pine-niidles

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Plant (Hymn belongs to @pine-niidles)

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Starting a little late but drawtober/october day 1! 🌿

I used to always start my sketchbooks and these sort of challenges drawing Shen so I had to start with him :) I don't draw or think about him very often these days but he's still one of my fav ocs <3

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2024 September Monthly Updates

read on my blog

I've got a very short update for you this month. I don't have any significant milestones or progress to show, I've just been keeping at it making progress on various things I've talked about recently. October will probably look pretty similar so I'll likely skip doing an update for it, especially since my girlfriend and I will be moving into a house late in the month and that'll be keeping the bulk of my attention! Once we've moved I'm planning to get the supplies I need to launch an online shop 🌟 I'll be easing into thing listing mostly prints & stickers I've already got designed but I've also got some plans for bigger things I want to make in the coming months :)

In other news I decided last minute (right now as I am writing this post) to do an October drawing challenge! My friend was telling me about their plans I got nostalgic for when I was in high school and took requests of other people’s ocs to draw every day in October or turn into merfolk in May… So if you’d like to submit a character for me to draw I’ve made a form here! I’ll be doing them in the same template I did these artfight attacks in because they were really quick and fun. I don’t actually know how long I’ll keep it up or if I’ll even do it daily, I’ve put zero planning into this and I know I have a busy month ahead of me so I’m also putting zero pressure on myself about it but we’ll see!

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\o/ I'm in this! (you should really open those read mores because Mod Ara did an amazing job on the graphics)

Contributor Spotlights: START!

The great wait is over - It's time to meet all of our contributors!

Please look forward to our contributor spotlights, which will be added to this post in the coming weeks! 🌙🦋

See our first round of contributors below the cut!

Up first and drawing for the Kotone Shiomi, the Fool, is Sijia, whose stunning rendering is going to make her card shine!

INSTAGRAM: @/jd5vlp0610

Next is Honk, representing the Magician arcana with Junpei Iori! Honk's work is eye-catching and distinctive!

TUMBLR: @sirlanval

Please give it up for the other representative of the Magician arcana! Linktoo will be putting their beautiful compositional skills to work on a card for Kenji Tomochika!

CARRD: https://linktoo-doodles.carrd.co/

Bringing up the rear for today's spotlights is David, whose writing is beautifully poetic - they'll be sure to tug at your heartstrings with their piece featuring our Fool, Kotone Shiomi!

TWITTER: @/halberdierradio

Stay tuned for more! 🎵

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2024 August Monthly Updates

It's a very text heavy update this month, I'm... working on getting back into the habit of regular art. My art muscles have grown stiff and it's slow going training them back up. It is going though - I've even been doing some sketching in my physical sketchbook this week.

Doodling fish makes for a good warm-up

Website/Blog

I've been wanting to set up a proper art blog for a while. Social media has always been hard for me to keep up with, I've never really had fun posting art online ever since deviantart stopped being good. Figuring out what, when, how to post & keeping up with constant changes... it's been said a million times so I won't get into it, and at the end of the day even if it's frustrating it's still worth it for the connections I make and the art I get to see because of it. Still, I don't want to rely on social media to be the only place where my art lives (it's a sad thought!). That's why I've been compiling art pdfs, it's why I've been looking into physical print making, it's why I started these monthly updates in the first place.

So if you're reading this on my new blog welcome! (if not - it's here) I'm planning to eventually move to hosting it myself but so the moment I'm relying on wordpress, I apologize for the banners. I'm still deciding how I want to do monthly updates from now on - I'll be posting all of them on the new blog for sure but I'm still undecided if I want to continue to cross post them on tumblr & kofi. I have a poll just for that running right now if you have an opinion (or if you don't - it's a nice motivator just to see that people are actually reading these).

Other than monthly updates I'll be posting process breakdowns on here, and more in depth looks at individual projects at various stages of their process. Maybe doing some features (or even reviews?) of other artists/projects. We'll see how it goes! I won't be cross-posting those, thought I'll probably post links to them when I write them (you can also sign up to the email newsletter for this blog at the bottom of the page - though you'll have to make a wordpress account). I know a lot of people use patreon for this kind of thing but I like the freedom of not having an expectation of consistency (or quality).

Fanzines

I've started taking part in fanzines again, there's a couple in particular I'm very excited for! Not much more to say on that topic as I'm not allowed to announce my participation yet but that's something I've been working on this month.

All in Good Time

I've done very little (read:none) art for my own projects this month, but I have done some writing for a couple I've yet to introduce publicly.

The first is a short (12-16 page) self-contained comic featuring a friend of mine and my ocs. I've written a rough script for it and will be working on character designs and art for it when I have a little more free time :)

They Say There is a Monster in These Woods

The second project I was doing writing for is much longer term - I've been toying around with the idea of doing a solo visual novel for some time now and I finally came up with a story idea for one.

The game starts with you in the woods, injured. You stumble across a clear where a lone manor stands and collapse in front of it. When you come to the Lady of the manor greets you, and invites you to stay as her guest for some time while you recover from your injuries and to attend her birthday celebrations in two weeks. You spend this time in the manor getting to know the inhabitants, maybe finding the sparks of romance with one among them, and maybe even figuring out the source of the mysterious rumors that there is a monster in the woods...

\o/ I hope that intro sounds fun to you! I'm certainly excited about it. This will be more of a long term project - both in the fact that it'll be a lot of work to make and because I have other game projects I want to prioritize first, some collab work and some of my own games that are only a couple steps away from completion (Don't Wake the Sleeping Dragon I've not forgotten about you...)

--

And that's all for August! I'm looking forward to Summer ending and the start of Fall, maybe I can do some plein air watercolors of the leaves changing color when that time comes :)

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Monthly update post will go up today or tomorrow but in the meantime - I've set up an art blog to talk about art projects & process & whatever else I feel like rambling about :) I also plan to post monthly updates posts there from now on but I haven't decided if I want to continue crossposting them here on tumblr or not so I'd like to hear your preferences

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Hello ! My supporting friends ,🖤💚💔🤍🍉

Thank you from my heart for what you are doing for the people of Gaza who are in bad need in this tough and dire time. 💔💚🖤🤍

You are examples for kindness, generosity and nobility. You have been standing with for long and showing how brave one should be in time of need. 🍉🍉🍉🍉

You helped me greatly to make progress in my campaign, but I am still in need of your kind support to reach my goal.✌️✌️

As noticed, the campaign is very slow😪😪 now and needs strong move and this can be carried out through your contribution and cooperation. 😯😯

Please don't leave us alone during this dire time. I am still in the first quarter of my campaign. ❣️❣️

https://gofund.me/0dc0aa34

Thank you for reaching out to me! I've donated and hopefully my follower can as well, or at least help spread this.

This is #214 on the vetted fundraiser spreadsheet.

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A quiet aside just for the two of them 💙💚 for @yonah952

Commission Info | My Links

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I'll be there to catch you when you fall 🌠 for @denim-lich

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Swim On: Shark Zines for Charity!

Swim On is a yearly digital art zine featuring illustrations and comics about sharks. All proceeds the zine makes goes directly to finfree.org every September 30th. Swim On is edited and produced by https://jeypawlik.tumblr.com/ and has been running yearly since 2015, with 2024 being the last year (for now). Grab a decade’s worth of shark art here! [Image ID: Promotional image of 10 zine covers all featuring a different shark. Text reads “10 years of Swim On - grab all 10 @ topazcomics.com/swimon/downloads all proceeds go to finfree.org” /End ID]

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Feels like a good time to mention I have a ko-fi page! Any tips are always super appreciated and go towards me being able to make more art for both me and you :)

My laptop screen fully gave up on me today 😬 I was going to take more of a break between comms when I finished my current queue but I'll probably end up opening pwyw mystery comms as soon as I can!

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My laptop screen fully gave up on me today 😬 I was going to take more of a break between comms when I finished my current queue but I'll probably end up opening pwyw mystery comms as soon as I can!

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sleepy drawing for an art trade event earlier this year ☁

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Escape can wait for a moment 🎣

Commission Info | My Links

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2024 July Monthly Update - Artfight

Another July gone by, another Artfight draws to a close. This month's update post will be primary looking at what I've made for Artfight, but first some personal updates:

I mentioned in my last post I was dealing with wrist pain but it was getting better. It got worse. The last few weeks of July I spent not moving my hands as much as I possibly could because both hands were feeling so bad. Luckily I managed to figure out the cause (I bought myself a wheeled bag to take stain off my back when grocery shopping, turns out wheeled bag + cobblestone streets = wrist destroying vibrations) and once I eliminated it my wrists started actually healing. They're feeling much better now, not fully healed but well on the way :) I'm just glad art wasn't the cause. With any luck this'll be the last monthly update this year with a 'personal circumstances' blurb at the start and I can get fully back to just making and talking about art ✨

Artfight

This year was my 8th year participating, which is kind of wild to think about. My first year was Sun vs Moon, on team moon and I drew 34 total art pieces. I don't think I've ever beat the number but I certainly got close this year having drawn 30 attacks!

I didn't have a specific plan going into artfight this year, I usually don't other than maybe a list of people I'd like to draw for. I treat artfight as a super low pressure way to experiment and draw fun designs. Not every piece comes out exactly how I want it but that's part of the fun and every year at least one artfight drawing makes it's way to my fav art that year. 

At the end of June I'd just made a template for doing these chibi icons and I was having so much fun with them I started off artfight doing a bunch of them for attacks:

I think they turned out super cute but they look a little awkward side by side due to the different dimensions of each one. I've yet to find a good way to display batches of them 😔

The first bigger drawing I did was of a character I found in my bookmarks and I love how it turned out:

It was the perfect piece to break the last shackles of my artblock away and drawing it felt smooth as butter. I didn't really do anything similar the rest of the month but there's several points on how I lined and colored this one that I'm keeping in mind to experiment more with in the future. 

After the first piece I was feeling in a more environmental mood and freehanded these two attacks featuring characters in funky landscapes.

My wrists were still feeling pretty iffy at this point so the lines for both of these were a very loose first pass over a rough sketch but to be honest I don't think anyone would notice unless I pointed it out. 

I really thought I'd do more in this style but 🤷‍♂️ it ended up not happening. Maybe I'll do something with some ocs soon

The last three attacks I got out before my wrists got too bad to draw I did all in the same day

These two characters were exactly my type & I love to draw chibis on some kind of environmental base or prop so I wanted to do something with that this artfight as well. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Another one with a base, this time more like a character standee that I love to give dnd characters. Physical character models moving around on a map is one of my favorite tactile experiences of tabletop games.

The last one I did before I had to take a couple week pause - I wanted to experiment around with linework specifically and while there's a lot I like about this drawing there's several things I had to rush or simplify because of my wrists and overall it didn't end up being the strongest piece. Ah well, that's how it sometimes.

The day after I did these I went grochery shopping again and then my wrists really gave out. I didn't draw anything for artfight from the 12th until the 29th when my hands were finally starting to feel good enough to try and do just a few last drawings before the end.

I started off simple with some blocky chibis with saturated lineart. I'd played with colorful lines in the past but I never ended up liking because having all the lineart be one bright color always felt too much and too distracting. However, earlier this month I saw this gorgeous attack by ebelcities which made my realize the extremely pointless arbitrary restriction I'd been putting on myself: you don't need to have ALL the lineart be a bright saturated color, of course you don't! How trivial! And yet this was a huge breakthrough. I have to thank ebelcities for having such beautiful art 🥰 Seeing her work is always sooo inspiring. 

I still didn't want to push my hands too much so my next attack was done mostly using the lasso tool, with a few textures added on top. This attack received the least attention on social media out of all of them but personally I'm pretty proud of it 🤍

In the last two days my hands were feeling MUCH better and I took advantage of that to try and reach my initial goal I had at the start of the month - 30 attacks to fill up a whole page on my all attacks section with attacks from this year. 

​I had 7 left to do - and I did it!

I wanted to keep them simple both of the sake of my hands (drinking game for this post - take a shot anytime I mentioned my wrists) and to actually finish 7 drawings in 2 days. But I also didn't want to just give people rough sketches, especially since most of these were revenges for some really lovely art I'd gotten. So I came up with the idea of A) a border template and B) using tones!

I've been really into dot tones recently but I've not really been using them as is the traditional method - it was a bit of a challenge doing them in these! Picking tones, getting a range of values, matching textures, getting the size of the dots right... so many decisions to make. I'll have to keep experimenting with them, maybe for some actual comics in the future :)

And that's it for this year's artfight. We'll be hearing the results soon but even before hearing them I think seafoam has probably lost haha, we've been lagging behind all month and I had a feeling this would happen when I saw the team numbers but I still love seafoam regardless <3 I'm looking forward to seeing what the teams will be next year!

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chibis from artfight 🌈

For FatherShark, Perlendrache, XilaGaming, and @becauseihad-too

My Artfight | Commission Info | My Links

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Inky artfight attack for @camberdraws 💖

My Artfight | Commission Info | My Links