russenoire

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doodles

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of course Im gonna go with both. I mean imagine the shounen detective-vibe quips these two are gonna throw back and forth they have such peculiar-people-met-by-chance aura

also hc that for mezato good posture automatically equals human tripod

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a broadly applicable extended metaphor for the kageyama brothers: 

mob is round and ritsu is sharp. 

this applies to LOTS of things about both of them– least of all, but most noticeably, their hair.

mob is round. he’s blunt, socially dull, tangential to the lives of his peers. he’s like a firm ball of clay rolled between two hands. when he learns new things, it’s like, first he has to make them stick, then he has to re-roll himself back into shape without them falling out. ideally, the things he learns become a part of him. overall, it’s a clumsy process, so he’s not the best learner, but neither is he the worst. and he’s good when it comes to learning about (and improving) himself, because he can reshape himself, being clay. he is also relatively easily influenced by others, who may try to shape him to their own liking. still, roundness is the most comfortable shape for him, so he always returns to it. 

ritsu is sharp. sharp-tongued, sharp-eyed, sharp-witted. he’s like a mass of thorns or shards of glass. when he learns new things, they stick easily, becoming impaled on his jagged surface, and he understands them intimately, though they remain separate from his self. ritsu is a very good learner. but he’s not very good at learning about himself, because when he tries to delve deeper, he gets poked by his own spikes. he is also more brittle than mob, so it’s harder to improve himself; things need to break before they can change shape. likewise, ritsu is less easily influenced, being more solid and thus less permeable. he wishes he was a more organic shape, like his brother, despite the many clear advantages afforded to him by his sharpness.

mob’s psychic power is also based on roundness– his aura in the anime consists of overlapping circles. his power, tied directly to his emotions, is round like a coiled spring. as his explosion meter slowly ticks up, the spring is compressed bit by bit. when he hits 100%, it releases all that potential energy at once, then slowly collapses back to normal. 

ritsu’s psychic power is also based on sharpness– his aura in the anime looks like jagged shreds. where mob’s aura flows like ripples in a pond, ritsu’s cracks and crinkles along fault lines, like paper or tin foil that’s been folded before. the uneven structure means he can’t store emotions as psychic energy in the same way as his brother; emotions just create more faults and fissures, making it harder to direct his power anywhere else.

ritsu is certainly sharp by nature, but much of his jaggedness is a result of having parts of him shattered by trauma. i can’t help but wonder how different he would be had he never met ???%.

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Teru and Mob sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g

It was at this moment that Shou knew…. he fucked up.

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boo!

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i think he should get one BILLION hugs . instantly

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@licilou22 He was so surprised he dropped his phone on his face.

As for Ritsu…

He managed to avoid Takenaka for 3 whole days.

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Why people like your doodles better than your finished works

Learn from your doodles rather than resent them

I frequently see artists complain that their finished works got less attention than mere sketches, doodles and other smaller or less serious work. Which is frustrating! But almost as often, I can see exactly why the doodle got more attention. I’m going to cover some of these reasons, so you can use that information so you can do more than fume about it.

The doodle is easy to read, the polished work is busy

The polished work is completely drenched in little details that the artist slaved over, but the details create a kind of overall noise that makes everything harder to understand, making the whole image less appealing.

Don’t get too lost in little details, work from larger shapes to small details, use things like a highly readable silhouette, contrast, variance in line width or negative space to keep the image understandable. Pay attention to the composition to guide the eye where you want it.

The doodle is high contrast, the polished work is low contrast

When you do lots of details all equally well lit and easy to see, overall you lose the strong lights and darks that make a work pop. You have to sacrifice some of those details, let them be in shadow or out of focus in the background, to create a more appealing image overall.

You might also be forgetting that without lineart you need to use strong lights and darks, since lineart creates it’s own natural high contrast.

Contrast draws the eye, use that to create focus where you want it.

The doodle is simple to understand, the polished work is highly ambiguous in meaning and message

Many doodles that outstrip the artist’s polished work are jokes. Jokes usually have a specific clear focus and message, the viewer can understand it immediately (if they couldn’t, it wouldn’t be funny). You don’t have to make everything funny, but like a joke, you need to get to the point and give the audience the information they need to “get it.” More details can be present, but the viewer should not be confused about what to look at from the outset. Remember: people will look at and interpret your art in milliseconds. They might give it a longer look but only AFTER that millisecond look.

The initial glance is like the first page of a book. If it wows them they keep looking to understand more, if they are lost and confused, no second chances, they’ve already scrolled away.

You can use things like composition, basic structures of shapes and simple shape symbolism to give viewers the initial information they need to stay interested. Don’t feel like you have to abandon more personal and difficult to parse symbolism, these things can work together to create intrigue.

The doodle is fluid and expressive, the polished work is stiff and dead

The sketch for your polished work needs to be done with spontaneity and fluidity. When you want to really flex your drawing skills and show the world your beautiful realistic human faces, your sublime anatomy, gorgeous textures - it’s easy to forget about the undersketch and jump to rendering as soon as you can, creating a stiff or boring sketch that isn’t worthy of all the time you’re sinking into the minute details.

Practice quick gestures, read up on line of action, and before you make a polished painting, make sure you have a sketch that’s fun to look at even without the detailed rendering. Thumbnailing helps. Studies too. Sometimes you have to do the bad boring sketch, but you can take a few stabs at it.

You can’t make a bad sketch good by painting more details on it, you need to work out the sketch first before moving to the details.

Remember, if you’re going to spend 20 hours painting the thing, you can afford another half hour sketching a few different takes on your idea before digging in.

Lots of doodles, very few polished works

If you mostly post one kind of thing, your audience will be people who like that. Also, you may not have much practice with the techniques you are using in the polished work, while you have become a pro at doodles. You become an expert at what you practice, do more of what you want to be known for, become an expert at it, make it the only thing your audience is there for.

The audience is familiar with the subject of the doodle, unfamiliar with the subject of the polished work

Many artists do doodles of fanart and get fed up that people like that more, but the truth is, they don’t like it “more” they just already know they like it. You can increase the chances of people appreciating your original works by making sure they can understand what’s going on in the illustration without prior knowledge of who these characters are, or simply sticking to it until you have garnered an audience. Just keep at it.

Remember, the creators of the property you made fanart of are themselves artists who were pushing an original idea at one time. You can follow in their footsteps.

The doodle is quirky and unusual, the polished work is stale and samey

This can happen when an artist has an image in their head of what a SERIOUS and PROFESSIONAL painting looks like, usually based on a very narrow subset of artwork, often itself based on the same cargo cult of seriousness.

Try studying works outside your usual stomping grounds. Look to artists that likely inspired your faves (if you’re talking about realistic artists who inspired your favorite concept artists, here’s some likely culprits to get you started on the google search: JC Leyendecker, Alphonse Mucha, Norman Rockwell, James Gurney, Rembrandt), look to artists outside your genre, and look at your doodles and ask yourself what “not serious, just for fun” source of inspiration is making them so fresh and vibrant that your audience is connecting to them so strongly. Study that, respect that fun and try to pull it into your serious work.

The polished work was hard to make and no one cares

Being an artist is hard, and that we keep at it is commendable, but struggling and taking more hours doesn’t make a piece better necessarily.

There are a few things to consider here. First, you need to realize looking to the vague faceless masses of the internet for a fatherly “I’m proud of you, son” moment is always going to be disappointing and painful and attempting to guilt strangers into fulfilling that role for you is awkward and inappropriate. You need artist friends who can recognize your hard work and cheer you on and you need to be your own cheerleader, value your own hard work and practice.

Second, you need to realize torturing yourself doesn’t in and of itself make art better. Hard work is something people love about art, the meaning of someone spending that time, but if I screamed for 8 hours, drew a single line, then posted that, the internet wouldn’t be wrong to be unexcited about it. Rather than blame the viewer, think about two things: how can you make the art itself more appealing while still doing the painting that you’re interested in doing, and how can you do that faster and with less pointless suffering?

It’s okay to be a masochist when it comes to art, many artists are, just make sure you’re spending your time and suffering wisely.

You’re complaining about someone else’s “doodle”

Sketches and cartoons are deceptively hard to make appealing, rather than fume that they are getting more attention, look to them for lessons. What could you learn from them? Could you do it? Maybe you should try. Would make a good exercise.

And never get mad that their drawings are more appealing to the internet than yours, even though they spent less time on their drawing than you did on yours. See above for why time is not important here, but also keep in mind they may have been practicing longer than you or may be more established than you.

Keep working on your art, keep posting, push to be seen, advertise your work, put yourself out there. These things take time but work.

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Binky!

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I love him so much, he's such a sweet baby

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mob was definitely the kid who could not force a natural smile no matter how many times his mom told him to "smile with his eyes" for the kageyama family holiday card.

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i was sad last night because i got to the end of volume 12 of the mob psycho official english translation and there aren't going to be any more books until january and then i saw this panel and laughed for 30 minutes

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Title: Please, go to therapy.

A collab I did with @ygodmyy20

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in los angeles, the historically Black community of altadena has been decimated by the ongoing eaton fire.

afropunk has created a spreadsheet of gofundmes of displaced Black individuals and families affected by the current los angeles fires. the list is constantly being updated.

please donate what you can and share widely.

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AI under capitalism