#Artfight is certainly going to be An Experience this year

[glasscitadel]

I'm a fast artist in the way I can start to finish a fully rendered bust in one 4hr sitting.

I'm a slow artist in the way that my auDHD never allows that to happen until I'm scrambling at the last minute.

I'm also a secret third artist where I must have at least 10 wips to constantly carousel between. Sometimes, multiple just happen to get finished within the same day and I will again appear to be a fast artist.

[pine-niidles]

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!

[ren-from-mars]

I’ve been doing some reflecting on this past year, and I really truly think it is the most artistic improvement I have made in any span of time. Of course, I’m going to be completely insufferable about it and have collected my best piece from each month with a few personal notes, so why don’t we go on a sprint down memory highway together?

January

At the start of the year, I was both adrift between fandoms and art styles. I was mostly aiming to find which style I could keep using, finish pieces quickly yet still feel proud of. It certainly worked in the moment, but as I pushed my boundaries more it didn't stick. Still, I look back on this style fondly! also proper throwback to my old username that i had for far too long

February

This was the start of me working on colour palettes. I lay down my main colour in the background and fit the rest of my colours around that. It was a good way to start experimenting!

March

Then the shift back to finding my style- I particularly like how the hair turned out in this piece! I also started trying more interesting poses here, and actually properly attempting hands.

April

I didn't finish any pieces in april as I had started working more hours and didn't quite know how to balance myself creatively at that point. I did lean into this style of sketch much more, which was good fun while it stuck around but ive leant away from it in more recent times.

May

Not much to say about may in particular, lots of the same things as the past few months with improvements here and there! just some steady progress :)

June

Cue the crunch of getting character refs done before artfight, and then only actually finishing one (which isn't actually complete, even to this day). But hey, more solid reference for My Guy ! I also leaned into drawing furries a lot more and have improved heaps in the difference of proportions!

July

artfight baybee!! no artistic differences, but it was a lot of fun scouting out other peoples character designs! I do hope to participate more this year :3

August

back to colours, though this month felt like a bit of a backtrack. Don't get me wrong, I do quite like this piece, but contrast-wise it doesn't have as much visual clarity as I would like. Regardless, a good learning opportunity!

September

Fun fact, I rendered this one entirely in greyscale! This was the start of me getting back into hatchetfield after being reminded of NPMDs release, and lets be real this part of black friday was chilling so I had to do something about it! I consider this piece a landmark in terms of my art journey.

October

Once again no real finished pieces, I was too busy watching nightmare time while waiting for the group watch of npmd. I did do a lot of studies of star wars characters from their live-action shows though, which was a fun learning experience!

November

This was the piece where I applied pretty much everything I had learnt throughout the year. contrast, colour themes, interactive environments and poses, the lot! and also. its them. how could i not

December

A perfect piece to wrap up the year with! Another step up from november, this applied lots of what I had learnt and pushed my boundaries even more. I have been aiming for more realism to actor's faces and body types, not out of it-has-to-be-canon-sake, but rather learning how to accurately depict someone's likeness from a few photo references. good practice for both live-action and animated characters!

Overall last year was absolutely wild. I can't wait to share my journey with you all as we go into 2024 strong!

[artsyfyro]

Artfight 2023 Collection

This year’s Artfight has come and gone, and it was a pretty active year all things considered. Sent out a lot of attacks, and even got a lot of defenses, especially for Kilua this year. Since a lot of work went into the pieces I did this month, here’s each of the pieces I did for people.

Keep in mind that I was on Team Vampire, so next to the title of the piece, i’ll have a number that corresponds to the person it was for, attributed to near the bottom of the post, and in parentheses, a indicator on which type of piece it was, friendly fire, attack, revenge, etc. Without further ado... here’s what I did this year!

#Piece 1 - 20th Century Boys (Attack) Ft. Clarenze and Liam Signhson

#Piece 2 - Sweeping Blade of Grass (Attack) Ft. Parsley

#Piece 3 - Ballin’ (Attack) Ft. Slim Ridland (Ft. Daily Pyoro)

#Piece 4 - An Unlikely Trio (Attack) Ft. Ivy, Josie, and Wynne

#Piece 5 - Reaper in the Rain (Revenge) Ft. Drizzle

#Piece 6 - Salty Vaporwave (Revenge) Ft. Jewel

#Piece 7 - Hat Trick (Friendly Fire) Ft. Ferris and Mochi

#Piece 8 - Flower-Tailed Forest Dweller (Attack) Ft. Matcha

#Piece 9 - Sunflower Chu (Attack) Ft. Poppet (PMD ver.)

#Final Piece - Fluffy Aeromancer Dragon (With a Battleax) Ft. Aero

Credits:

1 - @clarenzesinghson 2 - @honeycrud 3 - @rachaelpyofren 4 - @madadrawing 5 - @dibblesdoodles 6 - SaltedGlaceons on Artfight 7 - @startistdoodles 8 - sweirde (Kira/Kemoki) on Twitter 9 - @snoofins Final - @noodlebean

Last Thoughts of the Event:

This year’s artfight I think was one of my favorites i’ve had so far (and i’ve only been around since 2021), but not without some added anxiety.

Some of that anxiety was expected stuff from artfight, like not being able to hit a couple people because I ran out of time and energy, and also dealing with artist burnout a couple time. But some other stuff was personal life stuff, and well... twitter becoming more and more of a trashfire.

That all being said, this year was also really fun. One of my favorite things to do over an artfight is find some way to improve on or just experiment with my art since I don’t really do “big colored pieces” very often, and this year certainly helped push that a little further. I experiment a lot with shading and backgrounds, and I think in hindsight, things like Pieces 2, 5, 6, 8, and Final ended up being my favorites to look at just because the colors and background all just work.

Some of them also allowed me to think up a couple ideas of scenarios to put the characters in that added to how I went about the piece. Pictures 4 and 7 especially clarify that, considering they depict a scenario or even a potential group dynamic that’s pretty fun to think on. 

Though what also was crazy was that I got attacked a lot more than I was expecting to going into this year. Like I expected at least a couple if I was actively participating, but I got hit with... well 7 technically, but one was a mass attack Volt was included in, not directed at me, so 6 officially. It was a neat surprise to keep waking up to a few of them, and a lot of them focused on Kilua, she got a lot of love this year. (dw, Volt got a couple too actually). I’m really happy about that, and I love all the drawings people did, they all capture something about the original designs that I love, while translated into their own styles. Dibnibs in specific went and even added backgrounds to them after the event passed, and they (not just mine but a couple of the others I saw) look awesome.

Whatever the case though, the event went really well. I got quite a few pieces sent my way, and I was able to put out a lot of pieces, and a lot of those pieces I really like how they came out. I was on Team Vampire this year, but I think I can say i’ll win either way because I only was on there because a lot of my mutuals were going werewolf, and I wanted to have opposition. That and, I just like Werewolves more. 

If anyone has questions for me about anything related to their art, my dms are open. And with that, thanks for a really fun year to everyone who participated. 

[maudfs]

It's that time again for the summary of art! 2022 is on its way out and it was certainly a year...

This was the year of the water tiger in the Chinese Zodiac. I enjoy using Zodiac things as prompts AND my birth year was of the tiger, so that is January's image. I used the lasso tool for a lineless look, it was fun.

February's image is a bunch of air type raptors of a species I have been thinking of for a while. I was trying to flesh out what markings they would have and what kinds of color morphs might exist. (front to back: rare (sunset), common (blue-jay), melanistic (dark), leucistic (light), and albino) Of course they are not finished (I guess headworlds are never really finished) but I would like to someday update my websites bestiary with all the characters and species I've created and these would be one of the featured ones.

March's image is for an Ovipets challenge that I won! It is a Catus with butterfly wings looking at butterflies in a field of clover.

In April I made a bunch of shuffle-style icons and little sprites for my characters for things like their toyhouse pages or my website... so basically a bunch a stuff that won't get posted by itself.

For May here is a sketch of Fulvina from Spectrobes (the thing my Fulvina is named after! I had to draw it eventually, but) I didn't finish it at the time because I was having trouble with the lines, though I do plan on finishing it. Spectrobes as a whole could use some more love!

June's image is Amdy as a Unicorn, as I was seeing Junicorn challenges but didn't want to draw something every single day. I also chose this because well, why do I have so many so-called shapeshifters yet I only draw them in one form? I should show what else they can do!

July is ArtFight month and this time around I found some very cool characters to draw including a dragon named Colors! This was very fun to draw.

August I created a character called Daemon, seen here. Haven't really fleshed him out much though XD.

September Flight Rising released a gene called Soap that makes the dragon extra shiny, and I knew I had to draw it. What better than a vaporwave dragon? Flight Rising has released a LOT of stuff this year now that I think about it!

For October, a WIP of Alban... didn't finish much this month. I wanted to draw some Halloween images and make a bat-sona but that didn't happen in time. Somewhat related, this is the third year in a row I started to feel depressed beginning in October and into the winter, DESPITE loving Halloween and colder weather, so I'm wondering if that's a sign of seasonal depression or something? Yeah.

November's image is more Ovipets, this time dogs (Canis and Lupus) playing in fallen leaves. Used lots of different CSP brushes in this one. (For the single purchase version, of course... as if I'd deal with a monthly subscription for an art program... I don't know who thought THAT was a good decision)

December I finished this piece of Cygnet. I was going to try to draw more for December, but the sheer cold of this country wide snowstorm(!) seems to have put me in hibernation mode, so I'm gonna go ahead and finish with this.

Now's also a good time to say that I still don't mess with ΝFТ's or АI art, (I don't consider either of these things to be “art” and I don't have the energy to argue about it) so I've been experimenting with new watermarks to try and combat that in a subtle way... still watching Twitter catch fire. Still wearing a mask (end date: undefined). Still love playing Legends Arceus... STILL too shy to socialize!! Come on, that's gonna end up being my new year's resolution for like, every year! Gosh XD But I must continue to try... I must..!

As always, thank you for coming by and reading. :3