#I make up for my dirty lineart by painting

[srtruth]

[risunsky]

How do you do your process? Do you sketch it first and then paint over it? Is there a sketch before the rest of the pencils? I'm SO fascinated and in love with your work. Please direct me to a place if you've answered these questions before.

Thank you for your interest! To be honest, I can't remember if I've ever answered a similar question before and I'm too lazy to check, lol. My digital painting method is catastrophic. I waste an enormous amount of time trying, failing and starting over and over again.. ^^"

But to answer your question more precisely, I always start with a lineart sketch, yes, most often a dirty first sketch, then I draw a cleaner sketch before painting over it. (more like underneath, because I end up blending the lineart with the painting at the very end), it helps me keep the fine details in the process and the outlines clear. The current one in progress is a good example:

the face here isn't finished yet, I'll probably still be spending time making micro-corrections on it. I hope it helps! :)

[shadandrews]

woah your colors are very good- is there a process to them? they look so nice

Wah, thank you!!

For coloring, I generally think it's a little bit of having an eye for color -- i look at a lot of other artists' pieces and try to remember things they do that i like with color! And some of it is going to school for animation, where im trying to make things simple and cohesive.

My go-to is

pick colors for whatever I'm doing. This is sort of just...based on intuition. But two things i make sure to do(or try to) is if its a character, I try to limit them to 2 "main" colors and an accent, if needed. I try not to exceed that, personally, because with my art it tends to get too busy looking? But its not a hard rule for sure -- This little guy is blue and gold. The hair is a really light blue, and then the dark blue clothes, and some gold accenting to break things up. Backgrounds i tend to just pick what feels right. But this background has blue, so I make sure its the same type of blue that is on the character.

Then, I have a set of layers that I overlay ontop. I have this saved as a material template in Clip paint and I just drag-drop. This is where all my color correcting happens, tbh.

adjust the brightness and contrast, if needed.

adjust the hue and saturation. I tend to make the picture a little warmer hue, and boost the saturation

I have two textures i overlay, and adjust he opacity per image. One is a paper texture, and the other one despite being named paper still, is jus a static noise texture.

a gradient i adjust colors on per image, but warmbright-to-cooldark is generally my rule of thumb

Then I'll add some glow from the lightsource as a glow or overlay layer, too. this is normally just a gradient and erasing bits

here that is with just it popped on, and then with my adjustments

Next I'll normally add a gradient map, and adjust the color balance to make sure everything looks kind of unified. Sometimes i do this and then delete both of them because i liked it before LOL. But this really helps give a mood, too.

I also change the lineart color. If I'm being lazy, I just make it all one dark, saturated color (in this case a dark saturated red) Now it looks like its hot a summery! Vs how cool coded the original picture colors were!

Thats my like....quick and dirty. Theres a lot of good tutorials on how to actually colorpick initially and everything, but tbh I dont really think about it a ton and I think a lot of it comes from having a large mental color library 😅

[badlydrawnmanic]

more stuff from my paint folder under the cut with varying levels of explanation

my owlfolk rogue d&d character as a shitty little baby because baby birds look miserable and it's funny

shut up

a square full of bugs

weird arcade cabinet thing from a dream i had. i didn't draw it on here but it had sonic underground decals and stuff and as prizes it'd print off stickers and random screenshots from the show that'd come out that side thing. i don't know why but it had a trackball

i was doodling a bunch of critters for some reason. i think it was low-key inspired by @mossworm's art and in my head it was for some kind of critter collection game idea

i forget what this is about but i think it speaks for itself. despite being in the paint folder it was very clearly not drawn in paint

dinosaurs in love

again not a paint drawing but a manic i drew on drawception

tails lost in the sauce (a plant poofed a fuck ton of pollen right in his face and he is not having a good time)

i drew this while sleep deprived and proceeded to break down into a laughing fit. no i don't know what it is and it's called god.png

a miscellaneous character i have named gordy gatorman. he's gay and owns a bakery

the same doodle of my owlfolk rogue plus two more things (she hates everyone)

i don't have an explanation for this one i just thought the belt attached to scourge's coat was stupid (you know this is old because of my "colored lineart only" phase)

i think the original text for this was slightly nsfw but this is funnier actually

"hjpt ;leg.png"

one of my many interpretations of a human sonic, this one leaning more into "grumpy teenager" than anything else. i usually don't draw humans so this is surprisingly nice looking

there's 3 more panels to this but i just wanna acknowledge those sad lobsters in the dirty ass tank at the grocery store. they looked so sad and i always wanted to take them home

it me

me and my @kinslee-the-normal-human's oc. we used to rp a lot and they'd get into all sorts of bullshit with mr. tall echidna always being like i told you this would happen and being generally upset about it but his teeny tiny girlfriend could not care less. this time it was about vampires but he's just vibing

one of my ocs just kinda turns into fire when he goes super and i thought the idea of his clothes burning off was hilarious

hard to explain but my friend made an au where like every possible fusion of two characters that could exist did exist all at once in a weird little sci-fi society and we roleplayed it a ilttle bit. my main character for it was an amy/manic fusion named pippin and they had anxiety

in the background you can see salyut (he was actually made for this au as a shadow/biolizard fusion), maroon (a shadow/knuckles fusion), and... man i forget his name but he was a sonic/shadow fusion. the character in the second to last panel is a mephiles/tikal fusion who was part of the evil sci-fi government or whatever and she scared pippin a lot. i might repurpose pippin because they're very cute

@kinslee-the-normal-human told me that you can tell if someone is a furry based on how they draw dogs so i drew a dog and she said i was a furry based on how i drew the back legs. she was right but i don't get the test lmao

one of my ocs sort of got sucked into amy's family unit and he's in a sort of younger-ish sibling role to her (despite being older) and she makes him very happy and he loves her very much. they are friends :)

pov you are talking to razor on discord and he is happy to see you

this is called "scourge peep.png". i don't know why it's holding a knife

me and my friend drew pokemon from memory at a sleepover. i think from the different art styles you can tell which ones i drew nsjkdgs

i was playing the sims and made a version of gyro on it and he just kept getting abducted by aliens. i couldn't stop him

[antirepurp]

Thanks for the tips! I definitely keep those in mind :). Do you handpick your colors? I really need help with that :/

a lot of the time yes. it's one of those things that you have to do a Lot to get the hang of it, and studying other art also helps with it, but i can try giving some pointers perhaps

i went ahead and dug up this tutorial from my main on placing characters into environments that focuses on the coloring aspect, which gives some pretty useful notes in adjusting colors to make them fit into backgrounds. i recommend giving it a look!

as for my process, i tend to usually have an idea of what mood i specifically want for a drawing when i start it and then pick the base colors based on that. here's some 'hog art with different vibes from this year and the base blues i ended up using for each of them:

most of the time i slide the hue to about where i think i want it and then start playing with the saturation and value sliders, and when i think i got something that looks right i lay it down. usually it's not quite right the first time and i need to pick it back later after laying down the other colors and adjust it further, bucket fill the new color in, then adjust it again and so on

it usually takes me a while to get the shade to a point where i think it looks right, and that takes a lot of fiddling with the hue-saturation-value sliders. as a general rule if i want the palettes to be colder i tint them more towards the right side of the color wheel (towards cyan/green/blue/magenta) and more to the left side if i want them to be warmer (red/orange/yellow, and magenta for blues). saturation and value sort of go hand-in-hand when determining the intensity of a color, but generally the higher the value the less you need to saturate it to add color to it. finding a good balance here takes some trial and error

also what i do a lot is adjust the entire base color layer (or all of them if i have multiple, and sometimes i include the shadow/highlight layers as well) with color adjustment features. i think most art programs have a specific tab for these sliders, but in paint tool sai they're found under filters:

i use "hue and saturation" to, well, adjust the hues of the colors towards the direction i want (usually just whether i want them colder/warmer or more intense)

i touch "brightness and contrast" a bit less, but sometimes adjusting here helps me make the colors pop out more, or make the background layers less eye-catching by lowering their contrast or cranking down the color deepen slider

another thing to keep in mind is that shading and highlights will also end up adjusting colors further. here's the tailmon pic i drew a couple days ago, with flats and then base shading (+ some adjusted lineart colors):

the colors already tint towards warm on the left, but the shading and highlights emphasize that even further

also layer effects are your friends! after i got to around this phase in the pic i figured that tailmon wasn't popping out of the background enough and there needed to be more contrast between the two of them, so i threw some light blue/cyan multiply and shade layers on the background, and smudged and erased the color in parts that i wanted to be lighter and added darker shades to parts i wanted darker. also bc i work in a back-asswards kinda way i had already put some additional highlight layers on the character to emphasize the lighting way before i even did the background, but i enabled them again below to show the difference they make (and simulate a sensible artist's workflow lol):

^ the overlay below the layer group was to add some glow to the background as well. quick and dirty lighting stuff!

i think a lot of coloring does end up coming down to practice. mess around with layer effects and multiply and overlay colors on top of your chosen base colors to see how they're tied together, study other people's works and eyedrop colors out of them to see what combinations of hue/saturation/value they're used to achieve the effect, try out new things! the more you do stuff the better you'll figure out the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't.

i feel like i might've gotten a bit sidetracked there akjshdaks but i hope this was helpful ":D

[shyshysmind]

the beginning of a thing

This is the beginning of a thing. It is also published here >>>>> https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/178504141/write/705655879

enjoy :)  Who am I? Your guess is as good as mine, really.Am I simply the young hardware store cashier with blue hair and long roots who sometimes wears bright red lipstick (which, by French fashion standards, is more of a warm red than a cool tone red and doesn’t match my skin tone)? Maybe I’m not all that complex; it’s possible that my life really isn’t much more intricate than what customers see when I scan the barcodes on their oak two-by-fours in their carts and take their dirty coupons in my thin white hand with a smile. For the most part, I don’t speak to my coworkers unless spoken to, and as far as customers go, I am on autopilot: “Hello, you find everything okay?” If the customer only sets one or two items on my counter (usually a soap-box-sized carton of screws or some small random piece of plumbing piping): “Would you like a bag for that?” (It makes me happy when they say no; plastic bags are horrible for the environment.) The customers usually insert their cards into the card reader on my counter and then stare at me in their idle, waiting for me to perform some magical cashier trick on the computer, unaware until I peep up and tell them so that the card reader machine is waiting on them to push a button or enter a credit pin number. Maybe I’m just as dull and reticent when I go home after nine hours of, “Hello, you find everything okay? Would you like a bag for that? It’s gonna have you select debit or credit--here’s your receipt, and here is a coupon for five dollars off a purchase of twenty-five or more,” as I am when I take my lunch breaks alone in the quiet of the training room, reading some overdue library book and pinching small bite-sized pieces off of a gas station brownie to nibble at instead of taking direct bites out of the suspiciously oily pastry.Maybe I’m actually the notions inside my head. Maybe I am just a tool that they use to be heard and make their dreams a reality; maybe I’m not my body or job. Maybe I am a successful, peaceful, light-hearted artist and author--I just haven’t published my novels or hosted any successful art shows yet. Or any art shows, for that matter.Perhaps I’m my mother’s daughter; stubborn and crazy, with an invariably rotten attitude and enough financial issues for myself and all of my fellow cashiers to build a boat out of and sail away from civilization and debt.Maybe I’m always so quiet because I’m holding my tongue, like my mother, and thinking about slashing tires and throwing ceramic dishes at skulls and sinking screwdrivers into flesh, all in the name or petty revenge or an intense burst of anger. Except, come to think of it, my mother doesn’t actually ever hold her tongue, so I suppose I might just be quiet for reasons entirely my own.Maybe I’m just like my mother’s mother, like my mother is so committed to convincing me I am, except fifty years younger; nasally voice, although mine is less whiny and severe; sitting in front of a computer for hours a day, except she uses the computer her husband bought for her to do lazy transcription work so she can have money for cigarettes, the only thing in life her husband won’t buy for her, and I saved up my paychecks in high school to buy my laptop so that I could leave Mudcap High School and graduate early through online classes; we both sleep a lot, and, as my mother said when I was in high school, I “spent a lot of time on my ass” just like Grammy does--although my time in bed was always induced by an inability to find the motivation to get up, and Grammy’s bedridden state came from staying up too late playing online solitaire. Maybe I’m just that girl from Mudcap High School whose hair displayed a new fresh (done at home) short cut and color of the rainbow at the beginning and end of every month whose clothes all came from Salvation Army and whose stomach was always making obnoxious attention-seeking noises in Spanish--wait, you thought all that time that I was a boy? Well, yeah, I guess that’s reasonable. I wore a lot of huge baggy sweaters.Maybe you just know me because you know somebody who knew me. In that case, maybe I only exist in your world and consciousness as the girl who broke Jo-Ellan’s heart, or the girl who tried to look like a boy but then dropped out and grew boobs and is now hot (in the online pictures, at least). Maybe your friend has a friend who knew my twin brother, and so you heard from your friend’s friend who knows my twin brother that my twin brother’s friend saw me on a dating app, and my brother told him, “Don’t worry dude, she doesn’t like dudes. She’s just looking for a sugar daddy.” And so my twin brother, whom we will call “Z”, laughed about it with his friend once the shocking sighting of Z’s twin sister on a dating app had passed, and all was well, but now people know that Z’s twin sister is a sugar baby and not as quiet and sweet as she seems.Maybe you heard about me from Dan or Katherine; maybe you hope to meet me someday, because I sound like a very sweet person and you like the artwork of mine which they showed you. Maybe you heard about me from Tyler, the guy I made sandwiches with when I worked at Subway in high school--in which case you probably believe him when he says that I did drugs in the back room of the restaurant. Maybe you don’t even know my name--maybe you know me because you’ve seen the art I post online. Maybe you feel very connected to me, and feel pleased to see me when you see that I’ve posted a picture of a sketchbook page I’ve completed. Maybe You don’t know my name at all, but the way I layer paint and colored pencils and vary the thickness of my lineart is enough. Maybe the portraits and paintings I share are enough for you to care about me.Maybe you’re one of Sage’s friends. Maybe you hung out with us the October night when it was warm and I was seventeen and he was eighteen and he put acid under my tongue with his goofy smile and then left my house because he was high and felt like God and my bathroom-sized bedroom was like a birdcage for him at that moment in time. Maybe you were there when he skateboarded from my house to Sebastian’s with more acid and weed in his backpack and the intention to share. Maybe you’re one of the three other guys who were at Sebastian’s house, already under the magical intoxication of Sage’s acid when he called a cab to pick me up from my house and bring me there to drink canned beer and smoke mediocre blunts until the sun came up and I noticed how swollen my lips felt, because acid always makes my lips feel all swollen and purple. So maybe you know me as Sage’s girlfriend who he didn’t call his girlfriend until I finally dumped him months later and he begged for me to stay and apologized for never giving me attention or being a good boyfriend. And that was the first time he had called himself my boyfriend.I don’t want to think about nights like those anymore. The boy I’m dating now regards LSD with as much hissing ostracism as if it were all cocaine sold from the alley behind a gas station dumpster. Just thinking about that night makes me feel high, though--my anemia leads me to shiver even in sixty-degree weather, which Midwesterners consider quite warm, but I didn’t mind the wind blowing through my maroon flannel and thin anemic skin that night. As I sat on the cold chipped concrete steps in front of my house waiting for the cab Sage had called for me, the cold was refreshing and good-hearted instead of a brittle cruel punishment from Mother Nature. I didn’t feel insecure about my dingy old black high top Converse; my high-waisted jeans and black T-shirt didn’t make me feel like I looked like a twelve-year-old boy; and the dead-ends in my chin-length purple hair were not worth my concern. The sky all up above and around me and the globe, hugging the horizon of the sleepy little dangerous city, cradling the most dangerous place in all of Indiana in its arm like a tired baby, was stark black, and I could basically smell it; it was a nice undiluted solid black, and there was no pollution hiding the stars. The stars had had a grand day, and were ready to make sure that I was going to have a grand night.The neighbors on all sides of our house were drug dealers, and those were just the neighbors we actually talked to and knew anything about. The National Guard Armory to the right of my mother’s house, right across the narrow one-way street, was comical considering the neighborhood it was in. But none of that mattered; for once I didn’t hate it all. The sky was a rich fragrant black, thick enough to choke you if it had such bad intentions; but its intention were only good. The black was the many yards of high-quality fabric of a fine lady’s skirt flowing endlessly down from a well-tailored strapless bodice with a lovely fit and comely sweetheart neckline. The stars were bright and small enough to be all the jewels and shiny beads which her personal tailor had surely spent weeks or months or even a lifetime hand stitching onto the top layer of her many layers of skirts.It was such a good night to wait outside for a cab.I will never have nights like that again; life is constantly changing. I can try to recreate that, but I will never get it right. Recreating such good things is a privilege entirely out of my pale mortal hands.Maybe you know me as the girl who drew really nice insects at Emmons Elementary when we were nine years old who has since moved to and from at least three public schools in the next city over, and then left public schools entirely right smack in the middle of junior year. Maybe that’s how you know me.You could know me as Andy. If you still know me as Andy, you probably either haven’t spoken to me since sophomore or freshman year, or you knew me in eighth grade when “Andy” was still a thing, and calling me by my real name now just wouldn’t feel right after all that time. I told people to stop calling me Andy junior year, and people obeyed--well, really I just stopped talking to anybody, so nobody called me anything. But the man I am dating now called me my real name yesterday, and it just sounded strange. He never knew me when I was Andy, and Andy only lasted a few years, and I don’t introduce myself as Andy anymore. I don’t care to be called Andy anymore. Yet it feels so strange, hearing somebody casually call me by my real name. Not knowing that I ever had another name. I don’t think I’ve really spoken to people since high school, so that was one of the first times I’ve heard somebody say it. My mother doesn’t even use my name--she’s never really called me my name, or anything nice.I’m rambling. My name just sounds weird. I don’t like it when boys say it passionately.There are so many people that I may be--I can’t even begin to guess which one you may know me as. Even if I were to know exactly what experiences we’ve had together or who told you about me, maybe you don’t even see me as what we’ve done together or what you’ve heard--maybe your own personal thoughts and emotions warped what you know about me. Maybe for the better, probably for the worse. Maybe jealousy came into play somewhere along the road, and no matter what good things you’ve heard, you refuse to accept that somebody who dated somebody who you wanted to date can be genuinely kind and good. Maybe you don’t even remember anymore why you don’t like me. You just don’t.Maybe you’ve loved me since freshman year, before you even knew my name, before you cut your hair short and before I grew mine out, so no bad things you hear about me sound right or can scathe your love. Maybe you don’t want to know me. Maybe you wish you did. Maybe you’re thinking about checking the back cover of this book and scavaging the pages of tiny nonsense text that comes before the first chapter and prologue just so that you can find some email or way to contact me because you think I sound interesting.However you see me now, though, that will change. The way I see myself changes at least three times per hour.

[seaweeeeef-blog]

The Beginning of Something

OOps, I accidentally put this on the wrong blog. lmao follow shyshysmind for my writing, i’m gonna repost this oops This is the first chapter of..... something. It is also published here > https://www.wattpad.com/705655879-lavender-whomever

Who am I? Your guess is as good as mine, really.

Am I simply the young hardware store cashier with blue hair and long roots who sometimes wears bright red lipstick (which, by French fashion standards, is more of a warm red than a cool tone red and doesn’t match my skin tone)? Maybe I’m not all that complex; it’s possible that my life really isn’t much more intricate than what customers see when I scan the barcodes on their oak two-by-fours in their carts and take their dirty coupons in my thin white hand with a smile. For the most part, I don’t speak to my coworkers unless spoken to, and as far as customers go, I am on autopilot: “Hello, you find everything okay?” If the customer only sets one or two items on my counter (usually a soap-box-sized carton of screws or some small random piece of plumbing piping): “Would you like a bag for that?” (It makes me happy when they say no; plastic bags are horrible for the environment.)

The customers usually insert their cards into the card reader on my counter and then stare at me in their idle, waiting for me to perform some magical cashier trick on the computer, unaware until I peep up and tell them so that the card reader machine is waiting on them to push a button or enter a credit pin number.

Maybe I’m just as dull and reticent when I go home after nine hours of, “Hello, you find everything okay? Would you like a bag for that? It’s gonna have you select debit or credit--here’s your receipt, and here is a coupon for five dollars off a purchase of twenty-five or more,” as I am when I take my lunch breaks alone in the quiet of the training room, reading some overdue library book and pinching small bite-sized pieces off of a gas station brownie to nibble at instead of taking direct bites out of the suspiciously oily pastry.

Maybe I’m actually the notions inside my head. Maybe I am just a tool that they use to be heard and make their dreams a reality; maybe I’m not my body or job. Maybe I am a successful, peaceful, light-hearted artist and author--I just haven’t published my novels or hosted any successful art shows yet. Or any art shows, for that matter.

Perhaps I’m my mother’s daughter; stubborn and crazy, with an invariably rotten attitude and enough financial issues for myself and all of my fellow cashiers to build a boat out of and sail away from civilization and debt.

Maybe I’m always so quiet because I’m holding my tongue, like my mother, and thinking about slashing tires and throwing ceramic dishes at skulls and sinking screwdrivers into flesh, all in the name or petty revenge or an intense burst of anger. Except, come to think of it, my mother doesn’t actually ever hold her tongue, so I suppose I might just be quiet for reasons entirely my own.

Maybe I’m just like my mother’s mother, like my mother is so committed to convincing me I am, except fifty years younger; nasally voice, although mine is less whiny and severe; sitting in front of a computer for hours a day, except she uses the computer her husband bought for her to do lazy transcription work so she can have money for cigarettes, the only thing in life her husband won’t buy for her, and I saved up my paychecks in high school to buy my laptop so that I could leave Mudcap High School and graduate early through online classes; we both sleep a lot, and, as my mother said when I was in high school, I “spent a lot of time on my ass” just like Grammy does--although my time in bed was always induced by an inability to find the motivation to get up, and Grammy’s bedridden state came from staying up too late playing online solitaire.

Maybe I’m just that girl from Mudcap High School whose hair displayed a new fresh (done at home) short cut and color of the rainbow at the beginning and end of every month whose clothes all came from Salvation Army and whose stomach was always making obnoxious attention-seeking noises in Spanish--wait, you thought all that time that I was a boy? Well, yeah, I guess that’s reasonable. I wore a lot of huge baggy sweaters.

Maybe you just know me because you know somebody who knew me. In that case, maybe I only exist in your world and consciousness as the girl who broke Jo-Ellan’s heart, or the girl who tried to look like a boy but then dropped out and grew boobs and is now hot (in the online pictures, at least). Maybe your friend has a friend who knew my twin brother, and so you heard from your friend’s friend who knows my twin brother that my twin brother’s friend saw me on a dating app, and my brother told him, “Don’t worry dude, she doesn’t like dudes. She’s just looking for a sugar daddy.” And so my twin brother, whom we will call “Z”, laughed about it with his friend once the shocking sighting of Z’s twin sister on a dating app had passed, and all was well, but now people know that Z’s twin sister is a sugar baby and not as quiet and sweet as she seems.

Maybe you heard about me from Dan or Katherine; maybe you hope to meet me someday, because I sound like a very sweet person and you like the artwork of mine which they showed you.

Maybe you heard about me from Tyler, the guy I made sandwiches with when I worked at Subway in high school--in which case you probably believe him when he says that I did drugs in the back room of the restaurant.

Maybe you don’t even know my name--maybe you know me because you’ve seen the art I post online. Maybe you feel very connected to me, and feel pleased to see me when you see that I’ve posted a picture of a sketchbook page I’ve completed. Maybe You don’t know my name at all, but the way I layer paint and colored pencils and vary the thickness of my lineart is enough. Maybe the portraits and paintings I share are enough for you to care about me.

Maybe you’re one of Sage’s friends. Maybe you hung out with us the October night when it was warm and I was seventeen and he was eighteen and he put acid under my tongue with his goofy smile and then left my house because he was high and felt like God and my bathroom-sized bedroom was like a birdcage for him at that moment in time. Maybe you were there when he skateboarded from my house to Sebastian’s with more acid and weed in his backpack and the intention to share. Maybe you’re one of the three other guys who were at Sebastian’s house, already under the magical intoxication of Sage’s acid when he called a cab to pick me up from my house and bring me there to drink canned beer and smoke mediocre blunts until the sun came up and I noticed how swollen my lips felt, because acid always makes my lips feel all swollen and purple. So maybe you know me as Sage’s girlfriend who he didn’t call his girlfriend until I finally dumped him months later and he begged for me to stay and apologized for never giving me attention or being a good boyfriend. And that was the first time he had called himself my boyfriend.

I don’t want to think about nights like those anymore. The boy I’m dating now regards LSD with as much hissing ostracism as if it were all cocaine sold from the alley behind a gas station dumpster. Just thinking about that night makes me feel high, though--my anemia leads me to shiver even in sixty-degree weather, which Midwesterners consider quite warm, but I didn’t mind the wind blowing through my maroon flannel and thin anemic skin that night. As I sat on the cold chipped concrete steps in front of my house waiting for the cab Sage had called for me, the cold was refreshing and good-hearted instead of a brittle cruel punishment from Mother Nature. I didn’t feel insecure about my dingy old black high top Converse; my high-waisted jeans and black T-shirt didn’t make me feel like I looked like a twelve-year-old boy; and the dead-ends in my chin-length purple hair were not worth my concern.

The sky all up above and around me and the globe, hugging the horizon of the sleepy little dangerous city, cradling the most dangerous place in all of Indiana in its arm like a tired baby, was stark black, and I could basically smell it; it was a nice undiluted solid black, and there was no pollution hiding the stars. The stars had had a grand day, and were ready to make sure that I was going to have a grand night.

The neighbors on all sides of our house were drug dealers, and those were just the neighbors we actually talked to and knew anything about. The National Guard Armory to the right of my mother’s house, right across the narrow one-way street, was comical considering the neighborhood it was in. But none of that mattered; for once I didn’t hate it all.

The sky was a rich fragrant black, thick enough to choke you if it had such bad intentions; but its intention were only good. The black was the many yards of high-quality fabric of a fine lady’s skirt flowing endlessly down from a well-tailored strapless bodice with a lovely fit and comely sweetheart neckline. The stars were bright and small enough to be all the jewels and shiny beads which her personal tailor had surely spent weeks or months or even a lifetime hand stitching onto the top layer of her many layers of skirts.

It was such a good night to wait outside for a cab.

I will never have nights like that again; life is constantly changing. I can try to recreate that, but I will never get it right. Recreating such good things is a privilege entirely out of my pale mortal hands.

Maybe you know me as the girl who drew really nice insects at Emmons Elementary when we were nine years old who has since moved to and from at least three public schools in the next city over, and then left public schools entirely right smack in the middle of junior year. Maybe that’s how you know me.

You could know me as Andy. If you still know me as Andy, you probably either haven’t spoken to me since sophomore or freshman year, or you knew me in eighth grade when “Andy” was still a thing, and calling me by my real name now just wouldn’t feel right after all that time.

I told people to stop calling me Andy junior year, and people obeyed--well, really I just stopped talking to anybody, so nobody called me anything. But the man I am dating now called me my real name yesterday, and it just sounded strange. He never knew me when I was Andy, and Andy only lasted a few years, and I don’t introduce myself as Andy anymore. I don’t care to be called Andy anymore. Yet it feels so strange, hearing somebody casually call me by my real name. Not knowing that I ever had another name. I don’t think I’ve really spoken to people since high school, so that was one of the first times I’ve heard somebody say it. My mother doesn’t even use my name--she’s never really called me my name, or anything nice.

I’m rambling. My name just sounds weird. I don’t like it when boys say it passionately.

There are so many people that I may be--I can’t even begin to guess which one you may know me as. Even if I were to know exactly what experiences we’ve had together or who told you about me, maybe you don’t even see me as what we’ve done together or what you’ve heard--maybe your own personal thoughts and emotions warped what you know about me. Maybe for the better, probably for the worse. Maybe jealousy came into play somewhere along the road, and no matter what good things you’ve heard, you refuse to accept that somebody who dated somebody who you wanted to date can be genuinely kind and good. Maybe you don’t even remember anymore why you don’t like me. You just don’t.

Maybe you’ve loved me since freshman year, before you even knew my name, before you cut your hair short and before I grew mine out, so no bad things you hear about me sound right or can scathe your love.

Maybe you don’t want to know me. Maybe you wish you did. Maybe you’re thinking about checking the back cover of this book and scavaging the pages of tiny nonsense text that comes before the first chapter and prologue just so that you can find some email or way to contact me because you think I sound interesting.

However you see me now, though, that will change. The way I see myself changes at least three times per hour.

[song-fox]

I posted 15,317 times in 2021

122 posts created (1%)

15195 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 124.5 posts.

I added 6,103 tags in 2021

#mcyt - 4688 posts

#sanders sides - 269 posts

#cool post - 256 posts

#animals - 190 posts

#cat - 173 posts

#check later - 173 posts

#dog - 116 posts

#toh - 83 posts

#iconic post - 78 posts

#caps - 77 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#*looks at my hoodie* *looks at my abundance of white t shirts* *looks at my skirt* *looks at my mismatched green & red shoes* yeah i'm fine

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Genuinely kinda tempted to write an essay on why tommy didn't betray technoblade, just for funsies

88 notes • Posted 2021-03-11 18:53:58 GMT

#4

Art tips that i have learnt that have absolutely no cohesion but might help someone:

Canvas (canvas bags, converse, etc.) takes up a ridiculous amount of pigment to colour in so have a backup marker/paint on hand

Hand sanitizer, soapy water and toilet bleach can't wash out alcohol markers on canvas

However hand sanitizer can be added to alchohol markers to make them last a little longer

But it also goes really faded so do with that information what you will

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SUPPORT YOUR BACK WHILE YOU DRAW

Draw on canvas with the lightest pencil you have bc that shit is hard to rub out

Paint always takes longer than you think to dry. Be patient. And stop touching it because jesus christ the only thing that'll happen is you'll get your dirty fingerprints all over it

Count your pens regularly bc there's a high chance you've lost one

Those pens that come with ready-made swatches? Ignore them. 99% of the time it looks nothing like the actual ink

And neither does the barrel, point is just swatch out your pens as soon as you can

Get that drink away from your art. No i don't care how careful you are with it. Get it away.

Using ballpoints to do lineart? Cool, just do the colours first because it will smudge

No, the ink poisoning won't be as bad as you think. Just wash it off when you get the chance

Red alcohol marker + nail polish remover = orange with a dark brownish-red outline

Yellow and black do NOT mix well. Be as careful as humanly possible when using them in close proximity

When using paint, make sure you're in a place where no dust can get on it

Work quickly with markers, those things will probably dry faster than you can switch out your colours

105 notes • Posted 2021-03-31 22:19:03 GMT

#3

Everyone shut UP he's the only thing i care about

112 notes • Posted 2021-08-01 12:34:15 GMT

#2

yeah my breathing is perfectly normal why do you ask

228 notes • Posted 2021-11-15 17:07:09 GMT

#1

Wilbur fuckin clawed his way back into the living world just so he could yell at his little brother, what an icon

717 notes • Posted 2021-01-20 21:04:39 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

Finally

my War of Wrath artwork for the Silmarillion 40 compilation has been revealed. On the one hand, I’m glad I got everything done so early, but I have found that I sort of need the instant gratification of rambling about what I did as soon as I did it, so keeping it secret for over a month was ungh. So hard. No wonder that procrastination is more true to my nature.

BUT now I can finally talk about it, and I shall do so at length, for this time, I can actually do a walkthrough of the Artistic Process (TM)! Usually, I paint in A4 and only do one scan of the lineart and one scan of the finished thing because I am teh lazy. This time I painted on A3 paper to have enough space for everything, which meant I couldn’t scan it at all. But I was so terrified of messing the whole epic thing up that I took photos of it after every major step. (How I would have gotten these grainy shots back onto A3 paper in order to try again is a puzzle I would have tried to solve if I’d had to. Fortunately, I didn’t.)

So I shall ramble you through How Lyra Paints Stuff... now.

There’s actually one step of the process I didn’t document, and that’s the preliminary sketches. I don’t usually do these, but with this pic, I was so terrified of messing up (see above) that for once, tried to figure out the composition in advance. I had attempted this back in March for B2MeM and failed, so I had reason to be scared! So unlike my usual lazy habits, I actually toyed with different perspectives, decided that I would be unable to pull off a full frontal dragon and figured out Eärendil’s posture cos you can’t just fight a dragon balancing precariously on the rail, can you. Unfortunately, I forgot to keep that sheet so it seems to have gone the way of all waste paper. Alas. I was kind of cute, with some silly notes scrawled in, like “Wear a helmet, dude” after I first drew Eärendil with long open flowy hair like any self-respecting Tolkien fan artist would. Oh well. If it turns up somewhere after all, I’ll edit it in later.

So here’s the basic lineart. Isn’t that exciting. As you can see, I can’t stick to a single perspective to save my life. I also discovered that when you’re designing dragons, there’s a fine fine line between “terrifying” and “ridiculous” (as I observed on my LJ back on... August 17. Holy shit, it’s actually been two months! No wonder I am out of patience). Alas, Ancalagon looked like a scruffy chicken! So I decided to try belly plating instead of scales.

Yes. Somewhat better.

With that in place, it was time to start colouring. On the background because washes need to come first. Now, I hate doing backgrounds. I know they make a picture about 200% more dynamic and I need every boost I can get, but I still hate them. Which is why I ditched my original idea of doing really dramatic clouds and a storm-light atmosphere (my favourite kind of sky). I had to admit to myself that I just wouldn’t be able to handle the complexity of the texture and the lighting situation. That is what differentiates Me (TM) from real artists (TM).

So I went for a sort of dirty purplish pre-dawn wash, except for that strip of  dawn (or possibly fire) at the lower end. And the bit of sky around Vingilot. Yeah, yeah, I know, you wouldn’t get nice clear-cut beams like that and if you did, they should be distributed threedimensionally, and the lighting on Ancalagon is all wrong anyway. Look, it’s a feckin’ image of a flying ship and a dragon, the primary source of light is a goddamn Silmaril, don’t bother me with realism? >_>

Making some headway. -- The kids insisted that the dragon should be red. They eventually accepted that this is a night dragon and night dragons are black, but it took a lot of discussing until we got there.

Needed moar birbs.

That moment when you realise you completely forgot to add corvids, wtf is wrong with you Lyra, corvids are the best, better sneak some in!

(Praise the Valar for Google Image Search, btw. In the olden days (TM) I would have had to lug home five books on ornithology home from the library and still not have found so many good reference shots of Various Birds From Below.)

Vingilot. Ah, Vingilot. I really prefer to think of her as a proper ship made of white timbers, and most pics I’ve seen depict her that way. Bilbo Baggins, however, suggests that Eärendil got a new ship “of mithril and of elven-glass" by the Valar. But he’s an outlier, right? Surely we can discount Bilbo. He wasn’t there. People who make verses about Eärendil in the House of Elrond probably shouldn’t be trusted anyway. Glass, bah.

EXCEPT that what Bilbo actually has done at this point is deal with a dragon, and he’d know that people who sit in wooden boats shouldn’t tackle a firedrake. We know that dragon-fire is hot enough to melt even the minor Rings of Power, so it’s definitely hot enough to crisp up a wooden ship in a single sneeze. But if we assume that mithril is basically titanium and elven-glass is kinda like pyrex, they might just be able to withstand the heat (conveniently, without getting too hot themselves and frying Eärendil in the process). Besides, I guess it makes sense to use translucent/reflecting materials for maximum brightness. TL;DR Bilbo's got a point, it can’t be the original wooden ship. (Which means that Eärendil’s crew could simply return home in the same vessel that brought them there, in case anyone ever wondered about that.)

Voilà, translucent-ish Vingilot II. And tiny!Eärendil. Good thing I bothered with the preliminary sketch because you can see so much detail at this tiny scale, haha, not. BUT he’s got one leg safely on board and the other resting squarely on the railing instead of pulling some Captain Jack Sparrow shit, yeah! Most of him is protected by the stupid swan prow, he’s got a shield, he’s got a helmet, AND he’s got a lifeline attached to his belt. Safety-conscious, is our Eärendil.

Superzoom! Fire of doom! Ancalagon has really poor aim though. I guess he’s distracted by Thorondor and his merry feathered friends. Or bliiinded by the liiight. Or just a bit stoopid.

Some more faffing with the background, trying to add some texture and contrast and interest. Screw it, this is as good as it’s likely to get, time to slap my signature on. There we go.

"But Eärendil came, shining with white flame, and about Vingilot were gathered all the great birds of heaven and Thorondor was their captain, and there was battle in the air all the day and through a dark night of doubt. Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin."

[brianewing]

Pencils for tonight’s @failurebandig poster at @promowestlive #NewportMusicHall With @swervedriverofficial . Prints will be available FROM THE BAND at the show TONIGHT Buy them all from the band so they hire me again!!! . I’ll have copies available at a later date. Sign up for my newsletter BRIANEWING.COM I’ll only have a handful. . BIG THANKS to Tim Doyle and @nakatomi_inc for the opportunity to do a poster for one of those bands I never thought I’d get the chance to do a poster for. Hopefully I’ll get to do more #nudgenudgewinkwink . Big inspiration behind this piece was #ghostintheshell and #FAILURE’s latest album #inthefutureyourbodywillbethefurthestthingfromyourmind. It’s like if #WilliamSBurroughs and #StanleyKubrick collaborated on an album while watching #Interstellar At least that’s what I got from it. . I pencil most of my work at 8.5x11 nowadays because I can get the work done faster and I have a really nice and very expensive scanner with a great lens. One of the best investments I ever made. Had it for over 10 years. Knocks on wood… . This started with a #sketch in my #sketchbook and then I’ll scan that, throw some type where I want it. Send it to the client #NAKATOMIINC who then sends it to the band’s management for approval. From there I’ll print the sketch out onto a sheet of bristol board. Then I’ll go over that with a pencil and tighten it up to be what you see here. Then I scan my finished pencils because I am neurotic. From there I’ll ink it. . If you can’t make it to the show - sign up for my newsletter BRIANEWING.COM . HEY! I’ll be at @sonictemplefestival in May as one of the guest artists. I’ll be painting a mural and have a booth. Who’s going?! . I suck at posting lately. Kinda slammed right now with #DeadlinesRuleEverythingAroundMe for the upcoming summer! My Dirty Head is at Failure status as I stare at Metallic Awesomeness inside my Sonic Temple. If I’m lucky - it’ll be quite the Creep Show! Hashtag #ghostboner . #illustration #emo #darkartists #lineart #details #screenprint #skulls #artprint #alternativemovieposter @capsulesbook #portrait #sonictemple #saturdaysavior (at Newport Music Hall) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvwraIrhzW4/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=13rjhktv79zhe

[industryskillsisaacbewley]

For my final first year project, I created a character concept for my portfolio. I took inspiration from the horror genre, in particular the asymmetrical horror game Dead by Daylight, and decided to create a character based off of the killer characters in this game and also various other horror media.

To create the final concept, I used plain pencil and ink to create the basic linework traditionally, and then scanned the lineart into Paint Tool SAI to paint over it. I also used Photoshop for small touch-ups and editing, but I used this program very sparingly compared to SAI. To achieve the ‘painted’ feeling, I used custom brushes for SAI that would give my pen strokes a more watery and paint-like texture and also used my Wacom tablet so that I could effectively use pen pressure to blend and use the paint brushes to make it look like a realistic painting. 

I decided to make the turnaround sheet in a painted style as there was more potential to show texture and make aspects of the character (such as the skin and clothes) look more disgusting by using brushes with jagged and speckled textures to give the colouring a more dirty and infected look. While I believe the effect I intended to go for with this style worked, after finishing the project I realised how time consuming and difficult it is to consistently do digital painting. I feel like the style works very well for final designs and illustrations, however I would never digitally paint regular concepts or sketches due to how long it would take to finish and look acceptable. More sloppy, intentionally messy styles of digital painting may look interesting and be more viable in concept art, although I did not have the time to explore this possibility. I could consider it the next time I do a project similar to this, as this could also give the benefit of having concept art be drawn in a charming and suitable style that doesn’t take up a lot of time.

In my opinion, I think that I did very well with the texture and anatomy on this design. The painting style I used alongside the custom brushes made it easier to incorporate texture into the design, and this helps the design a lot as the grungy, dirty texture helps to show the feeling and personality of the character - that he is a killer, and he is designed for a horror game. The anatomy is fairly clear and it is obvious that the design is human, and I am happy with this as I used to struggle with human anatomy a lot and this shows that I have improved on this for sure. I will definitely be experimenting with the painted style and textures in future, as I have had a lot of success with it here and it is very fun to do alongside showing character and genre easily.

However there are still a lot of things to improve on. I am not an expert in digital painting and I struggled while doing it, especially when it came to showing lines and blending shading. I think that most of my painting mistakes can be overlooked from my use of texture, but I still had a hard time with it and the final design isn’t exactly what I wanted it to be; I had hoped for a more sinister style with paintwork that was contrasting so the lines and shading stood out more and properly conveyed the horror style I was inspired by. I feel like I can only improve this by practicing digital painting more, and when I gain more experience in digital painting I should be able to paint in different styles much better than I am able to now.

I have learnt a lot about character design and the industry in my first year, and this final project is the culmination of everything I have learned this year. This was also a good opportunity to polish and gain experience in other skills, and most notably I think I learned a lot more about textures and blending in art. I now know that textures are vital for showing the style and feeling of the character or environment that I am trying to portray, alongside the actual art style as well, so I should show extra attention to textures and art style when doing more design work in the future. I have also learned that although experimentation adds flavour to designs, I shouldn’t try to do things I have limited experience in as the final design may not look as impressive as I had imagined it to be, like how the digital painting I did hasn’t adhered to my expectations. Overall I have learned a lot and I am eager to see how I can use this in my second year on this course.