#I wanted to redraw this bc I’ve grown a lot

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

Great explanation 👍

Redraw of this

[inotanzen]

hiii! i really admire your art skills. and the fact that you improved so much in just 6 months is inspiring! do you have any tips on how to improve? i'm 26 and i want to improve but i feel like ive neglected my art for so long and now it's too late. :(

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH OMG ?? oh man i’m so bad with feeling and gratitude but this seriously means more than i can express so i worked really, really hard on narrowing down my best tips! so here’s

Eli’s Top 5 Rules To Be a Totally Cool Awesome Badass Artist In As Long As It’s Going To Take (In Order) :

Most important rule of all is it should be FUN. be disgustingly self indulgent, draw what you want and LOVE, not what you think you should or what everyone else is, or how everyone else is! don’t vibe with doing sketches first? hate lining? despise complicated painting styles? find shortcuts, don’t do them!!! if you’re doing digital maybe draw your sketches traditionally first and scan them/take a photo to draw over, try a lineless style, cel shading, or mixing mediums, the options are endless! this is where your “style” will come from. all “style” is, is an artists shorthand.

You are your only competition. never compare your progress to anyone but your past self, it’s not a race in terms of how good you are at X age after X amount of time spent practicing. i saw it illustrated in this comic a few years ago (that made me cry at the time, because i hadn’t started drawing yet) as seeing your skills as a beautiful potted plant- just because some people are walking around with theirs fully grown and thriving, doesn’t mean your little sprout will stay small forever. just be patient, keep watering it, and eventually, it’ll be a beautiful flower all your own. ❀

Use references Obsessively. this includes tracing! (ethically) there’s a ton of resources out there, redraws of frames from movie or shows are great too! play around with it, try using the perspective but change the style or turn it into a character au for a fandom you love. (this is part of that first tip!) mashing together images past the point of original intelligibility is acceptable as well. the goal isn’t to obsess over accuracy or stop using references altogether though, just to use them differently over time.

Inspiration/motivation won’t be gone forever. don’t force yourself to practice drawing, or you’ll end up resenting it altogether. i’ve had my tablet and pencil since january but i say 6 months bc there were two (almost three) entire months where i had no inspiration and just did Nothing. take time to consume new media for ideas or look at what inspires you instead! keep folders of the things you find most appealing to pull up when you need them. art can be a freeing escape if you allow it to be!

Look at art you admire and think about Why you admire it. why does it look good, what catches your eye most? is it the colors? the lighting? the shapes and perspective? the varied line thicknesses or the overall layout composition? everything can be broken down into components, hone in on the ones you like most and try to emulate them. we’re all just flowing down the stream of shared inspiration together. :)

bonus digital art tip: you will always need more layers than you think you do. give each element its own layer like it’s the most introverted mf you’ve ever met, i swear on everything good in this cursed world you will thank me later. layer/item selection and transform are your best goddamn friends for life.

there’s also a lot of art related posts in this tag and on my art twitter ♡ thank you endlessly again and good luck on your journey!!

[cryptidunknown]

Get To Know Me Tag Game

Thank you for the tag @midnight-reader-morning-sleeper ❤️❤️

Why did you choose your URL? I just think cryptids are neat (even if I don’t really believe in them) and my cousin jokes about me being a cryptid, so I guess that’s what inspired it. I’m also nerdy. I thought about yourlocalforestcryptid but it felt too wordy and nerdycryptid just had a better ring to it. My old URL was theravenclawpotato, but I changed it bc it made it seem like I’m a Harry Potter blog

Any side blogs? I have @casperthefriendlysnake , which is my reptiblr blog that’s been slightly neglected recently, and @nerdycryptidart which is an art blog that has been neglected for a while

How long have you been on tumblr? About 3 years I think? I’ve had this account for about 2 years and I had another account before this for about a year.

Do you have a queue tag? Nope I don’t queue things I just spam my followers with my latest obsession and then disappear for 3 days straight

Why did you start your blog in the first place? For my first account: I just wanted to look at some fandom stuff more conveniently and didn’t plan on actually posting but I kinda got sucked in. For this account: My old blog was full of fandoms that I had mostly grown out of and stuff I didn’t really like anymore so I just wanted a fresh start. For the art sideblog: I don’t post art much and wanted people to be able to see it without having to sift through all the stuff on my main. For the reptiblr sideblog: I reblog a lot of reptiblr stuff to the point I felt it called for a second blog lol

Why did you choose your icon/pfp? It’s an Inktober drawing a did a couple years ago that I liked, and thought would make a nice pfp. And I just like Gravity Falls

Why did you choose your header? It’s a redraw of an Inktober I did once that I thought would be a good size for a header. I also think it suits me and my blog

What’s your post with the most notes? At least half the reblogs on this are from the hell-propaganda addition but I still keep it because some folks still appreciate my original bad joke (linked at the bottom because tumblr mobile exists to spite me)

How many followers do you have? 254

How many people do you follow? 176. I need more lol

Have you made a shit post? Almost every post I’ve ever made falls somewhere on the shitpost spectrum

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts? Not really a fan. It feels guilttrippy. I think it’s very cool that people use this platform for good but I think we should also respect that some people get on here just for fun and to escape real life and shouldn’t be pressured into reblogging something. It’s also not cool to judge someone’s morals based on whether or not they reblog something

Do you like tag games? I love them, they’re a lot of fun! Though I often forget to do them 😅 Also I usually just put “tagging anyone who wants to play” because a lot of my mutuals are mutuals with my other mutuals and have probably already been tagged in it lol. I also like to hop in on “tagging anyone who wants to play” ones sometimes myself so yeah

Do you like ask games? Yes, they’re fun!

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous? I don’t think I have any that are really famous but I do have some that have been on here forever and have like so many mutuals and it’s just like How

Do you have a crush on a mutual? I don’t have a crush period tbh

Tagging anyone who would like to play!