#This was one of those times when i started on the lineart. And then said no thanks and skipped straight to coloring

[wundrousarts]

Yesterday I watched Cartoon Saloon’s short “Screecher’s Reach”, and thought Daal’s hair was almost exactly like how I envision Mathilde Lachance’s hair, so I decided to try and draw her. Today I stopped cleaning up the sketch after about an hour because I got bored, so it’s going here.

[iknaenmal]

i have to watch it w low quality and badly translated subtitles bc my sister is watching it w me and the only one we could find with spanish is not . v high quality but its ok

gonna start pmmm

[jadenvargen]

If I want to study someone's art or style, how do I do that? Like where do you even start when looking at an illustration that they made 😭thank you!!!

Here’s stuff i think about. i don’t do that many style studies, so idunno how helpful it is! pls sound in tha comments if anyone has tips:) 

Pinpoint what stuff you like, and focus on that. Focus on technique rather than exact replication, for example ( just first thing comes to mind) if you like rostov’s disco elysium cover art and want to study it, don’t just repaint the image, find what’s key in the style. looseness, maybe? then, instead of copying the image with your technique, try to apply the same looseness. (feat. shitty 5 min sketch plz dont judge example of how i normally approax paintings, versus a study. ALSO not to say u CANT do this it's just how i would study, myself. )

That being said, don’t force yourself to make art decisions that feel unnatural to you. a lot of the time artists make decisions based on their weaknesses as well as strengths. I do very shaky, hatchy lineart because my hands are very shaky. I focus on painting what I* feel is important and fun. 

Instead of copying a style from a picture, look at a variety of pictures and find technique. For example a lot of people redrawing a screenshot in “sailor moon style” or “ghibli style” will draw… let’s say, an old man, looking like a usagi because that’s the screenshot they looked at, instead of watching what stylistic choices for example takeuchi made when stylizing an old man. So the “studies” end up homogenous. I personally find it unproductive to replicate a painting for purposes of study, but like focusing on individual elements. say you like egon schiele, replicating whole paintings at a time IMO isn't gonna do much, but maybe you can set out on a series where you sketch copy his hands or feet from different paintings, and then try stylizing your own hands the same way? Or maybe your fave artist draws moonlight like a blue stream, or a red one? Try applying only that light to your paintings.

You could also color pick or look at the colors they make and paint whatever you want with those same colors, to understand how they work together and what can be done with them.

Also, if you can, look at their influences! Everyone learns art by seeing others art. Chances are they saw art they liked and picked from there what elements they enjoyed. Looking at the inspiration can help make some of the techniques more obvious.

Basically focus less on copying(not that copying is bad- but not always helpful for studying), and more on what you like. If you find what you like, you can work from there and try to think about your own art from the same perspective.

IDK if this helps as i said, feel free to add onto^_^

[taylor-titmouse]

Old Dog, New Trick by R/L Monroe @petitemortality is out! This one's for the big hairy bear lovers, the leather likers, the transmasc tops, and the fags. It's really good and sweet and all about falling in love with your own body again. You can check out the first three pages and a list of what it features on its shop page, and it's only $3!

but this means it's time once again for a process poooost~ you can read about how we designed the cover below!

THUMBNAILS!

this one might have been the most straightforward yet. lee essentially told me 'dad bod in a chest harness' and that is what he got. the two on the bottom left were me thinking he hadn't Literally meant that, somehow, and trying other things. even rereading the chat log i'm not sure how i came to that conclusion because he very clearly asked for a dad bod in a harness. (i also had not read the story yet, so i didn't have an impression of charlie. do not be fooled by my slinky little twink in the bottom middle. he is a big boy too)

the bottom right is when i was like 'no wait he definitely just said dad bod with harness' and had the thought of putting the author and title on the harness itself. we went with that one!

color passes, had to involve the rainbow somehow for pride. dom painting himself seemed the obvious choice for me, very dad at a football game. but lee was like "wait. put it in the background." and it Is the obvious choice. and then

what did he mean by this

honestly there wasn't much more to it from there, just workshopping where the 18+ should be on his body and how much space it should take up. this is probably the most straightforwardly representative cover i've done for him so far! oh my god there's lineart.

also please appreciate the itchio thumbnail. making the itchio thumbnails is actually the most fun part. you should look at lee's shop page and see how nice and clean those look all together. i wish i'd kept a consistent style guide when i started out with my own books ; ;

tits

[valdekboy]

Another Amazing AU

I never know what to write here… so let's get straight to the point then. A while back I found another amazing AU that belongs to @chez-cinnamon and I liked it … a lot.

And as always, If I liked something, I can't just be normal about it and comment something nice, I had to draw something. Long story short, first sketches were terrible, that took me on a long trip of re-learning some things and learning a couple new things. Overall, making these drawings was one looong roller coaster.

And as always . . . THAT LITTLE YELLOW SON OF A GUN WAS PUSHING ME TO DRAW THE MAIN 6 HE LIKES SO MUCH. So this time I gave him a camera and made HIM do all the work. Let's see how it went.

Well, the camera experienced Mach 1 speed, so I think that's all

.

.

.

Now, that's all.

In the end I want to say that I love what you did with these characters and I'm sorry if i messed up any of them.

And now off I go cause honestly I'm a bit stressed about posting this. So I'm pressing the publish button and I'm signing off. I'll be back soon.

As always have a Good Night/Day!

And If you want to read a bit of my rambling about this whole drawing process It's all down there. Just be aware that I write these things mostly for myself.

When I did the first sketch I realized that my old method of drawing poses (which was just sticks and orbs) won't work here. So i started to learn and re-learn some basics, and I tried to remake those sketches at the same time.

In the end there were like 5 different sketches for each character and to be honest, I was really close to just throwing it all out the window because it felt like i was going nowhere. But I found the problem.

My brain just couldn't comprehend that REFERENCE is just a REFERENCE not a fucking guideline that you have to hold on to for your dear life. It's okay to mess up here and there and that no-one is going to kill me for that. And when that thought clicked in, it felt amazing. I finished sketches, then lineart, heck I even drew all these in-betweens with Valdi (that yellow potat).

And then there was time for coloring . . . and that fear of messing up came back. That's why there's not much going on in that department. I'll keep working on fixing that, but it might take a while. And these backgrounds were a complete experiment. I'm not even sure myself if they're any good.

All of this felt like I threw myself in the deep water, but somehow I did it and I'm really glad all of this happened. Comparing these to my previous ones, I really see some improvement, and I did these MUCH faster. Even counting in all the learning i did. (plus building up courage to post these)

I still wish these drawings turned out better, the lines feel stiff, there's nothing to interesting in terms of colors or shading, but even with all that, for the first time in a while I think that these drawings aren't that bad.

And now for the AU. Why this one? I just stumbled upon it one day and I really liked the idea of switching up the one who controls the whole circus. And all those changes to the characters, their style, the clothes, colors and all those little details, I just love everything about that AU. All these characters feel really calming/relaxing to draw If these are the right words to use. (I really hope it doesn't sound too weird) I don't know if I would've learnt the things I did if I didn't find that AU.

So I want to say THANK YOU @chez-cinnamon for creating an Awesome AU and all these Beautiful drawings, and for giving me that bit of inspiration I needed.

If anyone decided to read all that and somehow survived, know that I'm sorry if all of that looks like bunch of random thoughts cobbled together (I bet that my english didn't make this any easier) As I said earlier, I write these thing mostly for myself so I can come back and read them in the future (It just helps me sometimes).

And I just want YOU to know, whoever you are, I'm really glad that YOU are here, reading this.

Thank You for being here!

[genericpuff]

Hi there! 😄 Tysfm for compiling the LO brushes, being able to use them (non-commercially of course lol) makes me so friggin happy. 🙇‍♀️ I have a few questions to ask about them though:

Which brush did RS use for laying down color before shading/effects? In the Rekindled tutorial, you use the Lineart Brush for laying down flats, but I'm not sure if what I said in the previous sentence is the same thing as flats (I've been drawing my whole life, but I didn't start taking digital seriously until very recently lol 🤦‍♀️).

When the Splatter Versa brush was used in S1, there are varying oval shapes as well as several other non-ovular shapes that I don't see when I use the brush. Were there other similar brushes used with different shapes? Or am I just doing something wrong with the brush settings? The other shapes look more wilted than the other petal shapes.

Which brush was used for the usual thick, varying lineart? (It's most noticeable with the lines in hair in mid-S1 esp.) This brush isn't really textured, so I'm a bit confused which one in particular it is.

Sorry for being annoying, I'm just not tech-savvy and very intimidated by all the technical aspects of digital drawing lol ("Wtf are 'blending modes'?" /hj). 🙇‍♀️

Hey there, no problem!! I'm glad people are getting use out of them!

Though I'm not entirely sure as it clearly changed often throughout the course of the first season, the Gouache a Go Go brush and Hard Pastel both have those "crunchier" textures that you can see in some panels. There are also watercolor brushes that she used to blend the edges in some bigger panels.

Could you send me an example of a panel? Just so then I can actually see it and mess around with some things and give you a better answer haha That said, if I had to take a guess, either she messed with the brush control / tilt settings in Photoshop, or she may have used the Warp / Liquify tools to warp them intentionally to achieve that "petal" look. But again, send me a pic of the panels in question if you can and I can take a closer look :>

As mentioned previously, an example would help a lot here, but I do know what you're saying that some panels had very thick, varied lineart. Rachel has gone on record on two separate occasions that she used the Gouache Wet Pencil / Wet Round brush from the Kyle Webster Pack. Though the Hard Square Pastel brush can also achieve similar effects. Note that the Wet Round brush is a dual-sizing brush - if you adjust the brush size, you have to also adjust the particle size in tandem, otherwise you'll get a bigger brush size with more scattered/diluted particles. Though this effect IS very helpful for shading!

As mentioned, Rachel has mentioned some of the brushes she's used, and though it's not necessarily relevant to what you're looking for specifically, she's also mentioned these brushes in old FAQ's, specifically the Wet Round brush for lineart.

Here are some examples I whipped up real quick based on some of the panels that specifically depict thick lineart and textured coloring:

Mind you, these are all my best guesses, based on what Rachel has provided and what I've both dug up and been provided by other contributors who have pointed me in the right direction.

Unfortunately, while LO's art style is unique, it also makes it very difficult to reverse-engineer because throughout the comic (esp in S1 when she was still experimenting) while she did clearly have some "favorites" out of the bunch, she also just kind of went off "vibes" a lot of the time, treating every panel as an individual painting. And while that did lend to some of LO's most beautiful panels throughout S1, it also created a lot of whiplash between stylization because after doing one panel with thick lineart and bold texturing, she'd do another with watercolors and softer edges.

That's also not taking into account the software she was using - many of these brushes were designed exclusively with the Photoshop brush engine in mind, not Clip Studio, so they may not work entirely as intended if you use them in Clip Studio or some other non-Photoshop software. We also have to consider other factors like canvas resolution, texture effects added afterwards (such as that canvas overlay), and other adjustable settings within the brushes themselves that Rachel may have tweaked, including the pressure sensitivity, particle size/density, thickness, etc. All of which we can't really truly know, so we can only settle for our closest guess.

This is half the challenge - and fun - of trying to emulate her art style, because even she clearly didn't follow any strict rules 😅 Unfortunately it leaned more towards worse as time went on as it was clear the assistants themselves were given very little guidance or consistency (or at least, didn't have the time to settle on a happy medium) resulting in panels that are even more distinctly out of place as they were being swapped between different artists with different backgrounds and styles.

All that aside, I hope that helps! I do admittedly have to update that brush pack again, I feel like there are a handful of brushes I've found since then that could also be added, but I'd also like to update the included instructions to better reflect what I've learned since then regarding each brush and how they could be used. Ultimately though, they're yours to experiment with! Mess around, adjust the sizes and density and pressure settings, all of these things can contribute to the overall look.

Good luck! <3

[notbecauseofvictories]

I've now received four (four!!!) different copies of my fic, bound and illustrated by different artists---and there's still a deep, almost reverential feeling I get when I hold them in my hands, lay them out. Ironically for the subject matter, they feel decidedly holy. After all, where else am I going to get proof that I did this---even if "tell a story about music and the devil" is one of the sillier things you can do to occupy your time.

But to be less vague, this is the kind gift of @fleabitebooks / @kettle-bird! They reached out to me a few months ago, saying they wanted to bind my Devil Went Down to Georgia fic, and would I like a copy too? As I would never say no to a gift like that, I gleefully accepted.

If you've been following me long enough, you've seen their art in my Cornstalk Fiddle tag, and I am pleased to say that the images lose none of their power. I think the choice to stick to a limited color palette works beautifully here---the golden-yellow of the title pages and the larger art almost seeps through the paper. With the crisp lineart and shading, it ends up being both lovely and vaguely ominous, a sign of the eldritch things moving around/beneath the story.

(Also, I realize this is not a major aspect, but....I love how truly awkward-looking the Devil is. He looks like a Southern Gentleman, and I love that touch of weakness in his jaw.)

I also deeply adore some of the design choices---chapter 3 starting with the cornstalk fiddle and the triumphant starburst of golden-yellow? The white snakeskin-threaded-with-gold pattern used to bind the book? The way the paragraph breaks and endsheets are music? Amazing. Just amazing.

Maybe I should revise what I said above. Yes, having your silly fic about a country song turned into a physical book is proof that you did it, finished it---but it's also proof that someone else did too. In this case, @kettle-bird sat down with my fic and carefully copied it, played with fonts (oh, those are fantastic too by the way!) and spacings and margins; they drew art, colored it; laced the book together, made and bound the cover, then shipped it off to me.

Which means....if I did this, then I was hardly the only one.

[goldenshrikecomic]

Hello, this is gonna be a long one and I hope I don't bother you too much with it but you have something great going and and I think maybe some advice for someone like me who wants to do a longer comic and I took heart in that one ask you recently answered were you said you are plenty of pages ahead of the readers to not get paralysed by a deadline which seems like a no-brainer now that I read that with my own two eyes black on white but I had not thought to maybe go about it that way and I needed to have someone spell it out for me apparently. So to my question.. see, I have a skeleton of a story I have key scenes that need to happen and that I want to happen and I am sure in between things will shift and change and grow and a part of me can't wait for it to happen but- How do you start. How do you get going. It is in my head I have some written notes but most is in my head and I do not want it to remain there and rot I want to draw and tell the story I had in mind but I feel.. paralysed on the starting line of this journey and I am unsure how to go from there because my mind gets caught up in estimates of if I post one page a week that is "only" 52 pages. That seems so little. How many years would it take. Can I do this. And then my mind fires up in passion because I am willing to commit I want to do this I need to do this and I have a good idea of how to pace myself and how to go about it. I have the beginning of it on the back of my tongue and the tip of my fingers I can imagine it so vividly I wish I could animate it (if that wouldn't take up even more time and be insane I would) But somehow I still feel stumped on how to start. How to get over this first hurdle. It might be the executional dysfunction playing a huge part in it, maybe I am overthinking to much and stand in my way because of it, but like... How did you start your comic. How did your journey on GS begin? I know this was a bit of word vomit I am sorry but you are an inspiration and you seem to go about things (from what I could gleam from the asks) in a way that feels like it could work for me too and the way my brain functions but I do not know how to start? I dunno if it makes sense I am no english native and my thoughts are hard to put into words.

This ask has been sitting in my inbox for a while because it's such a loaded question. I have plenty of asks in this tag about my comicing process, so check them out maybe. This reply got lengthy! The more I wrote the more I noticed I feel very inadequate trying to give people tips on making comics. It's such a trial and error process.

I've seen plenty of advice for people wanting to start out comics to just start small, come up with a smaller story to get a feel of it before you go big. And I absolutely understand it in hindsight because I would've done many things differently if I had just tried it out first, but it's not what I did. I wanted to make a big comic, and a big comic I made, as my first project.

I don't think about the years these things take, but it'd absolutely ease your worries if you could come up with a simple style and be able to make pages faster. I've stripped my comic of shading and gotten more lenient with myself when it comes to backgrounds. You absolutely need to cut some corners if you want to make more than one story during your lifetime. It's a limited time afterall! Being able to turn your sketch into a lineart without having to redo everything with a careful hand would help a lot already. And colors, they take a lot of time.

This is not how I went about it in the beginning, but I'd love to tell you to write those things in your head down before you start. Leave holes, just write in what you know because you will forget some cool details if you keep them in. Write the starting point, middle and the end, even with just couple of words. Add things that interest you in the middle of those points. Do you want a sad arc for your character at some point? Write it in. Come up with what makes it happen. Weave it into the other scenes. If you know what's to come, you can add foreshadowing to the earlier scenes. Even if you didn't know what would come, you can take something from earlier scenes and make it foreshadowing. Writing is a fluid process. You can jump around and add things, you don't have to approach it by putting one block next to the other. Once you have the elements you want, you just have to tie those things together. It's the hard part. And you will change your mind about many things when you get to draw your characters and see them doing the things you've written.

The start! I always say it's the worst part, but I've started to think it might be the second worst. I think the worst part comes after you've started and worked for several ten pages on fumes and you finally run out of juice. Picking up after that is hard, for me at least. But if you can manage, it should get easier. You know your characters better by now, and they carry some of their own weight.

Make a canvas. Think about the scene you want to start your comic with. Night or day? Calm or busy? Just doodle, BIG and loose. Add some frames by just drawing lines, move things around, resize. What do you want to portray with the first page of your comic? I like to establish some of the world or atmosphere, and only then move on to the characters.

Don't try to be perfect, in fact leave that first canvas completely unpolished and move on to the next one. What should this page tell? Will you show the character? I'd leave the establishing shot of them as the last big panel. The rest of the page should build up to it. The last panel is important, it's a hook to turn the page.

Come back to polish those pages more only after you have a few of them done. The most important thing is to get yourself away from that first page, because the first page is scary. After five pages you can move things around and start adding ears to your spheres. You've started a comic now. You can go back to the first page and make it nice, because you already have opened the path to continue.

IT'S HARD. But it's rewarding. It's not for everyone but it's awesome if you can make it yours.

[hybbart]

Do you listen to music while drawing? If you wanna share, I'd be really interested! Also related - do you think the music influences your art?

I do! It depends how hard I gotta concentrate, sometimes when I'm in the early sketching stage and I'm thinking a lot, especially a comic, I gotta not, and sometimes if I'm not thinking at all like doing lineart I put videos on in the bg. But most of the time I listen to music. (Also sometimes when I'm super duper stressed or overwhelmed and I'm drawing to calm down I listen to the music I have on my phone or play meditation music from youtube on it, just to get my headset off my head.)

I have a couple of playlists that are just some specific songs that are a mood, usually less wordy songs from OSTs or kawaii future bass type stuff. Sometimes though I just let my music play starting from like the most recent 30 or so I added so it's usually a jumbled mess. Occassionally if a particular song inspires a mood and I'm too lazy to search if I have any songs similar enough I just play that song on repeat until it's done. Recent songs I did this with are the Dandadan full opening and Osmanthus featuring Ado (which is one of those modern songs that are obnoxiously short so... I heard that quite a few times! I was given a couple songs similar enough to it that I made a playlist though including Okayu's cover of Flos)

I mostly listen to japanese music- current fav artists are Ado and Zutomayo- but I'll listen to most anything. I have a raau playlist that's basically "what do raau ranchers listen to while driving" that's mostly country music like the chicks and johnny cash. Recently I downloaded a bunch of late 90s and early 2000s music I hadn't gotten for some reason like barenaked ladies and linkin park and green day after my notepad doc I use to write songs I hear down got a bit full after a drive with my dad.

I'd say it influences my art when I let it. I can put it on as background noise or I can let it set a tone. Maybe it's not so much that it influences my art as it is that I am in a certain mood and I put on music that fits that mood. If I wanna draw something soft and pastel I'm not exactly putting on techn9ne or man with a mission! And if I wanna draw something actiony I don't usually play imogen heap or carly rae jepson. I'll make a temporary playlist. If I'm not in any particular mood, though, I'll just let my music play whatever in order added and become background noise. Usually it all ends up back at the masic block of shemusic at the start lol. I guess they're my best of queens.

(That said there are songs- mostly dance songs or musical OSTs- that I cannot listen to while drawing. I Just end up distracted and either singing or dancing...)

Uuuh this ended up longer than needed. remind me not to answer asks right as I wake up...

[demaparbat-hp]

hi dema! i’m learning how to do digital art, would you mind sharing your coloring process? coloring (and lineart) is the hardest thing for me to do T_T… what brushes do you use for coloring and how do you not make it look muddy? i’ve been trying to follow tutorials from different artists on youtube but i find my work to look so muddy… thank u in advance >__<

Hi, and thank you for thinking about me for advice! I'm honoured to share a bit of my process, nerve-wracking as that is for my shy self, and hopefully help you out as much as I can. Forgive me if I don't express myself very clearly—I have a bit of a hard time explaining these things. Now, let's get started, shall we?

I'll be using the first panel of this artwork as an example.

My process is pretty straight-forward for most artworks. Make a sketch, draw the lineart, and follow a self-made guideline for coloring and rendering.

Sometimes I'll throw the guideline to the trash bin and start experimenting with brushes and chiaroscuro and color palettes, but that doesn't happen most of the time and, when it does, it's more a challenge than anything else, and not really what I think you're looking for.

I'll include my usual steps here, however, and like I said earlier, these steps are more like what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.

(I just realized I didn't save the sketch for this artwork. Oops)

This is the lineart!

I tend to think that details bore me and are actually pretty exhausting to do, but then I go and make things as clear and detailed as I can. Because I'm a hypocrite like that.

I did try to keep things simple here, though, mostly because I had to go through three other panels and didn't want to burn out my fuel mid-process.

Base colors! The blush (and Zuko's scar!) I draw in a different layer in case I need adjusting the brightness or saturation later.

It's time for shadows!

Pick a color depending on the atmosphere you want the artwork to have. Is it a cozy, warm scene in a honey-tinted room, or is it a moment shared under the moonlight? The color choice should come as an answer to those questions—deep red for the first one and dark blue for the second.

Choose a color and make it dark and saturated. Then, play with the layer opacity! A darker shadow means harsher light, while less opacity works best for a softer look. See the difference? It's subtle, but it's there.

Of course, this is my personal choice. The way shadows are drawn and color is chosen depends on the artist and the artwork. I choose to play with a more simple coloring style, keeping shadows from blending into each other, but you may like a more realistic approach to shadows and colors.

My best advice? Try doing it every way you can, but in the end choose what works best for you. Whatever feels more comfortable, whatever you enjoy drawing the most. And then work to improve it. Love the little proof that you've gotten better, even if it's subtle.

And talking about subtlety...

I love to play with gradients. I use them mostly to give the artwork some form of atmosphere, and make it look cohesive and whole. A light gradient in the color and direction of the shadows will help the characters blend with the background, as will another gradient in lighter colors for the light.

Get creative with gradients! Use them so the lights feel brighter and the shadows darker.

Now it's time to work with the lineart again.

The pure black lineart makes the artwork look harsher, sharper, so I tend to give it some color to soften its edges and compliment the rest of the drawing. In darker shades as the rest of the colors, growing more saturated as the light comes closer.

I love to make the characters' eyes pop and glow! It's really fun what you can do by just messing a bit with the tones of the lineart.

Finally, I play with the level correction. A high contrast will help your artwork stand out and look brighter. See the difference?

And it's done!

Sometimes I like to add other effects or details, but this is the very, very rough shape of my usual process, and thus what I thought you'd like to see.

Once again, I'd like to point out that this is what works for me, and a large part of improving as an artist is just fooling around and messing up until you find the tools and tricks you're most comfortable with.

So keep drawing those muddy shadows and colors! They're only a step of the process.

[jezmmart]

#AMaY Commentary

Wanted to give a little commentary on the #AMaY project but needed a couple days breather haha. This mostly focuses on how I created each day with the full hidden final image in mind, but I also talk a bit about like "Why Amy???" on a personal level at the bottom.

So firstly, worth revisiting this old popular music video if you have the time, it was pretty viral back when it came out. This will become relevant shortly - not a huge deal if you don't want to watch it, but the reason I'm bringing it up will spoil said music video a bit so yeah, mentioning it and encouraging a watch now without context.

So yeah, #AMaY! It really came down to the wire on finishing it due to work, and I had to eat into my 2-week comic buffer that I'm now due to rebuild to keep up in the end.

It was basically the result of just REALLY enjoying drawing Amy and joking with friends and such to the point of being like "do I really enjoy drawing her that much that I could do a whole month of it? I think I could". Wasn't wrong!

I didn't have any set prompt list in mind, my idea was just to draw what idea grabbed me on the day. Then, inspired by various things I've seen do this but particularly that aforementioned music video which does the same reveal at the end, I had the idea of "what if I make it so they all make a picture of Amy when connected up". I had already sketched out this idea for the first day:

But started over after having this moment of inspiration.

What I didn't factor in is how this sort of effect is MUCH easier with simpler, larger pictures. I really should have just done her head or something, then most of my backgrounds could just be vague geometric shapes but didn't realise the practicality of it until it was too late, which is why we ended up with so many backgrounds of strange patterns and twisty pipes and such that I would try to mask by putting in additional patterns and pipes and whatnot as red herrings that were lower contrast than the ones making up the Amy picture.

I drew out what the final secret picture was going to be across a grid representing the days in the month, then each day I would start with a canvas of one square and figure out "now what sort of background can I turn this into, and what kind of Amy would belong in that background".

Naturally I had some ideas I was already leaning towards - goth Amy was one of them. When I looked at this portion of the image, the only sort of background thing I could see was some kind of cartooney medieval tower with a rim at the top. From there I realised the skirt could be bushes or walls around some dramatic graveyard hills, the creases in the skirt could be a path as long as Amy is positioned to hide the fact that they aren't actually connecting in the context of the hidden image. In some cases where it wouldn't make sense for a background element to suddenly stop, I instead used foreground scenery, such as the gravestone directly behind Amy here, to turn the element into the shape I wanted. These pipes that are going behind metal panels in the Chemical Plant background in order to turn them into eyelash shapes are another example:

Then when I got the idea to turn the lineart of of hidden Amy's skirt rim and chest into long wispy spirits escaping from the earth or something, it was just a case of adding a bunch more random ones of those to the rest of the background with lower contrast so they don't stand out as much as the important ones do. The one in the foreground also does the job of cutting off the path that makes up the tiny bit of Amy's leg lineart. Within the context of the graveyard background, the path continues, but at the zoomed out view, it can't be distinguished at a glance.

This was the kind of thought process that went into the more elaborate backgrounds. Naturally there were some where the Amy idea COULD come first, because what was required of the background was so simple I was kind of free to turn it into anything - or just take a day off and do simple geometric backgrounds.

(Again though, you can see here that I did all the circles as red herrings to imply that the little blob in the corner is another one - but the corner one is a deeper colour than the others).

And of course there were some days where I just COULD NOT think of anything that wouldn't be completely conspicious, so I just made Amy take up as much space as possible so I only had a few background lines to deal with, trusting that the grand context of the final hidden image would solve it in the end.

The final note is that I didn't JUST draw from these segments - I was steadily building up the full collage as I went, so I'd always have a "bleed" area I'd draw into with the existing surrounding days to make sure that the final result DID all connect up.

So yeah, that's the broad strokes of it!

To end on something more philosophical, I did sort of end thinking to myself as I spent all these hours drawing her - "Hey though, what is it about Amy? WHY do I love drawing her so much? Why is this one my blorbo?"

Humour me as I get all deep about cartoon pink hedgehog but I think it comes down to a few factors.

Let's address the elephant in the room first - unless I'm specifically looking to evoke her canon-self, I draw her with a more anthropomorphic sexy figure compared to the blobby, noodle-limbed body she has in the actual series, don't I. You see, in Sonic Adventure 2 there was this one promotional 3D render of her where they gave her one heck of a rack and also once I was on the internet as a teenager and partaking in the fandom, I saw other fanartists do the same with thighs to match. This was all during a vulnerable time in my development and it all made me a little unwell about Amy permanently, I think. Like, that cute haircut, the knee-high boots, the shiny short-skirted dress, this is all stuff that looks really attractive when you slap it on a human body!

Sonic himself is like... peak character design. There's a reason he's lasted so long and holds such mass appeal as a cartoon character. The only way to improve on that perfection is to make a girl version, and that's pretty much what Amy is. So no wonder she's so fun to draw!

And tailing off that - as an aspiring femme NB person who has not always been so, I do think I've always had a particular interest in the hyper-feminine aesthetic, which Amy has in spades. I think that's also a big part of her allure to me as a character. Much like how I live a lot of my feminine interest vicariously through my pin-up art, dressing up my OCs in cute clothes and such, I think that extends to Amy as well; a kind of obsession with the youthful hyper-feminine aesthetic that I just never got to openly enjoy in any real way earlier in life because I hadn't figured all this NB stuff out yet. I just love cute girly pink stuff!!!

That'll do it I think. I could probably waffle on about each individual day's art if I really wanted to but this is long enough as is. Check out the alt text if you like as I often mention easter eggs and costume details in those to try and make sure those with eyesight issues are getting the same experience as those without.

Thank you again one and all for enjoying or at least putting up with the month!

[More: #AMaY | Art Insight]

[ryuichirou]

Replies

About nkgw and about the Idia sketches! And also one about fem!Azul drawing from a while ago.

Anonymous asked:

hi! If you don't mind me asking, are you the creator of  Ń̸̞●̸͔k̴̙●̷̠g̴͍ą̶́ẇ̵̠a̴͈ stories on twitter? If so, is it part of something bigger or is there any more lore or backstory to the town/universe?

Hi, Anon.

Yes, I am! We didn’t really want to tie the author identity to this project if that makes sense (to keep it somewhat cryptic), but it’s an open secret anyway: it’s our project, and I am the one both writing and drawing it with Katsu’s assistance, guidance and sometimes ideas.

Our intention with Ń̸̞●̸͔k̴̙●̷̠g̴͍ą̶́ẇ̵̠a̴͈ stories was to create a series of small self-sufficient comics that could be read in any order, like small bites of kind of spooky kind of weird something in your timeline to go “huh?” for a moment or two; so there isn’t really any backstory or lore... But who knows, maybe some mysteries are going to get a little more context to them! Or not. The recent detective storyline is the first actual ongoing storyline that Ń̸̞●̸͔k̴̙●̷̠g̴͍ą̶́ẇ̵̠a̴͈ has. We are still thinking about the way we’re going to go around it, so it’s subtle for now. (I’m pretty sure Katsu also said it while replying to a similar ask today)

I don’t mind the theories though! It would be interesting to read what people think about things that are going on there.

What I can also say for sure is that I really enjoyed drawing an undressing game for it last year, so if possible and when we have more time for it, I’d love to draw something interactive again.

It’s also in a little impromptu hiatus right now because of my deadlines, but we’ll be back soon! Thank you so much for reading it and enjoying it. It tickles and inspires me a lot to hear that someone is interested in what exactly going on in this weird little town.

Anonymous asked:

How the hell do you draw so fast??? The new Idia ssr pjs JP card came out and you drew 2 amazing ones before I got his tsum and broom ones on the English servers within 3 hours of its release. And now another one??? God hands right there

Thank you, Anon!! I just draw a lot! lol

Well, there is also some planning involved. I started sketching around when the teaser for Idia’s ssr pjs just came out, coming up with poses and ideas and stuff. And now I just have to clean, fix and colour those sketches… since I am not doing lineart for them, it takes much less time! Well, it still takes a couple of hours of course, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like I have to be as clean or precise as when I draw something similar to our recent Cater (he took ~4 days).

So yeah, a combination of me drawing pretty much all day and Katsu being smart about our time management and posting schedule lol

Anonymous asked:

Are we cycling through all the main Idia fuckers of the blog with the pajama drawings?

I think we are! It was unintentional at first though, so Azul’s and Ortho’s sketches are pretty…vague, without the second person actually being depicted. I kind of got carried away with the other guys… (yes it’s a little teaser lol). We’ll probably draw something for the vague boys again though, it’d be only fair...

Anonymous asked:

plushie nice and big

yessss, perfect plushie

Anonymous asked:

It's bright blue eyes disturb me so

Anonymous asked:

Like it's staring into my very being

Reminds me of doll Rook dare I say, they should be friends

Oh no, another cursed toy…!

I think this one is a little more judgmental, isn’t it? Doll Rook was so friendly and cuddly!

And Azu-plush just wants to cuddle with one person only and still be pouty about it somehow.

Anonymous asked:

For the latest Fem!Azul drawing is she wet or is she *wet*?

Yes.

And both options are equally dangerous…

[evileyedoll]

LOST LOST really is 2023's theme for me. I spent most of this past year on my PhD project, so my output has been quite scarce overall - certainly so compared to the industriousness of years past. When I had chances to draw this year it was often like a gasp of air amidst a sea of my other efforts. "What's the next step forward?" I think at times. Consider the center drawing my face of course, because in real life I look like if cannonbolt was a sad refridgerator.

I started a new physical sketchbook and made some breakthroughs in my personal illustrations, but nothing I'm happy to share - in previous years I didn't have as much nervousness to experiment in public. Anyway this feels like a good opportunity to do a bit of a retrospective on the last ones of these I did.

In many ways 2022 was the best year of my work, I both did my most challenging (and correspondingly complex) pieces this year, and had the confidence to make several things a week. Past the initial few months I had really started to hone my mix of solid shapes, lineart and linelessness thats ubiquitous in my pieces now, though I wonder if I have grown too comfortable with the stability of a partial formula.

One disadvantage about only choosing nine pieces was that in wanting them to look good together I had to exclude a series of the coloured background pieces that interspersed the dark background ones. In those, I felt like a lot more of my effort went into the shape language, so there was a synergy with both approaches letting me understand things.

In 2021 I started using colours instead of grayscale, that years inktober could almost be said to be my best work, there was both a variety and scale to it..I drew something virtually every day for almost three or four months straight and crucially, I also shared it all after I was done. It really felt worth it planning art ahead, but also spontaneously filling the blanks it in the moment. That being said maybe that productiveness was not sustainable because I'd have very little time for much else after school, work and art.

Late in that year I realised I could just draw the things I like if I wanted, instead of the things I thought people wanted - so some of the later pieces really resembled discount warframes. That game has so deeply hooked itself into my visual library that I draw it even when I'm not intending to, and so when I started deliberately trying to evoke it (with very fledgling art analysis skills), I think I got more and more familiar with what I wanted.

In 2020 I was just starting out so I did not yet recognise there was something specific to aspire to - I dont have a retrospective montage like these other years for 2020. You can see virtually every piece I've ever uploaded on my instagram page, so I think I might not narrate as much about those in this post. Maybe in the future I'll review all these years through a completely different lens.

[eriisaam]

Real sentimental hours are happening right now, and I feel so stupid. But in a dopey way I mean.

You ever get a thought that crosses your mind that makes you feel inspired or sentimental (or both), but what caused it is something so minor? That's what I'm feeling at random right now.

So a little history about how I started art (sometimes I mentioned this in passing already, but I don't mind the walk-back). When I started art, I started off pixel art first before drawing, and I was really hopeless about learning how people did the bare basics. How did they make lines that had these tiny gradients to them? (before I learned it's literally just lineart with anti-aliasing.) How can people make those fine lines? (Before I learned the importance of brush sizes and how an art program adapts to pen pressure with a tablet.) People can just... color? Under the lines? Without having to redo the lines??? (Before I transitioned out of MSPaint into an art program that had layers.)

Besides that last one, I learned through drawing stuff rigidly with pixels, coloring in said pixels like a coloring book, and then going over to do the shadings and re-touch on the lines. Precise pixels, precise lines, and a rigid style that still left its mark on my current style even in the present.

Earlier on, every time I tried to experiment with lineless style, or just any style where you color in patches and build up on it through shades and renders and then add subtler lines on top after the fact, my results looked like absolute garbage mush. I don't mean 'woe is me' self-pity bad, but legitimately BAD bad. I got discouraged I couldn't live up to a lot of those styles, moreso as they became super popular back in the day and present, and although I COULD adapt if I wanted to do some of the techniques you usually do with that style in mind, I only can really do so in pixel art, but not drawings otherwise, cuz that fear lingered. So, my style heavily fixated on drawing lineart and rigidly following said lineart, and that's just something I had to live with.

Though occasionally, I had some what-if epiphanies in moments when I turn my lineart entirely off to go back and recolor the parts post-flat-making. Including here. Like a glimpse of what-could've-been or maybe-ifs.

Is this render super fantastic? Probably not, I dunno. But it's decent. Better than the attempts I did when I was way younger and attempted stuff like this earlier. That bit like this froggy chair part isn't the best damn thing I could paint, but it's like... it felt less scary now compared to it did way back when. Maybe paint-like lineless style isn't quite as off the table anymore. Maybe it's something to consider practicing.

Maybe not now and not for this piece, but... something to put in the back pocket. For now.

[ravangie]

Your style of characters is so beautiful!! How did you learn/develop/practice to draw like that?

Ah!!! Thank you!! 💗💗💗✨✨

Here comes a long rant, get ready

Talking about your own art style is kinda tricky, I feel like to artists it comes as second nature, so one doesn't really see it as a so-called separate "style". Rather they see it as a continuation of themselves in a drawn form (at least i do). But if i had to, i'd say that one's art style consists of two things:

1) What comes naturally.

I look at 5 year old kids drawing and see that each one of then has their own unique style. Already. Without even trying.

I've been drawing my whole life and I never tried to shape my drawing style into a box that I could call "my style". I just let the lines flow naturally and followed where they led me.

I started going to live-drawing sessions again recently and my friend told me that she could see "my style" of drawing that she sees in my digital works in those quick sketches that I make during these sessions. I think that's because when I work on digital illustrations, I don't think about how I should draw this or that. I just do it.

So, practise! With time, the ways you personally draw things will flow to you. When you draw one thing a 100 times you start to notice simularities in all of the 100 different examples, and then you systematize what you've learned and put it to use drawing your 101 drawing. After a while you won't even think about it before drawing them in the usual for you way.

I like to draw freely, not picking up a pencil from paper, with my lines just flowing naturally everywhere that I want them to. And I try to keep that same feeling in my finished drawings (where there is lineart still visible).

Here, found an example of a quick live sketch without any boobies for ya (just to be safe) and a linework for one on my more recent digital works. See how I try to keep the lines alive in the same way. And add highlights where I deem them necessary just for something interesting to the eye.

2) Your inspiration.

Everything that you see and like impacts your style, whether you mean it or not. My friend (other friend) watched Wolfwalkers the other night and immediately texted me saying she could see the inspiration that I've drawn from that movie. And she was right. I am a fan of the artstyle of the whole studio, so it's only natural that i, maybe even unconsciously, took something that i liked from their works and incorporated it into my own art style.

When I asked my friend what exact simularities she saw, she couldn't pinpoint them, she said it's just the vibe that she's getting. And i was content with that answer. Means i didn't copy and paste, but rather interpreted what i liked in my own way.

Also. Very important. You have to love what you draw. You're gonna wanna spend some extra time and add those extra couple of strokes that don't add anything in meaning, but are there to just be pretty. Sometimes those couple of strokes make the biggest difference. I think it's is very important to take time to just sit with your work and listen to what it needs to make it truly finished. A drawing can go from empty and unfinished to fantastic in just a couple of lines.

So. There it is. Sorry for the long answer. Or maybe you're welcome? Anyway hope it satisfies you!💖💖

[cinnamon-stheater]

KanaMafu - Kokoronashi

So I finally wrote my first fanfiction!✰ Sorry it took so long; inspiration took a while hehe! As you can see from the title this is a KanaMafu fic, and I'm not caught up on all the Nightcord events yet (from Kanade's Tea Time event and so on), so some events that had occurred in those events are completely ignored. Just pretend they didn't happen.

TW!!: angsty and severe themes (death basically). also really lazily proofread

Summary: Nightcord is doing their usual 3am activities when Kanade receives word from her father's hospital.

Word count: 1079

Click. Click.

"Hm... the bass shouldn't be so loud here," Kanade muttered to herself. "And this note doesn't fit in with the rest."

Click. Click.

"Kanade?" A girl's voice broke through Kanade's musing. "I've finished the sketch for the ending part. Could you take a look? I've sent it through the chat."

"Sure, Ena," Kanade nodded, switching tabs to the Nightcord chatting up, the one the group used to communicate. A new message popped up, and Ena's drawing gradually loaded onto the screen. Kanade clicked on it to enlarge it, quietly inspecting her friend's artwork.

"It looks great." Kanade smiled softly.

"Really? Thank you!" Kanade could hear Ena's beam through her headphones. "I'll get started on the lineart!"

"Wow, Ena," a louder voice spoke up, having seen the drawing as well. "This is amazing!"

"Hehe, thanks, Mizuki."

"Hey, Kanade, I'm almost done with the chorus as well!" Mizuki added excitedly. "Once Ena and I finish with the end, we'll be done!"

"That's great," Kanade said. "This song was finished quickly."

"Yeah! Good job, everyone!" Mizuki cheered.

It was such a happy mood for a gloomy day. The rain was pouring endlessly outside, pounding on the always-curtained windows in Kanade's room. She smiled. Even with all their hardships and troubles, being able to sit here and make music with her closest friends was a nice way to rest after the long day.

And the last person in their music group, the one that was living with Kanade right now.

"Mafuyu?" Kanade glanced up as said person walked up beside her. "Do you need something?"

"Your phone has been ringing," Mafuyu replied in her monotone voice, handing Kanade a vibrating phone. "For a while."

Kanade blinked, glancing at her desk. Usually she had it right next to her. Maybe she'd left it on the dining room table when she'd gone to get a drink of water - something she didn't usually do, so it made sense she had forgotten it.

"Oh - sorry, Mafuyu," Kanade said, taking the phone and standing up to leave the room. "I hope it didn't interrupt your work?"

Mafuyu shook her head. "No."

"That's good." Kanade made her way down the hall to the dining room and answered the frantically buzzing phone. "Hello?"

"Yoisaki-san! Thank goodness you answered!" A lady's voice cut through the speaker. "I've been trying to reach you for ages."

"Sorry," Kanade replied apologetically, a sheepish smile overtaking her features. "I was caught up in my work."

"At least you answered," the lady said. "I'm afraid I have terrible news." She paused.

"What is it?" Kanade's fingers tightened around the phone. Was it something about her father? She'd gone to visit him a few days ago and he'd talked about having a daughter named Kanade... the sweetest child ever, he'd said. Kanade bit her lip.

"Your father..." The lady's voice got significantly quieter, and Kanade's heart quickened its pace. "We are very sorry to say, but your father has passed away. We -"

Thud.

What?

Passed away?

No. No, that couldn't be. She had just seen him. He had been fine. Had been. Did his condition worsen that fast in that short amount of time?

Kanade gulped in air, trying to steady her swaying body. A tiny voice filtered out of her dropped phone, calling out, but she couldn't hear it. The world around her had gone silent, as if she'd been dropped into the ocean. All she could hear was her heartbeat, pounding madly in her ears.

Passed...

The lady's voice rang in her mind.

Away...

No..!

Kanade stumbled forward, her feet tripping over themselves. She broke into a run, not even caring to put her shoes on before she was out the door, her bare feet pounding painfully on the cement sidewalk. Her thin blue jacket was soaked instantly, and she trembled violently as she ran, both from the cold and desperation.

The hospital... where was the hospital? Even with the streetlights the dark was terribly suffocating. Her vision blurred, from the rain or the tears pricking at her eyes, she didn't know. She could feel her body tiring, slowing down, and her feet stung from the probable cuts that had appeared, but she had to keep going. She had to make it to the hospital and see her father. She had to make sure he was okay.

Your father has passed away.

Kanade's legs flew out from under her. Her frail body crumpled onto the ground, her hands scraping against the cement. She pushed herself up, but a knife-like pain pierced her stomach and she staggered. Right, she hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday. But she couldn't care about that now, not when her father had -

"Kanade!"

A figure approaching from behind came into her line of sight, their hand reaching out to rest on her arm. The sound of rain pattering onto an umbrella broke through Kanade's dazed senses, and she looked up at the figure.

"Ma...fuyu..?"

"Kanade," Mafuyu murmured. The same emotionless voice, expression - yet Kanade could hear the other girl's underlying worry and fear. "What -"

Kanade's shoulders quivered and her knees shook, threatening to bring her down. Like an earthquake had struck, she collapsed into Mafuyu's body, sobbing into her shoulder and clutching onto the other's sweater to keep herself from falling. It was like a dam had given way within her and all her pain came crashing through in a tidal wave of unbound misery. Every single thought, fleeting feeling, deep emotion was let loose in a rushing flood of tears and broken sobs. It hurt so much. Why did it hurt so much? And yet she deserved it, didn't she?

Her mind flashed back throughout the years: every time she went to visit her father, every time she would sit down to make music, there was a twinge of sadness, a pang of guilt. Because she was the reason he was in the hospital. She was the reason...

The rain spilled down from the stormy gray clouds, sliding down and off the sides of the umbrella. The wind howled through the air, screaming out its sorrow. The world itself had come to grieve.

It could have been moments, minutes, or even hours as Kanade wept despairingly into Mafuyu's shoulder, soaking her sweater with never-ending tears. All through that time, Mafuyu held Kanade close, a hand on her back, while she held her umbrella against the wind to shield them both from the anguished rain.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for reading!✰ I think most of my fanfics will be about this long, maybe a bit longer or shorter. It's named Kokoronashi because of the song's chorus (it's a KanaMafu cover). Kokoronashi as a whole actually doesn't fit this fanfic that much, but I think it fits Kanade and Mafuyu's relationship pretty well, so go listen to it if you haven't already!✰

I hope you enjoyed!✰