#and how certain artists/art styles influence so many people

[babysgarage]

i think it's really cool how you can see mini art movements come and go on this website

[eurothug4000]

INTERVIEW ON THE MAKING OF THE CANCELLED MMORPG NINELIVES

Ninelives is the most beautiful RPG that was never completed, but can still be experienced as it was left. As part of my video on the game (now up for early access on Nebula), I also interviewed Tota of SmokymonkeyS on its inspirations and development before its suspension in 2016.

What would you say are your main inspirations for the art style in Ninelives? E.g. other artists, film, games, literature, history etc.!

I was a huge fan of Adventure Gamebook when I was a kid. Well, maybe you don't know what that is. Please read the wiki if you need: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebook. I was reading (playing) translated oversea gamebooks well, and love the inner artwork especially what draw by monochrome. I had never seen pictures like that before, and had a strong impact on me. So, I wanted to make a gamebook by my self. When I started making my own gamebooks, I learned a lot about how games are made. That's because a gamebook is a medium in which the player can see all the source code. At first I started making gamebooks because I was attracted by the artwork, but my interest eventually shifted to making the game itself.

Related to the above, do you take a lot of inspiration from real world cultures and places? Are there any that you particularly gravitate towards?

I like the mixed culture, like Chinoiserie in France at the 17 century. Plus, since I'm Japanese and this country has always been greatly influenced by China. So I'm not limited to any one of these cultures, but trying to create as I am influenced by all of them. Sometimes people say that what I create looks Japanese, Chinese, or Asian, which is neither correct nor incorrect. I try not to be only of a certain culture when I create. That's because I want to create an imaginary world that is somewhat like reality, but slightly different.

Why did you want to make Ninelives?

Ninelives was the first game I ever thought of making, I think when I was about 17.

Do you think Ninelives being in an unfinished state provides a different atmosphere when playing the game and exploring the world?

I don't particularly think so. The atmosphere of the game is still complete. I wanted the game to be a relaxed, free-roamed adventure for players.

I wasn't certain during my research, so I wanted to confirm if Tomomi Sakuba was involved in Ninelives in any way?

Yeah, Sakuba was involved in Ninelives lots of ways. As you said, he did some of the texture pictures for flowers, plants and tree leaves. He also drawn the world map and area maps of the game like below: http://www.smokymonkeys.com/kyrill/index.asp?direct=138 He actually walked around the world by himself to make this. He was one of the most earliest game tester of the game. Oh, and I have to tell you this. He's a voice actor of male Nightbreed and Elf! In addition, his wife did some of creature voices. Her voice is also used on Triglav too!

What are your own personal thoughts on Ninelives? Is there anything you would drastically change looking back on it? Or any big changes you would want to make if you were to continue development at any point?

Ninelives was too much for me in many ways. It was a world I had been thinking about since I was young, but there were too many things to actually create to handle, and in that sense it's exactly the dream a child thinks about. We are a team of two in SmokymonkeyS, but one of us is in charge of programming and system engineering, and the game itself was created completely by myself. I had to create all the pictures, models, terrain, music, and story by myself. Now if I'm going to make something, I don't make it on such a large scale anymore.

Apart from the Switch release for Garage and occasional updates on Triglav that you mentioned before, is there anything that SmokymonkeyS are working on for the future?

Not yet so far.

I noticed your banner on the official website (http://www.smokymonkeys.com/kyrill/index.asp) has a character on a train platform, I wondered if that might be a future game?

Once it was. It was a previous project of Triglav for mobile. But it was going to be on a larger scale again, so we decided to port Triglav before that. There are no plans to make that game now. But I may make another game with that worldview and atmosphere. For example, as a mobile game.

A big thank you to Tota for taking the time to answer my questions! You can find SmokymonkeyS and their games here:

[deepdreamnights]

Hey there, saw your post re: harassment around artists using gen ai and thought it was great esp with the debunking of data usage myths. Would you share your thoughts regarding concerns that models are being trained to copy specific art styles and thus pose a direct threat to the artists whose art styles are being used?

Well, there's several levels to that.

The main one is that on copyright grounds, styles are explicitly non-copyrightable. Moreover:

No one's style is unique

No one's style is unimitatable by analogue means.

The second point is important, because anyone can go on Fiverr right now and and find someone to replicate any given art style, and every competent draftsperson has to be able to do it to some degree or another. No major animation house, art studio, or comic company has ever hired someone because they couldn't find someone else that could imitate the surface-level aspects of their style.

The first point is just a matter of basic reality. Ex-nihlo creativity either doesn't exist or is so rare as to be a once-in-an-epoch thing. Everyone builds on the influences that they learn from, and if you think someone has a unique style what they really have is a different media diet than you.

For example, Don Bluth. Born 1937, aged 15 in 1952.

Same year Time released this this picture of Burlesque Performer Dale Strong.

Someone made an impression.

Marilyn Monroe was also a national sex symbol when Bluth was a teen, putting some context to most of his other ladies, but especially Goldie Pheasant (or maybe she's more Jayne Mansfield, hard to tell through the bird-ness). His art style has obvious roots with Tex Avery and I would guess he read Mad Magazine a lot as a kid.

And Not to hang the guy out to dry alone, I was a teenager in the 1990s, and most of my sexy fictional ladies are 9/10 some combination of Dana Scully, Peg Bundy, and Rhonda Shear.

The point being that style isn't something you create intentionally so much as an accumulation of influences, drawn from the commons. Attempting to claim ownership of such a thing is by itself an act of theft in my view, and allowing them to be protected under the law would mean a judge being shown exactly how many pieces of prior art the Walt Disney Corporation owns that your work superficially resembles. Why, they'll even run it through a style recognizing AI to make sure they catch them all.

But let's talk about style matching.

It just takes one image now, and doesn't require training.

Which I'm sure sounds frightening, but this has been the situation since February for Midjourney, and it was available in the Stable Diffusion ecosystem long before that. If the threat were as pronounced as feared, we'd have seen the impact by now. And we haven't, and we're unlikely to, for several reasons, several of them listed above.

The largest is that style isn't even close to the be all/end all of what an artist brings to a given project. And the kinds of execs who are making a 'replace 'em with a robot' kinda decision aren't the kinds of people who care about art style beyond how much it looks like the most recent successful thing. And nobody's ever needed a robot to ride coattails.

But the next largest part is that AI style imitations aren't really accurate because the robot doesn't see style in the same way we do. It's all just math to the robot, and it prioritizes what it notices, not what we do.

I'll demonstrate.

Jack Kirby will be my example, for several reasons.

He has a bold and identifiable style, he's arguably the most famous artist in western comics history, and he has many analogue imitators and homagers.

Using Midjourney and prompting "an illustration of dana scully by jack kirby, 1968, in the style of 1960s marvel comics --ar 3:4 --s 15"

Using the base model, on the first roll we get three complete style mismatches and one that's kinda close, though I'd say that's way more Sal Buscema or John Byrne.

Kirby's women had a certain, difficult to describe oddness about their faces that the robot doesn't seem to grok, and it doesn't touch on the kinds of wild patterns and bold black/white swatches that make Jack's work feel 'jack'.

Tom Scioli's take on Kirby is a sort of lovingly flanderized parody, but it captures the spirit of Jack's art much more directly even if a lot of individual details aren't period-accurate. He draws Kirby the way you remember Kirby from your childhood, but I don't question whether the page above is trying to be a Jack Kirby homage or one to Sal Buscema.

But Midjourney has style reference, so we can inject the Kirby right in. Using the picture of Sersei dancing from above with the same prompt, we get:

Well, the work is more convincingly period, but again, we're not terribly close to being on-point. In fact, they're not very consistent between each other. Top left is any 80s marvel fill-in artist. Top right is maybe Kirby-esq. Bottom Left is flat out Jim Lee, bottom right is very Byrne-y.

Using three reference images to give the best shot, I'm also moving to using images of a similar color style, and all with a woman as the central focus. I have included the infamous Crystal pin-up shot because as I said, Kirby women have a certain oddness to them (fondly).

Results (MJ 6.1 on the left, Niji 6 on the right):

It all says 60s-70s Marvel, but I don't think Kirby would be the first guess for any of them. Maaaaaaybe the lower-left Dana in image #2 if you squint.

And that's Jack Kirby. Massively popular and prolific with a career spanning decades. If anyone in the comics space should be impersonatable by this thing, its him.

I'm sure you could train a LORA to get closer, and sure, the tech is only going to get better from here, but by the nature of how the system works no generation pulls just from what is referenced. Every generation is both blended with other concepts and emphasizes only what the machine catalogs as relevant, not what we might.

There's not much to stop someone from imitating your style with a machine, but there was nothing stopping them from doing the same with an underpaid freelancer. The results are likely to miss the mark regardless.

If the client wants you, they'll try and get you. If they just want something kinda like you, they've always had an avenue to that.

Fortunately, you're more than your style, and whatever anyone can do with the machine, you can do better because you've got access to both.

[akzgaj-writing]

Writing Advice

I would like to share my observations and thoughts on writing. I have been writing for 6 years (with small or larger breaks) and so. I hope it will help you.

Contents by @akzgaj-writing

Don't press yourself to writing. If you don't have ideas, don't push yourself to write, becouse it would just give you anxiety and even angry.

Have an app on your phone/notebook. Good ideas can come from anywhere.

Write down some loose and lazy ideas. It may help you in writing plots and stories.

Observe people/nature/world/feelings. Write your thoughts and be open.

Write short stories, write on writing challenges, and read prompts.

Read, read and read good books. Like art artists admire old masters, read and admire old books.

Find your writing style – reading books, choose your favorite writing style and polish it, learn it – don't copy it – just learn and try understand it, and create our unique-own style.

Find your genre that you feel comfortable in.

Listen only to constructive criticism. Many people like to criticise, but it doesn't help. Listen only to those who enjoy reading and who like/respect your work.

Don't write curses and swears! Please! You can write something like this: "He looked at him with fury in his shining dark eyes, and his lips began to curse." Simple? *I often abandon books that have swearing in them. I know people who do the same. Don't do that in your story! More people would like to read your story without the dirty words.*

Vanity is bad. Remember that you learn throughout your life.

If you don't have an idea/muse for writing, don't be angry with yourself. Just give yourself a break and time to relax. You can always write another story.

Listen music and write story inspired by it.

Pray to God for ideas. It work for me ;)

Let your interest/hobby inspire you to write! If you like cycling/drawing/horse riding, put it in your story.

When writing characters, try to understand how people behave in certain situations. Try to be realistic and look at your character's age/capabilities. Don't write 15-years-old-girl who is like Einstein-Marilyn Monroe hybrid, and she can defuse a nuclear bomb with a toothpick. Moreover, she is a clumsy gray mouse, but at the same time she is such a sex bomb that Aphrodite could learn the art of seduction from her. Remember that teenagers are clumsy, irritable, perpetually under the influence of hormones and behavioural changes, and often wear a colours of war on their faces :) I mean inches of make-up.

[dizzyisdizzy]

Okay I didn't say anything at first because I was nervous and didn't wanna be annoying or something but I came back because like,, woah mY GOD I LOVE YOUR ART STYLE

I was going through the hatsune miku tag and just!! Woah the COLOURS the SHAPES the LINEART RARAGGDHAHS CHEF'S KISS

immediately it reminded me a lot of rourow's art (one of those iconic muse dash artists <3) and like,, oh my god they're my biggest inspiration for my art style. I find it funny I could spot the muse dash inspiration immediately /pos

But you also put your own spin on it and AGH <3 both rourow's art AND YOURS is just,, aregsgshh I wanna eat it. I think your art would taste like fruit gushers

I will be taking notes I wish I could absorb your art style into my blood

OKAY THIS IS GETTING LONG SORRY LMAO but if you ever have any more tips or tutorials or even speedpaints I will be there with a pen and paper <33

Rourow art is soooo coool right? The Reimu just stole my heart. The colors were fun, stylish, seemingly unrestricted by any rules or seams in their structure... I wanted a look like that.

Then Miku arrived and the envy in my heart became too much to bear.

Here's my epic Dizzy tips to studying, my fellow Muse Dash enthusiast. I broke down the artwork into shapes, lineart, and color. I noted what I enjoyed and especially how it differed to what I drew. I refined the notes further until I had some main ideas/commonalities, and try to reason the whens and whys for these choices. Do they reinforce lighting, the shape of the subject, to vary the colors present, etc. There were also a lot of 'just because' reasonings (X happens when Y). All those became a 'rulebook' of sorts.

After that was lots of replicating, tracing, etc. Making sure that style was the first thing my intuition and muscle memory jumps to. My first dozen or so original drawings after that were done with many references and notes on hand until I got the hang of things.

The plan was actually to go as identical as possible, but differences were inevitable. I wanted to do my own thing proportions/faces wise, anyways. And it IS great to have people enjoy my work as its own thing AND acknowledge the clear influence.

Still so much I wanna absorb though... The flowy and varied lineweight, and I've yet to reach the sheer elaborateness of the color use.

If it helps in your quest, I don't mind talking about certain choices I make (there's usually a reason for it). Just try to be specific! Makes it easier to choose my words. Thanks!

[cerakuro]

Do u have any favourite artists or inspirations/influences?!??? gorgeous art aaa

i have a ton of people and things that inspire my art! honestly too many to list if im being honest. i can give a few highlights though!

a lot of my style obviously comes from the series i’ve been drawing fanart for…. which is super obvious now cause i just draw yugioh but i think some traces of the things i liked in the past still exist in my art! i used to be a huge dc comic fan and would draw batfam stuff a lot and i think that’s one of the most prominent lingering things just from my like… general composition and how i decide to stylize certain things like text boxes or my use of black for shading sometimes. i also used to draw a lot of danganronpa which i think impacts how i draw eyes the most </3 rip king

for more specific examples, growing up and learning to draw my biggest inspirations were artists like kirvia (which i think you can kinda see traces of in my art especially my older works with how they have those blocky shapes), 02png i ADORE the raw use of colour in their art and they had a huge influence on me in the past, although that’s kinda harder to see now haha, emilyamiao with just the incredible general compositions in their pieces and how dynamic and well drawn their characters are… for ygo specific artists though fushitas is one of my all time biggest inspirations i WISH SO BAD i could draw characters as easily and dynamic as them it KILLS ME. or someone like E_Volution who i want to have my art look like theirs one day 😭 ONE DAY!!!! or Baby999 who i am so obsessed with i saw they liked one of my posts on twitter and i genuinely lost my shit for like an hour. anyway

but tbfh i also just generally get a lot of inspiration to draw from my mutuals since i end up seeing their art the most! like…. emu is deadass solely responsible for me coming back to draw gx because they got into it and i kept on seeing their ygo art on their story or someone like xw who i want to steal their art style so fucking bad bro it’s not even funny i have to contain myself + many many more

anyway! i hope you don’t mind me gushing over other people’s works for as long as i did! im really glad to hear you like my art <:)

[evelmiina]

Hi Eva,

I have a fee questions regarding your wonderful work. I'm currently working on my visdev portfolio, but going a bit insane thinking about keeping my artstyle consistent if i'd ever be hired. I just looked through your background paintings and wondered how you keep your backgrounds in a consistent style. I love your nature studies too, and they look so different from your work pieces... More free and explorational. Is it difficult to keep up the habit of learning new techniques and exploring styles once you're on a job? I'm so full of ideas and feel like sometimes the idea would require a certain style/technique to be pulled off in the best way. Do you feel that too sometimes and is it restricting in a way to then keep the style of the paintings the same.

Would love to hear your thoughts on that!! :)

Hi Eekonis!

First off: don't worry! I don't think consistency is an issue... I feel like any artist no matter the level, feels like their work is all over the place. I think of consistency more like per project, rather than overall my work. 

If you're interested in vis dev, a good way to showcase your work in a portfolio and not feel overwhelmed and all over the place, is to create just one project. I saw in your portfolio the bat story exploration, that's great! Just pick one of the ideas you have. Truth is we never feel ready to do something and we postpone and ruminate, but you have to start somewhere. My friend always says, "vain tee se" (just do it) and that's really all there is. Imagine your story as a film/TV (or game, or comic, but you have to choose one), and make designs and paintings of how you imagine it. You can try searching for visual development portfolios and see what other professional artists have included in theirs, there's so many ways to go about it. From the top of my head I'm thinking Aurelien Predal, Marie Thorhauge, Scott Watanabe, Kevin Roualland, Sylvain Marc. Also art books of movies or shows you like are really useful. There's a lot of art of movies and artists, tutorials etc collected in character design references website, from all around the world.

If your own idea feels too vague or the story is not set and you get stuck on it, you could also choose an existing story like a fairytale or a novel. Try to be intentional with your pictures - you want to be clear and tell a story after all, you want people to feel like they get to know the characters and the world from just one picture, and they really want to know the full story. In your portfolio, I like your bat story explorations and it seems cool, but it's currently missing some characterization and story. It would be a good idea to illustrate story moments or character design that really shows the personality, gesture, acting. And when you create environments, make them feel lived and inhabited, give them just as strong mood and character as you would to characters. 

Consistency within a project is just about setting rules and limitations, some of them come from the ability and skill. Others are more like, what brushes to use, what are the visual goals, influences and references. You can go pretty far in breaking down how pictures are made and what makes a style. For example, why do Ghibli movies look like Ghibli? What kind of color palettes, compositions, camera angles, tools were used? How realistic/cartoony is it? There’s internal logic to everything designed, and with practise it becomes more visible.

I don't know if I intentionally try to learn new styles all the time. I'm generally just motivated by doing what I think is fun or what I want some piece to say about story, character or my own feelings and trying to do it best I can. It sounds simple but... if the goal is to do something really well, then I just do my best to learn it. There are some styles that I really love and think are amazing, but would probably take decades to pull off and I just accept that I don't really want to go that way, and I focus on things that I really want to keep at. It's always possible to switch directions, but to get good at something you have to commit to one thing at a time. 

So yes, I face my limitations all the time. I'm very familiar with feeling like, so and so would do better job, someone is always better than me for sure. Sometimes it is painful to not be able to draw or paint in a way I want. I think this probably never changes, it's just human nature. But I dunno, some people get satisfaction from making AI do their project in the style they want, but if I was able to do something in a snap of fingers, like just get the perfect style for my project, it wouldn't feel good to me. I guess I want the full experience of suffering and joy of figuring things out myself. Sometimes it will suck and hurt, but you learn more about yourself and it'll get easier to recognize what you really want to make. Then, you can always do a little bit better next time.

[reygwenwrites2]

I Love Ard1n, and You Should Too With Ard1n

By Rey Gwen

February 6th, 2024

Photo above taken by @666.pastel on Instagram

If I were to describe Ard1n in a word, the word I’d choose in a heartbeat is vibrant. The unique style that they’ve orchestrated turns music into a captivating encounter with Ard1n’s craft, with their upbeat energy seeping into everything that they do. Their dynamic presence on stage parallels the powerful energy reflected in their music. Ard1n turns music into not only art that is full of life, but also an unforgettable experience.

REY GWEN: Could you walk me through your process on curating your sets?

ARD1N: Well, the sound of my set fully depends on the party and what crowd I can expect to be there. I play parties for some pretty different scenes so I need to know my audience, but once I decide on what sound I'm looking for I go straight to Soundcloud and begin digging. Song selection can take up to a week because I want to be 100% happy with the songs I pick.

GWEN: How does your mindset change when working on a singular song versus an hour(+)-long set?

ARD1N: When working on a set, my head is very production heavy. I’m more focused on the texture and sound design in the songs I select as I feel that is what I pay attention to when I'm hearing other people dj. However when making my own music, of course the production is still a huge factor but what matters most to me is if my voice is compatible with the beat. Sometimes people have voices that are better used with certain sounds or genres and that is what i try to get right when making my own music.

GWEN: What role does audience feedback play in curating your sets?

ARD1N: I like to play what I want. Yes, audience feedback can decide what song I play next, but usually I have a setlist I want to get through before I begin freestyling. I think I always have more fun freestyling though. Oh and I DONT TAKE REQUESTS. That shit will irk me. What I consider audience feedback is their reaction and movement to the current song playing or what sounds/beats gets the people to move. That is what will decide what comes next.

GWEN: How do you know when a set is ready to be performed?

ARD1N: I’m never 100% ready 🤣 you can ask anyone of my irl friends and they will tell you that before I go on stage I’m always shitting my pants and worried what I have prepared won’t be good enough. I do think having more songs prepared for the set makes me more comfortable though.

GWEN: What has been your favorite experience thus far in your music career?

ARD1N: This is a hard question to answer! I’ve had so many really cool experiences and opportunities come from music. I think one of the coolest things i was asked to do was play Boiler Room in December of 2022. My good friends at Subculture Party invited me to play one of their Boiler room stages since they were working in collaboration together. It was a great weekend filled with great music and friends. The next best thing would probably have to have been the Halloween party I threw last year. I co-organize a party called Dancing For Heaven with my best friend, HVN, and we worked together with other Toronto party series ‘Body2Body’ and ‘Bambeeno’ to throw a mega Halloween warehouse rave we called ‘House of Skin’. It was absolute insanity and we want to throw another one again next Halloween 🤭🤭

GWEN: What/who are your inspirations? How do they influence how you work on music?

ARD1N: I'm inspired by any new artist I find with fresh ideas. They inspire me to look outside of the box and try stuff I've never thought of before, and explore sounds I didn’t think would fit in music. I’m also so inspired by my friends. When I see the people I care about doing cool things it makes me so happy and makes me want to do cool things as well!

GWEN: How do you mentally prepare yourself for performing?

ARD1N: I’m freaking out every second until I’m on stage. It’s only once I’m already djing or performing that my nerves go away and I fall into the groove of what I’m doing and I lock the fuck in. It’s like I forget the crowd is there and I’m djing for myself like how I would in my bedroom.

Ard1n on Soundcloud

Ard1n on Instagram

Ard1n on Twitter

[peppermakesart]

With the new year starting and the 2 year anniversary of me beginning to draw approaching, I wanted to take some time to reflect on where I was when I first started, and reaffirm the core principles that have been guiding my progress.

Going into 2023, I was dealing with a lot of stress and received an official diagnosis for an anxiety disorder, so I was looking to find ways to reduce stress in my life.

One of the first changes I made was to quit playing Dead by Daylight. A friend had introduced it to me about a year before that, and I really enjoyed it for the first 3 months or so. At first it felt incredibly immersive, especially for someone who isn’t good with horror movies, but as I got the hang of the nuances it became too much about memorizing optimal play and picking efficient options, and the gameplay can be horribly toxic. I never played MMOs and only played FPS games poorly without a headset, so this was my first experience with real internet toxicity.

After cutting that out of my life, I needed to find something else to fill that time, and I didn’t want to just get into another video game. I had also managed to completely avoid Twitter until 2022 (I kinda live under a rock) joining because of a friend of mine who was a professional artist. So around that time I was finding other artists that appealed to me, and the person who inspired me to start drawing is Stinky Katie.

Seeing that art didn’t necessarily need to be technical to be beautiful art made the barrier to entry feel a lot lower, and you can see a lot of her influence in my early work. To be clear, I’m not saying her art doesn’t require tremendous skill just because it looks simple. It takes a lot of knowledge to be able to simplify something down to its base elements while retaining your own art style, and 2 years later I think she’s even more of a genius than I did before.

My second major influence was the artist who I was friends with, we were only close for a short time, but I got to get a behind the scenes look at someone who earns most of their income off commissions. I gained an appreciation for the effort that goes into gaining those skills, and enjoyed encouraging them and seeing how much the validation spurred them on when they were struggling with deadlines. They had once mentioned wanting to create a discord art server where criticism is banned, and it’s just a circlejerk of people complimenting each other’s art, and I like the energy behind that. I decided to take that energy with me when I started drawing myself, and I try to go out of my way to show support for as many artists as I can. There is benefit in receiving constructive criticism and applying that feedback, but you can get that from someone else, I’d rather just try to spread a bit of positivity. If your one compliment is the difference that convinces someone not to quit, that’s worth more that any amount of technical improvement.

Around this time when I first decided to draw, I read an article that left a big impression on me. It was written by a woman who was a schoolteacher specializing in young children, and she spoke about how her favorite type of art was from a prompt she would have the children make, where they drew their interpretation of “safety”. I remember reading her describe how she would bawl her eyes out looking through what all the children made, and it further emphasized that the most important quality in a piece of art is how it makes you feel, and everything else is secondary. I feel like I can generally divide the art I make into two categories, pieces that I seek to capture a certain feeling or idea, and the pieces where I’m mostly focused on the art itself, either emphasizing the quality of detail in the current work or experimenting with various ideas in hopes of expanding my artistic toolkit.

It’s why I consider the first picture my favorite early piece of mine and not the second. I had just found out a coworker of mine had died, and I was able to capture a snapshot of how I felt at the time, to help process it and separate myself from it a bit. Sometimes it’s easier for me to control my emotions if I put them to paper, once I’ve placed them somewhere it’s easier to feel like I’ll be able to pick them back up later. I’m really proud of the second piece too, I locked in for 4.5 hours for something really clean, and the artist who created the original sprite found it and complimented me on it, but it just isn’t personal in the same way.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Here’s the first Smoliv I ever drew, it’s been my profile pic ever since everywhere publicly. It has symbolic meaning for me, it’s what ties together all the feelings I just described, and I want to stay grounded to where I was when I began.

[arewedoneyet]

Check out my story from "Here's to the Dreamers" campaign and Jeff Satur's Essentials Playlist on AppleMusic!

Playlist Link: https://music.apple.com/playlist/jeff-satur-essentials/ pl.7722c40a507a4309676225594450075

via jeffsaturthailandofficial @ facebook | 04082024

Disruptors, change-makers and boundary-pushers excite us with their diverse perspectives on art and life. Jeff Satur is one trailblazing storyteller whose unique story fascinates and inspires. Since picking up the guitar at the age of nine, the Bangkok-born singer-songwriter, producer and actor has lent his soulful voice to gorgeous ballads whose joy and heartbreak resonate with listeners—assisted by a consummate musicality that draws on a rich, varied vein of experience. Below, Satur shares with Apple Music some insights into his career as an artist from Southeast Asia on the world stage.

What challenges have you faced while pursuing a career in music?

“I think music is the only thing that can bring people together as one unit, creating a shared energy that inspires happiness and a sense of release in their lives. It’s almost like a form of medicine, unlike anything else in the world. Music helps you through difficult times and can alleviate sadness, especially when experiencing live concerts. For me, writing music is a chance to fulfil my purpose, as if I was born to do it—and it places me in the right environment. I have also learned that there is no definitive ‘right’ choice when it comes to music. You won’t know if it’s the best choice until you genuinely enjoy it. It’s like a challenge to stay dedicated and not drift away from your passion. So you just keep going for it.”

Can you share a moment when you felt like giving up on your dreams and what ultimately motivated you to keep going?

“I remember getting older, around 25 years old, and experiencing a wrong feeling that led me to consider quitting music due to the pressures of growing up. I had to get a job to earn money, and at that point, I didn’t believe that releasing a song would improve anything. Live shows and concerts had come to a halt, but despite those challenges, I remained determined to focus on my music. It was my primary source of motivation. I pushed myself to continue, even if the results weren’t perfect. To keep my inspiration alive, I attended movies and concerts, seeking more motivation to write—and seizing any opportunity that came my way.”

As a Southeast Asian artist, what unique cultural influences do you incorporate into your music?

“For me, there are no boundaries when it comes to creating music. In my song ‘Dum Dum’, I use traditional instruments that resonate with my identity and feel authentic. These instruments evoke the sounds I remember from my childhood, tapping into instincts that seem inherent, like an innate drawing that you’ve had since birth. Incorporating these instruments into my music is a way of expressing what I truly desire and wish to explore.”

Have you faced any specific challenges or opportunities as a Southeast Asian artist in the global music scene?

“I used to follow a certain pattern but I’ve learned how to distinguish myself from others because everyone’s style is unique. Why is it different? It’s because I’ve learned from series I’ve watched, songs I’ve been into, and books I’ve read. I try to be as authentic to myself as possible because I believe I’ve already internalised those influences and now want to share my true self with others without fearing judgment.”

Can you share any advice or encouragement for aspiring artists who may face similar challenges?

“As an artist in the global music scene, it’s crucial to leverage your unique background to set yourself apart. There are no boundaries between languages or challenges I’ve faced so far. While Thai may not be as familiar to many when writing music, I remain true to myself. I’ve explored both Western and Asian music and they have intermingled within me, allowing me to create something original that resonates with people—and the melodies flow naturally. The impact these melodies have on people is what inspires me even more.

“To reach a broader global audience, I enjoy surprising myself—for instance, by releasing two versions of my songs. This continuous effort breaks down the boundaries, making them thinner and thinner. My advice? The world’s market is expanding and there’s a lot to discover in Asian music. I immerse myself in Thai music and music from other countries, drawing inspiration and making the music my own. It’s essential to ensure it sounds authentic to myself, as differentiation from others is vital. In the past, I used to fear my music wasn’t good enough, so I didn’t write or produce my own songs. However, I realised the importance of being myself and changed my attitude towards my career, writing my music and embracing my true identity.”

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Why do you think Dobson's art got noticably worse? I mean so much worse. There's a reason why people often think his older stuff looks better; because it does (okay when he's not making mistakes like wrong number of fingers, angles, inconsistencies, etc.). I know he wanted to move away from his manga-influenced art but I don't think that explains everything.

I think the advantage of his older art is mostly that Dobson was simply being more simplistic in his early days than later on. Only that his attempts to be more detailed and move away from his "manga-influenced" art also involved him mixing too many things together all at once, creating just ugly art in general.

There is in my opinion a bit too much going on as to answer it in just a few lines, but I will try: First, the statement "Dobson was manga-influenced" always rubbed me off the wrong way because I don't think that is quite the case. Dobson was definitely influenced in his art styl and writing by certain mangas he read -Slayers and Ranma 1/2 primarily- but a handful of manga by an even smaller pool of artists to draw from, does not encompose the sheer variety of linework and aesthetics that have been within manga. For example, no one would be able to mistake a Go Nagai artwork for one by Akira Toriyama or Gosho Aoyama, because they have vastly different drawing styles. Confusing an Endo however with an Arakawa would likely be more the case. And don't get me even started how manga is often times writen differently from most western comics of the 70s-90s in term of drama, plot etc. What rather was the case, was that Dobson took aspects of the most simplistic, surface level aesthetics of manga in art and drawing, and hoped it would lead to success. Which it didn't, because of different reasons like a lack of commitment to the writing and nothing making it visually really different from a newspaper strip comic, but with characters making silly faces associated with late 90s comedy anime.

Second, when Dobson tried to reinvent himself, I think he tried too hard to get into more details or add shadows, wrinkles and stuff to his art. It is hard to explain, but the way it looks to me (particularly in stuff like his KorraSami pics) Dobson tried to draw characters at times with more "realistic" details like wrinkles in the face, but because the characters he drew are style toons, they started too look uncanny or exagerated. Which is another problem: When you look e.g. at his Ladybug comics, he didn't even get the proportions of the characters from the show not right by comparison, especially when it came to size of heads and eyes. Which if he had just gone full chibi style wouldn't have been as obvious to most people. But Dobson was always stuck in a weird halfway there state, where the characters were neither cartoonish but proportional, or too cartoonish and unproportional that the former balanced out the later. And he never figured the problem out.

Third, Dobson was just lazy when it comes to scenery I mean, I agree partly with Dobson that at times you don't need to draw a very detailed background when the focus of a story is in one panel focused on two characters looking at something off screen, them talking, or being in thought. But when you really think about it, when did Dobson ever for example really put effort into drawing e.g. a panel where the scenery was meant to tell more of a story or a storybeat, than the characters talking? Or when was a panel ever drawn from a different ankle than simply straight face forward. Like, has Dobson ever even heard of "overhead shot", dutch ankle or POV?

[vryfmi]

Talk Shop Tuesday! You asked me a really really good question about my art style, so I'd like to bounce it back to you! Are there any specific influences on your art style and/or process that you can pinpoint? How do you feel you incorporate new information and techniques to your existing style?

And, of course, what do you like best about your art style?

yes, i really like this question! i like getting insights into one's artistic journey and what started it. so, speaking of mine, i was asking the same question and failing miserably at answering it. it just happened? and i went with it?

as for influences i don't think it was any particular media, tho i have been getting quite a few comments that my artstyle (especially in traditional) reminds people of illustrations from various books. and the thing is yes, i can see that, i love illustrations that are done in ink, i did take a lot of inspiration from artists with similar styles and used their art as references when i liked something about it or the way they draw a certain thing. so i guess that's where it all originated and came together.

there's one influence of which im not 100% certainly about but i really really liked How To Train Your Dragon books as a kid and i always loved illustrations in it and how messy and unflattering yet compelling they looked. when i default to drawing characters in a very simplified manner i think there is a slight similarity or, at very least, similar vibe that could be noticed

[id from alt text: a page from How To Train Your Dragon book with very messy pencil drawings of main characters: Hiccup with Toothless on his shoulders, Fishlegs (hiccup's best friend) with Horrorcow and Camicazi./end id]

tho i specifically remember the turning point in drawing eyes, when i decided to stuck with only upper eyelid and the iris after noticing how many other professional artists simplify eyes in their quick sketches or figure drawings, where eyes are not a focal point but they still communicate emotions just as well and look coherent with the rest of a drawing. i just really like how it looked so i adopted it, plus drawing just two dots is fun.

i wouldn't say i learn a bunch of techniques, im still intimidated by actual hatching and learning process for that, im definitely not a jack of all trades when it comes to mediums and art tools. that said, the easiest (for me) way of incorporating something new is by drawing something one time but as detailed as possible and then finding ways to stylise or simplify it in the future. mostly i use it for character designs but it works with a lot of other things too.

and to round it up, i'd say the thing that i like about my artstyle the most is that it has a good balance between being realistic and stylised. it's versatile and gives me a certain freedom to be as detailed or not with what i draw but also doesn't limits me to drawing just one thing (my hyperfixation does). also i think it became somewhat consistent and recognisable in the past few years so that's also a nice thing to have

[puffywiz]

Hi! I am absolutely obsessed with your art; it's vibrant and expressive and just all around stunning. I have always wanted to be able to draw and make fanart, but every time I try it ends up a hot mess express. Do you have any tips/resources for learning? Do you think it's something that you can get good at, even if you don't have any real natural ability?

Aaaa thank you for your kind words! I'll do my best to offer some tips that have helped me over the years:

Create some mood boards

This is one of my fav things to do. It's different from gathering reference images, which you use to draw from specifically like when you want to get a certain pose right. Mood boards are more about finding images that invoke a certain feeling you're trying to express. Here's an example from a project I did a while back:

These are essentially ways to gather inspiration. You can look at the similarities between each of the images you chose and see if there are any connections you can draw. This gives your work a good starting line to come back to if you start to feel lost.

This can also be a great way to determine what types of art styles speak to you, and how you might like to emulate certain features in your own work. I grew up watching anime and would try to emulate the styles of Rumiko Takahashi and Hiromu Arakawa for example. Don't worry about being derivative at first. You'll eventually find your own voice through a variety of influences.

Start by working on understanding shapes

Drawing gets much less overwhelming as you learn to break things down into basic shapes. My one friend suggests drawing Pokemon as an exercise in determining how simple shapes build form. When you try to go right into drawing lineart first you start focusing on the details way too early and you can get into a stop-and-start that seems to go nowhere. People will also talk about the importance of silhouette. This essentially means you want your character to be recognizable by their shape alone. Cartoon styles particularly excel at this (Steven Universe is a really good example) but different art styles will adapt to this with varying success. This is still something I've been working on even after all these years and it's tricky, but it helps you think about diversity when you're drawing.

(These are some old examples from art school I did. They aren't great but they give you the idea lmao)

Keep a sketchbook and draw big

Keeping a sketchbook is the best. Put everything in your sketchbook and absolutely don't be precious about it. Blank pages are intimidating I know, so if that's stopping you one thing I do sometimes is start by drawing on sticky notes and pasting them in. Add anything you think is interesting - quotes, cutouts from magazines or fliers, cute snack packaging, etc. Anything that you like!

My friend also suggests taking up space in your sketchbook by drawing big. A lot of artists start small little sketches and get caught up in details. They start pages they don't like and move on without adding anything else in because they feel insecure. Don't worry about that, details can come later. And you can always draw over stuff you really don't like. You can paste stuff over it and draw on it again. You can use tracing paper to draw over something 5 times. There's lots of options to try before discarding a page all together. I find this helps combat feelings of discouragement when you're paging through your book. If all you see are abandoned sketches it can get you down. So don't give up!

Don't allow yourself to get precious about your sketchbook, no matter how many aesthetic sketchbook tiktoks you're forced to endure lmao. Sketchbooks are places for failure and experimentation. Let it be ugly. There's value in that too.

Draw both eyes at the same time

I still forget to do this but it really helps cut down on fucked-up-other-eye syndrome. Try not to fully draw one eye before you start the other one. Determine in your sketch phase where the character is looking and try to build on that, going back and forth between each eye until you're satisfied with them both.

Here is a comprehensive list of tips and tutorials my friend found here on tumblr too. I took a look through them and I think there's a ton of great stuff here.

Anyone can start to draw at any age for any reason. I think some people develop a knack for things not out of some inherent skill, but by taking an interest in the subject. I started drawing very young but I just stuck with it over the years because I liked it. There's no reason why starting later in life has to mean you can't get good at it. In fact, since your brain is more developed you might pick it up much quicker than you'd expect. Lord knows I've had to un-learn a ton of garbage over the years lmao. Habits die hard right?

I believe in you! Keep drawing! Have fun!

[essayofthoughts]

Which version (i.e the comics, cartoon, original campaign art, other fanart, etc.) of Percy and Vex do you typically visualize when you write your stories? Is that version of them your favorite?

This is probably gonna sound kind of arrogant but for the most part, none of them? Like, certain things have influences on how I tend to envision the characters but I'm not a terribly visual thinker or writer; if you look at my fics you'll note I tend to dwell much more in emotion and tactile senses than I do visual. It's kind of why I envy people like my dear friend @cosmonauthill or the excellent @exhaustedwerewolf - both have this fantastic knack for creating a single striking visual that helps you build out a scene or a character in your mind from that.

Like. At the end of the day there's only one art piece that I tend to really look to as a visual guide for any of the characters and that would be This Fantastic Piece of Percy and Orthax from the lovely @agarthanguide, and that's more to do with the artistic style of the piece (which. I just love) and the fact Hannah is a dear friend who's art I've enjoyed for a long time, meaning I'm biased towards her art anyway.

As it is, I don't particularly care for the animated series - I find the designs too simplified to the point that they're boring to me, and I'm someone who likes the animated shows I watch to have a clear style; to me the animated series looks altogether too much like many other shows.

The comics are fine, I guess, but they don't really stick out much to me, and I have nitpicks about a few things in the fanart of others - namely that a lot of people draw half-elves' ears like they're full elves. If they're half elves, then elven ears would be like those of the World of "we have an ear fetish" Warcraft elves and I find those kinds of ears just to just... beggar belief. I need a bit of verisimilitude and the ear size/prominence is a nitpick for me.

I certainly take cues from some art. I used a mixture of the comics art and the group picture done by AnenomeTea to judge the height differences of Vox Machina, which, yes, I did sit down and do, I'm like that, and I love @crithaus' golden freckles idea for Vex, I like the sheer ludicrousness of Vex's hair in @alienfirst's art, and I like how long and awkward Percy's face is in the comics, but I also like the art of @2impostors which always makes him look like his nose has been broken at least once (a headcanon I share) and I also like just how young he looks in the original stream portraits with that round face. It really brings home that he was only a teen when he went through so much. That's another reason I really like alienfirst's art as well, because they similarly give Percy a rounded, young looking face - though I personally tend more towards how Hannah - agarthanguide - draws Percy's hair than anyone else.

And that's before we get to specific AUs of mine - Percy's differently weathered and worn in Delia AU and Ripley's Assistant because he wasn't physically tortured; in Ghost Cass he's much better rested and doesn't look so sleepless, and of course for Tiefling AU, I lean very much towards the lovely art @blorbologist did.

So... yeah. What visuals I do have are very much a mishmash of personal opinion and specific AU, and while I might take cues from this and that it doesn't really create a single coherent image so much as a few specific details I can then write in for people to apply to their own image of Percy. Hope this answers your question!

[arecomicsevengood]

Matt Wagner’s GRENDEL

Late last year I got the urge to read a great deal more of Matt Wagner’s Grendel comics than I had before, basically precipitated by two things. One, a few that I had read were really good. The first Batman/Grendel crossover is surprisingly dense, balancing a great deal of characters and plot threads by having them run in parallel. A two part story that ran in issues 16 and 17 of the Comico series, initially brought to my attention by Frank Santoro talking them up, is maybe even better. Two, it has recently struck me that many of the creator-owned comics Dark Horse was publishing in the nineties were seemingly under-read or under-appreciated: The Frank Miller/Dave Gibbons Martha Washington series being maybe the most prominent example of a comic by major creators that’s basically never discussed. It is very easy to be an “art comics” reader and never think about Hellboy and Concrete, even if you’re the type that checks out older superhero comics fairly regularly. If you like Alan Moore or any of the British comics writers who worked extensively at Vertigo or 2000 AD, you might have avoided the works from the publisher that spent the nineties being associated with licensed comics. This also would’ve entailed missing a lot of manga, but people were proud of their ignorance of that world of comics too.

If you have never read Grendel, or are only peripherally aware of it, the main thing you should know is how weird it is. It begins with a short miniseries about a guy named Hunter Rose who’s a brilliant criminal mastermind who dresses up in a mask and calls himself Grendel. This original three-issue miniseries is from 1983 and has never been reprinted, and is basically dismissed by its author.

The ongoing Grendel series that started coming out a few years later begins with a lady, Christine Spar, who has written a book about Grendel, the criminal mastermind who adopted her mom. Through the course of the first year of the series, she begins dressing up in the mask and running afoul of the police. It slowly becomes apparent that Grendel is not so much a mask, a character one plays, but a demonic spirit of aggression that possesses people, destroying them, but in the process bolstering its own myth and therefore increasing in power. There is an omnibus called Devil’s Legacy which follows several people as they become possessed by this spirit. I am pretty sure the last few issues in this story leap hundreds of years into the future.

That said, I’m not certain what the omnibus editions contain because I tracked down older printings of the story. Comico went bankrupt after printing forty issues of Grendel, and while Matt Wagner owned the character and was able to continue the story at Dark Horse, the original color film was lost, and the recolored versions of the first twelve issues of the series in particular looked egregious to me, based on the scans I had seen online, compared to the very eighties, sorta Patrick Nagel, style of the flat coloring that seemed to match the work of the artists, the Pander Brothers. I assume the Devil’s Legacy omnibus contains recolored versions of the first 23 issues of the Comico issues.

Mireault recolors the story, drawn by Matt Wagner, from issues 16 and 17 I found so appealing. The initial color palette is extremely limited, and some people writing into the letter column complained. It is extremely cool to see the editor Diana Schutz explain that the style is influenced by the work of Chantal Montellier and Alex Varenne. One thing that’s fascinating about the comic to me is how much it is in dialogue with the larger world of comics, although perhaps not in ways that would’ve been apparent at the time: Joe Matt colors issues, Seth (circa Mister X) writes in, Wagner was doing cover paintings for First Comics’ Lone Wolf And Cub reprints after Miller left. It doesn’t feel so hermetically sealed within a self-flattering world as the way comics often do now.

By issue 24, the series takes place in the far future, and I found this chunk of the series a bit of a slog, due in the part to the art of John K. Snyder, which is extremely not my thing. Also, it’s science-fiction story taking place hundreds of years in the future that is actually about the era in which it is written, and its timescale for complete societal collapse seems way off. It’s also largely about religious corruption, but within a fictional world where the Catholic Church holds a vast amount of sway, this seems like an extremely dated concern at this point in time. Also, and I should’ve mentioned this earlier, one of the major ongoing plot threads in Grendel, that nonetheless doesn’t come up all the time, is the presence of vampires.

Wagner continues to experiment as a writer and as a storyteller. The last chunk of the Comico storyline is drawn entirely by Tim Sale, but with each issue split into two different storytelling approaches. One relays a vast amount of exposition with illustration meant to inspired by Japanese woodcuts, the other is more traditional comics about vampires. I like Tim Sale’s work, and it’s nice to see it in a context other than those blockbuster Jeph Loeb collaborations. In keeping with the book’s sense of the wider world of comics, the choices of artistic collaborators, often near the start of their careers, is pretty interesting.

That becomes more pronounced once the series enters the nineties, and Wagner starts having other people write miniseries under the Grendel Tales banner. Ho Che Anderson, Teddy Kristiansen, and Paul Grist all draw chunks. I love Paul Grist’s work, and even if the story (written by Steve Seagle) is not as good as the work he would write for himself, it looks good with Bernie Mireault providing painted color, and there seems to be enough of an understanding of how cartooning works to know that he should letter the comic as well.

The letter columns remain interesting, both in terms of who writes in (Chris Pitzer, future founder of Adhouse Books) and in the addition of recommended reading from Wagner and Schutz: We get recommendations for The Batman Adventures by Kelley Puckett and Mike Parobeck, Paul Pope’s The Ballad Of Doctor Richardson, David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, Acme Novelty Library, Jason Lutes’ Jar Of Fools, Joe Sacco’s Palestine. Schutz says that Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett would make a good Grendel comic.

And the whole Dark Horse run commences with Pat McEown drawing a ten-issue series called Grendel: War Child, with initial covers by Simon Bisley. This is a chunk that is fairly easy to read, action-movie in its beats and approach to an issue. At this point in the story, the far futre, the Grendel of the title is a robot, running across the planet. This is the last thing Wagner writes before the Grendel Tales series begins in earnest. McEown would write and draw Grendel Tales: Homecoming, with coloring and lettering by Dave Cooper. Dave Cooper’s Weasel series would later host McEown’s short story “No Escape,” but McEown mostly works as a storyboard artist, although his graphic novel Hair Shirt was released in 2010 to some acclaim. I haven’t read it, but do think he made a strong Grendel artist.

Grendel, like Hellboy, attracted very strong artists to work with an artist they admire, and nowhere is this more clear than in a series of anthologies published using a black, white, and red color scheme. The red, in most cases, adds very little, but basically every mainstream-ish comics artist whose work I appreciate pops up for a turn. John Paul Leon, Cliff Chiang, Kelley Jones, Duncan Fegredo, Guy Davis kick in an eight-pager. All of this work is collected now in Grendel Omnibus Volume One: Hunter Rose, filled with retellings and fleshing out of the character’s initial iteration now left to languish. There is also a lengthy miniseries, Behold The Devil, from 2008, drawn by Matt Wagner collected within that volume. This story concerns Hunter Rose performing an exorcism to confront the creature that possesses him, and seeing a glimpse of the future -- all of the stories and volumes I’ve outlined above -- in a piece that feels like it’s maybe stolen from the conclusion of From Hell.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention that Grendel Tales also brought the Croatian creators Darko Macan and Edvin Biukovic to American comics, with Biukovic lettering his work for maximum impact. This story was widely acclaimed, garnered its creators Eisner awards and work on other properties. I would need to check the exact timing, but this might’ve been what led Macan to work with his countryman Igor Kordey on American comics as well. This also might’ve been the first Grendel comic I read, having been talked-up as self-contained, but the mythos is vast and I am due for a reread of it.

After War Child (and a series of back-up stories by Matt Wagner that ran in Grendel Tales) there was a prose novel, Past Prime, written by Greg Rucka, that continues to move the timeline forward, that I believe is collected in the fourth Omnibus volume. There was also just recently a series called Devil’s Odyssey Wagner wrote and drew and had his son color, that is now in a separate hardcover volume. I haven’t read either of these, nor have I read Wagner’s recent stories where the Hunter Rose Grendel meets The Shadow.

The comic is far too inconsistent to be considered a masterpiece, and also too vast for casual engagement. I am writing this post in part because it feels insane that I read it at all, despite most of it being very good. It’s a genre work too challenging to be appreciated as straight-forward fun. It is, like The Maxx, both confusing from an adult perspective but likely life-changing to a teen. (One letter comes from a kid who says he started reading it at nine and is thirteen now and wishes the comic didn’t have a label that said “Not For Children” on it because some retailers won’t sell it to him: That kid rules, but I also really like the “not for children” label.) There is a small drawing of Grendel in the CF sketchbook Sediment and it is easy to see him vibing on the comic: When considered in the abstract, it is plainly very cool.

[airabuhan]

anon asked: Hi!!! I’m a tad bit shy so sorry if I seem awkward but… What inspired your art style? I noticed that you have very soft coloring and you have very cute art

hmmm i suppose a good part of it is inspired by enstars? at least, i admire the enstars art style a ton and it probably shows in the way i draw the characters somewhat, though it's not like a 1-to-1 replication of it by any means haha (i can't do clean lineart at all with the type of shading enstars does unless i purposefully try and replicate it which takes SO much time) i've been inspired by a number of art styles in particular though, many of them looking very different from each other? i can't really exactly point to one specific art style besides enstars that i can definitively say greatly influenced my art, it was more just me feeling inspired by certain aspects of how people colored, drew, painted, and the amalgamation of all of the artists i look up to shows in my art now? i did want to have an art style that had a more rendered, finished, almost paintery style while still maintaining a sort of anime-art style (i can't explain this well ahaha) but i don't know that that description particularly fits well with how my art style looks at the moment

i'm sure a lot of my art style now also comes out of the habits i'm just used to doing ahaha like how some of my 'finished' drawings are quite sketchy in a sense because i'm too lazy to sit down and render for hours and hours hgnhgh. i don't really do line art, because early on when i began drawing more seriously i was kind of frustrated with the whole process of doing line art and i preferred to do sketches and cleaned them up later in the process, and i have more fun drawing that way so i think that affects how my art looks a lot. it makes rendering SO time-consuming though, having to clean up all the mistakes because i was too lazy early on to clean up the little details :") i suppose that process does makes my art look the way it does so...

as for coloring, i'm honestly still learning how to color now ahaha i actually have no idea what i am doing in regards to coloring... coloring for me is just slapping colors onto the canvas and playing around with blending modes until hopefully something looks cohesive, though with playing around with colors and layer modes i've started to color in a way that's relatively consistent now? but my method of coloring is kind of all over the place and a little different compared to how i've seen other people may choose to color (throwing all the flat colors onto one layer and slapping a bunch of multiply layers and such until it looks cohesive) ... yeah learning how to color intentionally is definitely on the bucket list of things i want to learn, and some of my favorite artists are able to utilize color in such a beautiful way that i can't help but admire

thank you for the compliment!! my drawing process is lowkey whack, but i've drawn inspiration from so many artists even if my art really does sort of look nothing like some of the artists i greatly admire... to name some artists i've admired (even though my art looks quite different from theirs lol), i like gearous, @/velinxi, @/meltsmelts, @/cirqlr, and a bunch of other danmei artists over time. sorry for the long-winded rant, i like talking about art and artists i admire [Smile or comment on the answer here](https://retrospring.net/@airabuhan/a/110669242407708697)