#but i figured it's good practice to use the dip pen for finer lines like this (and all my regular pens are dry oops)

[humming-fly]

Inktober Day 19 - What big teeth you have

Guess who only just now realized Gab’s red hoodie is probably an allusion to little red riding hood (was too distracted by the obvious Edward elric design parallels haha)

[sootbird]

Hey Rox, random question. How can one learn to draw? I mean, I got the whole take a pencil and a paper and practice everyday but I mean, after doing that you understand proportions, light, perspective? Naturally? Just by practicing everyday?

Artists telling people just to practice art and not giving them any solid starting place is a bullshit cop-out and something I’ve probably said at some point, but I’m going to rectify it now by giving you a comprehensive guide to starting art.

Some people may disagree with me (and honestly I recommend asking other artists this same question to see what they say and what you yourself agree with), but I think no matter what kind of 2D art you want to make, you should start with traditional, realistic drawing or painting. The reason for this (aside from anecdotal evidence of it working for me) is that learning to draw things that occur in real life gives you a foundation for branching out into different styles or media down the line. Even if you want to draw cartoons or anime, learning realistic drawing will help you, because it will familiarize you with the complicated shapes that more cartoony drawings simplify or exaggerate. For example, if you learn to draw a realistic nose, then you can see different ways to turn that realistic shape into a simplified version of itself. Practicing realistic art can also help train your eye and get you accustomed to different techniques such as line quality, shading, color theory, composition, and various types of art materials, or media, as I will probably begin referring to it as.

So, the next step is to figure out how the hell to start learning to draw realistic stuff. I will help, using written descriptions, tips, and videos I have found online to help you.

First off is Materials/Media.

You can make art with practically anything. Anything from the humble paper and pencil to the most expensive and high-end art supplies. You can burn a piece of wood in a fire for a bit and then use the charred end to make marks with. You can use mud to paint with. You can dip your toe in ink and use that as a paintbrush. My point is that you can really get creative with it and I think creating art should be a joyful experience, not a painful one.

Art supplies can be very expensive, so for beginners I really do recommend a paper and pencil. Not a mechanical pencil either, but one of those wooden ones. They work well for drawing because you can use both the point and the side of the lead to make marks with. I also recommend getting a good eraser. My favorite kind are the grey kneadable ones, because you can squish them into any shape you need for any particular area that needs erasing. I’ll link to some on Amazon later on.

You can practice pencil drawings on lined paper (I have a whole lot of sketches I did in high school that are just on lined paper), printer paper, cardboard, etc, or you could invest in a sketchbook. Cheap sketchbooks are pretty easy to find, like they have them at my local grocery store, but you can also find them online for fairly cheap. Sketchbooks are made of different paper depending on the media (drawing materials) that you’re using. Paper intended for pencil drawings tends to have quite a fine grain for smooth blending, whereas paper in watercolor sketchbooks is rough and absorbent to suit the wet medium. You can get a sketchbook with any paper you want, really. I’ve done pencil drawings on pastel paper before, because it was the only paper around, and it still looked nice, just different than it would on finer grain paper. What materials you choose to use depends on the look you’re going for, and you’ll figure that out more with experience.

To start with, just grab some paper and a pencil and start making marks on it. See how many different looking marks you can make on the paper. I’m not really talking about shapes persay, but literal marks with the pencil. Thin lines, thick lines, scribbles with lots of pressure or just a little bit of pressure. Scrape the side of the pencil along the paper and see what it does. Try blending the lines with your finger. Just take some time to play with the material without getting hung up on creating anything. Do this sort of experimenting with any new art material you’re introduced to. The first thing you should do with a new tool is acquaint yourself with it, and that’s what this is doing. Get used to how the pencil feels in your hand and what motions feel comfortable with it. Keep in mind that you don’t have to hold the pencil the same way as if you were writing. Often if I’m shading with a pencil, I will hold it with all of my fingers around it and use my thumb to put pressure on it.

Now, shading.

Shading and mark making go together, because shading is basically using the marks you’re making with your pencil or pen to indicate lightness vs. darkness. To practice mark making and the techniques that are used for shading, I recommend watching this video and drawing along with the exercise. The artist uses pens in it but you can do it with pencil too! 

When you’re ready, you can start trying to shade basic forms (shapes). Shading gives a two dimensional shape a three-dimensional look. It turns a flat circle into a sphere. Once you learn how to shade basic shapes, you can pretty much figure out how to shade just about anything. For example, once you learn how to shade a sphere, you know how to roughly shade a head! And what is an arm if not a cylinder? A nose if not a pyramid?

There are lots of videos online for practicing this. Here’s one that’s pretty good.

This is where I recommend starting. Once you are more comfortable with that, here is a list of things that you can look up and try to get a handle on, in what I think is a pretty alright order.

Perspective (one-point, two-point, three-point)

Value, Tint, Shade

Drawing negative space

Foreshortening

Composition

Drawing from life

Color theory

It would take me a very long time to outline all of this stuff, which is why I’ve given you that list of stuff to look for online. There are a lot of great resources out there and I recommend searching for them and comparing them. I can’t go into depth on everything right now because there’s a LOT of stuff, but I hope the little outline I gave you will help give you a foundation and know where to look and what to look for! If you have any questions about specific stuff, feel free to come and ask me about it and I’ll try to help.

Here are links to some cheap art materials on Amazon:

Grey kneadable eraser

Sketchbook for pencil

Pen set

There are lots of other listings for stuff like this online, so do check around for what you want! The ones I linked are just options.

I hope this helped! Thank you for the ask anon, and good luck!

[anorthalas]

A Most Unexpected Expectation

The following story was written by the wonderful @edaigoa​ to pair with the graphic featured at the end of this post in a collaborative story we’re writing. Enjoy!

Sitting at his desk, Kalyanar looked over the parchment Avie had handed him. It was finer than anything he could normally afford, crisp and expertly produced, but for once, the richness of it did not bring a scowl to his face. Instead, he was smiling, fingertips running gently over the embossed emblem his lover had ordered printed on each and every sheet. It was something he could have done himself, with some work, but having it gifted to him with an excited grin had warmed his heart. That she had specifically chosen a modified Brightquill symbol meant more than he could say.

With his lips pursed, he set his usual quill aside, rummaging about in his desk for a moment before pulling out another, along with a tray and a runed ring. The new quill  - or rather, old, as he had to blow a layer of dust off - was made of thick, heavy metal; despite the obvious care that the individual vanes had been sculpted into a realistic feather shape, even an orc might have found the pen cumbersome. It was, by all appearances, too heavy for practical use. The round tray and ring both matched the quill, made of the same silvery metal and etched faintly with runes. The tray was set aside, and a bottle of fresh ink that shone faintly with mana was poured within. The ring, Kalyanar slipped over his thumb; a loose fit, until it wasn’t, sitting snug at the knuckle after only a moment. The printed parchments were stacked, tapped on the desk, and stacked again. He flipped through the pages, thumb ring brushing the edge of each sheet before the were laid out on the desk in front of him, in neat rows and columns until all the available space on the desk was filled, with a single master parchment and a scrap of notes directly in front of himself.

He had spent ages on those notes, short though they were; Avie dictating and editing on the fly as he dutifully read out the lines, writing scratched out and rewritten until perfected. Despite their shared excitement, they both wanted it to be just right.

Ring still on his thumb, he took up the hefty quill in a light grasp and tapped it on the edge of the ink bowl; bowl and quill alike rang like a delicately crafted bell. The quill split- halved and split, again and again, copying itself into thinner and thinner slivers that surrounded the bowl, floating in midair. Kalyanar reclaimed the original in a much more comfortable grasp, now that it was reduced to the thickness of a normal quill, the metal vanes and barbs of the feather thin enough to waver in the air.

He dipped the quill into the ink, and it’s copies followed like a flock of angry hummingbirds, nibs taking up ink like nectar and flexible metal tines softly buzzing together with every motion. He took up a position over the master parchment- and the copies mirrored him whirr of finely ringing metal as they jostled for position over the other sheets. Kalyanar waited calmly, despite how his own nerves jangled along with the chiming feathers; only when each quill was as still as the one in his hand did he shift, moving the pen back and forth without touching parchment. Each and every one mirrored his motions in perfect chorus. Glancing briefly at his test sheet, the scribe set quill nib to parchment and began to write with his finest, most formal script.

For a while there was no sound but the gentle scrape of quill upon parchment and the faint buzz of metal tines; every so often, he returned to the ink bowl, and the mirrored dance turned to organized chaos as each quill rushed to echo the motion in a flurry of metallic feathers and jabbing quill points. Somehow, Kalyanar neatly avoided getting pricked, the magic more organized than it appeared. With the steady hand of a scribe, Kalyanar filled in the page; at some point, he heard Avie back come in behind him, the only warning the rustle of her clothes and the soft, indrawn breath of her surprise as quills whipped about. He smiled, but didn’t comment, even as he felt the weight of his lover’s ley-bound gaze upon his back and the magical scrivenery tools.

For all the preparations and care, the actual writing did not take long. Formality completed, Kalyanar signed his signature at the bottom with his own personal script that included a heavy dose of showy flare- but leaving plenty of room for Avie to do the same. A breath of air over the parchments- hot, unnaturally so, and laced with embers that did not burn - dried the remaining wet patches in the ink in record time. Only then, did he turn, quill deposited on the rim of the ink bowl with a flurry of followers that slowly carded back together into one fat quill.

“What do you think?” He asked, holding the master parchment up for inspection with a hopeful smile. “It should be just as you wanted. I’ve been working on this ink for a while... I ground up the tailing shards from Lori’s enchanting into the pigments. I feel like I nearly enchanted my mortar and pestle half a dozen times process of testing, but I think I’ve got the right method down. Hopefully it’s not too bright? It still looks good on this end, so I figured this was as good of a time as any to test it-”

“I can see it,” Avie said, neatly interrupting his rambling; her voice soft with wonder as she grasped the parchment with shaking fingers. The shimmery black ink glowed with mana under the spellbreaker’s leysight, making normally imperceptible writing just as visible to the blinded woman as it had been before. Suddenly, with a single gesture, a whole avenue of life was abruptly reopened for her.

“-Ah. Good. I’m glad,” Kalyanar breathed, at a loss for a moment, before he reached up from his seat with a gentle hand, palm resting on his beloved’s arm as she blinked rapidly, clearly trying to keep tears at bay. “Hey. Come here?” He offered, sliding his chair back from the edge of the desk. There was a moment without a reaction as she kept staring at the parchment, oft-white eyes glowing an intent lilac, before Avie’s arm slipped around Kalyanar’s shoulders as she claimed a spot on his lap; she avoided putting pressure on his bad leg with familiar ease, despite the faint tremble in her step.

“...it really isn’t too bright, is it?  I tried to use a moderate amount-”

“It’s fine,” Avie laughed, the words breaking with tears and the sharp sound of a sniffle despite her obvious happiness. “It’s perfect. Kalyanar, I can see it. That's perfect. And so are the words.” She finally looked away from the parchment to beam at Kalyanar, before leaning in to kiss him soundly. By the time they pulled apart, Kalyanar’s cheeks were flush and damp from Avie’s tears.

“...I wanted you to be able share this with me,” he whispered, forehead resting gently against her own. “This, more than anything.”

“Thank you. It’s the best present.” Another sniff and Avie roughly scrubbed a hand over her cheek, before she straightened up with a toss of her hair, reclaiming her poise with dignity. “But. I hope you weren’t expecting me to sign all of these by hand?”

Kalyanar let out a relieved laugh, tilting his head to rest his brow briefly on her shoulder. “Of course not.” Grin growing easily into a toothy smirk, he slid the ring off his thumb, dropping it neatly into Avie’s palm. “Here. I can show you how this works.”

Brows furrowing, Avie stared at the offering.

“...I am going to get stabbed by your army of quills,” she laughed in return. Avie turned the ring over in her hand- before slipping it onto her own thumb, fearless as ever.

“Nonsense! You’ll be fine. Give the pen a tap. It will still remember the parchments…”

“I’m not sure I remember how to sign my own name.”

“Don’t even joke. You’ll be fine. Here, let me show you...”

Not long after the ink was dry on dozens of identical signatures, the entire collection of copied parchments could be found posted around the Dawnspire, and slipped into the mailboxes of every significant friend, acquaintance, and noble found with the bounds of Quel’thalas:

House Silverbrooke of Anor’thalas and the Brightquill Family of Silvermoon City

Dawnward Avie Silverbrooke and Lightward Kalyanar Brightquill would like to announce the expectation of their first child, to be born in the coming month of November.

Signed: Avie Silverbrooke & Kalyanar Brightquill