#changed the background to a gradient because i didn't like how it looked on my phone

[solroskajan]

How are they so cute, I don't get it, how is it possible?

[alfheimr]

My Favorite Cheap Art Trick: Gradient Maps and Blending Modes

i get questions on occasion regarding my coloring process, so i thought i would do a bit of a write up on my "secret technique." i don't think it really is that much of a secret, but i hope it can be helpful to someone. to that end:

this is one of my favorite tags ive ever gotten on my art. i think of it often. the pieces in question are all monochrome - sort of.

the left version is the final version, the right version is technically the original. in the final version, to me, the blues are pretty stark, while the greens and magentas are less so. there is some color theory thing going on here that i dont have a good cerebral understanding of and i wont pretend otherwise. i think i watched a youtube video on it once but it went in one ear and out the other. i just pick whatever colors look nicest based on whatever vibe im going for.

this one is more subtle, i think. can you tell the difference? there's nothing wrong with 100% greyscale art, but i like the depth that adding just a hint of color can bring.

i'll note that the examples i'll be using in this post all began as purely greyscale, but this is a process i use for just about every piece of art i make, including the full color ones. i'll use the recent mithrun art i made to demonstrate. additionally, i use clip studio paint, but the general concept should be transferable to other art programs.

for fun let's just start with Making The Picture. i've been thinking of making this writeup for a while and had it in mind while drawing this piece. beyond that, i didn't really have much of a plan for this outside of "mithrun looks down and hair goes woosh." i also really like all of the vertical lines in the canary uniform so i wanted to include those too but like. gone a little hog wild. that is the extent of my "concept." i do not remember why i had the thought of integrating a shattered mirror type of theme. i think i wanted to distract a bit from the awkward pose and cover it up some LOL but anyway. this lack of planning or thought will come into play later.

note 1: the textured marker brush i specifically use is the "bordered light marker" from daub. it is one of my favorite brushes in the history of forever and the daub mega brush pack is one of the best purchases ive ever made. highly recommend!!!

note 2: "what do you mean by exclusion and difference?" they are layer blending modes and not important to the overall lesson of this post but for transparency i wanted to say how i got these "effects." anyway!

with the background figured out, this is the point at which i generally merge all of my layers, duplicate said merged layer, and Then i begin experimenting with gradient maps. what are gradient maps?

the basic gist is that gradient maps replace the colors of an image based on their value.

so, with this particular gradient map, black will be replaced with that orangey red tone, white will be replaced with the seafoamy green tone, etc. this particular gradient map i'm using as an example is very bright and saturated, but the colors can be literally anything.

these two sets are the ones i use most. they can be downloaded for free here and here if you have csp. there are many gradient map sets out there. and you can make your own!

you can apply a gradient map directly onto a specific layer in csp by going to edit>tonal correction>gradient map. to apply one indirectly, you can use a correction layer through layer>new correction layer>gradient map. honestly, correction layers are probably the better way to go, because you can adjust your gradient map whenever you want after creating the layer, whereas if you directly apply a gradient map to a layer thats like. it. it's done. if you want to make changes to the applied gradient map, you have to undo it and then reapply it. i don't use correction layers because i am old and stuck in my ways, but it's good to know what your options are.

this is what a correction layer looks like. it sits on top and applies the gradient map to the layers underneath it, so you can also change the layers beneath however and whenever you want. you can adjust the gradient map by double clicking the layer. there are also correction layers for tone curves, brightness/contrast, etc. many such useful things in this program.

let's see how mithrun looks when we apply that first gradient map we looked at.

gadzooks. apologies for eyestrain. we have turned mithrun into a neon hellscape, which might work for some pieces, but not this one. we can fix that by changing the layer blending mode, aka this laundry list of words:

some of them are self explanatory, like darken and lighten, while some of them i genuinely don't understand how they are meant to work and couldn't explain them to you, even if i do use them. i'm sure someone out there has written out an explanation for each and every one of them, but i've learned primarily by clicking on them to see what they do.

for the topic of this post, the blending mode of interest is soft light. so let's take hotline miamithrun and change the layer blending mode to soft light.

here it is at 100% opacity. this is the point at which i'd like to explain why i like using textured brushes so much - it makes it very easy to get subtle color variation when i use this Secret Technique. look at the striation in the upper right background! so tasty. however, to me, these colors are still a bit "much." so let's lower the opacity.

i think thats a lot nicer to look at, personally, but i dont really like these colors together. how about we try some other ones?

i like both of these a lot more. the palettes give the piece different vibes, at which point i have to ask myself: What Are The Vibes, Actually? well, to be honest i didn't really have a great answer because again, i didn't plan this out very much at all. however. i knew in my heart that there was too much color contrast going on and it was detracting from the two other contrasts in here: the light and dark values and the sharp and soft shapes. i wanted mithrun's head to be the main focal point. for a different illustration, colors like this might work great, but this is not that hypothetical illustration, so let's bring the opacity down again.

yippee!! that's getting closer to what my heart wants. for fun, let's see what this looks like if we change the blending mode to color.

i do like how these look but in the end they do not align with my heart. oh well. fun to experiment with though! good to keep in mind for a different piece, maybe! i often change blending modes just to see what happens, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i very much cannot stress enough that much of my artistic process is clicking buttons i only sort of understand. for fun.

i ended up choosing the gradient map on the right because i liked that it was close to the actual canary uniform colors (sorta). it's at an even lower opacity though because there was Still too much color for my dear heart.

the actual process for this looks like me setting my merged layer to soft light at around 20% opacity and then clicking every single gradient map in my collection and seeing which one Works. sometimes i will do this multiple times and have multiple soft light and/or color layers combined.

typically at this point i merge everything again and do minor contrast adjustments using tone curves, which is another tool i find very fun to play around with. then for this piece in particular i did some finishing touches and decided that the white border was distracting so i cropped it. and then it's done!!! yay!!!!!

this process is a very simple and "fast" way to add more depth and visual interest to a piece without being overbearing. well, it's fast if you aren't indecisive like me, or if you are better at planning.

let's do another comparison. personally i feel that the hint of color on the left version makes mithrun look just a bit more unwell (this is a positive thing) and it makes the contrast on his arm a lot more pleasing to look at. someone who understands color theory better than i do might have more to say on the specifics, but that's honestly all i got.

just dont look at my layers too hard. ok?

[pigeonstab]

@unknownsodabrand Well Lucky you, I also love the artistic process and I keep all my sketches!! (seriously this is the most self indulgent question I could ever answer, thank you sm I'm gonna ramble a while sorry)

First I was only planning on doing the one Geno Illustration, I mostly wanted to experiment with the long 1000x2000 format bc I thought It could make for an appealing composition and it ended up being pretty challenging to get right.

So. I started with some rough planning of where I wanted everything:

Since this was gonna be a full Illustration I planned the colors earlier than I usually would (I have a love/hate relationship with coloring):

Didn't really like how it came out the first time so I just put a color mask over it, I wanted something a little warmer+brighter cause the flowers looked kinda green to me (Geno's was the one that gave me the most trouble and I liked it the least at first, by the time I finished It was my favourite XD)

Then I decided to make the three parts:

again used the same planning, rough sketch then color.

Then onto actually starting the Illustrations. I worked on these one by one but I'll show the process for all three by the steps rather than saying the same thing thrice.

as much as I wanted to keep the best for last I couldn't help myself and did the characters first.

Lineart:

(Error was supposed to be holding a golden flower so I made his hand's lineart and color layers it's own folder so I wuldn't mess it up trying to draw the flower. I looked a bit stupid so I scrapped the idea)

Flat color:

(I think I did Error's coloring after his background?)

In terms of backgrounds:

for Sans I started with the grid pattern, so I used a ruler tool and went in with color directly (the gradients are changes I did at the very end but I'm not editting out) Then I added the columns and the flowers were a last minute addition because the piece just felt a bit... naked. (also! I say columnS cause I planned on putting two, couldn't make it work the angle and space so I scrapped the bottom one)

The light is a yellowish white with gaussian blur of orange, it's an 'add' layer? ("ajouter(éclat)" because my app is in french) It's about 50% opacity.

I also shaded Sans at the same time as this with a multiply layer with a dark and light color (reddish brown and like light yellow) I'm not showing it bc I do have a 30 image limit I think

Then for Error's background it's just a case of making the lineart for the hammock, haing a layer underneath for the color, a white bg with blue gradient and the strings

For geno I have underneath the black to grey of the save screen, then I have the moss and the flowers

(The flowers were very fun to make I think I only copy pasted one?)

The lighting is a multiply layer over the whole image made the exact same way as Sans' coloring, I thought it was maybe a bit too dark so I dupplicated geno's lineart and colors folder to overlay over the lighting so he would pop more (seeing this now I think either would have been good. The first one might be better actually)

and that's it I think! If you read all of this, well first of all thank you but don't you have anything better to do?

also revised Geno's sketch once but it didn't fit in any where:

Error with my attemps of making the flowers work

[wasyago]

okay don't mind me just gonna ramble for a second haha-

(this was originally going to be under the drawing, but it got too long, and i can't add it in a reblog because both things are on queue, so separate post it is)

i just love how every time i start a drawing im like "well alright, just a quick sketch yea? no color, maybe some gray to white gradient and that's it, okay?". and then i start drawing (and obviously it takes longer than i thought because duh) and i go "okay but- i gotta at least do the flat colors, right? just the flats- maybe even some random colors to not spend too much time on it--". and then. of course. i do the flats, and im pretty happy with the result yeah? looks simple but not too simple, like it has some color some personality to it, but its not over the top so. so, i leave the drawing i go to get some water and start on an actual piece, and when i come back and take a look at what i drew its like, "well. listen. listen-- yeah im still pretty happy with how it looks but, but. it could be a little better, yea?" and then i sit down, put my water down, put my other drawing to the side, and i sit there making this quick sketch look better. "oh i don't like the colors anymore! but its all on one layer now so i can't exactly change them, plus i still like the idea, so maybe some filters? yeaj some filters on top will do!" (and of course its a yellow shade filter, because im original like that and 90% of my drawings don't also have it on). and then i add them filters and i think" well maybe some bounce light now? surely it already looks better with the filter but its kinda flat, and i want to bring *a little bit* of the original color in" so i add the bounce light, but now it looks out of place! shocker! so i decide that surely i can maybe add some grass at the bottom to hide the edge of the drawing a little. and well, alright, grass looks good, but its too dark, brings a lot of attention to it! and i can't exactly make it lighter, so, the logical choice would be to make the characters darker too, bring some contrast into the thing! and lets just do all the values while we're at it, why not! patterns to the horse, make the pants and skin darker, yes yes. and, oh- but now the eyes are lost because there's more dark hues! gotta make a new layer on top and make them eyes a little bit darker, maybe also color the bandana red and not brown so it looks special, hm? oh and! while we're on this top layer, lets also fix up the hair a little, maybe add some blush... oh and the straps of the saddle look weird, gotta fix those too! oh man and not that i look at it-- the head is too big! lets merge all the layers together and start that same thing over again! yes yes make the head a little smaller, yeah looks much better now! oh, better add some fading as well, to make it fit in the background a little, oh and some glow, suuure sure, and some lights in the eyes, and-

(and now that im looking at it, i realize that i somehow didn't save the final version????? like, i did a lot more to the thing, fixed up the saddle and that awkward shade oh his knee, and the grass-- i wont fix it now because NOW im too lazy to do it for some reason, but yeah, a bit unfortunate u_u)

anyways, point being, love art, art is pog, wish i cared a little less about it sometimes, but it also turnes this into this (imagine me pointing at the drawings as i say that, overly dramatic and sounding a little annoyed with myself)

[usergayeddie]

Hiii your icons are so pretty, would you have a tutorial on them or tips on how to do it?

hello lovely and thank you so much!! i have been making icons for a long time, but have also just started with this style of icon, so i don't know how much of a help i can be but i'll try my best! i make all my icons in photoshop, but when i first started i used gimp, it works similar and i'd recommend it if you dont want to commit to ps just yet. this ended up getting kinda long because i went step by step on how i make my icons like the ones from this post, with a bunch of tips and tutorials linked, so i put it under a read more. i specifically go deeper into how to change the colours of his hoodie depending on your background/preferences. i hope i could help even a little bit!

1. the base

one of the first steps is deciding what you want the base to look like. you can do just a solid colour, gradients, patterns, etc. you can use the solid colours and gradients that are already a feature in photoshop, but there are also a lot of amazing resources and bases by other talented people either on here or on deviantart. just look up icon textures on deviantart, you'll be able to find a bunch of textures and pre-set gradients you can use as your base. this is a really great pack you can find on deviantart that offers a bunch of bases. if you'd like to make gradients yourself, here's a really good tutorial! i am not really an expert on explaining how to use textures because i've only really just started with headers.

2. the picture/png

onto the star of the show - the person you want to have in your icon. i usually get those from screencaps from whatever show/movie i am making icons of. you can get screencaps of most shows and movies from screencaped.net. i then isolate the person i want to be in my icon so that the background is removed and transparent. you can do that yourself, here is a very good tutorial on how to do that in photoshop, or you can use other platforms like canva or adobe express, that have features to remove the background for you. you usually cannot adjust those, so if they dont cut out things the correct way you have to adjust in photoshop afterwards. when chosing a screencap you should make sure that the person and silhupette are clear and delinated from the background, without any obstruction in the foreground, so that you can cut out the entire figure easily without parts of their body missing. i usually also look for screencaps where the head and the sites aren't cut off, so that i can freely adjust the sizing and move the figure around. i also try my best to get a scene where the lighting is alright so that i don't have to fight for my life colouring it, but sometimes it can't be helped.

this is one of the screencaps i used for my recent eddie icons and it's a good example: his upper body is clearly seperated from the background, nothing is cut off, etc.

this screenshot is an example that i personally wouldnt use because there is a jug in the foreground in front of eddie that would be in the icon as well.

buck looks very cute in his lil hat but the shot is cut off on the right and on top, so i didn't end up using it either. you just kinda go through the screencaps you have (or take your own) and figure out which frames fit for the type of icon you'd like to make.

if you'd like to make screencaps yourself, here is an easy tutorial to follow!

3. basic colouring

when i make icons like these, i usually dont go too crazy with the editing, i mostly just adjust the lighting and colouring the create a well-lit base. here you can see the unedited png (first picture) and then once ive used a basic colouring (second picture).

this is a very good tutorial on basic colouring using curves, hues, etc, as i've done as well. it is for gif-making but those same editing steps can be applied to still pictures as well.

4. colour isolation

the icons i am currently making are in a style that you can see a lot around tumblr - where parts of the person in the icon, usually their clothes and other accessories, are edited to be a certain colour that matches the background, and that colour can be changed to match different bases. you can see that the hoodie eddie is wearing has a different colour to match the different colours of the background.

i desperately tried to find the tutorial that i used to learn how to do this but i can't, so i'll try my best to explain it myself (brace yourself). i have seen people do this by drawing onto the png, but i use a different method. for this you'll need to have some basic knowledge on layer masks.

we're gonna start with our png image that already has the colouring applied to it (1).

now, click on the layer and add a solid color layer (2). you do that by clicking the symbol i've marked on the bottom and then selecting "solid color...".

in the screen that pops up now you can select the colour you would like the accents to have (3). choose the colour you want and then click "OK".

your entire image should be in the colour you chose. now right-click on the solid colour layer in the layers panel on the right and select "create clipping mask" (4). this will apply the solid colour layer only to the cut out of your lil guy. it should looks like this now (5).

now we're going to adjust the blend mode. right now it should be set to "normal" (6). click onto the drop down arrow and select the blend mode "colour"(7).

now we can see eddies features again! now we want to edit it so that the pink is only on the parts that we want to be colourful. for this left-click on the white box in your solid color layer (8) so that it's selected. after that select the brush tool (9) and make sure it's set to black. we use black to take colour away and white to add colour back in.

now go over all the parts that you don't want to be colourful. if you accidently take too much away don't worry, just switch the brush colour to white and go over what you want to add in again. it looks like this (10) for me afterwards.

you can change your colour if you double click on the little pink box of your colour layer and adjust it however you want.

5. adjustments

after i've done everything listed above i usually group the two layers (your cutout and the solid colour layer) together so i can move them as one (11). after that i pull the group over onto my base and adjust it so that fits properly (12).

now that the cutout is on the base layer i usually go in to properly adjust the colours and make sure the colours on the cutout match well with the background. you can do that by changing the colour manually or using the eyedropper tool. and voilá! i know it sounds like a lot right now reading this, but once you've gotten the hang of it, it really isnt that hard.

i hope this was at least somewhat understandable and that i could help a bit! there are a ton of amazing tutorials out there for all parts of editing and photoshop in general that go deep into details in case there is a specific part you want to learn more about. for now i hope this gives you at least a small overview.

[squircatlies]

Today is the day I unleash my Mr. Bonzo fanart upon this webbed site.

This post is relatively safe up until the cut.

Is the *tips fedora* meme over a decade old? Yes. Do I care? No, absolutely not.

~

Now this is where I recommend "getting off" this post to anyone bothered by graphic depictions of body horror, blood, violence, or Mr. Bonzo (monster, not mascot like above).

I know the first image is silly, but I cannot stress enough how serious I am when I say:

Proceed at your own risk.

Now that you have chosen to continue, I have arranged the images in order of least to most vile and disturbing (though that might be slightly subjective on my part).

Remember that you can click off this post at any time.

Final warning: split tongue Bonzo.

I tried channeling Julia Drawfee with the lineart a little bit. Didn't feel like shading that one, so it's a bit flat.

Where did I lose my colours? Plot twist: the first image in this post is actually the last I've made, so technically I gained the colours. I wanted it to have more of a cheery vibe, unlike the ones under the cut, which I wanted to be kinda dreary and I feel like adding too much colour can mess that up.

Alright, I'll address the tongue. Remember how his head splits in tmagp 12? Yeah, it's a nod to that and also I asked myself "how do I make his design worse than it already is?" and that's the only answer I could come up with. I debated adding stitches connesting the two halves of the tongue but couldn't figure out how, so you're welcome. It will be present in all the upcoming drawings as well.

~

The next one is bloody, but it's not that much worse than the previous one overall.

I was playing with filters after I was done with this piece, because I felt like it lacked something, but didn't know what. Really liked this one, I think it's some sort of a gradient map. It pixelised the image and adjusted the colours a bit, it also really made the blood pop out, though it covered up some of the details.

Why did he lose his hat? It's stupid and hard to draw.

You may have noticed the artstyle change a little, the previous images having neat lineart and little to no shading. That's because I am using different tools, sketchy and soft brushes, that allow me to experiment with lighting and textures more (plus the aforementioned filter altering the image even further).

~

Alright, I feel like this last image deserves a separate warning. It references episode 12 (spoiler ahead), specifically the moment before the bartender loses a hand, though it's not entirely accurate. It's rendered in more detail than any of the previous images, so keep that in mind before scrolling down.

Basically it's pov: Bonzo licks your hand.

I feel like I could've made his tongue bigger in this one, it seems kinda small compared to his mouth. I really like how the skin on his face ended up looking. It took a lot of work.

The spit makes it look weirdly sexual, doesn't it? Listen, that was not my intention, but I'm not erasing it. I set out to make the worst thing I could and, though not without cost, I have achieved it.

I tried splattering Bonzo in blood, but it wasn't really working for me and it covered up a lot of the detail I liked, so I just put it in the background.

The human hand is drawn from reference, which I found by googling "hand reaching out away from the viewer". And let me tell you: google is shit at looking for drawing references, but I figured it was just going to be a sketch to explore an idea, so I didn't bother trying to get a better one. And then I fixated on it for a couple hours, you know, like a normal person.

I literally (and I mean no exaggeration) dusted off my drawing tablet after a few months of no use to spend the entire weekend, after tmagp 12 came out, glued to the screen making those images, except for the b'onzo one, which I made this evening.

Just to clarify: I drew all of those by myself. No filthy AI image generation is allowed in this house. I am capable of committing far greater sins than an artificial intelligence ever will.

The only thing left here is to extend my sincere congratulations/condolences to whoever got this far. It's up to you to either think you're brave or realise that you're foolish for doing so, but be comforted by the fact that at least you didn't make this post, which I cannot say for myself.

[starlahuskyz]

If you're comfortable with sharing... What pen and color do you use for the lineart on your 80s cartoon style? 👀

Well I say if you're trying to replicate an 80s cartoon style then I would say firstly find what kind of style you're looking to replicate. For example I take inspiration from Don Bluth's style

His art doesn't really use a lot of line weight, in fact the lines are pretty light. Shape is also very prominent with his artwork as every character can stand out from each other and doesn't end up getting repetitive. I would say try to study different artists styles to help develop you're own style, see what they do to make their art stand out.

I use firealpaca as my drawing program, and in the brush shop there is a pen called pencil(leather) I use this pen but I alter it to the settings seen below

This allows for thin linework and for it to have a somewhat grainy feel giving it that more older feeling. As for color I don't use full on black, I use a sorta black but with a greyish pink tint. (As seen below)

And I also use a grey color for when I color using the same black as the main linework, I just recolor the original lines into the grey to keep it from becoming indistinguishable. I'll put an example so you have an idea.

Of course if you wanna alter these choices that's up to you! Experiment with whatever works for you.

I'll do a little demo to you can get an idea of how you can approach doing this process.

First I start with completing my linework, I may even leave a few blemishes just to make it look a little more "natural" cuz nothing is perfect

Then I color the lines outlines of any part of the characters that are black into grey so it'll look something like this (I colored the background white so you can better see the change)

Then next I colored the drawing accordingly and shaded it, shading just involves me using certain colors like a dark low saturated red and using the darken layer. But that can of course vary, I also as a slight gaussian blur to the shading as a stylistic choice.

Then through putting everything into a folder or merging the layers together, I duplicate the entire thing and on the top layer use the gaussian blur once again, and put it at a value of 5

On that same layer I lower the opacity down to around 50% so it makes the drawing look more like an old animation feel.

Then I add the finshing touches like the background, which is a color gradient and a texture overlay. A noise filter just to make it that much more retro. and a drop shadow beneath the characters because I think it looks neat. And after adding my signature, it's finished.

I hope this my advice and this lil demo helps with developing an old cartoon style. Sorry with how long this shit is, I just didn't know how to keep this simple and concise without confusion. If you have any questions then feel free to ask.

[bomberqueen17]

more stories

ok since telling myself stories of how my day was gonna go worked yesterday i'm gonna do it again today

i did get... a lot of what i wanted to do yesterday done, but i could have done more and just plain didn't. so.

i do have a photo of paint colors behind the cut.

I went to the hardware store and they don't do little sample paint pots. I had to buy a $6 quart of paint in order for them to mix it. I'd grabbed a handful of paint chips, and picked one at random for them, and it's a color I love and think is gorgeous and also almost immediately realized that I super Do Not Want on my kitchen wall, but it was too late to stop the guy so. now i have a quart of this beautiful Sandhill Crane color. (It's PL266, for the record, by Pratt and Lambert.)

I painted a swatch of it inside the basement hallway, which adjoins the kitchen and is going to need redoing anyway.

And then I used some of it to paint a "floor cloth" shelf liner, which is drying now and I plan to sew a backing to and then install today.

[Image caption/description: a chunk of white canvas mottled with a deep blue-green color. I got this effect by priming it and then letting the primer only partially dry before I went at it with the final color, because I wanted a mottled effect. I then went and added a second layer of color when the first layer wasn't entirely dry either, not just out of impatience but because this is what I was going for. I'm then going to sew the hem on an old sewing machine I'm reasonably confident can handle the paint-stiffened fabric; I'm backing it with an old sheet. And then it will be done. I'm not coating it in polyurethane because this is a temporary/low traffic kind of solution.]

And here's the color, swatched, on the wall:

[image description/caption: The background, to the left, is my kitchen, with the stainless steel fridge and grayish cabinets, the floor still covered in taped-down cardboard. The foreground, to the right, is my basement hallway, formerly blue, now bordered in white primer where they replaced the plaster with drywall and fixed the doorway. And in the middle is the swatch of Pratt & Lambert's "Sandhill Crane", which is a blue/green kind of teal color, rather dark but vivid.]

It's not the color I want. it's too... well it's just a little muddy somehow, IDK. It's beautiful and I want to look at it at lot, but I don't want a big expanse of it anywhere. And it's too dark I think. I want bold and vivid but I want it to reflect into the space and change the grays, I don't want it to absorb light into itself.

So here's all the swatches I grabbed, which all look really dark too. The vertical ones are what I'm thinking for main colors, the horizontal for accent colors. The two ones that are the gradient paint chips are because there was literally not a single shade of scarlet or orange in the single-color chips, and because I liked the green one.

I was standing there in the aisle with my scribbled list of colors, confronted by the fact that the paint chips aisle is not organized by any criteria I can understand. It's not like a color wheel. THey don't even put similar colors together. So when I say, "i'm looking for like an ultramarine blue", there's no such thing, I have to take my idea of what I think ultramarine looks like, and I pick up the chip and it's called "soft lavender" or something and i'm like wtf this isn't purple, and it's not, but. wtf.

All of these are too dark and not bright enough, and I have to go back and try again, but I was just trying to get something to start with. I should pair the accent colors with the mains I was thinking of them with. But whatever, it's a start; if nothing else it's something for Dude to disagree with.

So today I need to go out I think. I'm going to measure the cabinets and look at what I'm putting in them, and then go to Homegoods and see if they have any discount shelf rack spacer things, and then find if anyone has any shelf liners in stock. The idea of getting colorful fun ones is great, but those are not sold anywhere, so that idea isn't going to work. I can have gray, white, beige, and if I order online I can have patterns of gray, white, and beige. I'm not going to buy stick-on wallpaper because the point is to not damage the shelves, not to coat the shelves in adhesive that will strip the finish if I decide to remove them.

So I'm just going to go to Target and buy whatever they have, for the shelves I can't see anyway.

I am going to make liners for the lazy susan cupboard, still. but that's how i'm getting started.

so: get the cat off me. Change clothes. Put another load of laundry in, that'll be two down out of the four I probably have built up to do. Put away the dry laundry from yesterday, it should be dry by now.

Go over to the house. Measure specifically which cabinets you want racks and bins for, and compile a coherent list of those.

Go to Homegoods. (please, god, get there before ten am. ugh.) Look for racks/bins/baskets only to fit specifically the dimensions on your list. Don't buy anything else unless it's specifically suited to your needs.

Go to Target. Buy an under-sink liner, you already know which ones they carry. Note what you did and did not get. Go home, order online for whatever they did not have in stock. Buy shelf liners if they have them and Homegoods didn't.

Lunch.

Finish the shelf liner and install the microwave, so you can feel like you're accomplishing something. Install shelf liners in shelves. Begin to move dishes over into the kitchen cupboards Jim said were ready to be used. (Uppers, not lowers, as lowers still have countertop guys to contend with.)

Perhaps find fabric and other materials for the turny-cupboard shelf liners? Cut those out? See how it's going. Play that by ear.

Come home and make dinner.

Oh yeah I was trying to get a chapter update up this morning. I'm like, so close, but it needs another editing pass and I just don't have time.

[deathianartworks]

Do you have any coloring tips? I'm trying to get better at coloring but it's hard :/ everything looks so out of place and I lose motivation fast

Of course!

By no means am I an expert on this (I still forget to choose a light source 90% of the time) but here's a few things that I do when I'm colouring something digitally. Remember these are all individual to the way I make art so they may not all be applicable to yours and are simply me explaining how I do colours, not a tutorial for all colouring styles.

Buckle up folks, this one's a long one (sorry in advance!!)

Here goes nothing.

Losing motivation is totally normal and okay, take a break if you need it, maybe send it to some friends for some hyping up (art servers full of other artists are great for this!). Colours ain't gonna look perfect first time you try to do them, I never put down a colour that I like first time, it takes some messing around and asking friends for me to get them down.

So don't feel pressured to get them perfect in the beginning, that rarely happens!

Here's a mini explanation of how I do my colours, hope it will help a little :)

1) GET THOSE BASE COLOURS IN!!

It doesn't matter if they're not exactly what you're going for rn, go with roughly the colour you want and start there! Personally, I do big blotches of colour just to get something down on the page as this helps me want to actually finish it. Then you clean up those edges so they're all in their correct spaces.

I've found that working on a neutral mid-tine grey background helps you see the colours best at the start so all of my 'paper' starts off grey when working digitally.

Here's the example I'm going to be using (this is from the ghost files fanart I'm working on)

2) ADJUST THOSE COLOURS!!

So, now you've got those colours down, you can adjust them to be roughly how you want them to look. If you're unsure on what colours look best together, you can either take some time out, find some YouTube channels and learn a little about colour theory... OR you could grab some colour pallettes from online and have a play around with gradient maps or simply placing the colours in yourself. There's no shame in using resources like those, that's literally what they're there for.

I didn't need to do this on this drawing as I was happy with the colour selection. This is because I chose the background colour and simply adjusted the hue and saturation slightly until I got the colours I wanted. This is my general technique for choosing colours as my work tends to be fairly similarly coloured (browns, oranges, reds, yellows with hints of purple)

3) ���SHADING✨

Right, well done! You've got your base colours in.

...but oh god, what now?? They look so flat and lifeless, what shall you do?!

This, my friend, is where shading comes in. It's both a way of telling the viewers where the light and shadows are, can change the mood of the drawing, can change what we feel about a character or it can just look real pretty but shading and lighting does all sorts of fun things to a drawing.

If your style is more simple and doesn't require shading/has minimal shading: apply this tip to any shading you do have and don't forget the importance of rim lighting in simpler styles.

For shading both skin and clothes, I use the original colour, shift it down into a darker shade and on the colour wheel I shift it down too (eg. shading green with blue, red with purple) sometimes you can shift that even further to create similar shading to the one above, where I shaded orange/brown with pinks/purple's.

The principle is the same with highlights but like,,, opposite. Shift everything up, shade browns with yellows, blues with greens, etc.

SIDENOTE ON HOW I COLOUR SKIN:

Okay so, these next two paragraphs are based entirely from what I've learnt during studies and aren't rules, just simply how I do it.

For lighter skin tones, I tend to start from one of the lightest colours and shade darker, like you would if you were working with something like watercolours. This allows you to build up shadows in areas of darkness. Once you've done the shadows, you can then go in and add highlights and lighter sections where necessary.

For darker skin tones, I tend to start at one of the darkest values, as dark skin tends to reflect light differently to light skin. Then I add lighter shades in sections that the light would reflect. You can add shadows too, I tend to add them if the drawing still feels flat after doing the highlights.

3) OVERLAY + MULTIPLY LAYERS ARE YOUR BEST FRIEND

These things are literally lifesavers for me, I love an overlay layer.

I can't really explain what they actually do so I'm not even gonna try, just play around with them. But using a purple/blue multiply layer and erasing where the light hits, that makes the illusion of full shading without the same effort of painting in the shades.

Overlay layers are 100% a 'fuck around and find out' resource, I tend to use red and pink overlay layers as my colours tend to be more desaturated and this helps with brightening them up. However they can also be used to change the genre/mood of the drawing, like this:

These two drawings are the exact same. There's no difference between them other than an overlay gradient map layer in green or sepia. (These gradient maps are built into clip studio paint, I'm not sure about other programs)

But the whole vibe is completely different. So yeah, fuck around with different colour schemes and overlay layers (the bi flag colours are a great choice for experimenting with overlays as the colours are naturally very harmonious so maybe start there.)

You can also try a noise later for a bit of texture, it's my go-to fix it for any drawing ngl

Uhhhhh, yeah. That was lengthier than I expected, hope it helps even in the slightest. As I said at the top, I am by no means an expert and am still figuring things out myself, so just fuck around and find out.

Bye now!

[ronearoundblindly]

sending this w love but it's really hard to read ur comments if they're purple *and* tiny

First and foremost, thank you. That is good to know, that is a great example of constructive criticism, and I appreciate you helping me make what I write more user-friendly for readers.

Second, this has stirred something in me that I cannot tamp down, and so here goes a well-meaning rant. Sorry in advance (especially if this is one of my moots on anon).

There are several reasons I do the tiny, purple text; among them are personal esthetics, good conditioning, and bad conditioning.

I don't know why I've sorta chosen purple/lavender/etc as a theme for a while, but meh, I like it, and to have purple text show up works with the theme. Speaking of themes, Tumblr has various ways you can see your dash, called 'palettes' I think, and mine is set to idk 'goth rave' or something which has purple text on black as the default. It's easier on my eyes and makes the tiny, purple text stand out nicely in my draft posts. Because that's how I see them when formatting, I didn't notice it might be much harder on a white background or any of the other palettes. Thank you for pointing it out! I hadn't thought of that.

This might also be me as a distracted person, but the visual of a divider such as this:

...doesn't seem like enough of an end-cap to the actual story portion of the post, so I change the way the A/N looks afterward to really separate the two. (Special shoutout to the fact that the divider's message seems utterly useless in encouraging/reminding readers to leave comments or reblog. You've all heard that tirade. Let's just say I know the reminder is ignored, so I gotta try something else as a transition.)

Writing/posting on this platform, as you may have heard, is a bit of a crapshoot mixed bag. Readers feel limited both in number and in time, so we creators tend to try various things to make our posts stand out, to make them appealing. Color or text variation is one of those ways. Now, I have no flippin' idea how to get rainbow or gradient text; I barely figured out how to put hyperlinks into my bio, bless my heart, so there's little chance of my blog looking super unique or fancy. Instead I vary the look between actual prose and my notes/warnings/summaries, which leads me to the sad bit.

I am conditioned by this site and others to understand that you are here to consume content. That content is the writing that I have curated and edited into a story which doesn't involve me, just the character of 'you' and other OCs or canon IP, so my thoughts and opinions are not and never have been the reason anyone follows me. Those are quite literally small compared to the actual work I generate.

I still think of comment reblogs as flooding your dash with stuff most of you have already seen. I think I'm being annoying--even though I know it's the only way to have my writing go farther on this site--and because I will do so very, very much IRL to *not* annoy anyone, I put opinion and random side comments and little thoughts in small text that is color-coded so you can ignore it as "not-story bits."

It is taking everything in me to NOT make this small text or purple. Honestly, my palms are sweating so badly, I've wiped my computer keyboard four times.

No, I don't want anything to be hard for you to see or read. Yes, I am really grateful you pointed this out. *Do* please remember that we are all doing the best we can to get the experience we want from Tumblr by customizing what we can.

*

The comment I posted in tiny, purple text immediately before this was sent to me has been changed to regular, default color. Hopefully that helps, and I will try to keep in mind how things will look in the future.

**

I did purposefully choose to not put a readmore in this post fwiw.

[3ofpents]

100 Palettes Challenge // Palette #15 // Greetings From the Pine Barrens

Today's color palette comes from a German Red Cross poster from 1914.

Are you excited? I'm excited.

It's less to do with the palette, though something about it does really appeal to me somehow.

But so let me bring you on a bit of a journey.

The other day, I was playing some classic Disney shorts for my toddler, one of them being Paul Bunyan. If you've never watched Disney's Paul Bunyan animated short, or if you haven't watched it in a while, I highly recommend it for the backgrounds alone. They're a classic example of that sort of classic painted, textured minimalist mid-century style. And as I was really looking at them, they reminded me so much of the travel posters from the 1930's and '40s. And as I was thinking about those, I just really wanted to try out the style.

So I did!

It didn't even take me that long to decide on a subject. I grew up in New Jersey and lived there for most of my life, and the thing that really pains me about cryptid fandom in the lack of love for the Jersey Devil.

Jersey Devil lore under the cut.

For those who don't know, the Jersey Devil (not to be confused with the hockey team of the same name, which was named after it!) is a cryptid alleged to live in the NJ Pine Barrens, an area that takes up about a third of the state. One of the several stories goes that, back in the colonial era, a woman either by the name of Mother Leeds or who lived at Leeds Point, NJ, discovered she was pregnant with her thirteenth child. Devastated — possibly because her husband was terrible, possibly because it was just hard giving birth to and supporting that many children — the woman hiked to the top of a hill nearby and shouted to the sky, "Let this one be a devil!"

Months later, possibly on a dark and stormy night, the woman gives birth to her thirteenth child. It might have been a rough birth, but both the mother and child survived. However, while the midwife was tending to the baby, the mother heard her scream. The baby changed — transformed — right in front of her eyes, its face and body lengthening, its hands twisting and hardening into hooves, a tail sprouting from its hips, and leathery wings stretching out of its back.

The next scream the mother heard was the inhuman screech of her devil child right before it killed the midwife and took flight. It might have then flown through the house, killing the entire family; it might have flown up the chimney in a burst of strength that blew the house from its foundations. But either way it flew into the depths of the pine barrens where it's rumored to have been terrorizing the residents of New Jersey ever since.

They say that anyone who's spent a night in the pine barrens has a story about encountering the Jersey Devil.

So when I thought about what location I wanted to make a travel poster for, obviously my first and only answer was the NJ pine barrens, and I needed to include the Jersey Devil on the poster somewhere.

And damn I had so much fun with this! Which you can probably tell, I think this is the most detailed piece I've ever made, and I'm so proud of it. I originally planned to have the Jersey Devil be lurking amongst the trees in a more prominent position, but with the limited palette I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it look right. And I really liked the idea of it kind of photo bombing the poster.

There was a little bit of frustration trying to figure out how I wanted to do the pine needles and the texture on the ground. But it was so satisfying when I finally hit on the look I wanted that the frustration barely even registered after that. And the tree textures, damn, I was expecting to be way more frustrated by that, but it worked out so well.

I loved the gradient around the moon so much that I added another one to the ground. I meant to play around with some gradients on the text but I forgot. I probably could've added some gradients to the trees too. When I do this again (because I'm definitely doing this again), I'm absolutely going to spend more time with gradients.

But god I'm so happy with how this came out, I might just print it out for myself to hang up.

[wyrmwould-star]

WOOO! New pfp update!

If u don't know, every now and then I update my profile picture to better match my improved digital art skills/style, and today is a HUGE leap forward. I've had 3 different versions now, so here's the one I made 5 years ago

And here's the last one, which I wanna say was made 2 years ago?

So, this is a big leap. In the last pfp update, I pretty much just traced over the first one, made the clouds better, a tiny bit of changes, as well as adding a Technoblade cloud later on, which is when I decided that the internet things that effect how I interact with this place the most will be added to my profile picture in the clouds.

This time! I did... A lot.

The scarf actually looks like a scarf and not an awkward mask

The eyes are ovular, and have some shine rather than just being semi-circles

✨Shading💫 just a lil tho

NEW UNUS ANUS CLOUD! I don't know why I didn't add this before. Possibly because it came before I decided I wanted an update every now and then, while TB died as I was making v.II

Less vibrant scarf colours

Background sky has gradient

Shell looks different, but I'm not sure how to put it into words

Clouds have been updated to look less bumpy and more puffy and the big cloud still looks like a couch but better lol

Slight difference in cloud highlight colour

And some line style changes

And I think that's all! So, without further ado, Cotton Turtle III

[jellyfish-confetti]

Hello! 

Wow! I did not expect this piece to get as popular as it did, but thank you all so much for liking, reblogging, and commenting on it! I know it can kinda sound insincere at times when artists thank the general people liking a piece, but please know I have read EVERY tag and comment on this piece <3!

One of my friends was interested in my thought process and creation of this piece so I decided why not do a break down of how I redrew this screenshot.

Now, to be clear I am not dissing anyone who likes the anime or who thinks the anime did this scene well. I'm actually really happy there are people who like this scene because the poor poor animators for MAPPA deserve all the love they can get. The anime moved beautifully and it was animated so well with a great focus on individuality and fluidity. This scene just didn't hold up to what I wanted.

tldr; You're totes fine to like this scene in the anime, I'm not dissing the animators (they deserve love and affection and a smooch on their head), I just expected something different. Please enjoy the process for this piece!

One of the first things I did before I even started sketching was break down the things I liked and didn't like from the anime and manga.

I decided to do a redraw of the anime rather than the manga, but used my favorite things from the manga art while keeping the formatting of the anime.

^This was my first initial sketch. Basically a thumbnail to get proportions set up and move to a tighter sketch.

^The tight sketch was done on a midtone gray canvas because I was going to be painting this piece, which means I needed a true neutral to gage the values. I tend to paint primarily in black and white, and usually I paint on 1-2 layers (with other layers being used to make certain spots darker before being merged onto the main painting layer). I usually lay down basic values for everything underneath the sketch layer, merge those two layer, then start painting from there.

^This is what the black and white painting looks prior to coloring. The whole painting is completely rendered through this method so that I can accurately gage the shading and make it as dramatic as I need to. This is the longest part of the process and took me forever because I kept goofin the eyes real bad (Imagine her...but cross eyed 😳)

^The entire grayscale painting is then colored with a gradient map (which is extremely useful and allowed me to experiment with lots of different color variations before settling on this one). If you're familiar with oil painting, this is actually really similar to how people did classical paintings (i.e. doing a detailed underpainting then adding in hue with translucent layers of colorful glazes). I really liked how this looked point blank without anything else, but I didn't like how the readability of some of the shadows were lost because of how dark the piece was. Also, It looks like a gradient map. There is no subtle hue shift, and Makima herself looks really flat compared to the grayscale version. The color on her cheeks is the same color as the train behind her...That's not great.

^This is what the final version looks like with me playing the curves tool (which allowed me to push the brights and the darks so the piece is more legible), adding hue variation to her hair, skin, eyes, and subtle background things, and final touches to the actual drawing itself (I had to go back in with the green hue in the shadows and add those back into her hair because they were completely gone when I made her hair pink).

^This is a really good comparison to show side-by-side the way a few adjustments can change a piece. Ngl I still really REALLY like the initially gradient map (the red eyes amid the green of her skin and the background is cool), but I'm glad I did the final touches, just to make it look less like a gradient mapped piece.

Hope that wasn't too confusing! Enjoy!! 

Redraw cause the scene was...disappointing...in the anime

[rapid-prototyping-project]

Customisation and Settings

After having Reece and Louis playtest my game [apparently funny sounds and flashing lights make them happy], it was suggested that I add customisation - maybe integrate it into a start screen. I wasn't convinced until they stated I could add a skin that's just the flag of Finland so now I feel I need to do this.

This is my start menu. Why yes it is stupid, but it won't stay like this. clicking on the middle button opens the first level, but I needed the player to not be able to control anything in the background so I made the default level a copy of the previous ones, but empty. I then ran into my next issue - what would load the start screen?

This is fred

No, really.

And this is what fred does. Because fred [he prefers you don't capitalise the F] is always in the placeholder level, as soon as the game starts he can cause the GI to make a start screen widget. This is removed when the game starts of course

This prevents the player from interacting with the camera and is reset in the game instance. I learnt about this via the post below

I had a problem where the bat would only move if the left mouse button was being held down, but when i changed Set Input Mode Game And UI to just Game Only, this fixed it - i don't know why, but i won't complain.

Next up is customisation. oh god.

this is how i control what skin is displayed in the little display thing - it's controlled by the game instance so it is universal and persists between levels.

This will be how I have my displays slide - I will also need to spawn another one in, but that's a problem for when this works. I just need to implement this into the actual customisation screen.

I came to the conclusion that what I was doing was far too complicated - instead, everything would be in the widget.

This is how I changed the material,

and this is how I set it in the ball. This actually did work, but adding a texture [such as the Finnish flag] makes the ball's jerky rotation extremely apparent, which may need to be fixed. At any rate, I actually have a customisation system now somehow.

This is how Louis got my map textures to map properly onto a sphere, so now I can have a ball with the Finnish flag instead of a quarter of the sphere being blue lol

Unfortunately due to how the texture is stretched, the materials themselves look kinda weird lol

This is the slightly more polished version. I've added the appropriate font, colours and text. The buttons still work but they're just invisible so I'll need to implement an audio cue when clicked. I also finally reintroduced the transparent purple block HUD from the tutorial in a way I like, and different colour backgrounds for play, settings etc to help visibility. I also added little notes at the skins and sprites corresponding to the texture, I also have space for 3 more so I can have 6 skins total. i just don't know what they will be.

Next, I added a similar animation to the slide left to show the settings screen. This exists for those who may want a lower sensetivity, audio controller or colourblind mode.

The next thing I added was a [placeholder] slider for mouse sensitivity since I already had a system for it. However, it didn't move. This could be due to it being unable to actually change the variable, or the mouse not being able to do anything.

However, using the below tutorial, I got it working. I figured that, since I couldn't do anything in the slider, I could set the sensetivity outside of the slider from it's value

This is in the game instance - it is called when the back animation plays in the widget

And I added this to my bat to utilise the sensetivity. I'm really happy this works, I just need to make the slider look better now.

I CAN MAKE THE SLIDER'S HANDLE GRADIENT HAHAHAHAAAAA Y E S

oh

is it actually that easy?

like this works, i just expected it to be harder. i suppose its just one of those days :D yippee

As the scale is from 0.01 to 2 not 0 to 1 [as with lerps], I had to divide the scale by 2 to make the colours properly fit the scale but I love how this looks.

I tried making a volume slider but despite using the above tutorial, nothing was going in and I just didn't understand. Besides, the volume can be turned down outside of the game.

These are some of the grid sizes I tried for the last material, finally reusing my panner material. However, as they were on a far smaller object, the sizes needed to be different

The one I selected was 4x4 squares on 30x30 grid, this gave the sphere enough shape whilst keeping the grid fairly visible

I still don't like the TF2's texture

it just looks like an eye. Even moreso than the actual eye itself

Behold. Yugoslavia. I chose the Yugoslav flag soley because Yugoslav history interests me, and because if I ask people what the flag is, I'll likely hear, Dutch, French, Russian and Paraguyan which amuses me :3

[damianacottstudio4]

after the recieving feedback for my work with the lego figure and stamps i decided to recreate or rather create a new work using the same elements ? or even new ones ? i kind of just felt that if i used the lego figure it should be enough especially after the most recent experiment with the stamps and lego figure combined

i opted to use this new background that i made for another work earlier this semester

i thought about how i could merge this with the lego figure to create a new work, i found the process again enjoyable and informing

i again didn't bother to glue or secure the rice grains when applying the spray-paint, i still followed along the process of the first one where i let the rice move around and interact with the canvas as like their own being, using their own movement from reacting with the can, it kinda reminds me of like a field of crops

with this work i actually didn't make like a mock up in photoshop, i just cut out the stencil and placed it on the canvas, this is a first i kinda of just trusted my judgement but also i felt that the stencil was so large that it didn't really matter as to where it should be placed i think

i am happy with the outcome of the rice stencil

looking at it in person is making me think of clouds, like the gradient change throughout the stencil, where some areas are lighter than the other its kind of like a blob of ink on white paper spreading

yeah i would say it is very strong in evoking a sense of being in the clouds

the rice sort of guides your eyes like your looking at a map of these rivers and streams flowing

i actually tried this new way of applying the stencil, itried sticky taping it down, i was worried that it would not come off the paper and in turn ruin the work

the stencil was also not paper, well it is paper just a thicker one

i also made like a make shift box with two pieces of cardboard to map of the two edges that were directly in line with the background

i did debate what colours to use but i thought i would keep it plain and simple in case i added more which i am sure i will to what that might look like, i am not aware yet

i am pleased with the finished result, i do still feel like it is incomplete though, i have debated spray painting on bits of the figure like an arm or a leg/legs however it is not achieving the look that i would like for this work

i have thought about other potential figures like a cartoon bird or even snoopy but i don't know what i want to achieve with this work so i am stuck as to how i should progress this work

in saying that, the process of creating was still fun and enjoyable, it is getting tiring cutting out the stencils as they take a while, especially since i try to manage how much i actually take away, as well as managing enough paper is left between two cuts to ensure that the legibility of this line cane be seen and contrasted well against the background

i just thought that because i'm using this detailed backgrounds it might be stopping me or potentially halting my process of creating because of adding too much to the canvas which could result in a composition that feels cramped, which is something i don't want to achieve

i don't know if i can express or rather state a theme or context for this work because i am unsure myself, i don't know, i do feel like the background though is like this zen rice field, that looks like clouds, kinda of like howl's moving castle like that type of sky

i have debated just going all out with stencils in this work and have a mixture of mediums however i am unsure still and have decided to leave this work for the time being and come back to it later on

i trialled out using the arms of the lego figure to try and create like bones lying around the floor or something

i was going to try and implement this into the work however i felt that it wouldn't go or maybe its a scaling issue however in saying that i will get back to the work later on

[the-tzarina-alexandra-paracosm]

Some of my favourite art - a timeline

Part 3: 2013

Final Fantasy X/X-2 and FFVII fanart. June or July 2013. The first pic shows remnants of my previous style, while the latter is fully anime. Late 2012-early 2013 was a transitional period in this sense. I really like the concept of the first pic, which is Yuna's past and future self looking at each other. The second pic shows an attempt at perspective and composition.

First row: July. Second row: late 2013. Not only was I growing more and more into my style, but I was trying my hand at original character design. (1st pic: Cherille and the others from the dragon story. 2nd pic: Ivy from the vampire story. 3rd pic: Thea, alien princess. 4th pic: Chleo, wanted criminal).

It's funny to me how clear it is that this is the first time I learned to do a gradient, then proceeded to use it everywhere.

And now for some of my most iconic 2013 pieces:

September (can't make the date out but it's somewhere between the 6th and 9th). I still love this picture. I like the colours even though I ended up changing the character designs to something more cohesive eventually. The concept of this drawing was combining my two stories taking place in Japan, the one on the left being a samurai one, and the one on the right being a modern time one (fun fact! These are the characters from what eventually became my first novel, The Image through the Thick Glass, but the very original ideas as illustrated here was a sort of whodunit/ revenge story, wherein Kaito's brother had been killed etc. It's crazy how different it ended up being from the initial concept!). I also have very pleasant memories of the drawing process, as I was in vacation with my family and we were chilling on a bench in the salt mines and having a snack (and I took my notebook with me everywhere).

In terms of art progress, the most noticeable improvements compared to just months prior are: 1. Side profiles have actual chins 2. Attempts to draw clothing folds 3. Attempts to do shading 4. Still anime influenced but slowly growing into my own style 5. Growing into my character design style

September 2nd. think this is single-handedly my favourite picture of all 2013. This is one of the first very serious attempts to combine composition, perspective, colour and mood. What I like the most is how the wind blows thriugh Onix' hair and clothes, and how the city lights reflect into the river, and how the cars are a mash of random colours to suggest the speed they travel at. This is definitely the highest effort and highest execution drawing I did in that year. And I still love the character designs (and concepts) today.

October or November. I like this because it is very experimental, and if there's a year that has been characterised by its sheer leaps and bounds in art, it's been 2013.

I had to check because I thought this was 2014, but it's actually dated as November 28, 2013. This is also one of my favourites, and perhaps objectively the best of that year. Compared to the Xavier and Onix pic, this had the added benefit of better contrast with the background and a more readable composition. I really like the mood of the drawing, too, it's very emotional. Also re: my gradient comments above, this is one of my first successful sunsets.

-----

The main characteristics of this year are: 1. Trying to adopt an anime artstyle 2. Experimenting with character design, as well as scene composition, perspective, gradients, shading, poses and so on. I didn't realise just how much I've improved over the course of just one year, it really seems like every new month brought a new skill with it, and the style at the beginning of 2013 and that at the end of 2013 can almost not be recognised as being from the same year.