#didn’t have an idea for today so challenged myself to drawing less chibi

[seaside-tropical-sun]

They are in love your honor

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep4: Pharaoh Kitsch

Ah, I just found out what happens when you put a quesadilla in an air fryer (it was still delicious but looked a lot like modern art) So now that nothing else can possibly surprise me today lets go over to Yugioh. Bear in mind, I am still sick as a dog and my brain only recently came out of a pretty intense fog so I think this recap makes sense but it might not. Which is on brand for this show so wtv.

Tea went to hell recently. She’s still kicking. But, unfortunately in hell.

Yugi’s still getting harassed by a swamp person who can’t stop talking about how good he is at Business.

I’ll be honest I’ve been on dates with guys professing to be Business experts (they’re not) where I basically wanted to lie on the ground exactly like this mid conversation in the middle of the damn restaurant.

So anyways, it’s this episode where Pharaoh decides to try something new. Mostly it’s because he had only a limited number of cards to choose from but also because it’s everyone’s favorite kitschy thing that I guess is back in fashion again that’s right it’s a rainbow.

This sounded like a joke on the show but I was just me talking to myself in this last blurb. *long, exasperated sigh*

(read more under the cut)

Anyways I just deleted about 4 or 5 different art rants (I’m pretty sure it was like 11 rants actually, I get pissssssed when I’m on Dayquil) where I pretty much snapped about trends, and it went way off topic. Apparently Dayquil me is just like up in arms about the neon 80′s pink rainbow unicorn trend that was super fun for a little while, but it’s been like 6 years and it’s *still here* and it’s like guys, while I was super down 6 years ago, now I am 30. Do any marketers out there even know how old millennials are supposed to be?

Anyway, before obsessive bad marketing happened and rainbows became a meme to comfort us in these hard times, rainbows used to be out of fashion when this episode aired in 2001. Just bear that in mind if you are a baby in the room and you think unicorn stuff everywhere is normal, it didn’t used to be. It used to be wearing multiple belts was normal and dying your bangs blonde and then parting them aloft and to the side, only allowing your freshly dyed hair to touch water maybe once a week. The cover “Mad World” just came out on the radio and we listened to it unironically. So Pharaoh using a rainbow was supposed to be a joke. Not like...a mundane thing we wouldn’t blink twice at in 2019 because rainbows are freakin everywhere.

And I should clarify that I’m referring to the the hyper cute Lisa Frank Revival. Not about how rainbows are a political symbol since the 90′s--that’s fine--that’s always been a thing, and I’m not docking the actual use of a rainbow both as a pride flag and as a Hawaiian license plate. I’m docking the market saturation of rainbows aimed at the five adults who can wear this stuff and still go to work somehow.

Anyway, a lot of Yugi’s duel is centered around Gansly making fun of his cute ass Kuriboh and saying it was too adorable to ever be effective so now I guess Pharaoh has decided to destroy the hell out of Gansly with a rainbow to get his revenge and to get his point across. Which is very Pharaoh of him despite the fact that this card is the opposite of Pharaoh’s entire emo/alt-rock aesthetic. Pharaoh just really needs to get in the last word always.

We get some more vignettes of what everyone else is up to and I gotta say they made a great use of Joey.

Photoreal penguin sure asked a lot out of me. My brother on the other hand who freakin loves penguins was like “THIS IS THE BEST.” and I was like “but how did the penguin pick up a ROPE?” and he was like “shshshshshhh don’t ruin penguin for me!”

I guess using it’s beak? Or maybe there’s little human fingers on one of it’s little flipper wings?

Anyways, the Kaibas have recovered from their orphanage/falling off of a cliff episode and are back to arguing in the way where Mokuba kind of lectures/begs his older brother and Kaiba goes “hhhrhhghghhhhh”

Mokuba is also just going off about whether or not Seto was a good parent. He’s not. Seto is a terrible parent, and I am shocked that Mokuba is still surprised by this. Seto is a freakin child, but hey I guess Seto is better than a war criminal?

Mokuba just expects a lot out of Seto Kaiba. Over the course of this show, it’s becoming apparent that Mokuba is slowly starting to see the cracks in his older brother, I’m just surprised at how long it’s taking Mokuba to figure out that his brother has not just cracks but is spilling out basically everywhere and getting everyone they know possibly killed in the process. Most likely Duke Devlin. Still shocked Duke Devlin is still alive.

Mokuba’s not quite there yet, he’s still holding out. He’s still trying to reason with this kid who is flying a blimp onto an island he once blew up like a James Bond villain so he can play a bunch of cards on it. Mokuba’s...pretty delusional, but I guess so are all Kaibas.

On the other side of town, Yugi decided he was kind of feeling bad about Pharaoh falling repeatedly on his own face. Which is also Yugi’s face. But also neither of their actual face since this is entirely in VR.

Nothing was even fired at Yugi’s direction. He didn’t even get a chance to like...reach for his cards. He was just like “Oh damn never mind oh damn.”

Like all the rest of these characters seem like they still function pretty good at like 400 HP but Yugi is just out at like 1200 it feels like. Shouldn’t it be you can play until you hit 0? Not like it matters since Yami would just take over anyway.

On the other side of town Tea is rewriting memories with characters who were absolutely not here for this moment in S1.

Could be that Tea has finally decided to recognize Duke and Serenity into the fold as much as Tristan, Joey and Yugi, or it could be that her memories are so freakin borked from S1 Pharaoh’s mind wipes, that she actually legitimately thinks both were there.

Funnily enough, she did not add Bakura to this memory. Whenever any other friend has had a vision where their buddies rallied them on, Bakura has always been included, but not this time. Nice. Maybe Tea is the only person who has figured out Bakura ≠ friend. Or maybe Bakura was just straight up written out of everyone’s memories when he died? Hell knows, the show still hasn’t talked about it. Bakura hella died, and no one has even talked about it. Of course no one is really next to each other at the moment so fine, I’ll let it pass.

Anyway, she decides to use this opportunity to prep for the upcoming Ironman challenge that I’m pretty sure she does once a year.

There she goes, on her way to probably save Mokuba’s ass with her own ass, yet again. Tea and her weird strength. I have no idea where she stores it. I have no idea where it comes from. But Tea is like some sort of primal force of nature and she rarely ever uses it.

And then..........this happened.

And then a purple horse with a scantily clad knight on it crosses this bridge to stab the fishman in the heart-it was a lot of unexpected stuff, guys. Again, completely normal for 2019. I could probably get a shirt with a rainbow and a unicorn with a knight on it from like...Target.

Oh My Oh My I just typed “unicorn on rainbow shirt target” into google and one of the first thing that popped up was a shirt with a chibi rainbow unicorn dabbing. My eyes. There were so many search results. Freakin dabbing. This particular shirt is clearly for children and not for 30′s but man I know like 6 people my age who probably already own this shirt.

Anyway, my apologies to all the fans of this fad, this is your time to shine, make the most of it, you are all valid and it is fine to love what you love. We all like different things. I’ll be here in my corner eagerly waiting for this fad to mercifully end so I can finally go back to the Tim Burton wannabe illustrator I used to be before I had to adapt to the hyper cute phase we’re in right now. I mean you have to humbly deal with the cards you’re given, and sometimes that means you have to draw some rainbows both in cards and also in actual drawings.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

So, when Noah realizes he can’t exactly beat Yugi with cards he reaches for this instead:

And guys, Yugi doesn’t even hesitate.

Like remember how Pharaoh walked straight into a creepy clown tent and shoved himself into a little tiny box in a dark room and got hellllla abducted in less than 2 minutes? It is SO EASY to abduct Yugi Muto. In fact, on seeing this magic door appear, Yugi even told Pharaoh “that’s a trap” and Pharaoh was like “that is a trap” and they both were like “I see no other options.”

When it’s like, Yugi, you are OUTSIDE. There’s no walls here--you could go literally anywhere else but the door.

But WTV, it’s Yugi logic.

[mysticsparklewings]

Heaven Help Us

Happy Fake Your Death Day! :D Or at least that's what I'm calling today. For those who don't know, March 22, 2013, is the day My Chemical Romance officially broke up. afterward, March 22 was a significantly sad day for the fandom. The day we remembered what once was. Deathday. But that was before October 31, 2019. My Chemical Romance officially announced their Return.   The world is currently a very uncertain place, including MCR's own concert dates, but I personally take solace in knowing that the impossible already happened once. It can happen again. We, the MCR fandom, hoped and waited and prayed for six whole years. I'm sure plenty of others were like myself and were just starting to lose the hope we'd held onto for so long...and then it happened. It really did. Moral of the story: Never lose hope. Good things come to those who wait. Have faith. Naturally, I had to do something for today. I've done tributes for the 22nd before, but all pre-Return. I'd say it had to be something special, but that's not strictly true. For me, all my MCR artworks are special. I don't do them too terribly often because I want them to be done right. I want to put everything I can into them. I want them to be the absolute best they can be. But I did know I wanted to draw all four of the main guys (left to right: Frank, Ray, Mikey, Gerard), since I've only attempted that one other time, and they came out much more chibi there. (Side note: I really need to find the time and patience to color that drawing at some point). This time I was hoping to still draw them in my style, but a tad more realistic. Or less chibi, anyway. While I was scouting out potential photos of the guys to use, among a few Danger Days/Killjoy pictures I was considering, I found this one that I really took a liking to. Largely this was because they didn't look quite as sour as they did in some of the other photos I was finding.  They don't really look happy per se, but there's an almost hopeful or looking-for-guidance feel to their expressions that appealed to me. And then the idea to call the finished piece "Heaven Help Us," after one of their songs and do something with angel wings in the background occurred to me, and I just had to run with all of it. Naturally, I started by sketching the boys out. I ran into a little trouble with the proportions, and I'm very sure some of that leaked into the final product, but I did my best. I also did my best to capture their expressions, but I know I missed the mark on that in a few ways. Part of it is just there's only so much I can do with my style and expressions and still keeping them looking like guys and not little girls. (To which, I will admit, they probably do still look effeminate. That's just what happens to guys when I draw them in my style. ) I had to sit on the sketch for a couple of days after that though, both to figure out what I wanted to do beyond that and because I was just seriously lacking in the motivation to make more complicated art at the time.   Fortunately though, when I did come back to it, I was able to come up with a fairly solid plan. I decided I'd paint the background separately with gouache and then ink and color the boys on another piece of paper. Originally, the plan was to also then physical cut the boys out and put them on the background, but naturally, I procrastinated the entire time I was working on this project and backed myself into a bit of time-crunch corner, so I had to forgo that idea and combine the two pieces digitally instead. Although, if I'm being honest, that might've been for the better, as I keep trying to imagine cutting out and around all those tiny pieces and sections around the edges and the longer I think the more than sounds like a good way to get a sore hand and lose all of my patience while holding a sharp object. In other words, no thank you. The background is definitely flawed, but landscape paintings aren't necessarily my cup of tea, so I went into painting it knowing that it didn't have to be perfect, it just had to be "close enough." The background in the original photo is a backdrop anyway (it's pretty obvious already but the harsh shadows the guys cast onto it really give it away), so I had a little bit of a leg up there. At least I wouldn't be trying to replicate an actual detailed landscape. So I went in with some yellow ochre, a rust-ish color, some white, and bit of a brown had leftover from one of my previous gouache painting sessions, and just eyeballed the features to the best of my ability. It looks like it's half-finished without the guys in front, but even so, I was still pretty satisfied with how it turned out.   This project has also since reminded me I really need to find excuses to use gouache more often. It works so well for packing on color and blending but still having a lightness to it that acrylic paint just doesn't. Anyway. While the background dried, I got to figure out what to do for my four boys. I went back and forth a bit, but ultimately I decided to do most of the coloring with alcohol markers, except for the hair. The hair would be done with colored pencils. And I'd already decided I was not going to try to draw Gerard's shirt print and I'd just bring it in digitally. At the time, I was thinking I might do the same for Mikey's, but when I got to where I was almost done with the marker portions, I decided I'd take a risk and try my luck doing it by hand. I must say, I did better with it than I was expecting, so I call that a win. It was a little tricky to figure out what colors to use for the markers and pencils since the contrast and lighting is...not strictly normal. From what I can tell, the light is coming from pretty dead-on, almost like it's right behind and above the camera, and it's very bright. So much so that is washes all of them out to the point they kinda look like they all have the same skin color, which I know isn't completely accurate. In some ways, this made shading easier and in some ways, it also made it more confusing. There are places I'd normally put shadows where there don't appear to be any in the reference, so I left them alone, but it almost felt wrong at times.   Gerard and Mikey's hair, in particular, was also a little tricky. Since this was around the time of Danger Days, Gee was dying his hair red and Mikey was dying most of his blonde. I had to get just the right shade of red and shade it appropriately, and it was actually more challenging than I thought it would be to get just the right shade of yellow and ombre balance for Mikey's. After I spent an eternity on both traditional parts though (the background and the guys themselves), it was finally time to move on. I scanned both pieces in and then booted them into photoshop. I cut the guys out of their plain white background and moved them onto the one I painted, then fiddled order with a Drop Shadow in the Blending Options to get those strong cast shadows behind them. They aren't a 1:1, but part of that is my proportions are different and also there was only so much I could do without just basically re-drawing the shadows in myself, which I wasn't too keen on doing. And then I came back to the idea that had originally sold me on this picture: The angel wings. While I was working on the other parts, I had gone back and forth over whether or not I wanted to include them, given how the original image looks and all, but once I saw what the final product looked like without them, I decided the wings were necessary. I simply grabbed a pair from PixaBay, my public-domain0image-site-poison of choice, then duplicated it so each guy would have a pair, then adjusted them as necessary to make them look more realistic as in being attached to the guys. I knew this wouldn't be fully possible based on how they're standing, but I made my peace with that and decided to just go with what I could do within reason. Once the wings were placed appropriately, I then fiddled with the layer options until I landed on one (I think it was either Overlay or Soft Light, I disremember) I was happy with. You can still see the wings, but they're not too in-your-face and distracting. And really, I like this look because it makes me think a lot of the angel statues they've been using in their Return promo stuff. That's really all there was too it. It took me three times as long as it should have because I was, as I said, just motivationally blocked (in working on bigger projects. I still wanted to create, but all I really wanted to make were simple things like the mandalas I've been experimenting with. I'm not sure what kind of selective laziness or creative block you call that ) for 80% of the time I was working on it, so it feels like this description should be a lot longer, but I think I've covered really everything that needs covering. I could describe in greater detail how many colors the layering I used, but it seems unnecessary unless I'm going to document all the specific colors I used and all that, which, spoiler alert, I don't have the patience for. And so, here it is. Like I said, I know the world is a very uncertain place right now, but I'm still thrilled that today is no longer the sad occasion it once was. I'm so glad My Chemical Romance is back, even if the future regarding not only them (as there's still so much we don't know), but the rest of the world too, is foggy and seems a little scary right now. If nothing else, I can now at least listen to their music and know, this is not all there is. This is not the end. In that vein, I leave you all with one of the most famous phrases from one of their songs: We'll Carry On. We will get through this, one way or another. May Death Never Stop You. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram