#disclaimer: i am not an art person

[egophiliac]

so we know you love diasomnia endlessly, but who is your favorite character from each of the other dorms

this is SO hard to answer, because so many of the characters are, like, those pet adoption ads that say "MUST STAY TOGETHER, CANNOT BE SEPARATED". it's all about the relationship dynamics! and I think everybody in the main cast is pretty neat, honestly; there isn't anyone who doesn't have something I really like about them. but if I haaaaad to choose...

Hearts - Trey, partly because I do like me a good Mom Friend™ character, and partly because he pretends like he's all sane and normal, right up until he does something to prove he's just as much of a dipshit as everyone else. you're not immune, sir.

Savana - BUFF 👏 TSUNDERE 👏 WEREWOLF 👏

Octa - this one took a lot of soul-searching, because I do feel like the Octatrio is at their very best when it's all three of them, especially when they're in full Ed Edd n Eddy mode. but in the end, Jade ekes out a win, because sometimes you get this Jade:

and then when he gets back from his nice mushroom-foraging hike, you get this Jade:

Scara - Kalim, my sweet little moron. such a good heart, so few braincells.

Pome - 90% of the time when Rook shows up, you know it's going to a be fun time watching a silly little man dance around and break into song for no reason and wax poetic about the beauty of, like, a chair. always a delight!

except every once in a while, he'll bust out something that is absolutely insane even by Twst standards:

this isn't a complaint, it's just. why is he like this. I want to study him under a microscope, except I'm afraid of what I might find.

Igni - MUST STAY TOGETHER! CANNOT BE SEPARATED! ...but I would probably go with Ortho, just because right now I'm pretty invested in his Learning Emotions story arc and looking forward to seeing it progress. he's a good boy who will post your cringe fanfic publicly if you annoy him

...and at this point I'm calling technicality because the ask says "other dorms", and I genuinely do not think I could choose between the Dia boys at this point. let's see how episode 7 goes first!

[kidvoodoo]

Dutch Bookie Joost Klein and his temporary hired gun, Nordic Crime Boss Käärijä

History will call them coworkers….

[drpoisonoaky]

as I person who will be spreading the azula-rangi agenda until the day i die i had to do this cuz @blorboazula is right our sassy little lesbian needs to be represented as what she is

[smokbeast]

poe thoughts and scribbles for my aching soul

[aibouart]

admittedly, i am afraid to talk about this, but have wanted to for a long while. i don't see a lot of people discuss this kind of thing, but i decided to do so for the me who was struggling and didn't know. also i have no idea where i am going with this and it's very late for me rn so here's a whole ass ramble on vent art. and also a bit more on how it's impacting how i view my art, now. i am terribly sorry if it's not very cohesive, my thoughts on it aren't yet cohesive either WOOPS

i wanted to talk a bit about how vent art really impacted my mental health, and how the idea that art needs some kind of meaning to have meaning really has been weighing on me lately (i know this is a concept i am assigning to my work and is not actually the norm/standard expectation of others consuming art. but it IS a sentiment i have seen enough that does impact me).

i want to specify, obviously i am not saying vent art is bad.

nor that doing vent pieces, or vent blogs, will ultimately result in what i went through for a number of years. rather, that this did happen to me, and there is a near impossible chance i am a unique case in any experience i will ever have. if you do vent art and it helps you, that's good! im not judging anyone for anything here. if your experience does not match my own, that's what it's like to be human~. i am not invalidating anyone on purpose by sharing my own experience. sorry for the insane disclaimer but it will eat me alive if i go to sleep thinking "what if they think x cuz i didn't say y and think im a terrible person"

---

i used to do vent art frequently (you won't find much on here as it was uploaded to a personal at the time). anytime i felt down or had a line of dialogue in my head making me feel bad in a way, i would draw for it. but the way i had interacted with it was really unhealthy. it became a terrible feedback loop where i'd feel bad, draw how i felt bad, look at the art, and ruminate even more on how i felt bad, until it spiralled so out of control i would lose touch with reality and get lost entirely in feeling like garbage.

i would just get so lost in the cycle with vent art that it would make my mental space worse and worse, and i would use the vent art as a negative confirmation bias. the words that hurt me i wrote down and anytime i looked again, they would hurt me again. but i would keep looking, and i would keep drawing.

i have always used art as an outlet, but for some reason the way vent art impacted me was unhealthy. it wasn't a good outlet. and it took me years to cut ties with it. i relied on vent art for a long time, but it took a lot of introspection and thinking to realise it wasn't the release i thought it was. and it was hard to let go, too.

i haven't touched the blog in a few months, now. i haven't done much vent art at all since then and genuinely, i've been doing SOOO much better. i no longer ruminate nearly as much as i had done so, i no longer get caught in a feedback loop that lasts for days to weeks. i still feel like garbage like people tend to do, but i don't put myself in a cycle over it anymore. i have gone back to it a few times in moments of desperation, but what used to be every week/every few weeks is now once a month maybe. and not to the extent at all (i would oftentimes post ~20 images in one night, before).

but i keep thinking about how, while the way i had done vent art was bad for my mental health, i keep feeling that just because i do sparkly cute and happy drawings, now, or drawings with no real meaning, that my art has nothing beyond face value... i do like a lot of my vent art. i think their compositions, or hidden messages and meanings, or colour use, was interesting.

but it wasn't worth the price for me.

so i am a bit caught in an in-between, here. my favourite form of art is the expression of love-you liked something so much, you dedicated time to draw it. and yet i cannot ascribe that to my own work very often. i think that man i wish i could make art with some kind of deeper meaning, that speaks to people, that's more than just pretty colours or shiny shading or a character everyone likes, or a character i like. but i just... don't know if it's for me.

ultimately, i could develop a healthy relationship with expressing and exploring negative emotions or experiences through art, but... do i want to? do i have to? do i need to? is it not enough to just draw something because... i like it..?

of course, the answer is yes, draw what you want, draw how you want, it's your art. but i am still trying to come to terms with that idea. i dont want to be seen as some shallow artist who just draws what's cute and pretty because they can and it's all they can think of, but like what if that's just what i like to draw??

in the end, that alone is good enough, drawing because you like to, because it's fun, because you like the thing you're dedicating time to creating for. it's just hard to grapple with after discarding a type of art that i felt was the only way i drew "for real".

anyways i am sorry this is soooo fucking long, and for all the clarifications (IM STILL NOT SAYING VENT ART BAD AND EVERYONE WILL DO WHAT I DID!! Dx) and the fact i had no real point here (probably)

anyways i will continue to draw what i want because i like to, as i have always been.

[anglerflsh]

La natura sta sguarendo and I'm channeling the frantic pacing into drawing

[spotaus]

Hello, so glad everyone enjoyed that CrossxLust post so much! My inbox has recieved quite a few fun new ship requests that I really want to work on thanks to that!

I'm going to get to them eventually, I promise, but I have others that were lingering from before that ask that I wanna catch up on first! I'll be doing them more or less in order from here on out! 🙏

[yonpote]

ok i literally only did two prompts but thats it for now i will get to the ones in my inbox tomorrow ✌️✌️

[unforth]

Sometimes I wish I could drive home just how little of Chinese fandom culture actually makes it onto Tumblr at all, much less circulates in western Tumblr circles, and I've finally got a solid example.

On this list I reblogged a not long ago, Poyun, which I started reading on Bilibili the other day, has the 93rd most popular ship on all of Lofter, with over 15,000 posts. By comparison, the 93rd most popular ship of that same year (2020) on Tumblr was from Haikyuu, and from 2021 the 93rd most popular was from Miraculous Lady Bug - which is to say, even if you're not into, it's a fandom you've almost certainly heard of if you move in fandom circles at all. Like, those are two fandoms with known, huge followings. Likewise, Yan Xie/Jiang Ting is a big deal ship on Lofter.

I started reading the manhua a few days ago, so I know I'm gonna be posting some of the manhua art to @cnovelartreblogs so I was like, I should check the main tags and queue the art (even if it means I might be exposed to spoilers), and then I won't accidentally duplicate other people's art posting efforts or anything.

Now, granted, I've seen some evidence that tag search is more broken than usual the last few days, but even so...

#po yun: there are maybe 30 posts in "most popular"

#破云: there are maybe 20 posts in "most popular," and they're basically all the same (as in, people tagged both)

#poyun: about the same number, and the only 3 pieces of fanart I can find on the whole platform (@drawulan you don't know me but you are a BLESSING to C-Novel fandoms with small followings on Tumblr. A BLESSING, YOU HEAR? I LOVE YOUR ART.)

Y'all, we have no idea how little we actually know and see about what's popular in Chinese fandom.

[gameyface46]

♪ I wanted to be your whole world, I wanted it all… I wanted it all… ♪

AHHHHHH ASPEN AND AQUA!!! ¡¡¡¡¡THE COUPLE!!!!!!

WAAHHHHHH THEY’RE SO CUTEEEEEEEE! I should have posted this on Pride Month… but… I didn’t come up with this until yesterday… but ASPEN AND AQUA SHIP ART… here you go! My July project! And it only took…

… two days?!?!?!

Good art DOESN’T have to take a month to produce? Wow. Though… this is pretty simple. I didn’t do shading because I actually kinda like the no shade look here.

These two are made for each other… land and sea are good together, you know? Well, more plants and water.

Though… my only criticism is that it’s a bit stiff. You know, it just feels like there’s not enough motion…

Inspo and life updates below!

This is blatantly inspired by Lake Street Dive’s album Bad Self Portraits, more specifically Rental Love. I like BSP, good album. I think it’s Aspen-core because it reminds me of the 20s and 30s for some reason, which is what inspired Aspen’s dress style, both male and female. I like drawing Aspen in his dress… god I love my little guys…

Anyway, the song that actually prompted me to draw this was What About Me, because that song specifically made me think Aspen. I am obsessed with Lake Street Dive rn… if I knew anatomy I would draw so much fanart…

So, in general? Life is okay. Finally exited artist block after I got some advice from a fellow tumblr (thank you nyanbinary-87) and it kinda motivated me to do art again. Still can’t study tho. It’s a whole thing. *sigh*

Also… follow me on twitch please! If you want, ofc. I try to stream once a week, but my schedule is… difficult. Right now, I’m playin’ OneShot! Such a good game… but I will die of a heart attack on stream. Also I will NEVER play that game at night. I’m a coward.

Good night y’all.

Oh, and PLEASE GOD LET PHILIPPINES WIN ANOTHER GOLD MEDAL AT THE OLYMPICS PLEASSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

[sidereon-spaceace]

very annoying to find that something I thought I handled well just hadnt fully processed yet

[fixing-canva-book-covers]

Another fix, this time for Elena Armas’ The American Roommate Experiment.

There are several frustrating things at play in this one for me: the lack of a defined colour palette, the inconsistent style of artwork, the faceless people and overly realistic shadowing on clothes (indicating that the people in these drawings were originally just photos, traced over and filled with basic colour), the randomly cluttered in assortments of motifs and vectors… it gives it a confused, cluttered feel.

I tried to follow the good old rule of thirds here while also establishing a more structured colour palette, giving the author’s bottom third a little cityscape to provide setting context. I removed the pizza and the gramophone entirely, replacing them as a feature with the little brass apartment key and adding the paper manuscript sheets for the lead’s romance book as a more obvious and compelling motif. I shifted the text down and filled the top third with the legs of the two character vectors (to avoid having to try and make the faces look less empty and slender man-esque) and I switched out the colour of the lady’s pants to draw the same pink through the cover art and lead the viewer’s eye down the page.

What do we think?

[blizzardrunner]

incredibly menacing but is SO nice about it

[muffindaydream]

old 2019-2021 arts focused on my OCs Grayson and Ophelia

[glompcat]

Valarie Walker, who played the character Tamara (she is in the overalls and says the quoted lines - as opposed to the other pictured character who is played by writer and director Cheryl Dunye), is an incredible artist. You can learn more about her current artistic ventures and ways to support her on her instagram here.

The Watermelon Woman (1996) dir. Cheryl Dunye

[pearwaldorf]

People in fandoms* associated with Neil Gaiman are not showing each other the grace they should be in a stressful time, and I would like to remind people of some things:

Not everybody knows about the allegations because it is not being reported widely in mainstream media. Gaiman has engaged a PR/crisis management firm that has done work with Marilyn Manson, Russell Brand, and Danny Masterson to actively squash coverage.

The story broke on a site unfamiliar to a lot of non-UK people. There was confusion as well as outright misinformation about whether the site was a TERF outlet (it is not). While Rachel Johnson, the lead reporter on the story, is a TERF who has publicly clashed with Gaiman about trans rights, she has behaved responsibly and ethically as a journalist regarding this. I wrote more in depth about these things here.

Everybody deals differently with finding out creators are problematic. The method you prefer is not the only correct way of coping. Some people are able to divorce art from the creator and some people are not. This is an attitude that can change over time. And if you feel like you need to express frustration that somebody else's method isn't the same as yours? I would recommend shutting your fucking trap.

If people know about the allegations, it's shitty to assume they're ignoring them or think they're false until somebody explicitly says so. There are many things people don't say online, and you are not owed disclaimers or explanations.

Fandom is more than the work itself. Some people find strength in the community that has formed around it, and rely on each other to help cope with and grieve this loss. The love you have for the work and your fellow fans is not something that belongs to the creator. It never has and that can't be taken away.

Your personal relationship with a creator's work will change over time. That's inevitable regardless of whether they turn out to be problematic or not. And when those works are deeply significant and formative, like many of Gaiman's works are to me** and countless others? That's fucking tough. Be kind to yourself and others when working through this. I love you all.

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* I have seen this in Good Omens most prominently, although I am sure there are other places where it is happening as well.

** I have been a fan of Gaiman's work longer than some of you have been alive. It has not been a great month or so.