#hhhh going through an art block recently

[saltytwi]

au doodles!!

[miutonium]

I saw your recent watercolor art and scrolled through your watercolor tag and lemme tell you I adore it so much! You're so good at it! 💖 Do you have any tips for watercolor and is there any brand you recommend for me since my watercolor paint never look as bright as yours! 💖💖💖

Thank you! I actually wrote my painting process here but here's some watercolor tips that I wish someone told me when I started painting like uhhhh 1725192719 years ago:

1. You will need to learn/do a recap on color wheel. Basically, we learned that there's 3 primary colors which is red, blue and yellow and basically mixing those two will create a secondary color (green, purple, orange) and mixing both secondary and primary will create tertiary colors (look it up theres like a few tons of colors hhhh) but shhh listen, Primary Colors also have Warm and Cool tones.

I grabbed this pic from Google since im on my phone rn but anyway, notice that even blue has a warm red undertone. Ever wonder why whenever you mix red and blue watercolor it never creates the perfect purple in your mind but a muddy red-brown shade? That is because you mix both warm red and blue instead of cool red and blue and purple is a cool tone.

This picture i grabbed from watercolor affairs demonstrates how secondary color looks like when you mix warm and cool blue red together.

Not my picture again but anywayyy I really recommend you try to make a color chart of mixing each primary colors with warm and cool undertones because it really helps me figuring out which color should i mix to create a specific color. The watercolor chart you see people do all the time may look intimidating but trust me it's actually easy when you understand what each rows meant.

2. Have scrap watercolor paper ready whenever you paint! Sometimes you need to do a quick swatch of the paint you mixed so you don't accidentally paint the wrong color.

3. DITCH THOSE WATER BRUSH!! I'm talking about the Pentel Aquash Waterbrush. If you are just starting on watercolor I am sooo serious, ditch those brush, don't even LOOK at it. Do not pass, do not collect $200, just GO. Keep it away from your hands until you can control your water on the brush. Unless you're Huta Chan, LOOK AWAY!!!

4. Get a good watercolor paper. You can cheap on watercolor tubes and cheap on brush but dont be stingy when it comes to watercolor papers! A good watercolor paper determines if your painting will be good or shit, not the paint itself. If you can't afford a block of good watercolor paper like me, buy a single big sheet (A1/A0) of a good paper and cut it up into smaller A4/A5 pieces (I do this all the time with my Saunders Waterford's paper)

If you still can't afford those paper, consider buying papers from known brands (and I am so serious about this because when I started painting I bought a cheap semco watercolor paper and I thought I was really awful at painting until I decided to buy a better paper and turns out the paper I bought was shit so I really mean it when I say buy from reputable art brands). The affordable brands that I'm using is Arto 300gsm Hot Pressed 100% Cotton.

5. PURE WHITE= BLANK SPACE. The white paint in your watercolor set means NOTHING. It only serves as a purpose to make a specific color opaque but it will never work as a way to paint white. If you want white, leave that part empty and unpainted. Your paper will serve as the white part instead.

7.As for paint recommendation, I actually use a mix of paint brands with varying grades so like I really don't have a single fav brand that I am devoted to. But if you want good artist grade paints at affordable price, Holbein paints costs half than other western brand watercolors and very high quality. I personally think their Opera Pink is the most brilliant paint out of every Opera color i used in other brands and I think I purchased it like 4 times already (although currently I am using Mijello's Opera Rose since I bought a set of paints months ago)

This is personally my opinion but you don't really need to buy every colors sold in tubes since some shades can be easily mix with the readily available 12 tubes paint that you have you have but these are the few colors that I think people should add and keep to have a diverse palette: Opera (Rose/Pink), Cobalt Teal/Turquoise Blue, Leaf Green and Neutral Tint.

ALSO this totally depends on each country but you can try look for watercolor trial kits on etsy (west) or shopee/taobao (asia) if you want to try various watercolors. Some people actually sell trial kits of other watercolor brands (and some even offer customization) online cheaper than buying the whole 12/24 tubes so keep a lookout on it!

2 years ago I actually bought a 0.5 ml mijello trial kit just to try out and I still haven't finish the colors in here completely (although I do use this as a complimentary palette and not a main one so it can be the reason why)

Very important part of painting: Painting is all about trusting the process. If it looks ugly, keep painting until it looks just the way you wanted. If it still looks bad and you don't have the energy to continue it, just let it sit and continue when you feel ready. I have countless of watercolor wips and some painting that I completed months or years later because I finally feel good enough to continue. If you're like me and likes to keep wips, keep the papers in a cool dry place or you wont be able to continue painting since the paper changed sizing.

I hope what I wrote here makes sense! These are a few things that I think are important enough to keep in mind! 💕💕💕

TL;DR: 1. Relearn Color Wheel 2. Keep scrap paper 3. Pentel Aquash is a lie 4. Buy good watercolor paper 5. Pure White=Blank Space 6.Holbein paint good 7. Trust the Process

[therem-harth]

h h hewwo owoo 22 / 23 / 29 / 31 / 34 / 50 / 58 / 61 / 88 in any order, and u can also just. pick only those that u want :3

hhhh-ewwwo? I did say I wanted to chat and I desperately do not want to do work or studies so buckle in for a long post (derogatory). 22. role model? Oh man, I don’t think I have any, like, specific ones for entire things, though I do fall in my hero-worship phaes and then fall out of them like everyone else. I think that taking an entire person and being like I wanna be like them is... not for me though. But I do look up to some people for specific things - I look up to, weirdly enough, Abigail Phylosohpytube who I didn’t watch before her coming out for her graceful coming out video though she admits that the experience wasn’t obviously as smooth. I look up to lots and lots of people for their ability to create and their art (not gonna tag my fav artists bc am tiny and do not want people to look at me, but i do be reblogging). I look up to people like ConcernedApe Stardewvalley and Supergiantgames Hades for their ability to put so much soul in their work, smth I aspire to do. I look up to @not-poignant for, among other things, their idk how to say it best, wisdom in understanding and communicating with others and with myself? I’ve learned a lot by just sort of being in their periphery and seeing how they articulate their thoughts and choose to be kind and witness other’s pain. Hell, I look up to twitch streamers and youtubers sometimes (the recent nice trait I’d like to have if I ever went into bigger content production is how ibxtoycat deals with parasocial relationship realities). 23. strange habits? Hm. I don’t think drinking tea whenever I need a pick-me-up is strange, that’s just probably forcefully assigning a British nationality to me. I think my insistence on misspelling words in a way I think is lowkey funny might be one, I say thamks bc it feels softer, or thank bc it’s funny, I say sleeb, I say finkers or tryink or otherwise replace g with k for lulz. I also don’t know if it counts as a habit but I have a small leather band around my wrist that’s been there for a year soon. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm I probs have like, stranger habits but I can’t recall rn. 29. best way to bond with you? Hmm. Well, if you show initiative and are explicit about wanting to spend time with me, that’s already a big chance of me spending time with you. And then if our interests match and I don’t think that you’re like, young in a way that automatically puts me in a position where I don’t feel comfortable really being myself around you bc in my head I have to look out for you (it has happened with two of my friends, sigh), and we regularly spend time together, voila, friend acquired. It simultaneously doesn’t take much and takes a bit to be my friend and bond with me - it’s easy af to become a casual friend cuz I’m always open to new people, but there has to be a level of trust to become like, a close friend. Respecting my boundaries, talking shit with me, being explicitly committal about wanting to bond with me are big steps that way. 31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names? Uh, I don’t do neither, but a current fave that is reasonably badass is my black tshirt with like, a ritual circle and a deer skull. V edgy, 10/10. I also used to have like a real edgy tshirt with a jester and some dice that said the game of life, but I threw it out bc dysphoria. or maybe I put it at the back of my closet along with one other shirt In Case I Get Top Surgery so I can wear them then. 34. advertisements you have stuck in your head? Many, such is the nature of advertising, alas. I have managed to avoid most of it tbh though, so the only place I am forced to sit through ads so they stick is my scrabble capitalist nightmare app where I play and always beat haha my coursemate. And they have adds for those shitty apps where you have to solve a puzzle that ends up failing in the add and like, drenching a man in green goo. I find those kinda fascinating tbh. Who plays these games? Who plays these shitty shitty games whose ad has to be “prove your IQ“ to make you want to prove yourself to play them? Oh and also, the insidious nature of ads in media I consume - the mcelroys have gotten me informed about many many things bc they do it in a funny way. Have you heard about squarespace? What about meundies? I also literally installed honey yesterday that I knew abt bc of the relentless adds and I wanted to save, uh, 2.50 from my minecraft server purchase (and then spent some time googling how they make money before giving up. just say u sell my data, that’s easier than not knowing what part of this makes you money). I was tired and in a weird mood, ok. 50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have? It’s always the stupidest jokes, what matters more is laughing together with someone and getting caught in a laughing loop. I still remember laughing with my siblings until our stomachs really really hurt bc I think one of us said a rug was vomit-colored and it was funny in the moment. How many times have I laughed like that with you too, vit. I know that Laura’s one is nostrilatu, right? :D :D It’s just something that catches you off guard, I think.

58. four talents you’re proud of having? Oh shid. Hm. 1) My ability to analyze data and understand the basic building blocks of something. Makes me cool at studying and sexy at explaining things to my course-mates. 2) Not a talent more like a skill that I’ve worked hard on through therapy - but my inner positive voice/healthy parent is very strong and automatic (something I was sure would never happen). A good example is me going out for a walk, my phone dying so I can’t listen to music, when I went in my head “well I can always make music in my head. do-do-do *drum sound*“ and I could feel the wave of self-reprimand cresting but before I could actually hear any negative comments the positive voice said with a light of a thousand suns NO THAT IS ACTUALLY CUTE AND SEXY and just haaaaaaah. 3) I sing good. Need to sing more. 4) I think I’m good at making conversation. Even with people I don’t necessarily like or want to talk to. More of a skill again but whatever. 61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.? Do not come to me and ask for favorites, witch. Uh, I have some quotes in my notes app, like 7 from Pia’s writing :D. But imma go with “It’s a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world“ by Mary Oliver. It counts, ok. Or, wait, something I will for real one day either crosstitch of commission shitpostcalligrapher: “t’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. “What are we holding onto Sam?” “There’s good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.“” 88. your greatest wish? Hrm. Right now? To have like a couple days with no responsibilities and without the outside world bearing on me as heavily, to be tiny tiny tiny so I’m invisible and can drink tiny tea on a tiny leaf. Uh, in general? My recently formulated wish or a goal is stability/peace. Then everything else becomes ok because you can bounce back to stable ground between feeling shit or everything happening so much. And I’ve sort of reached that. Also like, half a million euros would be nice too so I can get a house and a car and go on a few trips abroad. :D // there’s two ask memes in my blog recently, go wild

[aegir-emblem]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FIRE EMBLEM!!!

Y’all, the 30 year anniversary!!!!

My first video game ever was Fire Emblem Sacred Stones on my brother’s black Game Boy Advanced “console”... I still remember being so shocked by that main intro, my god - hhhh it was so pretty!!!

Just... shoutout to this texture. This game was so amazing and colourful, I would love to see it remade.

My first crush ever was Joshua from this very game, who I have made posts about before... and Lyon’s theme still makes me cry every time I hear it. Those flashbacks hit different. GAH!

Between 6-years-old and middle school, I played a lot more Fire Emblem games, like Shadow Dragon and Tellius... and while they were good, none of them hit as hard as Awakening did when it dropped. Do y’all remember when Awakening dropped and you first saw that customisation page?? And those cutscenes for the first time?

It was nothing like I had ever seen, and even as the games continue to get better and better in quality both of writing and graphics, Awakening will always hold a very close spot in my heart as the game that really shaped a lot of my childhood and personality, to be honest.

Id: Purpose makes me sob every time I hear it. I just remember the emotional roller coaster this game brought me through, through roadtrips and trainrides and plane flights across the US. I have logged over 500 hours on Awakening that are recorded, let alone all the times I started and stopped new playthroughs. My peak achievement was defeating Grima in 2 hits using Ricken equipped with a ladle.

That brings us to Fates... I know that Fates has a tricky rep within the fandom, so I won’t go too into detail. I have fond memories of the day my brother and I went to the store to buy the games, and we didn’t tell each other which game we would be purchasing. Until we walked up to the counter, me with Conquest in my hands and him with Birthright. From then we knew it would be a battle within the home, haha.

My brother is the better strategist than I am, but I grind my characters. It was really hard in Conquest, but I found a way, and whenever we would do castle battles, it was always evenly matched; my powerful Nohrian team against his brilliant tactics.

Additionally, although it was limited, the option of Bisexual S-ranks for Niles and Rhajat was very nice. I understand the contract rules that go into making games, especially in this franchise, but it was a step forward, and the representation for me as someone of the LGBTQ+ community was very nice. I understand that some people in the community remain frustrated with the minimization of the representation, but it was a step in the right direction for me.

Also, just the energy of Fates... The full creation of both kingdoms was so satisfying, and the cutscenes were crisp and lovely. And Corrin/Kamui’s design!!! The dragon blood techniques... I loved Fates. It was very exciting.

And more recently... Three Houses. The most I can say to start off... WOWZA.

I have more to say about this game than I can put into words, really. I bought my switch only aware of this game, and still to this day I don’t own many other games for my switch since Three Houses has taken up so much of my time.

Three Houses is incredible. The extent to it all, with the full voice lines and the quality of production, depth of character and story and the fact that it’s essentially THREE (four/five) games in one is so fantastic. Every character has such depth and detail, and it has inspired so much incredible art and writing. 

I, for one, have always struggled with writer’s block, but had a passion to write. This game changed that. By coming out on the Nintendo Switch, it opened up Fire Emblem to a broader community and gained an onslaught of fans passionate about the experience and ready to share what they could do. For once, I had a much more solid base of people to receive my writing. Recently, I finished my first multichapter fanfic, and have (since January of this year) written over 250 pages of fanfiction just for Three Houses. It’s utterly incredible.

And going onward with representation, this game deals with such depth of character that it is impossible to ignore their values. It deals with topics of racism, mental illness, sexuality and identity... and throughout it all, it remains a Fire Emblem game as if to encourage people that despite how scary the world can seem with those things, it always moves on. Despite the real-life topics, it is set against a backdrop of Kings and Queens and Emperors, Knights and magic and the question of chivalry with a goal in mind and so many allies to support you along the way.

The cast of this game has been lovely, and the quality resonates clearly with the value and the legacy that the game has. It’s fantastic.

I didn’t mention some of the games, but also - thanks to Heroes!! It has opened Fire Emblem to a whole new audience, and brings together so many more creative artists and fun communities... It’s amazing.

In short, I would not trade Fire Emblem - the series, the producers and studio, anything - for the world. It has shaped so much of who I am as a character, provided me solace in times where everything is changing too fast and I can retreat into a world with friends, allies, and goals. 

Whenever I think of these games, I think of my brother as well. He introduced them to me, and it’s something we’ve been able to share this whole time even when real life divided us.

I wish I had more words to articulate how this series makes me feel, but I truly do not. My passion for this series is beyond words. So - all I guess I can say is: 

Happy Birthday, Fire Emblem Series!!! Congrats on 30 years, and thank you so much for everything!!!

Fanfiction.net @ Thirth Floor; AO3 @ ThirthFloor