#i have 3 brain tablets

[calandrinon]

Me: hmm, I haven't had my brain tablets for a couple of days.

Me: I'm not getting any withdrawal symptoms though!

Me: Maybe I don't need them.

Also me: why am i so moody and cranky and not sleeping well, also the room is spinning a bit, i might float away

[ragnars-tooth]

so very quick and sketchy but i was getting vague designs for all the tldc ladies down in one place

not so sure on gwendolen and gwilanna and i havent looked back at the books for details yet but these were just a quick cool down for the night 🫶

[arrowsneo]

The sillay⁉️

[crebbyhermit]

lapin angelique

[thalassic-p4rk]

*Consumes your family* /j

*gasp*

eats you

[starfire-s]

i have been taking my iron and vitamin d tablets consistently… and wow who knew being tired all the time wasn’t normal and i should have the energy to do more than 2 tasks in a day

[iwaasfairy]

Fae fae when did you learn to draw digital? Like do you have any tips I’ve been practicing but honestly it’s so hard haha

I remember sometime early 2021 I think you did a lot of haikyuu art and it was amazingggg wow

-🪐 anon

fAE FAE pLS dgusgfus I LOVE THAT??? heLP but uhmm honestly i think the main reason why my art looks better now is because i've been practicing my basics a lot? and like, its a constant battle to get better and hate your old art yk,, but i'm glad i did it and i can't wait to see how much i'll improve in the future! BUT! as for practicing tips, i would recommend splitting up exactly what you want to tackle first.

digital drawing is a very different skill than sketching. coloring is a very different skill. backgrounds are a skill in itself. drawing bodies,, etc etc etc,, and it was really frustrating to draw sometimes bc it feels like they all go hand in hand? but splitting them up and practicing solely on that- can really help make it feel more doable yk

also drawing on paper is v helpful to me personally. get urself a practice sketchbook, even tho they are two separate skills they kinda are tied together. if you improve one it will also show in the other

and yEA i did do some art in 2021 that i was really proud of. but i do gotta say looking back, those arts took me like 72 hours and so much references that it always felt extremely overwhelming and scary to draw. i like them a lot still, but i dont remember finding it very fun to draw back in 2021

and sometimes it's embarrassing for me to look back at old art and not shudder in shame, but the fact is,, that i was happy with my drawings back when i made them. he reason i'm not happy with them anymore is bc i've practiced, and become better, yk? for fuck sake, atsuko used to look like this (left) and now he looks like that (right)

be a little kind to yourself. it's hard to admit that you can be good at and suck at something at the same time. your improvement will be directly linked to how often you can stomach to be bad at something tbh hahahah i stopped coloring the way i used to in 2021 because i loved doing it but i actually sucked at it. and im still in the middle of practicing coloring, and most of what i draw is ugly and i hate it,, but thats okay. i hopefully will find value in it once i start noticing some improvement

anyway sorry for the ramble the point is, find your weak points and target them. and then, practice. practice practice practice. dont believe these tiktok artists who say "oh i started drawing in 2021" and bust out the most amazing portraits in the history of ever. that isn't the reality for most people;

[strigital]

quick test drive number one of my fresh-out-of-the-box Kamvas 13 and so far I'm vibin'!!

[trollbreak]

Did y’all know that!!! BloodThirst!!!!!

[runningwithscizzorz]

(1)Learn the rules before you break them + Gather proper references

(2) Understand what you want to break and how

(3) Can't do it? Find someone who can

(4) It's going to look really bad for a while

(5) Have fun with it!

(1) -Yes, I am that kind of artist. Yet, not in the conventional way. I encourage people to go in guns blazing when it comes to drawing something new, then coming out analyzing what they know, and what they need to learn more of right away.

-Here, I broke down the anatomical pieces of Nour and Narinder's face with the same labels so you guys can understand this weird invisible pattern that I follow in my work. Doing this with any animal you're attempting to draw greatly improves your line confidence when drawing different face shapes. Also understanding the biological function for why animals look a certain way helps you keep consistency.

(3) Time to throw any artistic guilt you have for heavily referencing people's art OUT THE WINDOW and start ANALYZING PEOPLE'S WORK YOU WANT TO BE LIKE✨ I've always done this, having a reference of someone else's amazing work right next to my own drawing so I can try and understand how they make their magic work! No shame, no embarrassment, nada. Pure, unadulterated will and spite that I would be just as good as the artist who made me so motivated and happy with their work! I couldn't figure out how to make Nour's face both sheep-like, and humanly expressive, so I looked at a LOT of Zootopia and old Disney art for help!

(2) With how I draw narilamb, I'm still working on it (as you can see) but I wanted to break Narinder's face to be fluffier and slimmer, while Nour's face would be shorter and flatter. If you look at it for too long, it's absolutely going to look weird, in the way that if you look at Anna from Frozen for too long she starts looking really weird. The anatomy isn't meant to be correct or consistent, it's meant to convey the emotion and energy I want out of the characters in that moment. If you're able to properly get that across, then you don't need to think about how broken something looks, as long as your eye is happy enough to trick your brain into thinking what you're seeing is canny.

(4) Yeah, I hate this part too. It's going to look like shit at first. I can't even look at my art from a few months ago when I was figuring out their designs... God, so fucking ugly. If it weren't for the shittiness of those drawings, I would have never gotten here! Wading through the "trust the process" stage always really sucks, but it's absolutely worth the relief of when you finally get something to look right.

(5) Art is work, yes. It's stressful, it's long, it's straining, its draining, it's exclaiming, blah blah blah. But, I try to keep my art FUN. If I find my artwork becoming slow as I depressingly drag my pen over my tablet, I'm failing. You MUST keep spirit and life in your work. The spirit of emptiness or the life of sadness can have a very meaningful place in art, but those can only exist with keeping work light, easy, and fun! If you're stressing how a specific thing looks or how you can't get something to look right no matter what, FUCK IT. Draw something to bring the flavor back in your work! I'm kind of rambling, but just, HAVE FUN!✨️ Be messy, scream, laugh, slash canvases, throw paint, smash sculptures, tear apart books, GO CRAZY

[copperbadge]

Recently I ran across an article about an art center that was doing creative expression classes for people with disabilities. Not that unusual, I've encountered that and trauma-oriented art therapy before, but it was the first time I'd come across the idea since getting diagnosed with ADHD. While the class was aimed more at high-needs disabilities, it occurred to me that I could -- if I wanted -- make non-prose art about being disabled.

Outside of my work in scene design I've never been much of a visual artist because I've never felt I had the combination of "something to say" and "a meaningful way to say it", but I started to question how meaningful and complex I really had to be to just make some statements about having ADHD. I can do it in prose, after all.

So I started thinking about how you would talk, in visual language, about things like time blindness, shame stemming from undiagnosed disability, the shift in behavior that medication can induce. Ways to express my condition to people who don't experience it. I still didn't really know how to build the pieces but whenever I went to an art museum I'd think about how I might do a gallery installation. The centerpiece of my mental gallery was a pair of barcodes, one marked "Neurotypical" and one marked "Neurodivergent".

[ID: An interior view of a small booklet, with pages marked 1 and 2, showing barcodes -- on the left, labeled Neurotypical, and on the right, in slightly weirder configuration, labeled Neurodivergent.]

And then I thought, why not make a zine? Nothing you're thinking of couldn't be put in zine form instead of on a gallery wall.

[ID: The booklet continues to pages 3 and 4; on page 3 is a postage-style label reading AUTISM with up arrows on either side, and on page 4 is a QR code labeled ADHD. The QR code technically should work but it just dumps a block of text I wrote about having ADHD into a browser.]

I grew up with zine culture in the 90s and I always wanted to make one but much like with visual art, I never felt like I had the right kind of thing to say; either I had too much to say or too little, and anyway I wasn't confident that what I wanted to do wouldn't just come off as trite and obvious. But you can make a six-page zine out of a single sheet of paper, so I did: I made Helpful Labels For Strange Brains by idab zines, a division of Extribulum Press. (i--dab is a term for a cuneiform tablet that contains a royal communication.)

[ID: The last two pages feature the same image -- a cereal bowl with a spoon in it, the spoon containing a single Adderall pill. One image, however, is captioned "Wake up. Pour yourself a cup of iced coffee. Fix a bowl of cereal. It's going to be a good day." while the other is covered in a detailed ADHD-style step-by-step process for the same actions, culminating in "It's going to be a day like that."]

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out -- the art all looks intentional and it still has that "taped this together after school" aesthetic I remember fondly from the 90s. And the confines of six pages, each only a few inches square, offers a good structure to keep things clear, simple, and meaningful.

[ID: The cover of the zine, labeled "Helpful Labels For Strange Brains" in a kind of esoteric stampy font.]

Especially nice is that if you wanted to you could just hand out the flat sheet, and let folks fold it into a booklet or not -- there's instructions for folding it on the back of the zine. Additionally I have some sticker backed printer paper so I could print it such that you could literally turn the labels into real labels.

Anyway if you want it, here ya go. You can print it on a single sheet of paper and follow the instructions on the back to fold it. I thought about selling it but I do not have the spoons to do a bunch of printing and folding and shipping.

[bitalis]

i should probably update the app so i can get the ability to turn features on and off

[sanchoyo]

I rly should learn how to use perspective rulers in clip studio esp with the new fisheye one just being released bc I know they’re very useful and would probably help a ton. It’s just….perspective in general is so hard and confusing for me I rly do not get the concept of perspective lines/rulers at all 😭

[keferon]

Chapter 3 of Jazzprowl mecha! >:D

Previous chapter

Under the cut⤵️

Jazz thinks Prowl is fucking weird.

With space around him and aliens and fucking teleportation and all that crazy shit...Prowl's weirdness isn't too obvious at first. But once Jazz stops marveling at the view outside the window, his attention shifts completely to his new companion.

And. Well.

"'Your plates are so squarish.'"

Prowl takes a break from reading something on his tablet and raises his eyebrows in surprise

"They are."

Jazz moves closer curiously

"No offense okay but isn't it... Hmm. Stupid?"

He raises one hand and lightly slaps the edge of his palm against the center of Prowl's chest.

"What's the point of making armor this shape? And with so many wide gaps? All the strikes will go straight through. It's kinda dangerous. "

Prowl purses his lips in confusion.

"Excuse me? As if your armor makes more sense."

"It does."

"You...wha...you know what. Humor me, explain what you mean."

Jazz shrugs.

"It's round. And the gaps are...uh. What's the right word. They're thin? It's very hard to grab with your teeth or get under with your tentacles. See? You are. Dude, no offense, but you're like, really grabbable."

Prowl just silently opens and closes his mouth for a couple seconds, trying to think of what to say in response. Finally he decides to focus, but not on the part Jazz might have been expecting

" You... were built to fight the Quintessons?"

Jazz nods

"Course I was. Why else?"

Prowl looks....Very worried and somehow sorry for Jazz.

That's weird.

Jazz lets this detail just linger in his mind. He's not sure what conclusion to draw from it yet. And it's very likely that his poor knowledge of the unfamiliar language is setting him up. He's not sure.

------

Prowl has wheels. Jazz gives himself a mental smack for not paying attention to them in the first three seconds, but it doesn't matter now.

Because Prowl has freaking wheels in his shoulders and Jazz has a bunch of questions in his head.

Why the fuck does he have wheels??? In a place like this??

Prowl looks up at him.

"Something wrong?"

Jazz reaches out his hand mesmerized and spins one of the wheels.

The wheel spins.

What an amazing world.

Prowl looks confused again

"Jazz?"

"What are they for?"

Prowl faintly twitches one of his weird little wings.

"To drive."

Jazz spins the wheel again

"But you can't drive them! I mean, they're...uh."

He tries to find the right words in his head to say "inside your shoulders" but. Shit. He doesn't know how to say it so he accepts his linguistic defeat and helplessly twitches his horns.

"...They're on top."

Prowl tilts his head, clearly missing the point, and turns one of his legs around

"I've got another ones here...?"

Jazz instantly squats down and. Yep. There are wheels in the legs too.

Prowl moves his foot away before Jazz can spin that wheel too.

"I can just show you if you want."

That's a great idea. A fantastic one. Jazz is hellbent on seeing how it would actually work, because all his brain offers him is "fall on your back and awkwardly drag yourself along the ground?"

Prowl doesn't fall anywhere.

Instead, he suddenly ALL starts moving and freaking folds into himself? Jazz isn't sure what exactly he was expecting to see, but watching another mech fall apart like lego sure as hell wasn't that????

Not falling apart, he realizes a moment later.

Is it reassembling? Into something else???

A second ago, Prowl was standing next to him, and now there is a

Is that a fucking car???

Jazz can't say anything more clever than a loud "HAH???"

It is indeed a car. The design is very odd and Jazz can't recognize the model, but it looks like something vaguely race-y?

He pats the roof of it.

"That's so cool!!!"

The car somehow manages to look awkward and moves away from him sideways like some weird metal crab.

What the- what the hell-

------————————-

Prowl's mech has an amazing face.

Not that Jazz is staring, but he can appreciate the amazing attention to details. The eyes, the nose, even the lips. Who and why would make a mech with such lifelike face? That ..would make sense if Prowl had to appear in front of a camera, wouldn't it? Maybe he's some kind of celebrity like Blurr?

Jazz doubts it. Prowl doesn't strike him as someone who's used to attention.

But it's a good face, yeah.

Prowl valiantly ignores his staring, but after ten minutes gives up

“What?”

Jazz shrugs. He's been doing that a lot lately.

"You have a really cool face."

Prowl chokes on air and looks confused again. If you look closer. What is this face even made of? It looks metallic but it bends??? Literally...how?? How does it work?

Jazz is taller than Prowl, so he has to bend down to get a closer look. He wants to ask if the mech's face was modeled after the pilot's, but. Shit. How do you put it into simple words ?

Man. Okay. Uh. Appearance. How do you say "real?" True-positive? Wait, no, true and false are from English, this new language must contain one state word for true and false at the same time.

Prowl watches Jazz's struggle with the patience of a true buddhist monk.

What word even summarizes the state of being true or false? Hot and cold is "temperature", heavy and light is "weight" and then..

Jazz fumbles his fingers helplessly.

"What's the word for. You know how."

He claps his hands hard, and then again, barely audible.

Loud and quiet.

"Sound-positive, sound-negative, right?"

Prowl nods.

"But if I speak. I-mouth-positive."

He claps once more, quietly, barely audible

"I-mouth-positive. Sound-positive. Word-question?

If I do “quiet” but say “loud”. If I do one thing and say another, that's called-?

Prowl twitches his little wings.

"Ah. That would be veracity-negative."

Jazz makes happy finger guns.

"Yes! This..."

He points to Prowl's face

"Appearance-veracity-positive?"

He could probably phrase it more...accurately. Jazz chews his lips in concentration and tries to elaborate

"Appearance-veracity-positive-you?"

Prowl tilts his head

" Uh. Yeah? That's what I look like. I didn't change anything. It's..."

He pauses uncertainly

"Why are you asking me that?"

Jazz gives a thumbs up

"How do you say 'impressive'? Something like "eyes-positive-emotions-positive." Or it would be "good." Good sounds kind of cheap.

Jazz decides to add a couple more positive modifiers on top just in case. He's always been generous with compliments.

Prowl's wings bounce up funny.

One of the passing lilac aliens whistles.

_______________________________

Prowl thinks Jazz is fragging weird.

Okay, to be fair. Prowl has never had to be anyone's guide to interplanetary interactions.

He'd heard that races making contact with the rest of the galaxy for the first time tended to be weird. It's alright. He can understand that. Which of course doesn't mean it's any easier for him to be at the center of it all...everything.

Jazz is clingy. Friendly. He's definitely never been off his planet before, so everything around him surprises him.

Prowl's obviously “surprising” too, but there's this weird familiarity in Jazz's attitude towards him.

Prowl thinks it's because they're both mechanical life forms. It's the only guess he has that makes sense. But Prowl realizes pretty quickly that Jazz only looks like a Cybertronian at first glance. It's the details. Small and disturbing details.

Jazz was built to fight the Quintessons. His entire body, his entire design was made for it.

Now that Prowl knows that, he's starting to see it. Now that he knows where to look, he can't stop noticing.

All the plates are either round or streamlined and sharp.

He has no face, but his head is shaped in such a way that it would be very hard to grab onto. Or to hit it.

Prowl's processor involuntarily tosses him numbers.

Every bend and edge. Every detail. The visor isn't just curved, it's arched at the most perfectly calculated angle to take hits. His chest plates have the perfect ratio of thickness and curvature so that any direct hit ricochets or slips without going through the plate directly.

And Prowl is scared to even begin to analyze the structure of those legs. He originally saw their design as something similar to Empurata's. But no. The Empurata had always made it their goal to humiliate and diminish their victims. The limbs that the Empurata created were simple and often horribly, impractically awkward.

Jazz's legs are an engineering marvel and Prowl honestly almost wants to take a closer look. They bend at...how many? Five? Six places?

He leans forward quietly, pretending to want to change his posture, trying to get a better angle. There's at least one more joint under the front plates. Seven then?

Huh.

Jazz snorts

"Like what you see?"

Prowl flinches and quickly looks away. Idiot. Just because Jazz’s head is pointed in the other direction doesn't necessarily mean that's where his gaze was pointed as well.

"I apologize."

Jazz chuckles

"Hey, don't be sorry. You're giving me a reason to show off~"

Prowl gives up. Okay. Maybe it's just that Jazz's weird openness is contagious.

"Your legs are pretty..."

"Cool," Jazz offers

Prowl nods diplomatically.

"Unusual. I think cool too."

Would it be too weird to ask exactly how many joints are in them? Perhaps yes, that's personal medical information after all.

Jazz takes a few joyful little leaps

"They let me walk on walls."

"I have to admit that's impressive."

______________

"Can I join you?"

The little furry alien folds their arms across their chest and says something that...sounds disgruntled. Jazz honestly can't understand a word of it. He just saw the aliens playing something remotely resembling cards and he got curious. He doesn't remember having a fight with any of them yet.

The alien stares at him expectantly for a couple seconds and then waves one of their limbs and switches to a language familiar to Jazz

"No. Go back where you came from."

Uhm. Rude.

One of the lilac creatures smiles guiltily

"We don't play with robots."

Jazz stiffens

"But I don't..."

His attempt to explain is interrupted by the furry alien

"I don't care what you say. Whatever's underneath the metal, whatever scientific nonsense you come up with. This..."

He gestures toward the entire Jazz’s mech.

"...it's a machine. We don't play with machines. It's an unspoken rule. So go back to your corner and stay out of our way."

The lilac alien folds his limbs in embarrassment

"Hey, there's no need to be so rude."

"I'm just stating facts!"

"You could have done it politely..."

Prowl raises his eyebrows and moves away, making more room for Jazz on the bench.

"Kicked you out?"

Jazz sits down next to him and confusedly begins to play with his own fingers

"They wouldn't even let me explain."

Prowl taps him on the shoulder.

"It's hard to explain anything to them. They think you're a soulless machine just because you look like one."

Jazz snorts

"Well, that's just stupid."

Prowl shrugs

"They think you don't have a soul, so you shouldn't participate in their social interactions."

Jazz twitches his horns angrily

"That's..fucking idiotic."

"Well yeah" Prowl picks up "how can they judge whether we're sapient or not?"

"Uh-huh!"

"Where's the evidence that they themselves have more 'soul' than mold?"

"Ye..Wait what?"

(..What the hell??)

Prowl frowns.

"I should probably be more...sorry. You're new to this topic and...I'll try to explain in an unbiased manner."

Jazz nods awkwardly

Prowl pinches the bridge of his nose

"In general. We don't really meet their standards of ''alive and sapient being'' and they don't meet ours. Because of that, we...don't get along."

Jazz senses that something doesn't add up. Something dramatically big and obvious. But Prowl already looks annoyed, and Jazz is uncomfortable stressing him out with another game of charades. Probably should hold off on discussing such complicated topics until he's talking better.

____________

Prowl finds himself mentally reevaluating Jazz.

He no longer thinks Jazz is just weird.

Jazz is terrifying.

When their transport is attacked by a bunch of Quintessons, Prowl's processor tells him they're totally screwed.

The monsters have the numerical advantage, the ship is full of tiny, fragile organics, and Prowl only has one random tourist on his side who's in space for the first time.

When Jazz excitedly jumps up and asks to be let "outside to have some fun" Prowl's processor says it's suicide. If you squint and tilt your head, the stats numbers add up into a neat little ship that goes down swiftly and surely.

Then he has no time for statistics. Because one of the organics opens the airlock for Jazz and before Prowl can say anything his space tourist is already out the window.

Frag.

Frag, frag frag frag frag frag frg

"Jazz wait!"

Prowl climbs out onto the roof of the transport just in time to see Jazz tear a limb off one of the Quintesson monsters.

The sight is...creepy.

Jazz obviously doesn't have enough strength to just yank it off, so he sort of grabs the tentacle with his hand and then very quickly rotates his forearm a bunch of times literally twisting it off. The monster screams and wriggles and tries to rip Jazz's arm off, but he just lets it clench its teeth on his plates.

Prowl is in pain from just looking at this.

The monster clenches its jaws.

Its teeth cut furrows in the armor.

Jazz doesn't even twitch.

Things only get more interesting from here on out.

Earlier, all Prowl had was Jazz's word. Jazz said his job was to fight the Quintessons. Prowl automatically assumed that to have a job like that, Jazz had to be at least somewhat good at it.

This? It's not "good". It's a killing machine.

And Prowl is, just a little bit, fascinated.

Jazz tears through monsters with more than skill. No.

Prowl's processor is speeding up, analyzing the data.

These moves aren't just devastatingly efficient. They're habitual.

Jazz rips off limbs and locks jaws. Jazz knows exactly where to strike and for how long that strike will knock the creature down.

At one point, he just takes a moment to jump on top of one of the monsters and Prowl can have the pleasure of watching the sheer panic and confusion on the face of the usually inexpressively furious creature.

Quintesson twists and twitches and struggles to throw Jazz off, but he doesn't seem at all bothered by the constantly moving and shifting surface. He's clinging on tight as a damn insecticon. In a way that Prowl himself, with his angular legs, probably never could.

He also doesn't seem to react to pain whatsoever.

Either so used to it or unable to feel it at all? Prowl's not sure.

Jazz takes dozens of hits. He's been dropped, scratched and bitten. His plates are full of fresh grooves intersecting older ones, but they go completely unrecognized.

It's creepy. It's unnatural.

Three monsters at once try to squeeze Jazz into a circle, and Prowl curses himself for not thinking to ask for Jazz's comm. There's no sound in space, making screaming impossible, so Prowl just pulls out his rifle and shoots one of the Quintessons.

The creature twitches in agony and loses all interest in the battle struggling to shake off the sudden source of pain.

Jazz smacks one of the remaining monsters in the face and quickly bounces back to a more comfortable distance from the huge teeth and looks toward Prowl. Spotting a rifle and happily making finger guns again.

Prowl looks at the fresh teeth marks on Jazz's hands and thinks...wow...that's some wild dangerous alien slag.

Then he looks at the angular visor and the little moving horns and bouncy movements and corrects himself. Not slag. And not that weird. Probably.

The weirdest thing he's seen was organic life and he highly doubts that anyone or anything can overtake it.

[thegempage]

hmm. having Thoughts™

[mbat]

i am so mad