#my digital sketches look like garbage

[superintendent-b]

Rooks and Maxwell. An unstoppable force

thinking about halo again and wanted to play gmod too so. heres this. enjoy

[doink-boink]

People who draw with IbisPaint with their FINGER are cracked dude.

[alchemiclee]

I did a sketch on paper with a pencil for the first time in like a decade because i'm definitely not obsessed with him.....I might put it on my tablet and redraw it digitally to make it look better when I can make myself not have art block and migraines

[makingapril]

october 1st 2024: drafts!

preacher: i'm attaching slightly improved versions of our original drafts, but i'll also include mine and scott's garbage sketches under the cut because i think they're a little bit funny

(image id available through tumblr's accessibility options)

this is a slightly revised version of my original concept for "APRIL".

the main functionality i wanted for "APRIL" was for her to be able to read out words from the templeOS god word app, and ideally without needing keyboard input – hence the microphone. ideally all of her parts are going to fit inside a hollowed out mannequin or doll, which will probably just be the torso, so that she's more portable. for the same reason, i want her to run off a power bank – i want to be able to take her places!

if we manage, we're going to give her an animated LED face which moves to indicate when she's speaking. the way i first pitched it, i wanted it to also change a bit depending on how she "felt" – for example, frowning if the environment was hotter than ideal for the raspberry pi to operate on. but that's a bit beyond our current scope right now. i don't think we even ordered a thermostat.

scott drew the following wiring diagrams based off my original sketch. here revised digitally for readability's sake.

(image id available through the tumblr accessibility options although i fear it's not very good in this case. feedback appreciated).

scott: I decided to go with the raspberry pi zero 2w because it's what I've got experience coding on, it's relatively cheap for the "brains" of the operation (heh) and can perform both tasks from the godword prophecy generation, speaker operation and led matrix operation simultaneously. Plus its small enough to keep the circuit lightweight and fit inside the initial mannequin design.

This drawing fits no kind of engineering standard by the way lol. It was an initial sketch closer to a wiring diagram to see how it'd physically setup and wrap my head around transforming it from mains power to being theoretically portable and running on powerbanks. Unfortunately the LED matrix is really fucking power hungry so needs its own power supply of really specific voltage and current draws hence all the converters.

Also because Im using the smaller and cheaper pi, as oppossed to a stronger system like the pi4, it doesn't have any audio out jack so I plan to use the micro usb for audio out which means yet again I need another adapter for a soundcard and usb to micro usb adapters and all that jazz. Usually sound out can be done through the GPIO pins but the LED matrix takes so many pins that I cant really take anything form them so I had to look for other ways of doing it. Plus this way I get to add a soundcard so if we wanna add microphone support or anything later on we can :)

(Also this is all a little obtuse because I'm trying to do it as much as plug and play and screw terminal style as possible rather than actually solder connections for ease of access and initial setup, but this also works for modular design and component swapping later too so its cool.)

preacher: another reason we're going with plug&play is becauuseeeeee i don't own a soldering iron 😭 it's ok. it's ok.

our silly initial drafts under the cut for your viewing pleasure.

preacher: these were made around 2 weeks ago, so about september 15th ish.

as you can see the first "APRIL" drawing was beautifully drawn with my fat fingers in the facebook messenger photo editor. i think it holds up. lol.

[refuse2analyze]

homeless, help needed - offering various commissions

i havent been in/active in the art community for a while, and to be honest my return is for selfish reasons. i had to unexpectedly pack up and leave my home due to my bad family situation becoming significantly worse in the beginning of this year. so, i’ve been homeless since march. i’ll add the TLDR of my story towards the bottom of this if anybody wants it, but for now i’ll cut to the chase :p

cashapp: $uluvrory / venmo: circusfool / ask for zelle (unfortunately my paypal got hacked and i simply do not have the mental capacity to deal with that rn)

because of my desperate situation, i’m doing name your price commissions, as low as $5. of course the quality of the art will match the amount paid, which is why i’ll do anything ranging from a traditional sketch to a digital painting.

if you’re a real kind heart i would greatly appreciate any kind of donations, though i’d feel guilty not repaying the favor with at least a doodle

i have a general idea of what prices will amount to what kind of art, so dm me what you’re willing to pay and we can discuss!

since im still setting up my tumblr again, more examples are on my instagram of the same username! not currently logged in, though -> my situation below

this is a very summarized story, and i’ll refrain much information for safety purposes. certain family i lived with was known to mistreat members of our family. her biggest punching bags have 1. died 2. left due to her treatment. so i became her biggest target

she was supportive of my lgbt identity, until i came out as trans. currently i find the most comfort being unlabeled in every aspect of my identity, but at the time, i came out as trans, and discovered that this was not a safe space anymore.

things worsened at home, and i was practically only there to sleep due to fear and anxiety. being out daily from sunrise to night was miserable, being put in very uncomfortable and unsafe situations, which would absolutely have been worse if i didnt have a place to sleep.

i was told i cannot be out of the house like that, and i had to stay indoors, not allowed to isolate from her, or i had to leave. given how unsafe i felt around her and in that house at all, the only answer i felt i had was to leave. i knew it was going to have to happen since i initially moved with her at 15, i just didn’t expect it to have to happen so fast (i was 19 at the time, now 20)

i moved in with a friend’s dad. but unfortunately he lived in a filthy house with black mold all over the walls and vents of each room, all kinds of bug infestations, floor covered with garbage, and about 20 people (give or take), many on drugs, with constant fighting and violence. on top of that, her dad is a very scary guy, who knows my dad, a very scary guy, both in gangs and unpredictable due to their drug usage.

while here each paycheck went to clothing since my stuff was stolen on the daily (including expensive things, like my nintendo switch. man.) i had to leave that place unexpectedly and so the only items i took with me were what i had on my person when i went to work, and i had to rebuy everything from scratch (clothing, hygiene items, underwear, socks…)

after that i was floating around and as of recently i’ve been staying at a youth shelter! ive made it so far on my own, but my savings is getting pretty dry, and my minimum wage work is only giving me 8-12 hours per week, which is very hard to live off of. im frantically looking for other jobs, but its been a month with very little luck

i hope this post doesnt come across as too pity-seeking. any kind of assistance is so appreciated!!

[melishade]

So I have been quite productive when it came to art, which I'm proud of!

First photo is AOP Optimus Prime Holoform full body shot.

Second picture is AOP Megatron Holoform full body shot.

Third picture is Peaceful Timeline related, which Ymir finding the courage to take the initiative to kiss Oshern, getting reactions

(Optimus:...he dies. Maria: Papa no! Solveig: You need to calm down!)

And the last picture is the Mikasa vs. Megatron fight from the Hizuru OVA. (I know the swords look like garbage but I was happy with what I was doing.)

I'll definitely make these digital, but it would take time. I've also done a real bad sketch of my spidersona and I'm working on an animatic that should come out soon. Here's a sneak peek:

Hanji is choosing life in this moment.

Reblogs and likes would be really nice though.

[themeeplord]

Hi! I'd like as much thoughts on this as possible so I'd appreciate if you gave it a little look❤️

I'm trying to think of ways I can have a membership section on my ko-fi without bringing in too much new work into my already filled schedule while still providing fun things for my members.

Some things I've thought of so far:

Posting wips and projects that are on hold or abandoned.

Answering questions regarding my art process and try to provide art advice to the best of my ability.

Sharing full digital sketch pages and full pages from my sketchbook.

Posting my big art pieces free of watermarks and in the highest quality ko-fi can provide.

Please if you have any suggestions for things I could add, or think my ideas are absolute garbage please let me know and give me advice! Let me know also if you like these ideas and would actually pay to get access to this.

Please be honest and let me know what you think! I want this to be good and feel worth it for everyone while still not burning myself out doing it. :'>

Put your thoughts in my ask box or in the comments❤️

[i-got-da-rubes]

Welcome to my masterpost, because I can’t keep track of my own garbage anymore

Hi! I’m Rubes, but I can also go by Snirkish. I use she/they pronouns, heavy on the they/them parts, and use masculine terms like “bro” or “sir.” I draw, write, and I really like turtles. :]

Where to find me

@i-got-da-rubes on Tumblr (you are here)

@i-got-da-rubes on Instagram (unused)

Snirkish on Ao3 (why is the name different? I dunno, I was feeling quirky)

My tags

TMN'T' - Posts about my TMNT iteration!

My art - Including digital art, sketches, edits, and writing

My writing - Specifically my writing-relates stuff, likely all fan fiction

My edits - Specifically my edits

Turtles - (most of) My posts and reblogs relating to TMNT

Garbage - Raves, vents, goofing off and general stupidity

Reblogs - Need I say more?

Art junk I wanna save - Yeah

Asks

My TMNT fan fictions:

Full Grown - Mystic Breakdown [Rise Raph]

-Short Summary: In the midst of the apocalypse, the boy’s powers get a little out of hand.

Lavender Blood Runs - Mystic Breakdown [Rise Donnie]

-Short Summary: Donnie’s shell gets a little attached and he has to face a new kind of pain.

Call Me Crisis Jones - [General media TMNT]

- Short Summary: Casey begins to discover that his relationship with April isn't what either of them wants anymore, his dad may have had more of an impact on him than he realized, and Raph has been looking at him a little funny. Who knew sexuality could be so complicated?

Indeterminism - [ROTTMNT Post show pre movie] Tag

- Short Summary: Cassandra screams at the men who were supposed to be her fathers.

Thank you for getting this far in my post. Have a wonderful day.

[betty-cadaver]

Making a mess of things.

Forgiving yourself for “terrible” art.

Artists, do you ever have moments of evasive creativity? A brain fogs powerful enough to tickle John Carpenter’s fancy? Has your inspiration gone on a long stay holiday without you?

I get it a lot. Dusty, western style droughts, tumble weed and all, where the well of inspiration has long dried up. But it’s only temporary as I know at some point the rains will come and I’ll take another sip of weird and wonderful ideas.

My art is like my mood, only in the sense it’s chaotic, often messy. I don’t really draw my emotions per say, I just mean that I fluctuate between styles, level of detail, mediums used and effort.

I find myself scribbling something I later find to be utterly garbage and yet can’t seem to bring myself to throw it out or delete it. The below example is a recent example of this. I just drew patterns in black testing out a new brush in procreate. Next thing I know I’m slapping down colour like a 6year old with a crayonin one hand, full sugar coke in the other and accidentally made a knock-off Piet Mondrian & Joan Miro hybrid. I suppose if my art actually was an expression of my true inner emotions, this piece would be entitled “Bleh!” and yet I’m oddly fond of it. It’s a moment of my life, my time, my brains ‘auto-pilot’ let loose.

I think losing ideas is just a part of the process that we, as artists, must go through. We aren’t fountains of constant recycled masterpieces, we’re mere human beings. I can only speak from my own perspective, but I find myself coming up with some wonderful theme and I become obsessed. I’ll work at it in multiple styles and sizes and colors. And one day I’ll wake up with nothing, all my passion suddenly lost. Work will go unfinished with promises I’ll do it later (I typically don’t. And on rare occasions I do, weeks and months will have passed).

I look through my papers, sketch books and tablet with shame now and then at the sad, abandoned projects peering back at me with a glint of hope that I might just take a moment to finish them. I guiltily walk away.

Again, it’s all part of the process. It isn’t forever. I’m resting my brain and waiting to ride the waves of inspiration once more. You cannot force the process or you lose your passion and produce, oh I don’t know, something you hope looks like an edgy purple pop art abstract piece using all the digital dot brushes created.

So I suppose what I’m trying to say here is this. Good or bad your art is still art. We can’t make ideas pop into our heads at will. It’s ok do things for the sake of it or do things differently. It’s all just a part of our journey and sometimes we need to just slap colours down randomly in a way that almost commits forgery against 2 of the modern greats.

Forgive yourself your bad days and just let it flow naturally.

[clarktooncrossing]

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW! IT IS I, SANTA CLARK! Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost is nipping at your nose. Mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again. All the dogs in the neighborhood somehow learned to bark Jingle Bells in sync. Yet retail workers are still more annoyed with Mariah Carey. Snow is getting shoveled, tossed, and formed into sentient beings leading parades without permits. It makes for an excellent distraction as the Krampus abducts children for bad behavior. Fruitcake is exchanged only to find its permanent home in the garbage. Terrorists have hijacked the Holiday office party right before your boss can give you a Jelly of the Month Club membership as your bonus. And of course, the Turducken has returned to wreak its fiery vengeance upon an unsuspecting world! If all this doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, perhaps this festive look into the life of a Clarktoon will!

Having traversed the infinitude of time and space means Rosie has come into contact with many celebrations. Yet it’s Christmas that continues to fascinate her. Not to say she doesn’t love Hanukkah, Bahdi Day, or Diwali. All Holidays are equal in her wide-eyes. It’s just that Christmas comes with a message of being kind to all people and continuing to do so throughout the year. A message the good-natured cosmic cutie takes to heart whenever exploring new galaxies. Plus it helps that said galaxies have their own version of this Holiday, albeit with different names. Most of them even come with their own Santa Claus, Rosie having met most of them after discovering the multiversal Counsel of Clauses. Hoping to see one of their members put something under her tree this year, Rosie traveled to the dimension of eternal yuletide to find herself a tree and decorate it! Though she may have gone a tad overboard with the topper…

Using a real star for Rosie’s tree topper was an idea too cute / funny not to pass up. Not that it didn’t take me a few attempts to get here. First there was the tree itself. Going with a traditional pine tree was not an option. Rosie could travel across different dimensions, why settle for such an average, boring plant? Naturally she’d go with something more visually splendid, like this Calvorus plant that just so happens to be tree shaped. After that were the ornaments. My first idea was to make’m look like atoms, but it never came out right no matter what technique I tried. Then I thought I could make them miniature planets, but I figured that’d take too much focus away from Rosie and her star. Hence why in the end I went for regular round ornaments with a bizarre pattern. Finally there was Rosie and the star, both of which had their own challenges. In terms of the star, I was afraid my sketch wouldn’t translate well into digital. As you can see, those worries were misplaced. Same thing happened with Rosie, since I decided to have her wrap around the tree with her cosmic tail that @zerna added when she drew the character for a commission. Honestly, I don’t think I did as good a job as the insane invader did, but overall I’m very pleased with how this pic turned out. I hope you all enjoy this too and remember not to use real stars for your trees!

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

[samitheanxiousbean]

I originally just started doodling and my favorite class in school was art class even if I hated colouring due to me not knowing how to, then later the way my art teacher went about it made me start to hate drawing (For context, to her the only real art was with a canvas and acrilic brush, and you weren't even allowed to use a pencil for anything but the very VERY early sketch, she also didn't give us must help just basically teaching to eyetrace and that's it) and honestly I really disliked everything I made, to the point I no longer have any art pre 2020 because I ether burner it or threw it away and almost exclusively only drew once I was forced to

what made me quit completely was that I noticed that looking over the years, my "style" and art quality just objectively downgraded

...then 2020 happened, for some reason I can't even remember exactly why I started making minecraft skins, mostly for my friends, who's quality improved over time and I just liked the vibe, after realizing it was essentially pixel art i tried to look into pixel art some youtube channels such as Brandon's or Pixel overload were great help, aswell as me just watching people draw both in and outside of pixel art as I liked watching the process and I just continued to randomly doodle shapes and random stuff, I gained a liking to experimenting, doing stuff even if I knew I couldn't do it well, and pushed my boundries more and more to better myself (and even though my art still looks like shit, I won't lie and say it hasn't approved compared to 2020) I began looking at stuff of completely different art mediums and tried to incorporate it into the medium of pixel art, and I just continued, and still continue to push myself further out of my comfort zone cause I found out I like experimenting! (for example recently I've been forcing myself to draw actual backgrounds for artwork) and eventually I branched out to digital art in general (still using ibis cause no good pc xd) which I've also improved at! to the point I got the confidence to share extemely handpicked art outside of just my discord friend servers and dms (and that place was twitter, which I later started doing well on after posting 2021's pride month artwork (Sadly twitter chose to fuck me over almost immidiatly after but that's not the point of this post so I'll not mention it aside from this lil tidbit) and I was happy to see people actually somehow enjoy the garbage I put out xd) and yeah! I found out that pixel art and experimentation was just something I enjoyed and I'm sticking to it ^-^

I've grown friends with several artists who are much better then me who I reach out to for feedback when I can so...yeah I guess the things that mattered most are accepting and improving based on critisizm (instead of seeing it as a persional attack as I've seen some other artists do on twitter lol), getting to know other artists and watching other artists work to improve yourself, finding the medium that was right for you, pushing out of your comfort zone when you feel like you're ready or you've been in it for too long, and most of all

Never giving up fully!!

so two things: i have a topic idea for a video essay ive wanted to do for awhile, BUT id also like to get some outsider opinions. SO.

could everyone who considers themself, or remembers what it was like to be a beginner artist online talk about your experiences? im talking like, what websites did you use? what were the negative things that stuck out to you? what helped you get by? DID you get by? did you quit, and why?

and, if you do comment - let me know if youd be alright if i mention you by name/user in the vid or not, both are fine!

[knightbird]

Anna!! Everyone in the town hates her guts. But I don't. I love you, Anna.

(I'm trying to learn speedpainting... this one was about 3.5 hours. Could be better, could be worse :P )

Progress gif under the cut!

[certainkindofscientist]

i honestly dunno, this was really just practice tbh

[blackcatarts]

fishsticks.png

Aggy and I finally made another collab!!

i did the sketch and @elesii did the (incredible, astounding, amazing, beautiful, shocking, stunning) lineart and coloring!

[tiniest-hands-in-all-the-land]

I have to write an artist’s statement for my writing for visual arts class tonight then present it tomorrow along with 10 images of my art, and I’m dying inside because literally the only stuff I do is self-indulgent fanart.

Usually I use the term ‘literally’ way too copiously but like this time I legit mean it Self-indulgent fanart is li T E r aLL y  the only thing I draw

[ambivartence]

sorry in advance if you've already answered a question like this but i just wanted to ask, how do you improve on drawing?? i think especially for things like coloring, shading, and lighting , its been difficult for me to be happy with how it looks because compared to the sketch (that i think already looks nice) the colors just seem sort of flat and muddy and i feel like i dont have a good grip on what colors to put where and how to make it look unflatt if that makes sense! just curious on maybe what kinds of practices and studying you do for this(if any))<33 obv you dont have to answer if you dont want to, and thank you for being one of my inspirations, love youu<33333

hihi!! for simply shading/lighting, i would suggest you only work in black and white until you're totally comfortable with developing values. why? marco bucci explains it really nicely in this video but basically if you have good values u can have absolutely garbage nonsense colors and it will still make sense aka when i did this lol:

i'm guessing you're more interested in colored artwork though since black and white drawings can't be "flat and muddy" bc theyre in grayscale lol. for coloring, this is so tough for me too so i thought about this for a day or so and i came up with 3 tips that might help^^ 1) getting colors directly from photo reference or color reference, 2) manually adding filters/color harmony, and 3) studying color theory

i always work from photo reference so it informs a lot of my coloring/shading/lighting and often when i don't understand what color I'm looking at i directly just eye drop it and realize that what i thought was purple was actually just a gray-red. working from an actual picture helps make sure my colors don't look strange and while i used to think eye-dropping felt like "cheating" when i worked digitally honestly i've learned a lot from it and honestly if i stare at a color long enough i can get it pretty accurately now but i'm just too lazy so eye-dropping just speeds up my workflow (plus i hate digital color pickers anyways they r not built for artists and i wrote an entire paper on it in college once lmao) anyways here's an example of a color study i did by directly eye-dropping from a gif with @quokki's incredible coloring (love u ale <3)

if you're not working from a picture directly, you can still use other pictures or artwork as a "color reference" which I used to do a lot. i like to look at art from other ppl with pretty colors and create a color palette to use in my own drawings. for example, the color palette for this felix painting came from a piece (idr which) by Simón Prades on instagram but this palette is really easy to use since it's linear values it's like working in black and white but comes out looking cooler LOL

Recently for my lee know kiki's delivery service drawing i felt that the colors seemed a little flat n muddy to me because it was in an animated flat coloring style (lol) so I added a filter layer (just a flat apricot color set to overlay at 25% on photoshop) that livened up the whole thing and made it feel more cohesive. It's a pretty subtle difference to other people but made a world of difference to me :) it helped take the muddiness out of the shadows of his face and the glass reflection and took the painting from gloomy rainy day with stale bread to warm sunny day with fresh bread :]

and finally if u are interested in actually studying colors and lighting and shading and stuff these r some of the youtube videos and channels that i think do a great job explaining these very cool concepts:

pre-realism vs post-realism is a cool video about the difference between the mentality of how beginners draw vs how experts draw and kinda blew my mind tbh i think the big color takeaway from this video is that something that kids would color (like green grass) might actually be a totally different color to an artist's eye (dark yellow, red gray, even a super desaturated purple) depending on a realistic lighting situation

nathan fowkes did a 3-part guest talk series on understanding color temperature and relationships: (1) (2) (3) also not coloring but i love his video on value massing

this lecture on what charles bernard calls "the mother color principle" takes the "filtering" tip that i mentioned earlier to a much more developed level (it's an hour long so just skip through it.. u get the gist of what he's saying in a few min but the whole demo is also cool too)

i mentioned him earlier but marco bucci has many 10 min digestable videos about color on his channel that i like :) (also this lighting/value video is great too)

sorry i don't really know exactly how basic or advanced i should cater my advice but i hope this helps some anon^^ lmk if u have questions or if u ever want feedback my inbox and dms r always open