#not used to painting/rendering so this was practice

[0ctosquid-cd]

a little late but, made this as a celebration of the 14th anniversary of SATBK!

[hinamie]

for @cherryys who (rightfully!) hcs lategame megumi as having a bunch of scars befitting his status as resident punching bag

[belligerentbagel]

suffuse

[glossolali]

some soft wizards inspired by last week's wonderful fandom wide onslaught of the same 💜💕

[cold-neon-ocean]

why did love put a gun in my hand?  was it for redemption, was it for revenge? was it for the thrill of pushing my hope to the edge?

[averlym]

no one would notice if i ever vanished // if bodies could sustain // this never-ending army // like blood pumping through a vein

(click for better resolution!)

:OOO hello. anyway since these are all posters i'd have in an ideal world or smth and i'd like to store the high res versions somewhere,,, here's the google drive folder for them? hehe ''

close up!

[rak-radial]

Oc Au where everyone has cool tattoos

[send-me-a-puffalope]

i swear every time i open krita i have to relearn how to draw. one of these days im gonna figure out a style that i like and use it. consistently

[maydays-medbay]

Some shading practice with Halcyon and Paradigm! I'm really digging this style, and I'm definitely learning a lot about the different layer types and what they can do to create these more interesting and dynamic shaded works! Overlay layers are my prized children in these. Mmm, the way they can really sell a glow is so nice.

[pinksilvace]

Wish we could have seen more of what happened in the human realm :(

[skitskatdacat63]

Some coloring practice w my ocs :)

Though I must say, I always really just like the lineart the way it is, I guess they're perfect just the way they are

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[ryochinst]

experimenting .....

[foervraengd]

Mirre’s “How i render gemstones” tutorial!

(note: image above is not what is shown in the walkthrough. It is an example piece)

Ingredients:

Art program that has layers and selection tools

Patience (hubris or stubbornness is fine too)

(recommended) photo references of gemstones and/or prisms

(Optional but very helpful) Knowledge on how to use Reference layers and anti-overflow in Clip studio Paint

For this tutorial i am going to use clip studio’s “anti-overflow” feature. This post is not going to explain how to use that specific setting but you should be able to find guides on how to use it on clip studio’s official website or on youtube.

Please Note: The result of this technique will not 100% represent real life gemstones. These are more simplified but should still make an impression of the brilliance and appeal of gems, crystals and diamonds.

If you don’t work in CSP: the best workaround is to use the polygonal lasso selection tool for the same purpose.

This ended up being a long post so I am putting it under the readmore:

First off; Basic idea on how the light refracts inside a solid transparent object:

Wether it is acrylic, glass, water or crystal, the way light pass through more or less should behave the same as long as it is solid and not hollow inside. Pay attention to how the darkest parts of the stone goes along the inner edges, leaving a ”mid tone” sort of in the center. However, this might vary depending on the light setting. But it is a generally good rule-of-thumb to follow if you’re drawing something not based on a photo. Another thing to pay attention to here is how the placement of the highlight will lit up the inside of the gem in a parallel line. It also shows through on the cast shadow.

Light refraction on a cube:

I have already made two posts on this, so definitely go through them:

CUBE BREAKDOWN POST HERE

But a rough summary from those two links would be: Every side/facet of a gem or a cube etc refracts the light individually and not as one entity (that would make it look hollow and not solid). Think of it like how each piece in a broken mirror individually reflect your face back to you. Like a weird patchwork!

Putting this into practice:

For this tutorial I’m going to be nice to myself and not try to draw perfectly accurate gemstones. Instead I’m gonna draw them with a more ”natural” looking set of facets. Which actually isnt as common in real world as video games makes us think. Some crystals have geometric shapes naturally, but a lot of other stones are not as fancy. Anyway, im taking artistic liberty on these example stones because the technique I’m going to use will work for these just fine.

So, in clip studio paint, I first draw the stones on a vector layer. I give them facets for the front side. Then I duplicate the layer, remove the front facets and replace them with the facets on the back of the stone. The third image here shows both layers visible on top of each other. I now put these into a layer folder and mark the folder as ”reference”.

Now, on a layer below the lineart folder, fill with your base tone. Then make a layer on top (if you can clip it to the base tone, do that), this layer is where you decide where the highlight will be placed. In some cases the highlight is only lighting up one single facet - it really depends on the design of the stone. You can also blend and soften the highlight here if it looks good for you, just make sure not every facet is highlighted. The highlight layer should be on top of all the other layers clipped to the base tone layer.

Now it is time for the juicy juicy stuff! Turn on both lineart layers so they’re both visible. I hid the hilight layer here because it was in the way, but might not be needed in your case. Make a layer clipped to the base tone and paint in the darkest tone. This is where anti-overflow helps me out, because when i run my brush over all these crossed lines it will make the stroke pop in and out for each facet. If you dont use CSP, this is where you can use the lasso tool and select every second facet. It will take a bit more time but it should work similarly.

After the darkest tones I then make a layer for the inside light that the highlight has lit up. Here i keep it inside the darkest tone but this might vary depending on the light setting. If it looks good to me, then that’s what i stick to.

The way I approach rendering the facets here is like the grid in the example images above, every shade and tone appear more or less in each facet but the amount is relative to their position. So a gradient wouldnt have a smooth transition; it would be slightly scewed in each square on this example grid. Essentially like how some bathroom window glass panes look like.

Now it’s time to hide the lineart layer folder and check if the gemstones look decent to you. If not, then you can look up some reference photos and analyze where the values group together the most; be careful not to focus too much on the photos 500 million sparkles. Squint your eyes or blur the reference and try to see how the overall values behae.

I, personally, am satisfied with these rocks so I slap on a gradient map (you can manually color in them too if that’s your thing) and call it a day. The lit up inside of a gemstone tend to have a brighter and more saturated color than the mid tone.

Other Examples with this technique:

If you look up ”gemstone types” you can often find images displaying various facet types from more than just front view. These can serve as useful base templates for practicing this rendering technique. The backside of a gemstone is called the “pavillion” and is really useful to have at hand when it comes to painting the inner refractions. You can probably also use 3D models and convert the wireframe into lineart. But that is slightly out of my pool of knowledge.

Applying this knowledge without using a base lineart layer is of course possible. In this painting I followed a simplified summary of how the facets sparkle: Keep the highlight shape to match the front facet design, and all the inner refractions should be more scattered and split up but face a direction towards the center of the gem. Now don’t you think this sort of makes the gems look like eyes? That’s right! You can, and absolutely should, apply this on eyes to create the most sparkly anime eyes ever.

Now, refracted light that lands on the surface surrounding gemstones varies depending on the material - and if the gem is inside a metal frame it usually doesnt create this much refraction around it. But I want to have fun so i decided to break this rule in the name of pretty sparkles. :)

[strangererotica]

EXPLICIT CONTENT | MINORS DNI

Steve Harrington x Reader • Includes oral (f receiving) unprotected p in v sex • Utter fucking filth :) Wrote this because I’m so goddamn tired of Summer/the heat, and Steve Harrington raw dogging me on a cool kitchen floor would make it all better… 😆

Tagging @thosefuzzywordfeelings 💕

Steve nestles his cheek against your inner thigh. Sweat slicks your skin and his; it’s mid Summer, hot as fuck. Every room in the house is miserably hot, except for the kitchen, with its cold, tiled floor. It’s so hot that going out didn’t sound fun at all when you and Steve were deciding what to do with your evening. But fucking around on the kitchen floor in nothing but your underwear? That seemed like a perfect way to spend the night…

The cold, smooth tile feels refreshing against your back. You hum softly, stroking Steve’s hair as he rests against your thigh. He’s watching the sweat drip down your skin, the way it catches in the curve where your pussy meets your thigh.

He feels himself getting hard, but Steve decides that can wait. For now, all he wants to do is rest here, watching your pussy glisten in the heat of the afternoon, your scent stronger than ever and so close to his tongue he can practically taste you.

Steve’s tempted to bury his face in your cunt right now, but he holds back, drawing out the moment, building the tension in both your bodies. He blows a cool stream of air against your lips, watching them pucker in response. The air carries your scent back to Steve and he closes his eyes, savoring you.

His self control is faltering; he won’t be able to resist tasting you much longer. As if teasing him for his lack of restraint, you playfully wiggle your cunt in Steve’s face. If you can smell yourself, you know he can. And you know it’s making him crazy.

He gives your other thigh a playful swat, his big paw of a hand putting you in your place: “patience, honey-wanna take my time down here-,” he chides. His hands on you always get you riled up; you like it when Steve uses a little force. You roll your hips again, curving your pussy into Steve’s face, bumping the tip of his nose. His heart practically stops; you’re fucking destroying him. He’s so hard it hurts, the scent of you filling his nose and painting his lungs, a slippery string of your arousal clinging from the end of his nose to your cunt.

He can’t wipe it away, can’t bring himself to, no matter how long he’s trying to wait, trying to stretch this moment. He’d make it last forever, if he could. If Steve had to choose a place to die, it would be right here, in the soft bed of your thighs, surrounded by your most intimate scent, the warmth of your skin against his cheek.

He spanks you again, your pussy this time instead of your thigh. You gasp, a little giggle squeaking out of you at the same time. Your lips flutter in the wake of Steve’s palm, a soft vibration humming through your lower body, electric and warm. Steve’s teeth catch the supple flesh on your inner thigh; he nuzzles his nose into the bite marks he leaves, spreading the string of slick over your skin. His tongue accidentally catches it, rendering Steve defenseless. As the creamy musk of you sinks over his tastebuds, he loses all willpower and restraint.

Steve slides his hands under your ass, tugging you forward so your cunt is pressed against his lips and nose. You choke back a sob as Steve eats you, wet smacking sounds coming from where he’s sucking your juices, his head bobbing as he ruts between your thighs.

Steve’s groaning as loud as you are, filthy, shameless sounds of absolute gluttony, gulping at your release like it’s the only thing that can sustain him. The salt of your sweat mixed with the musk of your cunt is driving him beyond the point of being turned on; Steve’s coming in his boxers before he even realizes it. His hips start bucking as a wet patch of semen darkens the cotton over his crotch.

You watch Steve’s boxers fill up with cum, knowing that your cunt in his mouth is the reason he came without even being touched. It’s so fucking hot, such an ego trip for you, that you feel a surge of confidence and want to dominate Steve even more. You take a handful of his hair and hold him in place, swing a leg over his shoulder till he’s laying flat, with you straddling his face. Steve’s hands immediately find your ass again, groping the plump mounds of fat where your thighs and ass meet (his favorite place in the world) and he’s sucking your lips between his, while you grind your clit against the bridge of his nose.

You extend a hand behind you and place it on Steve’s crotch, feeling the gooey wet patch of semen spread inside his boxers. As you continue to hump Steve’s face, you bring your fingertips to your lips and suck his cum off of them. He watches you spread his semen on your tongue, the way you extend the soft pink pad and let him see, before swallowing it. Steve swears he could come again, just from watching you act like this. Something about the heat has turned you both into animals, acting on your most carnal desires.

Arousal pools in the contours of your body, trickling down your ass to the tile floor. Steve’s tongue finds every drop, pressing his hands against the backs of your thighs, bending your knees into your chest as he eats you. Your pussy is on fire, a beautiful burn that radiates to your center, a twisting spasm that catches you by surprise and unwinds through your body in waves. Your knees seize inward, fingers clutching onto Steve’s hair to keep yourself grounded. Your pussy trembles in his mouth, slippery cum spilling between his lips.

The puddle under your ass squelches as you twist on the floor, slathering the cold tile with your cum. Steve is hard again, his stiff cock dragging across your stomach as he crawls over your body. His mouth finds yours in a deep, wet kiss that’s all tongue and tastes like your pussy. He flips you over, one hand on your shoulder and the other gripping your hair, locking your body between his thighs as he mounts you.

You’re folded into a mating press, your breasts squished to your knees, Steve’s big hands cupping your ass as he sinks inside you. Your cunt swallows Steve whole in one slow, deep thrust. He growls inside your mouth, an open kiss connecting your lips, sweat dripping from the ends of his hair. You clutch at his shoulders, your fingers pressing into the contours of the firm muscles along Steve’s upper back. He rests his forehead against the puffy swell of your breasts squished together, rocking his full weight into yours, pinning you to the floor like conquered prey.

The sound of Steve’s heavy balls slapping your ass is deliciously sinful, a wet, thick sound that reminds you both how much cum he still has left to give you. Steve moves his hands up your body till his palms are pressed against the floor beside your head. You feel him tense, watch the muscles in his chest contract, hear the pretty, desperate grunts Steve makes as he begins to come. You seize on his moment of weakness, throwing all your strength into flipping Steve over. He’s on his back now, with you bouncing on his cock and absolutely ruining Steve in the most glorious way possible.

You drink in the subtle beauty of Steve’s features, each of them like brushstrokes made by an artist’s hand. His eyelids are heavy, half-concealing sleepy hazel eyes, his forehead wet with sweat and lined with concentration. The tip of his strong nose glistens with your sex still coating it, dripping down to pouty, kiss-bitten lips, rosy pink and slack as he surrenders fully to your control.

Closing your hand lightly over Steve’s throat, you slam your hips down against his, forcing his cock as deep inside you as possible. Steve moans, eyes lolling closed as he reaches to pull your lips to his. Whimpering as he empties himself inside you, a thick load of cum deposits against your cervix. You squeeze your pelvic muscles around Steve’s cock as tightly as you can, milking him. His body goes soft beneath you, all the tension draining from Steve’s muscles as the last of his cum drains into your pussy. You lift yourself off of Steve’s cock, watching between your legs as it lands thick and wet against his stomach. He tugs you into his arms, breathless and grinning, dotting your face with kisses and filling your ears with sweet, soft assurances of love…

[otterloreart]

Steps of creating a 3D model replica from scratch

trace photos of character from available and cleanest angles. attempt to get a 90 degree*, front and back, side profile and straight on of the face. save additional reference photos such as bottom of body, back, and various extra angles without tracing which may help reference later on.

*more on angles later, but trying to get a 90 degree from each side is the most realistic and practical option if you dont actually have the character you're copying

2. block out the body and head

and by block i mean, yeah, its made out of elaborate rectangles

4 aha, you thought I would hand sculpt those? no. no. I used the curve tool to add these swirls. And yes i exactly traced them over the drawings to match the original as best as possible. The end of the curve tool is flat by default so I added a few spheres to make the ends nice and round. (there is absolutely a way to make the ends of curves rounded but I did not feel like looking it up or messing with the settings)

this wasn't mirrored to the other side- I traced both sides of the body and the front from photos and sculpted the swirls for each side. I couldn't get a single photo of the swirls at the butt area so I just winged it.

6 I am struggling to not make Cha Cha look angry.

I feel like the eyes are basically traced off the original and yet she looks so much grumpier. maybe it just needs to be smoothed out?

I added a little definition to the area around the eyes and I do think it looks a little better. The more definition I add in this stage the better, because I prefer this to sculpting. However, if you're more adept at sculpting you would probably not make this as detailed.

7 Here she is after smoothing everything out in sculpt after remeshing, in both Eevee (left) and Cycles (middle/right). still trying to figure out how best to render things. For some reason her nose ended up lighter in cycles but i cant be bothered to fix that rn

On the previous step I made the elements of her face + ears mirrored but once I start sculpting I'm not using the mirror tool. In fact nothing ends up mirrored, even the back right foot is slightly shifted in position.

this is probably not even the final version, I think i might redo the smooth/sculpt part and fiddle with the underlying shapes (basically go back a step)

Cha Cha's face. is one of the most difficult things to sculpt. It is extremely difficult to understand the shape of the underlying sculpt because there aren't any photos of her with the eye paint removed. There are so few of her out there I don't think anyone would willingly remove the paint to make a custom or anything unless it was in truly awful condition, and I dont think that has ever happened.

I have saved dozens of references from a number of different sites- these pics here are from etsy, the above was from the wiki. Her eyes are different from every single other pony and pony and friends- they're so bulging, so round, the eyelashes are longer. It's wild.

I can only see all the things that are wrong with it.

It's basically impossible to get something like this 100% perfect unless you have like, a set of turnaround photos all from the same angle that you can match up to the camera. You can basically overlap references with the camera view but you will never know the exact angle so if you make edits from multiple angles like this you'll inevitably not match each angle and then have to go back and adjust the angles and then you're fiddling with it infinitely. That's why I usually go for the "trace 4 angles and make the rest up as you go along" method.

I don't want to spend _too_ long on every model I make- the Takara pony which took 6 months really shows how far down the rabbit hole I will go with something like this, and it's just not practical. But I think with a slight amount of fiddling I can match the reference a little better.