#probably like my favorite art piece ever???

[onlyhereforghosttrick]

Do Aigiel and Makoto have any hobbies?

I mean not before you asked but I can absolutely see them picking some up-

I know damn well Makoto has a massive shelf of books he's yet to read that he always insists he'll "get around to one of these days" [a fellow procrastinator]

And I was originally thinking Makoto would pick up gardening bc grass and all that but imo that would prob fit Aigiel better for a few reasons

Reason 1; She's not against getting her paws dirty [hell, if anything, she'd be in favor of it]

Reason 2; She absolutely picks it up as a hobby between the ending and the postgame in a futile attempt to find some connection to Makoto

Reason 3; Flowers. The smell they bring on the wind is sweet. It still makes him sick to the stomach. It can't help but remind him of what he's lost.

[jadecantcreate]

creeping shadows, rising smoke

the kremy wallpaper is done! @szaryherbatnik gave me the idea in the first place <33 (like. a month ago….better late than never?) click for higher quality; speedpaint beneath the cut

[artkaninchenbau]

Egghead chibs lesgooo ✌️✨ [Shop]

[moondrop39-dovewing70]

A Woven Song (Cover Fanart)

IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!!! ALL OF THE SWEAT, TEARS, AND ABSOLUTE FRUSTRATION IS FINALLY OVER AND I AM HAPPY TO SAY I FINISHED THIS BEFORE MIDNIGHT WHERE I LIVE!!!

Here ya go @stellawolfe30 aka @monkiebois

My first out of many MANY Several Fanarts pieces for the amazing "A Woven Song" Fanfic (I've linked it so many times before but I'll link it once again so that you may all read it BECAUSE IT'S SOO GOOD!)

Here's the speedpaint that I lightly mentioned before:

Here's the link to the amazing fanfic:

And have the kitten of bleps because it is now my signature:

[doyouknowhowtowaltz]

Joshua McQuary's work is generally excellent but then I saw he did a Hard Times At The Huskin' Bee piece. Get a load of that: https://mcmonsterart.bigcartel.com/product/hard-times-at-the-huskin-bee

Good lord, I feel so conflicted about this piece. So, I'm actually a pretty big fan of McQuary's work, he's does a bunch of gorgeous high contrast work, and I'm actually in love with flat geometric shapes in complex environments so the stuff he does with white rings and circles has always called to me.

But his Hard Times At The Huskin' Bee piece... it does not work for me. Maybe it's the composition, maybe it's the fact that I'm familar enough with the episode that my brain automatically breaks it down into the three reference images he used. And it's not that there's nothing to like, Enoch is big! Always a fan of that. And pottsfield in the background is nice and the fence is really nice. The fog too is great. But I don't know. It does not speak to me the same way his other stuff does.

Which is a bummer, because I like his other two OTGW pieces, this one in particular, is really neat.

[gible-love-nibles-archive]

🎵 Put your hand in my hand! Turn me around the room! If there's gonna be dancin'…! Then I wanna dance with you! 🎵

Happy (late) G.host T.rick on Switch day. I can't get it quite yet, but I did finish drawing this last night (I've had the sketch for. A few months). I REMEMBERED something cool happening with my F/Os this time (barely, but that's beside the point).

Can't wait to get it, wanna see the funny man

(Please reblog! I like reading tags :] )

[arolesbianism]

Ok yeah I’m a little obsessed with them

[rosicheeks]

oh yes you were at court! i forgot that was at the start of that post lmao. i've been to court twice when i was super young for drinking underage and then smoking lool it was so boring and long and shit but thankfully you were just there for moral support, i hope it wasen't such a bad thing your friend had to deal with! I remember seeing you post about moving but i forget if it was TO or AWAY from your parents but that clears it up. I totally get you on that though, i'm living at home right now and i feel kind of similar about not feeling comfortable in your own home. Its a bit different for me, but similar enough. Hell my stepdad even sleeps in the living room too! hes always done that so ive always felt like i had to be on eggshells when night time hit. I used to sneak smoking in the backyard back in the day myself, i got caught once when i was in highschool he made me throw all my pieces out which sucked big time. ahhh i love that, art! you should totally show more stuff on here too, at least if you're comfortable and its not stuff you'd wanna sell, i would absolutely love to see any of it 🖤i've dabbled in writing poems and things i planned to make songs, although only recently. I've always wanted to be a musician but my attempts at learning guitar over the years have never ended up lasting long and i try to learn singing but i just dont really think i can. plus i was always afraid of self expression so i never wrote until a few years ago. i still do, because music is so important to me (which is why i did pick 🎤!) and it makes me so happy but yeah. i have 2 shows im headed to in a few months even so im so excited 🥰my day though has been so boring, i mostly played video games and watched youtube videos. watched another episode of a show i've been watching called Silo, which i absolutely love. im so surprised you had room in your tags still after myself lmao, but i do that same thing i always talk in the tags! also i'm giving you tons of hugs and kisses 😘🥰 - 🎤

Hi hi hi ☺️ how are you doing lovely? 🥰

[waffulaa]

.

[jewishcissiekj]

i should make a post with my list of favorite artists who drew Asajj

[peachnix]

yea

other people do that thing where u keep a list of all the books movies shows short stories comics graphic novels podcasts radio dramas and articles *inhales deeply* that you've consumed and enjoyed enough to want to be able to one day find again, right? like that is just standard practice...

[pissfaggit]

old stuff and new stuff

[alfheimr]

My Favorite Cheap Art Trick: Gradient Maps and Blending Modes

i get questions on occasion regarding my coloring process, so i thought i would do a bit of a write up on my "secret technique." i don't think it really is that much of a secret, but i hope it can be helpful to someone. to that end:

this is one of my favorite tags ive ever gotten on my art. i think of it often. the pieces in question are all monochrome - sort of.

the left version is the final version, the right version is technically the original. in the final version, to me, the blues are pretty stark, while the greens and magentas are less so. there is some color theory thing going on here that i dont have a good cerebral understanding of and i wont pretend otherwise. i think i watched a youtube video on it once but it went in one ear and out the other. i just pick whatever colors look nicest based on whatever vibe im going for.

this one is more subtle, i think. can you tell the difference? there's nothing wrong with 100% greyscale art, but i like the depth that adding just a hint of color can bring.

i'll note that the examples i'll be using in this post all began as purely greyscale, but this is a process i use for just about every piece of art i make, including the full color ones. i'll use the recent mithrun art i made to demonstrate. additionally, i use clip studio paint, but the general concept should be transferable to other art programs.

for fun let's just start with Making The Picture. i've been thinking of making this writeup for a while and had it in mind while drawing this piece. beyond that, i didn't really have much of a plan for this outside of "mithrun looks down and hair goes woosh." i also really like all of the vertical lines in the canary uniform so i wanted to include those too but like. gone a little hog wild. that is the extent of my "concept." i do not remember why i had the thought of integrating a shattered mirror type of theme. i think i wanted to distract a bit from the awkward pose and cover it up some LOL but anyway. this lack of planning or thought will come into play later.

note 1: the textured marker brush i specifically use is the "bordered light marker" from daub. it is one of my favorite brushes in the history of forever and the daub mega brush pack is one of the best purchases ive ever made. highly recommend!!!

note 2: "what do you mean by exclusion and difference?" they are layer blending modes and not important to the overall lesson of this post but for transparency i wanted to say how i got these "effects." anyway!

with the background figured out, this is the point at which i generally merge all of my layers, duplicate said merged layer, and Then i begin experimenting with gradient maps. what are gradient maps?

the basic gist is that gradient maps replace the colors of an image based on their value.

so, with this particular gradient map, black will be replaced with that orangey red tone, white will be replaced with the seafoamy green tone, etc. this particular gradient map i'm using as an example is very bright and saturated, but the colors can be literally anything.

these two sets are the ones i use most. they can be downloaded for free here and here if you have csp. there are many gradient map sets out there. and you can make your own!

you can apply a gradient map directly onto a specific layer in csp by going to edit>tonal correction>gradient map. to apply one indirectly, you can use a correction layer through layer>new correction layer>gradient map. honestly, correction layers are probably the better way to go, because you can adjust your gradient map whenever you want after creating the layer, whereas if you directly apply a gradient map to a layer thats like. it. it's done. if you want to make changes to the applied gradient map, you have to undo it and then reapply it. i don't use correction layers because i am old and stuck in my ways, but it's good to know what your options are.

this is what a correction layer looks like. it sits on top and applies the gradient map to the layers underneath it, so you can also change the layers beneath however and whenever you want. you can adjust the gradient map by double clicking the layer. there are also correction layers for tone curves, brightness/contrast, etc. many such useful things in this program.

let's see how mithrun looks when we apply that first gradient map we looked at.

gadzooks. apologies for eyestrain. we have turned mithrun into a neon hellscape, which might work for some pieces, but not this one. we can fix that by changing the layer blending mode, aka this laundry list of words:

some of them are self explanatory, like darken and lighten, while some of them i genuinely don't understand how they are meant to work and couldn't explain them to you, even if i do use them. i'm sure someone out there has written out an explanation for each and every one of them, but i've learned primarily by clicking on them to see what they do.

for the topic of this post, the blending mode of interest is soft light. so let's take hotline miamithrun and change the layer blending mode to soft light.

here it is at 100% opacity. this is the point at which i'd like to explain why i like using textured brushes so much - it makes it very easy to get subtle color variation when i use this Secret Technique. look at the striation in the upper right background! so tasty. however, to me, these colors are still a bit "much." so let's lower the opacity.

i think thats a lot nicer to look at, personally, but i dont really like these colors together. how about we try some other ones?

i like both of these a lot more. the palettes give the piece different vibes, at which point i have to ask myself: What Are The Vibes, Actually? well, to be honest i didn't really have a great answer because again, i didn't plan this out very much at all. however. i knew in my heart that there was too much color contrast going on and it was detracting from the two other contrasts in here: the light and dark values and the sharp and soft shapes. i wanted mithrun's head to be the main focal point. for a different illustration, colors like this might work great, but this is not that hypothetical illustration, so let's bring the opacity down again.

yippee!! that's getting closer to what my heart wants. for fun, let's see what this looks like if we change the blending mode to color.

i do like how these look but in the end they do not align with my heart. oh well. fun to experiment with though! good to keep in mind for a different piece, maybe! i often change blending modes just to see what happens, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i very much cannot stress enough that much of my artistic process is clicking buttons i only sort of understand. for fun.

i ended up choosing the gradient map on the right because i liked that it was close to the actual canary uniform colors (sorta). it's at an even lower opacity though because there was Still too much color for my dear heart.

the actual process for this looks like me setting my merged layer to soft light at around 20% opacity and then clicking every single gradient map in my collection and seeing which one Works. sometimes i will do this multiple times and have multiple soft light and/or color layers combined.

typically at this point i merge everything again and do minor contrast adjustments using tone curves, which is another tool i find very fun to play around with. then for this piece in particular i did some finishing touches and decided that the white border was distracting so i cropped it. and then it's done!!! yay!!!!!

this process is a very simple and "fast" way to add more depth and visual interest to a piece without being overbearing. well, it's fast if you aren't indecisive like me, or if you are better at planning.

let's do another comparison. personally i feel that the hint of color on the left version makes mithrun look just a bit more unwell (this is a positive thing) and it makes the contrast on his arm a lot more pleasing to look at. someone who understands color theory better than i do might have more to say on the specifics, but that's honestly all i got.

just dont look at my layers too hard. ok?

[blacktabbygames]

Hello! I absolutely love Slay The Princess! I was wondering, were there any major inspirations that helped you create this game that you wouldn’t mind sharing? I’m always fascinated by the art that inspires the art I love so I’d be very curious and happy to hear what vibes helped you all piece together this wonderful game!

It's always tough to pin down inspirations. I think there's kind of three types: 1. Hard inspirations — things that you know are sources of inspiration at the start of a project. Or things that become known sources of inspiration partway through a project. These are sometimes, but not always technical.

2. Soft inspirations — these are more vibes based. Kind of like "what's going through my head on loop while working on a specific chapter." Almost never technical, and for me, this tends to be music more than anything else. (But maybe it's music *from* something specifically)

3. Loose inspirations — these are more along the lines of formative pieces of media. Stuff that seeps into your soul and directs your development as an artist or person, but not in a way where you can specifically tell what its impact is. Sometimes overlaps with #2 Anyways, some examples for each. Hard Inspirations:

• Disco Elysium — IMO hands down the best piece of interactive media ever made, and probably one of the most obvious influences on Slay the Princess. The concept of using internal voices to represent the player's thoughts helped us get around one of the biggest writing challenges in Slay the Princess — if the Princess changes based on your perspective, how do we codify what the player's thinking? The voices were a solution to interpret those choices in sensible ways and inform our players of how the game was reading their choices. Much better than breaking immersion and outright asking players what they tought. • Soma — we didn't play Soma until we were about half of the way through our work on Slay the Princess, but it was one of those games that felt so thematically on-point. I still think about this game most weeks. • The Stanley Parable — I like when narrators get frustrated at players for doing silly things. It helps when your narrator is British, too.

• Madoka — it's like 12 episodes long. Just watch it.

• Evangelion — Similar bucket to Soma. Didn't watch it until we were most of the way done, but boy does it have some similar vibes. Soft Inspirations/Music I've Kept On Loop While Working On the Game I won't tell you what music was looped for what routes. • Ceremonials (Florence + the Machine) — one of my all time favorite artists, and just a phenomenal album.

• Presumably Dead Arm (Sidney Gish) — super underrated. No Dogs Allowed is a great album.

• Haunted (Poe) — another banger album.

• Black Holes and Revelations (Muse)

I'll leave that third bucket unanswered lest this post become 50 pages long.

[tinyfantasminha]

I don't want to keep clogging my blog with vent posts but uh... I guess this is a more general concern/observation

But it's getting real hard to stay motivated in fandom spaces when there's little compensation, and annoying occurrences are more frequent than good ones.

Mainly there's been less engagement/people showing interest in creators and their art (such as sending asks, making comments and reblogging with tags) and MORE parasocial interactions. This goes for both artists and writers.

Over this year I've noticed a vast disinterest within my public in general. Asks about ocs, my art, or just nice simple comments of ''I love your art'' has been getting more and more scarce. My follower number is bigger than 2-3 years ago sure and I get more likes on my posts but they are feeling more like just numbers and statistics than actual people who supposedly like my stuff.

And while people being parasocial with creators has always been a thing, I feel like it's gotten way worse... in general? People sending personal pictures out of the blue in hopes of being validated, unwanted psychological advice or assumptions about the creator without any established connection first ( <- these happened to me in the same week.) ventdump, just insensitive/lacking of common sense comments in general, unreasonable demands (mostly with writers)... I wondered at first if it was just me, but a handful of mutuals/acquaintances who are artists and writers seems to be going through it as well.

It's annoying. It's tough. It's getting exhausting. Creators pour so much of themselves into their work—countless hours, effort, and passion, all to share something meaningful or entertaining with others (and for FREE) The LEAST anyone can do is show respect, even if opinions differ. When a writer posts a fanfic, don't just say ''omg post next chapter!'', when an artist posts a drawing of their favorite character, don't just say ''omg draw (character) next!'' as if they're faceless content machines that are expected to churn out more '''content''' for you without acknowledgment, encouragement, or appreciation.

''I want to support creators but I don't know what to say and I feel intimidated by their talent so I just lurk silently :((('' I swear to you, no creator (at least not the majority) is making up an intimidating persona to discourage you from interacting with them. They WANT your comments. A single ''I love your art/writing/videos'' or even something as silly as ''I want to eat your art'' is enough to keep a creator sighing dreamily for WEEKS. It doesn't have to be deep! It's heartfelt and that's what it matters!! (Just remember to keep it relevant and thoughtful... It takes just a bit of common sense NOT to comment things like ''this looks like (another character)'' or ''this but with (another unrelated ship/character/show)''. No one wants to hear comparisons or unrelated ideas when they’ve poured their soul into something.)

In fact, the ''I like your art but I think you're intimidating'' feels more hurtful than flattering. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, acting wrong. 💀

If you love that fanfic that changed your brain psyche forever and want to gush about it, go tell the writer. If you loved so much a piece of art that you saved it a million times in your phone and can't stop thinking about it, go tell the artist. Push away the ''they probably won't care about my comment/it won't make a difference'' thoughts. DO IT NOW. You won't know when they might go inactive forever or deactivate. You can't know if that is the last piece they will ever post. Make sure you show appreciation to creators NOW, while they are still here. While they're still not being replaced by AI.

[meanbossart]

Any tips for new or returning artists?

I’m hoping to discover my own art style this year (from scratch, no references) by just throwing myself into learning anatomy, drawing random characters, and praying I can figure out how to add depth to pieces.

I have very minimal artistic experience and my work has improved significantly from where I started years ago, but not even close to where I’m hoping to be.

I can freehand faces and tweak the anatomy accordingly but I feel limited. Maybe it’s (in part) because I’m using an iPad, apple pen and Procreate? I recently added the paper-feel screen cover and that’s helped significantly with control.

Do you draw on paper to help your muscle memory? Honestly, ANYTHING helps. I watch videos on anatomy and art all of the time — I just don’t know if my brain is absorbing it correctly 😭

Hello! I don't know if I can say anything in particular to the returning aspect of your situation since I've drawn pretty consistently all of my life, but if someone else has had that experience of picking the skill back up after a long break, feel free to share your thoughts in the replies!

I'm not fully sure what you mean by "hoping to discover my own art (...) from scratch, no references", but if it means trying to whip up a style from thin-air and blocking out all outside influence or take any inspiration from existing art that you like... Uh... Don't do that! I don't see the benefit. All art is a derivation of a derivation, I can assure you that by compiling a folder or collage of your favorite works, borrowing and reworking aspects that you like, you WILL land on an original style and have learned so much more about it in the process than if you hadn't done that at all.

Also I can assure you that drawing on procreate/ipad is not a hindrance whatsoever, plenty of professional artists prefer it over display tablets. @wolfskulljack-art comes to mind as someone who has created several incredible tour posters for Metallica, all in her ipad.

I must have drawn on paper a total of 10 times in the last 5 years, I have no idea if that's bad or not... It Probably is, but I'm at peace with it, LOL. Generally when it comes to improving ( and I know that this is a frustrating answer) the secret is to just draw a lot. There is no class that is going to take you from amateur to Caravaggio, it takes time and takes making "bad" art. A lot of bad art. When it comes to learning anatomy, I think the best thing you can do is draw a lot of real-life human bodies from reference while consulting an anatomical diagram or model of some kind. Otherwise you will just making a bunch of lines without ever understanding their purpose.

I don't think you need to be an expert at the human body AT ALL before jumping into stylization and making confident, art, but if you do something like this whenever you draw I think you will end up learning a whole lot. Muscle memory (no pun intended) will come to you naturally!

I also have a lot more tips in my #tutorial and #advice tags that you can look through if you want to, otherwise, I would tell you to just do more drawing and less looking for the perfect tutorial or golden advice. A lot of artists get very boggled down in learning in the most correct and effective way, and while there are pointers that can be given, they tend to be very straightforward🤷 and the rest falls on you to follow through with!