#process things right now

[stardustfanfare]

doinfg ssp good

[pixels-art-stuff]

Finished :D

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[hinamie]

ik i've done like 5 panel redraws from 265 alone but this is the last one promise

[eggwishing]

Let’s pull up that improvement chart again shall we …

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[aroaceleovaldez]

underappreciated Nico detail that I like - he seems to be an angry crier! very frequently he's angry when he cries and he cries when he's extremely angry. very AuDHD of him. emotional regulation sucks my guy and he's just going through it.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Embrace the truth

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[blackkatdraws2]

I have a lot of leftover drawings in my gallery. [Blank Scripts AU]

[Content Warning: Images below contain Gore, Death, and Disturbing/Uncomfortable Imagery]

I find it a bit cute knowing they start out as crazy and then slowly settle into something calmer and relatively healthier after learning to adapt to each other's lust-turned-love. [Stanley did it first but hey :3]

[astrhae]

...maybe it's all part of a great big ineffable plan

[starry-bi-sky]

danny and officer martinez's relationship in "late at night, when the nightingale sings" in a nutshell:

Martinez: FREAK! GET YOUR FUCKING KID!

Battinson, on the other side of the crime scene: he don't bite

Martinez, with Nightingale firmly attached his arm, visibly biting him: YES HE DO!

*points at them* Danny is the Bugs Bunny to Martinez's Elmer Fudd.

Another Officer: i can't believe you're fighting with an actual twelve year old. Martinez: i swear to god that is not a twelve year old, that is a little hellion that crawled out of batman's shadow one dark and stormy night and decided to dedicate his existence to tormenting me. Officer: Are you really that mad about him putting a sticky note on your back-- Martinez: thats not the point

in danny's defense: the word "freak" is. a mini beserker button for him for.... obvious ghostly reasons, so like, even if its not directed at him, he still very much unappreciates Martinez's insults at Battinson. Danny may or may not be projecting.

he's not going to hurt the guy! not in any serious or permanently disfiguring way at least! But he is going to leave mean sticky notes on the square part of his spine that he can't reach, and stick salt in his 3AM Late Night Crime Scene Coffee, and kick the bottom of his heel while he's walking so he stumbles. And other petty, infuriating things that tally up and boil over, over time.

[cacaocheri]

we both deserve to be happy

in case anyone is wondering, it gets easier. it gets so so much easier and i hope you find the love you're looking for

[fattributes]

Sometimes, being optimistic can be unhelpful. You don't have to feel grateful or thankful that your suffering isn't worse. It can be truly devastating, and you have the right to mourn missed opportunities, isolation, and pain. It's okay to experience emotions that aren't necessarily happy.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

It must have been Jayce who found Viktor passed out at the lab, right? Like let's be real that stubborn mf is not dragging himself to a hospital if he can help it at all. So the most likely people to find him and make him get medical care would be either Jayce or Sky, and it's established that Sky's left for the night.

Whenever Jayce leaves Mel's bed, it doesn't wake Mel up, so I don't think it's the case that anyone came to her door looking for him if anyone would have even known to look for him there. Nah I think Jayce woke up and quietly left in the middle of the night and in the moment Mel thinks it's because he's a fuckboi who gets his dick wet and then bounces but I think actual possible scenarios include: (1) he got a brainwave in the middle of the night and both he and Viktor are used to popping by the lab at stupid o'clock whenever inspiration strikes; (2) woke up with a weird bad feeling of suddenly needing to check on Viktor, in that uncanny way you sometimes get a call from a relative and just Know it's bad news before you pick up the phone, and lately Viktor's been sleeping at the lab more than at home so that's where he goes first; or (3) especially if you think this is Jayce's first or close-to-first sexual experience, he's having some big confusing feelings and needs to take a walk about it, and he just ends up at the lab on autopilot and since he's there he's just gonna pop in and check on this one thing...

Whatever the exact sequence of events that is one hell of an emotional rollercoaster for one night.

[eerna]

can you explain your art techniques a little bit further? I just saw your post about arcane helping you drop line art and stuff, and I wanted to understand better (as someone trying to get into digital art)

Sureee, ty for asking! :)

For the first 7 years of my digital art journey I imitated the comicbook-style art tutorials and techniques artists I liked used. This means that I would start out with a sketch, draw the lineart on another layer on top of the sketch, hide the sketch, use solid blocks of color on separate layers for the coloring, and add lighting effects on top of it all. I was never really happy with how it turned out, and I often felt like I shouldn't have gone past the colored sketch phase because the full render would lose so much life. I used pretty much the same brushes I use now, aside from some textured ones, but not to their full potential because they were painting brushes being used for flat shading. Here's a few examples of fully rendered stuff from 2020-2021:

Then, I realized I do NOT have to do things I don't wanna do, and I can totally remove any steps from the process that I wish! I experimented for a while until I settled on a new thing that worked for me. And so my current process is: draw a sketch, color it all on one layer (base colors), add light effects if needed, add another layer on top of everything, and paint until satisfied with the level of rendering. Then I add optional effects, such as fires or patterns. This means I leave the sketch layer visible, so I have to clean it and base colors with erasers as I work, but it enables me to preserve the sketchy energy. The "all rendering on one layer" approach frees my hand and I don't feel pressure to render everything separately and perfectly, which in turn, ironically, makes my art look more detailed because the eye compensates for unfinished bits. In addition, the line between a colored sketch and a fully rendered piece is much thinner, which means I don't have to commit to completing anything, and that is a big deal for an insecure person prone to artblocks. If I lose interest halfway through the lineart-and-blocks-of-color process, I am left with an unusable piece. If I do it halfway through the painting process, I get a charming, messy piece a la my recent Chappell Roan art (I left the armor unfinished, and yet it doesn't clash with the rest of the art). Here's a recreation I did to show what a big difference the different approach makes:

So why didn't I stop doing lineart sooner? I did try, but my attempts tried to replicate what I did when painting traditionally, instead of adjusting to my digital abilities, so it usually looked whack. I remember showing my friends the Rito Village piece back in 2019, which was painted based on a screenshot from the game, and one of them telling me "Don't go back to lineart!" I was like "YEAH I am NOT going back to lineart!!! I will keep painting!!!" Only to realize that painting landscapes with already stylized references and painting portraits were completely different. Here's a painting portrait from one of those trial and error attempts. Later I realized the mistake was working on TOP of the sketch, as I would have done for traditional work, instead of both below AND on top of it - after all, my intention was to preserve the life of the sketch, which was impossible when I couldn't even see it. I also didn't understand color values (or honestly, any color aspects) very well, resulting in some low-contrast, unappealing blobs.

So yeah, my advice to any beginner digital artist is: experiment and figure out what works for you. Think about what makes you happy when creating, and build your process around it. Also, keep researching art theory and applying it to your work. Good luck to you and all other digital artists~

[almea]