#quick sketch with alcohol markers again instead of working

[ahahnopenope]

i swear i can be trusted with ascending 🥺

[jupitercl0uds-art]

art summary 2023!!!

i wanted to give slight commentary instead of just 12 random pngs so here you go

tuesday 3rd january - blah blah blah!

this was meant to be the first frame of an animation. then flipaclip decided not to work. anyway theres a lot of incomplete stuff from this year and this is (sort of) one of them. idk how to explain why theres 4 of me and what's going on, it makes sense (sort of) if you read the thing its based on.

monday 20th february - waluigi doodle page

i literally cannot stress enough this is the only thing i can be certain was definitely drawn in february. i would have picked a different thing otherwise, i swear. i was on a gc late at night asking who i should draw with waluigi and they gave me yoshi koopas and birdette. istg.

tuesday 21st march - tails and tbh (discord pfp)

FINALLY!!! SOMETHING ACTUALLY GOOD FOR COMPARING!!!

its funny how on one hand i dont draw tails like that AT ALL anymore, but at the same time, literally all my headcanons are there, like his fangs coming out when hes really happy, his fluffy ears, etc. the onky thing missing really is drawing fluffy arms and legs lol. as for the rest of the drawing, i think its ok. theres a few errors, particularly with the stroke, and i needed to fix the fill bucket around tbh's eyes, but this is nearly a year old now so im not fixing it. sorry.

friday 21st april - gently holding tails

ah, tails plushie, how i love thee. where the hell are you girl i havent seen you in months. i have waluigi now. i miss you :(

tuesday 9th may - waluigi sketch with alcohol markers

i hate alcohol markers. they dry too quickly. so it surprised me when one day, while forcing myself to like them, i drew something i actually liked. i still love this btw!!! this is the basis for how i currently draw waluigi rn, and my art as a whole!!!

also fun fact: i drew this the day before i started reading sonic idw :)

saturday 24th june - transmasc luigi watercolour stuff

once again, weird mario fanart i made while talking to a friend late at night. the initial shirtless luigi was drawn as a joke because of a really quick shirtless waluigi my friend drew at summer school in 2022 as a joke, which is what the weird one who craves death is based on. weird as this art may be, this was such a happy time in the year for me and i miss it greatly :)

ill have to do july - december in a follow up post because i reached the image limit lol

[prinxietys]

Liar Liar

I told y’all I’d do it!!!! And I did! The first chapter to my new fic is out on ao3! This is more a slice of life set in a soulmate au

Here’s a link to the story!

Liar Liar

Chapter 1

Warnings: Alcohol, piercings, uhh, I don’t think much else atm (both very brief and not huge plot points)

Summary: It's easy to lie to people. Virgil knows this. He's lied his whole life.It's hard to lie, But Patton might as well be the master of it by this point.It's an art to lie, an easy facade that Roman knows all too well.There's no point in lying, it is the biggest waste of Logan's time.What a lie.

Pairings: Eventual Lamp

Virgil stared out the bus window, watching the neighborhoods pass him by in a blur.

"House," He whispered.

"Tree."

"Mailbox."

"Truck."

He liked this game, it helped the time pass. Especially since his phone had died this morning (A misplaced charger was the culprit).

The bus came to a slow stop, one person got off, three got on.

The bus started back into motion.

"Telephone pole."

"Tree."

"Tricycle!"

Virgil's mouth snapped shut and he turned to the man standing behind him, smiling widely.

"I love this game! Christopher Robin was a great movie!"

"... Yeah."

He glanced down at his phone in a desperate prayer that suddenly the battery would fill and he could bury his nose in it to avoid this oncoming conversation.

"My names, Patton!" The man held out his hand, but Virgil sheepishly held up his hand.

"Sorry, I don't... um," He glanced down at the others hand,and Patton immediately understood.

"Oh, no problem! Everyone wants their whole soulmate thing to be an adventure after all!" He took the empty seat beside Virgil as the bus went over a particularly bad pothole,and his body collided with Virgil's side.

"Shoot, sorry," He quickly apologized while pulling away, " I totally didn't do that on purpose I swear, i wouldn't have purposefully bumped you, I know you just said you don't like contact-"

"It's okay," Virgil cut in, trying to keep his voice calm, " like you said, it was an accident."

Patton looked sheepish then smiled wide at the other.

And just like that, the conversation was over. The two spent the rest of the ride in silence, and when Virgil's stop came, he said a quick "Bye" and left without looking back.

He checked his wrist.

10:55.

He hiked his bag up on his shoulder and sprinted as fast as he could down the block to work before his boss began to sacrifice his soul for a new employee.

~

"11:01."

"Not technically late," Virgil grinned.

"Cheek. You better go get your station ready, you got a pretty decent schedule today," His manager ruffled his hair, and he huffed with indignation, he was taller then them, come on!

He went to his station, bobbing his head along to the P!aTD playing over the speakers. He flicked on the lights in his office, and grinned as he blasted his own speakers, the next pirate metal on his playlist.

He looked over his next client, coming in for an industrial in his right ear.

A knock at his door drew his attention from where he was sketching his next tattoo design while he was waiting.

“You’re client is here.”

“Thanks.” He snapped it shut and pulled on gloves before going out to meet his client.

“Hey there,” He said in greeting, holding out his hand, “Names Virgil.”

The man took his hand and shook it once. Formally.

“Logan, pleased to meet you.”

“Formal for a punk,” Virgil said as he looked over the mans information.

“Mellow for a metalhead,” He threw back.

“Eh, just like the music. Wouldn’t say I’m hardcore.”

“Well, neither would I, then I suppose. I like the aesthetic. The freedom and transformation. Plus, my students will find another ear piercing amusing to no end.”

“Come this way and we can get started Mr. Teacher.” Virgil motioned to his work room, where he turned the music off so whatever latest alternative song played quietly in the background.

“Okay, go ahead and take a seat and lean back,” He motioned to the chair in the center of the room, which the other made himself comfortable on.

Virgil washed his hands before turning back to the other and pulled on a brand new pair of rubber gloves.

“So, first I’m going to clean the area surrounding where the piercing is gonna go,a dn then I’m gonna use a marker to mark where the piercing will be, and you can take a look and tell me what you think.”

“Sounds well enough.”

Virgil did as he said and handed a hand mirror to the other.

“How does that look? Won’t get in the way of your other piercings, though during the healing process I do recommend you stick with this rook you have in now and do not change it out until this new one heals. You will run the chance of irritating and infecting this industrial because of the close placement.”

Logan nodded agreement, and Virgil continued.

“Alright, in that case, let’s get this ball rolling.”

It was silent for a minute, before cold metal was set to Logan’s ear and Virgil was speaking.

“Alright you might feel a bit of a pinch, but that’s just the clasp since we’re using a needle instead of a piercing gun. Okay we’re almost read-” before he finsihed talking he did the first hole and smirked as the others fingers tensed ever so slightly.

“‘Startle ya?”

“Did I startle you?” The other corrected, seemingly out of instinct.

“Punk.”

He saw a smirk quirk the others lips.

“Alright, I’m gonna get the bar ready to go through as I pierce the second. Should I count this time?”

“If you insist upon it.”

“Alright, on the count of five. One-” And with that, he got the needle through the other side and was twisting the ball on the end of the earring.

“There we go, all done.”

Virgil laid his toolson his sterile tray and removed his gloves before picking up the mirror again, passing it off to Logan, who took it, accidentally bumping his hand against the others.

“Apologies,” He said quickly, “I too prefer to refrain from physical contact with others.”

“Eh, it’s no problem. Happens all the time.”

Logan was admiring his ear, it was red and very slightly swelling, but nothing bad.

“Alright-” Virgil went through the process of cleaning it with the other, showing a demonstration with his own barbell.

“And did you want a check up text or call in 30 days?”

“Yes, a text would do just well.”

“Alright, then we are all set. Here’s my business card if you have any questions or wish to make any appointments in the future.”

“Thank you very much for your time, Virgil.”

~

“Here we are, one raspberry cosmopolitan for Mr. Bigshot over here.”

Virgil blushed under the stare of the bartender, reaching out for the drink set in front of him.

“Ah, yeah…”

“So, what’re you doing here tonight? Tryna drink the week away?” The bartender winked.

Virgil felt an awkward cloud fall over his mind. Which always seemed to happen around the hot bartender.

“Uh, drink, yeah. Right.” As if to prove his point, he began draining his glass.

“Wow, you sure have a tolerance,” The bartender through his head back and laughed.

“Heeeeey, Roman!”

A man at the other end of the bar waved his hand and Roman winked at Virgil before turning and throwing his arms out in open greeting to the other patron. Virgil watched as the two began to throw playful flirting back and forth.

Though, part of Virgil wondered if maybe it wasn’t playful. Maybe that was serious flirting.

What would I know? He thought sourly. I can’t flirt to save my life.

Though, I don’t know if I’d want to. That would most likely bring more problems then not.

“Hey, earth to Mr. Brightside!”

He snapped out of his thoughts.

“I thought you were off helping someone else?” Virgil remarked.

“And I did, but I wanted to help you out a little more,” The other remarked, a glint of mischief in his dark eyes.

“Uh, I’m good, thanks…”

Flirting. He’s flirting.

Fuck, how do I tell him he’s handsome but I’m not interested? Will that offend him?

“I don’t know how to tell you honey, but you’re sucking down air there,” The other pointed to his glass, and Virgil looked down and felt his face begin to burn in embarrassment.

“Don’t worry suga’ I got you,” The bartender winked as he took the others glass.

“Oh, um, I don’t really drink that much…. One’s enough for me.”

“Oh,” The other pouted, “Does that mean I’m dismissed for now?”

“Uh.”

Okay, this was too much flirting, playful or otherwise, for Virgil to process.

“Um, I-”

Roman smiled. Not smirked, but smiled and reached his hand out to take Virgil’s, slipping a piece of paper into his own grasp, and not seeming to mind Virgil’s sudden reflexive jerk backwards. A Lot of people probably came and went like him all the time.

“Well, if you ever wanna bask in my radiance again, just gimme a call.”

With that, roman turned and headed back to help his coworkers, and the other patrons.

~

Virgil sat at his desk, water colors staining both his paper and hands, eyes bloodshot and drooping, when he felt a soft, trickle, like water, running down the back of his hand.

Assuming it to be paint, he rubbed his hand off on a towel, and paid it no mind.

Two hours later though, as he washed the paint off in the shower, he felt the trickle again. Cold compared to the steam of the shower, and not running off his hand but across it.

He looked down,blinking the dripping water from his lashes so his vision stopped blurring, and his heart stopped.

Is someone there?

It was written in red pen. In small, neat print.

Then below it, another line.

Sorry, if I scared you

He quickly sat on the floor of the tub, not wanting to slip and fall in his sudden dazed state.

It was them.

It was Virgil’s soulmate.

[mysticsparklewings]

Bug Girl

My WIP Wednesday! piece is all finished!   (Warning: LOOOOOOONG description about the art process ahead!  ) I don't think it's terribly obvious for a number of reasons (at least not at first), but this piece is actually a bit of fan art/inspired by How to make Friends with the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow, which I finished reading Monday night--Though I actually started this piece a couple of days before   There's a concept that gets brought up a few different times in the book of the main character Tiger imagining a "bug-girl" in a jar, usually to help visualize her emotions to us, the audience. This concept really resonates and stuck with me even before I finished the book, and thus I was compelled to draw it. Technically the way I see that concept in my head looks different from what I've done here, so sometime in the future I may take another stab at it, but for this time I wanted to strengthen the connection between the bug-girl concept and the book, so visually I modeled the overall aesthetic largely off of the book's cover; white lines and white dots on a dark blue background that has a slight gradient at the bottom. The gradient on the cover is more subtle and is more on the lines than the background itself, but I took artistic liberty on that to make my life a little easier. My original plan was to do the background with watercolor, do the lines digitally and print them out (since I had some kinks in the sketch I wanted to experiment with digitally instead of doing a lot of additional drawing and erasing) and then use my lightbox and a white gel pen to trace directly on top of the watercolor, then splatter away with some white ink. But of course, things can never be that simple. The way I see it in my head, the bug-girl has, well, bug eyes, but for this piece, I didn't want to lean too heavily into the "creepy" factor, given it doesn't really fit with the content of the book (which is a great read if you like realistically heavy YA novels, by the way) so I angled her head down and her hair covering her face to keep from having to make the decision on whether or not I wanted to go with that look. And additionally to do proper bug eyes (at least the kind I was imagining) would've involved a lot of tiny circle/cell shapes, and I imagine that would've made things feel too crowded or would have blended into the splatters/background in an uncomfortable way. Additionally, I was going to have her wings raised behind her, but after playing around with a few different references and positions in Photoshop (knowing full well I was not happy with the original wings from the sketch that I completely free-handed), I felt like this more asymmetrical, lowered position and dragonfly-type structure just looked better and fits better with some of the movements of the wings described in the book (using them to cover her eyes, etc.) which in most cases aren't technically plausible with normal bug wings. My first real problem was with the jar. Realistically, it needed to be tall enough for the girl to stand at full height at least. And in theory, probably a little bit higher so it would be more comfortable overall and so that in theory she wouldn't just stand up and be able to push the lid off. But I was having issues with the sizing because the jar could only be so big so that A. it would fit comfortably on my paper and B. if it was too tall, the empty space between the top of the jar and the girl would noticeably awkward. So I fiddled with that for way too long and ultimately, it's probably too short, but the size balanced is more comfortable to the eyes, I think. (I also added the cross-hatching to the lid to make it more obvious there was a lid since originally it just kind of looked like the jar had a very wide lip.) I also gave her a set of antennae, and after trying the concept of segmenting her whole body to be more bug-like (which was way too many lines everywhere) I decided to add some plates on the front of her forearms and calves. It's not much at all, but I didn't want to stick solely to traditionally "fairy" imagery since she's a bug-girl, not a fairy, but in this lines-only format, there was only so much I could do and still get the proper impact I was looking for. Speaking of which... I did a lot of swatching and testing of my various watercolors that I have on hand to A. get the colors I wanted right, B. practice my blending of two colors with more paint than water since I wanted very dark, opaque colors, and C. test if my lightbox would even work under the thick watercolor paper and the actual watercolor. However, I made two errors in judgment during the testing: 1. The areas I swatched to test were considerably smaller than the actual size of the area I wanted to cover and even with my biggest brush when I went to do a practice go I very quickly realized that was going to take an absurd amount of paint, time, effort, and I was very likely to run into some blending problems with the gradient. (So, in summary, half-pan-sized watercolors and mostly small brushes are not great for very large areas) 2. Once I realized the above, (and I had already done two very quick tests with alcohol markers and that idea almost immediately went out the window for the same issue) I had to switch course and ended up using some water-soluble pencils (one Arteza Woodless Watercolor Pencil for the dark blue and one Derwent Inktense pencil for the dark teal at the bottom) to lay down the color for the background and then wet them down to smooth out the color. Which turned out pretty nicely, especially once they dried. (I was a little worried at first since while still wet it was looking kind of patchy and weird ) The problem with number 2 is that after it had fully dried (aside from the paper curling pretty badly since it was in a sketchbook and I didn't think to tape the edges of the page down before taking water to it, which was mostly fixed pretty easily by wetting down the back of the page and sitting a very heavy box on it while it dried overnight) when I went to use the lightbox, the pigment from the water-soluble pencils was noticeably more opaque than the straight watercolor tests/swatched I had looked at previously. It wasn't so opaque that I couldn't see my lines underneath at all but it was opaque enough that a lot of the smaller details wear really hard to see. And thus I had a pretty big problem on my hands. What I should have done was trace the lines in black on the blank paper first so they would be more likely to show through the pigment in the first place and there's a good chance that would've fixed the problem, even if I still needed the lightbox to see those lines perfectly. But hindsight is always 20/20 so that knowledge didn't really fix the matter at hand. I knew pretty instantly that I didn't want to try tracing the lines onto another piece of watercolor paper and trying to color matter since I seem to always have majorly noticeable issues with that, especially when there's a gradient involved, and also because I knew when I scanned it in it would be fairly obviously there were two layers of paper instead of one because of how thick watercolor paper is. I also knew alcohol markers were out because, again, color matching issues with the selection available to me, and also from some of my much earlier testing with trying to get the specific gradient that I wanted. That left me with colored pencils. And thus I went through the five different sets I use enough to keep where I can easily access them (I have others I don't like as much that would've just been a waste of time) and started swatching colors on a piece of the same paper I had the lines on and then held them up to the background to color match as closely as possible. I ended up picking one dark blue and one dark teal each from both my Prismacolor and Polychromos sets since the blue from the Prismacolor was closer but the teal from the Polychromos was closer but they were both slightly off, so to keep the texture consistent I mixed both together for both colors. This ended up being a very good idea in hindsight because I finished off with a final layer of the Polychromos and that kept my white gel pen from having the problems it would normally have over straight-Prismacolor pigment. (Since Prismacolors are wax-based the wax usually clogs the pen tip very easily; the Polychromos are oil-based, so the oil created a slicker layer between the wax and the pen). And all I did was use my lightbox to see the black printed lines through the colored pencil as easily as possible and went back over them with my white Sakura Gelly Roll, then I went back and outlined the jar and the lid specifically with my white Uni-Ball Signo, since the ink is slightly brighter and the nib is larger. Once that was all done to my satisfaction, I cut out the girl in her jar and placed it on the watercolor background with some double-sided tape I picked up the day before from DollarTree, clipping a few edges so they'd be as flush with the edges of the paper as possible. And I figured that would be a better idea than glue because the glue had a very good potential of being very messy and leaving notable marks. The tape was just a safer bet. And fortunately, the paper laid pretty flat, save for a couple of spots I either missed because I applied the tape by lifting up the edges so I wouldn't totally lose my placement or up by some of the nooks and crannies that make up the ridges at the top of the jar that were just too small to do individually. And there is one spot where that tape wrinkled on me, but it's fortunately not terribly noticeable in the final product. Then I made a paper mask for the girl inside the jar and got to move on to the slightly more fun part; I dipped a paintbrush in some white ink (white ink as opposed to white watercolor because I was concerned the water part might cause some reaction to the existing watercolor background that I didn't want and I was a little concerned it would make the non-watercolor paper that the girl and the jar were drawn on warp) and started tapped it against another paint brush to get splatters everywhere. I masked the girl since I was pretty sure she'd blend in too much if she got splattered too. After the ink was dry, I removed the mask and went in with the white Gelly Roll again to make some stars here and there; mostly just because I wanted to since the original book cover only has dots. I left it at that for the night since it was almost 3 and I was tired, but I came back to it the next day and racked my brain for a bit since it felt like it was missing something. I ultimately ended up putting the mask back on the girl and used my pastel blue PanPastel to create a glow effect around her. After that, I scanned it and did make some minor adjustments in Photoshop (mostly color correction, but there were a couple of black lines of shadow around the edge of the jar since it was still a separate piece of paper on top of the other one at the end of the day. And here we are. It's still not perfection, but I am ultimately happy with it since I think I got the look I was after in the end. Plus, I think I capture the spirit of the original book cover's style pretty well ____ Artwork (c) me, MysticSparkleWings I do not own How to make Friends with the Dark or the cover art ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram