#sorry the perspective is weird in this one. i drew this mainly to take my mind off the heat

[occasionaltouhou]

regular touhou #48: yumi may not be my self-insert anymore but that doesn't mean i can't make her suffer in my stead

[eponymous-rose]

WIP Word Memes

Rules: Find the assigned words in your current WIP, then pick 4 new words and tag some peeps to find them.

I tag specifically anyone who’s feeling stuck on their WIPs at the moment! A lot of this for me is stories I might not revisit, so it’s fun to give them some life here. My words for you are lose, shift, smile, and take.

I was tagged by @lumateranlibrarian, so let’s make this a double-dose meme night! The words I was given were light, space, time, and breath.

---

light - (a seriously weird CR fic I fell off writing waaaay back in mid-campaign 1 mainly because it was an exercise in mood more than any sort of plot, but hey, there’s some prescient stuff here)

“It’s like this,” says Vex, a piece of gold between her fingers, drawing light like a mirror. “Every person you meet is a coin toss.”

“A coin toss,” says Keyleth, nonplussed, watching.

Vex makes the gold disappear into the palm of her hand; a flick of wrist, a glint of light and it’s gone. “A coin toss,” she says. “Every person you meet. You don’t get to choose which way it lands, but you know, every time, that a wish isn’t enough. Won’t keep it from landing.”

“I don’t think I catch your meaning.”

“Catch this,” Vex says, tossing the coin onto the wooden table. It rattles, collapses with one stamped face to the sky. “Every time you meet someone, you know it’s an inevitability that one of you dies first. Neither knows which, or why. That’s just how it goes, but it happens every time. And so by all means, go through life looking for the inevitable loopholes: meet people and forget them, leave them behind, not knowing. But the coin still falls.”

Keyleth tilts her head back. “Does it?”

---

space - (a half-finished CR Jester-centric fic that I think was the first thing I ever wrote for the second campaign, as an exercise in learning character voices)

She stares at the strange nightmare-creature with a sense of satisfaction for a moment, then bellows, at the top of her lungs, “Hey, is anybody else there?! Are you all super dead?! Because they’re not real monsters!”

The words sound weird to her ears, and she realizes belatedly that it’s because she keeps expecting them to echo in the small space, and she’s not actually in a small space, which is starting to get a little confusing. “I hope they’re not all super dead,” she says, to cover a sudden sinking feeling in her gut. She’s not much help with super dead, or even with other kinds of dead beyond ‘almost’, and she’s sort of The cleric, so. “I guess you’re with me, still,” she says, and the universe shifts into something that feels like warm acknowledgement.

“All right,” she says, and sucks in a deep breath. “Sorry about your everything,” she tells the monster, and steps through the wall.

She blinks at the immediacy of the transition into a warm, sunny day; she would’ve at least expected some neat twinkly effects or a shimmer in the landscape, but no, just one step to go from damp cavern to let’s-have-a-picnic.

Which, she remembers, is exactly what she’d been saying when they’d turned the corner and seen this amazing meadow in the middle of the rolling hills, with birds singing and, like, blink dogs frolicking (there may not have been any blink dogs) and celestial beings descending from on high to serenade them (there may not have been any celestial beings, either). So they’d stopped, mostly to let W.C. rest, but mostly mostly for a picnic, and---

She turns slowly enough to keep her dress from whirling out in a really cool way, because this isn’t cool, this isn’t good, this is very, very bad.

---

time - (chapter 3 of a CR novella I need to go back and rewrite because canon keeps doing my plot twists better than me)

Towns on the mainland always seemed to Fjord to be a bit too quiet.

In coastal towns, things changed. Things changed by definition. New faces coming through meant everyone, from the cutpurses on up, had to be adaptable to thrive. He’d always put a lot of stock in adaptability. Always had to.

These landbound towns, though, felt stale, entrenched in their ways. Granted, Port Damali had sometimes been far from a progressive, cosmopolitan outpost, but compared to towns like Crossroads, well. He’d already caught more than a few strange looks---not to mention a couple of hastily stifled signs against evil---aimed at him and Yasha. Nott, in disguise as a young halfling woman, was beginning to attract an even more worrying series of concerned looks. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before someone intervened and demanded to know what she was doing in such mixed company, which would just be all kinds of awkward.

So Fjord slouched a little as he walked, avoiding direct eye contact, matching his posture and stride to that of the quieter breed of workers wandering the town this evening. His fingers twitched with the urge to summon his blade, but he channeled that nervous energy into making himself as unassuming as possible, as near to invisible as he could manage without some sort of magic.

He glanced to his left, where Yasha strode proudly, destruction and devastation writ large on her dramatic features, her piercing, mismatched eyes seeking out challenges in every passerby.

With a sigh, Fjord abandoned all attempts at blending in and nudged Nott in the shoulder.

---

breath - (this is the one I’m most actively working on that I don’t want to say much about, but it’s a Beau-centric CR story with a bit of a weird perspective)

The sound of high, wheezy breathing was audible almost immediately, which meant that this mysterious woman had made it relatively close to the cabin, which in turn meant that she’d bypassed a number of traps along the way. Viev wasn’t yet willing to chase that particular sentence to its logical conclusion, but the heft of the weapon in her hands would provide ample punctuation if she needed it.

As they drew nearer to its source, the breathing halted for a moment, then started up again, faster, more frantic. Jui touched Viev’s arm, either to advise caution or seek reassurance, then backed off while Viev shoved her way through the last stand of bushes, toward the clearing where the trap had been laid.

The figure on the ground was unmoving except for the too-quick rise and fall of her chest, and she seemed really committed to pretending to be unconscious, so Viev was just going to let her go on doing that while she assessed the threat. Looked human, with the kind of wiry, absurdly well-defined musculature that could only be about nine parts extensive martial training, one part vanity, and approximately zero parts farmhand or laborer. The clothing was well-made and richly dyed; Jiu was growing out of half the clothing she owned these days, so if the crossbow did come into play, well, waste not, want not.

[awanqi]

Do you have any tips for artists who are just beginning to draw digitally 😀

I sure do! Based on my experience, here are some tips. Some are purely for digital, others are for beginner/and above artists, but I hope this can help as many people as possible! Your question was quite general, so correspondingly, I took it upon myself to answer with unnecessarily extensive and specific passages... and I am sorry 

Learn the fundamentals, which consist of color theory, perspective, composition, value, realistic anatomy (only if that’s your aim. I don’t want to say that realism is the only choice, because it really isn’t, but I will say that it is so much easier scaling down complexity than it is to build it up, plus, more knowledge won’t hurt, at least not in this case). Know the rules so you can safely break them.

Learn your program (and your tablet)! Doesn’t matter which one, there isn’t one that has a definite superiority over the other, the main point is that you have to stick with it, learn the tools and how they behave, learn the interface. It’s the same with traditional art, where you have to learn how to mix paint and choose brushes/canvas/ prime your canvas, take care of your equipment, etc. After all, digital art is just another medium, as different as watercolor is to oil. If you have the tools, use them. If you’ve got the ability to ctrl+z, color pick, whatever, do it! But obviously in moderation, like anything else. 

Despite the many differences programs can have, here are some things I’d recommend to do on whatever program you have.

Have a high resolution, I have it as 300 dpi. More pixels, more details

If your computer can handle it, have a larger canvas. Mine is usually around 12″ x 20″. It’s really big, though, and my laptop hates me for that lol

Make sure to have a computer with at least 8gb of ram installed (stupid of me to put this in with “tips”, but this is a recent issue of mine and I thought I’d share) if you decide to go with those settings that I’ve listed above. You can always have a smaller canvas to save on memory usage, but the 300 dpi, or at least 250, is recommended. If you’ve got photoshop as your program, 8gb is fine, but maybe don’t run any background programs like ... Chrome? SAI runs quicker, but not enough for 4gb of ram, so I guess for now, stick with 8gb.

As for the tablet, I’d recommend going for Wacom if you haven’t already. They’re the most commonly used, so they would have the most troubleshooting across the internet for if you’ve got some issues with the driver or whatnot. Some minor tips:

Draw for at least a week on your tablet (I assume you would start out with a tablet without a screen, so like, not a Cintiq) to get used to it. Draw even more on it, and it’ll be like second nature. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it!

If your program crashes before you can save your picture, and you’d worked so hard on it and it looked so good! don’t worry. You drew it once, you can draw it again. I read somewhere that when John Singer Sargent’s students painted something really well, he would trash it and tell them to paint it again. Not because he was a total dick (probably?) but it was because he wanted his students to have the ability to paint confidently multiple times, not just one time. Yes, your program crashing and you losing your work can destroy your fragilely rising self-esteem that you worked so hard to produce, but you can recover. Do the same next time and regain what you had, or even more advantageous, draw it even better than before. 

Don’t worry about not producing good art at the beginning, nobody does, I didn’t either (except Picasso, but he’s an anomaly. It’s really weird lol. but he ended up as a cubist so I think the universe retained its balance in the end) It’s about producing consistently rather than creating what you might think of as “a good piece” every once in a while, because the more you draw, the more you practice and then the more experience/knowledge and skills you gain. Of course, you should try your best at everything, just try not to be disappointed when your art doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to. It’s going to do that sometimes. Keep working hard.

If you do somehow start up as quite skilled, great! Keep it up. Work even harder.

But, if you start at a mediocre level instead, like everyone else, it doesn’t matter. Work even harder! 

Bottom line is, work hard, work effectively. be patient. Improvement is sure to come.

Learn other people’s mistakes so you don’t commit them too. Self-explanatory, I think.

Do studies of all kinds of artists from all kinds of movements, especially those that appeal to you. Studies can be broken down into categories such as color or value. Old masters did studies of their generation of old masters! It’s a tried-and-true method of learning. I’d recommend to start out with realistic first, then to go to less realistic styles. (but my word doesn’t hold much merit, so you can do whatever you want! free will is a blessing haha)

Find the best way for you to practice. Some people like to be mechanical and draw something over and over again to learn it, others like to make sure to include what they’re weak at in every piece they do. Mainly, though, if you’ve got something to work on, take it piece by piece and work at it until you’ve got it down. One way might be quicker but less interesting, and another might be slower but less taxing and more fun for your mind. It’s your choice! 

Challenge yourself constantly, I read somewhere that if it’s not hard or if you’re not challenged, you’re not growing. Try new things, it can tell you a lot about the way you want to draw. 

Find what you like/love to draw. I used to think that I had to know how to draw full-scale environment pieces (like what you would see in concept art/visual development) and realism, only, and reject everything else that wasn’t full environment/realism (big mistake btw), to be considered a “good artist”, but have learned since that that’s not always the case. Many artists have their own thing that they do, and they do it well, like how Mucha didn’t need environments or a realistic background to be a good artist, and Frederic Edwin Church didn’t need to paint humans to be a good artist. 

Alphonse Mucha  

Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs, 1861, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Norma and Lamar Hunt. (Fun fact, I saw this in person! It was huge)

Granted, they each produced very different types of artwork when compared to each other, but in their own right, they were still good artists. 

So, as you can tell, the concept of a “good artist” is subjective, and for good reason-- because you’re supposed to decide what that concept would be in terms of yourself. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and blahblahblah 

:)

but I digress.

Lastly, the beginning is always going to be hard, and it might even suck, and you might even want to give up. But hey, that’s normal! If you really love it, don’t give up. A good piece of art by you is still waiting to be produced.