#this is actually a redraw of something I drew last year

[itsghostlost]

I’m considering this as something for Fake Peppino Friday, he’s right there so it counts

[gplovestwdg]

Happy Halloween!

Somehow every year Louis manages to get the most cynical unjolly people to dress up with him on Halloween... last year, he, Aasim, and Violet were the powerpuff girls.

At Ericson's, students are encouraged to dress up and get the weekend to go trick or treating. It's like one of four opportunities the students get to have any fun. Younger students are supervised by teachers or able to tag along with an older student, while older kids are allowed to take the train alone.

Marlon this year is a flashlight :) Who knows why :) The costume just called to him in Spirit Halloween :) (This is actually a redraw of what's on the left, which is something I drew 6 years ago when The Final Season was still releasing.)

[spinemporium]

redraw of something i drew last year which was a redraw of something i drew 2 years ago

previous versions below :)

2022 version

2021 version

this was before i actually started the podcast so the designs and personalities were what i'd heard from my friends💀💀

[thegatorsgoose]

Mourning Dove notes, batch #1

So since I am a very visual thinker, whenever I post my ideas (that aren't in-the-moment rants, that is) I like to draw something for it. It's the closest thing I can get to transferring something directly from my brain to yours. Unfortunately, I have a lot of thoughts, which means I have a lot of drawings I want to make to help get my points across. And since it's easier to write my ideas down as they come to me anyway, I'll be posting Mourning Dove stuff in batches, drawing + notes = a batch :)

Speaking of the drawing part, this is actually a redraw of fanart I did for Wayne's Haunted Mansion I drew a while ago, so you can actually use the bear as a size reference! He's bigger than Bearwing now, but to be fair the bears not that big. Danny, at 14, is 5”2 at most, probably closer to 5’0. He's still a small king.

I decided to have him be 14 when he becomes a vigilante because 1. That seems like a reasonable amount of time for him to have recovered mentally and physically enough for him to be able to handle unfamiliar environments and have the training necessary to be cautious and know when and how to step in (at least 4 years of training + his powers make him a tiny terror).

2. Yo Danny Phantom he was just 14

This batch is going to be dedicated to why Danny is this au has autism and ADHD, and how that affects him. The why will come from the original fanfic this au is based on, Wayne’s Haunted Mansion by @tathartiel (which you should definitely read if you enjoy dp x dc!). How it affects him will mostly be part of the au. Ok? Ok. I tend to ramble a bit but I tried to make it easy to follow.

First of all, Danny enjoys knitting! He's already sewing, it's only the natural progression for him to find out about knitting, and the family would definitely try to encourage the hobby with less sharp tools. It gives him something to do with his hands, and at the end of the day he has something he made all by himself, something he can be proud of. He loves making stuff for people he cares about, he likes knowing he can do something to keep his loved ones warm, whether by making a blanket, scarf, sweater- you name it. He's definitely not great at first, but he does practice a lot. Whenever he's nervous or fidgety, it's nice to do something with his hands.

One of his favorite parts of knitting is the yarn itself. Specifically the texture and feel of certain yarns. The Waynes are rich so they have no problem supplying him with extremely soft yarns to make the softest sweaters and blankets. And you know how he loves pillows? Well I'd imagine that he’d also love the extremely thick, pillowy yarn. He uses it to make a huge blanket that enhances his pillow nest 10 fold. The day he got a giant roll of thick fluffy yarn he spent all day making a giant fluffy blanket out of it, and the following night shoving it in the birds and bats faces so they can experience the bliss that is the feeling of his new soft, pillowy creation.

Speaking of textures, Danny loves hoodies, especially his Batman hoodie(s). Not only so that he can physically show his appreciation for his family, but that they are warm and soft on the inside, and make him feel secure. His siblings have all gotten him their merch at one point or another, but it wasn't until Jason got him Red Hood merch in the form of a leather jacket did they realize that texture could be a problem. The inside was just not working for Danny, but he was happy to have merch so he tried to ignore it to make Jason happy. It lasted until dinner that night, Danny had a breakdown because the uncomfortable feel of the jacket was agitating him and suddenly the klinks of silverware on plates was to loud, the scrapes and stabs of forks hitting the plates felt like he was physically being hit on the head, and the vibration of the table when someone moved felt like pins and needles going through his arms that were resting on the table. It all became too much for him and he excused himself from the table with a wobbly chirp before promptly disappearing.

It wasn't until later that night, before Jason left, that he reappeared in front of him, tears in his eyes, and handed back the jacket with a guilty chirp. It took Jason some prodding to get Danny to explain why he was handing it back, and then when he finally understood it took a lot more convincing to get Danny to understand it's ok to not like the jacket, no i'm not mad at you, its ok. After he got Danny to calm down he left the manor and informed the rest of the group chat of the new development… and then got Danny another, comfier Red Hood jacket. Bruce, having autism himself (i'm not even sure if that's a headcanon or canon at this point), helps Danny in making sure he knows its ok to feel that way about certain textures and asks what textures he likes and doesn't like, even writes them down so when buying something online or getting something tailored, they can make sure it won't be uncomfortable. His siblings 100% take advantage of this list and start a sort of unspoken competition of who can buy Danny his favorite piece of merch.

Speaking of merch, he has a hoodie of every single Gotham vigilante and wears one almost 24/7. The media was given the vague explanation that Batman saved him from a physically abusive household at 10 (or whatever his age ends up actually being, they don't reveal his existence to the world until he's 12, where by that point he can change back into his human form comfortably. I'm making the assumption he eventually can for the au cus I don’t know everything) so they just assume it's hero worship from that. His siblings however know that it's because he loves them and thinks they're the coolest people ever. Everyone thinks he's adorable anyway. When he first saw Mourning Dove merch he was super excited, until he realized it would be too uncomfortable to wear. Later that week when Bruce gives him a tailor made Dove hoodie, he cried. (Bruce totally won the competition for it, the kids are just a little bitter about it)

Merch was made for him because Gotham does know Mourning Dove exists, mostly from eye witness accounts of the baddies he took down, but also from the literal one blurry video of him that exists. It shows Dove holding onto Batman's cape as Red Robin talks. This was taken on his first official patrol, so he was a little nervous. At first Gotham was mad at Batman for bringing yet another child into the fold, until all the criminals Dove brought in came back terrified. They realized they really should have learned their lesson from the latest Robin, and now just respect their funky shadow child.

However Dove doesn't actually come out all that often. He started his vigilante career because he got wrapped up in the supernatural side of Gotham, at first it was just helping the occasional stray ghost find their haunt, but you know how dangerous magic and the supernatural world can get in just the blink of an eye. Think Jujutsu Kaisen, he was able to see Gotham spirits causing and feeding off of citizens misery, and he just can't not help. When the Batfam realizes what he's doing, he's fully committed to helping the spirit of Gotham deal with her curse. They know there's nothing they can do to stop him, so they do the next best thing and give him armor, a mask and a weapon. They also up his training, which they had been doing before because… it's Gotham. So Mourning Dove doesn't actually come out as often as the others, just either when they're down on members, there's an emergency and need his powers, they want to teach him something, or when he just asks.

… Anyway, back on topic. Another way his autism affects him is making him mostly nonverbal/selectively mute. I'm making the assumption that they eventually do get his voice back, but at that point he can adequately communicate without his voice, using chirps and gestures. He knows now that if he needs to talk (talking to a stranger, needing to explain something more complicated, etc) he usually can. Usually. If he's stressed or uncomfortable in any way, he often finds that he can't talk. Thankfully he's been learning sign language for a few years now and can get across simple ideas and feelings just fine in a pinch. And sometimes, he doesn't even feel bad. And yet still, he can't find it in himself to speak. In those cases, if he needs to explain something complicated, he can write it down. He's gotten a lot better! And if he ever trips up, he can always look it up or use autocorrect if it's over text.

Another thing his trama definitely made a lot worse is that he has episodes of hypersensitivity. An analogy I once heard is that most minds are like doors, and most people can choose to shut the door on small pieces of information that are deemed unnecessary. Like the ticking of a clock, or the scratching of pencils around a classroom. But people with adhd can’t choose to closes those doors, and the flood of information can easily overstimulate us. With his super hearing this definitely becomes a problem, and I can only imagine it gets worse when in crowds. I actually already talked about this, with bad textures. Often we can ignore the extra sensory input and go on with our day, but when faced with something that agitates us, it opens the floodgates to make everything agitate us. The sounds of dinner don't usually annoy Danny, but with the extra bad sensory input that he just couldn't ignore, it made it so he couldn't ignore other pieces of input like usual, and it became too much for him. I usually counteract overstimulation by wearing headphones or earbuds, and while I know Danny definitely has noise canceling devices made for the supers with him 24/7 just in case, I think he deals with it, again, by controlling the texture of the cloths he’s wearing and using it to fidget. He counteracts the negative input by surrounding himself with positive input. If he's not in public or that doesnt work, he’ll curl up into himself and rock back and forth, countering the input with a soothing motion and clenching onto his skin like a stress ball. Of course, that's if Cujo, his service dog, isn't there to help him through it.

One thing that carries over into the future is his short attention span. curse you ADHD! He has trouble sitting still and concentrating on a task that doesn't interest him. However he still LOVES space, and often hyperfixates on it. He’ll sit in front of the tv or a tablet and watch documentaries for hours without moving an inch. The first time this happened the batfam where scared something was wrong, maybe he's having an episode and can't move? But when they approached him to see if he was alright he started wildly flapping his arms and letting out excited chirps, till he noticed the look on their face and got out his phone. An hour later he sent them a poorly written, excited and long text about his favorite star in the galaxy to the family group chat. Suffice it to say, space is his special interest. Since then they started using it as a way to get him to sit still or to distract him. Often it helps to play a documentary in the background while he does a task that doesn't interest him so he won't get so bored he up and leaves.

Last but not least, he has trouble understanding social cues. This is absolutely not helped by how sheltered he is in the social department. Danny's part ghost, and ghosts don’t really lie. It's just not a thing they do. They are loud and honest with their intentions, no beating around the bush. Danny just doesn't understand why people aren't straightforward as well. Danny is very honest and says exactly what he means. I always find this ironic when reading the actual story, that the one person in the family (minus Alfred) that's good at communicating can't talk. This is something that becomes an issue with Bruce and his habit of not using his words to talk. I'd like to imagine that, in trying to set a good example for his youngest son yet, he’d realize the importance of communication, and how he communicates.

You could argue that a lot of these traits come from his trauma, and you're absolutely right. It definitely contributes to making some of these traits a lot stronger than before in this au as well. However, I don't want to just make it all a trauma response because then it sort of implies something is… wrong with him. That there's something to fix. And I don't want him to be treated like that. There's nothing wrong with him liking hoodies. There's nothing wrong with him not wanting to talk. There's nothing wrong with him loving space so much. Those are just a part of who he is. Everyone has quirks, and those are his. I don't want the batfamily to obsess with fixing him, or try to make him “normal.” I want them to accommodate his needs like they do for everyone else in the family. I want them to accept him, and his flaws, like a normal person. Not look at him like he's broken. After everything, he deserves a family who accepts him, chirps and all.

Tldr of the last paragraph: making everything a trama thing makes people sad and want to help “fix” him instead of treating him like a normal person. I aint having that in my au so even if he wasn't hurt the way he was, he would still act like this. There's nothing wrong with Danny, he just needs to be accommodated for and treated like a normal person.

Bonus: close up and flat colors (idk if you can even see them but I am way more proud of those eyelashes than I have any right to be)

[cherry-bomb-ships]

Wanted to get some creative flow going while staying low-effort, so here's a screenshot redraw/edit/whatever you wanna call it, because I was curious how Mojo would look in the show with all my headcanons and little flourishes that I add when I draw him -w- So here's my redraw and the original screenshot, plus a version wif his OG palette since the lighting in the scene I decided to redo is all reddish

[Any reblogs and comments are seen and appreciated!! 🥺🥺 Also click for higher quality. Under the cut I put some of my thought process on my changes ehe ❤]

So the first thing I have to mention is one of my favorite changes: that little chip out of his ear! I mean, it's not a lot to explain if you just think about it for a second. This poor chimp has taken a LOT of beatings over the years, there's no way that he wouldn't have some physical scars from all that, so I figured the best shorthand way to show that would be giving him that notch. I like to imagine that he's self-conscious about it too 🥺

Second most notable change, I always like giving him a little tooth poking out because I watched a lot of anime as a teen Because with those sharp teeth of his, the idea of one poking out makes sense and also just looks cool to me -w-💖💖💖 I like to think it's a side effect of the PPG movie when he got all huge, cuz his canines also got extended so much that they were poking out from his mouth

So the thicker outline around the bottom of his eyes is something that the original show actually did, in the Powerpuff Girls Rule 10th anniversary special! That stuck with me ever since and rly made me question why he didn't always have it 😭💖😭💖

Even if I prefer his rounder design pre-movie, I can't deny that I adore the sharper, M-shaped nose that they gave him later on and I wanted to keep that. The sharp lines just make sense to me and line up with the shape theory of "sharp=mean and evil". Plus it looks like an M! For Mojo! :3

So this change is a more subtle one and is also a very new idea I had, but I gave his pupils a purple tone instead of being pure black! In all honesty it was inspired by one of the cover arts of the newest PPG comics coming out currently where the artist gave him purple eyes. In my mind they used to be a light brown and got tinted purple from his mutation, along with the whites going pink.

Alright final thing (I think), I know I touched on the notch out of his ear, but when it comes to his ear shape in general, I like to find a happy middle ground between his fully rounded ears they drew on him pre-movie, and the sharp almost elf-like ears they gave him post-movie. Like I said earlier, the sharpness reads as more villainous!

Oh wait! Okay last thing for real: I love giving him a bit more fur around his face, purely for the fact that I think it looks good and cute uwu 💖💖💖💖💖💖

If you read this far please either reblog or comment with your thoughts, I'd be so honored 🥺💖

[downsteepy]

When the first rays of sunlight hit his face the next morning, waking him up, Leon realized two things: one was that, against all odds, he had fallen asleep. The second was that his pillow smelled like Dante. That explained how he’d gotten to sleep in the first place.

hi this is actually a redraw of something i drew last year, based off of one of my mutual's danteleon fics :) i added some more personal details just to be cute about it but leon is the main focus here

[linesonscreens]

Let's Read Peanuts (Sponsored by “Snicker-Snacks”) – September 1957

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read the full month at the official GoComics page. Today's month starts HERE.

September 2, 1957

That’s not actually a joke and now I feel bad.

September 3, 1957

We don’t. We mostly just don’t want anyone ~else~ to have them.

September 6, 1957

Credit where it’s due. Schulz was clearly making this strip as a way to save on time and energy, yet he still made the effort to redraw Linus for every panel when he easily could have just photocopied it. You gotta respect it.

September 10, 1957

Lucy learns an important lesson about trying to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.

September 20, 1957

I think this might be the first time we’re seeing this joke. Though later on she’s more grossed out than embarrassed (“Ewww! Dog germs!”). 

September 22, 1957

This is technically the 4th football gag strip but it’s the first one that really feels in-line with it’s more modern counterparts. I’m not sure why exactly but I think it has something to do with how he’s drawing these characters now and the general vibe their expressions give. You can really see it if you compare the way Shculz drew CB eating shit with the same kind of panel from last year:

He's still not quite there yet though. He's not even doing that thing with the arms and the hunched spine yet.

September 25, 1957

Where on earth did you even get that thing!?

And to answer his question, every song is written for the electric guitar if you use one to play it.

Thoughts:

Happy Charlie Brown’s birthday to all who celebrate!

[mrfeenysmustache]

Four Years Later

In 2020 I started drawing again after a 10+ year art hiatus.

It was something I used to love, and I stopped.

I’d accepted I’d never draw again.

But then I did!

Last night I did a redraw of the first piece of fanart I drew and actually shared, right around the time I started drawing again.

The original from 2020:

Im just happy to be doing something I used to love again.

[spotaus]

Dang, that redraw hits hard in 2024 🙏

Below are the old versions! (The left is my very very literally first drawing of Ichor! The others followed a few months/years later-)

Some design breakdowns under the cut!

Okay, okay-

^this guy!! I drew him on my janky old laptop with a tiny lil drawing pad right after my Mlp phase in middleschool. He was one of my first designs and I'll confidently say the first utmv oc who made it onto a drawing format. At the time I refused to draw hands correctly and drew claws instead- Ichor here still had his name "Ichor" and was supposed to be a combo between Reaper and Red. He had his chains because he was a fickle God of death who needed to be held back by his fellow gods lest he wreak havoc on the surface. I love this design to death, mostly because I always think back on it to see how far I've come and how Ichor's been here forever! (Note that here he doesn't have his iconic gold tooth or purple arm. His clawed hands inspired me for the purple arm though, and the one spiked white tooth eventually became his gold tooth!)

^ This is post iPad acquisition thanks to my school getting some new funding. I don't think I drew this on procreate but I can't remember the name of the app smh. This version of Ichor was similar to the old one. Less bent on destruction, more just a trickster. (This one and the other one always fell into 'Teenage' vibes). Now he has shoes, the gold tooth, and the arm! Though he still has both eyelights and the 'crack' in his socket is still a gold scar instead. This *is* where I gave him his gray pants, but the slash on his jacket... uhh... swapped directions?? Idk about that one- But fun fact! The spot on his jacket is a mark of how he'd be killed one day if that came to pass! He doesn't know, no one does, but it's true! Old prophecy locked up somewhere in the Ruins. (Actually, Toriel might be aware.) His arm here is super desaturated because I wanted to keep it a minor detail. That changes very quickly 👀

^ He's lanky af!!! I always go through a phase of drawing things too short, then too tall. Welcome to Ichor's Way Too Tall phase! I wanted him to be big and chunky but uhh. That 'silhouette' talk got to me. Here the biggest differences? The hand is out of the pocket and includes his sword! (Which is Canon still) The scarf is here too! At first the scarf was a gift from Reward, then it was from Reward being killed, then it was just a bold fashion choice?(I settled on it being a gift from Reward again, to help him cover the collar) His socket is finally empty, the crack is there too. His teeth are all straight besides the one gold tooth, and the hand is very purple this time. The lore I wanna mention in this bit is the soul! It's constantly been a pale yellow, but here it has a hole in it! This isn't something that stocks, but the idea of it does. Ichir's chains prevent him from healing with his godly magic, so he's stuck on 1 hp. The god's souls are naturally gold, abd here, Ichor's soul was wounded when he was captured, so he's slowly been fighting off death. (In the final version his soul is white with fading gold, showing how his magic is restricted)

^Honorable mention jumpscare because this is actually a sticker I made about 2 years ago? Not exactly the same pose but it was definitely inspired and it shows how certain elements have stuck around since the last doodle. (This sticker is currently on a sketchbook at my house lmao-)

^And then current! I used to be allergic to using the same colors twice, so he used to have different shades of yellow abd gold everywhere. Now the yellow/gold is all the same! His eyebags (which started in the Lanky era) are more pronounced, he's more classic-shaped than he's ever been, and as per usual I don't think I drew his purple hand right. But! He's my boy, and that's what matters! Side note: His chains aren't visible here, but that's because I've decided that he prefers to hide them. His sleeves are puffy so he can tuck them away, his scarf covers the length of the chain on his collar, etc. It just doesn't make narrative sense that he'd leave them exposed like that. He's also in his old man era finally! Been trying to draw him like this fir years!!!

[lambhouse]

art block & burnout (and how i deal with it)

so i've been kind of Going Thru It lately, but then again who hasn't? life's kind of been an ongoing shitslide these past few years. and i can't say it's only now starting to catch up to me, because that would be a bald faced lie, but i think i've finally reached the point where i realize that for real, no cap, or whatever the kids say these days, change starts with me.

what does that mean, you ask? and what does it have to do with burnout and drawing?

well, i've been at my lowest for two years and counting now. i've had bouts of creativity and whole entire weeks of being productive and drawing like a machine and just generally being high on life, but those were just spikes of activity on an otherwise flat line. and i've been flatlining for months now. i know i'm due for a high at some point (it's how these things go), but this time i decided to get ahead of it and start building up some good habits so that when the next low hits, it won't be as hard.

this, at its core, isn't anything new or revolutionary and i can't say the tips/advice i have are universally applicable, but they will hopefully give you an idea of where to start, or at least give you a different perspective on how to go about applying any of the general art advice you see out there.

so without further ado, here is how i did this:

i started a new sketchbook last month. that, in and of itself, isn't a big deal; the big deal is that i kept up with it for a month straight. tomorrow is the actual 1-month anniversary (lol) of my daily drawing habit.

that's not particularly impressive either, not even for me. i've had periods where i drew regularly -- not 7 days a week regularly, but 3-4 days in a row every week and i kept that going for weeks. but i wasn't going through burnout at the time, and that's what makes this such an important milestone for me.

how i started:

it was rough, lol. looking back at this now i can see it's not a terrible first drawing but i remember how fucking stressed i was the entire time. my hands were shaking, i kept erasing and redrawing, i added color thinking it would make it look better, i even tried drawing from reference (the DRDs and the very faint flower in the corner) but i didn't have enough patience to really look at my references. overall it was a miserable experience.

but something good did come out of it, because i realized two things:

i was too mentally drained to draw from imagination, and

drawing in pencil hindered me more than it helped

now, drawing from imagination was what i always wanted to do and i could do it well enough and consistently enough when i was feeling good. but the whole reason i decided to build a habit like this was so i wouldn't have to depend on the whims of my brain chemistry anymore.

so drawing from reference it was. good thing i already had a pinterest board full of portrait references. i added about a hundred more to it that first night, just to have more variety, and that was enough to get me excited for the next drawing session.

now, the pencil thing. that's a bit tricky to explain and i can't promise it'll work for you as well as it did for me, but i think it's worth a shot.

the way it works for me is, the pencil is too easy a tool to use. even if you make a mistake, you've got an eraser and a million do-overs (or as many as your paper holds up to). so if i draw and erase and redraw the same line over and over again, at some point that starts to mean that there's something wrong with me, that i'm a shit artist, and what's the fucking point of doing it if i've basically got all the training wheels i need and i still can't draw this fucking eye right, or the mouth still looks weird, or the face is wonky. if the paper's good and the pencil lead is good quality and the eraser does its job well and still the drawing looks like shit, well, who's to blame for that? me.

i knew from the start that this was where i was headed if i decided to draw in pencil. even the very first sketches i did were in colored pencil, which is a step up in difficulty from regular graphite (they can be erased, but not completely). but obviously that didn't work as i had hoped, so more drastic measures were required.

so i decided to just rawdog it. i ditched the pencils entirely and took my tombow pens out of retirement. i only had five and two of them were different shades of pink, so not a lot of room to play with colors-as-values, but i made do. the three figures that look like they were drawn in pencil were actually drawn with the grey pen.

now this may seem counterintuitive. if erasing and redrawing stresses me out so much, how does drawing directly in pen make it better? isn't that just more stress?

yes and no, but mostly no. the way i rationalized it is, i can't make a perfect pen drawing even at my absolute best. there's just no way. but i can eventually arrive at a perfect pencil drawing, through a lot of trial and error and frustration, so why not take all of that out of the equation? frustration never helped me get better, it was just a creative sinkhole. so why not get rid of it? turn the possibility of failure into a certainty and work with or around that new certainty.

cut out the middleman, so to speak.

and it fucking worked.

-- for full disclosure, i've drawn in pen before. i started on a whim a few years ago and found it pretty liberating, so i kept doing it.

these are some of the first sketches i did in pen. they're pretty good, but as you can see from the date at the bottom, these were from before the Great Calamity of 2020 happened and everything went to shit. --

back to the thing.

so drawing in pen worked wonders to loosen me up and keep me going with the challenge -- or the building of a new habit. it certainly helped that i was also drawing portraits from reference and didn't have to think about poses, or features, or expressions -- they were all already there for me to draw.

not having to think about any of that also meant i had more energy to put into other things, like shading and coloring and how to simplify and stylize complex forms.

(i also got some poscas and four new watercolor makers. they weren't necessary for the process, but they were a nice treat.)

so i kept drawing. two days turned into three, into five, until i had a full week of daily drawings under my belt.

i hit a snag on day 8. (no pictures because (1) its fucking embarrassing, and (2) it's an oc design for a thing i'm still cooking and it's in the earliest of stages where the characters don't even have names.) i have a pretty good idea why day 8 was such a miss: i got overconfident. day 7 was a draw from your imagination day and it went well enough i thought i could do it again the next day. lol nope.

so i went back to my reference board for the next couple of days, but i had gotten a taste of true freedom (drawing from imagination -- and in pencil!) and i wasn't feeling the portraits anymore.

the next couple of days after that were rough (again -- no pictures bc uncooked oc's) but all the drawing from reference i did the week before had done me good. i had the willpower to keep going despite being unhappy with my drawings. they weren't bad drawings per se, but i was using my newly-found oc-drawing muscles and there were bound to be some growing pains. i was also drawing in pencil but by that point i had gotten used to making mistakes so i wasn't stressed about having to erase over and over.

(i don't think i actually erased all that much, tbh. i was instead using a blending stump to mask the wobbly lines.)

day 15. i didn't set out to draw one page a day but that's what ended up happening so i just went with it. i also only had an hour or two to draw and that's how much i was able to get done in that amount of time. slow and steady wins the race, i guess?

day 19 was i think the first time i drew in pen from imagination in a long time. i was also watching some vtuber drama nonsense on youtube and it got me thinking about making my own vtuber model. idek what a vtuber is or does but the process of making a model from scratch sounds interesting. (its also very time-consuming, i hear.)

anyway.

actual cooked oc's this time + a page of raziel drawn from memory to celebrate the news of the soul reaver prequel graphic novel that's in the making. (apparently dave rapoza is gonna do the cover art for it??)

and this is now turning into an art diary, but you get the gist. i kept going.

and going.

and going.

even when it wasn't fun. even when i didnt' feel like it. and maybe i havent built the habit all the way through yet, but the more i kept going the more i noticed how the "i don't feel like it" feeling became less and less intense.

it hasn't gone away completely. its 10pm now as i'm writing this and i know i have to open up my sketchbook and draw and tbh i don't really feel like it, but it's less that i'm drained and more like "but what if i fuck up a perfectly good page?"

and i know how to deal with that. i pick up a pen and fuck it up on purpose, and then i look at what i have and start problem-solving.

because that's what gets me through it.

not having a clear, concrete problem to tackle is what kept me stuck in limbo for so long, it's what's at the core of my burnout. you'd think creating more problems on purpose would make the burnout worse, but it got me out of the black hole of indecision and anxiety. because if it's something that i made, it's something i can unmake. it's something i can fix.

so i'm fucking fixing it, one step at a time.

[einsatzzz]

KHRe Projects Updates #1

The devil works hard, but I work harder🫡 Anyway, I've been feeling unwell the past few days so I'm just doing planning and other stuff offline. I also wanna post updates like this so I can keep track of my progress. I'll type this all as quick as I can because I'm not feeling so gucci.

Webcomic: I updated my pinned post for this but I determined that my target release date is somewhere around Q4 of this year, so the earliest is gonna be on October 2024. I'm currently organizing my CSP assets (will probably finish within two weeks) and I'm also making various assets/refs that I think will be useful. I plan on releasing Yui's profile before July ends, hope I can make it!

Wiki: I'm still in-progress with some templates on this, but I'll be updating the galleries soon to include more arts that my friends drew of YuiKanaRumi + more commissioned art (Thank you!! 🥰💖✨ueueue😭💖 I just finished running the last batch on Glaze, so they'll be safe there!🫡 I will definitely protect and treasure these!). By the way, after I'm done with Yui's page here, my next plan is to make one for Tsuna.

MVs: For this one, I think I'll prioritize doing something for the 📺MV in my project list, it's the one calling out to my brain right now. It will feature a lot of characters, but the art & editing will be simple. It should be around 1 minute long and I have a rough storyboard for the first 10 seconds (the others are still inside my brain haha).

I was actually planning to continue 🐈‍⬛MV first but when I looked at the drawings I finished last year, I don't feel too satisfied with it anymore, plus the picture quality is kinda too crispy to my eyes now. I wanna redraw it. I might alternate between 📺 and🐈‍⬛, then I'll just post whichever gets finished first.

That's all for now! I'm juggling a lot of projects but the advantage for this is...if I procrastinate on one project, I'll be procrastinating by doing another project, so there's still progress 🤣🤣🤣 And I didn't even get to mention my other wips djbfhsjvfhfsv My brain is bursting with ideas, inspo and creativity but my health/energy can't keep up!!!!

[enter-the-performapals]

(Old art alert!)

So... I was looking through this blog to find this piece (i might be doing something related to it later in the month!) To see that I hadnt actually posted it here!

I drew this back in June last year when I started rewatching Arc V again. Just wanted to give the boys more casual outfit and drinks that I thought suited their personalities!

This was also one of the first lineless pieces i ever drew that i was actually happy with! I think it took me about 3 weeks to do on and off, if I remeber right. I would also end up redrawing Yuya in the same outfit for my first ever post on this blog!

[exhaustedwriterartist]

5, 7, and 10 for the artist asks

Hi Crow!!

5. What piece of art are you still proud of to this day? (Show or describe)

Ooo! I drew this one on a shirt at a camp last year. Unfortunately that shirt is ruined now ;-;

And then I drew this one in 7th grade (6-7 years ago) not too long after I first watched TMNT 2007 (it's a scene redraw):

I'm actually working on a redraw for this one (slowly). You can kind of see the wip behind the first one. Nya @nyaboshi, surely you know which scene in the movie this is from (;-;).

7. Who are some artists that have inspired you?

Hmm.... There are a lot of artists that inspire me. MANY on here (including all my moots <3), Nirami on insta and YouTube, Bluebiscuits and Dingo Doodles on YouTube as well, Disney and DreamWorks artists, Don Bluth (MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE ANIMATOR!!!!!!!), Hayao Miyazaki and other Studio Ghibli artists, the artists/animators for ROTTMNT and LMK, and many more.

But I suppose the two artists that have inspired me the most are my Finnish Gran and my older brother.

10. How do you deal with art block?

Art block is legitimately painful for me. Like I want to draw, but my brain hurts and insides feel funny. I can still draw, but I tend to dislike what I draw during those periods (even when it's completely fine).

What I tend to do is 1. Fight through the art block if I can handle it, or 2. Write down/doodle the ideas I have to draw them later, 3. take a break for a few days, 4. watch something that motivates me to jumpstart me.

Doesn't always work, but option 3 is probably the one to follow. 😅

Thank you for the ask Crow!!

Art Asks

[mono-chrono]

Happy (approximate) 3 years to this post! I can't believe its been this long, and yet simultaneously, I can't believe how far I've come in the past three years. As such, I've decided to finally buckle down and redraw an old favorite of mine!

Gonna get a bit sappy so I'll put it below the cut

The original heist drawing was something that affected me so much. Not in numbers on here, but in satisfaction after drawing for so long. This year marks a decade of me drawing seriously, and looking at my old work makes me both cringe and overwhelmingly happy that I've kept at it for so long.

The original drawing was among some of the first I made with my current setup on FireAlpaca, and believe it or not, it was actually around when I found out how to hit my stride with it. It was also around a turning point in my art when I started getting further in my exploration and started attempting more ambitious things, even if it may not have always worked out.

But above all else, it was a special piece to me. I drew it around the time a community I was desperately clinging on to was dying, and by my friends, it was a well liked drawing! Its a nice, happy memory of before the chats dying, I was able to make one last, happy memory.

As of this year, that community is back again! I honestly could not be happier. It's much smaller, but its a community of friends. I cannot be happier about it. I joined that community 7 years ago, back when I was still in middle school, and through the highs and lows of it, I made a promise to never leave it.

Gods this is corny. If anyone actually ends up reading this, hi! Thank you so much! The TL;DR of that whole little ramble is that The Heist in general set off a whole phase in my life, and through it all, I'm incredibly grateful to it for that, even if it may not be the best work in writing or art.

I hope whoever you are, whatever you're doing, you have a great day! I primarily make these things to make myself and my friends laugh, but if I can bring some stranger, somewhere out there some semblance of joy with what I make, I'd be extremely happy.

I hope everyone has a good one out there.

[lozeyart]

Recently was struck with the urge to go back to my very first "human" character that I created back in 2011 and redraw/redesign him.

his name is Scael, and I would draw him CONSTANTLY. I remember his whole backstory and world I created for him fondly. I worked on him and his story and surrounding characters from 2011-2013 but shifted my focus to other projects after that. The last time I drew him was 4 years ago, in 2019, and it was just a redraw of a 2011 piece.

First picture was my very first drawing I did of him (before then I was only drawing Warrior Cats fanart and cat ocs). What a leap from drawing cats to people!

Miss this guy, I might actually try and do something with him down the road, but we'll see!

[kogarashi-art]

It's the last previews for Falling Into Darkness!

Important note before I go into some details on the pictures: I will, in general, not be doing this for other fanfics I post. The main reason I did this series of illustrations was as something of a treat for finally crossposting this 10-20-year-old story to my AO3 account. I don't really plan to draw a ton of illustrations for other fics I do.

That being said, I may do occasional images that will be posted with future stories on AO3 (I have a quick one for the first chapter of the next fic I plan on posting, for one), and if I do other fanart, related to a fic or not, I still plan to post art here.

But I'm glad for all the kind comments and everyone enjoying this series of illustrations with me. :D You guys are awesome.

With that, description-stuff (including more behind-the-scenes than usual) below the cut. 'Tis long; be forewarned.

First up, arguably the easiest illustration to do in the whole set. It's a silhouette, so the foreground wasn't really an issue (other than trying to get the edge glow just right, and I still don't think I quite managed but I'm definitely telling myself not to mess with it any further). The background was already painted for the second illustration in the whole set:

I just fixed up the paths and the treetops and added a little lookout stand to the building on the right, now that Sonic and Sally weren't blocking those spots. After all, it's supposed to be the same view anyway, so I figured I'd make it easy on myself and not have to completely repaint the scene.

The second image employs some little cheats here and there. Here's the original sketch from my sketchbook for comparison:

Very loose, lacking detail. Straight lines are more like suggestions. The robots are spiky blobs. I have a literal note next to a stick figure and a hollow shape telling me to get some references. There's the barest hint of the alcoves the robots are standing in.

I didn't show this level of behind-the-scenes off with other illustrations in this series (though I suppose if anyone's ever interested, I could do a process post about how I worked on these), but one of the first things I did with this series of illustrations was sift through the roughly fifty individual sketches I'd drawn to illustrate various parts of the story (not counting redraws of portions), ranging from vague shapes to much more detailed drawings, to narrow it down to the ones I was actually going to finish for this project. I ended up with 27 total images, including the two I'm previewing today, focusing on having at least one but no more than three images per chapter.

Once I'd determined which sketches, like the above, were going to become a finished piece, I then went through each and every one of them in Photoshop with a sketch pencil brush and filled out the sketches to a point where I could reliably ink them. That meant things like swapping out figures that didn't work with redraws of them or making size adjustments, like so:

The first image is the second illustration, and you can see I redid Sonic because his initial pose didn't work. The redraw was actually a pose of him I did to draw his post-Mobianization robotic elements from the end of the story, but the stance was actually good for what I needed, so I Photoshopped it in and then sketched the rest of the replacement drawing digitally. The second image is Sally watching Knuckles walk away, and you can see that I changed her left arm, and also reproportioned her body prior to inking (bigger head, smaller body).

And for pieces like the final one in this illustration series, I sketched in all the details that were missing from the initial sketch (which, as I said, was pretty barebones; in my defense, it was the last one I drew, and by that point I was pretty tired of drawing robot hedgehogs so Sonic was something of a stick figure in most of the last chapters' sketches).

And here's where one of the cheats comes into play. I drew one robot hedgehog. Specifically the one you see the most of, near the tip of Robotnik's cape by the drafting table. I drew it on its own layer in Potoshop, then copied and pasted it into all of the other holding bays, erasing parts that wouldn't be visible as I went along. I also went and found those references I needed for Robotnik and Snively and drew the two of them properly.

And then, because I much prefer physical pen-to-paper inking over digital (my tablet is not one of the fancy screen ones, and I've yet to really get comfortable digitally inking with it, despite owning it for nigh on twenty years), I colored all of the sketches red, assembled them in groups on letter-sized images, and printed them out onto cardstock (my preferred medium when I'm going to be traditionally inking). I inked them with my various inking pens (some Sakura Microns, some Faber-Castell PITT pens), scanned each sheet back into my computer, and cleaned up the lines in Photoshop (the reason for the red printout was to make it a bit smoother removing the sketch from the inked lines, though it wasn't as clean as I would've liked; oh well).

That left us with the above. Because I inked them each by hand individually, the robots don't look copy-pasted, because it was the underlying sketch that had been, not the ink work. The tables and holding bays also have straighter lines thanks to using a proper ruler for those (though I didn't concern myself too much with things like perspective and right angles), and after drawing the straight line, I went back freehand over spots to give them a bit of that hand-inked wobble.

From there it was a matter of laying down the flats in Photoshop, then shading, adding effects, etc. I like the cold yellow light I've got on the robots, and the overall shading on the yellow cape. Also that sense of satisfaction when I called this one done, because it was the last one. Huzzah.

I'll see you on Monday for the last chapter!