#tip your artists

[glxyqst]

AI Art vs. Human Art - Irreplaceable

"Why isn't it done yet? It's been a week."

"You're gonna get replaced by AI, haha."

"I'm not paying $10 for a drawing, bro."

Any of these comments sound familiar? If they do, you're either an artist, a supportive friend of an artist, or the ignorant asshat sending such comments to an artist. An artist who: - Has spent YEARS of their life practicing and improving their craft, honing their skills, and otherwise DEDICATING themselves to what they love. "Talent is cheap. Dedication is expensive." - Spends time to create something for you, when they also have: other clients, other projects, other jobs, other things going on in their lives as do we all. They aren't your personal bitch, and EVEN IF you were paying them MORE MONEY FOR MORE CONTROL, at the end of the day YOU went to the THEM. THEY are the artist, THEY are the professional, THEY are the expert. Shut the fuck up and don't try to break them away from their integrity. If they don't want to do something for you, either thank them for their time, or take 50% of your payment back and start your own personal art lessons. It's only too late to learn a new skill if you're dead. - Is doing something that you sure as fuck can't do, because otherwise why would you be asking them? - Is a person and deserves respect, even if you don't like their style or can't afford to pay what they have determined to meet their basic wage requirements so they can create.

An artist is a person and deserves respect, even if you don't like their style or can't afford to pay what they have determined meets their basic wage requirements so they can create.

Don't ask me why, but I desperately desired artwork of Android Cat Gavin wearing water wings and splashing in water. I already knew who I wanted to commission (the fabulous @cptjh-arts, powerhouse artist and amazing person).

Apparently, water wings are actually DANGEROUS and you shouldn't use them. So there's that. But I digress. https://swim2shore.com/the-false-security-of-water-wings/

My concept drawing for Android Cat Gavin with water wings.

For the purposes of this post, I used two AI https://magicstudio.com/ai-art-generator/ and https://hotpot.ai/ai-image-generator/create (two free sites that do not require accounts).

First AI prompt: cat with water wings

Second AI prompt: cat with water floatation device

Third prompt (which is the specifics of my commission request): cat android gavin from "detroit: become human" wearing swimming floatation devices on his front legs, splashing in water, Nines holding him.

Are all of these AI-generated images cute? Sure as fuck they are. Were they free? Yeah, they were. Fantastical elements aside, do they all follow the laws of physics / imitate life? NOPE. Don't recall asking for Catvin to have two weird tails up there (Also I am scared of the flood apparently happening inside my house?). And that one flotation device does NOT look sea-worthy.

Crop of the commissioned artwork from the amazing @cptjh-arts. <3 See the full image here: https://www.tumblr.com/cptjh-arts/710889609313255424/just-finished-my-latest-commission-for-the-lovely?source=share

Absolutely fucking PURRRRFECT. Exactly what I wanted. And all it took were brief conversations of excitement and clarification with my artist. Win-win all around. I get fabulous art, they get paid for doing what they've dedicated their lives to doing, and we both get a pleasant social interaction.

AI-generated art will continue to be refined, but it will never replace a sentient human being.

I am a sci-fi and fantasy fan. I love stories of robots, of true artificial intelligences---or rather, artificial sentience---of "different, not better". When Connor Detroit or Sonny or Data come around, I will be the first in line to greet them and look at their created works with awe. We aren't there, though. And in the meantime, artists are being shunted aside in favor of AI-generated art managed by non-artists---people who do not understand dedication or creativity. AI-generated art will continue to be refined, but it will never replace a sentient human being.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, that's okay. They understand, because they too have bills to pay in this capitalist society that puts money before people.

What's NOT okay is when you talk to them dismissively, disrespectfully, or degradingly.

Grow the fuck up, get over yourself, and go support your fellow human beings.

[mcromwell]

I have enabled tips on Tumblr!

That's all, thanks guys ;3

[druid-for-hire]

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled "immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

[albanenechi]

Drawing bases & references #33 ✨

3 character bases for your oc squads and some couples c:

[frog-in-a-cookiejar]

Blade of The Blood God

[theelvishfiddler]

AN ARTIST'S GUIDE TO HANDS

No, sorry it's actually not an artist's guide to drawing hands. Those are just warmup studies (which I'll talk about in this post.)

This is a guide to Your Hands and how to take care of them when making art.

No one ever sits down and teaches artists how to take care of their hands. They didn’t even teach me this while I was in art college. This is just what I've learned myself through years of pain and scouring the internet for advice.

This is going to be a long one and geared towards illustrative traditional/digital/pen/pencil artists specifically, but artists of other mediums and crafts should take care of their hands too! Well, we all should take care of our bodies in general, but this is about hands.

(advice is below the read more)

First off I'm not a professional or anyone with actual medical advice. I'm just some guy with chronic hand pain who makes art. This advice is free for you to use or discard.

WARMUPS!

Ever sit down in the morning to draw and wonder why your art is so stiff and looks so much worse than what you were drawing last night? It's because you didn't warm up!

You know how for physical sports they all warmup and do stretches before getting into the actual sport. To prevent injuries and all that? Yeah, it's good to do that for art too.

One way to warmup is to just draw lines. Try to keep them as straight as you can. Going up and down and diagonal. Draw squares. Big squares. Small squares. Circles! You are warming up, keep it loose and relaxed! Basically just scribble away.

(examples. I usually keep going until there is no paper white left. This can double as practice for drawing straight lines without a ruler, which is a great skill to have when freehand city drawing.)

Before hopping right into drawing people you can try doing some quick gesture drawings. Line of Action has timed sessions with a large variety of clothed or nude models. I usually do the 30 min class as it has a nice balance of short and long timed poses. The point isn't to draw nice art, but to warm up. Try to get the basic form down, not the details. I find that doing a full class session can really help my drawings feel more loose and grounded in reality for the rest of the day.

Some examples I found in my folders. I suggest looking into what a line of action (not the site) is and giving it a try with some of the studies!

COOLDOWNS!

For sports it's to return your body back to your everyday baseline after a workout.

Example; you are working on a big project! A masterpiece! It's detailed and cool! You have been focusing on this for hours and drawing so intensely. But you need to stop working for the day.

A cooldown is for winding down out of the go go go mindset. Put away the big project and do a couple small doodles and sketches. You are relaxing your hand and letting it stretch out. Keep the sketches loose. Let the art happen slowly. Don't polish anything, that can happen another day. Just ease yourself out of drawing.

...

Cool! Now we get into the meat of this thing.

HAND PAIN

How to avoid it and how to manage it if you already have it.

I love you artists and creatives, I am begging you to please take care of your most important creative tools. I really don't want this to sound like scare tactics like "oooh you better do this or blah blah!" Nope. I just had to learn all this the hard way and I'm extremely passionate about it.

Take this advice or don’t ╮(ﾟ～ﾟ;)╭ I can't tell you what to do, I'm not your dad

Adjustments and Small Solutions

If you are feeling physical discomfort while drawing there are many different solutions to try! Here are some suggestions that may or may not work for you.

Hold your pencil more loosely. Stop gripping that thang so tightly!!! Relax that hand! They make these… squishy pen grip things... I think they are called Adaptive Pencil Grips or Adaptive Writing/Drawing Aids? They stop your hand from being all cramped up by making your drawing tool wider. It's going to take a bit of time to adjust to drawing with it, but it's worth it for those who hold pencils too tightly.

Don't press as heavily. For traditional art, if you find yourself pressing really hard to get darker lines try moving to a softer pencil. Most standard pencils are HB, the B pencils have softer graphite. Experiment until you find the right one for you. For Digital, adjust your pressure settings so you don't have to press as hard to get thicker lines. You should not be pressing so hard all the time, it wears out both your hand and your tablet! It takes a bit of time to adapt to pencil or pressure changes. Try doing some unimportant sketches, they don't have to be good. You are just training your hand and mind to adjust using less pressure.

Draw with your arm and not your wrist! It's small repetitive motions that cause the most strain. You probably hear this one a lot, what does it even mean? It means moving your arm with the motions of your line, and trying not to make too many tiny movements with your just your fingers or wrist. This one is hard! It takes time and conscious thought to change the habit. Tips? Work bigger. Zoom in more. Use bigger sheets of paper.

(Motions exaggerated for a clearer example)

Change the angle of your drawing surface. They make angled tablet holders, angled desks, angled desktop raisers. Experiment, find and angle that is comfortable and the one that causes the least pain. (It's also good to make sure you don't have to hold your head at an uncomfortable angle when drawing. Staring straight down or hunching over a paper flat on the table can cause pain!)

Compression Glove? Wrist brace/tensioners? Some folks use them and I've been thinking of getting one for years now. I can't give advice on this one, because I don't have experience with it. Look into it if you want!

Managing Pain

First things first.

IF YOUR HANDS START TO HURT WHILE YOU ARE DRAWING. STOP! Put the pencil/pen/paintbrush/whatever down. The art will still be there for you to continue tomorrow.

I know from experience that it's extremely hard to pull away when you are hyper focused on an art piece. It's hard to remember all sorts of basic needs like food or bathroom when hyper focused. But you Need to stop when you feel that pain. (Preferably even before the pain…)

Take Breaks! Let your hands rest when you can. Just like a machine, if you don't schedule maintenance, the machine will schedule maintenance for you. Often that means having to wait a few days for it to return to functional. Best to take a day off from heavy usage or take an occasional 30 min break throughout the day to let your hands rest.

Stretching is important! Full body stretches are good; your arms, shoulders, neck, and spine are all connected, but I'm specifically talking about HAND and wrist stretching. There are a lot of stretches and massages for carpal tunnel and arthritis out there. I find they work for hand pain in general. Move into and out of each stretch slowly. Do not push a stretch if it hurts!! Be gentle!!

I am not a qualified professional and I will not be giving out specific stretches (that is beyond my personal comfort level). There are other artists out there who have made helpful stretching info-graphics which are cool, but I will not be because i don't want to be responsible for someone accidentally hurting themself. Ask your doctor for stretches & advice or look some up on your own.

Don't feel bad about forgetting to stretch frequently! Of course it is good to do it regularly and frequently, but I would be a hypocrite if I said that I remember to stretch daily. Setting timers for stop and stretch sessions can work for some people, but also doing stretches whenever you remember is fine! If you are sitting on the toilet you can idly do some hand stretches. On the bus? Laying in bed? At the beach? Do a couple stretches! Even just once a week is better than… nonce a week.

Using Cold or Heat to treat pain. If you really overdid it, put your hands in some cold water or wrap a cloth around an ice pack and apply it to your hand. Cold works best for me, but warmth works for others. This is just pain reduction and reducing inflammation from overuse! This is not a permanent solution.

If your hand hurts a lot! Frequently! Talk to your doctor? Idk mine has never given real advice. Just gently poked my hand and told me there isn't much to be done about it :/ but there are really good doctors out there who will care and give helpful advice!

Again. IF IT HURTS TO CONTINUE DRAWING. STOP DRAWING! This is not a "no pain no gain" type situation. Drawing so much that you hurt yourself isn't noble, it's just… limiting yourself. You only get one set of hands. These things are very handy to have.

Other Advice

Things I couldn't figure out how to fit into the earlier sections.

Your other hand can't handle the strain! Lets say you hurt your drawing hand... the other hand is right there free to use for art. Right? Wrong. Your other hand can't keep up with the demand, it hasn't been trained to the same extent as your dominant hand, it does not have the built up muscle. If you want to use that hand for drawing you are going to have to use it s l o w l y and train it bit by bit over a long period of time. When I tore a tendon in my right hand I decided to just keep drawing with my left and I got Really Good at it. It only took like two months before my left hand hurt too much to move. Then I had 0 functioning hands to pull up my pants. Not fun!!

People who draw on phones. That is extremely impressive! I'm amazed by the things people can create on such a small space. But phone artists are the ones I see most frequently mentioning hand pain. please please please make sure you are taking breaks. Would a stylus work instead of using a finger?

Outside of Drawing. Sometimes it's things outside of drawing that are causing the pain. For me there are multiple sources, but I also have tiny baby hands. Holding a phone too long causes pain. The handheld mode for my Switch causes A Lot of pain. The way my hand rests while typing on my laptop hurts! Playing tense videogames for too long hurts! Find the source of your pain and make some changes. The same things will apply to most; take regular breaks, do some stretches, and find soft things to prop up or rest your arms on.

Change your Artstyle. This one is more of a last resort. You might have to change your art style if you are getting sharp pains every time you draw. I loved drawing tight clean lines and many small fancy details, but drawing like that left me in so much pain at the end of the day. In 2023 I had to take the better part of year off from illustrations just to learn how to sketch and draw more loosely. I had to learn how to be gentle. To stop gripping my pencil so tightly. Learn! Adapt! You might discover a new style that you love even more!

A lot of this stuff gets more complicated in a work setting where you have to draw fast and long in order to get paid. Things like reducing your workload can help, but that can be... financially rough. But outside of that, it’s ok to be a slow artist. Going full steam and hurting yourself is not worth it.

Aaaaaanyway, thats all folks. Today's rant brought to you by me! The guy with chronic hand pain who always forgets to stretch! The guy who got frustrated with a sketch yesterday and decided to push to keep drawing for just one more hour! The guy who woke up this morning and had to spend 2 hours massaging and stretching their hands. The guy who probably shouldn't have typed all of this out because ooww ow ouch

If your hands do hurt, it's going to be ok! You don't need to be a speed demon who draws all the time. It's ok to take your time and take frequent breaks. You are going to do great things! Just be gentle with yourself...

[steampoweredwerehog]

“I wanna make art, but idk what people want to see from me—“ *GRABS YOU*

Do whatever you want. You have an idea? You plagued by visions? You got a special interest? You got daydreams about a oneshot you wanna write? Do it. “But how will I know what gets attention?” YOU WONT. THAT’S THE DEVIL TALKING. Say ‘fuck it’ and make whatever. I make art cuz ideas fill my brain & if I don’t see ‘em with my eyes I’ll DIE.

Make stuff cuz YOU wanna see it. If other people’s eyes see it that’s cool too.

[mewsmagic]

Here's a lil comic strip about how you can protect your art before sharing it to the public!!!

Against AI and against art theft too!

Click on 'read more' to see the extra tip I mentioned at the end!

Geez been working on this since the Meta AI things blew up but I only finished just now!!

Here's the extra tip I mentioned at the end:

you can use http://haveibeentrained.com to search for your images and find out if your work has been used for AI.

In there, you can choose to opt out, but AI companies are not obligated to respect it so it isn't too much of a protection unfortunately 😭

Also be aware that they are associated with AI and they did try to badmouth glaze so artists wouldn't protect themselves; which's very bad for a company that allegedly are on the side of the artists.

Also!!! There's a new type of AI that I was just made aware of last week, Copainter.

It completes unfinished work, which can be used for 'stealing and claiming it theirs', so put a cat picture in the next wips you post as well!

Funny protective measure I know LOLLLL but here's the tests for yall cynical people:

Perhaps I'll complete this comic with this info one day, but just these 10 slides took a looot of work so probably not happening anytime soon 😭

Thank you for reading everything though, I really appreciate it and hope this will help 🫶 be careful out there, privacy issues have been crazy recently!!!

[visions--of--collisions]

🎸🌻 by plzdldl

[wisteriteeth]

v1 where the fuck are we now

[ansjsla]

Commercial break from jjk!!!

[genericpuff]

idk who needs to hear this but if you're a writer looking for a webcomic artist and the best offer you can come up with is a 50/50 split "after gaining revenue", then that's literally asking for free work just with extra steps.

like first of all (and i'm sure people are gonna fight me on this) writing a webcomic and drawing a webcomic is not a 50/50 split, a scene that took you a half hour to write will take them hours to draw so it's literally more like 30/70

but also even IF your comic gains revenue, it's still not gonna pay for that labor, there are comic projects out there that have been going on for upwards of 10 years and beyond who are still maybe only making like $30/month on their patreon... and you only wanna pay them $15 of that?

please just consider writing a novel or short stories, or doing tabletop campaigns, or pitching scripts to comic publishers, or learning to draw yourself (even if you're bad at it! webcomics are allowed to grow and evolve in their art!), or doing RP, or doing anything that will get your ideas and stories out there without being at the expense of a whole ass other human being doing the brunt of the labor for free

no matter how dedicated you are to an idea or how convinced you are that it's truly a unique one that's worth working on, none of that will pay for the labor and time and efforts of people who you're asking to work for free to make your dream a reality. They have their own dreams that they're working on too.

[wave-nine]

Hi hi hi!!

I LOVE how you draw Papyrus, Would it be possible to get a tutorial or smth on how you draw him?

preferably with classic or swap, since I'm having trouble getting down how neutral or negative expressions would work with their kind of face

Helloooooooo!!!!! Thank you! :D

Sorry it's not exactly a tutorial, but just a rough step by step. I generally start with the eyes, then I do the overall face shape. I go fixing it as I draw in the mouth, then do the rest of the head and other details.

As for expressions, it might help if you draw it on something more familiar first. I'm more accustomed to drawing anime style people, so I'll use that as an example. Pay attention to the shape of the eyebrows, the eyes, and the mouth. It'll become easier to translate that into the way you draw these guys!

[so-very-small]

the participants of g/t july are stronger than any army soldier. thank you for keeping us all fed, i owe you artists and writers my life. if you do g/t july i hope you find a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk i love you

[albanenechi]

Drawing bases and pose ref #21

some more selfie poses!

[cozylittleartblog]

it seems to be artist alley tradition to have a Silly Sign for your tip jar, so this is mine :) if you see him at Anime Central or Anime Midwest this year... consider making a financial donation to #1 anime waifu Vash The Stampede

i'm gonna count up the money after each show and draw him with the Appropriate Amount Of Donuts too, of course