#to make it a fully rendered shaded pieces + background and everything

[breakfastatmiles]

Your art is wonderful!!!

A constant inspiration to my own creativity and art work. Could you explain some of your art style to me? I’m interested in looking at a bunch of different ones to try and finally find one for me.

Goodnight!!🌙

Thank you so much! That means the world to me! I’d be happy to share some of my process with you 😄

Keep in mind I’m completely self-taught, so this is just the process of how I make my drawings and not any sort of professional advice 😅 apologies for the long post ahead 😪

Starting with the basics, my biggest influences are Jin Kim and Ami Thompson. Both are amazing character designers and I really admire their stylization and expressions. Whenever I feel stuck on something, I always go back to their drawings for inspiration.

I typically start in Procreate with a canvas size of 3300px x 4200px or 11” x 14” with a DPI of 300.

I put my reference in the corner of the canvas (in this case it’s a screenshot from the movie She’s the Man) and I start my rough sketch (emphasis on rough). Sketching is probably the longest part in my drawing process because I’m focusing on expression, composition, proportions, etc. This usually has about two to three passes before I move on.

Then I lower the opacity of the sketch and clean it up with some lineart on a new layer. Lineart doesn’t play a huge part in my style, but I still like to play around with line weight. Since I knew this was going to be a fully rendered piece, I didn’t spend much time on lines that I knew were going to be removed later in the process.

Underneath all of that, I use the skin tone and color the base of the character. I make sure that I color ever so slightly past the lineart, for reasons that will be important later. This part can be tedious, especially because I use a textured brush, so there are a lot of gaps that I fill in later.

Then using new layers with clipping masks, I start the flat colors. Nothing too crazy here.

I’ve made color palettes for characters and backgrounds that I typically draw, so this way it speeds up the process and maintains style consistency. If I need a color that I don’t normally use, I’ll just play around with the colors until I find something that fits well with everything else.

Next, on a multiply layer, I add some basic shading (with the skin tone color) and blush (with an orange-pink color). I also move onto the background. Some are more complex than others. If I’m going for a more cinematic look, I’ll fill the background in with some basic shapes and blur it slightly. Thankfully the background was pretty simple in this reference.

I start checking proportions now that everything has basic colors. Then I duplicate my lineart layer and change it to a pinkish-red and put it on multiply mode and turn down the opacity. This is why the base color layer needs to line up with the lineart, otherwise there’d just be gaps underneath. Instead of erasing my black lineart layer, I put a mask on it and just keep the eyes and eyebrows.

Then I start working on the shading and hair, which is an entire process in itself. Maybe I’ll make a tutorial on that one day 😅

I also use some vivid light and soft light layers and put in some subtle colors for extra pizzazz.



Then I add a hard light layer to the eyes for that glossy look and on a normal layer add some white details just to make some things pop more (like the nose, lips, eyes, sometimes hair, etc.)

I did make an eye tutorial a while back, but my process is still the same!

Lastly, I spend a lot of time playing with different blending modes (multiply, add, soft light, vivid light layers) and really focus on the lighting. I used to focus on adding a lot more details and make the coloring more realistic, but I found that the more simplistic coloring was easier for me to do and fit my style better. Sometimes I still tend to go too far with the details and realize that it looks better when I tone it down a bit.

That’s pretty much it! Let me know if you have any questions! Hope this helps. Have fun making art!

[aureoboros]

commissions are: closed for now!

hello everyone!

i’ve had health problems that are making it very difficult for me to work and function outside of my home, which just isn’t viable with how expensive necessities are. so while i’m in this limbo, i’m opening up commissions! reblogs are greatly appreciated :]

a lot of my examples are bg3/dnd related, but regular ocs are more than welcome, too! i can also do fanart for other media if you’d like.

for right now, these will be through paypal. just send me a dm here if you’re interested! more information below the cut.

commission info:

- first come first serve, i will keep in contact with you throughout the process and start the sketch asap. for drawings with the highest level of detail, it’s possible that it may take a few weeks for me to complete. lower levels will take about a week or a few days over.

- while this is over dms for the moment, i’m going to make a proper form to fill out! reference photos are greatly appreciated for ocs, but detailed descriptions work too! i would also prefer if you provided a short personality description, and any ideas you have for poses or character interactions. i want it to be as close to what you envision as possible! if you want the drawing to be set at a specific time, or a specific aspect ratio for the image, let me know that too! busts cut off at the mid-chest, and half-bodies are cut off at the mid-thigh. i can also make icons (head-shot only) for a discount!

- payment comes after you’re happy with the composition! i’ll block out the characters and where they’ll be on the canvas before moving on to the full detailed sketch.

- i know my example images don’t have much shading. it’s because i enjoy the lineart process a lot more than anything else, so i don’t focus on it as much in my personal work. for fully rendered pieces, though, there will be actual light and shadow.

- more explanation on backgrounds: basic flats, simple patterns, and simple objects for framing are free of charge. keep in mind that detailed backgrounds are not my strong-suit, but i do need the practice, and i will try my absolute best. the more detailed the background is, the more it will cost, but everything is negotiable.

- i can do anthro characters (like tabaxi, dragonborn, etc) in my detailed style too! i don’t have as much experience in drawing robotics or machinery, but it’s not off the table. i like doing little details :]

- i will not draw illegal ships or anything hateful (racist, homophobic, the obvious), and i don’t do nsfw.

- don’t use my art for ai training or nfts.

- if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

- thank you for reading ^^

a better look at some of my examples - for more, check the #digitalart tag:

[offbrandhand]

Commissions are open! (direct pricing examples in alt description)

I do a little bit of everything! I mostly stick to humanoids, but I was a furry for years many moons ago so I have that experience. I will absolutely do full NSFW for an upcharge (no minors!). There's pretty much nothing I won't do for the the right price, so please ask! Here’s some more painterly rendering style examples these are $60+ dependent on bust/halfbody/full body +$30 for each additional character upcharge for background dependent on complexity, I will work within your budget

Here's some things that are fully rendered, but with line art these start at $40 no upcharge for basic background +$20 for an additional character (+$15 for each after the first addition)

and some line art with basic rendering- $35

If you're interested in just line art it starts at $25, $30 for flat colors +$15 for additional characters (+$10 for any after the first addition) ye olden sketchy style no color- $15 (bust/halfbody) $20 (fullbody) color- +$5 basic shading- +$5 add character- +$10 (+$5 for each after the first addition)

I'm also make tattoo designs! (price varies depending on design but range between $20-$40 generally)

add $10 for any finished traditional drawing, sketch prices stay the same (+$20 for painting, no canvases, but good paper, i have examples) that price includes lamination if you want it as well as shipping within the US (outside US just covers any upcharge). I AM WILLING TO WORK WITH BUDGETS PLEASE MESSAGE ME!!! i greatly appreciate your time for looking over this, if you can commission me please share because I'm really freaking out about not having a job. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer :) 20% discount if you buy 2+ pieces!

[spacemimz]

What is your process when doing fully rendered art! I've always loved looking at how detailed they are

I can show you with a couple screenshots of a current wip

1. I start out with a super rough sketch. For people it's a basic skeletal sketch of where what body part goes. For background sketches it's just vague shapes in the places where I'd like them to be.

2. Clean up time baby!! That's the stage where my vague shapes turn into full shapes. It's also the stage where I settle on details.

This is what a clean sketch looks like. Mind you not every detail I sketch is something I do in lineart, some things are just colors

3. Lineart woo-hoo!

This is what finished lineart looks like for me. What I also do is paint in shadows on my lineart layer for more depth and to give myself visual clarity too

4. Colors. For big pieces like this one right here I already color code the setting, give the whole thing a vibe

See this? No shading, that's all just coloring. Coding the colors this way minimizes the amount of layers I need to shade plus I tend to work on max. 3 color layers anyway. What I do for big pieces like this is color normally, then adjust the value and all that with a separate layer and merge everything. The minimum layer approach is something I picked up on when I was using ibis paint x on my phone in 2014 I think? Back then I had 3 layers to work with and I made that count and I guess that never left

5. ~shading~✨️ aka my favorite part aka the part where everything comes together. The shading really depends on the vibe and thing I'm drawing. Some shading is complex and some shading is simple. It's definitely the most fun part

6. Detailing. That's what I do afterwards stuff like rim lighting or texturing! Tho texturing is something new im trying. I'm kind of sick of my art looking flat sooo I use a variety of brushes to help with that. Genuinely think it looks good, makes my stuff look more alive

7. Sign it. I cannot stress this enough. SIGN YOUR WORKS!!! WHATEVER IT IS, SIGN IT!! I put my signature in places it's difficult to remove because you never ever know if some bloke wants to steal or not. Protect your creative property and sign it, watermark it. Make sure that people know it's yours and yours only

Wow that got long I'm sorry! But that's basically my process from start to finish, wait I forgot the collapse after I'm done oh well not that important hahaha

[zorilleerrant]

This is the thing I'm talking about with modern comics, too, and I think it has to do with the prevalence of digital photography (and now AI art) where creating an image with a lot of details can be very fast in certain circumstances, whereas writing uses generally the same historical methodology, so people think of it as harder.

People expect not just a background, but a detailed one. They expect fully rendered shading instead of the block shading that actually gives comic/cartoon style its signature look. They expect far more detailed expressions and physical features and all that. And they expect it done in the same amount of time, regardless of how much more time it takes to do all of that.

So I think the parts of this are: most people have produced a complex image by themselves, very quickly, by snapping a picture and putting one or two basic filters on it, included with their phone or free image editing software they have. There's also the various dressup games and image makers that craft something like that from premade pieces, where they don't see how long those pieces took to make, just that it only took them a few minutes to make the choices and create their final picture.

And then the fact that, if you read something quickly or slowly, it can take about twice as long. So people can skim something, or they can savor it, but there's only so much time difference devoted to reading. But with an image, the difference is huge. You can see the whole thing in a few seconds, but you can spend hours looking at a single static image and still be finding new things, depending on the complexity of the image. So there's something that both feels faster about it, as if it were easier to create, and like something is missing if, say, there isn't a background.

I'm just going to blame this on doomscrolling and FOMO again and the urge - not really in the reflex way, but in the social pressure way - to view as many things as fast as possible, regardless of what type of thing they are. Where there's only so fast you can read, but you can look at a hundred pictures a minute if you're not paying any attention to any of them.

Anyway, my point is that I think it's a more widespread issue about how people view visual art and it sucks fandom is getting dragged into it when fandom's supposed to be the place we don't do everything based on marketing techniques.

Comparative splashes, to illustrate what I mean.

*rubs face* I'm so tired of modern bangs having low word counts like 2.5-5k and still expecting fully rendered art. It's just not fair.

I say this as a writer AND an artist, it's just not fair.

[quinngefail]

COMMISSION INFO - Putting a cut here because I'll be real I'm sick of having to scroll past my own post HRKKGSK

COMMISSIONS ARE HERE AND OPEN!

Please contact me through direct messages if you're interested :)

Also, feel free to browse my #traditional and #digital tags for more examples of certain coloring styles!

I look forward to working with you all!

Typed version of commission info (and more specific info) under the cut:

LONG LIST OF INFO :

🖍 Coloring Style 1: Traditional art done with pencil, ink, and watercolors. Final images will be scanned for best quality. For sketches, I can use either red and blue lead or your regular standard pencil- it's up to you!

✒ Coloring Style 2: 'Cel' Digital art, with hard colors and ink.

✍ Coloring Style 3: 'Traditional' Digital art, made with brushes to give the pieces the look of traditional work despite being made digitally.

The prices for every coloring style goes as follows:

SKETCHES - JUST LINES

• Headshots - $7

• Busts - $10

• Waist Up - $13

• Full body - $20

SKETCHES - SHADED

• Headshots - $9

• Busts - $13

• Waist Up - $17

• Full body - $25

INKS - JUST LINES

• Headshots - $14

• Busts - $20

• Waist Up - $26

• Full body - $40

INKS - SHADED

• Headshots - $18

• Busts - $26

• Waist Up - $34

• Full body - $50

*Note that I will use 1-2 colors for the shading in SKETCHES and INKED pieces, and these colors are up to you!

COLORED - FLAT

• Headshots - $25

• Busts - $40

• Waist Up - $55

• Full body - $70

COLORED - SHADED + FULLY RENDERED

• Headshots - $30

• Busts - $47

• Waist Up - $64

• Full body - $80

SKETCH PAGES/REFS

Prices depend on what is included, and the level of rendering. You can request any number of drawings, how much of the character is drawn, and how far rendered it is- and these requests will adhere to the listed prices above, but with a 10% discount on everything.

For example, a piece with INKS that are JUST LINES that includes one full body ($40), two busts ($20 X 2, so $40), and four headshots ($14 X 4, so $56) would be $136- but with that 10% discount, the total will come to $122.

Add simple background: +$3

*Note that I'm not opposed to adding simple background + foreground info, like simple chairs, nature, props/items, etc. Inquire about this if needed!

Add extra characters: +2/3 of base price for every character added. For example, a full body SHADED INK piece with one character is $50, but with two characters it would be $83.

🌟 Terms of Service 🌟

• Do not trace, sell, or claim credit for my art.

• You may repost, but with credit given to me.

• Please provide references + specifics as you see fit- I want to make something you're happy and satisfied with, after all!

• Understand that I have a life, too. But if you have concerns with thr state of a commission, please DM me!

• I have a right to refuse any requests that make me uncomfortable.

👍 YES! (THINGS I WILL DRAW) ✨

• Humanoids

• Robots

• Furries

• Monsters

• OCs

• Aliens

• Gore

• Ship Art

• Simple Backgrounds

🚫 NO! (WILL NOT DRAW) 👎

• N S F W (s*xual)

• Complicated machinery + scenery

• Bigoted Content

• I*cest

• P*dophilia

Feel free to inquire about anything!

🪙 PAYMENTS 💸

• I accept payments through Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp! My specific info to deliver payments will be provided in DMs.

• Payment can be provided whenever- however, into full payment is received, you will not get your commission in full quality (you will only have watermarked and lower quality images until full payment is received)

• Upon request, I can send WIPs (if they exist yet)- though, these will be watermarked and in lower quality.

• Extra payment is always appreciated, and will get you some extra art :)

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to working with you!

[paint-lady]

Vamptober Week 4 Reflection & Final Thoughts

Week 1 Week 2   Week 3

Its complete! Its done! I am overjoyed to rest my eyes and hands- and I’m ecstatic I have one hell of a portfolio! Of course, I have my Ko-fi for donations. Working on getting that set up to take other payments besides paypal for donations. Donations are always optional.

And HERE WE GO! Vamptober Days 22-31

Vamptober Day 22: It’s A Beautiful Night To Hunt

After Day 21, I needed to have some fun. I wanted to depict my Tampa!verse thinbloods, prowling and poaching. What could possibly go wrong with two Lasombra and a Tremere with thinned blood?

The background is actually a photo I took in Chicago. I tried to look for anything from Tampa online or in my own travels, and found nada. I started by utilizing the Auto-color features, where the program renders a set of colors and lines from the images. I usually have this setting set to low, for ease of my RAM and Graphics Card. But for this, I set it to High Quality. I was a little disappointed by the results after waiting 5 ish minutes for it to render, but I noticed the colors were bolder. I then got to work blurring. I actually painted a large portion of the building blur, and auto-rendered the street below.

Next came the thinbloods. This part was easier, aside from the perspective. I had set up some perspective guides, which I found somewhat helpful. I’m certain that tool will come in handy when I attempt to do comic work soon. I am proud that im getting much better about my color choices. Pulling tones from backgrounds is really paying off to help make everything look in in the same place.

The note I have for myself is that I needed to “pop” Damien’s silhouette a bit more. Both Hazel and Tommy have enough lighting (or too much). Damien just needed a little rim lighting and on his shadow manipulations to separate him from the background to the foreground.

Vamptober Day 23: Forbidden Pleasures

I really wanted to make this prompt non-sexual. Being horny for vampires or vampires being thirsty is certainly part of the fun of the monster- but I didnt want to depict another “forbidden romance.” So I latched onto the forbidden aspect of the prompt. The desire for knowledge often leads vampires along paths that are far from savory- paths that plenty would consider forbidden.

So boom. Got to work on drawing a new House Carna Tremere. I laugh at my labeled Book of the Grave War- as if Carna got an ISBN for that. But I could not really think of a clever way to clearly depict what was so forbidden in this image without plain text.

I really like the stipple shading of this person- but I realized one major problems with this piece. When finalizing the rendering, I really need to make sure I give my devices ample time. I was incredibly frustrated when posting this piece that the shading on her legs looked pixelated and distorted. I am still not sure what I need to do with my output settings to assist with that- other than letting my devices take the time they need to fully load the image.

Vamptober Day 24: The Prince

I had fun with this one. I absolutely love choosing unexpected clans to be Princes in Camarilla Domains. Everyone has seen the Ventrue and Toreadors in charge. A Malkavian? Absolutely bonkers. A Tremere? Oof! A Nosferatu? Now there’s something really fun! Gleam in decay you Horrid Prince!

I am really happy with the shading on this piece- and I had another breakthrough. I worked up from black on this piece. Working from a black background rather than grey or white has a number of challenges in traditional media. But digital? I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get bold colors and let my washes show the dark tones underneath.

I then utilized this process for my Fall of London tokens and just ZOOMed through those. I continued working from a black background for a lot of pieces after this one.

Vamptober Day 25: Blood Magic Ritual

This one I took my time on. I worked up from black and layered my water color brushes and gouache brushes. I am so pleased with the color choices here- I really just....I impressed myself.

The technique I used here is something I learned from being a scenic artist. The term is called scumble, where you criss-cross your brush strokes to create a base texture. From there, I worked in digital washes. If this were a physical piece, I would absolutely soak it in paint and water, and leave it to dry for hours- possibly days before continuing with the next layer. To get the water color effect, I set the brush to paint as a multiply blend. So each time I went over a particular spot, it would get more saturated and darker. This more effectively mimics how physical watercolors work. I just kept playing with the wet blends and splatter brush until I thought it was enough.

The magic circles are from stock brushes from Clip Studio’s material catalog.

The figure is a depiction of Hazel’s adoptive sire, Mary Andrews. A fearsome Tremere of House Carna. Although Mary was known for Cauldron of Blood not Creatio Ignis- I do believe that Tremere would have that ritual in her arsenal if she could.

Vamptober Day 26: Ceremony of the Dead

HANDS! I pulled from a reference image for this one. I really needed it to see how wet fabric pulls across her body, and I really did a good job.

The lighting from all the hands was especially challenging- since each hand was modeled after my own- and I forgot to keep the lighting consistent. I ended up just trusting my gut and soft light layers.

I initially painted this piece to be far more saturated. In post, I actually used a subtract layer to dull some of the reds in the text and skin. This kinda creates this blue/green hue over the white highlights- as if we are under flourescent lights. Ceremonies of the dead do not need to be lavish. The notes I have for myself on this piece are: I definitely wish I could have manipulated this into something a little less like the reference- but its fine. I could have given the blood in the bathtub some more tones- indicating depth to the ceramic fixture. I should have also created a clip layer over my line art and pushed some highlights a touch further.

Vamptober Day 27: You’re Bound To Me

This one was much simpler than my other designs. I took photos of myself in the mirror to get the body postures correct. I like the body language of the foreground character a lot- I think I did a good job showing distress and an odd desire simultaneously.

If I was to redo this piece I would spend more time pushing highlights. I think the piece needs some more white tones to give it that dramatic lighting. Looking back at the layers it looks like I had toned these down- I should have left them bold. I think it would make the piece more dramatic. I also think both figures need an outline to push them forward from the background.

Vamptober Day 18: Bats!

BATS! Since creating Hazel as a character, I have had a lot more fun drawing and reblogging bats. I pulled my design from her jacket from 2020, with the thinblood mark and flowers, and a large flying fox. I redrew the piece, updating the design.

I streamed this one to my friends who play in the Tampa Verse or have role played with Hazel in the past. It was really nice to just chat and draw.

I think this piece is a little weaker than my other vamptober, but its certainly one of my favorites because I just had fun.

Vamptober Day 29: Night Off

I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do with this piece. I considered painting my Tampa Thinbloods in the blanket fort, but found the composition repeatedly not conveying a night off. So instead, I focused on what happens when you take a night off as a powerful vampire. Some one is going to break in and take advantage of your lack of vigilance.

I recall being rather tired when working on this piece and decided to only work in silhouettes. It was actually quite freeing to just work in black and white and then add in tones. The watercolor background is something I painted forever ago- I frequently use it as texture overlays.

My notes for this piece are that I think I got too dark and it is hard to distinguish figure from chain link fence from city. Had I toned things a bit more effectively, I think this would not be an issue.

Vamptober Day 30: Too Old To Die

*Cackles in artist* Hello old lady- lets make some artwork. This is one of my friend’s characters. Originally, I had planned to have this piece mirror day 15: Blue Blood, showing an opponent to Antonia Vicario. But my ambitious self had bolder plans and decided to not pit the Ventrue against each other tonight. Back in 2020 when I had just started using Clip Studio, I made a call for people to send me their OCs and I would just play with the new tools for an hour drawing them. I took that piece and redid it. A full year of artistic growth and knowledge to create this. I had so much fun making this. I forgot how much I enjoy my dripping paint effects. I used to do them all the time in fine arts classes. I think its gonna be one of my stylistic calling cards. I love the movement of the hair in the new piece. I did a good job with the soft glow to push her forward from the paint drips. I am proud of the subtle perspective that looks as if she looms over the viewer. I could have easily spent several more hours adding details and flowers.

The original:

Vamptober Day 31: The Sun Rises

I always let the final piece take as long as it needs. I spent 3 hours painting Hazel in a fiery red sunrise, knowing she will not burn. Utilizing my skills from the past 30 days, I try to incorporate all the techniques I learned. Although I didnt work up from black, I pulled and layered colors in the exact same fashion. I utilized pre-rendered tools for stones and bricks. I have a wonderful sense of depth from the alley to the sunrise. I think the fiery red tones were fun to paint. Whenever I tried to tone the piece to be softer, it felt off. 

My only note is to figure out how to bold her thinblood mark on her back. Since it is in shadow, it is hard to see it. I think if i had used a purple tone or blue, it would pop a little more against the reds. I really like how her hair looks so fluffy in the breeze. The shading is really well done. Originally I had it the same color as the sun behind her, but I made the right choice to tone it to red to help enforce distance. 

Lastly, the little bit of sun looks like a halo around her. We all know vampires are far from angelic, but oh its tasty.

Week 4 Reflection and Final Thoughts

I slept in almost to 11 am. I was so so so tired. I knew trying to juggle it all was going to be a lot- I knew that I needed to be kind to myself through this process. I tried so so so hard. But seasonal affective disorder is a bitch and my brain is a liar.

I think my final week was a resounding success. I had created a lot of beautiful pieces, and had a lot of fun with them towards the end. But there is one thing that kinda is a big blow to this entire thing. Sometimes- it stopped being fun.  It was painful to get something on the screen. It was agony to find something I believed was Good Enough.

I think in Week 3 I struggled with that the most. I was repeatedly frustrated with what I wanted to create versus time and work obligations and scheduled games. There was a part of me that understood that I needed to cut myself some slack, it was very busy. There’s another part that demands perfection, and failure to meet it is simultaneously unthinkable and repeatedly experienced.

I usually treat this with rest and time away from my stressor. Bubble baths and hot chocolate. But I wanted really badly to do all 31 days. I pushed through it- despite my best judgement.

I am proud of myself. I really truly am. This work is beautiful. The repeated acknowledgement from World Of Darkness’s official accounts was sweeter than vitae. But if I am going to continue to create content- I need to address this internal battle. I often reach a state of  “Fuck it!” when making these pieces that allows me to kinda have fun with it again. But I’m getting real tired of being in this cycle of  1. I got this!  2. I hate this  3. Its terrible  4. Fuck it who cares Not Me!  5. I love this and am unstoppable.

So what to do? I don’t know. I, understandably, feel rather drained after all of these. I’ve already decided I will be checking my finances to see if some light guidance through therapy is affordable. Because people don’t normally want to cry over things they want to do for fun. Because it isn’t healthy to drive myself to exhaustion over something I do for leisure. But theres also a confidence boost. I am going to start utilizing World Of Darkness’s Dark Pack for some of my content. I already do all this for free, why not be able to slap their logo on things? I feel like that is a good next step for continuing to make fan stuff.

The other thing is that I learned how I like to do digital art. I started utilizing techniques and tricks from my traditional mediums. And God I missed those. Its all just so fun to see how they translate to a digital canvas.

And from there, I recall a discussion I had with a local manga/comic artist I admire. She instructed me to practice getting loose and having fun. Because after all- if it isn’t fun what is the point? I think that is one of the most critical pieces of advice I have ever received. That and “stop using the fill tool its garbage.” The pieces I just let myself play and have fun are some of my favorite ones. The ones where I just let myself relax and move with confidence that I’m going to enjoy this process- and be excited to see what appears on the canvas. Going forward, I think I need to embody that attitude more.

Let the fun be the journey- not the final result.

And that’s where I am going to leave it for a bit. I need to take a few days if not a week to not draw vampires. I have a few non vtm commissions on my radar and can set up. The holidays are coming up and I need to prep a few slots for that.

But for now:

Just play. Have fun. Relax. Draw sexy lesbian vampires on the internet.

~Steph

Instagram    Ko-fi

[sazudot]

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thanks for tagging me @candicewright​

I’m tagging @aikakuu​ and this piece

@italiansoda​ and this piece

I don’t have anyone else to tag on tumblr orz....

You can reblog the original Lan Zhan piece here

So the process for this started when I saw an instagram ad for these earrings. My brainrot went “oh. lan zhan” and I just decided to draw him with them.

I didn’t really have a pose in mind yet, so I just set out to search for images of Yibo I could use to kind of inspire me in that way and came across this one:

I thought this was perfect. It’s such a good closeup that will allow me to really just work on some of my favourite things in close-up portraits, and it will allow me to also showcase the earring. It’s obviously from a photoshoot for something, and the idea of earring model Lan Zhan was really delicious.

So with this image I started sketching in clip studio paint.

I like to use the default design pencil brush for sketching, just in case anyone wants to know haha. After the sketch I set about making a colour palette. I usually colour pick from images and then adjust them so that the colour is a bit more vibrant.

Usually when I start colouring I start with the skin. I tend to render most of it. I use the following brushes usually:

Every brush apart from the last one is a default brush in the software. I use the last one when I do “lineart”, so usually anything with a harder, non-blended edge in the image.

Obviously the skin here is after I’ve already fully rendered it. The shimmery eyeshadow and the shimmer on the lips was added last, after everything else had been finished. Other than that it was fully rendered before I moved onto other things.

The next step for me is always the eyes. When I’m drawing close-up portraits I use like 5000 layers for the eyes. The first one is the sclera and the colour of the pupil

After that I usually draw the lashes. In this case the upper and lower lashes are on separate layers.

Up next is the pupil and the effects. The pupil is on a separate layer between the upper and lower lashes.

Above the pupil layer, below the upper lashes is the effects layer, it is set to Add (glow)

Usually for these effects I pick colours that match other bits in the drawing. In this case it is golden because of the golden earrings and the fact that lan zhan as amber eyes.

After this I add a layer of white lineart below the layer of upper lashes and on top of the pupil

(You can see the “eyeshadow” look below in these layers as well. This was mostly done using the emphasise texture brush and I think the default oil paint brush. )

After that come the eyebrows and hair. For eyebrows I usually draw a black caterpillar that loosely follows the shape of the eyebrow and then blend it until the colour is a translucent grey. After that I use the brush I use for lineart to draw some individual hairs

For hair I usually do flat colours first and then add some variation with either the flat marker brush or an effects brush I got when I downloaded a massive pack of hair texture brushes. For this one I think I used the flat marker and strangely enough the fingertip blender.

After this I drew the headband and the earrings. The process for all of them is simple: flat colour first with the turnip brush and then shading with the emphasising texture brush and maybe some lines with the random brush that has a korean name (see the brushes I regularly use). 

There is also a separate add (glow) layer on top of these that I’ve used to add some sparkles!

There’s also a layer of white lineart that I used to make sure the earring pops out of the background a bit

After all this I went and added the sparkle on the eyelids and lips.

I think the brush I use for this is a default brush but I’m not quite sure anymore. 

In any case, I use a combination of the sparkle a, b, and c brushes. 

The last step is the background and the clothes. For this piece they were super simple, basically just flat colour.

And that’s it!!

[alaraxia]

Process Breakdown: Starfall

Since I got some positive responses to my question on process stuff I’m gonna do a behind the scenes breakdown for my most recent piece to help people see the process I use and how I problem solve. I didn’t plan to do this initially so I won’t have a ton of process shots but I did save a handful. There’s a few scattered hyperlinks to other pieces I reference too. Just a warning this is mostly train of thought so it’s super verbose.  

So base sketches were mostly focused around me defining the shape of the girl since she was the focal point and building the environment around her. Going in the things I knew I wanted were a girl precariously balanced on top of a massive capybara catching a falling star, while surrounded by smaller sleeping capybaras on rocks. I layered out a general forest scene surrounding it but didn’t really commit to much in the sketches. Messed with the angles of the large capybara a few times to make it feel less flat and more 3D in the space, used a lot of reference photos of capybaras and sorta simplified them to what I thought was cute/ what stood out to me as their defining features.

Skipping ahead a solid amount is midway through the initial lineart, with some areas just colored in to define them as separate. Initially this piece was supposed to be in a similar style as my “Stratosphere Dreaming” art, with a single uniform line thickness, bright colors, and no gradient shading at all, but I realized pretty soon after I finished the lineart and started coloring that I had done what I tend to do a lot and made it too complex to pull off successfully in that style so I had to pivot to using gradient shading and other non-cell style techniques (though you can see a lot of those methods still in the coloring of the girl). This caused an even bigger challenge as I was drawing on a large canvas with high DPI in Procreate which resulted in me having a cumulative 50 layers to work with at any given time (hell).

Now once I made that rendering style pivot is when the really hard part began, and why on top of my persistent arm injuries this took me about two months to finally finish.

1.) I had an extremely difficult time trying to figure out the color pallet for the piece. I had an idea of the values and general colors I wanted (you can see some pallets and random base color tests in the image above) but I just couldn’t get them to look right and I became extremely more aggravated as I kept trying new and different things. My biggest mental block was feeling like I was stuck trying to make the initial pallet idea work, but eventually I was able to bump it to a slightly adjacent pallet and it worked far better. Essentially a lot of angry experimenting and testing.

2.) I made the piece too complex for its own good when it came to the foliage and scene. After finding success with a very specific way to render foliage in one of my favorite pieces I started to use it as my standard, but that standard started to show cracks when I had foliage heavy scenes like in my Hollow Knight piece from last year. The rendering style became insanely too time consuming, and incredibly distracting when used in abundance, taking away from the focal point. I knew this but I still attempted to use the same style to render the foreground foliage MULTIPLE times in increasing states of frustration until I stepped back, evaluated it wasn’t working, and tested out a very similar style with the same effect but that I could throw together twice as fast without the aggressive distraction and minuscule details that were irrelevant in the scheme of the art. This frustration in the rendering not working was only exacerbated by the color pallet indecision making a lot of the attempts just look bad both color and style wise.

Due to the limited layers I had to finish rendering out the girl very early and merge her together to free up layer space, and couldn’t keep my lineart layers as separate as I would have liked to allow for quick line color swaps. She ended up being a key point in defining the rest of the color pallet of the piece. The dress shape was indeed inspired by the Lirika Matoshi strawberry dress, but with my own twist.  

Once I got a more solid color pallet down the rest started to come a lot easier and I was able to begin filling stuff in and doing general color adjustments to make the backgrounds darker and give it more depth. I don’t have any more process shots beyond the initial color pallet exploration unfortunately, but the last hurdle I hit was at the very end once I was doing final touch ups. I found that with the only light source/ lighter color being the falling star that it washed out a lot of the rest of the pieces and made the details I spend so much time on feel unnoticed. I found though that adding the bright orange stardust specks into the trees, the girls hair, and falling from the star itself gave the last bit of color I think it needed without completely destroying the atmosphere. Originally (you may see it in some of the process shots) there were going to be jars with stars already in them illuminating the bottom of the piece, but after multiple trial and error iterations it just didn’t work out and ended up taking the focal point away from the girl and the star too much so I scrapped it.

Finally once I got everything done I made a copy of the entire art file to save as a backup, then with one of the copies merged all the layers together. Once all merged I made a copy of the fully merged layer, and went and adjusted the entire layer copy using a Gaussian Blur, reduced the opacity of the blurred layer to a super low percent, and put it on top of the original merged layer. This gave it that ethereal sort of feel that is difficult to notice unless you zoom in but really helps soften the piece and make it more dreamlike overall. Then I merged that blur layer down, and turned on about a 3% noise layer on it all to give it a bit of texture.

But that’s enough rambling from me, hope this helps give a bit of background to my process and decision making and it wasn’t just a wall of random musings. 

My last piece of advice is if you’re looking to do art professionally, do commissions, or make a lot of pieces in a short period of time I would highly advise against directly copying techniques I use. Because while I’m always working to improve I do only do this as a hobby rn so I have the luxury of being able to invest a lot of time, energy, and details into higher complexity pieces that would take way too long in a professional environment. I can put a lot of time into making a single piece exactly as I want it since I’m not reliant on art as my sole income. As I improve I can make things faster, but it’s still an overall slow process and I just end up moving my quality standards up with any level of improvement anyway. Use stuff I do as inspiration but I cannot stress enough to learn as many shortcuts as possible (I’m still struggling with this myself).

If y’all have any questions about bits feel free to dm, if I do something like this again I’ll try to get better screenshots during the process n try to be less verbose.

[livesincerely]

you render me in a thousand details

Also on Ao3

00000

“Hey, Davey, can you grab me another can of paint outta the closet?”

Davey looks up at the sound of Jack’s voice. The man in question is perched precariously on top of a ladder, the latest backdrop for Ms. Medda’s new show set up in front of him

He places the book he’d been reading while Jack worked to the side. “What is it I’m looking for?” Davey asks, clambering to his feet.

Jack’s head turns in his direction but he doesn’t take his eyes off his painting, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he carefully adds a series of fluffy white clouds to a cheerful skyline. “The extras should be just inside the closet on the right⁠—I need the dented can with the red stripe on the lid.”

Davey makes his way over to the tiny supply cupboard that Jack has claimed as his art closet. It’s a floor-to-ceiling collection of paint cans, canvases, brushes, and other supplies, and it never fails to amuse Davey how Jack can take one look at the mess and immediately unearth whatever item he needs for a particular project. Most of it belongs to the theater⁠—requested by Jack but paid for by Ms. Medda⁠—but Davey knows that Jack sometimes stores his personal pieces and supplies in there as well, if only to keep them safe from the daily mayhem of the Lodging House.

He reaches for the pull chain and a lone light bulb flickers to life. Davey takes a couple of tentative steps, squinting his eyes against the dust in the air as he scans the shelves for the can Jack had asked for, then lets out a squawk as he immediately trips over an unopened box of paint thinner.

His elbow knocks against something as he fumbles for balance and there’s a loud thunk and the flutter of paper as he sends a sketchbook full of drawings careening to the floor. Davey lets out a quiet curse, crouching down to pick up the scattered pages and tuck them back into place. 

His movements slow as he suddenly understands what he’s looking at⁠—what he’s discovered. Because this is one of Jack’s sketchbooks, but it’s not one that Davey’s ever seen before. And the drawings inside...

Dazed, Davey wanders back into the larger room.

Jack glances back at him, one eyebrow raised. “What, did ya get lost in there? What took so long?”

Davey swallows. When he finds his voice, it comes out tremulous. “Jack, what is this?”

“What is what?” Jack wipes his hands on a spare rag, then comes over for a closer look. He gets within a couple feet of Davey, then staggers to a stop, his face going alarmingly pale. “Where did you get that?”

“I, uh, I knocked it off the shelf by accident,” Davey says. “Why do you have⁠⁠— What is this?”

Jack lurches forward as if to snatch the sketchbook away from him, but stops himself mid reach—like he can’t bring himself to actually tear the pages out of Davey’s hands. He paces in place for a moment, then takes a step back, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What, that?” Jack says, and it’d be a passable attempt at nonchalance if not for the nervous waiver in his voice. “That’s nothing, really. Just practice sketches, and, uh, doodles and stuff.”

Davey looks at him. Then he carefully opens the sketchbook to the first page. There’s an inhaled breath, the tiniest twitch of the hand, but Jack makes no move to stop him and Davey takes that as permission.

He’s quiet as he flips through the assortment of pages. Or maybe it’s that he’s stunned into silence. 

There are all types of drawings. Some are only outlines, vague sketches with just enough detail to be identifiable. Others are fully-worked—entire pages of careful shading and texture and blending. He’d caught a few glimpses in the dim light of the closet, and this closer look only confirms his suspicion: these are all drawings of Davey.

There’s one of him from the other day, where he’d gotten caught in a storm and came back to the Lodging House sopping wet, his clothes dripping and his hair curling up at the ends from the rain. There’s another of him on his building’s fire escape, hands curled around the railing and head tilted towards the stars. There’s a series of drawings that are just of his eyes, all done in various shades of blue and in a couple of different mediums, which are the only bursts of color in any of the drawings so far. Davey asleep at the table in the mess hall with his head pillowed in his arms, a pencil starting to slip from his fingers. Davey sitting on the corner of Jack’s desk at Pulitzer’s, studying his latest political cartoon. Davey with the other Newsies, their bodies drawn in hazy silhouette, Davey standing at various street corners, hawking newspapers to faceless passersby.

A few of the scenes depicted are things Davey recognizes, distinct instances that he can place in his memory. Others are more nebulous, ordinary moments in an ordinary life. He turns to a new page, this time finding a sketch of him reading an unlabeled novel, curled up in the corner of one of the dorm beds. Davey frowns, a little perplexed. Although it’s beautiful, as all of Jack’s artwork is, he can’t begin to imagine what inspired Jack to draw this particular scene. He’s not even really doing anything in it⁠—it’s just Davey being Davey.

He turns to another page and his breath catches in his throat.

It’s a drawing of him⁠ caught mid-laugh with his head thrown back⁠, the morning sun shining brightly behind him and a slew of crisscrossing lines in the background⁠. Davey recognizes it as a moment from a couple weeks ago, when he and Jack had made the trek across the Brooklyn Bridge for a meeting with Spot. 

Davey traces a finger gently along the broad strokes of charcoal. Jack had remembered this moment, had kept the image in his mind until he’d had a chance to commit it to paper, then rendered it in astounding detail. And Davey’s no artist, but even he can tell that this drawing must have taken Jack hours. Days even.

“This is what you think of me?” The question falls out of his mouth, so unexpected that not even Davey had realized he was about to ask it. “This is how you see me?”

“Whaddya mean?” Jack responds, shifting uneasily, his voice a little gruff in his discomfort. “‘S how you look.”

“Jack…” Davey trails off helplessly, unable to elaborate, unable to explain the fragile hope that’s blooming in his chest. He starts flipping through the pages again.

It’s a wash of ink and charcoal and lead, the occasional flash of blue, but all of him. Davey pauses on one particular page, which features a drawing of him from the shoulders up with his eyes rendered in vivid color.

Colored pencils are expensive. Paint even more so. Davey imagines Jack in an art shop, imagines him hunting through the rows of supplies for just the right shade of blue with the same determination that made him start up a strike, deciding that this color is worth handing over some precious amount of his hard-earned paycheck… Davey’s heart starts beating frantically in his ears.

“These are beautiful,” Davey whispers hoarsely. “The way you’ve drawn me… you’ve made me look beautiful.”

Jack’s eyes dart here and there. Davey gets the sense that he’s looking for the ‘right’ way to respond to this statement.

“...I don’t hafta make you look beautiful, Davey,” Jack eventually says, scrubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “You already are⁠—I just draw what I see.”

Davey calmly sets the sketchbook down on the nearest bit of clean, flat surface. Then he steps forward, grabs Jack by the straps of his paint smock, and kisses him.

There’s a split-second where Jack freezes, startled. Then he groans somewhere deep in his chest, wrapping his arms around Davey’s waist to draw him even closer, and the press of his lips against Davey’s is deep and soft and wonderful.

It’s Jack who pulls away first, moving back all of a hair’s breadth, his eyes flitting across Davey’s face like he’s savoring every detail of his expression⁠⁠—like he’s perfectly content to just look at him.

It’s only now that Davey realizes the significance of that gaze: Jack looks at him like he can’t believe his eyes, like he’s something out of his wildest dreams, and he cups Davey’s face between his hands with aching tenderness, like he’s something to be cherished. Davey can only press up into that embrace, can only hold Jack close and hope that he understands, that Jack sees the emotion in his eyes the way he sees so much of Davey’s everything. 

But there’s one question he needs answered. “Why?”

Jack leans in and presses a kiss to Davey’s temple. “It’s just… you have so much to you, Davey. No drawin’ could ever be all of you. But that didn’t stop me from tryin’.”

A kiss on the high point of his cheek. “And once I got started, I couldn’t stop. I would see you sittin’ somewhere, anywhere, laughing or sleeping or shouting and⁠— and you just buzz behind my eyes and I can’t get it to stop unless I grab a pen and some paper and sketch out whatever picture of you I got in my head.”

A kiss right at the corner of Davey’s mouth. “And I couldn’t never show ‘em to nobody, couldn’t risk anyone seeing ‘cause there’s too much of my heart in ‘em and I couldn’t⁠—”

Davey lifts up and kisses him again: slowly, reverently. He whispers into the seam of Jack’s lips, “I love you too.”

[ot3]

My approach to flat colors + limited palette drawings

This is a follow up to this post  i made about how i go about figuring out a color palette for my limited palette drawings. an anon asked me about my actual technique of finishing them so this is gonna be an explanation of how I work in a limited palette with flat colors. I ended up with these thumbnails for a sketch last time so we’re gonna work from here and I’m gonna sort of walk through how i got to the finished version

first things first: every part of this process is just developed as a result of me messing around. take my advice with a grain of salt and if you think you know a way to do something better/that makes you more comfortable. go with that over what I say.

I’m honestly a little surprised when people express confusion about how i draw like this because it’s SUPER simple - literally all you’re doing is just stacking solid color blocks of shape. its very imprecise despite how sharp everything ends up looking. 

First things first is that you want to decide how you will be handling your edges throughout the duration. Do you want your shapes to be ultra-sharp and precise, or do you want a little bit of a wobblier, grainier edge? Both can look good but it’s VERY much a matter of situational basis. i’ve been favoring looser and grainier shapes so that’s how i’m going to be working on this. 

on the left here, you can see the shapes made with precise rectangular selections and an untextured pen, on the right, freehand drawn shapes and a grittier pen. There’s something immediately pretty different feeling about them. So play around with that first - its not something that’s fun to change halfway through! But lets step back a minute. It helps to work large to small. The two biggest shapes here are these orange chunks and everything gets stacked on top of them so i’m gonna do that first. 

Now, a key feature of what i do: clipping masks. almost all digital art programs have them. What a clipping mask does is it constrains the pixels of a layer to the transparency of the layer below it. Here I have the light orange layer, and then on top of it the buildings and billboard are clipped to the orange. Most of you probably already know this and I’m overexplaining a bit, but there was a time when i didnt know how clipping layers worked and someone had to explain it to me.

now you’ll notice the shapes of the buildings are rough, and sloppy. here’s the fun part: since this is all about stacking shapes, only your exterior edges matter. this all gets filled in. be as sloppy as you want when you’re making your shapes. in fact, the outside edges get trimmed out a bunch to when i do this - i go in and erase them clean. Don’t be too finnicky about drawing perfect and precise! its a waste of time. As long as the silhouette is what you want, the interior can be a nightmare.

Working this way, it’s important to keep your layers stacked in a way you can make sense of. Right now there are four layers here: the background dark orange, the two main orange rectangle shapes, and then the buildings on one layer and a billboard on the other. I rack up a LOT of layers doing this and it makes it annoying in some aspects, but being able to freely recolor any one chunk without losing my detail is a key aspect of this.

So, I block those out

Next, I do the same for the smaller chunks that are still main shapes. There are once again, a lot of layers here. The top layer is the hair - you can see the head showing through it. The head and arm underneath the hair, same layer. Then the cup. Then the light green pieces of paper. Then the dark green ones.

The cup is technically farther forward than the head and arm so you would think it’d go on top, but the point isnt to recreate the foreground and background hierarchy with layers so much as it is to group things in a way i can work with. The cup goes underneath so it can be grouped with all the other objects on the table. 

now, i just go and fill in all the shapes. i forgot to do the blinds but i get them later. you might notice a lot of these shapes are pretty rough, which was harder to notice before they were filled in. Now that I can see better, I go in with an eraser and clean up the edges until they’re the shape I want 

sometimes erasing leaves little bits of ‘noise’ around objects like on this napkin here. i like to keep a little bit of this noise for texture, but if you dont like it make sure to get rid of it! if you’re working very crisp this will stand out a LOT

Next up is to add some detail onto the objects

I flipped the canvas here because the head shape was wrong - the ears were uneven and i wanted to fix it. I want to go about adding detail onto the billboard and buildings. i do all detail with clipping masks - but the objects are clipped to another layer and so nothing can be clipped to them. instead, i unclip them and just erase by selection for the same effect

all of the text on the papers is clipped to the papers below it. the buttons are clipped to the phone. the yellow photos and card are actually another independent layer on top, in case i want to recolor them separately. im indecisive and end up recoloring things a lot. For the most part these objects are starting to become recognizable as more than just shapes

i go in an add the details on the background and character now. theres some more stuff on the table. the lines of the face and ears are on one layer, and the flats of the eyes below that. Here’s what each group of layers is, and what they look like on their own

The background/bottom chunk. Just the table, window, and shirt.

The middle bit. All the stuff on the table and the blinds.

Finally, the top, which is just his head and arm. 

now this stage is the bare bones of the drawing. you can more or less tell everything that’s happening. it reads. but its very much lacking in something - it doesnt have a ton of depth or interest. and adding that additional detailing, the dept and interest, is where stuff starts getting REALLY tricky and subjective. 

im gonna take you to a much simpler scenario to show the sort of options i go through at this stage

ahh its our dear friend, sphere casting shadow. this is, more or less, the kind of image we have. you can tell whats happening but it’s lackluster. there are TONSSS of ways frm here that you can go add interior detail to a shape once it has been established. here are some quick and SUPER rough examples

from top left to bottom right: flat cel shading, softer airbrushed/gradient shading, halftone, and a textured brush. Each of these has their strengths and weaknesses. They can also be combined.

for example, here’s the solid cel shading being used to contain a gradient/airbrushed detail. This image - probably the single oldest piece of my art i still willingly show people - is entirely colored with gradients being contained in cel-shaded chunks. It has a sort of soft, luminous quality but without losing its crispness.

here’s a super quick bust with some variations of stuff going on. obviously this is no masterpiece but you see how different types of detailing can interact with each other and be used to distinguish materials too. 

With the mob psycho comic I did, the detailing that wasnt line was done using a variety of halftones of different shapes layered on top of each other

by contrast parts of my ace attorney comic use a textured brush and have a sort of blended, papery feel

any of them can work for pretty much anything as long as you are using it with intent. practice around. mix styles of finishing together. find a comfort zone. the more you do it the more intuitive it becomes and at the heart of it this process is a very intuitive way of drawing because of how far removed it is from realism.

Now here is the trick - light and shadow.

Everything up to this point has been very flat and adding detail helps but there’s only so much that can accomplish. To get HEAVY light and shadow you need to think about things differently. I think if there’s any part of this process that’s complicated, its this one. 

To truly get the most out of your palette, you need to pick chunks of an image to be in higher/lower light and then either ‘step up’ or ‘step down’ the colors in that chunk. here’s what I mean.

Here’s our ball with a beam of light on it. Everything Within the beam of light is one step in our limited palette lighter than anything outside of it. Here’s how I go about doing this: the shape of the beam of light is below everything else. Then, once I have the shape blocked out, i select it. With that selection in place, i go to EVERY SINGLE LAYER that’s effected, lock the opacity, and recolor that chunk. So what’s going on here is that there is only one more layer - the beam of light, below everything but the background, and the rest of this effect is just caused by every layer above it now being two-toned following the exact same silhouette. THIS is why it’s so important to keep your layers separate - if the shadow and highlight had been painted onto the base directly, i would not be able to do this without significant effort. 

This works with all of the finishing techniques I talked about above

A combination of cel shading and half toning, all stepped up to give the appearance of heavier light on one area.This is also how I go about rendering transparency in this style. All of my layers are fully opaque and I allow the colors to do the work of conveying transparent material

Here’s our ball with the patterned/textured brush  shading, being viewed partially through a window

it’s obviously not a very representational way of working, but as long as your audience UNDERSTANDS what you’re trying to convey, then you’re executing it successfully.

So with that, now we’re gonna go and finish this drawing.

For this one, I decide a big central shadow is necessary. In the original thumbnail, he was backlit, which I still plan on doing, and that wouldn’t make sense without casting a shadow.

I’ve had to change the colors of some objects entirely in order to get this to work right. This is what I mean when I call this an intuitive process - some stuff felt weird, so I changed it. This also involves a bit of problem solving. The newspaper is now unable to be separated from his hand. Sometimes changing the color of an object makes that object look better, but ruins its relationship with the objects around it. It’s up to you to learn how to adjust and finagle things until you get it where you want.The paper he has and the napkin underneath it also all blend together now.

The next few parts of this process are REALLY just trial and error, where I toss a bunch of spaghetti at it until it works. It’s hard to decide what to screenshot, because I don’t know what will or will not be part of the finished drawing. To that end, you can watch the recording of this drawing here. This video isn’t edited at all so it contains a couple of minutes of really shitty sketching, and then all of the color thumbnailing work i did in the last post. Actually getting started on these final colors begins around the two minute mark. It is also sideways, I am sorry I don’t know why. 

Now, here you can see where I’ve more or less worked things out. His hand’s not on the cup anymore because my friend pointed out it didnt have an arm attached to it. I added some halftoning to make a gradiating effect in the sky and on the table to give the impression of a sunrise. His eyes are different but as of posting this, I don’t like them and am probably about to go back and change them again. The Cup now has a shadow and some rim lighting. His hand is in shadow. The stain on the napkin is big enough to define the edge of the paper on top of it.

Little things like that. 

The more you draw like this the more the way you need to think about your space becomes natural. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best of luck!

[billyboymiki]

5 Works Tag Game

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and post or link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I got tagged by @tippenfunkaport and @caramelaire for this tag game!!

I’m not one to compliment myself on anything honestly. Recently I remember thinking about how I barely drew anything this year. There was a part of my brain nagging at me to check how much I had drawn last year. So, I uh did. Turns out I drew basically nothing?! I triple checked this in fact. My DeviantART, Tumblr AND my camera roll. Nothing . . . I drew 5 very basic pinback button designs and that was it. I couldn’t believe it; but, it made be feel so much better about what I did this year. Basically my whole instagram is all artwork from this year, since I am actually really new to IG. I got super close to 40 works this year!

Now onto the works! They are in order of when I drew them 😊

Glimmer Inspired Patterns

I wanted to teach myself how to make patterns on Clip Studio so bad! I watched a couple of YT tutorials, and I can’t even remember why I decided to make She-ra ones specifically; I’m glad I did though! The Glimmer one means so much to me. Just looking at makes me so happy! The fact that so many people have now called it ‘aesthetically pleasing’ makes me feel as though I actually created a work that others could relate to. That was enough praise for me; to create something for myself that everyone else loved as well 💖

Glimbow Cuddle

This was my first real She-ra artwork. When I saw there was a Glimbow Week again I knew I had to join this one. I don’t know if anyone knows this; but, drawings take me forever to make. I used to be strictly a traditional artist and still prefer to draw rough drafts on paper. I couldn’t decide if I wanted them on Glimmer’s window seat or in Bow’s dads’ library. I was afraid of doing backgrounds; so, both sounded absolutely terrifying. I decided to go for the fireplace even if it meant fancy lighting on top of the background aspect. I think I actually spent more time on the lighting that’s hitting Bow than on anything else in this picture. It was worth it though. I studied how the show did backgrounds and lighting for a while. I tried so many different attempts at how I wanted it to look and ultimately went with this one! I love it so much 🥺

Bow’s list with doodles

Ah, yes the drawings I did for Tippen’s birthday!! I knew I wanted to draw a scene from ‘Tuna Cans’, but I was worried to try something like this. You see, I’m somebody that likes to stay in a comfort zone and only uploaded fully rendered perfect artworks. This year was the first time that I let the ‘fun’ aspect overrule my perfectionism. I’m so happy that I stepped out of my comfort zone for this, because I love Chibi styles so much. I can’t even explain the absolute joy I had drawing these. I didn’t tell anyone what I was up to, so it was just me laughing at myself for being an absolute goofball. The end result and everyone’s reactions were more than I could have ever expected. I’ve decided I’m going to revive this style soon as well so please look forwards to it!!

Space Suit Squad

Okay, so I cheated a little with this one! I couldn’t just pick ONE of the squad. Honestly though, I drew these with the thought of making them into prints in the back of my mind. I taught myself how to draw a space background and I’m really proud of it! So much in fact that the one in the final pictures is the first and last one I ended up doing! If I had to pick my favorites I think I’d have to pick Glimmer, Bow and then Catra. I LOVE the way I draw Catra I don’t know why? Maybe the eyebrows I’m not sure 🤔 It took me a while to decide on expressions and poses; although, I figured these were the ones because I could look at them and go ‘yep that’s them.’

Winter Glimbow

This one took me soooo long; I actually had to tell myself that I should put my pen down because it was done and I should stop touching it!!! I was sketching pictures in my sketchbook to make more patterns for my Redbubble account, and of course I’m like 100% Glimbow brainrot. My brain went, oooo you know what would be cute? If this skate was actually Bow’s and not just generic. So, I ended up sketching Glimmer’s as well. The heart that their skates make is like the cherry on the top for me, it had to be done! I’m not sure I did the background justice on this one? It doesn’t matter to me though because the concept was worth the effort. It was snowing here and I needed this picture like I needed air, even if it wasn’t even December at the time I posted it 🤣 I liked this one so much that I have similar ideas for the other seasons sketched out as well 👀

I’m sorry that I ramble so often. I’m like this quiet person; yet, it’s hard for me to get out everything I want to say? I’m horrible at it actually my brain runs at a hundred miles a minute and I’m not good with words most of the time. This turned out as more of a thought process than my actual feelings on each one I suppose. SO, in conclusion. I drew A LOT, I stepped out of my comfort zone, taught myself digital art and patterns. I let myself come to terms with the fact that not every piece of art has to be ‘perfect’. I drew at least 5 FULL backgrounds and I never used to draw them! I’ve also always been one for simple shading and lighting, and I do think there’s a time for that type of style, while other times sometimes a more difficult one might be appropriate. I’m glad that I did both because now I know I can do both, and they each give a characteristic that I adore 🥰 Thank you to everyone that has followed me through this journey, or just anyone who read my rambling! I have an honorable mention under the cut and some originals for anyone that made it this far! 💖

I’m not going to tag anyone; but, if you want to do this PLEASE do it. It was so great to reflect on what I did this year, it really surprised me and I think what you have done will surprise you as well! It’s been a rough year, and in the end we have been here supporting each other and that’s one of the most rewarding parts of being in a fandom! 💜

Glimmer screencap redraw

Another picture where I really tested myself on drawing a background! I love it even if it killed my hand!! The background definitely took the longest on this one too. My sister literally said ‘Wait, you did the background? I thought you just drew her?!’ And that was the only validation I needed!! I ended up thinning out Glimmer’s outline so she matched the background better. If you use the vectors on Clip please use this feature! You can do the opposite as well, it’s super useful!

Oh hi! Remember when I said I couldn’t decide between the two locations? Truth is, I also couldn’t decide if I was going to make it traditional or digital. I ended up getting really mad at the traditional version unfortunately. I haven’t gotten the hang of traditional backgrounds. In the end, I should have also done it in Copic and not cheap pencil crayons 😫

Just some space friends! There is something so rewarding about traditional art. Yes, I can see the mistakes and the proportions are most likely off; yet, it doesn’t bother me? I wanted to also show these bonus drawings because nobody is perfect and I thought some of you might like to see some of my process. Being able to hold it in my hands is something I will never tire of, in a way it’s super rewarding. I keep all my art actually and sometimes I like the rough drafts more than the finished work 👀 Outlining artwork can actually ruin the charm every so often 😔 I do really love the final versions of these though!

Annnnnd the last bonus!! As you can tell the final version stayed pretty true to my sketches! I almost went with a more realistic look and made the symbols ‘stitched’ onto the skates. In the end it felt like it didn’t fit the rest of the drawing unless I wanted to add extra details to the clothing as well. The wings on Glimmer’s skates turned into ‘Shwings’ PLEASE tell me other people know what that is? I had a pair a few years ago and misplaced them. I was doing the rough draft and it popped into brain and I treated it as a joke at first, until I gave it a proper chance XD In the end I fell in love with it!!!

[oosteven-universe]

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Masquerade #1

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Masquerade #1 Archia/BOOM! Studios 2020 Written by Laura Elena Donnelly Illustrated by Pius Bak, Samantha Dodge & French Carlomagno Coloured by Francesco Segala & Fabiana Mascolo Lettered by Jim Campbell    All is not as it seems with the guests of Jareth's famous Masquerade, as one participant slowly awakens to the reality of her topsy-turvy existence in the Goblin Kingdom when Sarah shatters the glass mirrors during her escape. But as this mysterious participant puts together the pieces, her discoveries threaten to unravel everything!    Well this is the franchise that just keeps on giving and giving.  There are so many aspects to the beloved world that Jim created that have yet to be fully explored.  I like the idea of this story and even more it’s execution as we see the unlikeliest of allies dare I say become friends.  It is something that is both terrifying and sweet all at once and it isn’t that this is overtly horrifying but it is more how the reader is going to perceive that which is being told.  There is power in words we’ve all known this our entire lives, including names as they have the most power of all.  Still perception is everything and I have to say that the way we see this story unfold is utterly marvellous.    I am enjoying the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well.  I like how we are introduced to the characters in this story and how the whole plot plays out before our eyes.  How we see the book being structured as well as the layers within playing their parts it is a huge in our enjoyment of it.  The character development that we see is interesting and it really is done in such a way that really intrigues the reader and makes them want to see more of them.  The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way we are delighted by this unique look as if we’d gone through the looking glass.  I am also really enjoying seeing how everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow which pulls you in and makes you forget how this is an oversized book.    The interiors here are nice.  They have this all-ages kind of feel to it and the linework that we see is laid down extremely well through its varying weights.  The creativity and imagination that we see as we go from workshop to ball to outside and all the creatures and beings that inhabit it are beautifully rendered. The way that we see backgrounds throughout and how they act to enhance the moments and bring us that mood, tone and feel to the story at just the right moment is magnificent.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a beautiful eye for storytelling.  The colour work is really lovely as well.  How we see the hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is rendered beautifully.  Beautiful comes up here a lot and deservedly so because the work has this almost fairy tale feel to it and there are few descriptors that accurately match as that does.   ​    I want to see more, I want to learn more about the young lady with the chair who smashed the mirrors.  I want to see more of this woman with multiple arms who tried to take Nettie under her wing as she woke.  There is so much here that is introduced and is utilised in such a way that leaves the door open for further exploration and depending on what the readers’ ask for who knows what we’ll get.  All I know is franchises such as this will never die or go out of fashion it encompasses everything we want to see more of in such a gorgeous fantasy setting.

[circusballoon]

27 & 35 for the ask game!

27. For digital artists: how many layers does a typical piece require?

Oof that varies a lot...

For a single fully-rendered picture, it tends to be something like this (not necessarily in order of when they’re made, but more just the order the layers are in) 1. White background 2. Sketch 3. Background color 4. Extra background stuff 5. Base color 6. Any markings or mildly more complicated things (clipped to base color) 7. Clothing and whatever else is on top (clipped to base color) 8. Shading 9. Any highlights or other touches on top of things 10. Lines 11. Signature outline 12. Signature 13. Radial gradient overlay because I overuse them 14. Krita’s paper textures

But if you counted a sketch page as a “piece” then it gets extremely varied because each picture with any detail on it has its own layers unto itself. Sketch pages typically range somewhere from four layers (background, any color, sketch, and signature), to twenty or so layers. It’s very rare that I get past 30 layers, and I don’t think my computer could handle much more than that.

35. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

All of my friends and friendly acquaintances on here and Art Fight are such huge inspirations to me! You all make such unique, cool stuff with your own individual focuses and seeing it always gets me so excited to draw and try new things.

This, of course, includes you! Your art always has such a surreal, otherworldly, dream-like quality to it with eyecatching shapes and patterns everywhere. Your attention to detail when drawing people is also so good and just.. can I just emphasize that the shapes of everything are so good?? So good.

As far as folks I don’t know but just follow, the two that come to mind are uh...

Geneva Bowers has super calm, colorful, whimsical scenes and people! Just looking at the colors makes me feel excited and happy, and the regular use of flowers and celestial themes are super my jam.

Petra Nordlund is another big inspiration for me! Petra’s people are all so charmingly full of dramatic dorkiness and goodness, and her art and stories are a combination of silly, cute, and fantastical with a dash of otherworldly horrors.

[wausdraws]

Howdy! Commissions are now open! As this is my first time doing anything of the sort, I'm keeping it to five slots so I'm not overwhelmed, on the chance I am commissioned. Also of note: I am open to discussion! If you're unsure about anything, please contact me via Discord, at Awauspic#3154. I will answer you as soon as I can, so feel free to ask!

A Few Things First

          A few things you'll want to know before even considering commissioning me.

All In One Place.  Since I'll be having a limited number of slots, I'll be leaving these available for checking. You can track these on my Trello if you want to see what I'm doing, though I will also state whether my commissions are open or closed on my dA profile & art Tumblr.

Full Payment Beforehand.  I require full payment upfront for commissions. Pricing and Payments below will cover how I'll handle refunds and anything extra that may come up.

Communication is key! I will check with you for every stage of the commission, and request that you stay reasonably responsive; I want to make sure it looks as good as can be, but to do that, I need to know your thoughts!

On Uncertainties: If you think you might want to commission me but aren't sure where anything falls - contact me! I want to give you the best possible experience, which includes before you commission me. I'm perfectly willing to discuss what you want with you, regardless of whether or not you decide to commission a piece from me.

Referring to references... As a general, I will want a flat-color reference, with no or minimal shading, or an available color palette. If there isn't one available, I'll work with you to get the appropriate colors down and provide a swatch with the completed piece for future reference.

Cleaning up afterward. Post completion, you have one week to point out anything minor or easy to fix within the piece that bothers you; as long as it's within that week, and reasonable, I'll fix it. Past that, however, it's done and dusted, and I will not be altering it.

What Can I Do For You?

          You're okay with the above? Great! Here's what will be accepted, what will be rejected, and a few things I'm a little iffy about. This isn't exhaustive, so if you're hesitant at all, contact me! I'm more than happy to clarify for you!

I will draw:

Furries! As visible in my commission post above, I will draw fursonas and general furry creatures, feral, to anthro, to 'taur.

Animals! In-line with furries, I'll also do general animals.

I might draw:

Fandom content!  This is more so because I need to know where it's from, and have references available. Though by no means an exhaustive list, some fandoms that I'll cover are:

Undertale/Deltarune

Since this is AU heavy, please specify if Classic for standard, or give me the AU. I try to keep up but dear god.

Warriors, including OCs.

Light Gore. I am willing to draw bleeding/injuries/fights. See below for what classifies as too much. Again, this is case-by-case.

Body horror. I'm much more tolerant when missing chunks, extra mouths, broken shapes, and general weirdness is just part of the design. However, it is still case-by-case, and we'll need to talk it out.

Innuendo or Suggestive. Tasteful relative nudity, suggestive posing or behavior, and visual innuendo. Nothing too obvious, but I’m game to work with you on figuring something out.

I will not draw:

Mechs!

Actual Human People. Those who are real people. I’m not drawing a celebrity, I’m not drawing your cousin.

Humans, in general. This will change as I improve, but for now, humans are a firm no go.

Bugs. I am terrible with them. I will improve, but for now, these are no-go.

NSFW.

NSFW Gore is anything excessive; pieces being ripped off, clear abuse or painful deaths are hard no's.

NSFW Sexual is with visible genitalia, actual sex, etc.

Pricing and Payments

       Having chosen what you want and the piece in question confirmed to be alright, here comes the rest of it; paying the artist. As a heads up, everything listed is in US Dollars.

Details, Extras, and Deadlines, Oh My.

Character(s)

Group Shots: I will do multiple characters for full-body pieces of any level, but not for sketches or mugshots. Each character will add seven dollars onto the original price, for up to five characters total.

Complications In The Making: Characters come in varying levels of complexity. However, if one is exceptionally intricate - either in having heavy, detail-orientated patterns or a lot going on, that will be ten dollars per intricate character, alongside the original pricing.

Backgrounds: With all pieces, I’ll include a simple mono-color background, as well as one without. In fully rendered, I’ll add an effect on top to make it special. However:

Funky Background on Non-Rendered: I'm happy to add background effects on a non-rendered piece. However, it'll cost you another two dollars.

Simple Scenery: Scenes are another beast entirely. For simple scenes, that's seven dollars.

Detailed Scene: Fifteen dollars flat for anything detailed; more requested features drive the price up by two dollars every two features.

Deadlines.  If you want a piece done by a certain time, it may drive up the price depending on how quickly you want it, and if there is anything I will have to set aside to get it done. Naturally, I will reject deadlines that I know I will not have time for, or are otherwise unreasonable.

Start to Finish: For a single fully rendered body piece, it takes me approximately three days to complete, while balancing it between the rest of my workload, while sketches often only take minutes.

Sets: You can commission multiple works at once, and I'll bundle them together to be done along the same timeline, or at least with each other; excluding a deadline or real-life problems, I'll have them done and sent to you at the same time. Individual prices still apply.

Up-Front, And Returned

       After alerting me to your intent to commission and getting the details worked out, so comes the green.

A Cuppa! Feel free to pay me through Ko-Fi! It takes in 3$ increments, so anything divisible by three is an option, and with less processing fees.

Paypal! After we've got everything settled, I'll hand over my Paypal.

Patreon! Still a WIP, my Patreon is available if you're feeling like you want regular doses of art, or just want to support me. I appreciate it no less. <3

In the event of a refund... I will refund for work not completed. If, for example, you commission a full render, but request a refund after I have completed the sketch, I'll keep the sketch costs, but return the rest to you; you also, of course, get to keep what work was done before the refund.