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vetyr · 9 days

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hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

#answers to asks #illustration #art advice #art help #drawing #digital art

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backupthere · 3 months

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Came up in a discussion at tonight's game- which of the back-up-there back ups would join in with the YMCA between plays (sadly neither backup joined in this evening, I was dissapoint)

I’m assuming that this takes place during a longer than normal break in play, for example one of those times where somebody finds a small hole in the ice, ¾ of the officials stand around and look at it for a bit, at least five hockey players offer helpful opinions on what they should do about it, and the DJ is trying to keep the mood up. (As opposed to a normal pause in play where the music will cut out any second once the puck drops…)

I’ve included everybody in this, because some of them start off as back-ups in the series and go on to be starters, so I’m using the context “in a game where the other goalie is starting”

Absolutely joining in:

Coop

Pete

Andrew (a surprise to the others)

Damien

Rick

Mitch

Might join in if they were in the right mood:

Jack

Addy

Chris

Ryan

Gethin

Nick

Rob

Cody

Paul

Joe

Absolutely not:

Will

Woody

Dan (Dan would join it at other times but not in his game headspace which also applies when he’s on the bench)

Karl

Ross

Lucas (the existence of his sense of humour is private, the guys in the room can know about it but the fans cannot)

Gav

Ricky

Only if personally bullied by the DJ:

Billy

Martin (Damien’s tandem backup)

Special mention for Jonny, who would 100% join in when he was on the Huskies but would be very very unlikely to join in on the Cobras during the Puckdrop era. I like to think that the Cobras can develop into a place where he might join in if he felt like it in future seasons.

If I've missed anybody feel free to let me know, and I'd love to know if any of these are unexpected!

Also I love the idea of this series coming up in a discussion at a game - I know who will have been involved in this conversation, but I do like to imagine that there's a whole bunch of people out there just chatting about my work!

#not fic but about fic #answers to asks

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desiderii · 9 months

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I think I understand what you mean about writing practice? It's focused on one manageable aspect that you can explore and examine without overwhelming you. You incorporate it in your writing in different forms, several times at the least. You experiment. Then you review what you've written in the lens of that aspect and how it worked while writing and how the effect is while reading?

Yeah, basically!

A lot of the craft of writing, when you look at it from a mechanical perspective, is refinement for effect. Tugging on heartstrings, making people fall in love with your characters, inspiring moments of laughter. And a lot of the effects you can go for don't take very much page to play with. I can think of at least two popular tumblr posts off the top of my head (the 'vary your sentence length' one and the 'control your reader's heartbeat' one) that play with rhythm, tempo, and sentence structure, and their effective examples are what...200 words long? 500 at the outside?

I mean, for example, the only way to get really good at writing novels is to write and finish novels, but within that novel there are hundreds of moving parts that could be played with. That said, imho, what you might get out of this kind of focused element practice depends on your process. I write bits and pieces pretty much reflexively and I like to tinker, so I'm not going particularly far out of my way to do any of this. The best way to practice writing is to write things, whether it's full and complete projects or writing exercises or anything else.

#answers to asks #anon ask #writing #practice #writing practice #Not all writing needs to be 1) finished or 2) for an outside audience

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lemotmo · 10 months

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Hello :) not to put pressure on you or anything, but I recently read (all in one sitting) and fell in love with to boldly go (the 911 star trek AU), and I saw that it's almost finished but you haven't updated in a while. Again no pressure, buuut can I hope to read the ending someday? The writing is so lovely, and the slow burn so gooood 🥺

No pressure, don't worry.😋

I'm a little ashamed though. 🙈 I have two months of vacation coming up and finishing this fic is right on top of my to do-list. Real life, single motherhood and work got a little overwhelming just over a year ago, so I had to start prioritising some things in my life. Writing fic wasn't one of the priorities.

But I am in a better place right now and I have the outline for the ending all ready. Now I just need to sit down and write it out. I am determined to finish it because I hate leaving things unfinished. I know what it's like, reading a WIP and waiting for a new chapter.

So yeah, somewhere during July, I will post a (hopefully) worthy ending to this fic. You have given me an extra boost though. Knowing that there are still people out there, eagerly waiting for the ending makes me happy.

#answers to asks #buddie #to boldly go #buddie in space fic #WIP I need to finish

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snek-panini · 1 year

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Hi! Your book bindings are awesome and the information you provide is so useful to me so - thank you! I had a question- am I supposed to glue the whole of the endpaper to the text block or just have it as a flippable page? When using decorative papers that have a good and bad side I felt off about having the bad side showing, but now I'm not sure.

Hello! Thank you so much, I'm glad my rambling is useful. Also the tags you left on my post the other day made me super emotional, thank you. I'm going to put the rest of this post under a cut, since it got really long and has images in it. Hope it helps!

So, end papers! What I do (and I think most people do this but I'm not an expert) is to have them as a flippable page. It feels weird at first to have that blank page on the back, but almost every book I own including ones from book stores has them that way. I don't usually post photos of the back side of the endpaper because it's not as pretty, but here are some I've made:

Left side is Around the World in 80 Days, which I posted a couple of days ago, and the right side is from Lunacy, a fic I posted about earlier this year. With 80 Days I used a florentine print and they're only printed on one side. Lunacy looks like that because the endpapers on that one are cardstock and that tends to be colorful on both sides, so if you want to avoid having a plain back that's one way to do it. As a bonus, it's very thick so it won't wrinkle around mull or tapes when you glue it to the covers. It tends to only be available in solid colors though, so it does limit your design choices that way.

The pros do it this way too! Here are a couple of books I've bought in stores that have the same setup. One of them is from a horror novel though, so trigger warning for teeth on that one just in case.

The green one is The Reivers by Faulkner, which is a very fancy edition put out by the Franklin Library, and the one with the teeth is a special edition of one of the Welcome to Night Vale novels. Both of them have very fancy endpapers, one in shiny silk moire and the other in what I assume is a custom print, that are still blank on the back. I figure if it's good enough for fine presses and special editions it's good enough for me too.

I have gotten the impression that some people paste multiple sheets together in order to make stronger endpapers? Like paste, squish till flat and dry, fold, attach to text block? But I haven't looked into that yet and don't know if I've understood them right. If I'm right, that might be one way to get designs on the back of the endpaper, by pasting the plain sides of two sheets together. Or you could maybe run the sheet through your printer upside down and print an image on the back, if the paper's sturdy enough to take it. Or I do a lot of things with rubber stamps, you could stamp something there if it fit the book you were making. All of that would require experimenting though, I haven't done any of it and am now throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.

Anyway, this got really long and rambly and I hope at least some of it was helpful to you!

#endpapers #bookbinding #snek makes books #answers to asks #i love getting asks but be prepared for a dissertation in response

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dirtnote · 6 months

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weirdly specific asks: 2, 3, 7, 14 (because we love reminding folks to drink water), 19, 25, 28, 30 (Would you ever choose to be immortal, why/not?)

2: thoughts on veganism? i have had thoughts on veganism but my ultimate position is that it's not rlly my business BUT i do think it's something that can only really exist in a world that had an industrial revolution. but also sort of exists as a reaction to it as far as meat products go? it's ironic when people want to go deep with it and claim it's The Way To Be when biologically we are omnivores and therefore need to be very specific with our diets, using grocery store shelf options, if we want to cut out animal byproduct altogether. like i don't think you can be vegan living ~off the grid~ or in literally any survival situation lol. on the other hand a lot of people are vegan because it's the moral thing to be, as far as consumption habits go. you could argue that if you want to consume morally... well you really can't! ALBEIT in this case the focus is on animal cruelty in an industrial context, rather than a goal towards Overall "moral" consumption under capitalism and btw i'm not like, 'critical' of veganism (nor should anyone be because who give a shit. truly. it's just a personal dietary choice) there's just aspects of irony to the mostly fringe internet vegans i'm referring to. and people who attempt to guilt a general audience out of their current eating habits. (i also think there IS a moral way to consume animal byproduct-- like, for example, raising chickens in your backyard and harvesting their eggs... or buying eggs from someone else who raises them that way. not everything is buying from corporations operating thanks to inhumane chicken mills)

3. a specific color that gives you the ick? there are so many colors in the world and i love most of them :) ..

but i'd have to say like, this general pukey highlighter greenish yellow. OR extremely bright yellow on walls. im so sorry. yes colors look better next to others and im not trying to be a yellow hater i promise. my lockscreen is art with a (different) shade of yellow as the background

7. what animal do you look forward to seeing when you visit an aquarium? omg well i'd have to say the octopus and jellyfish :) I LOVE JELLYFISH and just realized i had a dream about them last night. i get to see them in the gulf sometimes which if they are ouch kind is not so fun but we often get the ones without stingers. like moon jellyfish

14. do you think you're dehydrated? i don't think so, i'm usually sensitive to the feeling of being thirsty and generally go out of my way to make sure i have water all the time :) but i was putting off drinking water just now for a while so thank u

19. the veggie you dislike the most? honestly i am absolutely a veggie lover so i had to think about this for a while until i remembered that i dont really like radishes. a rare exception tho

25. would you say you have good taste in music? yes ^_^

28. last meal on earth? omg. this is the most difficult question cus how do i choose!!! also im hungry and should sleep so im just thinking longingly about chicken chimichangas now. i'm sure if i thought about it longer i'd come up with something else but i WAIT HOMEMADE TACOS WITH SOURCREAM LIME DRESSING. ok done

30. free question: would you choose to be immortal? ahh yes the question with the most endless list of pros and cons! on one hand, i'd like to think i'd handle having to be permanently ambivalent (considering the extreme temporary state of everything that comes with being immortal). i'd be curious to see where humanity goes from here, but if things go to shit like a lot of us think it will then im stuck with that!!!! :( and ive got technical questions as well. like if something globally catastrophic happened and everyone Died would i be the only one left for, like, eternity...?? does it last for the entire life of the universe? i dont think ive ever heard anyone ask that before? like do i end up chilling in the vacuum of space watching the last brown dwarf die off at the end of the universe?? so. all that said my answer is no i think. unless i get to sleep for a veryyyy long time like how a vampire does. but probably not so no </3

#im sorry many of these answers are long like the vegan one. i was trying to cut it down but i cant. chronically just writing annoyingly long #answers to asks #thank u for sending these this was fun <3 especially for coming up with a question of your own!! feels like a sleepover #answered

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royaleofury · 2 years

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Astro Extras from Asks

📓 Moon Sextile Neptune

📓 Mars in Libra( 3rd house)

📓 Venus in Capricorn( 7th house)

📓 Moon in Jyestha nakshatra (pada 3)

📓Rahu in Rohini( 1st house)

📓 Mercury (Taurus ) at 0° degree

📓Jupiter in 9th house

📓 Sun, Chiron and Neptune( 7th house)

📓 Moon Conjunct Asc, Mars in 5th house

📓Venus Trine Asc, Mars Trine Asc

📓 Saturn (dk) and in 2nd house in d9

#astro asks #extra #followers asks #astrology #answers to asks

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cattimeswithjellie · 1 year

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Oh, well in that case, let's see what I can cook up...

Bdubs died. He remembers the moon crushing him, turning him to dust, remembers every agonising second of his death. And then he was waking up on a rocky outcrop surrounded by his friends. That's gotta leave a mark; the one time he fails to sleep, and sees the moon, it kills him.

Ren has been possessed so many times, he's starting to lose his grasp on who he really is. The whispers of the entities who puppeteered him still remain in his unconscious mind, and he often fears sleeping, lest they take control once more and make him hurt his friends.

Okay I don't got much but if you're interested I have a couple of fics centered on the free real estate that is Bdubs' between s8 and s9

Hermits dealing with their moon-related trauma is absolutely my jam, I will gobble that down all day long. And poor Bdubs, he was convinced enough that the moon coming close was his fault (due to moon-shaped base) that he let Scar sacrifice him on the Mooner altar twice! I have to wonder if that is the reason he didn't even try to get away, like he somehow owed it to the world to go down with it.

I love Ren's weird alter-egos as well, they vacillate between just ridiculous and silly into completely ominous. I haven't even watched much of his content during the times when he's been possessed or repossessed, but Dog in the Door basically branded it into my mind forever.

I will always, always take fic recs! (especially when I accidentally deleted part of my own newest chapter and am taking a brief frustration-break from writing!)

#answers to asks #hermitcraft #the angst is real even though we make it up ourselves

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desiderii-fic · 1 year

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Hello!! I just found your AO3 this week and I'm completely gobsmacked at Candle, Cup and Casket. You've created such an intricate and amazing world, it's brilliant! So I decided to read your other Merthur fics, but Ethical Sadism has not been updated in a long while and I was wondering if you intend on finishing it? Thank you xx

Answering this after five years, even though I’m 99.99999% sure that you are probably no longer on tumblr, anon. EVEN SO, I’ve decided to poke through and finally publish a couple of asks. That and I’ve been wanting to kind of explain what ES’s deal is and this gives me a good excuse.

So.

Ethical Sadism is tricky for two reasons.

First, because it was an experiment, and I’m hesitant to say it, but really? It’s a bit of a failed experiment. I am constitutionally incapable of posting regular updates in a serial fashion, which is what ES was intended to be, as a fic. An ongoing storyline where I didn’t know the end ahead of time and was just writing as the whim took me. I...would probably do things differently with it now. It was a good experiment, and I’m glad I did it, but I legitimately do not know where I was going with half of the plothooks I dropped in. Though I do find it super funny that d&d got so much more popular since I first posted ES.

The second reason it’s tricky? I figured out I was aroace only after I created ES’s concept.

The reason that this is an issue is that the story is, fundamentally, about Arthur being aro and Merlin not being aro at all, and how their relationship still develops when Arthur isn’t just going to magically fall in love. So. The experience of an aromantic character, but from the POV of the one who fell in love with them, as sort of a ‘what now’ post-confession for both of them.

I did not know this when I started writing it. Originally, it was just ‘here is my experience with relationships’ and ‘I have always been vaguely baffled a the moment of a confession’ and ‘no is always my first answer to a romantic overture, so what does that look like with these guys.’

Anything and everything I would write going forward, on this particular story, would still cleave to that, but...with more context, I suppose. Since now I have more of an understanding of why and a ton more conviction that just because one of the characters isn’t gonna fall in love doesn’t mean they’re not gonna get together. That being aro means you get to choose who you give your love to, even if it takes a minute to switch gears and decide you want to. It’s. Very personal, tbh, and I feel very strongly about it, and I would want to make it an actual story and not a serial if I went all-in, because that’s where I’m most comfortable working writing-wise and just...ah. Ah.

So. Yes. ES is a weirdly important story for me that I don’t know if I can ever finish. RIP. I should probably put the WIP discontinued tag on it at some point.

#answers to asks #wip update #ethical sadism

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yamujiburo · 3 months

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clothes shopping!

#hanamusashipping #hanamusa #jessie #delia ketchum #my art #inspired by my answer to a previous ask

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ineed-to-sleep · 3 months

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Collection of memes with mostly my tav/astarion to keep myself sane

#I'm not even gonna ask if any of these have already been done the answer is probably yes fjckkckck #does not matter tho I llovve them <33 #bg3 #bg3 tav #astarion #baldur's gate 3 #tavstarion #sleepyscribble #oc.nawen #ship: narion

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bixels · 4 months

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Baffled.

#personal #not art #like how do you arrive at this conclusion #what beliefs?#the man may be a total grouch but if there’s one thing he HATES it’s Japanese nationalism #Japanese nationalists famously HATE his work especially the wind rises which criticizes imperial Japan and calls out the invasion of China #don’t ask for context on the first part of the tag I’m not answering

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sammaelsfatcock · 18 days

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Curiosity killed the cat, 1 and 42! Nyah~

good fuckin' question. Of the many things which turn me on, I've found an unfortunate (and sometimes hilarious) weak spot for people wearing any kind of face mask - cover the mouth, yet leave everything else visible? I'm weak at the knees already That and like, actually being interested in what I have to say about stuff. I love telling people things but the amount of times people just start talking over me, or interrupt, after a few seconds is really quite disappointing. 42. I have an oral fixation. Take of that what you will.

#sam's smut #sam speaks #answers to asks #woo!#first ask game win!#thanks cat person #couldn't do it without you

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carlyraejepsans · 4 months

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When I was like 15 I dated this guy named Wes and we would roleplay Soriel so then when we broke up it made me have a vendetta against the ship for a few years. You made me like them again though so thanks. Also I'm a lesbian now.