It's beautiful how easy it is to learn new skills compared to 10-15 years ago. I like to say I taught myself a ton of stuff in all kinds of creative fields, but in reality, "self-taught" means a hundred different people made free resources that helped me get here.
This is one of the reasons I vouch so much for open-source projects, free resources, good educational youtube videos etc.
I want to dedicate my life to creating cool, fucked up art, and at the same time, nurture the internet as a public and open library for learning how to make cool, fucked up art.
spent a wonderful couple hours perusing the stacks at the local library, and walked away with...
Apples Are From Kazakhstan
Teach Yourself Russian
Dancing Guide
Colombiana (cookbook)
Photographing Buildings and Cityscapes
The Science of Plants
The Wolf of Wall Street (dvd)
From Russia With Love (dvd)
The one I really went there "for" was Apples Are From Kazakhstan, but who am I to say no to the other topics calling my name? The Dancing Guide looks really fun to be honest, and if I'm lucky it might even make me hot shit at the bush bar!
I'd like to encourage everyone to visit a library and borrow from it. Try something new, since there's no risk. Take out a million books at once, on topics you're only "maybe" interested in. You never know when your deepest passion will fall out of the sky.
WALKING GHOSTS: MURDER AND GUERILLA POLITICS IN COLUMBIA
POLAND: A MODERN HISTORY
MAD DREAMS, SAVING GRACES, POLAND: A NATION IN CONSPIRACY
THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR: AN ORAL HISTORY OF WOMEN IN WORLD WAR II
the theme of the day is national histories... mostly.
I spent quite a while trying to find a book on the history of unified italy. eventually i found something promising, a book that ties history to modern culture. so that should at least provide something on modern italy.
after 2 hours in the shelves i saw "the unwomanly face of war" and grabbed it on the way out, it looked interesting.... and then after all of that i bumped into the section i'd been going insane trying to find for those 2 hours!!!
I RETURN SUCCESSFUL FROM MY DISSECT—I MEAN STUDY OF CAT—I MEAN @8um8le s ART STYLE!
That’s right. Art study.
Absolutely not my excuse to shamelessly draw Cat.
ANYWAY, red and blue is lifted directly from refs, pink (some blue) is freehand stuff
Enjoy my unhinged notes—
First I did some line tracing, I wanted to see what was going on with how the form came together without worrying about color; the pose language is divine. There’s so much personality and they’re well balanced in shape and gravity. My own poses tend to come off stiff at times, so if anything, I need to learn to loosen up and exaggerate a bit more
Then I went and looked at the use of color and came away with some confirmation about my own problems with color—I use too many high sat/high value colors too often and don’t trust myself to use contrast of warm-cool and complimentary colors to do the heavy lifting 😅
Did a few design reviews; this is freehanded unless noted otherwise. The design work of the machine parts is so nice; I get too caught in “believable movement” that sometimes I forget robot parts can and should look badass and detailed enough to read as such. My first attempts freehand were still a bit stiff and not reading correctly so I tried a different pose altogether and really pushed the exaggeration and then really went ham at free handing Cat. I think he turned out pretty damn good
Then I decided to compare my own art from months ago and this week to the design choices of Cat and came away with realizing that, even if there’s a theme to my design, visually Ylixir (the Oc) is really muddy when turned monochrome and that’s not great. I love her design still since too much clutter would be eye killing, but it’s a reminder to me at least to strive for more contrast and visual interest to help a design.
When I trusted the contrast (without realizing it) and remembered my value variations since I was working in monochrome oranges it came away as a very interesting and something I’m very proud of. It’s a reminder to do more work in monochrome to make me more comfortable with colors that might seem boring alone but come together to be incredibly pleasing
3: —saving strain CAUSED* by relying on TOO MANY* high saturation/same value colors
I’m literate, I swear.
Anyway, thank you, 8um8le! This was fun and I learned a lot I think. Excuse me while I eat these notes and put Firewall back in containment before she realizes no one’s around to stop her—
Going to try something new for me: spend my evenings trying to draw/paint that which is hard/which I am awful at and just keep plugging at it until I have no more to learn from it. I LOVE the realistic painterly worlds lots of artists do but it is NOT my forte. How'd I learn as a kid? Well...I sucked. A lot. And kept drawing anyway.
So. I'm 36 and going to spend my evenings seeing if I can't learn to do this very thing. The likes of Allison Theus, Caraid, Alector Fencer, and Nambroth (Among many more) have filled my imagination for 15-20 years. Deep brain imprints. If I want to draw and paint that way too I'm just going to have to practice it. Time will pass by either way and not everything needs to wow people. I'm going to screw it up and make mistakes and things will look weird at first. But if I learned to do everything else up to this point...why not painterly realism?
It is never too late to learn unless you've had something egregiously bad happen like an enraged gorilla pulled your limbs off or you happen to be dead. Um sorry about either of those if they've happened to you. I don't tick those boxes though so I better get to work.
Flipaclip was fun, but I wasn't going to pay to use more layers. My friend suggested I try Krita (I'd finally set up a tablet that connects to my computer and wanted to try to draw). I thought myself the program and made 4 things so far!!
Just a recap, these were my flipaclip animations:
And these are the Krita ones (in order of when I made them):
My wifi is ass so if some of these are completely still, I will post this again when I get better service!