Athens' Reblogs

I reblog stuff random stuff here. Mostly things I find funny, but also occasionally art. B)

[jamesleech]

Crooked Channel, Folded Temple

Two paintings for the Globe & Mail - David Gratzer, an attending physician at CAMH writes about what led us to a crisis of mental illness and potential paths towards meaningful change.

Big thanks to AD Ming Wong 🙏 These two originals are available in my shop.

[jamesleech]

Three paintings for a story about a very costly cancer treatment drug, the unsurprising greed and sociopathy from pharmaceutical execs, and the people affected by it.

For ProPublica - Story by David Armstrong

Shout outs pill smasher Lisa L-W for inviting me on for this one

[jamesleech]

crazy, happy, foolish, fleeting

Oil, pencil crayon, graphite on panel, 18" x 24", 2019

[jamesleech]

Hunters in the snow (After Bruegel), oil on yupo, 9x5.5" Packing (After Vuillard), oil on yupo, 9x5.5"

Two more from a childhood classic, Home Alone (1990). This movie probably made a whole generation of us think about how to set up our own DIY home defense. I feel like a few of of Kevin's contraptions would have been lethal damage

For the upcoming show "Film School" at Giant Robot in LA, May 31st - curated by @jettpack and Woodrow White

[zipsunz]

F I N D H E R

[wallabii]

Zzz

[its-emimi]

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[piratedgender]

[themisally]

[rt0no]

[rt0no]

[men4ce-red]

im going to lose it. im going to lose it. im going to lose it. im going to lose i

[corrodedparadox]

3am

[shoomlah]

how do you consistently draw the same character without it looking weird or off every different time?? also how do i coordinate faces, i always make the eyes too far apart or too big or too small or make the mouth too close to the nose or chin edge. If you have any advice I'd really appreciate it since it looks like you have your art shit figured out 🙏

Oh man SO so much of it is just practice, and you're not alone! I honestly think everyone struggles with a sort of "generification" of their characters' features the more they draw them, even seasoned professionals. There's a tendency to just sort of average everything out into an unrecognizable mush over time, and it takes a lot of conscious effort to push back against that.

Here are a couple tips and tricks that I've found to be helpful over the years:

Make turnarounds and model sheets. There's a reason animation/game studios do this, and it is because we are all still bad at drawing a consistent face. Despite being gainfully employed. What are we, graphic novelists?? We wish. Anyway it's a great way to familiarize yourself with your character's face from multiple angles, and it gives you a single source of truth to return to anytime you need a refresher:

Gather real-life reference. Anytime I'm designing a character I'm pulling together a ton of reference of actual people who look, to some degree, like the character in my head. It's always a collection of analogues, never just a single person, but it can be a great cheat sheet for understanding how your character might move, emote, etc:

Make a 3D model. I know it seems daunting, but with the advent of programs like Blender and Nomad Sculpt it's becoming remarkably more accessible. Heck, even James Gurney was sculpting maquettes out of clay for Dinotopia back in the day! It doesn't have to be particularly detailed—just a sort of proportionate lump will do—but it's another great way to have dynamic reference that you can rotate and light accordingly:

Practice, practice, practice. Make expression sheets for your character! Either right there on the spot, just start drawin' expressions, or you can slowly collect drawings of your character that you like, as you draw them, and compile them all in one place for your own reference. Need to draw your character's head from a weird angle? Maybe you've already drawn it before and you can copy your own homework! Doesn't count as stealing when the call's coming from inside the house 😎

I'd love to pretend there's a magical point where you can just immediately rotate your character's head in your brain like some sort of photorealistic apple in a twitter meme, but a lot of the time it's reference, hard work, and whole lotta repetition. 😐👍🏼

[cannibalcaprine]

i feel like we don't appreciate these days how much the twin towers sucked, like, design-wise

they were contemporarily hated for just being these giant grey monoliths

like there probably could've been an easier way to get rid of them, but they probably needed to go either way

[tgirl-subway-the-dark-ages]

crying at this. the curb is brutalist. the sidewalk is brutalist. house made of concrete bricks is brutalist. lmao??

[cue-jay]

[geee13]

[scotchgrove]

when u like a character for their potential to be interesting and complex more than how they’re actually written

[kaijuno]

[wizardshark]

This is because snow doesn't bounce sound waves like concrete does. When the world is like this it's LITERALLY quieter. The snow muffles sound