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[beryllineart]

Some Art Studies

Learning stuff. The coloring on the chess piece is based off of iridovirus. It's a type of virus that can turn isopods (pill bugs, roly polies, potato bugs) an iridescent blue color. It also shortens their life span and makes them sluggish, but I still think it's cool. This is the page of sketches my current profile picture comes from.

Besides the humans, these drawings are based off of photographs I've taken. My brother caught the rainbow trout last year, the grackle was present at a turtle pond we visited on World Turtle Day, I didn't have my umbrella when I saw the snail even though it was raining, my dad and I got up early to watch the sunrise, and... I dunno, I wanted to draw rocks in a river.

Each of these took me between 10 and 15 minutes. I wanted to work on my rendering speed. I'll probably be doing a few more of these later, but 3 pages of doodles feels like a nicer number than 2, y'know?

I've got to admit, part of the reason I do so many studies is because I'm not very creative. I know how to increase my technical skills, but I haven't found exercises that help me with my creativity yet.

I kind of want to do an art tutorial about rendering metal or iridescence or glass or something. I feel like I'm learning a lot of stuff and they do say explaining things to others helps you understand it better. Am I delusional though? My art and art style are pretty boring, if I'm being honest, so I'm not sure anyone would be interested. Still would be fun to do though.

[beryllineart]

I Declare the 20th of May...

...to be Eliza Doolittle Day!

Traditionally on this day my family has "lots of chocolate" while we watch My Fair Lady. I persuaded my mom to give me a piece a day early so I could make some art to celebrate, and decided to draw from life. I immediately regretted it because it meant I had to take a single bite out of a peanut butter cup and not finish it until after I had finished drawing. That took restraint.

Foil is apparently really hard to draw, I gave up after a while. Again, I couldn't have chocolate until I finished drawing. Also, the ending of My Fair Lady makes no sense to me, I'll admit that I've only seen the movie, but Eliza and Henry Higgins have no chemistry, in my opinion. (plus other life-threatening considerations)

It is also Pick Strawberries Day and World Bee Day. I won't be celebrating the first because I don't like strawberries, but I might make a bee doodle to celebrate. There are some cool iridescent species of bee out there.

[beryllineart]

Sea Monkey Day

Okay, so I forgot to do art for May 15th, which was Dinosaur Day, National Chocolate Chip Day and National Pizza Party Day. But May 16th is National Sea Monkey Day (and National Barbecue Day) so I drew a picture of a brine shrimp, which is also known as a sea monkey.

Also I will be making Minecraft map art based on the dragon in the water and the mallard was an incredibly easy thing to draw. I think I'm getting better at art. Anyways, I'm reaching that point where all the studies I do are finally letting me draw cooler things from imagination with lots more speed, which is good, because I get bored easily and also have terrible posture.

Yes, the transparent dragon's skull makes no sense. I'm trying to tell myself I don't care, but I think next time I will use a reference.

[beryllineart]

beetle!!! unless that's a different bug

Yep, this is the Hop-bush Leaf Beetle (Callidemum hypochalceum) and it's from Australia! It feeds off hop bushes from the Dodonaea genus. That's literally all I know about it.

Basically I was just doing some studies and liked how this one turned out, plus my profile picture was due for a change and I don't feel like drawing hummingbirds right now. I love iridescence, and beetles are a great source if you want iridescence that both does and doesn't make sense. I think I'm starting to understand it a bit better though.

Pay no mind to how blurry it is, this took up less than an eighth of the page of doodles it's a part of and is meant to be smaller.

[beryllineart]

International Respect for Chickens Day

Y'know, I don't know if the Green Junglefowl (Gallus varius) counts as an actual chicken per se (domestic chickens are Red Junglefowl) but c'mon, look at those colors! May 4th is International Respect for Chickens Day, and I love how random some holidays are. It's awesome to celebrate the crazy, small and underappreciated things in life.

[beryllineart]

Tell A Story Day

Once upon a time, there was a girl who got so caught up in her quest to make Minecraft map art in survival that she forgot to work on her comic for Tell a Story Day.

However, she did collect every type of tree except cherry and a gaggle of little friends, including an eternally young ball of yellow fluff she forgot to draw. The End.

Tell a Story Day is April 27th. And yes, I know this art is terrible, I hate perspective and was only willing to spend an hour on it. Admittedly, the manatee I drew a while back took even less time and looks a lot better, but counterpoint: I actually liked making that art and wasn't a little burnt out like I am right now.

I might need to change things up in some way, like trying out pastels or doing a bit of music. I've done a lot of high effort art this month though, so I'm deciding not to feel guilty that this one is bad. We all have bad art days, whether that be from lack of motivation or from an inability to put something decent on paper.

[beryllineart]

I did it again

It's only been like, 2 weeks, but I had to make another Minecraft map. I still don't own a mouse, by the way.

The last one was Silksong, this one is Undertale. It was mostly practice to solidify some sort of process to make map making more efficient, and I think I did all right. I got this done in only 3 days (while having tests and a cold, might I add) while the last one took a week.

Process pictures and candle sans under the cut.

For some reason it was most convenient to leave Sans' face for last and I... kind of got carried away.

I would have finished this a few hours earlier but I decided to have some fun. Sans started looking like a candle while I was filling in his face and I kind of just... went with it. I even added a little flame that I later had to remove. Didn't stop it from being fun to do.

It helped that this was much simpler than the previous map which partly means that I don't like it as much, but that's okay. This was really just a practice run, and I had fun. One day I'll be insane enough to do this in survival. I'd probably use a mouse for that though.

Blocks I used

For background- blue wool and blue terracotta

For Frisk- lapis lazuli blocks, gold blocks, magenta wool, stripped crimson stems, yellow terracotta and brown terracotta

For Sans- light blue wool, mushroom stems, light gray wool, light blue terracotta, clay and quartz blocks

For the spyglass- light blue terracotta

For the candle flame- orange wool and gold blocks

For outlines- black wool

[beryllineart]

Earth Day!

I love nature. I love learning about plants and animals (especially birds) and I can find pretty much any aspect of nature interesting, especially when I think in a writing or art lens.

I didn't have time to draw anything super cool for today. I do a lot of nature art though, like that chipmunk and that turtle. I did some doodles during class a few days ago that should apply, plus here are some pretty pictures of water droplets and a little rainbow that perched itself on the stairs. I swear, one of these days I'll learn how to do glowy, rainbowy art and I'll never be able to stop.

Also, additional reason I didn't have any art lined up for today. Because I'm an idiot who forgets how much I hate things after only 2 weeks. I really need a new crochet project to stop my insanity.

This is already so much easier than the Silksong art, though I'm doing it from scratch without a handy dandy base, which cuts both the time and my screen in half. I just wanted to share how this sleeve looks like a mouth, it's pretty fun.

[beryllineart]

This is my first painting after updating to Krita 5.3. Some stuff has been rearranged, which I'll have to get used to, but I am so looking forward to the additions and fixes to text, which should hopefully make making comics easier. Also they have a comic panel editing tool now.

Krita's cool. I keep learning new things about it which make my life a lot easier once I start using them, and I get to experiment with lots of things. I'm having a lot of fun right now with colors, brushes and textures.

My general goal is to eventually find a semi-reliable way to paint iridescence, and it would be cool if I learned how to do it in multiple art styles. You have no idea how hard it is to find scientific predictions/ models for how light interacts with iridescent materials. If I somehow crack the code, I will be yapping about it like crazy.

[beryllineart]

April 17th is Bat Appreciation Day, National Haiku Day, Blah Blah Blah Day and National Cheeseball Day.

Wish me luck with finals, they are the worst.

[beryllineart]

Aquamarine Study

World Art Day is April 15th! I drew this a few days ago, and finals are really messing with my ability to do art specifically for this holiday so I hope this is fine!

Y'know, I need to remember that I have improved an incredible amount with my art. Part of the process of improving has been a better ability to see my mistakes, which I'll admit has led to the false belief that I've actually gotten worse at art.

One thing I am proud of myself for is that I can do a good piece of art much faster than I used to be able to. This apparently only took 3 and a half hours, and it's not too long ago that this would have taken twice as long.

[beryllineart]

man whatever tumblr's doing w ur art's makin it ominous and stuff

Wow, that's crazy! It does not look like that on either my phone or computer, so I don't know what's going on. Funny thing though, that's exactly what Krita does to the thumbnails when you're not actively working on a piece.

I guess for you and anyone else whose tumblr is darkening stuff this screenshot is like, extra dark or something.

Like, I like the vibrancy of the brighter colors and contrast and stuff I guess, and I'm a big fan of using darker colors in my art but this is much darker than the piece actually is. You're right that it's ominous looking too, which is kind of fun, but it's not what I drew.

That's definitely strange... is tumblr darkening other people's stuff too, or just mine? It looks completely normal on my end too, that's so weird. I hope it sorts itself out or something.

You said on an earlier post that you were able to see the correct, lighter version as long as you clicked on the picture, so I hope that still works at least. It's so weird that tumblr's doing that.

[beryllineart]

Inspired by my favorite bit of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. The book, not the TV series (I've only seen one episode of that). I did get bored and really didn't want to keep rendering, so I basically just did the minimum amount I could. There was a lot of experimenting with new brushes in this piece, and I had no idea what I was doing. Also I recorded a timelapse.

[beryllineart]

Trust the process...

Trust the process...

Trust the process.

During the last section I watched While You Were Sleeping, IQ, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the first 15 minutes of Guys and Dolls. And sat through an hour of British medieval romance. I am so slowwww.

[beryllineart]

Draw a Bird Day

Dude, what are you doing? If you don't want to get wet, just fly instead of hopping from rock to rock and looking ridiculous. Gosh, some birds make no sense.

[beryllineart]

Silksong Art

This is some nice pixel art, huh? Maybe it could look a little nicer, but for someone who never does pixel art, I'd say it's not too bad. My brother hasn't played Silksong in forever... I should ask him to play it during the summer.

You want to know something else about this art that I think is pretty cool?

It's a Minecraft map.

I freakin' built this in Minecraft.

Minecraft.

Anyways, this took me around 24 hours, possibly more, so I'm going to rant for a bit because this was harder and took longer than I thought it would. You don't have to listen to me, but I think I need this.

Not only did I have to use my laptop's trackpad the entire time, but the /fill command mostly worked for just the bell beast's head because when I designed the art, I used the dithering brush way too much, so there was a lot of switching blocks.

Minecraft maps are 128*128 pixels. At their smallest size, each block equals a pixel. That is 16,384 blocks. Since I made a base that I then used the staircase method on top of, that's almost twice as many blocks. Yes, the staircase method was necessary to get the right colors. I don't think it's unrealistic to say this might have been 30,000 blocks.

I realize that I'm really complaining about nothing in particular, and some people do lots of map art that is way better than this. I just wasn't prepared for how long it would take me. I started this on March 28th and finished on April 4th, and I estimate that it took about 24 hours.

I don't like playing video games that much, and I think the only reason I stuck to this was a sort of sunk cost fallacy thing. I'd already spent so much time on it that it really bothered me not to finish it, even if I should have worked on homework and stuff, or even other art instead. It doesn't help that making the reference art was so quick. I think I gave myself unrealistic expectations.

Anyways, here are some more pictures of my reference art, the different versions of the maps, the bats that started spawning (I did do this in Creative Peaceful mode so mobs wouldn't bother me too much) and other miscellaneous things.

Blocks I used:

For Bell Beast's body- light blue and blue terracotta, clay, and quartz

For Bell Beast and Hornet's heads- quartz blocks and mushroom stems

For Bell Beast's legs- cyan terracotta, light gray wool, dark gray wool and stone

For Hornet's cloak- red terracotta, crimson hyphae, and netherrack

For the ground- black, brown, gray and light gray terracotta

For outlines- black wool

oh, also scaffolding was useful even though it's not part of the art itself

And apparently I messed up the entirety of the light blue terracotta sections so that's why the shadows on the bell beast's body are too dark. Whoops.

[beryllineart]

Are you in an art school/went in an art school/gonna join an art school ? Because holy shit, your art and shading is so peak

Thank you, that's so nice of you to say! I am not in art school, but I am an art major, and the college I go to has a great art program. I've only taken like 3 art classes so far, but they've been great.