I mostly make art for The Lunar Chronicles (and a bit of Fire Emblem/Nintendo) with an art style as consistent as your wifi connection. You can find me on Instagram under the same name for more content. https://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmicNovaArt/shop?utm_source=rb-native-app&utm_campaign=share-artist&utm_medium=ios
Can you please give art tips to people who are just starting in digital art (or just don't know what they're doing)?
Well, I don’t really know what I’m doing either and consider myself a beginner, but here’s some tips from mistakes I’ve made.
— Reverse your canvas!!! This is my most useful tip!!! It’s easy for our brains to ignore large flaws. There may be a huge difference to the artist when a canvas is flipped, but that new angle shows us what everyone else sees. That’s why it’s not often that a viewer sees a huge difference when a piece is flipped, but the artist does. Do this frequently throughout your process so that your drawing will look the same when flipped in any direction.
Here is a digital example, as well as a real life example. I like to do this with any piece, whether it’s a sketch, a painting, jewellery, or sculpture. Take a screenshot or flip the canvas if it’s digital. Take a photo or use a mirror if it’s traditional.
— Save your work and duplicate your canvas. Sometimes programs like to glitch, crash, or corrupt your art. I recommend doing this every time you make a pretty good change to your work. You can delete all your extra works when you are finished. If you run out of storage space, I recommend uploading the backup files onto google drive, Dropbox, etc instead. This is what I do, even if it is a bit overkill.
— Actually try out unfamiliar tools. I didn’t find liquify for 4 years. Liquify is your friend!! Same with the lasso tool and alpha lock!!
— If you’re super new, I recommend learning like you’re using a colouring book. There’s tons of downloads you can colour in. You can draw your own line art and then colour it all in underneath that layer. I save most of my sketches and some line art to send to my friend so she can colour it in or make something new out of my unfinished sketch as a way to learn. Eventually you’ll probably stop making line art and your process will resemble the traditional method. I paint over my sketch now and don’t have much resembling a line art layer. I use this method whenever I try out a new program.
— Beware the airbrush. Airbrush is fun and tempting, but it will deceive you. Do not trust the airbrush. Especially the soft airbrush.
— DO NOT DRAW WITH NIGHT SHIFT ON. It adds a yellow or brown filter over your screen. It will screw up your colours and is especially dangerous while working on hair and skin. Bring your face close to your screen and lift up your glasses if you have a blue light filter on your lenses. My lenses are tinted grey, so I stay away from windows and sources of UV light while drawing.
— Edit or make your own brushes. Everyone has their own brush preferences, and there’s tons of online tutorials on how to make them. Nearly every brush I use is customized, and I turn patterns from old drawings into custom texture brushes so I can use them in any piece.
— Have fun and don’t give up! You might feel small, but a lot of people love to find beginner artists and watch them grow and improve. Someone out there looks forward to seeing the doodles you make while bored, your first attempt at a new medium, concept art for pieces you aren’t ready for yet, experiments with new colours and styles, another new portrait of a character you’ve obsessively drawn again, etc. There are more people cheering you on than you initially think.
— Progression isn’t linear, and improvement isn’t always obvious. Personally, the quality of my art drops drastically for a few months before I finally make a big improvement and figure out the solution to my obstacle. Your experiments might not turn out how you like, but they will teach you a lot.
Sorry, my health has been bad lately and I haven’t been able to improve my test results. I’ll try and be back again though. Turns out taking a break from the internet actually worsens my social anxiety and ocd so I need to stay to get over that I guess. I’ll post a Cinder art in the next bit
here me out: lunar hanfu that’s darker blue and white, silver stars and moons and wisps, and the icing on the cake: a long cloak with the fluffy hood like red riding hood
Yes yes yes yes! But also imagine something like that on Winter! Not necessarily hanfu, but the same idea. The Winlet shippers could go wild with that design.
So I know how much you love exploring the world through historical fashion, and since the Eastern Commonwealth apparently spans all of Asia, have you dabbled in any of the more uncommon Asian garments for Cinder/Kai? I've been thinking about Cinder wearing a Saree but I'm also curious about Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Cambodian etc.
I have so many outfits saved that I’ve never got to (as I regularly fail them in practice). A lot of the time I’ll start out with a specific idea before I fail and revert back to hanfu since I’ve spent the most time practicing that so far. I want to make sure I do it right, so I’d rather wait until it looks correct. My current work for Kai will hopefully be a yellow Manchu (Yeah that was a lie, I failed again in colour and cloth in the middle of writing this.) I think both the E.C and Luna would wear chut thai (with makuṭa headdresses on the moon) and sarees, salwar kameez, dhoti kurtas, and other similar garments. I imagined Kai’s wedding attire in Cress/Winter to be traditional Thai wedding menswear with the “sash” being a sabai? For festivals I’ve always wanted to try drawing them in a white kosobe with a red hakama (there’s probably a single word for this outfit that I do not know) as well as try out something Mongolian, though I have no specific ideas with that, just a lot of options. Heading back south, anything that resembles lavalavas (skirts, wraps, trousers, etc) would probably be very common in the E.C. Sinhs could be common both in the E.C and the moon, maybe having a unique pattern depending on what sector you’re in. Perhaps the common fabrics used in things would change, which would be a way to include Persian silks and other fabrics, meshing traditional material with other cultural clothes (I think this would pair really well with Áo dài.) I can see garments like the deel and nekhii deel still being worn as everyday clothes, especially for warmer climates. Since the E.C seems fairly homogeneous, (maybe due to Asia being hit the hardest by the last world war, repeat imperialism, foreign government control, or assimilation) all these garments could start mixing and matching with each other. Maybe some of these things are global. This is how traditional clothing has merged and become its own thing in the past. I just really like to imagine these things being embraced because we have already experienced clothing bans and forced assimilation so much, and the world in these books has probably experienced more. Even before humans had the FOXP2 mutation that allowed us to understand language, we were making jewellery and art that meant something to us. It seems trivial, but keeping these things alive seems really important in both real life and fiction.
Once again, I am so very sorry if I have referred to things incorrectly. I’ll have some access to research papers that could help in a few weeks, but I am very much not a smart person, but I will still try my best.
A Tears of The Kingdom drawing from November. I wanted to be safe and wait until the 1st anniversary passed since I don’t know if it’s a spoiler if it’s not a real boss fight, but I thought it would be cool if it were one.
I like the sketch you made! You should try a dark blue and white colour for a lunar look with moons and wispy parts and twinkle stars
Ah!! I can picture that exactly. I started one like that when I was trying to draw Levana in a Wires and Nerve style, but trashed it because she didn’t deserve it and I didn’t have the motivation to spend time on her.
I’m currently working on a blue and purple modified cloud collar design for Cinder, but I’m going to add in some Lunar elements now!
I’m going to keep this specific idea in mind for the future. I no longer need an AU as an excuse to exaggerate the whimsicalness.
As someone who’s Chinese it looks like you did an incredible job on the hanfu. I don’t know much about those types of dress if I’m being honest but you’ve definitely got the respect part down and I encourage you to explore futuristic twists! I have not read the lunar chronicles but I like the idea of futuristic or modern takes on traditional things
Thank you. Since my last sketch I’m exploring fantasy and modern modifications. I’d like to sew a small variety of miniature hanfu before I get too sci-fi yet. I think having a better understanding of how it’s made vs. just imagining the layers and knowing how to put them on will help me stay true to the designs. Thanks for the encouragement, it means a lot <3
a mix of Thai/Japanese/Chinese traditional clothing would look so cute in Cinder. The draped piece with sequins and embroidery from Thai dresses would look so pretty with Lunar details and moons and stars. actually all of these would look pretty on her with details of Luna
Yes, I love the concept! Thai/Cambodian clothing was the first thought I had when imagining non-aristocratic sectors of Luna before Wires and Nerve came out. Or even for some of the higher nobility that don’t participate in the aristocracy at all. I’d still imagine the palace with Nagara temple-style architecture (because Cypress Blackburn has a god complex and all) too if it weren’t for the beautiful art they had in Fairest (though Wires and Nerve ignored that too) but at least we can still speculate on the inner decorum. Hindu and Gaelic inspired interiors could still fit even if we include Wires and Nerve.
But yeah, now I want to focus a lot on what Lunar clothing could look like. Wouldn’t it be cool if tons of unique attire evolved over time throughout sectors outside of the capital? I won’t speculate on Artemisia too much since the nobles have and will take, appropriate, and throw away anything in the name of beauty, but what if there was a mining sector with traditions similar to Miao Silver? As Artemisia doesn’t seem to have a lack of anorthite, or compounds mixed with anorthite, perhaps this may be a tradition in one of the outer sectors.
If it takes place in a mining sector, imagine hair pieces, earrings, necklaces, pins, aglets, etc. made of Lunar Anorthosite that can be passed down throughout families. Not only would it look beautiful, but could you imagine the folklore behind it? Marissa didn’t drill in just how symbolic it is to have the royal crown be made of crystalline anorthosite. Anorthosite, the Genesis Rock. Rare on Earth, and likely the mineral that surrounds the outer walls of Artemisia Palace. The rock that was the final key to piecing together the formation of a celestial object 1/80th the size of the Earth, the rock that explained the evolution of the moon, and the first thing the majority of people think of when talking about the Apollo 15 mission!
If it is still unlikely that a mining sector would be allowed to keep any anorthosite, then maybe let’s speculate on regolith solidified by impact shockwaves. The dark grey/black would have a bold contrast with much of the building stone in the Capital. Maybe this could be a tradition in a sector that uses electrolysis to mine oxygen or water, a sector that uses fusion with helium 3, or even ra sector that explores the terrain outside of the domes that simply finds this regolith in areas with high meteor impacts.
YES THE TOPIC HAS COME UP ABOUT HANFU!! There’s this account here on tumblr @ziseviolet that specializes in hanfu + history. If you’re up to it I’d definitely suggest trying to draw hanfu with almost a fairytale twist to it. The flowy simpler ones are most common, but occasionally I find ones with thicker fabric and a cape/coat? with a hood like red riding hood. Those ones are my favourite😁😁 Their account also has tons of photos that can be used as references
Haha, they're actually one of the first blogs I followed! I planned to draw one like this back when the 10th anniversary came around, but I wasn't capable of that yet. Is something like this sort of what you're thinking of?
I think I saw something similar to this in a video game. I'm not sure if you can make out the idea. All these kinds of sketches are messy.
