Hi, I'm Danika (you may call me Dani, any pronoun)
I draw stuff! Mostly fanart, and for the last few years my main obsessions are Critical Role and House of Five Leaves, with a bunch of other fandoms sprinkled throughout.
This is a @danikatze art-only side blog where I reblog all the art from my main.
I'm starting a new woodblock print! A small one (11 x 16 cm) and not a reduction print this time. Here's the sketch:
There's an exhibition called Ode to Water soon. I saw this landscape from the train recently and it seemed fitting :) I have less than two weeks to finish it, so wish me luck!
It should be doable though. It's only going to take three woodblocks - four if you include the background, but that's not going to be carved out.
This print was much more of a hassle than I thought it would be. I'd carved it in a jiffy, but printing it took a three attempts spread across a month's time. I'm pretty pleased with the result though! My only complaint is that I would've liked that yellow to be more orange and that blue a bit deeper/brighter, but I'm just not the best at estimating colours and it turned out perfectly fine heeh.
If you're curious about the issues I had and how I solved them:
What it comes down to is that I was just less patient and careful than I usually am. I thought my deadline was much tighter than it actually was, and it made me go about things pretty amateurishly..
I should've sanded down the wood blocks:
There was a big dimple in the black part especially that would have been no issue if I hadn't skipped that step. It was shallow, but that's all you need to get an uneven print. I sort of fixed it by sanding it after, so It looks good now;
I tried out a water based printing ink I had little experience with and the different colours had wildly different consistencies:
I tried to do a rainbow print (gradient) for the sky and the yellow was pretty much liquid while the white was a thick paste. Thus, they didn't blend properly. I know ways to manipulate the consistency of oil based printing ink, but I couldn't figure the water based ink out.
In the end I started over with oil based ink. The second attempt was just as bad, because the consistencies were different for that ink too, and for some reason I wanted to do it real quick at the end of my work day. The third time I had the entire day to figure it out and it went fine. Besides not being able to mix the colours I wanted lol, but that's really a minor complaint. It's close enough;
The registration system I used wasn't appropriate for this project:
For my multi-colour projects, printed with an etching press press (where a big and heavy metal cylinder rolls over the block) I tend to make a folder with built in registration marks out of cardboard, so that the paper doesn't move when it goes through the press. I totally forgot about those though, somehow, and used a simple registration system I had laying around, that had two issues.
1) it was thinner than my wood block, so the paper had to curve down to reach the registration marks. idk if it makes any sense when I explain it like that, but suffice it to say, this made the registration unreliable. In the end my big brain increased the thickness of the registration system and it worked fine.
Apart from the fact that 2) it doesn't have a cover (like the folder I usually make), so the paper moved as it went through the press, even though I cover it with a sheet of felt. This was solved by holding the paper in place until it went through the press (almost put my fingers through the press a couple of times as well when I didn't pay attention, which was not ideal).
So y'know most of these issues made me feel pretty stupid, because I know these things!! Printing requires care and patience, two qualities I possess, so why didn't I use them? Who tf knows. This took me at least a month longer than I should've taken me. But ahh whatever, hopefully I'll learn from my mistakes.
I was sad the Nein left their moorbounders behind and got the idea to draw them like those videos of lions reunited with the humans that raised them :3
I made little drawings for Caleb and Jannik, and Caduceus and Clarabelle as well and (plus another Jester and Yarnball one) I like them lots so I'll post those separately :)
I posted this last week, but turns out I wasn't alright with glassless Felix after all. And then I decided to add quick shading and background too, to make it visually a little more interesting :) Also, no sound this time - I found it distracting.
I started drawing Zuala and Yasha art a long time ago and lost it somehow (or deleted it because I hated it. I don't remember) So I started over for femslash week. I was so focussed on getting anything on paper, though, that I forgot to look at the prompts, so it doesn't fit any day in particular lol.
@cr-fem-fanwork-fest
(the original nsft under the cut)
all my even slightly nsft art is immediately flagged by tumblr so hopefully covering the female presenting nip is enough. I'll have the uncensored version up on bsky later.
I've been feeling a bit art blocked and what used to help was redrawing HoFL panels. I've wanted to draw more Ane-san Yaichi ever since I reread it last summer <3
I was actually kinda angry drawing this lol - my first attempt got stained with black ink (in a not artistic way) and I was just uuurghhasdhnngg >:( almost all the way through this drawing. I used leftover colours on my palette that turned out a bit too cold so I used a yellow overlay layer. The original below the cut :)
None of these redraws are gonna have my best effort behind them (I'm just trying to like drawing again and don't want to have high expectations of myself right now ^^;) so I'll just post them together like this heh
Anyway, this drawing is a little thank you to @lovelysarachi for having fun HoFL conversations with me <3
Heyy another redraw - and style swap this time! I don't know if I've ever (intentionally) done a style swap before. I love Yamato in Ono Natsume's art style (*fans self*), but Masa in Kishimoto's looks kind of wrong to me 🤔 Still cute though :)
I've been feeling a bit art blocked and what used to help was redrawing HoFL panels. I've wanted to draw more Ane-san Yaichi ever since I reread it last summer <3
I was actually kinda angry drawing this lol - my first attempt got stained with black ink (in a not artistic way) and I was just uuurghhasdhnngg >:( almost all the way through this drawing. I used leftover colours on my palette that turned out a bit too cold so I used a yellow overlay layer. The original below the cut :)
I've been commissioned to draw a bunch of educational illustrations and I finished today. That is, I'm sending them in today and some may need corrections (most have already been approved), but regardless: It's so satisfying to see them together like this
If you're still taking requests, Bolaire and Hal or one of them would be amazing!
It's been over a month since you sent this ask, but I haven't forgotten! Here's a little colour pencil Hal because I haven't used my pencils in too long and I felt like it :)
I wanna draw Bolaire too, but I've got other things to get out of my head onto paper first lol