That Crazy Artist

Why yes, I *AM* on my meds, why do you ask? (cue demented grin) You may call me Steggy, Steg, or Dark. | Gender: Female | Age: Old enough to know better, stupid enough to do it anyways

[eliciaforever-deactivated201906]

Dear Tumblr,

All those posts you see of young artists charging $3, $6, $10 for a drawing because they need help? That’s fucking exploitation, and fuck you if you think it’s reasonable or a “good deal" to pay nickels and dimes to squeeze a full-color original drawing out of some talented, hardworking kid because things are tight, and they can’t afford their textbooks. Or food. They sure as hell can’t afford to make you art for $6.

Instead, stop. And ask them where you can donate. If you can afford a $6 drawing, then you can afford to spend $6 simply to help someone. You don’t need internal organs as payment.

Don’t allow young artists to be exploited.

[asieybarbie]

this and this some more.

[bickpen-blog]

I’d go one step further and say: Offer to pay them decent Illustration wages instead if you still want a drawing, say around $20/hour. That way not only will you blow their socks off with your kindness and respect for their abilities, but you will also endow them with a sense of worth that they’re probably hurting for after being surrounded by the sort that makes them feel like their services are so worthless.

Illustration is a professional skill requiring years of training and dedication, regardless if there’s a school involved. If you enjoy that artist’s work and want to help them out, either donate like suggested above or else pay them what their work is worth and pass on the word.

[artists-help]

Basically!

And if someone claims something that took you an hour to draw isn’t worth at least around $10 per hour of work, dont listen to their bullying. To the non-artist, its hard to see the worth in art especially if they didn’t put 10, 5, 2 or even 1 years of solid effort to get to the level of artistic ability there are today.

If the person complaining is still unhappy with the price despite that reasoning? Well let THEM make their own drawing themselves and spend the $10 elsewhere. GL to them getting the level of artistry you have without those years of experience they put behind them!

[daggers-drawn]

Honestly, I make designs for people for free, but someone offered me $20 for one once and I nearly cried.

[mxaether]

Seriously. It means. So. Much.

[dark-the-dork-blog]

hey there! once you get this u have to say five things you like about yourself + send it to 10 of your fave followers. SPREAD POSITIVITY! but only if you want to though :')

cwell.... 

huh. Ok, sounds like a good start to the year! 

I like my hair, my drawings, my singing voice, my height, aaand... hmmm... one more thing...

uuuhhh.....

my taste in music? Does that count?

aaanywho, I’m just gonna tag the only followers I can actually remember talking to... @holmesazetaz @hebitonetsu @cake-by-the-0cean @pattythenest 

[stuffman]

People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter

[pervocracy]

This is 1000% more motivating than every preachy “real writers write every day” post on all of Tumblr.

[thats-what-sidhe-said]

I call this the “two cakes” rule and remind myself of it when I start comparing myself to other people.

teacher: write a 5 page essay analyzing this me: it’s not that deep 🏊🏼

[warmheartedsweetiipii-deactivat]

I swear to god they’re so dramatic. Even in art history they read into what an apple or fly means like BICH maybe they’re just in the painting chilling. Y DOES IT NEED A MEANING

[moncarnetdenote]

Yo, makes me laugh that you say this. Because you’re actually right

At the time artists started painting still life (early renaissance), painters didn’t bother with meanings at all. It was a technical exercise. Seeing how good their techniques were

But painting is expensive as fuck and you gotta pay for pigments and shit, so you had to be able to sell your shitty still life, to the people who pay for your pigments and shit. But they didn’t want still life paintings, because it was… just food….. They wanted Jesus and bible scenes and such. Not apples and shit. Because rich people loved religion. And were pretentious as fuck. Why have an apple painting at home when you can have men freaking out over zombie Jesus

So artists were like ok, see, you don’t get it. The apple refers to the original sin, and all the fruits represent your wealth and such. But the skull’s there to remind you that your wealth doesn’t matter, you’ll die someday anyway

Because that was a popular thing at the time, being rich but having symbolic stuff that remind you that you’ll die someday despite being rich. Rich people were weird. And pretentious

So painters BULLSHITTED all that symbolic stuff around the things they put in their still life paintings to make the boring painting exercises appealing to the gullible (and pretentious) rich people that commissioned them. And rich people gobbled it aaaalllllll up

And that’s how we still have still life paintings from most famous renaissance artists today and that they’re in such good condition, because still life paintings became THE shit amongst rich people and they bought them and kept them at home. Instead of remaining stuck in a dusty, shitty painting workshop, to be forgotten beneath tons of other stuff and rot

And there was this whole lexicon and symbolism dictionary created around still life paintings at the time, like each object was meant to represent something and there began to be conventions and stuff

But they only ever were technical painting exercises

It never was that deep

[spacetoasty]

shipping your own OCs

shipping one of your OCs with 4 other OCs and not knowing which pair should be canon

[rah-bop]

adding your friend’s OCs into the mix

[dark-the-dork-blog]

AMEN

[itscolossal]

WATCH: Ingenious Hack for Sketching with Two Point Perspective Using an Elastic String [video]

[umber-penumbra]

SCREAMING

[beepbeepbeepbeep-deactivated202]

[dark-the-dork-blog]

 Best, most useful tutorial I’ve ever reblogged

[artistsaurio]

Heads up PayPal is changing ToS again

And they are getting even more strict when it comes to not using invoices for charging for Digital Goods.

Whatever Invoices make you uncomfortable or not, you gotta start using them if you want to keep your PayPal and your money. Changes starting this October 19th.

Honestly I don’t get why so many artists are so overwhelmed by invoices, takes just a few clicks to set up. 

And is not only “oh you have to use invoices because PayPal says so” if you don’t use invoices you’re putting yourself at risk of being scammed by an user abusing the buyer’s protection. 

Since PayPal ain’t got no idea of what those $50 you received were for, but the buyer is saying they didn’t got anything for the money, PayPal will just side with the buyer.

I’m seriously begging ppl, start using invoices. I’m tired of seeing ppl complain their paypal was banned, or is under investigation, or worse, the $100 they got for a very complicated commission, 3 months later get a refund issue. 

just

start

using

invoices

for your own sake. 

Here is how you use invoices because I can’t keep playing devil’d advocate, yes I would love to help you get your PayPal restored but just this last month I had to help three persons, and they were MORE than aware of this issues. 

Just protect yourself. 

Step 1. You login and click here

Step 2. You click create new Invoice. YOU NEVER CLICK REQUEST MONEY, unless you want to risk yourself to get scamer by buyer’s protection exploit and not only lose your money but your paypal account, and any future paypal linked to your irl name. 

Step 3 You follow this steps

1. Invoice for amount only

2. Ask your client for their PayPal email and put in that field

3. Add a vague description of what you’re doing, something like “Character Coloured with Background” is good enough, and if you need more than 1 character you can type in “2″ where it says amount, or just say “2 characters”.

Warning: don’t type in “Naruto rawing Sasuke”. That will get you banned. 

4. Click send. 

Optional steps. Create a template, doesn’t take more than 10 minutes and it will save you a lot of time for future invoices, you can even click on “items” right next to “create invoice” and add a list of services you offer such as “character sketch” “character flats” along with a price, so next time you invoice you just add to the invoice from your list of items and you saved yourself some more time. 

More importantly, you protect yourself from buyer’s protection exploit because if PayPal knows you’re doing digital goods, then you will be allowed that you did in fact created a digital good. 

Keep PayPal happy, as for right now there are no alternatives to this service, and this is the only source of income for many freelancers. 

Stay safe. 

[awkwardtimezone]

Heads up, all commissioning artists

[wyntera]

Speaking as someone who has worked in commissions for a long time before creating digital artwork, I strongly encourage anyone to do this.

Whether or not you offer commissions on a daily basis or you do a handful for close friends, you are still doing a business transaction. It does not matter how serious you take it, how much you trust the buyer, how sure you are that nothing will go wrong; business is business and still subject to rules and laws. We live in a litigious society where people can and will sue you for the smallest of infractions; you don’t want a $10 drawing to result in hundreds of dollars in legal fees.

And that isn’t meant as an exaggeration. I worked for many years doing commercial embroidery design for a small family-owned company. And no matter how small the order, even if the entire transaction from initial purchase to finished product took less than 15 minutes, we always created an invoice. Even if it is as small as “Person’s name ‘XYZ’ over shirt pocket” that sucker got an invoice and the customer signed it before we sewed so much as a stitch.

Why? Because we live in a world where the customer is always right, and without that paper it is their word against yours. And it isn’t just a matter of a customer claiming they didn’t get a product. It’s also that a customer didn’t get the product they “expected,” and that is a broad thing that can land you in hot water if you aren’t specific.

The company I was with went to court multiple times dealing with customers claiming they didn’t get the product they wanted, or refused to pay because they weren’t ‘completely satisfied.’ It ran the gamut of a little granny who took us to court over a $20 hat, all the way to the city government refusing to pay for thousands of dollars of merchandise because the royal blue that they chose wasn’t ‘royal enough.’

But we won those cases, because we had those magical little invoices that proved we did as we promised.

It sounds big and scary, but covering yourself is so incredibly easy, and you come out the other side looking so much more professional for it. Artists who use an invoice system look like they have their act together, and are more likely to get repeat business because the buyer feels like they can trust the creator more. And when people ask that buyer about the artist of that amazing piece, they’re going to pass your name along and mention how easy the process was.

Protect yourself, look like a boss, use those invoices and make that money.

[dark-the-dork-blog]

Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. 

YOU GUYSSSSSSSSSSS 

[dark-the-dork-blog]

I decided to be slightly productive today. Would ya believe this is only my second time using a tablet?

[dark-the-dork-blog]

hey look I’m still alive and somewhat productive! 

yeah no, I’m not productive, let’s not kid ourselves here. I can’t finish a picture without starting another every five minutes and none of those ever get done. Yes, you read that right: for everything you see on this blog, there are at least 3 abandoned doodles floating around somewhere. ANYWHO:

I decided to toy around with an idea I had for a fantasy race and this happened.

[amalkova]

Since it's 'Tell an Artist Positive Things About Their Art Day' I'm here in ur inbox and I am so going to gush about ur frikkin amazing work! I love that not only is your work super detailed but you also draw such expressive poses! I always admire how you can fit dem robots into the most twisty and bendy poses and make them look AMAZING! Also your expressions are so so good and you draw super elegant, noble faces and ahhh there is so, so much to love in your art! <3 (and I looove your colorssss)

AAAA EPH YOU SLY MOTHERFUCKER!! HOW DARE

Thank you so much for all the sweet words and you know what?? HA! THE JOKE IS ON YOU CAUSE I LOVE YOUR ART I adore how sensual and intimate you make every painting and it’s a real painting with many hours of work and love put into every picture, how you work the lighting and mood is truly exquisite and jfc you manage to create such complex scenes I’m always stunned at your ability to create such intricate work aaa!! *slaps face* u are a good and awesome person too and i wish u all the best in creative an personal fields both <3

[dark-the-dork-blog]

And here we see a typical interaction between two wild artists

[rileyav-moving]

artist tips

don’t save as jpeg

[suchirolle]

as a former yearbook editor and designer, let me explain this further

if youre only planning on posting your art online, them please save it as .png ;this is also better for transparencies as well

BUT

please, if youre planning of printing your art, NEVER use png. it makes the quality of the image pretty shitty. use jpeg or pdf instead. and always set your work at 300dpi to get a better printing quality - this means, the images are crisper and sharper and theres no slight blurriness. i had a talk with my friend who is currently taking design, and pdf is much better to use when youre working with a bigger publishing company because it still has the layers intact, but if youre only planning on printing your stuff at staples or at some small publishing store, the jpeg is the way to go.

this has been a public service announcement

[justhere4coffee]

I’ve replied to this once before but I see it’s doing the rounds again.

This is all utter bullshit.

I’m sorry but if your qualification is working on the school yearbook, you have no qualifications. Do not pretend otherwise. As a former professional photo manipulator for advertising brochures, I can say that you’re not comparing apples to oranges here - if anything, you’re comparing fruit to farmyard machinery:

JPEG is a lossy format. It is suitable for web imagery because it sacrifices detail for reduced file sizes, but in doing so it introduces artifacts that weren’t in the original; if you load a JPEG for editing, then save it as a different JPEG, then you’re adding more artifacts formed from those first artifacts. Do this often enough and you end up with a horrid glitchy mess that looks like a puddle’s reflection after a stone’s been thrown in. You’ve seen those memes that have 3 or 4 different “found at” tags along the bottom, that look like fingerpainted copies of the original? That’s why.

PNG is a lossless format that comes in two primary flavours, PNG-8 and PNG-24, which use 8 and 24 bit colour respectively. 8-bit colour is what you have in GIFs, a limit of just 256 different colours in a predetermined palette, usually automatically chosen by your software when saving. These files will look the same as GIFs, potentially with large patches of solid colour instead of the usual gradual shading seen in 24-bit imagery. This is usually better for small banners or pixel art, as it can yield smaller filesizes than GIF format. (There is an animated version called MNG but it has very little web support, hence the continued use of GIFs.)

PNG-24 is great for larger images where detail is as important as colour depth, as well as printable RGB images and (if supported by the client) full colour images with gradient transparencies. It most certainly does not make “the quality of the image pretty shitty,” as it preserves every nuance. File sizes can be smaller than JPEG for small images, or significantly larger for large images.

PDF is a container file, whatever you put into it will be pretty much preserved as it was, so you gain nothing but lose nothing.

TIFF is what you need to be using for archival or print-quality imagery. It has support for multiple layers, multiple colour channels (RGB as well as CMYK, which is essential for accurate print rendering), and everything is preserved exactly as it was seen on-screen when being composed. There are compressed versions available, they use similar methods to PNG in order to maintain detail without sacrifice; next to whatever your graphics program uses natively, this is the most interchangeable format available for professional use.

DPI is important only when used in combination with image dimensions; in and of itself it serves no purpose. If you make a brilliantly detailed 640x480 image & set it to 300dpi, you’ll receive a brilliantly detailed 2 inch x 1.6 inch print. This is great if you want to make a postage stamp, but not if you’re creating an A4 flyer! Determine the image’s dimension then set the DPI accordingly; 72dpi isn’t hideous especially for text-heavy work (it’s ~3 pixels per millimeter), and 150dpi can be suitable for many images. Unless you’re interested in photo realism, 300dpi is usually overkill - for our hypothetical A4 flyer, you’d need a file of 2490x3510 pixels for edge to edge printing, with a correspondingly high memory requirement and filesize even if using a compressed format.

Keeping the layers intact is utterly unimportant for print work unless you want to use a separated colour print method that requires multiple passes to lay down each ink. If you send a file with all the layers, masks, etc. off for printing you’re liable to get it sent back unactioned, as they won’t want to take responsibility for choosing the wrong elements for printing. Save your work with everything intact, then save a flattened copy especially for printing purposes - this is one of the reasons Save Copy As… is a common option in graphics manipulation software.

This has been a Public Service Rebuttal.

[queensimia-deactivated20181215]

FUCKING THANK YOU

As a designer who’s worked a few years for a newspaper, I cannot begin to tell you how much OP’s post (edit: response, technically) made me cringe. I would have killed to get a photo as a TIFF for once instead of having to tear apart PDFs only to find a 50x100px 72dpi shitty JPEG inside for the 5 millionth time…

JPEG and PNG are best suited for web formats (and it is perfectly fine to save your web version as JPEG, that’s what it’s goddamn for). You will make a designer cry if you send a web-safe JPEG for print, however. And if you have a vectorized logo saved as EPS (or even better, AI), you will make that designer’s year.

[yoyothericecorpse]

[sweetpollyoliver]

Oh my gosh

[dark-the-dork-blog]

What are these pens and where do I get them

[dark-the-dork-blog]

I finally got my tablet working; here’s my “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing but hey practice makes perfect” test run. I was going for “generic human character” but my hand seems to have decided that Danny Phantom’s head was a thing that needed to be drawn. 

Also, I’ve completely forgotten how to use GIMP, any tutorials/tips will be greatly appreciated. I think this was actually EASIER to use back in high school tech ed when all I had was a mouse, to be honest...

[dark-the-dork-blog]

It’s still happening

Oh look, MORE porn blogs. 

Well, at least they help with anatomy references? In theory? 

.... yeah no not really. I don’t follow any of ‘em so nothing pops up on my dash.

[dark-the-dork-blog]

I realized I don’t really post any drawings here anymore. 

I feel I owe the handful of you that follow me an explanation: 

I haven’t drawn anything lately