A Disappointment Aiming to be a disgrace @hemlocktheunseelie - Tumblr Blog

UPDATE:

The other day I was surfing the internet and I found this specialized painting colour wheel, it shows how real paint colours relate to each other.

Outside: the purest/brightest colours from the tube.

Inside: naturally muted or earthy colors, like browns and ochres.

The Center: dark neutral tones used for mixing shadows.

The Lines: two equilateral triangles. One shows the triad of primary colors, and the other shows the triad of secondary colors. Triads are traditionally used to create vibrant yet perfectly balanced compositions.

Complementary colors: are those located directly opposite each other on the wheel.

Shadows I:

If you want to achieve rich, dark neutrals, the standard rule is to mix a color with its direct complementary (opposite) tone. However, doing this can often make your shadows look flat or muddy.

Instead of using the exact complementary color, the real trick is to use one of the colors right next to it (either to the left or the right). By doing this, you avoid a dull mix and introduce a beautiful, subtle color bias into your shadow, keeping it clean and full of life. You can see an example of this in the second image.

I want to share this with you because I think it is really illustrative!

Reference: “Quiller Wheel” by Stephen Quiller (👈link)

#art resources

veryluckyclovers

unseeliecottage

My dog got rained on, gave up on living

I put my dogs out in the morning right after getting out of bed, and it was lightly drizzling. So lightly that neither of them cared and went charging out into the garden completely unbothered.

I went to the kitchen to make a coffee, and heard the sky open up into a torrential downpour.

I hurried back to let the dogs in, expecting them to be right at the door. Nope. One of them was sniffing around, fully ignoring the pelting rain.

But, not Nutmeg.

He was sitting in the middle of the grass, hunched over so far his snout was almost on the ground in a proper Eeyore stance, just

staring at me

forlornly.

I stared back for a minute, confused at what he was doing. (i first though he was shitting) then i asked him if he wanted to come inside. He immediately bolted towards me.

So when the rain went from a light drizzle to a downpour he just, gave up? Both dogs have figured out how to pop the door open if i leave it unlocked, so they let themselves in regularly. He knows he could have come in at any point.

But just. It started raining hard and he was just, "welp, guess that's curtains for ole Nugmeg."

???

#dogs #shouting into the void #rambling

unseeliecottage

Look who finally got their own pots today!

This little group came to the cottage as seedlings, and sickly at that. They had been pulled out of their native soil through a sloppily drawn portal circle, and any juvenile mandrake younger than sapling age won't survive long outside of their native soil.

Keeping them in medicated/spellbound water is pretty much the only option and they'll have to stay there until sapling age at least.

This group did really well in their water though, and eventually got to be transferred into a medicated soil patch.

They're finally stable and old enough to have their own little private pots and they're doing super well

They grow up so fast :')

Finally read "Gideon the Ninth"

I want to bite something.

I think it might have been the best written book I've ever read (or maybe its just a combination of great writing and the type of book I just personally like.)

But the exposition is absolutely stellar. There's a knife's edge of explaining too little and leaving your reader confused, and explaining so much the book feels like an educational textbook, and the author doesn't balance on it, she fucking tap dances on it.

The story just plows along, never lagging while sneaking in concepts that will become plot important later. A concept will be briefly introduced in it's simplest form, then reintroduced with greater import, and then finally in it's subverted form in a plot point.

I found Gideon so charming and so much fun to spend time with as a character. And at the same time, every other character felt like the main character in their own story. When Gideon was walking around, briefly passing by, it really felt like i was getting a glimpse into half a dozen other novels. Each set of characters felt like they were really helming their own stories, not like they were supplementing Gideon. Everyone really felt like they had their own internal life in a way that is typically reserved for the main character.

I at no point could guess what was going to happen next. And it wasn't like the premise was all that unique in it's base ideas, there's a lot of tried and true tropes being employed. But the way they were combined and re-contextualized just made them so interesting.

You have the underdog pretending to be (essentially) a member of nobility, and the whole story is a closed circle mystery. But the suspects are all magical space necromancers and swordsmen trying to uncover a 1000+ year old mystery in a rotting castle on a abandoned planet. It's just all so cool and fun.

The dialog and humor are irreverent and fun, the aesthetics are cool as fuck, the characters are interesting and memorable, the world feels bleak and fascinating.

I was also a huge fan of the descriptions, the author really leans into non-literal descriptions that focus on how things feel, rather than the straight forward clinical sketch.

It was such a gorgeously written, gory, action-filled, fun read. I was sculpting a cottage replica when i hit the climatic part of the audio book and i straight up stopped blinking. Had to take a minute and address my watering eyes before i could continue.

like, 11/10, great read