I’ve been too sick to draw anything new, and It’s been like 4 months since I started these cowboy designs and I know for a fact they aren’t getting finished so I’m just gonna dump what I had so far here and dip ✌️
Katsuki cuddles, because it is late and I could go for some cuddles rn
Pairing: Katsuki Bakugou/ gn! reader
Warnings: soft! Baku, total self-indulgence, mentions of the reader having a bad mental health day, spicy noodles.
"Hey, can I come in?"
You hear harsh knocking on your door with a few seconds' pause to listen for a response.
Whatever you might try to say ends up sounding like a mixture of a sad whine and grumble, to which you hear a faint "tch" and the sound of your doorknob twisting.
Light streams into your dim room, a tall shadow with spikey hair appearing on the wall before the door is closed, and you are both submerged in the darkness. The pink light from the salt lamp at your bedside slightly illuminates the objects around it.
The room is quiet, minus the muffled volume of music coming from the headphones that you've taken off. Neither of you talks as you shift slightly under the covers. You feel the opposite side of your bed dip as Katsuki sits down with a small huff of breath.
"You didn't come to class today."
It was just a statement, but you could tell there was an underlying question of "are you okay?".
You knew the answer to that question.
You hear a sigh as Katsuki sits on your bed, the mattress sinking around where he sat.
Katsuki kicks off his slippers and pulls the hoodie he was wearing over his head before tossing it gently to your side like an offering.
You turn your head to look at the black hoodie resting on the blankets draped over your hip. You reach for it. Your hand and arm feel like they are ten pounds heavier. Your fingers were swollen from dehydration.
Katusuki watches your slow movements, examining your face, seeing how the salt lamp illuminates the streaky tear stains of your cheeks. The bags under your eyes look darker without more light to show your features.
Slowly you pull the hoodie over your head, popping your head out and adjusting the torso. You are enveloped in his scent, and it warms you like a fireplace from the inside out.
"Have you been here all day?"
You nod slightly, not quite looking at his eyes but examining every feature of his face.
He sighs and shifts his position, holding his arms out for you. You lean, flopping into his arms. You rest your head on his shoulder as you put your weight onto him.
"all just got to be too much for ya, huh?"
You hum a response, nuzzling into his neck.
The past few days have been overwhelming. Aizawa didn't let up on the workload one bit, and training had been difficult and frustrating. You felt like you were hitting a wall with the progression of your quirk. Your workload was bearing down on your mental health. Waking up and seising the day just wasn't on the table.
You felt devoid of emotion and full of it at the same time. You felt gross in your skin. Like you wanted to take it off like a piece of clothing to reveal this determined and confident person you strived to be.
"Did you take your meds today?"
You scrunched up.
"...Did you eat?"
You hesitantly shake your head no. It made you feel sick. Nauseous and Uneasy, expecting him to scold you and yell at you. You felt selfish for taking this time for yourself and letting yourself drown in depression and anxiety.
He pushes you away from his shoulder. For a second, you fear he is upset at you. Until you look up and see that he has a soft expression on his face.
"Let's make you something to eat, then we can figure out what else is going to make you feel better, 'kay teddy?"
You feel like melting. It's not often that you see Katsu in such a soothing and soft state. He, more often than not, will dote on you gruffly, grumbling to himself as he helps you with homework or caring for yourself.
You nod, rubbing the drowsiness from your eyes as you stare at his hand, outstretched for you to take. Slowly, you take it, and he leads you out of bed, out of your room, and down the hall. You take the stairs, slippers scuffing against each step, he doesn't let go of your hand, he holds it like something delicate, sturdy but not hard.
Katsu lets you take your time, he waits more patiently than ever, not complaining, not calling you names, not grumbling to himself. It's almost offputting how sweet he is being. He settles you down on the living space couch, dim side table lights illuminating the area.
"Ramen alright with you?"
"Hm?"
You look up at him. It's the first he's spoken since you got downstairs. He clears his throat and repeats himself.
"Is ramen okay? I have a stash of spicy packs in the cabinets, I'll make us some."
You nod your head, showing him your first small smile of the day. He responds with a gruff nod and hum of approval, before kissing you on the forehead. Katsu walked past you towards the small kitchen.
It's quiet, and you sit comfortably on the couch, laying your head against a throw pillow, a knit blanket tossed over your body. You listen to the sounds of Katsuki cooking. The occasional clatter of metal against the grates of the stovetop. the sink tap. the pour of water and shake of seasoning packets.
Time passes slowly and with it, the intrusive thoughts slowly subside. Katsuki finishes cooking and walks over to you with two bowls in his hands, two pairs of chopsticks clutched between his hand and the side of one of the bowls. He sits down carefully, offering the bowl to you to take.
You lift your head from the pillow, looking at the bowl being offered to you. Your nose had cleared from all the snot left over after the tears stopped, it felt like all of your senses were heightened. You saw the steam rising from the bowl of noodles, the smell of tangy spice tingling your nostrils.
You take the bowl gingerly from Katsuki, taking the chopsticks he offers next. as he starts picking away at his bowl, you carefully clutch a few noodles in your chopsticks, lifting them, watching them unwind from the tangle in your bowl.
You both sat there in silence, minus the sound of the slurping of noodles. Katsuki finishes first, placing his bowl on the coffee table. He sighs and proceeds to lean back on the couch, resting his arms around the back cushion of the couch, his left arm comfortably wrapping around your shoulders as you finish your bowl.
"Thank you,"
"Huh?"
"Thank you,"
"For what?"
"For caring,"
He huffs, "That's my job, idiot,"
You let out a soft chuckle and he smiles at his comment, you lean into him.
"Finished?"
You hum a yes, he takes the bowl from you and places it next to his. You draw yourself closer to him, resting your head on his shoulder.
"Let's do something tomorrow, ok? Just you and me."
"Like what?"
"Whatever you want, teddy," He mutters into your ear as he plants a few soft kisses on your head. You reply with a soft 'ok' and let out a sigh as he peppers your head with kisses.
You two stayed there for a while, a small conversation being exchanged between both of you. Not much needed to be said. Katsuki understood how your mind worked, how much you struggled some days. Most of all, Katsuki was willing to listen to you when you needed to talk or needed him to give you space. After all the shit you've dealt with, you finally felt like you were able to heal your inner child with Katsuki, no matter how long or short amount of time it will take.
a/n
didn't really know how to end this one but it's been such a long time coming!! I really needed this kind of comfort a few months ago, so honestly, it probably would have been more helpful if I had posted this before I really needed to reread it or anything. oh well! at least I posted it!
Digital illustration of a brown fem with a purple bob. They are looking back, with the collar of their pink denim jacket lifted up. The jacket has two pins that depict a rainbow flag and trans flag and there’s stars and text that reads, ‘support abortion access.’
being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five
when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much.
Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential.
So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’
1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust!
2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:
a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it!
In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support.
I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose
b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me!
c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface
d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)
e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them
f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics.
g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.
h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more.
And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc.
This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah.
Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks.
so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!
In uni they told us that animators working on a specific character will spend a half hour before starting the actual animation to just quickly sketch out that character in a bunch of different poses and faces. Like just super quick sketches. Gets you used to the character again even if it’s only been a day since you last drew them.
I started doing that and oh boy does it help significantly for keeping characters consistantl and also helping you draw them faster when it comes time for the actual piece
How can you as a ageless blog make fat phobic comments under my chubby girl supremacy post like please fuck off. Why the fuck can't people understand that just because you are chubby it does not automatically mean you are unhealthy. Don't come onto my blog and leave a long fucking essay about how you believe certain things about your body type and how you've always been always been skinny and how you don't like how your body type is represented in media. Do I even need to say anything about fat/chubby people are represented in media
Roomate just tested positive for covid. She's masking up, and saying in her room downstairs. And im staying in myself and jamesons room upstairs, with the door closed. Jameson and Jess are taking lysol wipes and spray to everything in the kitchen and bathroom that are both communal.
I'm going to have to call my abuser and ask him for cash, so we can put money on my credit card so that we can order in supplies, and food because we've definitely been exposed too, at this point. And don't want to leave the apartment and risk others.
I'm immunocompromised + have inflamed air ways from my surgeries. If I get this. I'm fucked.
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