Origami Around
Fai_Ryy
Not today Justin
blake kathryn
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Noah Kahan
official daine visual archive
★
EXPECTATIONS
Product Placement
macklin celebrini has autism
ojovivo
No title available
Monterey Bay Aquarium
oozey mess
Mike Driver
cherry valley forever
No title available
tumblr dot com
Game of Thrones Daily
seen from Philippines
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Venezuela
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Yemen
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Algeria
@refs-and-ideas-4me
TAGS:
art ref // writing ref // links // tutorials
digi art // pixel art
Also there are tags for stories and characters that are really old and idk if I'm ever going to actually go back and make them. I'll tag those as "old char" and "old idea"
There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.
For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.
Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.
They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.
Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.
If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.
If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).
There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!
This is a big reason that I have always loved the Brother Cadfael novels, set in the mid 1100s. Written by Ellis Peters, each book has such a vivid sense of the place and the time period. Many different settings around Shrewsbury are described, along with the people and their various jobs.
I love that kind of world building and would add that many resources were tightly regulated that we don't consider nowadays. Examples are the right to herd your pigs in an oak forest belonging to a specific monastery (saw an example where an altar piece had a carved pig to make sure the claim was known and advertised) or down to which farmers had the right to tree leaves in the fall (shortage of other animal bedding in certain Swiss valleys). The idea of a wilderness in a medieval setting is not what we think.
Great points! Thank you.
Forever recommending A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry as an introductory resource for this! The author is a historian of the ancient mediterranean and he has a lengthy two-part blog post on "lonely cities": how fictional cities tend to look in pseudomedieval fantasy versus how real cities actually worked, specifically how they reshaped the land use for many miles around. Part I, part II, or available read aloud on YouTube here.
Something I try to keep in mind when making art that looks vintage is keeping a limited color pallette. Digital art gives you a very wide, Crisp scope of colors, whereas traditional art-- especially older traditional art-- had a very limited and sometimes dulled use of color.
This is a modern riso ink swatch, but still you find a similar and limited selection of colors to mix with. (Mixing digitally as to emulate the layering of ink riso would be coloring on Multiply, and layering on top of eachother 👉)
If you find some old prints, take a closer look and see if you can tell what colors they used and which ones they layered... a lot of the time you'll find yellow as a base!
Misprints can really reveal what colors were used and where, I love misprints...
Something else I keep in the back of my mind is: how the human eye perceives color on paper vs. a screen. Ink and paint soaks into paper, it bleeds, stains, fades over time, smears, ect... the history of a piece can show in physical wear. What kind of history do you want to emulate? Misprinted? Stained? Kept as clean as possible, but unable to escape the bluing damages of the sun? It's one of my favorite things about making vintage art. Making it imperfect!
You can see the bleed, the wobble of the lines on the rug, the fading, the dirt... beautiful!!
Thinking in terms of traditional-method art while drawing digital can help open avenues to achieving that genuine, vintage look!
ALSO!!
YELLOWING!! Digital art is very blue-light based. Cold, clean, flat. But traditional art has warmth to it. Why?
Over time, paper gets yellowed with dust, oil, dirt, and nicotine from cigarettes! So colors got warmer. This makes art look pretty aged, on top of the slight toned papers and hand made/factory made inks they printed with.
Learn how to simulate retro artwork in this three-part series dedicated to the history of printing methods and how to recreate them digitall
If I told you to think of a Silver Age comic book, what image does your mind conjure? Chances are, you’re picturing a comic with bold lines…
Dang y'all like old art!! Here's a couple resources too for those who wanna learn some more :]
------------------------------------------
ADDITION: I KEEP MEANING TO MENTION THIS-- YOU CAN SET YOUR CANVAS TO CMYK INSTEAD OF RGB FOR BETTER COLORS! :D
CMYK is meant for printing, while RBG is a light spectrum color setting.
You can look up how to do this for whichever drawing program you use since it can change from program-to-program!
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
someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help
me: my what
What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.
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!
How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense
https://youtu.be/pMC0Cx3Uk84
https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk
:3
Reblogging to save a wrist
Hi I have a literal animation degree and I learned fucking ✨none✨ of this
Super 90s Carpet Brushes are live and alive on you-know-where!
A little different from what I usually make, and I had a lot of fun! Seven stock-retro brushes and three pre-made backgrounds. You can customize the gradient, manipulate the particle gap & size, and even toggle the glow on and off.
Free forever, have fun, Clip Studio only, etc, you can throw me tips for snacks & my electricity bill if you want.
Past brush sets for the Clip Studio gorls:
Even More Decoration Brushes | Some More Repeating Patterns | Ornate Decoration Brush Drop | Netting and Lines | Lip & Hair Gloss | Glitter & Sparkles | Destiny Brush Pack | Valentine’s Frame Set | Candy Coated Brush Drop | Bloody Throne Pack | Magic & Daggers Set | Tarot Pack Brushes (October Update) | Elfy Card Set | Big Ol’ Card Asset Drop | All Those Brushes
Free Manual Wheelchair Reference Models
ID: A banner with grey 3D models of 5 kinds of manual wheelchairs in a line in front of the disability pride flag and text that reads "Manual Wheelchair References" /End ID
For disability pride month, I decided to release a pack of 3D manual wheelchair models.
The pack includes 5 wheelchairs:
2 Active urban-style chairs (one of which includes a smart drive)
1 off-road active chair
1 children's wheelchair
and 1 standard "hospital" wheelchair).
All the wheelchairs are based off either wheelchairs I or friends of mine have used
Downloadable here!
or on the Clip Studio Paint Asset Store (ID 2097442) (there's been an issue with the CSP version, but the models in the download folder can be imported into clip studio paint until I can fix it)
More info about the download contents below:
How to Paint Light by jonhuangart
Here, take these
JUST SOME THOUGHTS! I don’t really like the “go from the top up” advice on drapery/clothes - if you’re having difficulty try it like this!
YES I see the typo… I’m so sorry folks… I was in a frenzied rush to make this…… and I’m too lazy to fix it……
For artists who have problems with perspective (furniture etc.) in indoor scenes like me - there’s an online programm called roomsketcher where you can design a house/roon and snap pictures of it using different perspectives.
It’s got an almost endless range of furniture, doors, windows, stairs etc and is easy to use. In addition to that, you don’t have to install anything and if you create an account (which is free) you can save and return to your houses.
Examples (all done by me):
Here’s an example for how you can use it
two (2) people asked how i did the matchbook thing so take this
this is just a simple idea but if you spend some more time you can get real krazy with it:
making fake prints is so fun please do it immediately free resources under cut xoxo
Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel
It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.
For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits.
Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer.
You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?
And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.
Enjoy ^_^
This is really important, especially because language can change in very unexpected ways.
For example, did you know that before 1986 people never said “I need to”?Instead, they were far more likely to say “I ought to”, “I have to”, “I must”, or “I should”.
Don’t believe me?
Anyway, most people won’t notice subtle changes like that. But your reader will notice and be confused when characters in your medieval world use metaphors involving railroads and rockets.
One of the things you can do besides use Google Ngrams is to read books or watch movies written in the time period you want to set your story. The key here is that they can’t just be set in that time period, they have to have been made in that time period.
Also, there’s a Lexicon Valley episode on this very topic which I highly recommend. It’s called Capturing the Past.
SEE ALSO Etymonline. Word origins and when they’re first recorded. So, say I wanted to find out when a “coffee break” became a thing – around the 1950s, as seen in magazine adverts – or characters might talk about more genrallly “taking a break” from the 1860s…
SUPER useful!
Hello! I remember seeing a tutorial for wrinkles / clothing physics here but i cant seem to find it... where could i see it again? Im having a hard time drawing clothing physics / wrinkles haha 😅
I haven't shared it publicly, but here's a preview image of it. It's available in full to my Patreon supporters, though. It's also in the Lackadaisy Essentials art book, which can be acquired through the BackerKit campaign currently in progress.
Basic rules for analysing fiction, an incomprehensive list jotted down in a hurry:
The protagonist isn’t always right
The protagonist isn’t always good
The protagonist isn’t always written to be relatable or likeable
The narrator isn’t always right
The narrator isn’t always good
The narrator isn’t always telling the truth
The narrator isn’t always the author
The protagonist’s moral compass, the narrator’s moral compass and the author’s moral compass are three entirely different things that only occasionally overlap
Pay attention to what characters do and not just what they say
Pay special attention when what the characters do is at odds with what they say
A lot of the time the curtains are blue for a reason. If they aren’t, you should read better books
One more:
12. The antagonist isn’t always telling the truth
So many times I have seen people apparently just … forget that it’s possible for fictional characters to be (a) mistaken or (b) lying, and say things like “we know this to be true because [character] said so here” (or, worse, “this fact is canon because [character] said it”).
The antagonist isn’t always telling the truth, the protagonist isn’t always telling the truth, the secondary and minor characters aren’t always telling the truth, the narrator may be telling the truth but if the narrator is also a character in the story then don’t count on it.
Cheat Code #3 for accommodating disabled characters in sci-fi/fantasy:
If you want your setting to be accommodating, change the environment more than the person.
i.e.: On a worldbuilding level, if you want to portray a society that keeps disabled people in mind, then that needs to be reflected more broadly, even without your disabled character on screen. Because this means that your society was considering disabled people as part of itself when it was figuring out what's necessary.
If your computer takes voice commands, it should also have an optional keyboard in case someone can't speak.
If your magic school has multiple floors, it should have a teleporting rune circle for those that can't take the ever-changing stairs.
Whenever you have a feature you're adding, ask yourself—"If my character couldn't use this, what would they do instead?" And if the answer is "they'd have to wait until they could" or "they need someone else to use it for them," then your setting isn't accommodating. An accommodating setting always has an actionable answer to that question.
And as a bonus, if you follow through with it, oftentimes you'll end up with a more interesting world and story overall. Spells most people can speak can be written in ancient elven instead? That means you can have a character sneak a spell into a magic-banned city by writing it on their hair ribbon, and that it's possible that a book might be a self-generating spell on its own. Your spaceship has textured lines on the walls to let blind people navigate without guidance? Not only can you make it look artistic (different colored paints, glowing patterns), but now your engineer can make it to the warp core when the power's out and oxygen's finite.
Don't limit yourself just to what's needed in the moment. Figure out interesting alternatives to your setting's features, and your world will automatically feel more alive.
Cheat Code 1: How to avoid eliminating disability in your setting
Cheat Code 2: What kinds of aid to use to accommodate disability
GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3
Other things you can do:
Linked footnotes
Customized page dividers
Sticky notes
Lined paper
Paper that looks stacked on top of each other
Old looking paper
Newspaper articles
Tumblr posts
iOS text messages
Emails
Fake ao3 authors notes and kudos button
Freaking discord chats
Its fucking amazing. Ao3 is fucking amazing. Can I legally marry a website?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3
Other things you can do:
Linked footnotes
Customized page dividers
Sticky notes
Lined paper
Paper that looks stacked on top of each other
Old looking paper
Newspaper articles
Tumblr posts
iOS text messages
Emails
Fake ao3 authors notes and kudos button
Freaking discord chats
Its fucking amazing. Ao3 is fucking amazing. Can I legally marry a website?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
