anxious teenager

;p | I procrastinate too much and self loathing is my specialty | I like art, Nintendo, and SU | INFJ | 🏳️‍🌈

[cometcrystal]

i knew that tony had confirmed that velma and marcie were a couple but why didn’t anyone tell me he confirmed velma specifically as a lesbian and posted a picture of her and marcie in front of a giant pride flag!!!!!!!!! (source)

[queenoftheantz]

I’m getting close to the end of my BOTW adventures, it is making me reflect and giving me feelings I didn’t expect.

[killer-clown-car]

Amazing Shirts (And Other Things) I Want: Part Five

[vera-crossing]

last night I had fun playing with colorful lights

ig @vera.crossing

[arktm]

I’m tired. ☁

[eleart]

mae’s room

[fluffysheeps]

Festive bulb 🎄

[vera-crossing]

last night I had fun playing with colorful lights

ig @vera.crossing

[mindfulness-with-mo]

@danidonovan has signed her name at the bottom right of her artwork. Please give her blog a follow for more information on ADHD. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I also pull a lot of my information from additudemag.com. Thankfully, we’re learning more about ADHD every day!

Also, remember, that people without this diagnosis can experience these symptoms, as well. ADHD is more chronic and a daily struggle.

Happy ADHD awareness month all 🤗

[mossandfrogs]

The End of an Era

[studentlifeproblems]

[succubusboyfriend]

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

[succubusboyfriend]

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

[suave-eddboy]

[thepioden]

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

[sparksel]

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! 

[concerningwolves]

[nymika-arts]

The woods are lovely, dark and deep 🍃🍂

[nymika-arts]

Part 2 🍃

[nymika-arts]

I think I accidentally deleted half of this post so here’s part 3 and 4 again lol enjoy

[melgillman]

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!  Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

[frogdilf-archive]

here is a carrd for black lives matter

here is a carrd for he/him lesbians

here is a carrd for bisexual people

here is a carrd for nonbinary people

here is a carrd for lgbt activism

here is a carrd for how to help lgbt in poland

here is a carrd for philippines aid

[frogdilf-archive]

here is a carrd for trans rights

here is a carrd for back trans lives matter

here is a carrd for black artist resources

here is the saytheirnames carrd

here is a link to the lgbt freedom fund

here is a link to black aid for hiv

[1eos]

it's 2020...... stop being nice to racists

[1eos]

racists get more second chances nd more empathy than the black nd brown ppl they hate. there is no harmless racism there is no casual racism. racists do not deserve to be coddled i don't care how old they are or where they grew up. black nd brown CHILDREN are killed everyday by racist systems so white CHILDREN can face the consequences of their racist actions. stop saying shit like 'educate them' it's 2020 if you're racist you deserve to get your shit rocked. period

[etakeh]

THE FEDS RETREAT.

This is so fucking amazing to me.  

[magsgotswags]

This is an excellent shieldwall. 

[normal-horoscopes]

WE HAVE WAR DRUMS AND PHALANXES NOW THE STREETS BELONG TO THE PEOPLE OF PORTLAND

TURNS OUT NOTHING UNITES AMERICANS LIKE TELLING THE FEDS TO FUCK OFF