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@spottydoodlebergs
I collected my art tips on hands over the years. It ended up being 54 pages of notes I took and some guides I tried to create for myself. Maybe some of these can be useful to others as well. You can buy the pdf here or join my Patreon to get it for free.
don’t lock the door
do you have any tutorial on how to paint gold? your gold motifs are so beautiful and it's something i struggle with. Any advice would be appreciated
Thanks! Uhh it generally shifts based on the texture & shape I’m going for, but here’s my general process / rule of thumb:
Or if you lock layer transparency — or however its called in Photoshop — you can use a textured brush to quickly pepper in some highlights & shadow to add a gold-ish effect:
I forgot one more thing! Adding extra details can help make gold pop even more in your paintings. Putting on some well-place highlights, a little blur, and a lil overlay layer makes a world of difference:
I saw a few folks asking about my Virelle piece so here’s a tip:
You can make shiny & glittery gold pretty easily when you use a dappled airbrush. It’s the same process as above, but with a spray of large-to-fine dots. It takes a little more time, but the result is cool.
The standard version of ClipStudo comes packaged with the saturated line tool, which generates sunburst effects. And so we wind up with something like this:
I dont know how this translates into Photoshop, but for CSP users I’ve updated my airbrush pack with the customized brush. Good luck. 😭
So I reblogged this before, but I actually wanted to stop and saying something, which is this:
Everyone who writes has felt that moment of “EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE I’M A FAKE I’M A FAILURE I’M WORTHLESS,” and it’s always been over a moment like this one. That moment where you realize your idea has been done before. But here’s the thing. Ideas aren’t worthless, but they’re the pennies of your novel. They’re the smallest component.
Execution, on the other hand…that’s what does everything. That’s your dollar bills, stuffed into the jar until you have enough to go on the biggest adventure of your life.
So write your story where the mermaid falls in love with the boy who lives on land. Write him becoming a merman for her, or write him as a her, or write your sea witch as the heroine, or write your mermaid as a villain. Write a world. The idea, that’s a penny you found in the street. All the real value is going to come from you.
Oh dear
Hey guys. EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE who reblogs this post BY MAY 5TH 2019 will be getting a small monster design based on your blog theme, name, or profile picture. Let’s go.
Hi, I'm rereading some of my work and I notice that most of the sentences start with a subject and it tends to get really annoying after a while. Any tips on other ways I could start my sentences?
How to Diversify Your Sentence Structure
This is a really common problem that I think a lot of writers have! Having a repetitive sentence structure without variation can make your prose really choppy, boring and difficult to read, while overall weakening your voice.
Here are some techniques to help you change things up a bit!
Switch around your subject
Very basic grammar: Every sentence has a subject and a predicate. I think when we think of subject in a sentence, we often think of person. This might be especially true in creative writing because we deal with characters.
For example:
Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. She felt a cold breeze blow through her. She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.
In this example, Amelia is the subject of every single sentence, and a verb is followed immediately afterward. Because every sentence begins with ‘Amelia’ or ‘she’, there’s no variety and it’s a little bit boring to read.
Here’s what it could look like if I switched the subject around somewhere.
She felt a cold breeze blow through her.
A cold breeze blew through her.
The difference is subtle, but now the subject of the sentence is the breeze, not Amelia. The sentence structure is still the same: The subject is followed by a verb. However, because the subject is different from Amelia, it still brings variety to how your sentences read.
Here’s what it looks like now:
Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. A cold breeze blew through her. She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.
Now that every sentence doesn’t begin with “Amelia” or “she” it seems a little bit more interesting.
Put dependent clause before subject
So we changed one subject in a sentence, but we still have multiple sentences that have Amelia as the subject. It still doesn’t have too much variety in sentence structure, and as a result, it can be stilted.
So let’s try bringing a dependent clause before the subject.
She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.
Realizing that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather, Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.
By bringing ‘realizing’ before the subject, I created a dependent clause and succeeded making the first word something other than the subject.
However, because it’s a dependent clause, ‘realizing that she wasn’t dressed appropriately’ is a sentence fragment — it’s an incomplete thought. So I combined it with the last sentence to make it complete.
So after those two techniques, let’s compare the original with the rewrite.
Original
Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. She felt a cold breeze blow through her. She realized that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.
Rewrite
Amelia opened her front door and walked outside. A cold breeze blew through her. Realizing that she wasn’t dressed appropriately for the weather, Amelia turned around and went back inside to grab a jacket.
Now because there’s a variety in sentence structure and subject, the paragraph is not only more interesting to read, it also flows better and more smoothly. It also has the added bonus of diverse sentence lengths which was lacking before, and it helps make the writing more engaging.
I just wanted to note: there is nothing bad about having your subject as the first word in a sentence. I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to change every single sentence they ever wrote. Like in my example, the first sentence starts with Amelia. That’s fine.
The problem is that when every single sentence starts that way, it becomes repetitive. You can still have some sentences that start with your character, just make sure to throw in some other sentence structures, and your writing will be more engaging!
Outside of this specific example, you can also try playing around with dependent clauses in your existing sentences as well.
Jamie walked into the haunted house, despite her reluctance.
Despite her reluctance, Jamie walked into the haunted house.
The sentence is the exact same, but I just switched around where the dependent clause ‘despite her reluctance’ is placed. Even though it has the same meaning, it can provide a different feel or at the very least, switch up having your subject as the first word of every sentence.
I also talk about this in my guide about how to make your writing flow better. Sentence structure has a lot to do with making your writing sound cohesive and eloquent, so I would definitely recommend checking that out as well!
Thanks so much for asking Anon, I definitely struggled with this too when I was just starting out. I remember seeing how every single paragraph started with a name, and that was really annoying me, but I had trouble figuring out how to fix it. I hope this helped!
“Forbidden” Timelapse, for patreon.com/tycarter!
What ARE Vanishing Points?
So I feel like a lot of confusion with drawing in perspective is because people are not taught the absolute basics properly? So let’s do that.
Let’s say we have a cube.
Now, a cube we know is made out of 6 squares or rectangles, and every edge is at a 90 degree angle.
so every opposite edge of a cube is exactly parallel, right?
but let’s say we draw a cube using only parallel lines:
this looks a little weird, you know? Like if i try think of this as an object in 3d space and i look at it for too long, the faces start to look really warped - with like the back looking bigger than the front as if its been made out of weird wonky trapeziums
so what’s going on here? if all those edges are exactly parallel, why does it look weird?
lets take a look at this photo of a railway track
Now we know that the rails on a track are always going to be parallel, they have to be the same distance apart so the train can stay on the track yeah?
But we can very clearly see that these tracks are converging to a single point in the photo.
So what does this tell us, exactly? That our view of the world is naturally warped, and that lines that are physically parallel when drawn in perspective will converge to a single point.
Now, I could call this image “one point perspective” - but that’s not really true,
if these lines are also parallel, then they must also converge to a single point in perspective, right? so lets add another point
clip studio paint automatically adjusts the horizon line to fit the new points you add to your perspective…. notice how the horizon line actually fits the photo better now?
our new point is a very very long way away, so we don’t notice a lot of difference in the angle between lines, but the point that i’m trying to make here is:
Drawing with perspective guides is not about choosing one, two, three point perspective etc. those are just quick ways to set up a certain viewing angle
What you are doing when you use these guides is making your parallel lines converge to a point.
So, if you want to draw a big ol’ cube that’s aligned to be parallel with these railroad tracks, then you can do that with the same point as the tracks - because it’s parallel. It’s on the same axis!
but what if you want to draw a cube that’s rotated, and isn’t parallel to the tracks?
well that’s not too difficult to do if you know that every point represents one set of parallel lines.
If these lines aren’t parallel to the ones you already have, then clearly you just need new points.
We’re not planning to tilt this cube up into the air, or rotate it onto its side, so we’re going to leave the vertical axis alone, and just move our horizontal points to a different place on the horizon line
But speaking of the vertical axis - the only points that will be on your horizon line are the ones that are flat on the ground. But you can still have points that are not on the horizon line!
This is important to remember because if you’re trying to draw something like a slope or stairs, something that has an incline, it’s not going to be level with your horizon.
Let’s draw some stairs as an example.
This is actually pretty simple - first draw where your slope starts and ends by drawing a big L shape.
this will give you some parallel corners, which you can then connect to make a new point for your slope
And with this you can then find the centre and divide that up into equal parts to make your stairs (http://lesbianlinkle.tumblr.com/post/176704472820)
So lets go back to our original cube, with the knowledge that our parallel lines should all converge to a point and draw it again
well, doesn’t that look better!
but also, now you know how to make a cube lean against its buddy like this
because we just make new points for the new parallel lines
Anyway I hope that clears some things up, and makes perspective easier to understand!
Also if these tutorials have been helpful and you’d like to support me, I do have a patreon & a ko-fi you can donate to :^)
I’ve noticed a fair few people expressing that they didnt understand this post, and I tried to like explain more but actually after writing for a while I realised more words are probably not going to help is the thing about it.
So! If you don’t understand this post:
1. First the main takeaway here is: Vanishing points represent parallel lines.
that’s it. If that’s all you remember, you have 99% of the post.
2. I recommend bookmarking this post so you can revisit it and reread it a few times, with any advanced concept relating to art just reading about it isn’t going to get it to sink in. You’ll need to experiment and reread it to fully understand it!
3. Speaking of, here is an exercise you can do that I think might help clarify this post.
Take a look at some photos of architecture, and look for the parallel lines. Actually draw them on top of the photos!
I recommend especially using a program like CSP that lets you set up perspective rulers, so you can see the vanishing points
or you can just make the canvas really big
Anyway! Here’s an image to get you started:
or go out and take some photos of your own and/or have a look on google! Do this a few times with a few different photos, then try drawing some architecture.
just drop the opacity and look for the parallel lines in the architecture.
The Milt Kahl Head Swaggle (Source: Cartoon Brew)
I love it when you can pick up an animator’s quirks.
I’ve read in old interviews with Milt Khal’s fellow animators that he did the swaggle to purposefully show off. Moving the head in 3-d space is an exceptionally hard thing to do but Khal upped the level of difficulty to a place many animators wouldn’t go. Not only are they all doing the swaggle you’ll notice they are all TALKING while they are doing it. This is back in the days where you had to use a timing sheet to pace your animation and a head swaggle doesn’t work if its too slow or too fast so he had to figure out the right speed so it looked natural while the character finishes what they have to say while not interfering with the distinct mouth shapes. Not only did Khal do it without any shifting weight problems or timing issues he would often do it while moving the rest of the body. This isn’t his signature move just because he was good at it.This is his signature move because he was one of the only people skilled enough to DO IT AT ALL.
Milt Khal was a MASTER.
Anonymous said: Your art is so natural and expressive, I love it! I was wondering how you go about cuddles?? Or just fitting two people together so it’s not awkward or stiff looking, it’s something I’ve struggled with but look to your art to see how you solve it. I was wondering about your thought process when organizing a drawing like that (I hope the English is okay!)
Thanks! ^^ When I read your first question I thought you’re asking about real cuddles :’) Anyway, this is how I go about it, sometimes I alredy have a pose in mind, but then it’s just trying until I get it right. Sometimes I use references. But this technique is really relaxing, I love to draw this way :D Hope it helps!
Princess mega post! I absolutely had a blast creating this artwork for the Disney Designer Collection - Premiere Series. Now that the madness has passed, who was your favorite?
“This film has long scenes where there’s time to illustrate the thought process. All Moses does in some of them is to listen, which is very, very challenging. To make Moses expressive, we used a lot of what some people call ‘bottom eyelid animation.’ It’s really difficult to suggest what Moses is feeling and thinking when all you’ve got to work with are the lines surrounding the eye. There were also scenes where most of what I did were very, very subtle head moves, because I want the characters as true, as believable, and as real as possible.” — James Baxter, animator for Moses
He was a young artist employed by the Disney studio, but tasked with the entry-level job of finishing off the work of the animators and crafting the “in-between” animations that completed the characters’ movements. Wong had learned that studio executives were creating a film from the new novel, Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten. Tom says the young artist read the book and without consulting his supervisor, “took the script and painted some visual concepts to set the mood, color and the design.”
His sketches recalled the lush mountain and forest scenes of Sung dynasty landscape paintings. His initiative paid off. Walt Disney, who was looking for something new for the film, was captivated and personally directed that Wong be promoted. Today, top animators and illustrators revere Wong’s work. Children today are as enchanted by the misty, lyrical brushstrokes of Wong’s colorful nature scenes, inspired by his training at Otis College of Art and self-study of Sung Dynasty art
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HE’S STILL ALIVE HE’S 105 YEARS OLD AND HE’S *STILL FUCKING ALIVE* THIS GUY HELPED MAKE THE FILM THAT MADE ME WANT TO BE A FILMMAKER AND *HE IS STILL ALIVE* AAAAAAAAAAAAAH
I met him at a gallery event a number of years ago and, UGH HE IS SO TALENTED AND SO KIND AND ENCOURAGING THERE IS A REASON WE ALL LOVE HIM. Also, my alma.
GUYS WTF IS THIS CRAZY TALENTED GUY- HE MAKES KITES TO WOW JUST WOW
OMG PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW
this is the most romantic thing i’ve seen all day
No shit. That tom cat was like:
“This thorn invested wall means nothing.”
“I will gladly walk on it a thousand times over, if that means I could be with you, my lady.”
and the lady cat was all:
“My brave darling.”
OOOPS MY HAND SLIPPED!!
Suddenly my muse insisted me to draw the personification version of the last pic, and who am I to reject inspiration when it comes so willingly to me? At least this will help with the artblock issue I currently have to deal with.
Russian imperial era inspired because hot damn.
Note: I tried google reverse image (and other reverse image search engines) those photos and came up with nothing. I wish I knew the original photographer because I want to love hug him/her so hard for capturing such inspiring moments.
OMG that’s the cutest thing ever and the best courtly love ah so brilliant.
Few romantic heroes could do better.
I don’t post cats often but that illustration.
that ILLUSTRATION
I am a True Believer in outlining before you write. (At least, so long as an outline doesn’t debilitate your writing.)
But I think some people don’t understand what that means to me.
To me, an outline means that I know:
Where the story is going.
What beats it’ll take getting there.
The major content I know I want to write.
How that content can be reasonably connected.
Where character development decisions should take place.
What the climax will entail.
What choices the characters will be forced to make during the climax to fulfill or deny their developmental arc.
It also means that along the way I might…
Randomly move multiple scenes to a completely new settings.
Rearrange scenes to make for better pacing.
Throw in conversations I never imagined the characters would have.
Completely change one of my main character’s voices in the third chapter.
Have a random side character mysteriously foreshadow grudges certain characters are holding.
Realize certain characters have legitimately been holding said grudges.
Add in new character arcs for said characters to get them to work through their grudges.
Watch as the main ship progresses way faster than intended.
(Cry over the main ship.)
Let the protagonist chose to go by an alias because he’s more insecure than I thought.
Watch as his brother ruins his alias attempts four chapters later.
Create an entire new arc that revolves primarily around the protagonist wanting to sleep in a proper bed after camping for three weeks. (And do a lot of last minute plot adjusting to make the pacing still work for this bed-related arc.)
Forget one of my main characters exists for five chapters.
Suddenly add her into an arc she wasn’t supposed to be in, to make up for it.
Be bamboozled as the love interest refuses to sit still long enough to let their leg heal and ends up with a permanent injury.
Flat out re-outline entire chapters because the new idea worked better with the character development or pacing.
Realize that the symbolism I had for a certain thing has actually meant something different all along.
Add in a motto I didn’t realize was a huge part of two of the main character’s lives in the previous book.
Take about ten thousand notes on what needs to be adjusted in the next draft.
Cry because I think the novel will be too long.
Cry because I think the novel will be too short.
Cry because I love it too much.
Cry because it’s definitely the worst thing ever written.
So, when I say I’m a True Believer in outlining, I don’t mean that I’m a believer in never letting your story’s surprise you, or never making last minutes adjustments, or never throwing out huge parts of your outline for something better.
I mean that I’m a true believer in letting your story have a foundation before you write it, because any large or complex story built on a weak foundation, like a castle built in the sand, will need to be re-built later.
But the stronger a foundation you build for it, the easier it is to make changes without your entire structure falling apart.
#This is not saying that some writers don’t do better just rebuilding the castle later or that all stories are complex enough to warrant outlines. #Please do not take my post about what outlining means to me and attempt to writer’splain to me how some writers can’t use outlines. #I literally put that disclaimer right below the title. #Read and think before you reply.
Dammit, my tricks explained!
Wow, this is cool. It’s something I do but I’ve never seen it broken down in this logic before. Nice way to make sense of this great writing flow.
