#my jutsu

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psst when you do digital colors for comics you have to hide ur lines at some point. its so cool its so fun. look at the pretty colors with me.

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this video will show a little more how the iron gall ink changes from a nearly sky blue to something much darker

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hi how do you mix skintones i am in hell! i love watercolors but my skintones always end up super weird :(

Hm...let me see if I can help... if you keep in mind the basics of color theory, you will be able to figure out a way to get to whatever color you need as long as you are determined, and this is a very important skill—I will explain a bit. Here:

This is the pared down version of the color wheel! You've probably seen it before, you've probably had to paint it for an art class before, we're all sick of it and hate it, but it is sooo helpful with mixing colors.

When I work with Ecoline colors, I often end up making Yamato's skin a little too red bc their reds are very strong, and so to balance that out, I often add sap green to his skin tone.

We don't think of green as a color we should use for skin often, but when you've got to much red, adding green will make it a little bit closer to brown, will make it a little bit more neutral and natural looking because they're opposites.

Similarly, I had a problem where I was making a color for his hair, and my brown was coming out very kind of...dull orange? I wanted to add a color to balance out the orange, but I thought that blue might be too strong of a contrast, and that his hair might then come out almost dark grey—

—When working with pigments, if you mix direct opposites in equal balance, the color you should end up with is close to grey— —And I didn't want that! So instead, I mixed a deep purple I had in my pallet already, and the blue in the purple cancelled out some of the orange, but the red in the purple gave the brown a nice, strong red undertone, leaving me a kind of mahogony color.

A lot of color mixing is just playing this game of balancing, adding some of one color, then balancing it out with something else, continually adding more until you reach what you're looking for. It feels tedious at first, but then you start to get into it, and you don't ever want to use paint straight from the tube again LMAO!

If it helps, for Yamato I usually use: Lots of Ochre A little bit of a deep, almost pinkish or purplish leaning red, A little bit of brown/burnt umber

If it comes out looking too red, or too orange, I sometimes add a little bit of green or green and brown.

Here's a video where I mix his skintone. I'm using a set of holbein for speed and demonstration purposes (so the mixing is more obvious) but you can do this with literally any set of watercolors

obviously there's a huge range of skin tones which u could try to match with painting and i am only covering one, but the same basic principle applies to most, just with different paints in the combination

if you're new to paint mixing it may be overwhelming at first and you may think "i need to record this exact mixture so that i can replicate it in the future" which is. super stressful! i, at least, felt like that last year lol. i do not recommend trying to keep track of every mix you make, it is so much work, and mostly useless 😓

but as you experiment more and grow in confidence it becomes easier and easier to play it by ear

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What’s you process for having 2 characters interacting in an art piece? Do you draw one and then the other or do you switch back and forth?

HM okay so. i thought about this for a while bc i don't...i don't usually Think too much when im drawing i just kinda do it at this point after practicing this much THAT SAID. after all my thinking, i have an answer:

scenario one: characters barely touching

in this scenario i can draw the characters in any order i want, usually one and then the other

scenario two: characters touching equally, neither leaning particularly hard on the other

in this scenario i draw both characters at the same time, starting with the heads, and then drawing their structures intermingled

scenario three: one character being the weight-bearing-character

when one character is holding up the other or contributing structurally more to the form than the other, i draw the one which is more structurally important first, and then i draw the other one

i hope this answer is useful to you! it was interesting for me to think about.

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how did you do the effect on obitos hair?? I'm simply mesmerized it looks incredible

AH you mean on this one?

doing traditional art means that my materials and artwork are effected by the world around me including the light situation. in this situation, the hair was drawn with graphite, and heavily drawn with graphite, which made it very reflective

the purplish hue is entirely due to that effect

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I'm drawing Kakashi for the first time (as much as I love them, I rarely ever draw naruto characters so this is a little fun and new for me) and I'm struggling a little bc I'm trying to draw him relaxed, reclining with pakkun (in the way I recline with my cat) and I'm realizing there's something so personal abt drawing him in such a vulnerable pose ig. Like? I'm very tired too rn so maybe I'm being extra emotional and rambly but there are so few scenes of kakashi in canon where he's not wearing the jounin vest, where he's alone and relaxed and out of uniform. And I didn't realize it until I was trying to think back to other similar scenes and there really weren't any. and I'm kind of mesmerized by how you draw him because you capture that so so well, your art is gorgeous but it's also so real and expressive in a way that shows a lot of practice and a lot of love. Idk i think I've said this before and I'm sorry if it's annoying that I'm saying it again (I'll just shut up after this lol) but I went to an art school and I had massive burnout and only really started drawing again in the past 6 months and you were one of my inspirations 2 start drawing again and I'm still not as good as I'd like to be but I draw so much more now and having an actual passion for art has led to a huge improvement, so thank you and thank u for bearing with me and my sleep-deprived rambles. I think my original point got sidetracked. I forgot why i started writing this ask.

dkgjhsdgkjdshg no i think you're 100% right abt the kakashi relaxed thing, even when we see him "relaxed" he doesn't ever really Look relaxed. like

here he is chilling out in the hot springs. this man does not look relaxed but he DOES look exhausted and maybe a little like he's gotten lost. somebody help this confused man find the exit.

anyway art + motivation talk beneath the cut

djhsdkjghsdkjhg thank u for all the compliments abt my art, i do work really hard in order to draw expressive characters, and spend a lot of time paying attention to how the small details in posture and expression change how the character comes across, and im glad it pays off!

also yeah no, similarly, once i left art school (when the pandemic hit) i did have a good 6 months where i did not pick up the pencil even once, and like, usually i feel rlly bad or guilty when i'm not drawing, but my burnout was real bad and i was straight up angry abt everything dgkjhsdgkjh so i just...didn't draw for like 6 months. i didn't even feel bad about it bc i was too busy being angry

and i had a bad relationship with art at the time and eventually realized i kind of had to like? make a different relationship with art—like, try to stop seeing art as something which gave me fundamental worth as a human being, or part of who i am? you know? that's a LOT of pressure to put on just...something that i do. if i took that kind of approach to literally any other task in my life, i'd never do it. imagine thinking that the way and style with which you descend the stairs gives you your worth as a person and if you don't do it exactly right then it means you're worthless as a person? buddy i'd just find a way to go down and out through the window LMAO

i think this is the thing which gives a lot of people burnout, it's exhausting to be constantly working on something and ALSO believe that if you fuck it up even a little, it's because you are the fuckup, and a fundamental failure of a person. god thats so much pressure.

anyway so i decided to make a naruto art blog because i don't even like naruto That Much but my best friend had been trying to get me into it for years (ty kate ilu kate), and so any art that i made would be purely for fun, wouldn't have anything to do with my self worth, and might make kate laugh too, and that's why this blog exists! and taking the pressure off of creating art like that has been enormously helpful to my mental health and my ability to create, also i take breaks alllllll the time, i'm like...way healthier about my art thanks to that, and also just...a nicer person, i think? anyway i'm very glad that i inspired you to get back into art but i'm far more glad that you've found a passion for it, cultivating that passion and joy is so important