Discover Top Posts Tagged with #rab rambles

Update: they are being idiots.

[Content ID: A screenshot of text from a TextEdit document. The line reads, “Peter scowls at him. Juno sets a pillow on his face to hide the expression.]

#3.6k yay #jupeter #the penumbra podcast #juno steel #fic progress #rab rambles

Me on my way to the kitchen to make myself a raspberry mocha

#chronic pain #rab rambles #mcas

Hahaaaaaaaa I think I’ve been in survival mode for so long that my brain doesn’t know how to function outside of it anymore ??????

#day two of not having to worry about the book for the first time in like three years #glad I’ve got a therapy appointment lined up for next week #the good thing is I was able to anticipate this reaction because at least it’s a pattern for me #where every time I finish a big project my brain sees the suddenly Available time and goes #‘ah! time to finally have that breakdown we’ve been putting off for later’#gonna just…try to be gentle with myself as my brain flings itself against the walls of my skull in confusion and inexplicable angst #vent #Rab rambles

Don’t know why the cops have chosen THIS Starbucks to be THEIR Starbucks but frankly I’d like to kick them out with a broom

#needed to vent because WHYYYYYY #they had a ‘meet your neighborhood cops!’ event here last week #like I’d rather eat a steel chair but thanks #and now I came in to get some work done and there are like eight of them around a table and I’m like #GET OUT OF MY HOUSE #THERE ARE LIKE SEVEN OTHER STARBUCKS IN THIS TOWN #Rab rambles

Hello Rab, I just wanted to say that your art is huge inspiration to me. There just isn't many artists out there who work with color pencils, and your artworks with them are absolutely charming. If you have any tips along the lines of "things I wish I knew", I'd definitely be interested! (no pressure, of course !)

I'm sorry I'm so late in replying to this! This ask has made me so happy; thank you <3333

Things I wish I knew:

Sometimes expensive things are worse, but Prismacolors are GLORIOUS. Other colored pencils feel like working with tree bark compared to the pillowy-softness of Prismacolor wax.

I've tried soooo many different types of paper over the years. The more tooth (texture) to a piece of paper, the more layers of color you can pile up. I prefer less tooth because it requires less time to fill in those pesky white gaps you get while working with textured paper...but "good" paper like Bristol is actually TOO smooth for me. It took me like ten years to find this paper, which is my current favorite (not so smooth that you can't build up a couple layers of color, but not so toothy that you get white patches). It's not archival AT ALL though, which sucks.

I used to struggle a lot with line art, since the pencil wax would cover the lines. Here's my process now:

- I sketch on your average sketch pad, then use a LightTracer (light box) to ink my sketch onto Xerox paper. The nice thing about this method is I never lose the sketch, so if I mess up with my brush pens (which happens VERY OFTEN) I can just restart on a new piece of Xerox paper.

-Once I'm done with my line art, I scan the page. THEN I color my line art. Once I'm done, I scan the page again. Next I overlay the two scans in Photoshop via auto-align, and set the line art to "multiply" to create clean dark line art. I'm not sure whether the auto-align tool is available on other programs...I'm pretty sure you can do it on photopea, though. If you use colored pens for your line art, you can also use the hue tool to change your line colors.

Pic without separate line art layer:

With line art layer:

Don't be afraid to use a pencil eraser to lift some color off the page. An eraser won't get rid of a color, but I regularly use erasers as damage control for areas that get too dark or muddy. Erasers can also be used to add texture.

Be aware that pure black can flatten or muddy a scene. You'll often see me "deepen" my black areas with colors like tuscan red, process red and indigo blue (or avoid black altogether).

On that note, don't be afraid to go dark! It can take courage to rip off the bandaid and put down a dark layer of color, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get some contrast. When I remember to play by the rules (heh), I color the light parts of my work first, then lay down a layer of indigo blue or dark green or tuscan red over all the dark areas to sort of force myself to stay dark.

Don't let anyone convince you traditional art is unmarketable, or that you'd be "smarter" to work digitally. Work with whichever materials or programs you want.

It's okay if you work slower than other artists. This is the lesson I'm still trying to learn! But it's true: You can't expect yourself to work "quickly" with colored pencils. As much as I love colored pencils, they're slow and can be very boring lmao. Don't burn yourself out with grand expectations.

#hope this was helpful!#colored pencil #rab rambles

Feelin’ like a friggin’ audio engineer over here, adding highpass filters and de-essers and EQ effects and a compressor

I honestly don’t get how some people can just...speak into their mic and not have any problems?? I’m starting to think my voice is especially tricky??

#when I speak 7-8 inches from the mic the audio is full and tasty but also peaks #and the pop filter stops filtering through the pops and hisses #and when I sit any farther away from the mic my audio becomes tinny and hollow #so I guess next time I record I'll be turning the input volume waaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAY down #and maybe seeing whether it's possible for me to install a highpass filter AS I RECORD #blarg!!!!!#whatever I think I'm finally satisfied with this audio!!#took another three hours of recording (and will probably require another couple hours of splicing lawl) BUT #WE MADE IT #rab rambles #MY INPUT VOLUME IS ALREADY AT SUBATOMIC LEVELS I DON'T UNDERSTAND

Big fan of how I was brainstorming a fic idea last night and thought to myself “I wonder if anyone who’s not currently captured by the slavers has lightning powers” and then today I started up the ep and this new character pops up like “hello I have lightning-summoning powers”

Like, oh okay guess that’s solved then thanks

#👍👍👍👍👍👍👍#Rab continues her Critical Role journey #I was GONNA finish writing my goddamn Voltron fic and then episode 26 happened and #WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO??? /NOT/ WRITE A CR FIC????#rab rambles

Sometimes I’m tempted to just say fuck it and send Kate Cary a physical copy of my fancomic

#like as a ‘thank you for inspiring me to create comics’ way #I’d worry that it’d be interpreted differently though #I don’t think she writes for Warriors anymore but there might be a legal issue there too #Rab rambles