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A little blog about my art and adventures. Reblogs are cool but please don't steal or delete my captions, thank you!

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Hello 👋🏼 I know it’s been a long time..but I couldn’t resist the mayor 👉🏼👈🏼✨

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Digital Art Bootcamp Class 1.2 - Characters & Costumes

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This really brought me back to my fashion drawing classes in uni, the next assignment is on gesture and flow which I'm super excited for as we used to do this too with a live model in class.

[xz-art]

Re:Curve

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A couple of character designs based on my love for recurve archery.

I've always wanted an anime series based on competitive recurve archery (and probably the closest thing to archery as a sports anime we got was Tsurune). So here's me daydreaming about making up my own story in my head based on my own past memories of competing in this sport during my high school days. Basically the quintessential archery outfit = bucket hat or some kinda cap (I used to wear my brother's bucket hat) + sports sleeves (the sun really bites when shooting outdoors) + polo neck jerseys (I had quite a few collected from open competitions I used to participate in)

[xz-art]

Your tutorials are incredible! They're so easy to follow and have just enough explanation to understand them without being overwhelming. Your art is also amazing I really like how you do line weight variations ^^

Aw thank you so much! I’m really happy to hear you find them easy to learn from ☺️✨ ahh you’re too kind, Anon! I hope you have fun using the tutorials✨

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Art by Michelle Lee

March’s Theme: #MushroomFighter

Presented by CDQ Magazine

Discover the artists of the Character Design Challenge community and the current Theme of the Month in our Facebook Group! And when you repost your design on our Patreon page, you can also win awesome prizes every month and choose the future themes!

RULES | WINNERS | MAGAZINE | BOOKS

[xz-art]

Thank you for the feature @characterdesignreferences ☺️

[xz-art]

thank you for your tutorial on line weight! question about it, do you draw lightly and then go back to your lines to add weight? or do you add the varying weight AS you draw! the latter has always been difficult for me, especially on digital

Hi Anon, Thank you so much for checking out the tutorial, I really appreciate it ☺️ I usually work with the latter which is to add the pressure/weight as I’m lining my sketch in digital. 

Usually, I would start off with a rough sketch to have the idea down and then on a new layer above I would create the cleaner lineart using the line weights. Sometimes if I feel that the line isn’t thick enough then I would go back in to add more thickness to those strokes afterwards.

 Here’s an example of the process for reference:

Tbh, I would say it was difficult at the beginning for me as I am more used to controlling a pencil on paper traditionally vs the stylus on a tablet/screen. But I think you can try adjusting the pen stylus settings to better suit your drawing pressure or if your drawing app has an auto smoothing option for the selected brush where it helps optimise your strokes then that may help as well. I also find working in smaller sections at a time may be easier for the control or you can also try breaking up a very long stroke into two parts so it is less daunting. And if at first it doesn’t show as expected, we can always undo in digital and try again 💪🏼✨

Hope this helps! 

[xz-art]

Art Tips | Line Weight

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Hello, I didn’t make it in time but I still wanted to share this short guide on applying varying line weight onto a drawing.

In my first year of art college, drawing class was like a treasure trove of new tips and knowledge which I looked forward to every week. I used to only draw either very lightly overall or with the same intensity and no variation in my lines. 

But one of the first things introduced to us in drawing class was how to vary our lines and mark making to capture light and shadow through just our line drawings. I never noticed the big difference it made to drawing only in a line with the same weight or which was uniform in pressure. I saw how it added more depth and fluidity to the character or subject making them less flat and stiff overall.

So ever since then I have tried to observe more and make thoughtful decisions of where I can play with the pressure of my lines while drawing.

Hope this is helpful! :)

-xz

[xz-art]

I decided to join the Digital Art Bootcamp by Rossdraws and this is my first assignment submission 🐍✨

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The first class is studying a portrait from reference and putting our own flair on the final piece. I was drawn by the face paint design on this model and the swirling motion made me think of snakes so I went with that for the concept. (Photo by Nadezhda Diskant from Pexels)

I learnt so much about breaking down shapes and using color dodge to enhance lighting from this lesson. It’s been awhile since I studied a portrait closely and this took me back to my art foundation year in college. Though I was mainly doing those traditionally so it felt kind of new to do it digitally this time.

Looking forward to class 1.2 ☺️

Any of you joining the bootcamp too?

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NieR Reincarnation

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This is the fastest digital painting I’ve made of 3 characters, I didn’t know it was possible under 4 hours 😂

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Helloo, there is a drawing tips contest currently hosted by xppen and I really wanted to try participating. I enjoyed making tutorials in the past and want to start making them again, this entry will be a short one focused on drawing.

So to help decide what kind of topic to cover, I wanted to ask the community here what are some topics regarding drawing you’d like to learn about? Use the reply feature to let me know and I may pick a few to make for this entry ☺️

At the moment, these are the possible topics I came up with and if these pique your interest let me know as well or cast your votes✨

1. Tied and Styled Hairstyles

2. Eyes

3. Line weights

4. Mark Making

5. Shading

6. Chibi Character

7. Flowers and Plants

8. Ornate Boarders

9. Fantasy Weapons

10. Prints and Patterns on Clothes

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Botanical Gardens | Pt 2

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These flowers and leaves made for pretty nice inspiration/references✨ I couldn’t resist, please feel free to use these as references if you’d like ☺️

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Botanical Gardens | Prairie Cafe

03.04.2021

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Today a couple of my friends had planned to invite me out for an early birthday brunch, so they organised a morning walk at the botanical gardens as the cafe was right across the street from here.

We took so many photos of trees, flowers, monitor lizards, terrapins and food along the way and I couldn’t have had a more wonderful day with them and catching up on life ☺️✨

I forgot how healing it felt to be surrounded by nature and great company. So here are some shots to share the experience with you and I hope these help brighten your day too 🌱✨

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Guess who finally decided to download VRoid after seeing it ages ago on twitter?

I’m so excited to customise my own models once I explore more of the tools 🥺✨ the hair editor is really fun and I just found out how to export the uv maps for textures.

If you’ve tried out this program before or work with it, please share some tips or what has your experience been like with it cause I’d love to learn from you 🤗

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A little WIP of a mushroom fighter for CDC’s March theme challenge. After having gone through like 6 different sketches and ideas, I was most drawn to this silhouette in the end.

Hoping to have the final piece done by the weekend to submit ✨🍄✨

[xz-art]

Liv: Kintsugi

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Entry for the consciousness design category of the Punishing Gray Raven contest over on Pixiv.

I had initially started off with a more cyberpunk idea in mind (as you can see from the last image) but then thought about the kintsugi video I saw awhile back and went in that direction instead.

It was also inspired by a few sculptures I saw online which looked like porcelain with ornate designs and had the cracks mended by kintsugi.

Results are still in the judging phase but honestly, I’m just happy I got to work on this because it was fun ☺️

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✨🤖✨ MIXL & Moxxy ✨🎨✨

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Meet the artsy duo who set out to create larger than life works of art in a sci-fi fantasy cityscape ☺️

Moxxy pilots an artist robot, MIXL and together they aim to be the best in a world of competitive mural painting.

MIXL’s name is a play on the words ‘Mix’ and ‘Pixel’ which relates to the idea of mixing paint and the pixels found in a digital image.

Moxxy’s name on the other hand is a combination of the adjective ‘moxie’ for her personality and the ‘epoxy’ found in paints and coatings.

This was my artist avatar challenge entry over on deviantart. Sadly I didn’t make it in to the semifinals but I did get a really nice story idea out of making this which I hope someday I’ll have the time and energy to create as a webcomic (think giant robot artists competing to create the best murals on buildings and every pilot has their own unique art style).

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Blackstar Theater Starless | Mizuki

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Helloo, hope everyone’s been well! This piece has been the most detailed digital illustration yet which I’ve put my mind to complete. It was meant to be an entry for a contest on Pixiv but a mishap occurred which I couldn’t then meet the deadline.

The mishap: I messed up when saving midway so I lost the first half of work which I put 6 hours into TwT don’t be like me kids, save your work regularly--heck, save multiple copies of your work regularly 😭

But after being dumbfounded for a good five minutes and getting some food in myself, I was back to recreating everything I lost cause I really didn’t want to give up ✌🏼 (Also, this game is gorgeous with its characters, story, music and costumes although I have to struggle with the japanese ver cause there’s no global release yet--)