What’s your favorite stuff to draw? Textures, people, vs animals, weapons and objects, landscapes, faces, colors you like to work with? What would be like, such a fun exercise or project to work on?
oh man, i think my fav thing to draw is people, that’s all i do lol but more specifically i really enjoy drawing hands and clothes; faces can be really cool too but i tend to struggle with them more than with hands. i have favorite colors (it’s teal and purple!) but they’re not necessarily the colors i use in my works a lot, tbh any color scheme is awesome to work with to me.
backgrounds are my weak point, and it’s actually one of my new year resolutions to try to make them more complex in my drawings! i do really enjoy drawing plants though, and playing with lighting.
re: fun projects, there’s a couple of them that i have in mind and would like to work on/try my hand at, and they’re comics! but like, not the sketchy silly stuff i’ve done in the past but something more polished and serious that utilizes better paneling and angles. we’ll see how that works out 😮💨
after school activities
zmeess:
after school activities
and here are some progress shots! quite a few of you have inquired about speedpaints so i tried to take more of those shots this time. cause i simply can’t deal with video editing software. my brain is very small
a few days ago @ beckpoppins on twitter and @artofcarmen introduced me to fashion shows (still have not watched any) and sent a couple of pics of balmain suits my way and in my head i went listen, my life is so hard. i deserve to sketch essek in a handsome suit, as a treat
the suit in question is this one, from 2016 i believe. i modified it a bit to make it look less modern, and also made it purple (cause duh), but man. isn’t it so essek-looking
as an addendum, this one goes out to all of y'all people who are suing me for emotional damages from yesterday’s pic. i hope this lad soothes your pain
happy belated valentine’s day to y'all in general and shadowgast enjoyers in particular. may you always have a life-long friend to platonically snuggle with
The way you draw hands and then render them so stylistically :O I’m in awe every time
thank you!! 🥺
zmeess:
zmeess:
after school activities
and here are some progress shots! quite a few of you have inquired about speedpaints so i tried to take more of those shots this time. cause i simply can’t deal with video editing software. my brain is very small
#so cool to see the progress #wish i could see the steps between images 2 and 3 as well #i have no idea how you get to 3 from 2
there are actually no additional steps between 2 and 3! i work with two main layers: a lineart layer and a color layer underneath it; what happened from 2 to 3 is i slapped some very rough colors on the color layer to get a sense of the color/contrast balance. that’s all! this step takes me ten minutes Max, unless i’m not sure what kind of color scheme to employ (then it takes a bit longer cause i try out a few different things). after that i continue to refine those colors, still working on the color layer. hope this helps!
zmeess:
happy belated valentine’s day to y'all in general and shadowgast enjoyers in particular. may you always have a life-long friend to platonically snuggle with
progress shots progress shots! tried to take more of them this time too
Hello! Do you usually use references for drawing clothing? It always looks so real, the newest painting of yours included <3
hi! thank you!!
*getting on my soapbox of Fellow Artists Please Use References*
short answer is, yes i do!
long answer is, i usually use like a dozen references for one illustration alone; if i’m drawing, say, a silk skirt, i google “silk skirt” and study all the shit that comes up to better understand a) the texture of silk and how it reflects light and b) the density of silk and what kind of folds it creates. and then mash all of that up into my own silk skirt! sometimes i also take my own pictures when i’m having trouble figuring out how the fabric will hang from/wrap around a certain body part in a certain position. for example, the tunic in the latest painting was referenced from a real shirt that my roommate owns! i modified the garment in my picture (it’s a different color irl and is a button-up shirt and not a tunic with voluminous sleeves and a wide sash) but taking and studying that reference photo was immensely helpful. so ye! references everybody
I'm sure you get plenty of questions about this (and please redirect me if you've already answered this!!), but how did you develop your painting style? I'm particularly interested in the parallel contour lines you add- looking at your progress images, it looks like you lay down a flat color and then manually hatch them in? However you do it, it's gorgeous! I've been seeing your art on twitter/tumblr for a couple months now and have always been curious as to your technique/painting inspirations
hi, and thank you for the kind words!! to be quite honest, it’s a little bit difficult to answer the question of how i developed my painting style, simply because i’ve been painting for over fifteen years 😂 a Lot of stuff has inspired me throughout this time, and there’s tons of things i figured out on my own, it’s all just a gumbo soup in my head at this point 🤭
however, i can tell you one thing in that the parallel hatching is mainly inspired by the works of leyendecker, toulouse-lautrec and edgar degas! when i use it i usually lay down/block out a base color and then go over it with parallel hatching in a slightly/entirely different shade depending on the kind of effect i need to achieve; usually it’s a lighter color, but not always! i pick the direction of the lines based on the 3d shape of the object to sort of ‘hug’ said shape; picking the right direction and stroke length also helps convey foreshortening, though for me it requires a lot of thinking and experimenting to achieve the right perspective. i also use other kinds of hatching to convey different textures! it can be fun to try and figure out what works best for this or that thing.
this is a bit of a bare bones answer i think, but yeah! i’m not entirely sure what else to add without writing a 10k word essay, but i hope this helps and if you have any specific questions, let me know!
just letting you know that your progress shots and talking ab how you do your art is really helpful! i struggle to make my colors look vibrant and feel cohesive when i start painting a sketch, so i really appreciate seeing how you go through it! if you ever start doing speedpaints i would love to watch :D
i’m really glad to hear that it’s helpful!! i have learned a lot from other artists and knowing that i can help others in turn makes me happy 🤭
and man, you and me both buddy. can’t wait until i finally start doing speedpaints 😔
it’s been pretty cold where i am and i had a day off today, so i thought it would be a good idea to draw a still from the beach episode of shadowgast: the anime
two ✌️thingsies:
1) i love the way you render and even tho I'm not into your current fandom (followed for hs and stayed for jjk) i still find myself searching the nearest person to me to show your art whenever you come across my dash. in conclusion it's lovely and so fascinating
2) do you put on texture on the canvas? or is it the brush? also which program do you use?
and thanks for sharing your art! everytime I see it i have to pause to take in the beauty and zoom in the details!
hi, thank you!
1) glad to hear that you’ve stuck around through my hyperfixations 🤭 LET’S BE REAL i cycle back to homestuck every so often so i might draw some more yet 😏 but fr though thank you!
2) i use paint tool sai 2 and you can find my brush settings in my pinned! the texture you can see in my pics is the Watercolor B layer texture (which i am reasonably sure is one of the default ones……), and pretty much the same thing can be achieved in photoshop by creating a new layer on top of your drawing, filling it with mid gray, applying a monochromatic noise filter, blurring it a lil bit, and then setting that layer to soft light
Hi am here to humbly ask if you sell prints??
hi! WELL i created an inprnt shop a while back and tried uploading one print to it and it cropped my picture really weirdly for their canvas print option so i got frustrated and made that print private and decided to deal with the whole thing at a later date. m working on it 👉👈
zmeess:
it’s been pretty cold where i am and i had a day off today, so i thought it would be a good idea to draw a still from the beach episode of shadowgast: the anime
progress shots for this picture!
WHAT’S UP WITH 3 AND 4?? sometimes when i know that the scene i’m doing will have a lot of ambient light/shade of a specific color i first do my underpainting in local colors, lay a solid color in a specific layer mode over it, then merge and do my rendering on the resulting layer!
for those who are unfamiliar with the term ‘local color’, it’s the color of an object as unaffected by direct light, reflected light, shade, aerial perspective and other objects around it as possible, i.e. the 'true’ color of an object! compare the local color of caleb’s hair (obviously it’s too desaturated here bc my underpainting was light) and essek’s skin vs their colors affected by the blue ambient shade of the twilight in the finished painting.
as a point of clarification, technically i didn’t use true local colors in my underpainting, but they’re something that i knew would work for what i needed them to do. you know what i mean LOL the color overlay here specifically was a navy blue in hard mix mode and at 30% opacity. and i don’t use one specific mode everywhere, it’s very fun to experiment a lot with both the layer mode and the colors and see what looks best.
Your style of thick streaky coloring over the base tone.... hrggghh love it so
thank you!! 💜
ur art makes me go a little insane in the membrane (positive intonation) I love how you colour
thank you!! painting is always my favorite part hehe