hi!! have you seen the new Iris Van Herpen collection for fall 2023? the photos just came out today and they have extremely zmeessek vibes (that's what we call him in my server LOL) like especially all the gorgeous head pieces and extravagant collars? 💜 look look 😍
i feel like the usage of the present perfect in the “have you seen” might be implying that i keep up with fashion/fashion shows, and that’s thinking too highly of me 😂 that is to say, no i hadn’t, but i looked this collection up and looked at the post you linked and it looks pretty cool! thank you for messaging me and sharing it with me!
i like the light green layered sleeves (links for any of my followers who are reading this) and would totally draw essek wearing those as part of some of his fancier outfits; they’re structured but not exceedingly sharp, and i like a certain degree of organic-looking shapes for my dynasty fashion 🤔 matt said dynasty austere and geometric but i took that one chitinous armor comment to heart and ever since then kryn dynasty drow have been bug and mushroom and bone people to me. but like, victorian. i have a vision okay
anyway, the wavypetalcollars are awesome too, as well as the duochrome teal plissé fabric, that fabric specifically screams essek to me. and ear cuffs/ear ornaments are always splendid, i’ve actually never thought of giving essek just one ear cuff in my drawings before (i’ve always drawn him with a pair on) and i shall dip my toes into that puddle now
(also, i’ve seen a few people call my essek zmeessek before and it’s so cute 🥺 and kinda flattering too. i wish my once school bullies knew that folks have come up with an entire name for my specific interpretation of somebody else’s oc. that’s what success looks like fellas)
sorry for blasting your notifications. love your art 👍👍
no worries, it’s always a pleasure to get eight billion tumblr notifications and discover that all of them are just one fandom/art person methodically going through my blog and liking/reblogging all of my art or all of my art that’s relevant to their interests. makes me think about how they probably stumbled upon one of my pictures and liked it so much that they checked out my blog and went ‘all of this is great, i love it and want to share it’. thank you!
hello!! have you ever posted any speed paints or tutorials on how you do your art? i absolutely adore your style and i really want to see what your process is so i can try doing something similar agsgsgs
hi, thank you! you can look at progress shots for some of my pictures in the #zmeess progress shots tag, and i also occasionally answer art-related asks, which you can find if you scroll through my #zmeess talks tag.
i just wanted to do a couple of screencap studies of some pouting wizards. like we all do
personally i love that Caleb’s pouting expression is ‘angry wile e coyote’, while Essek’s is 'William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The Song of the Nightingale. 1895, oil on canvas’
commission for @tiddiechamp, her half-elf bard Dahlia! i have a soft spot the size of siberia for bards so i was very happy to draw her 💙💛 thank you for commissioning me!
i bullied @ionomycin into doing an art trade with me, in which they drew my Essek design and i drew theirs. i was beyond ecstatic to draw io’s Essek, his white eyes and white freckles and big cute ears and floppy sleeves have bewitched me. we also align on our white nails!Essek opinions, which is a delight. and the medieval scandinavian vibes are irresistible okay.
i tried my best to do him justice in my art, but you should definitely look at the way io draws their Essek! and please check out io’s part of the trade or i will break into your house at night and rearrange all of your furniture
for how much Caleb has changed Essek, i can never stop thinking about how much Essek has changed Caleb. Caleb looked at Essek and thought, this is a man whose knowledge i might be able to use to change my past. but when Caleb convinces him to share that knowledge, the first thing Essek teaches him is how to control his future
Just curious if Leyendecker was an influence in your art style. I’m obsessed with the way you both use color!
i’ve studied Leyendecker’s style quite a bit, but he hasn’t been a huge influence on my colors, i owe much more to impressionists and even realists on that front. and, y'know, myself, at least i like to think so 🤭 i’d say that some of the defining features of Leyendecker’s color, to me at least, is the overwhelming warm/sepia-toned quality, lights and shadows that are very close in hue, as well as studio-esque artificial direct lighting that is so strong it sometimes leaves even the skin of the people in his paintings shiny; none of those is something i employ often, and now that i’m leafing through my stuff, most of my works are the opposite of that. i do quite enjoy Leyendecker’s brush strokes though and thank the dude for being one of the artists that have helped me figure out what the heck to do with blank backgrounds when i only want to focus on the character and/or fashion. nothing quite like a fashion artist to aid with that!
i’m on bluesky now too! twitter has become way too much of a yuck hole to the point of it not being funny anymore, so i’ve relocated
also unrelated, taking this opportunity to remind y'all that my name is spelled with two (2) E’s and two (2) S’s in it! they belong together, do not separate 😏
for how much Caleb has changed Essek, i can never stop thinking about how much Essek has changed Caleb. Caleb looked at Essek and thought, this is a man whose knowledge i might be able to use to change my past. but when Caleb convinces him to share that knowledge, the first thing Essek teaches him is how to control his future
i had a lot of notes on this one, but tumblr ate my draft and now i’m too angry with it to type the entire thing up again. the only thing i will mention:
as i was compiling the above image, i noticed that the final painting appeared quite a bit more saturated and high-contrast than the previous progress shot when put next to each other, even though i didn’t touch up or color correct it at all. i thought that some might be curious as to what the heck had happened, so here’s an explanation:
i added an off-white vignette; the only other things in the painting that are as light as it are the highlights on the pearls and Essek’s rings and nails, and the vignette made them pop by providing a point of reference for the eye
i added a brighter orange highlight to Caleb’s thumb and the lower part of his palm below it (a quick internet search has informed me that that part is called the thenar eminence, and i was like damn, good to know). the reason i did that is because that plane is almost perpendicular to the direction of the main light source, but the whole endeavor also had a nice little bonus in the form of brightening up the overall picture
i added some small patches of shadow to Essek’s right hand that were a more saturated purple than the colors around it
these were very small additions, but imo they made a big difference in how the colors appear to the viewer. i find it awesome how sometimes you don’t need to color correct the whole picture to give it a more nuanced and impactful feel, because adding a few small contrasting elements (or similarly colored, depending on what you want to achieve) might be enough. the takeaway here is that color is always relative and heavily depends on the surroundings, which i honestly find very sexy of her
i bullied @ionomycin into doing an art trade with me, in which they drew my Essek design and i drew theirs. i was beyond ecstatic to draw io’s Essek, his white eyes and white freckles and big cute ears and floppy sleeves have bewitched me. we also align on our white nails!Essek opinions, which is a delight. and the medieval scandinavian vibes are irresistible okay.
i tried my best to do him justice in my art, but you should definitely look at the way io draws their Essek! and please check out io’s part of the trade or i will break into your house at night and rearrange all of your furniture
