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 😏
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 😏
I hope we can still see you here (it’s been so nice to see artists more active since The Fuckening)
you absolutely will! i’m not leaving tumblr, bluesky is just a sort of an alternative to twitter. i’m hoping to be somewhat more social on it than i was on twitter, in the sense that i actually want to eventually follow people and reblog stuff, alongside posting my own art. bluesky is excellent in that it allows you to curate your feeds perfectly, which is something twitter lacked and the constant barrage of algorithm-driven tweets that i didn’t want to see discouraged me from checking my timeline for like five years. now i might be able to finally appreciate other people’s craft 🥺 very tentative about it, but i want to try!
tumblr will stay a zmeess art-only place for the time being, like it is right now. you can choose to follow whichever appeals to you more, or both!
they are! i’m dealing with a lot of stuff in my life at the moment and can’t take on that much more 🥲
i’ve been thinking of officially opening a waitlist on tumblr though and contacting people once i’m done with my current commitments and am in a better place mentally, since i know that some have been waiting for my commissions to open again for a few months and are worried about having missed my announcement. i might do that once i figure out how exactly i want to implement google forms into the process, and then post about it here on tumblr.
Hey! I'm a huge fan of your art, and also incredibly nervous to ask this, but I was just wondering if you have any tips for beginning artists...? I've never drawn anything from my own head or without a lot of help, but I want to create beautiful things. I have no idea where to start, but I have Procreate, a bunch of colored pencils, a bunch of sketchbooks filled with terrible scribbles, and enthusiasm.
hi! thank you, i’m glad you enjoy my art <3
i assume you were looking for advice on artist technique & resources when you messaged me, and i don’t know if i can offer something substantial on that front because it’s a very, very broad topic 🤔 people go to school for this kind of stuff, and i don’t think i can condense that into one singular post on tumblr (and even if i did, it would be eight billion links that would be rather discouraging and overwhelming to see, or at least it would be for me).
what i can recommend though (and i hope this doesn’t sound patronizing) is that if you’re just starting your artist journey, it’s a good idea to ask yourself why you’re doing it. when i started drawing as a separate distinct activity, a thing i pursued, i did it because i liked the process (and later the end result) of expressing an idea i had in my mind. i like illustrating a thought! i like depicting small pieces of narrative, a metaphor, or a feeling in a singular visual form. honestly, at the end of the day, i draw because i enjoy telling stories. that’s why i decided to get better at drawing—i wanted to be able to impart the gravity and the drama, however self-indulgent and self-important, of the stuff that i was thinking about, and ultimately it has directly informed how i chose and have been choosing to improve my skills and what art style i wanted to pursue. that’s why my art is character-driven and why i focus on anatomy, why i work more on color and less on geometry, why i pay a lot of attention to allegories and symbolism and so on.
i see you mentioned wanting to create beautiful things, which in my opinion is an awesome reason for wanting to draw! i would personally try to define what ‘beautiful things’ means to you. drawing and painting is a subject with infinite facets, so when you look at them all at once you might feel like you don’t know where to start and that you will never master even a fraction of them. but if you precisely identify why you want to draw, it might become easier to pick a point of entry! if 'beautiful things’ first and foremost means 'beautiful colors’ to you, you may want to start with studying color theory. if it’s 'watercolor paintings of flowers that would look stunning on the wall’, you can start by looking into watercolor technique and the anatomy of flowers. you might even come to the conclusion that 'beautiful things’ to you is whatever other people find beautiful, and maybe you can explore why you want to create beautiful things for other people, and then search for techniques that would help you in that endeavor.
'why do i want to draw’ might be considered a very navel-gazing sort of question, but i truly believe that it has practical application (among other things); because if you know why you want to draw, you know better where to start and where to go after. really, if you narrow it down to one specific thing, or the thing that matters most, or the thing that takes precedence, it’s much easier to open your browser and look up 'perspective in art’ than it is 'how do i become an artist’.
i hope this is even a little bit helpful! i’m sorry i can’t tell you exactly what to start studying first, because there’s just so much and better art teachers than me have composed curriculums that perfectly balance all the aspects without overwhelming the student. but i can tell you that you know better than i do where you should start! if your ultimate goal is doing art for pleasure and not as a job (also absolutely valid, but it doesn’t seem to be your case), don’t worry about efficiency and one singular 'correct way’ to learn, just figure out what brings you the most joy and you will naturally find where to begin.
hiii I'm normally too shy to send asks, but I just wanted to let you know that I've been scrolling through your art posts for thirty minutes now, just gasping in absolute awe
everything you draw is seriously incredible and I'm so fascinated by your use of color!! it's truly inspiring
have a good day/night!!
ahh that’s so nice to hear, thank you for taking time out of your day to send me this ask 🥹
I don't know how late I am to the cat train but you should see Jezebel my Bengal mix. My smallest and most photogenic cat
my birthday was on june 13 but i am never saying no to more cats. Jezebel is stunning, the graceful curve of her ribcage in the first photo? impeccable
Helloooo! I know it's not your birthday anymore, but if it were, Pippin and Miss Gandalf the Grey Marple would wish you a lovely day! Since it's not though, they're probably just thinking about food. Sorry about that
(btw your art is stunning and incredible and gives me heart palpitations every time it graces my dash so thank you for that)
(thank you so much, this is very sweet of you to say)
any respectable cat should always be thinking about food honestly. Pippin and Miss Gandalf the Grey Marple are simply doing their job
Cannot believe I forgot to send pics of my cats! The calico is Solaria, and she's very sweet and shy and cuddly. The orange one is Bones and he's a little bastard (affectionate).
the first and the last pictures seem like they exemplify their personalities perfectly. thank you, i love them!!
I don't know if I'm late for the birthday cats (happy birthday!!!) but here! This is Hertie Gertie, short for Hertrude Gertrude. She has no teeth and is a sweet little grumpy.
thank you!! i love the first picture especially, that’s truly a ben affleck face. kissing her grumpy nose
Excuse the mess, but happy birthday kitty bonanza! The princess is Ríma, the orange boy is Marvin, and the tabby boy is Saga. They all live your art, and so do I!
thank you so much!! i love all three of them but Marvin’s sad disappointed face has my entire heart
Happiest birthday! Your works are so, so gorgeous and I'm always so greedily glad when I see you've posted something. Hope you're having a gorgeous day. (Here is my cat Imelda -- Immie -- who is currently snoring on my elbow.)
thank you so much!! Immie is so so sweet look at how soundly they’re sleeping 🥺
Leo the cat (your art is AMAZING omg I love it so much ahhhh)
YEAH i selfishly requested cats for my birthday back in june 🤭 still getting em but who would say no to more cats?? not me fellas
Leo has such a beautiful freckle right in the middle of their nose 🥺 it’s like a target that was strategically placed there to help you aim your kisses. thank you!
I heard you wanted cat picks. We have a mini colony of cats in my home with 4 humans. A cat for each hand. They are spoiled and all are rescues
THIS IS WHAT I CALL AN OPTIMUM NUMBER OF CATS all the hands a person has need to be busy petting at least one (1) cat each, at all times. thank you for the pictures!!
happy happy birthday!!!!! u ever notice literally everyones birthdays are in june or is that just me??? either way i hope ur birthday was fantastic :3
happy birthday guy gets happy birthdays from my 16 pound boy bubbie! enjoy
thank you very much my birthday was swell! imo everyone’s birthday is in june because it’s the best month BUT THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT, BUBBIE’S GOT THUMBS
Happy birthday! Here are some pictures of our cats - the bigger one is Socke (which means a sock in German) and the smaller one Motte (a moth in German). Thank you for your amazing art - it always makes my day a lot brighter. :)!
Socke and Motte look like god had a piece of clay from which she wanted to make two cats but when she was dividing that piece in half one of them actually turned out to be a little bit smaller than the other and she only noticed when she’d already started forming the bodies, and instead of mashing those two cats together and starting anew she was like ‘nah it’s fine, it will be funny if they look the same and one is just smaller than the other. i bet it will make zmeess smile’. so now you have two cats that you love and i can snag a bit of that happiness via these pictures. thank you!!
The dark one is a grandpa who loves adventure, warm sweaters in winter, and ignoring my existence the moment my partner shows up. The orange menace grew up in a wild colony and was just adopted a few months ago. His primary goals in life are food, trouble, and slowly winning the love of old man cats.
ahhh what a sweet family, thank you for more cats 🥺
did i draw more tumblr safe wizard spice? oh yes i did
the most important part of Essek’s character arc is not the redemption and atonement but the fact that now he finally gets to touch a bony wizard butt. among doing other things /j
(you absolutely can tip me for this nonsense, though i also accept love and support in blushing emojis 😈)
HOW do you draw such good feet? Please share your secrets
a) thank you b) my only secret here is using references. sure, looking up and studying the anatomy helps very much, as does the fact that i’ve been drawing for eight billion years, but you need to actually know what something looks like before you draw it, especially a body part that’s rather complicated-looking. so i observe stuff in real life and look at photo references (most of which i take myself). and when i don’t, it’s because i’ve studied and drawn that particular angle/position from references and real life enough times that i now can do it on the fly 🫡 honestly applies to many things i draw
There's something iver noticed about your Artstyle and the way you color and do lighting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost looks like you're going for the "visible paint strokes" style, but in digital art instead of traditional?
If so, that's such an amazing way to portray texture and depth in an otherwise 100% 2D plane! I love it a lot ❤️
ah thank you! yes, that’s pretty much exactly what i do. now that i’m thinking about it, it’s funny how i arrived at this art style despite the fact that prior to switching from traditional to digital art around a decade ago, i was never a fan of opaque mediums like oils and acrylics (though i did have experience painting with them). it was watercolors only for me 😂 but yeah, i absolutely employ the same techniques in digital art that i would with opaque paints.
I wasn't the original person who submitted the ask about how to improve at art, but I read your advice post. I realised that most of the art that really speaks to me conveys emotion through movement/gesture or facial expressions, with supplementations through light and colour and it's not something I ever really thought about before in a conscious way. So thank you for that post, it's definitely changed my perspective on some things!
i am extremely happy to hear that that post was helpful to you! honestly speaking sometimes i’m unsure whether my rather meandering and very much not hands-on explanations are even useful, so receiving this ask made me feel much better about the practicality of my advice 😂 i’m glad it helped you realize what you like most about art and i hope it will also help decide what to work on next! thank you for messaging me 💜
can i draw more shadowgast spice that is even more indecent than all my previous stuff combined and is still tumblr safe? i sure can if i crop them hands off when i finish it 😏
i’m fully intending to be a purveyor of shadowgast having lazy, unhurried, most vanilla sex that’s incredibly satifying in how boring it is. comfort and abscence of danger is hot. there is a unique pleasure in the feeling of safety and domesticity of it all and i’m here to deliver fellas
i might post the less cropped version on my bsky some time soon 😌 stay tuned
hey ladies and gentlepeople, remember me talking about posting my smut in a slightly less tumblr safe format (read: more explicit) on my bsky? well, it has begin 😏
I said it before but you're such an art inspiration... your anatomy, your colors, your expressions, your composition, EVERYTHING is so well-made, and you have such tenderness in your drawings. I love them and I'm blessed that you like the same ship i do ;o;
thank you!! glad to be delivering some tenderness for the ship you’re into! 💜
for you! my nyasper!! (jasper) he is the most precious gemstone ever, and probably has a brain just as smooth. (kidding kidding hes very smart (i think)) he's also very talkative, so when i asked him "jasper, wanna say hi?" he replied "myeeaaa!!!" so! basically he said hi, basically!!! ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ∫
uhh you are very cool and create beautiful (in the sincerest meaning of the word) things and yea! bye bye!
ᓚᘏᗢ ♡♡♡♡
HI JASPER the last picture looks like he’s giving me a kiss 😭
thank you so much for your kitty and the compliment!!
I heard you wanted cats and here he is. The orange bastard, king clingy boy himself
Fun facts about Trovão: his name means thunder, he's actually my son's cat (if you ask, tho, ollie is his human), i do not want to know what he was like before he was neutered (he appeared to us already ballsless) bc hes very antisocial and misogynistic towards female cats, and he only eats chicken flavored kibble, raw meat and salmon churus dhhdjfjfkf his favorite human is my son and hes always very upset with us that ollie needs to go to school bc it severely impacts his ability to hang out with his favorite human baby, and thinks its very irresponsible of us to take *communism voice* our kit out to the human vet when hes sick, what if he gets sicker??? We love him 😻
LOVE Trovão, i want to poke him gently in his tummy if he’ll allow, thank you for these pictures
You asked for cats and cats you shall receive! Unless this gets sent to the void. It happens a lot.
This is Morgana. She was sleeping on me and I had the audacity to move, so she's not best pleased.
Sleeping in the laundry. Only the ones freshly ironed though, she has standards.
The green-is thing she's on is a suitcase. Freshly washed, of course. The stuff on top was so she would not sleep on it again cause she's obsessed with it, I don't know why. Evidently, it did not stop her.
On top of the ironed clothes, ON the clothing iron.
Carpet was still half wet? To be fair, it's nest shaped, so I'll take the L for this one.
This is Ariman, he's turning one this year. I know he looks judgemental, but he was also fresh from sleep, cut him some slack.
He really likes this dollhouse. Can't be comfortable, so I don't know why.
This is from last August and he's a baby! He was kinda floofy as a baby, don't know what happened.
ahh i love them, thank you! way after you sent me this ask i was visiting my parents and one of their cats totally pulled a Morgana and slept in my open suitcase 😂 also happy birthday to Ariman!
Happy birthday and thank you so much for all your wonderful art!!! Seeing your posts always makes my day!
I don't have a cat of my own to share, but here's the kitty that lives across the street from my roommate and I! Don't be put off by her resting judgemental glare, she is the sweetest little lady and will rush over to us to shove her little head into our palms when she sees us. And she also makes sure to escort us on our trips to take out the trash in middle of the night, because she knows that we're stupid humans who might get lost during the 1 minute walk.
Anyway, have a lovely rest of your day and keep up the eggcellent work!🥚
thank you so much for the egg and the kitty cat!! i love it when cats look angry, it’s the best 😼
i’ve wanted to draw tm9 wearing modern clothes for eight billion years now (mostly i’ve been mucking around with modern Essek sketches and never finishing them), and something is finally coming out of that!
i can actually imagine modern Jester wearing a bunch of different fashions (unlike most other members of tm9, who have very specific styles in my mind), but this is what happened this time! maybe i will draw a couple more modern Jesters yet though, who knows
also? do not let her oversized hoodie fool you, her quads are massive and her abs are rock hard underneath it
i’ve wanted to draw tm9 wearing modern clothes for eight billion years now (mostly i’ve been mucking around with modern Essek sketches and never finishing them), and something is finally coming out of that!
i can actually imagine modern Jester wearing a bunch of different fashions (unlike most other members of tm9, who have very specific styles in my mind), but this is what happened this time! maybe i will draw a couple more modern Jesters yet though, who knows
also? do not let her oversized hoodie fool you, her quads are massive and her abs are rock hard underneath it
ah i think im a bit late to this but happy birthday!!! ive been following you for i think about close to 2 ish year now i think and i love your art style a ton! hope you had/have a wonderful day<3
hi, thank you!! i feel like i need to explain myself, my birthday was two months ago actually, i just keep queueing the cats i received/have been receiving as a result of my birthday request for cat pics 😂 it makes it seem as if it’s constantly my birthday but no, my followers are just super kind and have been sending me tons of cats. thank you so much for messaging me and following my art for so long! 💜
Hi!! I really admire your work, and really enjoy the way you render. I was wondering what brushes you use when rendering and in what program. I’m trying to do master studies of all my favorite artists but I can’t seem to accurately replicate the textures and blending with the brushes I have in Photoshop.
hi, thank you! 💜 you can find a link to my brushes in my pinned post, but unfortunately i can’t help you with ps brushes because i do my rendering entirely in paint tool sai.
hi! love your art, especially how expressive it is! i actually had a question about tattoo tickets. I've been meaning to get a white pearl tattooed to signify shadowgast, dunamancy.etc., and I really love how you have rendered the pearls in this piece -> https://www.tumblr.com/zmeess/724213136101638144/for-how-much-caleb-has-changed-essek-sometimes-i?source=share
I wanted to ask, do you allow tattoos of your art, or inspired by it? Is there a tattoo ticket that can be purchased if so? No worries if you don't, just thought I'll shoot my shot! Thank you for sharing your art and hope you have a nice day!
hi hi!
you actually taught me what a tattoo ticket is with this ask, totally not a thing that exists where i live (i wish it were though). i am not against some of my art being used for tattoos in theory, and i’ve been commissioned for tattoo designs in the past, but i don’t know the legalities behind the process of creating a tattoo ticket for an existing work of art, and the issue of coordinating derivative work and monetary compensation thereof is a little bit too much to research and organize at this point in time for me. i’m sorry i can’t accommodate your request right now! i’m really happy to know though that you like my art enough to consider making it a permanent part of your body. 🥺 thank you for asking!
hello! your work is SO lovely and i’ve adored it for ages, i’m a costume design student and the way you draw clothing and fabric is both utterly gorgeous and super inspiring as i try and learn more skills in that area. i had a question! i saw your and io’s essek exchange (essexchange. esschange) and i was wondering if you are comfortable with people drawing your essek outfits (if you are credited, of course)? like i mentioned your designs are such an inspiration and i’d love to draw them in my style but i also completely understand if that’s something you would rather not be imitated, you put lots of effort into those and they’re very unique and cool. either way i figured i would ask! if no, that’s totally fine, if yes, then expect art sometime early august once artfight slows down lol. hope you’re having a lovely day!
hi!!
thank you very much, it’s so heart-warming to know that my outfits are good enough to inspire people to want to depict them too 🥺 to answer your question, i would prefer to be asked on a case-by-case basis in DMs and such before people draw/cosplay any of the outfits in my art, for multiple reasons. don’t hesitate to shoot me a message, i’m absolutely terrible at replying swiftly but i am not inherently opposed to the idea and i will not shun anyone for asking. thank you for taking the time to inquire about permission first!
i’d been putting off drawing Yussa for ages (i suspect because i was afraid i wouldn’t do him justice) but today i ended up having some Yussa feelings and then an hour and a half later this sketch happened
