lads i’m thinking of drawing something shadowgast-y for this upcoming v-day again this year and i’d love to hear your input if you’d like to weigh in on what it should be 👀
first (1st) of all, should i go for something sfw or nsfw?
this one is mostly a joke but y'know. cast your vote anyway
i personally find voting in random polls fun so i’ve been thinking of what else i could attach to this v-day poll silliness, and you know what i always struggle settling on? Essek’s gosh darn hairstyle, even though otherwise i’ve had his design mostly finalized for a good while
Do you have any tips for rendering? I'm pretty confident in my sketches and linework, but when it comes to rendering colour I always get choked up and embarrassed.
i do! i am in no way an expert, but these tips are something i’ve come to throughout my painting journey, and they have helped me create more well-rounded paintings.
1. if you haven’t already, start with familiarizing yourself with your drawing software’s painting features and capabilities. just try all the brushes yourself, play with all the settings, look up official and unofficial tutorials; you will truly be surprised how much stuff default brushes can do. there is nothing wrong with asking other artists for their brushes/brush settings, but in my experience it often prevents people from experimenting on their own. when i just started doing digital art i used to hoard PS brushes, but i never really used any of them except for one pencil brush that i eventually replaced with a brush i created myself in my preferred software.
2. always work on your entire paintingevenly. never start working on details of one part before you’ve decided on and laid out all the colors/done the underpainting.
3. decide on your color values right at the start. simply put, you should start not only with figuring out the color scheme, but also which parts of your painting are going to be light and which are going to be dark. look at the underpainting below—regardless of the color and details i added at later stages, the sky remained the lightest part of the picture, which is part of what allows the character to stand out.
4. experiment with textures! physical mediums such as paints often have the advantage of naturally creating textures that are pleasant to the eye, while with digital art you sometimes might want to add your own to avoid a sort of ‘bland’ look. in the past i’ve created my own textures by painting and scanning watercolor blobs and laying them over my digital art in various layer modes.
5. try not to think of evenly colored objects, especially flat surfaces, as something that requires only one color to be depicted in art. look at the floor in this painting by Edgar Degas—our brains absolutely register it as an evenly colored surface, but in the painting itself not only does the floor shift from light to dark (because some portion of it is closer to the source of light), it also features many different hues: red, yellow, green, etc.
6. i greatly recommend at least trying rendering everything on one layer—it will help all the parts of your painting to stick together, preventing some details from looking like a cutout glued to the canvas. this tip might be more or less helpful depending on the type of art style you’re interested in pursuing, but rolling around in the same paint on one layer really unifies your picture if you’re into more 'painterly’/brushstroke-heavy styles.
7. for the same reason, take some time to read up on the subject of reflected light! then practice noticing reflected light in real life, and painting it. in my experience, fleshing out reflected light is often what takes paintings to the next level.
i hope this is helpful! please try to remember that there is nothing to be embarrassed about when you paint : ) even if what you’re doing looks silly to you, it’s not a moral failure and doesn’t make you a 'bad artist'—it means that your hand hasn’t caught up to your eye yet and you’re actively working on that. good luck painting!
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come hang out, it’s super cozy! make sure you poke around your moderation settings to be able to see (or hide!) mature and other types of content, fine-tune your main feed (you can choose whether or not it will show replies, for example!), and explore various other feeds (most artists have a feed with their art, it’s like an equivalent of an artist’s personal art tag on tumblr). there are tons of very useful custom feeds, including but not limited to some fandom stuff (look at this shadowgast feed!).
commission for @gingersnipe, their aasimar sorcerer/paladin Visenya! their request was to depict Visenya as if they’ve had their official portrait painted as part of their political position, and honestly? i was born to be a portraitist in a fantasy universe
commission for @gingersnipe, their aasimar sorcerer/paladin Visenya! their request was to depict Visenya as if they’ve had their official portrait painted as part of their political position, and honestly? i was born to be a portraitist in a fantasy universe
Serve… Save… Slave… Slay… I’ve sins aplenty, aye, but regrets? Not so much.
commission for @shabammo, her Dark Knight Aavhen! i’ve never played FFXIV so it was very fun to learn that it has its own race of cat people. 🤭 thank you for commissioning me!
a week or so ago i ran a bunch of polls on what kind of shadowgast picture i should draw for v-day, and y'all have helped me build something really fun! especially with the three winners of the color poll (purple, teal, and orange!). i don’t know how much of a ‘regular shadowgast’ this picture has turned out to be (regular shadowgast are probably studying ancient tomes in a dusty library as we speak), but let’s say that i am giving you the plot bunny gift of figuring out the setting of this scene 😏
a week or so ago i ran a bunch of polls on what kind of shadowgast picture i should draw for v-day, and y'all have helped me build something really fun! especially with the three winners of the color poll (purple, teal, and orange!). i don’t know how much of a ‘regular shadowgast’ this picture has turned out to be (regular shadowgast are probably studying ancient tomes in a dusty library as we speak), but let’s say that i am giving you the plot bunny gift of figuring out the setting of this scene 😏
commission for @wintert-ide, her tiefling Moon druid Leaf! i was instantly in love with the request (which was to depict them casting the Moonbeam spell), and was very grateful for the opportunity to use some fun lighting 🌙 thank you for commissioning me!
commission for @wintert-ide, her tiefling Moon druid Leaf! i was instantly in love with the request (which was to depict them casting the Moonbeam spell), and was very grateful for the opportunity to use some fun lighting 🌙 thank you for commissioning me!
My child!!! Thank you so much for drawing them and adding so many beautiful details to the art. 10/10 would recommend, they are such a lovely person to work with and so so talented :>
ahhh thank you for your kind words!! and this drawing is so cute 💜
Serve… Save… Slave… Slay… I’ve sins aplenty, aye, but regrets? Not so much.
commission for @shabammo, her Dark Knight Aavhen! i’ve never played FFXIV so it was very fun to learn that it has its own race of cat people. 🤭 thank you for commissioning me!
First, your art is gorgeous! Tumblr suggested me two post of yours. Second I wanna ask, what inspires you and art influences?
thank you so much! i avoid tumblr’s algorithm most of the time, but i’m glad it allowed you to discover my humble art 🤭
as for inspiration and influences: i think i answered this/similar questions at some point in the past with some names and stuff, but honestly? a while back i was cutting some green onions, and if you start with the white end and go all the way through to the green end of the stalks and then use your knife to move the cut pieces into one pile, it will have a perfect white-to-green gradient, and i loved that so much. made me want to capture that in a painting. that is to say: i’m really, really easy. anything inspires me
I keep seeing your Scourger!Bren pictures in my head, and I finally figured out what they remind me of—Patrick Page’s Hades from HADESTOWN, specifically the second act. The accent isn’t quite right, obviously—Caleb isn’t an ultra-bass and doesn’t sound like a Southern oil baron, but the look is right. The white button-up shirt, the short hair, the rolled sleeves. The book holster reminds me of Hades’ suspenders. And now imagining Shadowgast singing “How Long” and dancing to Orpheus’ music is making me feel things. Something about the look he’s giving Essek in the “lingerie” picture just… reminds me a lot of Hades. I’m not sure what it is.
the following is all /pos:
i first read this message when i was blearily checking tumblr after waking up in the middle of the night, and it was a journey.
‘who is patrick page’
'what is hadestown’
'the second act? oh so it’s a play’
’“caleb isn’t an ultra-bass” lmfao i’d listen to that’
’“southern oil baron” i’m losing my shit thinking of caleb sounding like a southern oil baron’
and then of course i had to google the dude and a) hamsome, b) i understand what you mean! put some years on Bren and he definitely could look like that 🤭 will have to listen to 'how long’, thank you for the rec!
i’d wanted to play around with Caleb’s hair color for a while, so i did! gave him a few different hairstyles just for the hell of it too (feat. my scourger Bren design in the bottom right-hand corner, because why not).
i am actually a big fan of the shade Caleb has in the official character art, i find the fact that his hair is more brown than red very charming for some reason 🤭 though i always end up giving him bright red hair in my art. the temptation to use it as a visual metaphor for fire is too strong i suppose 😔
i’d wanted to play around with Caleb’s hair color for a while, so i did! gave him a few different hairstyles just for the hell of it too (feat. my scourger Bren design in the bottom right-hand corner, because why not).
i am actually a big fan of the shade Caleb has in the official character art, i find the fact that his hair is more brown than red very charming for some reason 🤭 though i always end up giving him bright red hair in my art. the temptation to use it as a visual metaphor for fire is too strong i suppose 😔
after exploring various flavors of redhead with colored Caleb sketches i couldn’t help but do the same with Essek 🤭 i know his hair has been described simply as ‘white’, but my personal headcanon is something slightly warmer (the one in the bottom right-hand corner!). i think farmboy dirt wizard Caleb could definitely compare it to the color of unbleached linen or something, like the hopeless and incredibly silly romantic he is
anyway, i thought i could also play with Essek’s hairstyles here a bit like i did with Caleb! Essek drives me crazy with how difficult his hair is to draw and i still haven’t settled on something specific (though i’ve been recently defaulting to the upper left-hand style). at this point it’s part of my headcanon that Essek simply changes his hairstyle depending on what he’s in the mood for that day
(also, here’s another permanent Essek headcanon of mine: he has a naturally asymmetrical upper lip)
let me know your favorite shade of Essek hair in the tags! 🤭
HC Essek's quick prestidigitation hairstyling works like a randomize with no control over the result, he just spams till it's something acceptable
Essek wakes up in the early morning and spends the four hour difference between his and Caleb’s rest requirements blearily hitting the randomize button in the character creation menu
after exploring various flavors of redhead with colored Caleb sketches i couldn’t help but do the same with Essek 🤭 i know his hair has been described simply as ‘white’, but my personal headcanon is something slightly warmer (the one in the bottom right-hand corner!). i think farmboy dirt wizard Caleb could definitely compare it to the color of unbleached linen or something, like the hopeless and incredibly silly romantic he is
anyway, i thought i could also play with Essek’s hairstyles here a bit like i did with Caleb! Essek drives me crazy with how difficult his hair is to draw and i still haven’t settled on something specific (though i’ve been recently defaulting to the upper left-hand style). at this point it’s part of my headcanon that Essek simply changes his hairstyle depending on what he’s in the mood for that day
(also, here’s another permanent Essek headcanon of mine: he has a naturally asymmetrical upper lip)
let me know your favorite shade of Essek hair in the tags! 🤭
You are my FAVORITE critical role artist if not overall portrait artist. I love how cold yet soft you make people look. There's so much longing emotion and humanity. The work makes me feel affectionate every time.
thank you so much 🥺 portraying human emotion is very important to me, glad to hear that i’m succeeding!
*Slams against your window* HELLO!!! I found your art blog through one of my mutuals re logging your art and I - love - everything about it!!!! The colors. The anatomy. The l i n e w o r k. It's all so pretty I can't *gasp* 💀. Haveanicenight.
*opens the window so you don’t bash yourself against it too many times and can safely fly in*
i’d wanted to play around with Caleb’s hair color for a while, so i did! gave him a few different hairstyles just for the hell of it too (feat. my scourger Bren design in the bottom right-hand corner, because why not).
i am actually a big fan of the shade Caleb has in the official character art, i find the fact that his hair is more brown than red very charming for some reason 🤭 though i always end up giving him bright red hair in my art. the temptation to use it as a visual metaphor for fire is too strong i suppose 😔
tagged by @mllekurtz! i miss tumblr tag games, thank you mlle 🥰
last song listened to: i haven’t listened to music in a while, but according to my music app it was All Of This by The Naked And Famous. not my favorite song of theirs, but a dear anyway
currently reading: i’m currently struggling with reader’s block, but i am in the (very slow) process of re-reading A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin (THE fantasy book of my childhood that made a mythology-obsessed kid fall in love with fantasy) and Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (which i last picked up two months ago; it’s very slow-going cause that shit is heavy)
currently watching: right this moment: The Green Planet documentary! nature documentaries are my comfort watch and have been keeping me company in the past week that i’ve been sick. in the process of: Dark! which i am watching very slowly (only on ep4) and it’s reshaping my attitude towards psychological thrillers, which i normally detest with my entire being; this series however is *amazing* so far
currently obsessed with:
my cat that has barely left me for over a week and is babysitting my sick self
practicing drawing chibi characters with everyone’s favorite drow criminal
baking focaccia
honey white chocolate
this bad bitch:
ALT
tagging: you 🫵 do your part in keeping tumblr the fun interactive blogging platform it’s always been
here’s the deal lads: in the span of two weeks i got ill with covid, lost half of a tooth, accidentally set my bed on fire and had to have my phone repaired with mediocre results. i NEEDED something light in my truly comical life, and drawing tiny Esseks has been a blast. i hope you enjoy them too (he meeps when you pick him up)
