May 2024

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a digital hips-up painting of an elf. he is slender, with a hint of muscle on his forearms, and has medium brown freckled skin and long bright ginger box braids pulled back and out of his face into a haphazard half-bun half-down hairstyle. he is wearing a gray shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a delicate embroidered white silk undershirt visible where the gray shirt is open at the top, and a leather apron. perched on top of his head are magnification glasses with brass-colored metal frames and side shields; there is a silver ring with a black gemstone on his right hand and a few simple bracelets on his left wrist. he is looking wistfully off screen, and in his hands he is holding a small iridescent porcelain cup, with a cinnamon stick poking out of it and light golden tea visible inside.ALT

commission for @elle-thereafter, an original character named Perran from her CR fanfic Gate Building: See also, Bargaining with Archfey, Complications of! El wanted to know what her character would look like if put on canvas, and helping people visualize their lovely brainchildren is one of my most favorite things, so i was very happy to work on this portrait. thank you for commissioning me! 💜

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Hi! I hope you're having a great day.

I love your art deeply and love the painterly quality of it. Thus I've been wondering if you have any traditional art you can share? I've seen the watercolor nature paintings you did and loved them, as I also love working with water colors.

Have you every worked with oils, or gouache?

hi, thank you so much for this sweet message 🥺 you inspired me to do a study of a tulip i saw on my walk today! it had a bird cherry bloom inside of it and i found that incredibly charming.

a small watercolor study of a vivid red tulip bathed in bright afternoon sunlight, done on textured watercolor paper. the tulip's bloom is facing the viewer; its center is purple-black with a yellow and white outline, with the characteristic three-sided pistil in the middle. there is a tiny off-white withered bird cherry bloom resting on one of the petals. behind the tulip there is a suggestion of green leaves and ground.ALT

as for oils and gouache: when i work digitally i 100% employ the principles used in oil painting (and other types of opaque paints, as opposed to watercolors), but funnily enough i have always hated working with gouache, and i have never worked with oils! mostly because i was very young and very broke when i was a traditional painter, and oil painting is Expensive. or at least it seemed so at the time 😔 now that i’m considering it though, i think i might try oil painting in the future. could be fun to roll around in real paint!

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digital thighs-up painting of an aasimar pointing a revolver gun off-screen. she is athletic and curvy, has dark brown skin with glowing golden freckles, and golden pupil-less eyes with black sclera. she wears her black-to-red-to-yellow ombre hair in long box braids that are flying around her with her dynamic movement. her ears look like small red-orange wings, and she has a crown of five red-orange crystals growing on her forehead along her hairline, as well as a few on her exposed shoulders. she is dressed in a dark red embroidered duster over an unbuttoned red shirt, beige pants, and a dark corset. she is also wearing a cowboy hat, and there is a silver sheriff badge hanging off her leather neck armor. she is looking in the same direction that she is pointing her gun in, with a fierce and wounded expression on her face; there are golden tears flowing down her cheeks. behind her are four very stylized wings, and a glowing halo.ALT

another commission for @tiddiechamp, her amazing aasimar gunslinger Montoya! it’s such an honor to draw her again, thank you for commissioning me 😭❤️

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Is there a magic secret I never learned in all the art classes I've taken? How do you pick the colors you use??? I'm in love with all your choices. Like the little bits of color that don't match what color it's near... how do you decide where the color goes? Is it like the shadows and highlights? Your color palettes are gorgeous. Your art is so beautiful.

thank you!

there is no magic secret! it is all about how you choose to interpret the color you see—i.e., your personal stylization.

look at this wonderful picture of fuji apples:

a photograph of two red fuji apples against a rocky background.ALT

(By Scott Bauer, USDA ARS, Public Domain)

the local color of the fuji apples above is red, and they’re lit and photographed in a way that makes them appear pretty uniformly red in hue as well. but you can still pick up some small variations in hue, as well as saturation (chroma) and value!

the same photograph with three small painted squares over it, the shades of the squares picked with an eyedropper from different patches of one of the apples. one square is peachy-orange, the second is a white that only slightly leans green, and the third is very dark red. next to each of the squares are screenshots of the corresponding hue/saturation/value scales.ALT

you can go the hyper-realistic route, carefully observing and replicating the colors you see to create a painting of fuji apples that is as close to real life as possible. you can also choose to stylize and interpret the colors through a certain lens, which may help convey a certain mood or just make the image more aesthetically pleasing (humans usually enjoy limited palettes it seems).

there is an infinite number of ways you can do that! which is where the fun of experimenting and developing your own style lies. the important thing you need to remember is that, while i picked those little swatches with the eyedropper tool, you should observe and depict any color in relation to its neighbor and not on its own. is this patch cooler or warmer in hue in relation to its neighbor? is it more or less saturated? is it lighter or darker in color?

once you have analyzed those properties, you can think of how you want to stylize them. would you like to lean the darker shades red? would you like to make one object more saturated than everything else in the picture, to draw the viewer’s attention to it? would you like to make all the lighter colors lighter and all the darker colors darker in order to up the contrast of your painting? the possibilities are endless.

here’s my little 15 minute study!

a digital painting of the apples.ALT

i made the background more green in hue because i wanted the apples to stand out more, pushed the highlights away from white and towards light green to make the color scheme more harmonious, and added purple to the shadows because that’s what i do. : ) among other things. it has changed both the mood and the lighting of the original photo! and you don’t have to follow this algorithm for everything, or indeed anything—you can play around with color any way you want.

you can do this kind of color nudging with color overlays in graphic software too, to a certain extent. for example, if you set a solid yellow layer to ‘darken color’ over a picture, it will turn all the pixels of that picture that are lighter in value than that particular yellow into that yellow. things like that can make your color palette more cohesive/limited, and doing those adjustments in your head as you paint (as opposed to on a separate layer) can make them look more varied and fun. no shame in color correction, use it! it’s a tool just like any traditional glaze is, and if you have a favorite 'glaze’, with practice you will figure out what it is you like about it and start incorporating that right at the painting stage.

tl;dr: observe the colors around you in relation to each other, experiment with them, and most importantly paint and practice a lot! thankfully there are no magical secrets, only color theory and practice 💪( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

for color theory reading, i recommend James Gurney’s Color and Light! it was recommended to me last year, and introduced me to the gamut map approach, which i hadn’t been familiar with before. i’ve only used it once but it was tremendous fun and taught me a couple new things.

hope this is helpful! happy painting 💜

tip jar!

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zmeess:

digital thighs-up painting of an aasimar pointing a revolver gun off-screen. she is athletic and curvy, has dark brown skin with glowing golden freckles, and golden pupil-less eyes with black sclera. she wears her black-to-red-to-yellow ombre hair in long box braids that are flying around her with her dynamic movement. her ears look like small red-orange wings, and she has a crown of five red-orange crystals growing on her forehead along her hairline, as well as a few on her exposed shoulders. she is dressed in a dark red embroidered duster over an unbuttoned red shirt, beige pants, and a dark corset. she is also wearing a cowboy hat, and there is a silver sheriff badge hanging off her leather neck armor. she is looking in the same direction that she is pointing her gun in, with a fierce and wounded expression on her face; there are golden tears flowing down her cheeks. behind her are four very stylized wings, and a glowing halo.ALT

another commission for @tiddiechamp, her amazing aasimar gunslinger Montoya! it’s such an honor to draw her again, thank you for commissioning me 😭❤️

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digital shoulders-up portrait of a half-elf, looking off-screen with a serene expression on her face. she has pale freckled skin, long brown hair with large messy curls and short bangs falling over her forehead, a heart-shaped face and large vivid green eyes. she is wearing green eyeshadow and is dressed in a top with a low neckline. she appears to be lit with bright sunlight, and the background behind her is a warm green color.ALT

commission for @mozzys-stuff, his half-elf druid Nele! i don’t often work with warm color schemes, so this sweetheart was a genuine treat to paint 💚 thank you for commissioning me!

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zmeess:

digital shoulders-up portrait of a half-elf, looking off-screen with a serene expression on her face. she has pale freckled skin, long brown hair with large messy curls and short bangs falling over her forehead, a heart-shaped face and large vivid green eyes. she is wearing green eyeshadow and is dressed in a top with a low neckline. she appears to be lit with bright sunlight, and the background behind her is a warm green color.ALT

commission for @mozzys-stuff, his half-elf druid Nele! i don’t often work with warm color schemes, so this sweetheart was a genuine treat to paint 💚 thank you for commissioning me!