hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

I read this post two days ago and I keep thinking about it because well, it's so damn recogniseable to me. So here's my two cents about my experiences with coming back to art! I created my blog years ago but only seriously came back ~a year ago or so to become active, coinciding with me getting back into fanfiction. And well, me getting back into fanfiction also led to me getting back into art. Now I'm in my thirties, and honestly? I'm afraid to call myself an Artist - mentally I'm prefacing it with "amateur" to soften it. I still feel so, so new to this - my style tends to be 'whatever I feel like at the moment' and 'why is this too round? I didn't want it to be this round' and 'somewhat distinctive pen-and-ink I suppose'. I've been ever-so-slowly working my way through Draw-A-Box and trying-and-failing to keep up a consistent art habit - and yet it's consistent enough that I come back to it every two or three months at most. I totally agree with bostoniangirl21 - Art Takes Time. And I'd like to add to that that it also takes Acceptance. You'll fail. You'll fail over and over and it sucks and it's not fair, and you look at your piece of art and all you can see is the flaws, and how could anyone love this? And then you post it on Tumblr and... People do love it. They see the art where you only see the flaws. They don't get to see the sketches and the pieces you dislike so much you keep them away from posting. And I can assure you - even the very best artists with the most gorgeous portfolio have sketches like that; the practice pieces, the stuff that just didn't turn out the way you wanted it to be. Honestly, the best tip I can give you is this: HAVE FUN. Enjoy the process. And even if you don't feel your drawing is going anywhere, it's still a part of the process of becoming better. You learn from every piece you make, whether you feel it's successful or not. The anxiety that comes with posting and showing your art, though, I don't know if that will ever leave. Be bold. Own your art - and your soul will shine through like it does in the piece above!

To end, here's a bit of my progress - one concept I iterated on a few times in the past two years.

This one's from the end of 2021, before I'd decided to focus on art again. It's Veryn as a student at the Arcane University, Veryn as Nerevarine, and Veryn as a member of the College of Winterhold.

These are from early 2022. My heart lies with painting, rather than with lineart - painting allows me to hide so many flaws :p I spent like five days on this, playing around with photoshop for most of the day. I drew the body on top of the body from a posing app.

And the latest one, from mid 2023. Much cleaner rendering, and lines, but admittedly I prefer the pose and contrast of the version I made before!

Dahlia enjoys a moment of peace

If you’ve been following me for any decent stretch of time, you’ll know that originally what I started doing here is just writing. It makes me happy, keeps my heart full, and I am stricken with the brain rot, so I do what it tells me. However, I have been sharing my art (mostly hand lettering and plants) as well. I never really (and still do not) consider myself to be an artist, and I have never been able to draw people other than stick figures.

I have been practicing for months and months, and mostly if you see people art that I post here, the outlines and clothing details are traced.

Perhaps this doesn’t seem like much and could definitely be improved, but I did this all by myself (no reference or tracing at all), and I am very proud of myself.

my morrowind files

VEHK-EMOJI!

Inspired by some of the Vehk-coloured emoji's on various TES-discords around, I made a bunch of Vehk-emoji for myself - and then some friends joined in as well! If you want to use them too - here's the link!

discord.com/invite/KTkJJQNJGy

Hope y'all enjoy!

The way Delyna's grandfather Llerar Mandas tells it, you'd think the dastardly Lord-Wizard snatched the maiden from her ancestral manor, polymorphed as cloud of netches or something. Please—the girl was caught in leather catsuit, sneaking into Divayth's tower, geared up as burglar would: lockpicks, two glass swords and a magical ring of Chameleon—mademoiselle's frivolous attempt at "slumming", no doubt. Lenient as Lord Fyr is towards petty thieves—Delyna was merely put under arrest in the tower. She spend several weeks, enjoying hospitality of Fyrs before she was released unto a representative of House Redoran. That during these weeks her addled father, Arethan rampaged through the Ashlands alongside his gang of vagabonds—supposedly as means to cope with kidnapping of his daughter—can scarcely be blamed on House Telvanni, can it not? Truly, Delyna would have been released much sooner, if not for the real fear of her accidentally perishing en-route—Tel Fyr is fairly isolated place and the surrounding waters can be dangerous.

CUSTOM VEHK-EMOJI!

Inspired by some of the Vehk-coloured emoji's on various TES-discords around, I made a bunch of Vehk-emoji for myself - and then some friends joined in as well! This server is just for emoji's, so no chatting channels or any interaction needed ^^ If you want to use them too - here's the link!

discord.com/invite/KTkJJQNJGy

Hope y'all enjoy!

In the early days of ESO you could not edit the look of armor such as design and color and since I always choose gear I own that has the best stats I was amused that Darash kept wearing very revealing armor. Especially when he was adventuring in snow covered areas.

To really accept failure and learn from it, you must be kind to yourself.

Grumble.

Grumble grumble…

Fate

Change a single letter and change the word game

I want to play a game with you all.

You have to make a new word by changing only one letter of the last word.

Dirt

if you tag me in a chain post and i don’t do it it’s not because i hate you it’s because i am very lazy. i love you thank you for tagging me.

People liking your personal OCs is still such a crazy feeling, I've been doing this for years and ppl asking about them still fills my entire heart with warmth and idk how to handle it

You enjoy this fictional guy I made up for fun?? Whose only content is random artwork or writing made by me and a handful of other artists at most? They have no show/book/game with a large fandom, it's just one person with an art blog?? I love u

This is super interesting to read - thank you!

Some random notes on Joshi's design because I can.

Or I talk about accent colours on discord and paste it here. This is a long post that contains nudes, however it is placed under a cut with a disclaimer.

Joshi's main colours are black, beige and vermillion. I tend to describe his magicka aura as also being an orangy-red as well. Vermillion is his accent colour design wise.

The vast majority of his clothing is either black or neutral-toned, so that makes the accent colour pop.

So whilst that second one is an outdated design, it's using the same basic idea. Vermillion accents on neutral coloured clothing.

He adds elements of chitin plate as parts break or become extinct. So the armour has a large beige component by 4E199. But I haven't done a fully finished version of him in full armour just yet. It's essentially this Netch leather set that I've modified.

I use a lot of steppe cultural influences in his costumes, there's fun flippy toes from his gutals.

One day I'll finish the flats on these but this is his mid-game Morrowind armour, has a lot of ashlander elements to it for wandering through the blight infested areas.

It's mostly dark chitin plate and boiled netch leather. He's technically wearing a chitin helmet but it's wrapped in a plain linen wrap with a vermillion accent.

Both line arts are the same armour set in various stages of disrepair as he fights his way through Kogoruhn. Pants are a faded olive green, shirt is the same plain linen that wraps his helmet and the netch leather is a darkish grey purple. Salk chitin is used for his plate. Scarf and sash are vermillion.

Now for some talk on the secondary colour that I use for his nudes, under the cut due to blatant nudity.

Josh does have a secondary accent colour, which is violet. Mostly it's emphasised when I'm painting him without clothes, but his face tats dictate the colour of his Morag Tong tat (violet) and his prisoner serial number dictates the colour of his marriage tattoo (black).

So whilst his main accent colour is still surrounding him, and I've used it again in his lounge robe in the sfw piece. The nude shows the secondary colour is a dusty violet.

The purple I've chosen below is because it ties him to the Blighted hive mind, which is always presented as ash skin and darkness until one reaches Aetherius. (or becoming an Ascended).

Below I'm pulling magenta for an accent since it's a medium between the two main colours (as suggested by @naturalbornlosers who hit the nail on the head). I use the colour as his ash goggle lens tint too.

luke_penry.exr on TikTok

Credit if used!

unavoidable that you will be the villain in someone else's story. You will be painted in an unfavorable light. You will be the irredeemable one. and all of this will happen despite how nice you might usually be or how kind or how respectful or how warm. and you will just have to move on.

Tag the OC who WASNT MEANT TO BE THAT TRAUMATISED IM SORRY

.

These are all so pretty - my favourites are the winter landscape with the great tit, and the Dunmer in modern day clothes. They all set this amazing mood though that really resonates with me as city.

Do you take out your sketchbook to sketch in the open air, do you take a picture, or do you draw from memory and vibes?

eastern europe spring and particularly doomerwave-aesthetic-of-my-life things

a - g i a n t - bird, my ocs, me, my surroundings; sounds like depeshe mode/suede and far sound of traffic; tastes like calm getle depersonalisation, smells like sweet parfume and city dust wind at your hair

im just living in that sketchbook; sometimes, it looks shitty, but at least it all have meanings for me

Morrowind, the bitter coast