#i really liked doing lineless style and i like this era of my art | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reallyhardydraws · 4 months

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2023.

i hope any of you reading this will forgive the essay. i started posting to this art blog ten years ago in 2013 when i was just at the very end of high school, uploading short animations i'd made for one of my final projects, preparing myself for art school where i was gearing up to become an illustration/animation student.

i went into my art foundation course in 2014, still thinking i was going to be going into storybook illustration or with faint hopes of becoming like a concept artist for game/animation, although even then i'd started thinking about patterns...

and then in 2015 i did go into my BA, going in for that illustration with animation degree that... usually when i talk about it in real life, i say didn't really feel like the best place for me. if i think back, the best things i got out of it were two of my best friends, one of whom is now my partner. looking back on my BA era, there's some bits of sketchbook stuff...

and while i was at university my main fandoms were thunderbirds are go and x-men for a bit... these are from the end of 2015 into the beginning of 2016...

then for a little while i was doing this still sort of pastel-ish lineless situation:

and i alternated between that and this thin fineliner type work (pretty sure all of the linearted pieces were done on paper and scanned, and all the lineless were graphics-tablet-only) - it was in this style that i started to offer commissions for the first time too.

and i also had fineliner-lined work in sketchbooks that i coloured with marker and posca pens, the colours of which were generally a bit more intense just based on not being able to slide the hue/saturation around on paper:

also 2016 was when i discovered the spongebob musical just after it's trial run in chicago (which ended in july of 2016) and i started making fanart at that point... which would have the biggest effect on the way i drew (and i did end up handing in a piece of spongebob musical fanart as one of my art school homeworks lmao)

from summer 2016 until early 2017 things were still quite soft and pastelly in my digital art, colour-wise:

and then suddenly everything got whacked up to 100% on saturation. also i was using the binary tool to give everything really thin pixel lineart for some reason.

then i went on vacation in summer 2017 and didn't draw for maybe a month? just short of? and when i came back i decided to change everything up again... giving characters blobbier, more ugly-cute faces with large squinting eyes and big nostrils and i was worrying a lot less about making anything look smooth, lineart-wise. i turned off the pen stabiliser in SAI and let it wiggle.

then... the spongebob musical opened on broadway in late 2017, i went to see it live in person for the first time... and my whole brain was ENTIRELY consumed by my love of it. i was putting that david zinn inspired pattern explosion into everything, even if it wasn't sbm fanart.

as we go into 2018, i started colouring my lineart. my biggest interest was still broadway musicals (with spongebob at the top of the list)

i think summer 2017 - early 2018 is probably my favourite art era, i was at my most bright and colourful and exciting... although i know in my actual real life i was struggling a lot with my home situation and i had been for some time. art was definitely my escapism back then, and i think a lot of the time i drew really bright, joyful stuff to try and inject that feeling into myself.

as for my university work, i was putting my focus into 3D paper-mache puppets:

and i was also starting to do more repeat patterns, mostly inspired by things around me. i'd learned how to make patterns actually tile and repeat in 2017, so made a few during my time at uni just to accompany some of my projects, but never as the focus of them. one of my university tutors told me that maybe i should put more focus on doing surface pattern, and maybe applying it to textiles, but i said i wasn't interested.

i graduated from my BA in the summer of 2018, and immediately began volunteering at the whitworth art gallery doing anything i could - stewarding, helping with arts and crafts, dancing with families...

in 2019 i was still very colourful... i was trying out more chunky colouring on characters skintones that i think was def inspired by tumblr artist jadenvargen:

but the blobbyness and ugly-cute style of drawing faces was gone by here, and i think... the way i drew characters probably had better *anatomy*, proportions were maybe a bit more realistic...

in 2020 i started adding the black shading to under the chins and some other places on characters' bodies because i started watching the anime my hero academia with my brother, lmao (and i was starting to pastelise colours a bit again, these are the most pastel-ish examples) my lineart has really smoothed back out too, though i never turned my pen stabiliser back on in SAI. i think my hand just adjusted. probably seems a bit insane to miss that, but i do.

by the end of 2020, the almost-year of lockdown over cobid had... made me a bit insane, i think, and i moved out of my mother's house and into a flat with a friend from university.

in 2021 i think things were much the same... i think from this point on is where things have sort of settled. i don't want to say stagnated, but i do think things have been very... like this for a while.

2022 - got the most exciting examples out...

also i was very into these little frames in 2022.

and then on to 2023! in 2022, i did begin trying to shift gears a bit -- hoping to put more energy into sewing and making products (like my tutor has suggested back in uni, even though i'd really resisted the idea.) i sold at a few in-person markets during winter of 2022, but got disheartened by the amount of money i had to sink in up front to sign up for a spot...

which has made me VERY grateful for the people who have supported me via online sales. it has really helped me stay afloat in 2023 - AND it has felt more wonderful than i can describe that there have been people interested in my work... especially when a lot of it has been my original designs, rather than the fanart that i expect a lot of people initially followed me for.

i've also... in the past 2 years... branched out a bit more when it comes to 'being an artist' - and have had the opportunity to deliver arts & crafts workshops with local refugee & asylum seeker support charity, afrocats. it's taken me to their home base in a church to hotels across the city where asylum seekers were temporarily placed while waiting on their new homes, and of course to my beloved whitworth art gallery, where we welcomed visitors from all backgrounds: from the typical white middle class visitors the gallery usually expects, to all the refugee visitors coming into the space for the first time.

and through my volunteering at the whitworth, i showed up so often they decided they might as well pay me. so i've also become a facilitator of... creative play sessions, my favourites of which have been outdoors. monthly, year-round, we have 'outdoor art club', where i get to paint with mud and make potions from leaves with kids & families - here you can see me tell you a little bit about it in this video below with 'crempog' a puppet character that makes videos about activities for kids and families around manchester (my bit starts at 01:10 although i am in the intro and thumbnail haha)

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and then of course the summer 'PLAYTIME' activities we've had the past two years: scrap studio in 2022, and play market in 2023. it's the best freelance gig ever -- just to hang out and encourage families to be creative and have fun.

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in working more in these new avenues... outside of being - as i've called myself for a long time - "an internet artist"... i've found myself more interested in this sort of thing. in being a "real world artist" too. in doing surface pattern design, and being a workshop facilitator, i find myself wanting to put more energy into these sorts of projects.

in 2023 i've also dabbled a little bit more in youtube videos! i have had a channel for a while and have made videos in previous years, but 2023 has been the year i've done the most in. admittedly most of them haven't been about my art, and more just like... random things that interest me (the spongebob musical in particular) but i've really been enjoying video editing. that's kind of an art form too, so i'm including it here!

moving forward, want to keep putting even more of my energy into other things. my shop, with a bigger range of products to offer. workshops in real life, where i can make a difference.

as for my art blog... i feel like i've done the least drawing in many years in 2023, and... well, things have been weird and complicated for a bit in my real life. i hope to draw for fun a bit more again very soon, and to return to doing things in more of a wild and crazy way, to be more creative and exciting with the way i draw things. still, here's some of my favourites from 2023:

thank you so much to everyone who has borne witness to my art journey this past decade!!! i hope you will stick with me, who knows, maybe for another 10 years if tumblr holds out. especially a big thank you to everyone who has ever commissioned me, or bought anything from my store, you literally keep me able to make art at all and i cannot, cannot, cannot overstate how much it means to me.

i'm moving homes soon, possibly into very cramped temporary conditions for a little while before HOPEFULLY starting my real life with my partner. if i can take one more moment to plug my work, then [here is a link to my online shop] and [here is my ko-fi page too.]

cheers, cheers, cheers!

- LOREN 🌈🍍🎉

#also: i did post. monster high and steam powered giraffe fanart on my main blog when i was in high school #in 2012/2013 it seems like i did absolutely LOADS of fanart for both of those fandoms but didn't cross-post it to my art blog #and uh. well. i'm not about to do it now hahaha

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genericpuff · 5 months

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Do you have any recommendations for comics on tapas? I'm rather new to the app so I wondered if you had any. Sorry if someone already asked!

Oh, so many! Tapas was one of my OG homes waaay back in the day, when I was still getting into drawing comics (back then it was gag-a-days). I spent a lot of time reading comics on there and it was one of my first introductions to comic platforms in general (next to SmackJeeves, RIP).

Rock and Riot - 1950's LGBTQ+ gangster teenagers getting into shenanigans and turf wars. Very cute and fun and adorable <3

Monster Pop! - Monster girls who are besties! This one has some real gorgeous art especially if you like the original vibes of S1 LO, lots of bright beautiful colors and lineless shapes. The creator of this comic, mayakern, now develops comfortable and eco-friendly skirts with her wife and pals for plus-sized folks! (they have pockets!)

A BETTER PLACE - Young girl Hannah and her little brother Theo find something cool in the woods. Children becoming gods. This was one of those comics that had some REALLY cool "you had to be there" time travel elements that aren't quite as immersive in hindsight (I was one of those people who were there and DAMN it was awesome), but it's still absolutely worth the read and it operates as a sort of prequel to another one of Harry Bogosian's comics on the platform.

Fail by Error - This comic is long since done with, its creator having moved on to bigger things, but at one point in time, this was the titan series on Tapas, before the platform became predominantly BL's and isekais. Fail by Error was truly one of the best of the best of Tapas-hosted comics from its golden era of comedy comics. Also the creator made art for me once and I still have it! <3

(my babieees <3)

RandoWis - funny gag strip is funny ! He also draws an MMO-themed comic that - coincidentally - when I double checked, looks like it stopped updating in 2021 until two days ago. So yeah, good time to check that one out too!

Undying Happiness - Naomi takes a chance on love and decides to meet up with a guy she met online. He turns out to not look like the guy in the photos in the most hilariously absurd way.

Deep Fried Pudge - Okay, this is a really weird inclusion because like... this comic isn't good. This comic is painfully bad. Like, "roll your eyes into the back of your skull at your dad's stupid jokes" bad. This comic has not stopped updating daily since 2012. It literally just had its 11 year anniversary. Every update is just a single panel either making some pun or just stating very innocent, inoffensive opinions. There are four thousand of these things. And every single one is done with the same art style and joke structure as before, the comics from today look and feel like a 7 year old made them the exact same way they did 10 years ago, as if trapped in a hellish time capsule of its own design, and I love it, I freaking love it. Its existence quite literally defies human nature. Reading it and attempting to comprehend why it exists is like staring into the eyes of some Eldritch god that chose peace over chaos. Pudge will outlive all of us. Pudge will outlive the universe. All hail Pudge.

#there are definitely tons more that i haven't unlocked in my brain #i spent so much of my formative webcomic years on tapas man #i miss the way it used to be #like yeah ok it has actual branding and its own originals catalogue now #but what it is today is only a fraction of what it used to be in terms of its community and culture #i haven't been on tapas since 2020ish and like #it was a good decision to leave #but damn i miss it sometimes #there are some genuinely amazing hidden treasures on it that either got buried or just stopped updating but are still 100% worth reading #webcomic recommendations #tapas #tapastic #webtoon recommendations #ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything

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saysike-skedoodles · 2 months

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TMM Cartoon Network Bumpers

[BTW- if you're an account that does NSFW/ Fetish content, I kindly ask for you to not interact with my work. Please don't take this the wrong way, I respect your interests, but I'm uncomfortable with that content and wish to not engage with it :] ]

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You know how TMM (and my artstyle as a whole really) is inspired from cartoons during the early 2010s? Cartoon Network shows in particular. Well, I decided to walk down memory lane and take a look at the bumpers that would've been running during CN's "check it" era/rebrand. I have a bit of a fascination with bumper ads from channels like Cartoon Network and [adult swim] as it is. I dunno I just like seeing the style changes over the years, they're cool. So I took a bit of time to research their look, try to find fonts and whatnot, and made this!

Bex was honestly a struggle to try and adapt her colour palette to Cartoon Network's "check it" palette. I think it's obvious why. Silly and Stacy already shared similar colours and meanwhile Bex has purple and green. What I will add is that the lineless style was definitely a lot more difficult than I thought, I think it was because of the fact the outlines used are usually white. The thing is though, is that the trio has white as their primary fur colour. Soooooo yeah, fun, anyways, I definitely wanna do more of these fake bumpers, especially the ones with the scenes popping up as 3 small squares, the one where its almost like portals/windows and they pop up. That and I just wanna draw the trio altogether using the CN colour palette :]

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I don't own the CN logo of course, i only have it there to try and emulate the TV bumper style

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Deviantart

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Art Tumblr

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TMM Official Tumblr

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[all content I post is automatically 13+ if not stated in the title or the content itself]

#too many misadventures #tmm #oc character #art #oc #ocs #digital art #digital drawing #my art #cartoon network #cn colour palette

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ot3 · 2 years

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biggest art inspos?

@lycheestew sorry it took me three and a half months to answer this you sent it to me right around the time i finished my composition writeup and i was like 'good god i can not spend another two seconds thinking about art right now ill answer this later' and then well i just kept not doing it

but anyway. heres uhhh some stuff that was formative/that i am presently into.

Ever since I was in middle school I have been OBSESSED with tracy j. butler's work, she does the webcomic lackadaisy cats and everything she draws is just masterful. Her fully polished paintings are beautiful but I'm choosing to show some of her pencil sketches here because... well... just look at them. like holy shit. I think you could probably trace my love of drawing more stylized proportions with a disproportionate amount of detail on the clothing to her stuff. she also just does magnificent character work and i have a print of her expression tutorial that i kept hanging right by my bed to look at for years.

i was also, as you all know, incredibly incredibly deep into homestuck fandom for the majority of my Learning to Draw years so there were a few artists who were big during peak homestuck posting era that were very formative for me.

in particular i was really into @xamag-homestuck's stuff because i just found the way she stylized characters super pleasing. i spent a bunch of time trying to emulate that.

there was also someone who went by putoshop, i don't know what their current socials are if any but the old blog's gone, and i can specifically site their art as being the thing that got me to start trying lineless stuff

i also have loved loved loved everything @ggdgart has ever done and in particular their use of color in cucumber quest imprinted on me a ton and is something i have drawn a lot of inspiration from over the years. on top of that they have a wonderful sense of fashion and their character designs are just great. cucumber quest rules.

i also was a kid who was really into western cartoons and didn't start watching anime with any regularity until i was in college so a lot of those meant a lot to me. a lot of my early drawing was done trying to copy/trace avatar the last airbender screenshots and while i think it definitely got me started i honestly feel like it had less of a long-lasting impact on the way my art looks than other stuff that i didn't even watch a ton of. i was never super deep into either show as media but i always absolutely loved the aesthetics happening in samurai jack and my life as a teenage robot. they both had that excellent geometric midcentury vibe. more recently in comparison to those two, i also feel in love with the background style in gravity falls and would say that was pretty influential.

right now as for present inspiration i'm absolutely obsessed with everything that deb jj lee does because, well. once again i find really the only adequate thing to say is 'holy shit'

their stuff rules soooooooo hard

i'm also extremely in love with angela sung's art.

the textures! the colors! the shapes! no misses here

im sure theres more stuff i could bring up but this is what's coming to me at the time so ill leave it here

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