Cold Cuppa Ace

ok, so i just saw the most convoluted method for this ever, and i see a lot of convoluted methods for isolating/transparent-izing your lineart, and listen, you guys, my method is so fast i can literally do it in less than five seconds. here are some pictures to walk you through it.

here’s your lineart. see, it’s only one layer, and that layer is the background layer.

make a new layer.

return to your background. select the whole thing. copy it. go to the new layer. paste it. now you have a background layer with your lineart, and a new layer with your lineart. now, make sure you’re on your new layer, not the background layer, before you do this next part.

so you’ll note in my little hovery tool box thing i keep “layers” and “channels” together. this is the main reason i keep “channels” in a tab. so, you’re going to see that list of things – red green blue etc – and then at the bottom, there is a wee dotted circle. see? click that circle.

holy mother of god what’s happening here!!! a whole bunch of dotted lines vaguely outlining your lineart should appear. look down at your keyboard. find the delete button. hit it. then, go back to your “layers” tab.

see how on the new layer, the lineart seems to have disappeared? it hasn’t. look where it says “lock” just above the layers. while on the new layer, hit the square directly next to “lock.” then click anywhere in your image to deselect and make those lines go away. switch to your background layer and just turn the whole thing white. you can use a big brush or whatever, i like to select white and white and then just run a gradient across it. 

either way once your background is pure white, you’ll see what’s happened to your lineart. it looks kind of faded, right? that’s because what you just did was delete every ounce of white from your lineart. awesome, right? sure. but you don’t want your lines to look faded like this. this is easy to fix.

switch to your new layer. select a color – any color you want your lineart to be. i like to use colors other than black, like dark blues and reds and so on. get a big brush. run that brush over every inch of your lineart. see how it darkens up again?

so now your lineart is transparent, and just as nice and dark and vivid as before. make another layer, between the background and the lineart layer.

i used to use these but nowadays i tend to use the default airbrush in sai for uhh….everything…

EDIT: I JUST REMEMBERED I DID BRUSH TESTS SOME TIME AGO maybe these are interesting for ya

Yeah, like, I've been down this road literally dozens of times.

And it's always the same story.

Had Born This Way come out today, or had tumblr been more than a sack of server server crashes twinkling in David Carp's eye in 2009, the exact same accusations would be leveled at Gaga.

I know that because the exact same accusations were leveled at Gaga. So much so that she literally went back in the closet.

She came out in 2009. Born this way came out in 2011. The backlash was so massive and relentless that for years people (many of them queer) accused her of exploiting queer people for cash, and now she only ever calls herself "an lgbt ally" and "not a gay woman."

People act like they've been supportive of Gaga's LGBTQ+ activism and art for a decade, but they literally drove this woman to give up the label of bisexual and stop making queer art entirely (though she remains a relentless activist, and arguably there are queer reading to be made of songs like Hey Girl, unabashed, flagrantly, openly queer art seems not to be on her creative table anymore and I can't blame her for that).

And now people have the audacity to point to her as someone praiseworthy compared to the newest artist embracing queerness and queer rights? After they've literally traumatized her to the point that conversion therapists would be proud?

Like, please.

Get Gaga's names out your damn mouths.

Some of these people never grew up desperately clinging for hopes of validation from their idols in an environment of relentless hatred, queerbashing, fag drags, and isolation, and it shows.

Like, I'm really glad for all of them that they neither need nor want to be validated by Gaga or Swift or whomever else.

But for every self assured, grown ass queer, there's a trembling 11 year old who has just realized what this feeling they have means and is fucking terrified, and knowing that someone powerful and beautiful and loud and above all accessible to them, like a fucking pop star, thinks that they're amazing and everyone who hates them is wrong?

That shit saves lives.

God, I'm so fucking mad.

Like, these kinds of complaints always seem to be aimed at getting more and better queer art in the mainstream.

Just

Look at him

Look at him, Nickelodeon

Look at him

me when i see a bug irl:

Here’s the thing: I don’t think there’s anything naive or idealistic about SU as a show and how it depicts talking to people.

First and foremost, Steven does not ever successfully talk to people in a situation where he hasn’t protected himself. When he does, it’s a bad thing. Steven doesn’t get the upper hand on White because he makes bambi eyes at her and sniffles a little and goes “oh granny won’t you be nice to me” and she immediately falls over herself to go “oh my goodness you beautiful baby child how could I ever have thought to wrong you.”

Please, enjoy this smattering of beauty and wonder.

No and no. The only feeling you have after you hit 50 is a deep feeling of utter contempt for the young.

Okay, maybe I should tone down the salt, because it’s just possible you don’t really know how ageist and rude this is.

First, I’m going to answer this like it wasn’t rude. People over 50 are…people. They fall on the same sexual spectrums (gender and orientation and all that good stuff) that people under 50 do. Obviously people change as they age—emotionally, mentally and physically,—but trust someone who’s been in fandom since 1995 and has been sexually active (in one way or another) since 1976, plenty of older people read and write porn, and plenty of them look at attractive people and think “yeah she could get it.” If that is, indeed, the correct phrase. Sure there are people over 50 who aren’t sexual, just like there are people under 50 who aren’t sexual, but plenty of us are still interested in reading, writing and doing the sex.

Now…I’m going to go a little deeper, because this is just a fucking weird question. It is all but impossible, if you engage with pop culture at all, to be unaware that men over 50 like to consume and create porn. Jesus fucking Christ, if you watch TV at all, you know men over 50 feel sexual attraction in real life. There’s a whole branch of pharmacology dedicated to making sure they can act in that attraction. On this very hellsite, I’ve seen a lot of posts complaining about the age of actors compared to the age of the actresses playing their love interests. I can’t check my newsfeed without seeing a woman who is literally in the news because a man over 50 had sex with her and then paid her to not tell anyone about it.

Harvey Weinstein is 66, for fuck’s sake.

So I suspect the “people” you’re asking about are women, specifically women in fandom. I don’t know if I’m being asked to furnish proof that women over 50 aren’t really active in fan fiction and therefore what we say about fandom can be disregarded or if I’m being asked to furnish proof that women over 50 in fandom are actively sexual and therefore can be thought of as predatory, but either way, this is weird.

I’ve said this before, I know that having old people around when you are a young person can be weird and annoying. We can come off as judgmental, condescending and dismissive. Our weary cynicism can really harsh the buzz of youthful enthusiasm and that’s a drag sometimes. We post selfies and we have saggy boobs and grooves around our mouths and young women don’t always like seeing the future like that, especially when we also bitch about our health or our kids or jobs or the dreams we had to leave behind. Politically, especially if we’re white, we make you wonder who we voted for and if we really have your backs when it comes to social justice issues.

I get all that. And I could go on a rant about how important older women have been to fandom and how you literally would not have it if not for women who were in their fifties in 1975, but those rants are a dime a dozen on tumblr and while I do understand being uncomfortable around older women, I refuse to apologize for my presence in a space I have helped create over the years. I refuse to justify myself when I shouldn’t have to.

If this is a genuine question and you’re upset by my ranting, I do apologize. However, while it isn’t talked about much in Tumblr SJW circles, ageism is real and I see it all the time on this site. Think about all the misconceptions about your own generation and how annoying it is when some stupid article acts like you’re part of an Other monolith.

But this isn’t a question about people over 50 feeling sexual attraction or wanting to read/write porn; it’s a question about whether women are recognizably human once they’re no longer youthful. It’s misogyny right down to its core.

Though The Villages – which spans three counties with 40,000 homes and more than 70,000 residents – boasts 34 golf courses, nine country clubs, two downtown squares and a slew of restaurants and bars, getting lucky is one of the residents’ primary pastimes.