Illustrator & Printmaker

Dear @sylvanbrushes

I don’t redraw my pages for a few reasons. 

(1) If i’m drawing Namesake for a trillion years, I cannot draw other things, and while I love Namesake, it’s not the only story I have to tell.

(2) While some edits to get the book ready for print are a-ok, I discourage redraws because like - current you is always better then past you, BUT future you will also be better then current you. And current you could not have improved without past you fucking up a bit and trying. The first step to being good at something is sucking at something. If you start redrawing, you are basically constantly competing with yourself, and that’s an awful dynamic to live with. I used to think my art peaked at chapter 20, and now that I’m on chapter 32, chapter 20 looks like ASS to me. It’s never-ending

(3) Serials are about evolution, if a reader wants a consistent story, they can read a graphic novel. 

(4) I’ve learned to enjoy and appreciate the mistakes of the past, as they are the foundation that had to exist for my comic to even grow to it’s current point. 

(5) REDRAWING IS ACTUALLY REALLY HARD and kills the initial charm of the story. Because it’s NOT just redoing the art. The paneling is also going to be less strong. And the text. And the colors. And recapturing the initial charm of the original page is very difficult. Any new page you make to replace it is going to look more beautiful, but it’s not going to feel the same. A lot of readers got attached to the older art too - anytime I change a cover, everybody tells me to put the old one back.

(6) You don’t actually need the comic to look nice. Most people will read stuff that looks like butts if the story is good and the art is communicative. You mainly need good art for marketing, and you can just draw marketing art specifically for that.

(7) The only person who cares about the original art looking bad is yourself, because you are comparing yourself to others and how their art fucking slapped already on chapter 1, but those guys also feel like their chapter 1 sucks. Nobody is happy with chapter 1. Moving on is for the best.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/05/07/justice-league-dark-apokolips-war-john-constantine-king-shark/

There are a lot of things that bother me about purity culture, but I think the most disturbing is that it clouds the very definition of consent, and then teaches this confusing version (you must consent to deep dives into your trauma and how it affects you for the benefit of strangers who have already decided you’re a bad person, and not consenting to that automatically makes you an abuser, also no one can consent to reading or thinking about disturbing content ever because thinking about it means you want it irl) to young, vulnerable, and often traumatized individuals, thus making it harder to understand their trauma and easier for them to ignore the real warning signs of abuse (like demanding that you agree with the abuser otherwise you’re literally the worst and most harmful person ever) because it teaches that abusers only come in one type, and that all abusers are “nasty shippers”.

the fact that most of the rest of the time he’s going around with his doublet unlaced to show his cute embroidered undershirt (i looked up if it had a specific name in tudor fashion and like it does it’s called a chemise which im used to meaning ‘women’s underwear’ for most of modern fashion history, and chemises don’t often have embroidery and embellishments because like, they’re not meant to be seen, altho it’s not uncommon for wealthier people)

he’s essentially wearing the equivalent of the unbottoned shirt to show a cute lacy bralette underneath

And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.

NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!

This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”

All the Japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any Japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style - they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

male or female

hero or villain

sea or land

even in the snow

Once I got out of grad-school and started working, at exactly age 25, I figured it was time to get serious because I was “too old for this stuff” and frankly I was afraid of being judged. 

I sold all my comics, I stopped reading fanfiction, I stopped playing video games. All of it. It’s not that I never, ever watched anything “geeky” or spent a weekend binge-reading a kink-meme, but when I did, it was rare and I’d feel guilty about it like it was time wasted. I’d keep it all to myself, you know? And without any kind of inspiration, I eventually stopped drawing. After all, I didn’t need it for my “serious job,” so why bother? Unfortunately, my former skill is so atrophied now it’s nearly lost, but worse than that, it’s stressful now instead of the thing I loved to do for most of my life.

What was I doing instead? Well, I’d work my miserable, toxic job, come home and worry about how far behind everyone else I was, and how weird I was compared to all my colleagues. I’d go out with people and do the things they liked doing, but I only pretended to. But I’m not great at that and pretending to be someone else ate me alive. Unsurprisingly, by 31, my anxiety and depression was not in a great place, and I fuckin’ snapped. Not just because of this stuff, of course, but it honestly contributed. I quit my job and left town.

Suddenly I was completely alone, no job, no friends, and no reason to pretend to be someone else. So, I started doing all the things I’d given up. I read all the fanfiction I wanted, I bought a Playstation and an SNES and played them for hours. I bought back every comic book I loved, watched every Marvel movie I missed, and caught up on my favorite characters. I started traveling around just going to cons for the first time (NYCC, GeekGirlCon, DragonCon, etc). In fact, at @geekgirlcon and DragonCon especially, I saw groups of women who were 60+, just fucking enjoying things, and it made me feel so much better about my future. I’m not even joking, I literally cry every time I think about it, because I never realized how scared I was about aging in a world that thinks I’m already a decade too old for the things I love. Suddenly, that wasn’t so scary. 

And then I just stopped pretending that I wasn’t into this stuff. I mean all of it, even the stuff no one understand, even the stuff people openly make fun of, even smutty fanfiction. 

And look, I’m not saying this cured my depression, or that everything is perfect. For one, I picked a city that’s awful for geeks and I’m trying to figure out where to move and how. For another, I lost six years of making like-minded friends, and it’s hard to find them now because we’re all so worried about being judged and online – the space that was always a refuge for me as a loner weirdo growing up – is now apparently a Children of the Corn. But I’m happier here, actually fucking liking things, than being the unobjectionable robot woman I’m apparently supposed to be. 

This is gonna sound weird to you guys, but when I first started writing fanfic and sending stories to fanzines to be published back in 1991, in my first fandom all of the fans and writers and editors and readers I met were shocked that I was 17 because they were all in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I was the outlier. I was an aberration.

Wanna know when young people started discovering fandom en masse? In the mid 1990s, when AOL got their internet gateway.

All the folks who ran fannish mailing lists and conventions and published ‘zines and posted fanfic online were over 18, because email and IRC and Usenet and FTP sites and listservs were primarily used by adults because they were almost exclusively college students, government employees, and academics. And the users of gated communities like BBS, GEnie, Compuserv, and AOL all skewed older. Only Prodigy was actually aimed at kids, because prior to the mid-to-late 1990s, children weren’t getting online until they went to university.

And what kids found was the fandom that adults had built online, after being a part of it offline for decades.

Even when FFN was launched, the people who initially posted there were the same people who had been posting fanfic to the internet for a decade: THE GROWN-UPS.

I was 26.

I didn’t even know I liked tech; for my first fic, I needed a webpage, it was ugly, so I opened it to look at the code, saw my first html, and fell in love.  Now I’m an analyst who tests programs for statewide and even national use.

I didn’t know I liked people; I thought something was wrong with me, that I seemed to always say the wrong thing, that I seemed to think wrong.  Instead, it just turns out how I think is just fine; there are so many people like me and I still meet them to this day.  

I didn’t know I could make and maintain friendships, short or long term; as it turns out, not a huge problem.  I make and maintain friendships of almost two decades and still made new friends as of this year.

When my son came out to me as gay, I was ready for the question he wouldn’t ask that I had to answer right then; I love you.  Of course it’s okay. And why the fuck are you awake and messaging me at three in the goddamn morning?  YOU HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW.  Without all the friends who told me what they needed that day for themselves, I’m not sure I would have known that was something he needed to hear.  Without my friends, I wouldn’t have known to even expect–much less how to answer–a thousand questions (at least) he had, and where to have him look for more.

(Also didn’t hurt fandom was the one place I could be sure was all the happy ending gay love stories any gay child would need to read and knew exactly where to send him.  Fuck knows the pro version still isn’t exactly thick on the ground though it’s getting better.)

When I first started, I was mentored by an older woman in her forties-fifties, and on her webpage she had a log of all this shit she’d done just in the last year; traveled to hang out with fan friends, all the fic she wrote that year, all these people she met, this wonderful life.  She posted to all these sites, and she posted to mailing lists her opinion and argued without fear or self-consciousness.

All I could think is I want to be her.

You think men just somehow magically get powerful as they pass into adulthood?  No.  They are mentored by, they get given chances to move up from, they learn from older men in their social networks, including in predominantly male “fannish” space.  Power, knowledge, opportunities move through those networks–and don’t kid yourself, they are primarily masculine networks.  By narrowing your networks to women within one or two years of your age, the “lol thirty-year-olds” rhetoric cuts you off from resources you might use to get stronger.  That’s a feature, not a bug.

It’s not a contest to see who can get by without them. It’s not cheating to look at a thing in order to know what the thing looks like.

USING REFERENCES FOR ART IS NOT ‘CHEATING’!!!

If you can draw/paint without references, great!  But if you need to use them, and feel that your art can be bettered by using references, please, use them!  This is one of the biggest tips I can give to artists, is USE REFERENCES! 

Anyone who would dare to attack someone for using references after ‘recognizing a pose’ is a dipshit, who doesn’t know a thing about art.

Do you know who else used references for their art?

Norman Rockwell

Alphonse Mucha

Gustav Klimt

Toulouse Lautrec

Vincent Van Gogh

Paul Gauguin

Edgar Degas

Gil Elvgren

Frida Kahlo

Pablo Picasso

Disney Studios

You can even use other artists work, it’s just a matter of respecting the artist. Just be very careful and ASK (if you can) before posting any art you made that directly references an artists work. If you cannot contact them, let people know or link to the reference you used. Do not claim the work is your own or let people assume it by not saying anything at all-that’s where the call out culture is. Emulating master works was REQUIRED for half my undergrad classes in painting- and my original work was so much better because I studied someone with more experience and knowledge of the craft.

Unless you have a very good grasp on your subject matter trying to draw everything from memory is just going to hinder and frustrate you.

Study the masters.

Study real life.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

REFERENCE

IT ISN’T CHEATING

Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening

Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.

Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

Do you need to distract yourself? Or are you simply bored? Here are some great websites to make the time pass.

create pixel art

Awesome photo editor and art program, all free…!

Totally free transparent textures

make a cute chibi

draw some cool generative art

be a graffiti creator

create a picassohead (you don’t need to be a picasso to do so)

paint online

another awsome site to create pixel art on

and another one

create your own mandala

or color one

create an avatar

or you can try creating your own superhero

here you can interact with organisms in different environments to see how to music changes

here’s a website that translates the time into hexidecimal colours,

Here is a website where you can travel along a 3D line into the infinite unkown

here is a website where you can listen to rain with or without music

Need a model in a certain pose for drawing? here

Want to build your own planet

here is a website where you can create your own galaxies

make your own pattern (very useful if you need a new background)

create next hit comic

make a city which looks like something from 90′s games

draw a mandala like design

jig saw puzzles

more jig saw puzzles to solve

create a stunning HTML5 animation - no coding!

make a movie

create and dress up dolls

play a piano

you can also play a guitar

create sounds

another sound creator

create a logo

design your dream home

sketch rooms

explore fashion trends and create your own sets

build a website

try this app for building a website

Or maybe start learning how to code!

design your own t-shirt or a beanie or sweatpants and order them

design your own phone case

pretend to be a graphic designer with this cool online tool

Make your own Glitch art

Here’s another glitch art maker

And another!

Holy hell, here’s a third!

make an image look like it was created by a commodore 64

freaking cool text generator!

Easy to use word processor

Make up really cool patterns or run your photos through it :)

Write an essay on anything with no hassle

Wanna see how something you write would look like if it was on JacksFilms YGS((Your Grammar Sucks videos on YouTube))?

Make pictures out of text

ASCII word generator

Need an idea for some fanart-here :D

Still haven’t found something that would float your boat? Try these:

watch a documentary

learn to code

do something yourself

workout with the help of this great youtube channels

learn things

play pokemon or zelda or other awesome old school games

waste your time on miniclip

play games at additing games

or try games at agame

calm your thoughts

the quiet place

it will be okay

vent or listen to someone

pour out your soul

explore the sky

look at art from around the world

virtually visit museum of iraq

explore world with arounder

create a music playlist

list through rare books

scroll useful science website

create sand art

brain games

try out tastekid and discover new favorite band or movie or book

interactive 3D anatomy

random street view

post a secret

create a family tree

find our what’s the difference between x and y

help scientists and become volunteer researcher

create your own font

read a classic short story

In the mood to read, but not sure exactly what book to go for?

scribble on maps

listen to letters

play with acrobots

listen to podcasts

make a bucket list

Ever want to see the most truly useless websites in creation?

Prank a friend with this blue screen of death!

Zone out watching the colors drip down

Maybe none of these peeked your interest-maybe you’ve been wanting to create an o.c, but never really knew how to start-or you just enjoy making O.C’s….

This masterlist is to help you in making your own OCs….it can also apply to developing RP characters i suppose! (´ヮ`)!

How to Write Better OCs:

basic tips on how to make your oc even better

tragic backstory? learn how to write one/make yours great

writing specific characters

a wordier, great guide on how to develop your character

kick out those vague descriptions and make them AWESOME

Character Development:

how to actually make an OC

Q&A (to develop characters)

more Q&As

giving your character a backstory

how to write an attractive character

Need an Appearance idea?

Humanoid generator? check

Here’s another one

and maybe if you didn’t like those this’ll work

Need Monsterpeople?

Well, then here ya’ go

Maybe you need Cats?

Diversity

adding more racial diversity

avoiding tokenism, AKA, how to add diversity to your cast not just because you “need” it

writing sexuality and gender expression (doesnt include non binary, if you have a good ref to that, please add on!)

masterpost on writing more diversity into your story

cultures of the world

guides to drawing different ethnicities (not just a great art reference, but also really helpful in appearance descriptions!)

Mary Sue/Gary Stu

Test to see if your character is a Sue

Explains subdivisions of Sues/Stus

Powerful Characters Don’t Have to Be Sues

Villains

villain generator

need an evil sounding name for your evil character? bam

villain archetypes

what’s your villain’s motive for being a villain?

Relationships

character perceptions (What your character thinks of themselves and what others think of them)

how to write strong relationships between two characters

8 ways to write better characters and develop their relationships with others

OCxLove Interest Handbook

develop your couple with good ol’ Q&A!

how to write realistic relationships

how to write relatives for your characters (this is more OC related to a canon character, but will help in writing family members in general)

ARCHETYPES

12 common archetypes

8 archetypes for male/female characters

female archetypes (goes pretty indepth from two main categories)

a list of archetypes

NAMES

how to name your character

random name generator

most common surnames

surnames by ethnicity

APPEARANCE

tips for better design

basic appearance generator

pinterest board for character design (includes NSFW and images of skeletons/exposed muscle (?) so tread carefully!)

clothing ref masterpost

Clothing generator

Another clothing generator

More clothing generator

Aaaand even more

Steam punk clothing

Char Style preference

Dress Generator

DETAILS

give your character better powers

a list of professions

proactive vs reactive characters

positive and negative traits

interest generator

skills generator

motivation generator

123 ideas for character flaws

list of phobias

Oh shit someone died

Backgrounds and stuff? yep

Quirks

Personality. you need that shit

Need something fandom related?

City generator hell yeah

location? got ya

World-building?

make your own god damn laws

Landscape.

Need Item names?

Fantasy/sci-fi/etc. medicine names

Stuff to make things more interesting.Weapons, clothes, treasures… whatever your characters need.

Item & Artifact Generators

Other stuffs!

Genre, Plot, & Story Prompt Generators

How did your characters meet?

how… how far was that joke gonna go?

Because if so I’d like to recommend Habitica!

You make a little avatar of yourself!

Totally customizable!

And!!! If you’re wheelchair bound, guess what! Wheelchairs for your avatar are free! Check it out!

You have the categories of Habits, Dailies, and a To-Do list

And every time you check something off, you get health and XP!

Huzzah! I leveled up!

Use your XP to buy items and rewards!

I'ma give my little avatar a new helmet!

You also can get little pets!

Go on quests!

Need a break? Check in at the Tavern for as long as you need!

It’s a habit tracker and to-do list… As a video game!

And here’s the best part - ITS FREE!