spilling my mind on paper

While you can't ever guarantee revenges, your chances of getting art back are always higher if you target people with positive ratios. There's a lot of people on site who have +75% attack ratios (meaning they've drawn way more art than they have received). Go target them! They deserve love AND are way more likely to return art!

DO NOT fall for random celeb tiktokker with 50k followers who is, for the seventh year in a row, promising they will be revenging all the art they get all while their ratio sits at a whooping 5%! There's always some people like this and a lot of younger folk fall for it again and again. And then these people don't even bother with commenting on the art they receive

In my experience, it's younger folk or people who are newer to art that will go more apeshit (affectionate) about the art they receive. If you really wanna make someone's entire week, find yourself someone who is new to AF or someone who has just started drawing and give them a lil something, they will adore it!

Artfight can be a great opportunity to make friends. I've met some wonderful people through exchanging art there. Use the search function to find characters tagged as things you have an interest in and go ham. Chances are, you may meet someone with similar interests who may end up becoming a long term friend.

While receiving revenges is great, don't try to guilt trip people for them. Don't go around posting comments on people's profiles like "If I draw for you will you revenge me??" Just draw for the person if you'd like to draw for them, don't do it expecting the whole situation to be a transaction

A lot of people will mention in their profiles whether they are revenging or not. It's a good idea to check that out if you are interested in revenges- But never take these as a 100% guarantee

Comment on art you have received! It doesn't need to be a deep comment. Sometimes gushing over it and dropping 30 emojis and a big thank you gets the point across. It can be rather daunting to not receive any confirmation that the person you drew for even saw the art you made for them.

Use the opportunity to practice things you wouldn't normally! You can't 100% guarantee a revenge, but challenge yourself to draw:

types of characters that interest you but you wouldn't personally have as OCs, OR that you aren't commissioned to draw a lot (e.g., the gender you draw the least, diverse bodies, etc.)

angles and poses you're not confident in, to practice anatomy and perspective

in experimental styles you want to try, like chibi or cartoon or realistic

compositions you wouldn't normally, like with specific colors, elements, or backgrounds. e.g.: i want to give tarot-style pieces this year because i'd like to experiment more with abstract symbolism and that's something missing in my portfolio!

And don't even get me started on the poster design!! I gasped when I saw the tag line on the trailer

Whakapapa. Whānau. Utu.

I'm Ezra. You can use they or he pronouns for me. My pen name is Ezra Lamdan, though you may see some of my older stories published under "E. M. Lamdan." I'm a secular, anti-zionist Jew, a Palestine solidarity organizer in my local community, and a writer of vaguely literary speculative fiction. My askbox is always open so feel free to ask me any questions you have about Jewishness, organizing, or especially my work!

About my work:

I write speculative fiction, usually science fiction, fantasy, Weird fiction, or some blend thereof. I call my work "vaguely literary" because I consider it more character-driven than plot-driven. But it is second-world and yes, there is always plot, so I have to be wishy-washy about these sorts of designations. I care a great deal about prose and spend an unreasonable amount of time nitpicking at the sentence level.

I tend to write about navigation of generational trauma and the potential for collective liberation, only possible through the pursuit of solidarity. My work is anti-colonial and anti-capitalist in nature. I seek to use fiction as a vehicle for the disruption of Zionist, white supremacist, hegemonic narratives. The characters in my stories are almost always queer.

I am drawn to writers like N. K. Jemisin, Arkady Martine, Ursula K Le Guin, and Octavia Butler. My work is deeply indebted to Afrofuturism in its approach to diaspora and historical memory, something I hope to honor. My fiction has also been greatly influenced by Marxist critical theory; Walter Benjamin has probably shaped my thinking the most, but I also draw a lot from Fanon, Fred Moten's Undercommons, Christina Sharpe's concept of wake work, and countless others, I won't just sit here listing theorists all day don't worry

I write short fiction sometimes, but also I'm working on an in-progress novel, a second-world sci-fi with some fantasy bells on. This is the first book of an intended trilogy, which, if you follow, you'll probably be hearing about a lot. I really hope to write a draft of this novel during the first year of my MFA. Speaking of -

Some facts about me!

I am a fiction MFA candidate, starting this fall. I will also concurrently be teaching English 101. So hopefully, there will be a lot of writing productivity from me over the months to come.

I've been peripheral to the publishing industry, working as a freelance ghostwriter, for the past... 4? 5? years. This has been a very financially precarious time for me as you might imagine. Please do not ask me any questions about the ghostwriting, I am not able to answer them, and suffice it to say it's nowhere near as interesting as it sounds.

I'm in my late 20s #itgetsbetter

I have 2 cats and I used to work with horses, so animals are a very important part of my life.

I have a few published short stories. None of them are particularly recent but that's okay, there will be recent ones soon, keinehora. Some of them can be found on my Patreon, where one is free (a really good one, imho) and the rest are available under my lowest contribution tier.

On a related note. I have a Patreon, linked below! You can follow for free to see my newsletters and read that free short story. I post every month talking about what's going on, what I'm reading, what I'm writing, usually a snippet of the latter, and at the end of every newsletter, a picture of one of my animals.

I also have a website:

I am always open for tag games, ask games, anything like that. I look forward to storytelling with all of you.

A note about my blog under the readmore, to be clicked if I looked familiar to you -

🌸 Cheri's v.3.0 Portraits Are Here! 🌸

After approximately 2 months of work, I've finished the first revamped portrait batch for Cheri. This includes their basic seasonal portraits, romanceable character-exclusive portraits (beach and bathhouse), and additional outfits alongside their alt versions. The extra outfits for this batch are:

Their iaido training gear, with tied/untied sleeves;

Loungewear, with warm and cold weather variants that is based off of the nemaki I've drawn Cheri in in certain art (1, 2);

An alt version of their summer outfit (with kimono off);

Shooting Star Festival date outfit, and;

The travelling outfit that they wore in the winter before the story starts (which is part of their Lore Portraits™️; more lore to come!).

This has been a massive labor of love, because not only did I do a ton of extra work for the additional outfits and emotes on top of that, I also fully rendered every single outfit layer for fashion study reasons. Here you can see how every layer of their outfit affects Cheri's silhouette, even if slightly!

The underlayers also work as bases for some of their subsequent outfits, so there's no such thing as wasted effort on my end.

Some Extra Thoughts

Aside from the portraits, I've also talked quite a bit about my process for making these designs and some character discussion in my prior posts, if you're interested in reading about them:

Spring | Summer | Fall | Winter | Dichotomy Between Cheri's Iaido and Date Outfits

I've come a long way since I did my first ever portraits, so seeing the obvious improvements in both my imitation of the FoM style and my own rendering techniques has been very satisfying. Now I can finally move on to the second set of seasonal outfits and the new extra portraits for wedding and other outfits I've drawn Cheri in 🌸

As a bonus, some slightly more scandalous versions of the loungewear/bathhouse portraits (which are actually not very scandalous considering the new bachelorette, but it is for Cheri's standards) under the cut!

@artbyeloquent — WAAHHHHH ELO i didn’t mean to miss this!!! tumblr hates inboxes i stg bc it not only didnt notify me but it wouldn’t let me answer this ask with photos?? im blaming mercury rx and improvising lol

so! for my vampire folk gothic horror wip affectionately called vrp:

370311 — dried blood

00001a — raven hair

c5c5c5 — smoke and stone

4f200f — church pews and old growth

Second HD reference for AF is live on Patreon! All tiers ($2+) get to view the full, HD piece 👀 you won't see the full piece on my socials, and it only goes live on ArtFight later this week!!

I just realised, i can ask here

So I'm a cis male, and recently when walking through the woods I took my shirt off (i guess for sake of context, I'm about 5'8", slim, hairy), it was my first time ever doing something like that, i felt so incredibly scared initially. However, to work on my rather severe issues with trauma, my anxiety, body confidence issues, and just frankly to be more comfortable due to how hot it was, i did it