Clarartsa

Everyone's favourite egg

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.

I told you it was coming soon. Big ups to @henghost for inspiring me to slip into a fugue state and emerge eight hours later with this monstrosity. I'm genuinely proud of how Taylor this Taylor looks. I'd listen to this album if she made it.

Victoria towering over Amelia, golden and strong, absolutely able to tear her to shreds. Looking down at her with utter disgust, tinged with horror and fear she desperately tries to hide.

Fragile One standing behind her in solidarity with their Host. Shield and arms ready to protect, golden light shining with awe.

Ameila cowers before her, hunched over with fear, looking up at her with burning fever of obsession. Even as Victoria looks down at her like she's the scum on her boot, she can't stop the sickly sweet rot in her heart.

The Queen Shaper looms dark behind Amelia, utterly dwarfing all of them. A true eldritch creature of constantly shifting flesh. Biology personified. Not caring what their Host does, like a scientist looking at bacteria.

Amy cowers before Vicky.

Fragile One cowers before The Queen Shaper.

sees art with sketchy thin line art: ah yes i want my art to look like that

The body as a temple.

I, like many North American children, was raised in a very Protestant household. I don't know how things have changed in the church since the late 90s/early 2000s, but when I was a child things like tattoos and piercings (especially on AMAB kids) was anathema.

Naturally, as teenagers do, I rebelled. I drew patterns like this on paper since middle school. In high school I started drawing it on my body. The belly of my arm was the number one canvas. I drew on it almost daily. I used every colour of pen I could get my hands on, every spare moment of class time or free time to make my arm a work of art. For that I was punished. A teacher gave me detention for doing this instead of reading, the air cadets thought it was a tattoo and forbade it, even my mother was shocked by it and had my pastor give me a talking to about the evils of ink. What did that result in? At age 18 I got my first real tattoo, then another, then two more. I stopped because of money, but if that were no object I would be covered head to toe.

So what's the point of this story of teenage drama? The way I was raised, the body was an ideal, Protestant temple. For those that have never been inside a Protestant church (at least NA ones around me), they are bereft of things like icons. There are no paintings of the saints, certainly none of Christ. And our bodies should reflect that and be "clean" for God. I deeply disagree with this notion. If our bodies are indeed temples, they ought to be like the Sistine Chapel, or Saint Basil's Cathedral: decorated with works of art.

Of course that art doesn't have to be religious in origin and I don't intend this to be a message solely for Christians. This is simply the perspective of someone that was neck deep in the church from childhood onwards. I don't hold any grudges for that, it simply was my experience.