A Forever Growing Artist for Christ

November will be filled with positivity.

November will be filled with happiness.

November will be filled with blessings.

November will be filled with love.

November will be filled with progress.

November will be filled with opportunities.

Trick-or-treating is derived from the much older practices of guising, souling, and mumming

guising was a Scottish tradition of children wearing “disguises” to protect themselves from evil spirits, and going door-to-door to receive food or money. it dates back to at least the 16th century!

souling was a British/Irish practice of soulers (mainly children & the poor) going door-to-door and receiving soul cakes (’souls’) in exchange for song & prayer. this practices dates from the 15th century.

mumming was a similar British practice, though more commonly performed on Christmas and Easter. Amateur actors (mummers) would visit houses & pubs to perform folk plays in exchange for money. These often involved sword fights, and occasionally sword dances! 

Immigrants brought these practices to North America, where trick-or-treating itself developed in the 1920s. It’s gained popularity in a number of other countries since then, with different countries developing their own variations, but is still most commonplace in the U.S. and Canada.

Guising, souling, and mumming are still practiced today in certain parts of Britain (and elsewhere), though not on the scale that trick-or-treating has reached. Soul cakes look like this:

Opposite Puns!

Star Wars Visions is dropping Sept 22 and has a new, shiny trailer. To make things easier, I thought I’d make a big info post about Star Wars: Visions (that i started over a month ago and only finishing now lol) since I am SO excited for the long-overdue advent of Star Wars anime. I’m a big fan of anime and was really excited to see the variety of studios and styles being tapped for this project. I also included some links when possible to some of the studios’ past works!

1. “The Duel” (Kamikaze Douga)

In an alternate Jedi vs Sith universe based on Japanese lore, a former Sith wanders the galaxy and confronts an inner struggle of selflessness vs selfishness. The animation will be stylized as black and white with the exception of the lightsabers. The tie-in novel Ronin by Emma Mieko Candon will be based on this short. As I guessed, "The Duel” looks to be 3D animation since Kamikaze Douga is a CG animation studio. Their animated short Batman Ninja is a fun example of how they work with 3D animation.

2. “Lop and Ocho” (Geno)

A padawan/master story focusing on Lop, a young bunny Jedi padawan. This short will emphasize its natural scenery in contrast to imperial industrialization. Geno is a pretty new studio, but it’s mostly formed out of the former staff of the now-defunct Studio Manglobe, which made Samurai Champloo back in the early 2000s (although I’m unsure if any of the staff that worked back then are still with the studio).

3. “Tatooine Rhapsody” (Studio Colorido)

A Star Wars rock opera about a Tatooine garage band trying to make it big. It will be chibi style and feature cameos from existing characters like (chibi!) Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt. Studio Colorido has recently done action anime like Burn the Witch, as well as more sllce-of-life styles like Penguin Highway.

4. “The Twins” (Studio Trigger)

Follows a set of twins born to the Dark Side where the brother must save his Sith sister from the darkness, inspired by Luke and Leia. Hiroyuki Imaishi from Studio Trigger is directing this short—a brief highlight reel of his animation and directing work can be found here, I’m very excited that he seems to have a super dynamic style and I’m looking forward to seeing such vibrant and colorful concept artworks come to life.

5. “The Elder” (Studio Trigger)

A story that follows a classic master/apprentice relationship, and of the old generation giving way to the new. Studio Trigger is also animating this short in addition to “The Twins”—some examples of their past work are Little Witch Academia and Promare.

6. “The Village Bride” (Kinema Citrus)

Described as “romantic and bittersweet,” a fallen Jedi observes the traditions of a small mountain village through the titular village bride, inspired by traditional Japanese mountain culture.  This short apparently “approaches the Force in a really unique way.” Kinema Citrus’ recent works include Revue Starlight and Made in Abyss. Their staff members are former animators from Production IG and Bones, both of which are big and influential animation studios.

7. “Akakiri” (Science Saru)

A “beautiful yet painful” story about a Jedi and a princess. The concept art looks particularly gorgeous to me. Science Saru combines traditional and 3D animation techniques, and produced Food Chain from Adventure Time as their debut project.

8. “T0-B1″ (Science Saru)

A “cute and fun story” about a droid boy who wants to be a Jedi, also by Science Saru. Very much inspired by the classic and old-school anime Astroboy, and they even tapped one of the original sound designers who worked on Astroboy.

9. “The Ninth Jedi” (Production IG)

OH   B O I  ~

Eesh, coloring darkskin palms is one of those things i’m good at doing but not so good at explaining, so i’ll try my best on this one

Okay so starting off

The palm of a dark skin person’s hand is simply just a reflection of their undertone

Everyone has an undertone and black people are no different. A dark skin person’s palm is a part of their hand that has little to no melanin. Without all of that melanin the only thing that’s left is their undertone

Black people with an orange undertone tend to have orange looking palms

Black people with a neutral undertone tend to have a mixture of pinkish orange-ish looking palms

And black people with red undertones tend to have pink looking palms

So how exactly do you determine the palm color and undertone of a darkskin black person?

ight so  B  O O M,

When it comes to a black person with a neutral skin tone rather than raising the color up in the Spectrum simply just lighten the skin

Skin tone can be complicated so I made a few examples:

Make sure when coloring black palms to always add a gradient

(( Many artists have done this and I too am guilty of it so dont sweat it ))

For those of you that don’t know what 4c hair is, 4c hair is a hair texture type that contains coils to small and tight that the hair appears to be more puffy rather than curly ( like to photo below ) this is in NO WAY to be confused with curly hair. there is a drastic difference.

As a black artist that primarily draws characters with 4c hair, I’ve been asked many times to do a tutorial on 4c hair so here we go~

before we get into 4c hair, lets take a moment to fully understand it by talking about hair texture in a general sense first

let’s take a look at this example of straight hair vs curly hair ( 1 type straight hair vs 3 type curly hair )

If you take a moment to compare the two you’ll notice straight hair is flat, it has no texture. Straight hair perfectly hangs down similar to liquid-like silk. It’s lack of curl pattern is the reason as to why it hangs perfectly flat.

curly hair on the other hand doesn’t lie down flat and silky like straight hair, It’s more thick. Curly hair in it’s raw and unstyled state has a trapezoid like shape this is because the sides of the hair spread more outward.

So why is this? Why is straight hair flat and curly hair thick?

the answer to that question is a thing called piling up. When it comes to hair texture, the shape of the hair strands aren’t the only thing that matters, its how the strands coexist with each other, Curly hair strands coexist by piling up on top each other.

moisture also effects hair texture too, different hair types absorbs moisture differently, thus the thickness of each hair type is different. 

…..soooo, how does this all relate to how to draw 4c hair?? 

Well let’s take a look at the drawing below. Notice how the arrows go outward more as the hair texture gets curlier. As we’ve already discussed, this is because hair piles up, The curlier the hair texture, the more it piles up on each other, the bigger it gets, the more outward the arrows go.

Out of any hair texture, 4C hair has the most curls. Because of this, the hair piles up on each other so much that it doesn’t lie down flat like straight hair, nor does it make a trapezoid like shape like curly hair, it instead becomes more cloud like.❤️

This is what you need to take into account when it comes to drawing 4C hair.

Think of it as piling up a bunch of cotton balls on each other. The most cotton on top of top to lead to a bigger patch of  cotton. this is 4c hair.

How to not draw 4c hair:

Garnet fanart. Let’s talk about Garnet Fanart. I notice a trend that when artists draw Garnet from Steven universe, her hair texture is usually changed to 3 type curly like texture. This subtle form of White washing has confused me because this is inaccurate. 

Garnet’s hair is in the shape of a cube. Though 3 type hair piles up on each other, it isn’t curly nor thick enough for their hair to stay in the shape of a cube. Curly hair lies down more than 4c hair. So garnet’s hair being in the shape of a cube is a dead giveaway that it is 4C. Why do you think hairstyles like flat tops are usually seen on black men with 4c hair? It’s because, the 4c hair texture is thick and strong enough to stay in whatever shape you put it in.

please, if you’re drawing a character with 4c hair, avoid drawing it like curly 3 type hair, this is very anti-black and texturist.

So, how do you draw 4c hair?

honestly, its the most easy thing in the world

i wanna clarify that blobby looking 4c drawings ( like the one on the top left ) can work depending on how cartoony your art style is.

Another thing that I want to greatly clarify when it comes to drawing 4C hair is, YOU. DONT. NEED. TO. DRAW. EVERY. HAIR. STRAND!…..like, seriously. I’ve gotten many messages about how 4C hair is hard to draw, and it’s always left me confused; but then I find out that the same people that have trouble drawing 4C hair, attempt to draw every single strand of hair. This is unnecessarily time consuming because it’s merely impossible to get every single detail down, especially when you have a simple cartoon style. 4C hair does not require much effort, all you’re doing is drawing lumps. It’s that simple, nothing more nor nothing less.

The reason why I greatly advise all of you to avoid drawing every single hair strand is because in real life, when you look at a 4C textured Afro, your eyes don’t pick up on each individual hair strand like straight or curly hair. 4C hair, appears to be more undefined and cloud like, so attempting to draw each and every individual strand is unnecessary and will most likely end up looking inaccurate.