art and dumb hours

Book seller

Crystal seller

He sells flowers

She will sell you a pumpkin this fall

Would you like to purchase.. bean?

They are regulars. They buy mushrooms for soup

She has more options

Don’t be scared, he’s just been doing this for years and is passionate about garlic

Can I interest you in...melon?

Witch’s familiar needs coins to buy ingredients from toad next door

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

I’m not asking for pity, I’m asking for someone to listen. I NEED WORK. I’m 17 years old and I do commissions. At this point I’ll try to draw just about anything if it means escaping this god forsaken house. When I was younger I never quite understood the truly cruel nature of verbal abuse and how much it affected people until it happened to me. When you live in a household where you do not feel loved, you hurt. You feel useless because your own parent tells you so. You’re reminded every day about how you weren’t wanted and that you were just a byproduct of sex. You feel like a bastard, you are called a bastard, and every day you’re not belittled just for existing, you’re preparing for the next shit storm. I’m so tired of living here. For those of you who don’t understand the extent this goes to and the severity of the matter, allow me to explain. The Effects of Verbal Abuse 1. Low Self Esteem. I feel like garbage for every day that I’m home. I’m called a “fucker”, “bitch”, “wretch”, “bastard”, and frequently, everyone in my family are “assholes” just for being there. 2. Powerlessness Do you know how much it hurts to watch your younger siblings being told it would be better had they not been born and when you say something about it, your own mother tells you to “fuck off”? 3. Feelings of Damnation My mother rants about “family curses” and how most of us will turn out to be sluts, child molesters, or how we’ll be fucked up in the head to the point we’ll be locked away in some mental institution. 4. Impending Uncertainty Abuse comes in a cycle. They abuser hurts you, they feel guilty, they try to fix what they did wrong so you feel okay, and then they hurt you again. I never know when my mother will blow up. It could be because a fucking throw pillow was on the floor that she tells everyone what worthless pieces of shit they are. 5. Exposure to Insensitivity My mother tells my stepfather quite frequently how she can’t wait to get her college degree so she can leave his ass. She openly admits to using him for his money and how he’s just a penis to her. He follows her anyway because she’ll kiss the wounds she gives him and he believes that she cares. 6. Pitting Family Against Themselves There is no praise in this household. You are never appreciated for being yourself, so everyone competes for the love they don’t have. Just today my youngest brother, only 10 years old, was ready to tell on his other brother Caleb for the sake of nothing more than praise. Even though both him and Caleb shared the opinion of not liking our mother, he was ready to tell on him for it. When I told him not to and that it would only escalate things, he turned to me and said “But mom’s being nice to me.” My own Stepfather falls prey to the same thing. He loves us and he pities us for what we hurt for, but like a sheep, he can only follow what our mother says is right. He has to blindly agree with her or he knows his life will be made a living hell. —- I do not feel safe in this house. I wanted to earn enough money to make it on my own when I turn 18 this December. I can’t stand it here anymore. Every Saturday is cleaning day, and that’s not so bad. I don’t mind chores. The problem is when you can’t do them and are yelled at them for it. We’re expected to perform tasks we weren’t taught to do and she gets frustrated at us for not knowing. She yells at us that she’s just the pussy of the house and so she’s expected to do everything just because she “shit us out of her vagina”. The deal is, she only has to ask us once to clean. We will actually perform the task. Every one of us has proven ourselves capable but she tells we’re not anyway and does everything within her power to show to us that “we can’t”. Before we can even start scrubbing the bathtub, she calls us assholes and takes over to do it for herself, telling is we won’t do it the right way anyway. How can we do it the right way if she doesn’t give us room to learn! We never see the chance to prove ourselves because she takes it away from us before we can even start. “I’m gonna hit everybody so goddamn hard because you all just need to shut the fuck up.” She said this just now as I was typing. I’m very tired. When I go to school I want to throw myself down the stair because I can’t handle the thought of going back home into a house so hateful, to a person who could care less if I lived or died. I came out to my family as lesbian last year and my mother’s immediate response was to tell me I was going to hell and that all I wanted to do was lick pussy. She continues to tell me how I’ve damned her to hell because she couldn’t raise me to be a proper Christian. My sister opened up to being Aiethiest and so our mother told us that if she ever finds herself attracted to animals, she can just go ahead and fucking shoot her. Our biological father was sent to prison for molesting both my sister and myself, yet my mother constantly threatens to give us back to him when he gets out of prison this February. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BUY MY ART. My mother won’t let me have a real job because she’s paranoid I’ll tell on her to people at work. She even harasses myself and my siblings for information on what we tell our family councilor when she’s not around. My only hope of escape at this point is to save enough money to make it out of here as soon as possible. The account is a joint account so I’ll withdraw as much as I can to keep a physical stash somewhere, ANYWHERE. I just can’t be here anymore. I’m close to breaking down into tears every time she even looks at me. I need to set a successful example for my siblings. They’re hurting for this and no one can fix it. If I get a place of my own then at least they can visit me and escape for a while. I believe in myself. I know I can do this if you give me the chance. MY COMMISSIONS ARE CHEAP AND I WILL WORK QUICKLY AND WITH MAXIMUM EFFORT. Please. I’m losing hope and this is all I have left to hold onto. All I hear in this house is yelling and crying anymore and I have no escape. Give me a chance to make my own. MY COMMISSION INFO IS HERE https://friendofmegamantrash.deviantart.com/art/COMMISSIONS-OPEN-711173789