♡Music, Art, and Writing♡

Commission for @jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear! I loved working on this piece, and I'm honestly really proud of it!

Finished the Balto set (with Togo as a bonus). Fixed a couple things from the individual posts, including completely redoing Jenna since she didn’t match with the rest of the set by the time I finished them up. I had never drawn any of them  before besides Balto so I was really happy with the way they came out. I may add some minor Balto characters later, but I wanted to move onto the GNG/GDW series since I’ll be working on them for quite some time @___@! It was nice to FINALLY do some proper fanart of my favorite movie after 20+ years though :0

i must make…

b e a d l i z a r d

B…

AND with a little practice, you can even make them 3D shaped (especially with the smaller beads and wire, though you can make them with the bigger beads and string, to an extent) 

And end up with this

We all know NaNo is supposed to be fun, fulfilling, and magical, but lets be honest-- this time of year is already bonkers busy.

For some of us, the pressure can be really, really discouraging. So here's a list of NaNo hacks I've used in the past that have really saved my sanity.

Switch your timeframe: Thanksgiving is HUGE for me at work, so that last push week is just NOT an option for me. So in years past, I've started a week early and kept myself to a 30day time frame, just shifted in a way that allowed me to finish it

Drop your word count: Yeah, theres no official way to do it outside of Camp, but do it mentally anyways. Then you can still ride the high energy of NaNo without the stress of a goal you know you cant meet.

Work on an existing project: 50k is a very small novel. If you know your project is gonna spill over, just track the 50k you do in November.

Count EVERY word: work on an outline? Did a brainstorm? Rewrote a line of dialogue 70 times--delete NOTHING. Count it ALL. If your approach to NaNo is just 50k of words, then toss all those words in a pile and sort it out later.

You dont need draw all the days

You can do digital art

You can color your pieces of art

You dont need follow the official inktober list

Dont rush yourself in do all the days. You arent a failure.Take a break

Have fun

I haven’t done realism in at least 5 months ugh

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. 

The ONLY WAY to combat the lack of funding in arts education is for professionals to take a few hours a week to share their skills for FREE, to empower and encourage the next generation of artists. THIS IS WHAT THE INTERNET IS FOR. Here’s 200 tutorials:

Ive got a couple!! I’m starting to read back through MTMTE slowly and gather more but here’s a couple I use a lot. I find it super helpful referencing all the different artists that work on the comic and seeing the different interpretations of them :) I hope these help!