VON

Unless you're drawing explicit realism, in my opinion, expressions should be exaggerated to some degree. If you aren't doing a 1:1 recreation, the point is to get the FEELING across. Try making the expression you want to draw and feeling how your face pinches and stretches.

Skin doesn't just "disappear" when your face moves it around --- that's where wrinkles come from! Pay attention to where your skin creases when you emote, and use it to your benefit. It's a fine line between overdoing it and underdoing it -- find your own balance.

Ultimately, every expression has a little bit of push and pull, unless your face is completely neutral (and even then, there are still some wrinkles...). Learning to think of expressions as actions and reactions is VERY helpful in learning to draw them without needing a reference, and in learning how to stylize and push expressions based on references as well!

I think a lot of people end up with stiff or unexpressive emotions in their art because they're just trying to recreate a picture instead of understanding WHY and HOW the face is moving --- and it's a tough thing that takes a while to really pick up and learn. Hopefully is helpful in showing a way of thinking about it that can influence your process and approach to emotions!!!

Also, bonus: even without the lines, the planes alone still show a LOT of emotion.

thats my fat old man!!

All right, listen. It’s pretty damn funny that two weeks ago I posted all like, “oh I don’t really comment chapter-by-chapter, I’m waiting to see what happens next,” but this one broke me.

This chapter was everything I wanted for bkdk, and it’s so much more tender than I ever dreamed it could be.

I was looking for something else in the comic and came across this page and it just struck me how clearly it communicates something I’ve thought about a lot of times - that Shou doesn’t just see an ally in Ritsu, he is very heavily projecting all his own problems onto him.

Shou saw this boy during the 7th Branch arc, quickly picked up on him radiating ABUSIVE FAMILY ISSUES (amplified by the fact that Ritsu was extra nervous around Mob after he found out about Ritsu’s new hobby of beating people up in dark alleyways), and just decided that this was someone like himself, maybe the only person he’s ever met who might be able to understand him, so of course he’s not going to let that go. That in itself is fine, and it’s mutual too - Ritsu later flat out tells Shou that he finds him relatable. Ritsu also needed to know that he was not alone in order to progress, but the difference between him and Shou is that Ritsu isn’t assuming anything about Shou, he knows they’re not really the same even though they have things in common. Ritsu isn’t convinced that he has any right to say how Shou should handle his family situation, he’s just supporting him in what Shou has already decided: That he needs to stop his dad.

Meanwhile this page is nothing but Shou telling Ritsu how he should think and feel about his own “abuser”, because clearly Shou has figured out the only right way to handle a situation like this. He’s assuming that Ritsu has also lived with some kind of family tyrant, that Mob must have purposely hurt Ritsu like Shou’s dad has hurt him, and that the same problem solving can be applied to stopping it. He’s assuming all kinds of things based on basically nothing but Ritsu’s anxious behavior and the fact that Mob is very powerful. His insistence that Ritsu should know he’s better than his brother? That’s likely something Shou has told himself many, many times. That’s likely what has kept him going while setting up his plan to ruin Touichirou’s world domination schemes, and what cemented his honestly pretty naive belief that he could beat his dad in a fight. The thing about feeling inferior? Probably also something Shou has had to struggle with as growing up changed his view on his dad from being someone worth looking up to, to being both an embarrassment and someone to be feared, thereby dragging Shou down because he sees it as his responsibility to keep his dad in check.

There are just so many assumptions. In Shou’s mind of course Ritsu will understand and help even though Shou just kidnapped him, because they’re practically the same! (That that particular plan actually worked is wild, but that’s a different story.) And of course Ritsu will be able to hold his own against a bunch of adult espers, because he’s tough and clever just like Shou! And it breaks my heart when Mob saves Shou from being blasted to pieces by his dad and Shou assumes it’s Ritsu, because I think he wanted so badly to believe that if he couldn’t take Touichirou down himself, then at least someone like Ritsu could do it instead. I don’t think it ever really occured to him before that anyone not exactly like himself would be willing to stand up for him in that way.

Projecting this hard onto someone is not… good. This makes it hard for me to imagine any friendship happening between Shou and Ritsu after the World Domination arc as a seamless and natural thing. Shou’s overwhelming fascination with Ritsu is just kind of worrying and never shown to be returned.

Shou has shouldered far more responsibility than a kid his age should ever have to, but his perception of the world is often childish and self-centered and involves a lot of black and white thinking. At one point Touichirou calls him a spoiled brat, and in a way I think that’s true. Shou has been used to ordering people around and thinking of himself as a leader, but giving people orders about what they should think and feel doesn’t exactly make for a good basis for establishing positive relationships with other people.

see yourself

watercolour on arches paper

January = tammikuu = the oak moon

February = helmikuu = the pearl moon

March = maaliskuu = the ground moon (“maalis” doesn’t mean anything but it comes from the word “maa”, meaning “ground” because you can usually see ground beneath the snow in March)

April = huhtikuu = the burn-beaten moon

May = toukokuu = the field moon

June = kesäkuu = the summer moon

July = heinäkuu = the hay moon

August = elokuu = the harvest moon

September = syyskuu = the fall moon

October = lokakuu = the slush moon (the kind of half-melted snow that no one likes)

November = marraskuu = the death moon (altough “marras” is a really old word that no one uses anymore, I had to actually google it because I didn’t know what it means)

December = joulukuu = the Christmas moon

Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.

This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.

A “pack” of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.

Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.

One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.

Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.

Getting a “pack” of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.

Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.

Only experienced silverbacks or the boldest young Dads dare venture into a craft store for long without his mate or offspring to keep roving Craft Ladies at bay and guide him in this strange ecosystem. If a Dad enters with his mate and is separated from her, he will often scuttle for the seeming familiarity of Woodcrafts, Models, or Paints (the latter not to be confused with Fine Arts, unquestioned territory of art students), but he eyes Scrapbooking and Jewelry with trepidation and will usually venture into those exotic areas only in the company of females of his pack.

Lumberjacks are rarely spotted entering craft stores of their own volition, for while they do not fear it as Dads do, they know it is an environment unsuited for megafauna such as themselves.

Hardware store Lesbians generally adapt more easily to craft stores, although they may enlist another Lesbian of a subspecies more adapted to that environment to guide them until they find their niche. Lesbians have even been known to seek the aid of a Craft Lady, a native fauna that share similarities with Lesbians but are usually smaller and nimbler to suit their chosen habitat. Dads who witness this are often awed by the Lesbians’ temerity, for although larger, Dads are generally wary of the cunning and dexterous Craft Ladies and may mistake their enthusiastic pack greetings as predatory swarming.

Craft Ladies, secure in their ecological niche, have no fear of interlopers and take the presence of non-native beings in stride, although they may become territorial about scarcer resources.