Untitled

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering

pulsating

throbbing

beating

thumping

thudding

pounding

humming

palpitate

vibrate

grinding

crushing

hammering

lashing

knocking

driving

thrusting

pushing

force

injecting

filling

dilate

stretching

lingering

expanding

bouncing

reaming

elongate

enlarge

unfolding

yielding

sternly

firmly

tightly 

harshly

thoroughly

consistently

precision

accuracy

carefully

demanding

strictly

restriction

meticulously

scrupulously

rigorously

rim

edge

lip

circle

band

encircling

enclosing

surrounding

piercing

curl

lock

twist

coil

spiral

whorl

dip

wet

soak

madly

wildly

noisily

rowdily

rambunctiously

decadent

degenerate

immoral

indulgent

accept

take

invite

nook

indentation

niche

depression

indent

depress

delay

tossing

writhing

flailing

squirming

rolling

wriggling

wiggling

thrashing

struggling

grappling

striving

Arouse -  agitate, awaken, electrify, enliven, excite, entice, foment, goad, incite, inflame, instigate, kindle, provoke, rally, rouse, spark, stimulate, stir, thrill, waken, warm, whet, attract, charm, coax, fire up, fuel, heat up, lure, produce, stir up, tantalize, tease, tempt, thrum, torment, wind up, work up

Again, I posted something like this a while ago on my band blog - where I do actively write smut - but this one is new and revised! Please note: this only covers heterosexual smut, I’m sorry.

So for the (non-slash) fanfiction writers out there, here’s some more tips: (actually, some of these will work for slash as well)

So I’ve been reading a lot of fics lately where people are either

A) Putting wings onto canon characters

B) Making OCs with wings

So I decided that, with the influx of people who are writing winged characters (and therefore the influx of errors that come with writing winged characters), I’d make a little thing to help you slap a pair of wings onto anyone!

This is also a bit personal, too, because the MC in my upcoming novel has wings!

1. Know that there are a lot of types of wings to choose from

Part of being a writer is the desire to take something (whether it be a pre-existing work or an idea in your head) and make it into your own. So, instead of just going with the classic bird wings, why not spice it up a bit? If your character is an angel, you certainly don’t have to stick to the classic depictions of angel wings. Why not give them butterfly wings or dragonfly wings?

Here’s a small list of different types of wings to choose from:

Bat wings

Beetle wings

Bird wings

Butterfly/Moth wings

Dragonfly wings

Note that these wings are for animals who can fly. There are also animals who can “fly” that actually glide, such as sugar gliders and flying squirrels.

Yeah, so the options are pretty limited, but feel free to make up your own kinds of wings that aren’t necessarily based on a pre-existing creature’s wings!

2. Be familiar with the anatomy of your character’s wings and their limits

If your wings are completely unique, draw them out. A diagram or picture is key when it comes to things like description. I’m not gonna tell you what everything does and give you Animal Wing Anatomy 101, that’s for you to research. Know that there are different types of wings and that they have different uses, strengths, and weaknesses.

3. Never use the full extent of your research! 

Surprise, surprise!

“But wait, Maddy!” you cry, writing utensil in hand and poised to stab me. “I thought we were supposed to were supposed to show our research!”

Well, you are. Technically that’s not wrong. But, readers don’t want to know ALL of it. Over-described wings are sometimes worse than under-described wings; what sucks more than not knowing what a character’s wings look like is having to look up wing anatomy in the middle of the chapter!

Only use the most basic of vocabulary when it comes to describing the parts of the wing. Most of the time, you just have to say “bat wing” or “feathery wing” and the readers get the basic idea. (Like seriously, do you think the readers know what a dactylopatagium brevis is????? It’s a part of skin on a bat’s wing btw)

4. Don’t bring your character’s wings up only when they’re needed!!!!

Unless your character’s wings can fade away when they’re not needed, wings are a 100% real, 24/7 thing! It’s bothersome when writers mention the wings in one chapter and then only bring them up when there’s a daring escape that needs to be performed! Most of the time, I forget that the characters even have wings at all!

There is also the fact that wings aren’t all pros and no cons. If they’re functional, they’re probably big, and if they’re muscular, they’re probably bulky. If your character is clumsy, they’ll probably knock things over constantly, and if they’re not clumsy, they’ll still knock things over constantly.

Your wings are two (or four, or five, or six quintillion) extra appendages; they’re a part of your character! You don’t have to spend every second reminding the readers that they’re there, but don’t go long stretches of time without even mentioning them.

5. Your character’s wings can be a good way to indicate their mood or to provide for that little bit of description that you think you make be lacking

Why wouldn’t you want to describe the wings? I mean, you don’t want to describe every minute detail over and over again, but it’ll boost your word count a lot more than you think. They can also be used to convey your character’s feelings without explicitly telling the reader! It’s like a new set of facial expressions!

See? You can tell he’s wary and ready to fight from the movement of his wings! Also he’s crouching next to a dead body but that’s not relevant right now

Here’s a list of wing language (?) that you can incorporate into your story that will not only increase your word count, but will also add to the sustenance of your story!

Nervous

Twitch

Flutter

Ripple

Fold tightly

Fidget

Flap

Angry

Flare

Bristle

Fluff up

Ripple

Beat

Raise up

Snap open

Happy

Flutter

Curl up

Ripple

Wave

Flap

During Battle

Bludgeon

Smack

Bat

Clout

Whack

Kick someone’s legs out from under them

Snap someones neck (only for muscular wings like bat and bird wings)

Problems that may come with having wings

Poke out from under blankets and let all of the cold air in

Stepped on

Get pins and needles from being folded for too long

Squashed on chairs/ in beds/ in crowded hallways

Vulnerable in battle

Molting (for bird wings)

Writing the dialogue first.

I never used to do this, but one night it was really late and I was half asleep but I wanted to get some work done. So I decided to just fill in the dialogue I wanted for the scene.

I found myself with close to 1000 words of dialogue. (I obviously tagged who said what, how it was said, etc.)

When I came back to the document, I just filled in the action, the background, descriptions and plot.

I ended up with between 3000-4000 words in one sitting.

No problem! And sorry about not answering sooner, I was on vacation. To make it up to you, I’ve made one of my trademark Long Posts about it.

TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE PAIN (FOR BOTH ORIGINAL CONTENT WRITERS AND FANFICTION WRITERS)

When I first started writing, about eight years ago, I had the same issue as @imjustafuckinggirl.

How are you supposed to write about pain you’ve never experienced before???

The characters in my book suffer through all sorts of terrible shit, and in no way am I writing from experience, which is marginally easier to do than write about something that has never happened to you.

However, with time, I managed to gather up a few strategies on how to write pain.

1. Don’t Write Paragraphs About It

I know, it’s tempting. You want to convey to the reader just how much pain the character is in, and you think that the pain will be emphasized the more you write about it.

This, however, is a lie.

As a reader, when I’m reading a book or fanfiction where, whenever the writer uses agonizingly long paragraphs to describe when a character is hurt, I skip it.

Entirely.

It’s boring and, quite frankly, unnecessary, especially during a fight or huge battle, which are supposed to be fast-paced.

When it comes to writing about pain, it really is about quality and not quantity.

In my own writing, I stick to short, quick paragraphs, some of them which are barely a line long. This gives it a faster pace and sort of parallels with the scattered, spread out thoughts of the character as they suffer.

2. Describe it Right

Many times, usually in fanfiction, writers over-exaggerate certain injuries.

This partially has to do with the fact that they’ve never experienced that injury before and are just thinking about what it might feel like.

As a girl with two brothers and who often participated in rough play-fights, I can assure you that getting punched is not as painful as you think it is.

(However, it does depend on the area, as well as how hard the punch is, on top of the fact that you have to take into account whether or not the punch broke bones)

I’m reading a high school AU where a character gets punched by a bully (Idk where they got punched it wasn’t stated) and the author is describing it like they’d been shot.

It was to the point where I was like Did the bully have brass knuckles or something????

It was very clear that this author had never been punched before.

When describing the pain of an injury or the injury itself, you have to take into account:

- What object was used to harm the character

- Where the injury is

- How long the character has had the injury

- (For blades) How deep the cut is

- (For blunt force trauma) How hard the hit was

- Whether or not the wound triggers other things (Ex: Concussion, vomiting, dizziness, infection, internal/external bleeding).

There’s also the fact that when some authors described wounds caused by blades such as knives, daggers, and swords, they never take into account the anatomy of a person and which places cause the most blood flow.

Obviously, a cut on your cheek will have less of a blood flow than a cut on your wrist, depending on what the blade hits, and I hope that everyone consults a diagram of veins, capillaries, arteries, etc. when they’re describing blood flow from a certain place.

There’s also the fact that you have to take into account where the blood is coming from. Veins? Arteries?

The blood from arteries will be a brighter red, like vermilion, than the blood from veins, which is the dark crimson everyone likes to talk about.

Not all places gush bright red blood, people!

3. DIFFERENT INJURIES HAVE DIFFERENT KINDS OF PAIN

Here, let me explain.

A punch feels different from a slap.

A broken arm feels different from getting stabbed.

A fall feels different from a dog bite.

I’ll give you a list of all the kinds of things that can be described for the three most common kinds of injuries that happen in stories:

Punch/Blunt Force Trauma

How it feels:

- Aching

- Numbness (In the later stages)

- A single spike of pain before it fades into an ache

- Throbbing

Effects:

- Vomiting (If the character is punched in the gut)

- Swelling

- Bruising

- Broken bones

- Unconsciousness (Blow to the head)

- Dizziness (Blow to the head)

- Concussion (Also a blow to the head)

- Internal bleeding

- Death (In the case of concussions and internal bleeding and broken bones- ribs can pierce lungs)

Stab Wound/Cut

How it feels:

- Stinging (only shallow wounds have just stinging)

- Burning

- With stab wounds, I feel like describing the effects of it make it more powerfully felt by the reader

Effects:

- Bleeding (Consult chart of the circulatory system beforehand for the amount of blood flow that should be described and what color the blood should be)

- Dizziness (Heavy blood loss)

- Unconsciousness

- Infection (if left unattended)

- Death

Gunshot

How it feels:

- Depends on the caliber bullet, from how far away they were shot (point-blank range is nothing like being shot from a distance), and in what place. Do careful research and then make your decision.

Effects:

- Bleeding(Consult chart of the circulatory system beforehand for the amount of blood flow that should be described and what color the blood should be. Also take into effect the above variables for blood flow as well.)

- Dizziness (Heavy blood loss)

- Infection (if left unattended)

- Death

Some things that a character may do while they’re injured:

- Heavy/Harsh/Ragged breathing

- Panting

- Making noises of pain

gasping

grunting

hissing

groaning

whimpering

yelping (when the injury is inflicted)

screaming

shrieking

wailing

- Crying/ Weeping/Sobbing/Etc.

- Clenching their teeth

- Unable to speak

- Pressing their hands against a stab wound/cut to try and stem the bleeding

- Eyesight going out of whack (vision blurring and tilting, the room spinning, black spots consuming sight)

- Eyes rolling up into their head

- Trembling/shaking

- Ears riniging (from gunshot)

Eating On A Budget

- Buy Bulk. My number one tip for budgeting food is to BUY IN BULK. Instead of buying a chicken breast, buy eight and individually wrap them in plastic wrap. Freeze what you’re not going to eat within the next two days, and defrost as needed.

- Cook Bulk. Make a large pot of chili, soup, or your favorite pasta sauce. Buy plastic containers at Walmart and portion out your meals. Freeze them all! I do this with my pasta puttanesca sauce, I make it once every six months and cook enough to last.

- Store Brands. There are cheap knock off brands of everything from Cheez-Its to Quaker Oats. They’ll be anywhere from $1-$3 cheaper than the brand names. On a similar note, store brand cleaning supplies is about $5 cheaper than the name brands! Don’t judge them before you try them.

- Store Cards. My Stop & Shop card gives me a gas discount, and other store cards offer similar perks. Store card + store brands = ridiculous savings.

- Avoid Organics. Like I said in my last Adulting post, I’m not paying $4 for a cucumber unless it can clean my apartment and sing Jazz standards. Buy vegetables, but avoid anything labeled “organic”.

- Mixed Greens. Avoid buying “mixed greens” unless you’re going to eat them within a day or two, these have a very short shelf life. Instead, buy a head of lettuce or a bushel of kale.

- Frozen Produce. Stock your freezer with bags of peas, carrots, fruit, etc. These will defrost easily in your soups and are good if you run out of ice packs.

- Dollar Stores. They have really weird brands of chips and pasta and really poor quality paper towels, so don’t expect to do you entire shop here. However, they sell bulk tomato sauce, six packs of ramen, tuna fish and other wonderful things for under a dollar. My local Dollar store sells tubes of capers for a dollar when just down the street my organic supermarket sells them for upwards of $5.

- Buy Fruit. Specifically, BUY IN BULK at your local chain supermarket. My boyfriend and I have been throwing back those Cara Cara oranges like nobody’s business. Fruit is great for quick breakfasts, snacks, and a healthy alternative to downing a pint of Ben and Jerrys.

Budget-based cookbooks (online recipes)

- College Student Cookbook. Click here.

- Meals On The Go. Click here. (Not a cookbook, but super helpful)

- Broke College Kid Masterpost. Click here.

- Cooking on A Bootstrap. Click here.

- Good and Cheap. Click here.

- Budget Bytes. Click here.

It’s also worth checking out my “eating on a budget” tag.

Also, please check out “Pimp Your Ramen” for ramen-related hacks!

making money

tutoring! one of the easiest to make good money in limited time! you don’t have to make home calls if you sign up to an online tutoring agency and tutor over skype

sell your old clothes. to friends/classmates or online (eBay or depop are my favourite platforms)

sell your old notes. this is easily done online and a good way to make a little extra cash

sell your skills. sites like etsy and redbubble are good places to make money off your creative talents

saving money

save £1378 in a year with my free printable

make coffee and tea at home. those daily £3 coffees add up quickly

take your own mug to coffee shops. if you can’t resist the temptation of a coffee shop coffee take your own mug. pret a manger gives you a 50p discount if you bring your own mug and caffe nero gives you double stamps

don’t carry money with you all the time. this will just make you tempted to spend

never buy another bottle of water. carry a reusable bottle with you, bottled water is very very overpriced considering most cafes will refill your bottle for free

don’t use apple pay. if you always have access to money you’ll be much more tempted to go into that shop and buy the top you passed in the window

food prep! carry snacks and a packed lunch with you to avoid pricey snack bars and ready meals. this is also an easy way to be healthier

home cook. this is always cheaper than eating out and 99% of the time cheaper than pot noodles/ramen. home cooking is even more affordable if you do it in bulk or with friends

borrow and download free ebooks and audiobooks as much as possible

make good use of the library. instead of buying books borrow them for free, a library membership is often free if you belong to a university/college but a membership is still often cheaper than buying lots of books if you’re a big reader

bring reusable bags to avoid paying for plastic bags and be kinder to the environment.

go paperless. avoid printing costs and look after the environment

cut your own hair. going to the hairdressers is expensive and can be saved as a treat but if you just need to trim your split ends there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do it yourself or get a friend to help you

pre drink! if you are going out then drink alcohol at home it’s much cheaper than buying it in pubs or bars

other

use cash. it’s much easier to avoid spending money and stick to your budget when you can see exactly how much you have 

keep track of your saving and spending. i love the ‘pocket expense’ app. this will also show you what things you are overspending on 

collect coupons and loyalty cards. points make prizes!

 1) Choose a character to sketch

I chose a cool character by my friend daydreamkazooma at twitter. I kinda wanted to give him a flamboyant pose for some reason.

2) Let’s skip line art phase for now and add the base colours 

Do not worry too much about what colours to use. Just fill in a general colour and use Hue/Saturation adjustment if you’re not happy.

Try to imagine what the final piece will look like in terms of how the colours will help direct the viewers eyes. In this example, the way the yellow attacks your eyes immediately brings your view to his jacket. 

3) Picking a colour to use for the shading

Now for the shading. Imagine how the object looks in 3D so you can properly show off shapes. Also notice how I flick my pen to create some of the hair shapes.

To choose the colour for shading:

Use the eyedropper tool to select your base colour. (Pic on the top right)

Slide the adjuster on the colour wheel downwards, just a little bit. Then click a colour going towards the lower right on the “colour box” for that perf dark hue. (Pic on the bottom right)

4) Keep going with your shading, always keeping the shapes in mind

e.g.) spiky hair = spiky, triangular shades 

The whites of his eyes are so bright its getting creepy, so let’s pick a darker value that’s more pleasant to the eyes and use it for shading the teeth too. I also changed the colour of his tongue.

5) Follow the folds and shade accordingly 

Take note of the type of fabric and the weight of the clothes. This is difficult to explain without going into too much detail, but in general, the thicker/heavier a fabric is, the less folds it has. Your jeans tend to have less folds compared to your cotton shirt.

The McDonald’s red and yellow is starting to bother me at this point so I hid the yellows, and used Ctrl + U (Hue/Saturation adjustment window) to find a darker redviolet for his jacket which I think is a good shading colour for red hues.

6) Lighting

Before that, I darkened the (too) bright yellows so it’s not jarring against his jacket.

Add the base colour on top of the shading. You do this by thinking of the LIGHTING instead. I personally do this method more; the other method being: painting with the SHADOWS/SHADING in mind. 

Use a bright yellow to light his jacket’s lining. 

Also, notice his red gloves are blending in too much against his dark jacket… so what do we do?

7) Contrast

A bright colour of course! Make those gloves pop. 

Extra details: The white pattern on his shirt and trousers. 

8) Focal point 

OK, let’s give him an eye colour that can “compete” with the eye catching yellows in his jacket. We want to bring attention to his face as well.

The viewer’s eyes are now focusing on his intense eyes before his stylish jacket. We successfully changed the focal point back to his face, don’t you think?

9) More shading

Let’s shade the gloves:

Notice how the shade colour I chose goes towards the left,  (towards desaturation)

Unlike the previous shade choices which were towards the right         (towards saturation) For example on his hair:

This is to sort of ‘balance’ the tones. Saturated hues are generally hard to handle so be careful with them. If you choose a saturated tone for shading when your base colour is also a bright tone like a saturated orange, it can end up looking like its been coloured in MS Paint, like so: 

When I coloured the yellows on his jacket in a previous step, I did this too. 

I switched to Photoshop so my colour wheel is now a… colour box.(?)

Towards-the-left on the colour wheel is Downwards on the colour box.

10) Now for the pre-rendering stage. 

Select the shaded areas using the Magic Wand Tool. It’s OK if it feels messy.

Then, using the same method of choosing your shade colour, (again, choose downwards the “colour box”, towards the saturated hues) choose a shade darker than your Shade colour for a deeper shade colour.

Using a soft round brush with pen pressure turned off, carefully paint on the edges of his hair. Just the edges please, you don’t want to replace your original shading colour with the darker tone.

11) Highlight

Now Invert Selection in Select > Inverse and paint the area near the shadows with the Highlight tone so you make that nice contrast effect. Highlights tend to go towards the desaturated areas (to the left) 

Do the same for the jacket:

And the yellows:

I dabbed this same yellow Highlight colour lightly on his black shirt serving as its Highlights instead of choosing a lighter tone from the black base. 

I find a saturated splash of colour on a black surface much more cool looking.

Do it again for the skin.

I said ‘Highlight’ on that pic on the right, but that’s not really the actual highlight colour. It’s a secondary colour to add hues to the skin so the character looks more alive, kinda like blush-on in makeup. The concept is, skin is translucent so you should tend to show the blood/haemoglobin underneath. For this character’s skin tone, I chose a more orange hue (slightly more saturated orange VS. the base orange) so it goes well with the rest of the colours. 

12) Highlights on the face

Now for the real “highlight”. Just lightly dab with the soft round brush the side of the face where the most light hits. Add a little more orange hue if you want, to keep that gradation effect.

13) Finished establishing the colours!  

 Now just clean it up a little…

14) Lineart

…add lineart on the edges and you have a finished cel-shaded piece! Next step would be rendering it if you want to push further.

15) Rendering  

Add textures. 

Do the rest of the fucking owl.

=========================================================

Thanks for viewing!  Kayl belongs to daydreamkazooma.

This is only a cel-shade tutorial but the tutorial to render the rest of the fucking owl is available in my patreon. Brushes used will also be available!

Okay so I followed this video about foreshortening and…

GUYS

SHIT

It works!!!

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS

IT WORKS AND I SPENT SO MUCH TIME TRYING TO PULL THIS SHIT OFF BEFORE BUT THEN THERS THIS EASY SHIT I COULD HAVE DONE

ahh thank you so much! ♥ welcome to the digial art scene friend, i hope you enjoy your stay and ctrl + z

now onto your question! (if you don’t know what layer and layer modes are and how they generally work you should probably google that before you continue reading)

we all perceive colour differently (thx science) and i trust my intuition a lot when it comes to colour picking because of that, and also because i feel like you can make pretty much every colour combination work within the right context. context is key! but still, remember that all of this is about how i perceive colour, so you might not agree with everything i say.

here’s a quick rundown of terms you’ll see around a lot in reference to colours and shading: the hue, which is the ‘colour’ itself, the saturation aka the intensity, and the brightness [or value] which describes how dark or bright we perceive a colour to be.

rule of thumb: when you shade don’t just add black (or white) to your base colours, that will make your drawings boring and lifeless. use different hues and saturation!

now first things first: which skin colour does the character have?

you’ll mostly be navigating in the red to yellow spectrum for the skin tone. so when i pick the base colours i usually start with the skin and adjust the rest of the colours accordingly. if you’re not sure where to begin it might help if you first determine the values (brightness) of the base colours in grayscale.

and here are a few colour variations—i stuck to the approximate values but played around with a lot of different hues and levels of saturation.

now compare 3 and 5: you’ll notice that 3 is very bright and leans towards orange hues, whereas 5 has a pinkish tint.

on the left i gave 5 the hair colour of 3 and in my opinion the pink hue of the skin doesn’t go well with the orange undertone of the hair. you’ll have to experiment a lot to find out which combinations work for you.  

ctrl + u is your biggest friend (or image >> adjustments >> hue/saturation in photoshop, the shortcut works in sai and clip studio paint too). play with the sliders and see what happens. i do that a lot myself, because it’s easier to coordinate the colours like that afterwards instead of trying to manually pick perfectly matching ones right away.

for further adjustments i like to use an extra semi-transparent layer on top of everything with just a single colour to add atmospheric light. this unifies the colours and makes them more harmonious, if that’s what you’re looking for. this is about as far as i’d go if i didn’t want to shade the drawing.

if i do want to shade, especially with high contrasts and dramatic light, i darken the base by just adding an additional black layer, here set to 40% opacity. of course you could add a colour layer like the ones i mentioned previously too.

to create an impression of dramatic light you need a high contrast between light and dark areas (1). if i want additional visual intrest i often add secondary light which falls onto the main shadow areas. here i picked a faint greenish blue to balance out the yellow (2). and since light is at least partially reflected when it hits a surface you should add a faint glow that goes across the shadow/light border (3).

for this shading style i like to use the layer mode colour dodge with lowered opacity + fill settings. for some layer modes opacity and fill do the exact same thing (e.g. for multiply or screen). however for colour dodge there’s a big difference:

a lowered opacity merely alters the transparency of the entire layer. that looks pretty awful sometimes, because the bright orange affects the dark of the hair much more intensely than the already brighter skin. but when you lower the fill percentage you primarily lower the amount of light that falls onto darker colours. so the layer’s opacity setting treats every colour equally whereas the fill setting takes their values into consideration. it might be hard to understand if you don’t try it out yourself, so just play around to get a feel for how it works!

and to summarise, here’s a process gif:

My first shot at creating a sort of tutorial/guide, telling how I do things. On this initial chapter we’re going over the handy matter of Hands. Not meaning to be an encyclopedic explanation, only showing my own methods and self-taught clues. Hoping somebody finds it useful! :3 I’ll do more if this one is received well. So let me know~