Thar be art here, matey.

Didn’t have time to participate on our Pride Month Challenge due to school/college/work? Don’t worry; now you can create all the content you want during your vacations! We present to you: lgbtincomics’ 2018/2019 VACATION/HOLIDAYS/NEW YEAR CHALLENGE!

Just as in our Pride Month Challenge, our goal is to promote LGBTQ characters from any part of the wonderful comic books universe - including DC, Marvel, independent comics, live action versions, comic versions of not-originally-from-comics characters and any other possible media related to comic characters. We want to encourage everyone to create fan content of their favorite characters, while also enjoying fellow fans’ content, as well as supporting their favorite comics and creators.

✓ You can start it whenever you want and it can last as long as you want, between December and January. ✓ The prompts are vague on purpose, so you can interpret them however you want! ✓ If you can’t do all prompts, that’s fine. You also don’t have to follow an specific sequence. Feel free to do any amount of edits for each prompt. ✓ What can you make: Any type of edits, gifs or art. Use your creativity! ✓ Which characters can you use: Any canon LGBT+ character from comic books or their adaptations. We also count characters that weren’t originally from comics but have a comic version (in this case you must use the comic version in your edits). Likewise, we count non-canon couples, but please include only those with at least one canon LGBT+ character.

- To be reblogged here, your post must:

include at least one canon LGBTQ character from comic books universe (see previous item);

be original content (don’t use other people’s gifs or fanart, unless you have their permission and credit them);

have good image quality;

not be strongly NSFW, unless you keep it under a cut;

be tagged with #lgbtincomics within the first 5 tags, otherwise we won’t see it!

PS:  Remember to include something like “lgbtincomics’ vacation challenge + [prompt/theme]” in your caption so we can tag it as such when reblogging the post.

Any questions? Don’t hesitate to ask us!

ideas of exercises to help with your practical art skills, as well as things to keep in mind while making art and new ways to find inspiration:

draw every day

recreate a drawing you did before, but better

draw something using only simple geometric shapes

do studies of famous artworks

listen to artists explain their work, it’s super interesting

take life drawing classes (or use online photo resources)

find an artwork you love, and work out why

draw caricatures of friends

set a 1 minute timer and draw an object as quickly as possible

draw something you can’t see, eg. music, emotion

research artists you admire and find out how they work

think about composition: what stands out, what recedes etc.

find a famous artwork you hate and work out why

sit outside and draw the landscape

copy a photo exactly

draw a scene from a film

draw the contours of an object not the outline

visit an art exhibition near you

draw your bedroom

look up tutorials online - there’s so many useful ones!

practise creating contrast between light and dark in pictures

research colour theory

do a self portrait

learn about art history! Research different movements etc.

try a new medium

consider the feeling you want to portray with the artwork

draw without looking at the page

draw a character from a book you’ve read

draw something you don’t usually draw

look at your pictures in the mirror to help you see problems better

follow artists and galleries on instagram for inspo

draw an ugly object in a beautiful way

try using only bold, bright colours

plan your colour palette before starting an artwork, and stick to it!

if you usually work in 2D, make something in 3D

always remember to add shadows

draw an object which is important to you

use 5 lines to depict an object, make every line count

draw using negative space

always draw from life when possible!

think carefully about which direction the light is coming from

study proportions and anatomy!! 

draw your pet

research items symbolic meanings in art

make an art blog to compile images that inspire you

draw using only straight lines

try accentuating any subtle colours in an image

draw models from fashion websites

sketch with friends! They always have great ideas

keep drawing even if you find it hard, you improve with every mistake!

{my art masterpost might also be useful to you} 

Y'all wanna know what a rigorous illustration program looks like:

For midterms ALL of my classes expected a range of 10 to 40 hours of work for each assignment. This didn't include regular class time (18.5 hours) or extra time spent in pseudo-mandatory workshops for an extra 6 to 12 hours. This also doesn't include sketchbook assignments of various studies and rendering techniques assigned one class and due the next.

Now obviously not everyone has that kind of time available. Not everyone has the dedication to make that kind of effort.

But improvement only comes from practice and hard work. Being good at ANYTHING requires time being invested. When you run out of paper on a regular basis, you're on the right track.

And quit wasting your practice time. Dedicate yourself. Multitasking is LITERALLY impossible and neuroscientists the world over have proven it. If you're drawing for mastery, you shouldn't be watching a show, listening to a podcast, etc. (Music w/o lyrics is fine)

Start with the basics. If you can't render a cone, cube, sphere, and cylinder effectively using the 5-value system, you shouldn't be shading. If you can't draw those shapes in perspective (actual perspective), then your practice should be drawing those basic shapes over and over until you can. If you want to draw the human body DRAW THE HUMAN BODY FROM OBSERVATION. Look, I get it. It's not always comfortable to look at nude bodies in an academic setting. But you'll never get the observational skills you need if you don't get the fuck over it and draw from observation.

Struggling with faces and heads? Draw them upside down. And there are only 3 steps to improving on drawing heads:

1. Draw heads

2. Draw heads

3. Draw heads

Finally, there's one last major factor that you need to remember when drawing:

DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF TO YOUR PEERS.

It'll make you bitter.

It'll make you angry.

It'll make you arrogant.

It'll make you quit.

;)

It looks like tumblr now automatically converts png files to jpg - if you have a fairly “clean”/simple digital art style that gets wrecked by jpg artifacts, you’ll want to put transparency somewhere in the image - tumblr will leave pngs with transparency alone (a single pixel border of transparency around the image works and is pretty non-intrusive).

Quick morning warmup for @peachfuzzcomics Amazing artist and a titan of positivity; if you somehow are following me and not her, fix that.

Done tweaking my Tinder bio. Reblog if you’d swipe right, Fuzzies. 💋🌹