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tbhk - number 3 lives
tbhk - delivery cupid AU
hi i'm ren, i like drawing two characters and only two characters. i have so many wips that i run polls to decide which wip to do. i also like to stick the songs i listen to under big drawings. i work slow because i'm super busy and tired all the time. i'll put an FAQ down here one day. but i can predict one
Q: Do you take commissions? When will they be open?
A: I don't take any commissions! I'm too busy working to be able to handle commissions or art for anyone else.
Q: Do you JUST draw Mitsukou?
A: yes
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so a little while back i was asked by @/lame-earring/magatamahairclips how i go about drawing backgrounds, and i finally had a chance to write things down about it!
it's a little hard to explain my process, since i've got a weird way of going about drawing in general. i almost never sit down and begin drawing without knowing exactly what the finalized version should look like in my head. i end up with these weird flashes of inspiration and see the finalized thing, and remember it fairly well. it's why i match my drawings to keywords and songs, because thinking about that word or listening to the song makes it pop up again if i don't have the time to jot down a sketch. from there, it's just me doing my best to try and force what's in my head on the page.
that being said, maybe some of this stuff might not make sense. it's all going to be written from a perspective of what works in my own head, but hopefully it helps anyways! (there's also drawings that nobody's ever seen in here either. as a treat.)
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OKAY SO HUGE DISCLAIMER. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. I'VE ONLY BEEN SERIOUSLY DRAWING BACKGROUNDS SINCE *CHECKS WATCH* SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR WITH THIS DRAWING. I WILL ADMIT THAT I DO NOT USE PERSPECTIVE RULERS. POINT PERSPECTIVES ARE COMPLETELY FOREIGN CONCEPTS TO ME THAT I STILL NEED TO STUDY.
now my tl;dr. my main advice is to treat the background and everything that comes with it as a character in its own right. backgrounds or a lack thereof exist to add to and tell more of a story, right? so since we want to draw a background, it has to compliment what else is in it. try and draw the eye to characters and details. it's about flowing things to whatever the main thing is, and not overriding the rest with extra information that takes away from it. also, force yourself to try and draw backgrounds that are gonna look bad to you at the start.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO SWING ABOVE YOUR WEIGHT CLASS. it's what i've done with colors and backgrounds, and it's been paying off with less than a year of being at this.
using this one as an example, just because it's the one i think i'm the proudest of lately... the line of the street and the curve of the umbrella push your eye toward kou and mitsuba, who are the focus of the drawing. as for the lightpole and the umbrella popping out of the border, i've also become a huge fan of playing with the aspect ratio on drawings recently. it adds more depth, so you can tell the lightpole and the umbrella are in front. additionally, the yellow and black striping on the lightpole is used for warning, and the road signage reads as "STOP." it's just something that pertains to my fanfiction that this drawing is based off of, but it's just a detail that makes me happy.
but taking all of that together, the background is... hopefully working to push your eye away from all of the warning signs to them just having a nice walk home. so it adds to it, yeah?
a few more examples of me trying to push directions in my backgrounds...
this one would have worked better if i'd pointed the raiteijou toward them, and angled the vines and veil things a lot harder. it was supposed to give off the feeling that kou was reaching for the raiteijou, but i don't feel i got that quite right. the background isn't fully synonymous with the lighting cast diagonally over them, which is why i think i wasn't happy with this one. coloring's nicer than i remembered, though!
this one was trying to start the eye down at "hikaru", then drawing it up to yoshiki and the firework where the more unnatural colors are. i think i half succeeded at that, since "hikaru's" eyes are so bright down in the cooler colors, and the bright blue in his... his goop is up so high. i wish i'd spent more time on his goop, but i was rushing this one for a convention.
fun fact. this one was a copout, but i still got it to work(?) i had a deadline to hit and i was exhausted. the idea was just to rely on the balloons sort of... swirling inward, but when i began to color i realized it didn't work without crowding them in the balloons too much. so i slapped the line on there and it worked. this one's a bad example of a minimal background, but i swear i have a better one coming that is... funnily enough, tilted the opposite direction.
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and now for ones that simply don't work and got scrapped as a result so hopefully you can tell more of a difference.
this one was included in the post that prompted asking more about how i draw backgrounds! but uh. there's no clear line of action here or anything to draw the eye anywhere in particular. that's why this one got scrapped.
so this one from april last year 100% doesn't work, because it's trying to be way too many things at once. there is the idea of a direction in here.
if i had to redo this with my knowledge today... i'd swap the side shijima is on so she's right handed (woops), take out mitsukou (i was greedy and wanted everything), and center hanako and nene. i remember attempting to make it work with the line being drawn from shijima's paintbrush, but having mitsuba and kou over it just doesn't work out.
the second version also suffers because there is just too much. even swapping from it flowing up doesn't help. shout out to my awful stick figure sketches again.
i might take a swing at this one again, since i know what i need to do to fix it.
from november 2025. i attempted a more minimal background on the first one, but it seems i couldn't figure out if i wanted the perspective to be going up, or pushing down, and it just fell flat as a result. the second one was changing a pose, but it seems i was also just taking things straight on. i don't think i would have been all that more successful.
barf ok this is from december 2024, back when i was still first venturing into drawing backgrounds. there is ALMOST a clear focal point that just doesn't work because there's not enough negative space. the teapot behind ciel (yes black butler) should be nudged over so there's both the veil, the spoon, and the spout leading into him as a focus. i was very nearly cooking on this one, but i missed the mark because i just wasn't experienced enough.
Hi! Whats the deal with u no longer posting ur process and stuff :o?
hi anon!
short answer, nobody really engaged with or acknowledged the process gifs or my little music list. unfortunately it does take some time to put those together, and that's time that i could use to be drawing. if people don't find it interesting, then that's okay!
if i can get more conspiratorial, i also think there's something about tumblr's algorithm that dislikes posts with read more in them. i really don't think i got that much better since the new years rabbit ones, but that post absolutely flopped lol. engagement's not everything but i hover around 12 hours for each drawing if i'm lucky. my last big illustration took 15 hours AAA OH GOD IT TOOK 15 HOURS
but um. if anyone was actually interested in that stuff. let me know and i'll start doing it again? i do little snippets of wips over on my sideblog, but not the whole process.
edit: do the likes mean yes, do it?? help me out here i get no sleep haha
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when i feel bad i can just make them feel bad instead
(real talk/tiny blog update under cut)
so something really scary happened to me at work two days ago. i won't get into the details like i did on my main blog, but the long and short of it is that i'm going to at least try and force myself to stop working on stuff for a bit and make myself rest.
knowing myself, i probably won't be super successful in stopping myself from working so don't get too worried lol. my body's crying for a break, but i really don't know if the rest of me will actually let that happen.
in case i do manage it, drawings are gonna slow down. i just don't have it in me to keep setting and hitting drawing deadlines right now out of like, anything but anxiety atm. i've been running on empty for a little while now, and this incident's kinda the straw that broke the camel's back.
if i DON'T manage to make myself slow down. um. idk yell at me to put the pen down and go take a nap on my next drawing. ok live laugh love mitsukou tysm for your support and patience with me <3
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(side note, dragon and snake were taken off of this one because i am exhausted of the research needed for those. i need a little refresh and then they'll be available again <3)
bunny. bunny. bunny. i'll be taking off dragon and snake from the next poll because i need a breather from all the research these particular ones take. but comparing this one to my year of the horse is kind of insane in terms of the development i've had
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a little housekeeping!
just so everyone knows i post a LOT of wips on my sideblog. so if you'd like to see even more of what i'm working on that isn't all cleaned up yet, you can take a look!
ok now a treat under here
retired mitsukou drawings that are too old/no longer meet my standards/have to be retooled/were scrapped completely
