#about my process

Thanks for the ask, hon! <3

I definitely didn’t use any symbolism this week. This week was rough with IRL stuff and I think I only wrote about 2k words all week. 

That said, looking back on my writing, I don’t tend to use a lot of symbolism. I suck at it. I tend to lean very heavily on literal wordings and interpretations (which might actually be an autism thing, I’m not sure,) but I’ve always had a hard time grasping and interpreting symbolism in literature. I’m much more prone to putting symbolism in visual media--like drawings and animatics--and it’s also easier for me to interpret them that way.

Thank you so much! It’s always super exciting to hear when people enjoy my work. *hugs* I pick fics for a variety of reasons. It might be that the dialogue would be fun to voice, or the author’s language in the narrative is particularly beautiful, or the fic really manages to elicit my emotions/resonates with me. It’s not always easy for me to define what about a fic makes me, somewhere in the process of reading it, go “omg I must record this!!”. And the things that really draw me in seem to shift some from fandom to fandom and as time goes on.  

Mostly my fic choices are a reflection of what I’ve been reading recently, absolutely loved, and felt I had to be the voice for (there are some fics I love but just rec/stick on pinboard because I don’t have time to actually record all the things, so that means a higher bar for how into a fic I have to be to record it). So I’ve mostly been recording fics I feel “podfarr” about, meaning I can’t imagine not podficcing it and want to start recording *now*. I do keep tabs on BP authors I like as well as authors who I’ve podficced in the past and know are podfic friendly, particularly authors who have writing styles that mesh well with my style of narration. 

Also what on earth does "digital oil painting" mean?

Thank you so much!

I use Photoshop and work from reference. I’ve posted a tutorial on my Deviant Art (I’m licieoic there as well), it’s admittedly not a great tutorial but that really isn’t my strong point! LOL

When I used to do traditional media artwork, I used to do a lot of pencil sketching, pen line art, colored pencil work, acrylic paint, and occasionally charcoal/Conte crayon or pastels. I don’t do a lot of watercolors because you really only get one shot at getting it right or traditional oil because it’s very messy. But traditional media became very hard on my neck, shoulders, and back, and when you’re already in pain you really can’t handle any more on top of it, so I switched to digital media on a semi-permanent basis many years ago. 

I’d been practicing and teaching myself digital artwork since I was around 14 or so, hunting for various tutorials online and playing around with the various tools available in the program. Digital art allows me to do it while propped up on pillows in my bed with a tablet in my lap, my eyes on my laptop in front of me, it’s a lot easier on my body this way. 

I work from lots of different references that I put together in a ‘rough’ format and then I paint over it to get the changes in form, different shades of color, any additions and details, and the background (if any) that I want, after that, I blend the colors like I would with a real paintbrush, only I’m using a digital brush that makes it look like the stroke of oil paint. So the final product is something that is totally mine, though the final product’s quality varies depending on how much time I put into it. Sometimes I just want to stop looking at a project because it’s not turning out the way I want and that’s something that happens to all artists at some point or another so I just call it done, even if I don’t think it looks quite right. Most of the time, though, I end up pretty happy with what I put out. 

I’d be happy to tell you more about my process!

I started doing digital art when I was around 14 (I’m 37 now), but I made the change to doing it full time when I developed back and neck problems while doing traditional art. I can do digital art in bed while relaxing, so it doesn’t hurt me to do it. Because I have fibromyalgia I am always in pain, but painting digitally helps the pain float to the back of my head and I enter a kind of ‘zen’ state, that’s why I do it. It gives me peace.

I call it an oil painting because that’s the style of the painting. If it was watercolor-style, I would call it a digital watercolor painting. What I use to accomplish the look of oil in photoshop is a brush I downloaded from a free site that I use to apply the colors and blend them. But you don’t have to have a special brush to do this, while I was still learning I just used a fan brush that came with photoshop. It’s under Wet Media Brushes.

If you look at pictures that have an oil painting filter, you can usually tell it’s a filter, the strokes are very uniform, usually in a cross-hatch pattern that doesn’t match the contours of the figures in the image. Mine are different, I work from reference, but you can see the strokes I make because the only filter I do use is a Smart Sharpen filter to make my strokes show up better. I want people to see the work that I do, the love that I put into each painting.