Cats, video-games and Fanfiction

🌸🌼🌺🌷🌻💐 Where is my dandelion?

(Soft oc asks) 4 - Forehead kisses or hand kisses?

@hungrydolphin91

The oc rambles continue :3

View of a town skyline at dusk in the winter, with the J&B Blended Scotch Whiskey logo superimposed on the picture. A flock of sheep walks from left to right, making baaa sounds, their bells jangling. Some Christmas lights with a star are strung along some telephone poles on the left side of the frame.

Cut to the inside of a house where an older man with white hair is sitting in an armchair reading a paper. His wife comes in and puts her handbag on the side table. She’s on the phone, and quickly moves into another room. A lipstick rolls out of the bag. The older man surreptitiously picks up the lipstick, then sneaks into the bathroom, locks the door, and attempts to apply the lipstick. He is not pleased with the results. He wipes off the lipstick and hides it in a small makeup bag on top of the bathroom mirror cabinet.

Elvis Costello’s song “She” begins to play when the wife walks in, and it plays throughout the video. The first line of the song is “She may be the face I can’t forget,” and as the video goes on we learn why this song is significant to the story being told by the ad.

The older man goes to a small store and buys more makeup. The female shopkeeper gives him an unfriendly glare when he pays for his purchase.

The old man looks at a magazine in his home. He tears out a page about makeup and goes back into the bathroom to experiment with the eyeshadow he bought earlier. He tries the lipstick again and adds some rouge. The result is better, but he’s not quite satisfied.

The man goes to a bus stop. Inside the bus shelter, he minutely examines the eye makeup on the model in an ad on the shelter wall. He jumps away from the ad when another man enters the shelter and sits down. The other man doesn’t seem to have noticed what the older man was doing.

Back in the bathroom, the man experiments with mascara. He likes the result. He puts the lipstick on again, and likes this too. Someone knocks on the door, so he hurriedly wipes off the makeup and hides the makeup bag again.

Scene cuts to the living room, where the man sits in his chair reading the newspaper. He looks over at some family photos. One of them shows the man with his arm around a teenager with short, dark hair.

Scene then cuts to the man’s bedroom. It’s nighttime, and he’s in bed with his sleeping wife. The man sneaks out of bed and back into the bathroom. He puts on all the kinds of makeup he bought: lipstick, rouge, mascara, eyeshadow. He looks at himself in the mirror, all made up, and smiles. Now he’s got it right.

The next day, the man is in his living room, where he hears a car honk outside. He goes and looks out the window. Outside is a group of people greeting each other in the driveway; they are an extended family, and apparently have just arrived at the older man’s house. One of the family members is a young man with short, dark hair. Text superimposed on the screen reads “Alvaro, 26 años,” indicating the name and age of the young man. The scene cuts back inside, where the older man comes away from the window, looking thoughtful.

The family sets the table for Christmas dinner, putting out plates and silverware and lighting candles. The older man goes to Alvaro and gestures with his head. “Come with me.” They go into the bathroom. The older man locks the door, then proceeds to put the makeup on Alvaro with much love and tenderness. The older man is happy with the way Alvaro looks. Alvaro is pleased, too.

Cut back to the dining room, where the rest of the family is laughing and talking together. Conversation suddenly stops and people look up, surprised. The grandfather ushers his grandchild out of the bathroom. She stands nervously in front of her family, her face beautifully done. The family pause, then start to smile. The camera goes close on a man with greying hair and beard. He seems overcome with happy emotion, and seems to be the grandchild’s father.

The camera goes back close on the grandchild, who looks shyly at her family. The name and age superimposed now read “Ana, 26 años.”

A woman with greying short hair stands up and goes to Ana. This apparently is Ana’s mom. She gives Ana a big hug. The mom is crying with happiness and love, and smiles at the grandfather through her tears. The grandfather blinks and seems shy but pleased.

The camera pulls back to show everyone at the table again. The grandfather is standing and leading a toast. Superimposed text reads “La magia no solo está en la Navidad. También está en nosotros.” (The magic isn’t only in Christmas. It’s also in us.)

A series of short close shots. Ana happily raises her glass with everyone else. The grandfather takes his wife’s hand and kisses it. Ana’s dad takes a sip of his whiskey, then Ana’s grandmother goes over and gives Ana a big hug.

There’s a brief shot of a bottle of J&B whiskey, which is on the table with the other dinner things, then the scene cuts to show the grandfather looking at Ana and raising his glass to her, smiling. Ana raises her glass to her grandfather and smiles at him.

Final shot is the J&B logo on a black background with the text “de celebrarnos” (to celebrate us).

I do not know how to explain how fucking impossible that would have seemed to me twenty years ago when I just realized that possibly, maybe, I wasn’t straight. I cannot explain to you how amazing this is, and how beautiful it is. 

To everyone that's confused, the planet Venus rotates very very slowly, with a single revolution taking about 243 Earth days, and Mercury rotates slowly, but not as slow as Venus.

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk