ALL* Content Warnings For Trigun And Trimax

she's so real

Was this necessary? No. Am I going nuts waiting for my male Vash wig to arrive so I did this to scratch the itch? Yes. I don’t even know if I can pull a male Vash off, but I wanted to try this doing more of my femme Vash in the meantime.

Beautiful Vash art by @hollycircling!

would you consider dropping some tips on how you color? your art always has such a nice feeling to it

Thank you so much, and yes, absolutely! 

So... I have been agonizing over how to answer this question for over a week because I tend to make a lot of my major decisions based on what looks and feels good to me in the moment. It’s sort of hard to explain. Then I started getting philosophical with it (“how does one color? How do I explain aesthetic?”), and I started rambling, and had to cut the answer way, way, way down lol.

But here’s what I can help with right now. I think the most important part of how I color is my tools and what they allow me to do. These are currently my favorite brushes to use: 

From top to bottom, I use Kyle T’s Gouache for just about everything. A lot of my recent pieces are done entirely in that– I love the chunky texture and how the pressure mimics traditional gouache. It’s great for children’s book illustrations, and filling linework, and realistic portraits. She is my soft wife and I love her. 

I practically never use the default hard round. Ignore that. 

The roller brush is another one I use for painting. It was my go-to before KT’s gouache, so you’ll find it a lot in my older work (and as a big texture thing in my current works). The “Sampled Tip” below that one I usually use for children’s book styled illustrations. It’s like a really dense, waxy crayon, so it’s fun for textured lines and details.

I always paint in my own shadows and highlights, but I like to use the soft round if I want to blow the shadow or highlight out. It’s for extra large areas.

And finally my pencil. I use it for sketching as well as linework, if I plan on doing a linework-centric piece. I don’t think there’s much of a difference between the two there… one is probably smoother than the other. 

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The reason why I like textured, pressure-sensitive brushes so much is because they’re important to how I paint. When I blend, I don’t use a blender brush or a smudge tool. What I do is layer two colors– lightly– then use the eyedropper to select the color between them and continue painting with it. That’s probably the key to most of my work. I’ve gotten pretty fast at it, so I’m constantly selecting colors from the painting and reusing it throughout my painting. 

I still use the color-wheel to hand-pick what I think will look best, though. This is probably going to be a really frustrating answer, but I choose color palettes based on basic color/lighting theory combined with personal aesthetic preference. It can take some studying (of both theory and other artists’ work). If you’re ever looking for a really great reference on the former subjects, I highly recommend Color and Light by James Gurny. Even if you’re not into watercolor or dinosaurs or realism, the guy is a master at explaining all that different stuff in depth. 

Shape and negative space are also pretty important to me, but that's a whole other thing. And as a side-note, I recommend following more children’s book illustrators. Their work may look simple, but a lot of intention goes into how they use color, shape, space, and texture. 

Also, on texture, I hand-draw most of mine. I love to add little scratches and drops and splashes when the painting is almost over. It's one of my favorite things to do :')

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Now, the other most important tip:

Once I’m happy with the sketch/linework, and once I’ve laid down the basic colors of my piece, I do a Really Terrible Thing. I become a graphic designer’s worst nightmare and collapse everything onto one layer. 

Then I paint directly on top of it, linework and all.

I do this for a lot of reasons, but mostly because 1) my tiny brain is overwhelmed by the clutter of too many layers, and 2) it forces me to approach a piece as if it was traditional media– a process which I find a lot more comfortable and rewarding. I paint right on top of the base colors, and right on top of the linework, effectively redoing and cleaning up what I already have there. Even if I'm working with a blank background, I'll paint a new blank one on top because it gives the feeling of a more unified piece, if that makes sense.

Basically, I approach my drawings as if I’m using traditional media. I like chunky brushes, utilizing (what I personally think are) interesting color combinations and textures, and smashing everything down onto one page so I can just paint. 

Anyway, please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to go into detail on, any pieces of mine you’d like to know how exactly I went about it, etc etc etc. I’m happy to answer ^^

houseki no kuni/land of the lustrous + text posts, 1/?

houseki no shitpost, if you will. i dunk on these rocks with nothing but affection

Translated from Ishida’s personal twitter (X):

Yesterday, after finalizing the name of my new manga, I fell asleep. Kaneki and Touka were in my dreams, for the first time in a long while. In my dreams, they defeated Mado, fought against a mysterious ghoul, and even though it went all over the place, it was fun. It almost seemed like they were telling me to go have fun.

The title of my new work will be “Choujin X.” (Superhuman X) I will enjoy working on it at my own pace.

to the casual observer it may look like i'm trying to summon a demon but anyone who knows me will realize that i am simply calling my wife

How to view Tags

So I just found out how to view the tags others add to your posts when reblogging them. There used to be an XKit Extension for it but ever since the new Tumblr dashboard that didn’t work anymore. However, Tumblr makes it now possible without the need of an extra extension. I don’t know if this is common knowledge and I just never knew but I thought I’d share it for everyone who, like me, didn’t know about this feature. So here you go. ;)

This only works for the desktop version, not for the app:

1. Click on the “notes” on the bottom left of a post. 

If people added text to your post or wrote a reply that’s visible in the little window that opens then. 

2. To view the tags click on the “#” on the top right of the little window. 

And that’s it. Now you can see the tags that were added to the post. ;)

Harry Potter low cost version

by Studio 188

is phos really phos anymore? 

OMG! I finally finished Kuroshitsuji’s realistic portraits list. I calculated it took me 2 years and 195 days! On my list were 63 portraits but meanwhile I did some extra fanarts. Thank you all for support in this challenge. I think I couldn’t bring that to the end if not yours kind and motivational words. Much love ❤️