I Need To Rebuild Basically My Entire Art Style From The Ground Up To Improve Or Refine It More. I Can

You are never safe from electrocution. Maelstrom dragons can only really GET YOU if it's wet, so you might think to escape to the deserts, but watch out

Electrum dragons can more easily GET YOU with their static buildup the drier it is, with water being their counter. The safer you are from one, the more the other can attack

makes you wonder if theres ever been team rocket like duos of these guys

if you hear yapping when you knock on my door thats the dogs. they're all little chihuahua mixes. now if you hear yipping thats the kobolds. important distinction

i am drawing each of these on their respective day this week (already finished today's

dragon calendar:

monster monday

titanic teeth tuesday

wonderful wings wednesday

thick horns thursday

fat tail friday

seismic tail saturday

silly snoot sunday (we have fun with this one)

this thing down here

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how to tag

Day 21 - flowers

LMFAOOOO ELON MUSK JUST GOT STABBED BY AN EX TWITTER EMPLOYEE

hyperfixating on wizard of legend but theres like no content about it so i have to actually get good at the game

Pinned 2024

accidentally deleted my old pinned while deleting all of my art due to the AI bullshit on 2/27/2024.

Hi, I'm Smoothie. I don't know what I'm going to do with this blog. However, do not follow me if you are a minor. I'm not gonna be filtering myself anymore. If i see you following me and you're a minor, you will be blocked.

I am an artist, but you're going to have to take my word on that due to tumblr's AI bullshit.

I use they/them, subject to update later maybe idk. yadda yadda fuck off terfs. i block people liberally.

I wrote nearly 4300 words today. In just one day I've gone from "yeah I still have a bit left before I can start doing the drawings for the book" to "oh hell yeah i can just do a little 3-page epilogue and then art it up" in one day. I'm crazy. the end of this project is in sight. i am so happy about this informa

HOW TO USE THE "MAKE ART GOOD" BUTTON TO MAKE YOUR ART GOOD

HEY, YOU! Yeah, you, amateur artist! Have you ever seen a digital artist with really good fucking colours and wondered "HOW DID THEY GET THOSE REALLY GOOD FUCKING COLOURS?!" Is it experience, talent, and an eye for colour? FUCK NO. I'm here to tell you what the pros don't want you to know, which is that right within your very art program (assuming you're using Clip Studio Paint) is a single button that will MAKE YOUR ART GOOD*

* or like, marginally better than it was before most of the time

Let me show you how I took this BORING, UNGOOD Slime Rancher painting I did as a final project for my traditional art course from BORING...

TO RAD AS FUCK

IN APPROXIMATELY FIVE MINUTES

THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE BUTTON.

You'll have to put everything on the same layer (I recommend putting it in a folder, duplicating the folder, and then collapsing all the duplicate layers together so your original work is still untouched), but after that, you can open the Gradient Map menu and go hog fucking wild.

This is what you're gonna see:

Basically, what gradient maps do is they map the darkest colour in your piece to the darkest colour in a gradient, and the lightest to the lightest, and then VOILA. All of your colours have been changed to the colours of the gradient. Neat!

You can use this to do things like automatically change skin tones or hair colours, or in our case, colour the whole painting!

You can download sets off the asset store and load them into your program by selecting the wrench icon and picking "Add gradient set."

All you need to do is load a gradient in the tool and voila...

...okay actually that looks like shit. (The gradient I'm using is #11 from the Yunywave set on the asset store! Go download it! It's a good set!)

So, our solution here is going to be different depending on the goal, the gradient, and whether it's a colour piece you're trying to zhuzh up or a B&W piece like this.

For this one, I duplicated the original layer and set the second one to Overlay at 100% opacity, then applied the gradient map to it.

INCREDIBLE! PERFECT!

Here are some other examples of how I've used gradient maps...

See, Overlay is a really good blending mode to use for this kind of thing, especially if you painted it with "normal" colours and just want to give it a little kick! But you should experiment with other modes, too. For a pastel piece, try Screen. For a subtle change, try Soft Light. For a moody or dark piece, try Multiply.

And you can also add even more details over the gradient layer to add that extra punch to it! In the example painting, I wasn't happy with the foreground tree's highlight being so dark, so I painted over it with an orange colour picked from the background, duplicated it, recoloured it to a dull yellow, and set the layer to 60% Glow Dodge.

Digital art gives us so many tools to make SICK FUCKING ART with, and gradient maps are like, the most powerful tools of all! USE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM AND GO MAKE COOL STUFF!