This Hat!! And I Have Been In A Battle Of Wills For 2 Months!! I've Made Hats Before But Nothing As...

IF YOU WERE CURIOUS ABOUT HOW EPICLY EPIC the epic-sized poster looks irl, here you go! I gotta admit it is even more awesome in quality than I expected, the paper is nice and thick and glossy and the colors are pretty much exactly right which is usually an issue since I paint with *~rainbow~*

ps its worldbuilding wednesday ask me stuff :D

Aaaaand of course the designs I finally settled on. It seems to have stuck cos I haven't been interested in changing them much for a few years now (actually I just checked, about eight years holy shit that's not a few at all!). Like I feel it reached some kind of creative maturity because they incorporate everything I learned about actual functional outfits over the years, but of course I still make them as fancy and stylish as possible. Because they are elves.

I have been thinking about this SO MUCH wrt my own high sensitivity. This sort of three-factor approach to emotional personality stuff is really useful for sorting thru your own life and thoughts for personal growth and self awareness, etc. My personal low baseline, high sensitivity and slow recovery time are all "problems" that have to be addressed seperately. Once I acknowledged that my own baseline is pretty skewed toward the negative thru NO fault of my own it helped me resist attempts to shame me for not being a naturally "happy" person. Some people are rays of sunshine and some people are misty fogs and that is OK. Its been much harder for me to accept the sensitivity because I grew up under the delusion that this was something I could change about myself. I feel this is related to the attitude that sensitive people shouldn't be "coddled" and bullying/abuse can be justified if it toughens them up. So it really did take an entire lifetime of effort and FAILURE to realize that was patently untrue. No amount of willpower will make this skin thicker, and thats OK too. The time it takes to return to baseline/regain equilibrium/find balance is the most important thing to address in my experience. If you don't have a whole lot of control over your basic brain chemistry (medications can only do so much after all) or your sensitivity (degree of sensitivity to stimulus is *biological*), what CAN you control? Your thoughts, decisions, and your actions. These affect the intensity and duration of emotional reactions. This is what true cognitive behavioral therapy is all about. Acknowledge what makes you feel things and why. Understand WHAT you're feeling. KNOW that emotions serve a PURPOSE. I see lots of posts circulating with long lists of actions you can take to deal with negative feelings in a healthy way and that makes me happy that people are sharing this, because I had to learn most of those things on my own and the more time saved from having to figure out what to do is more time you can use to figure out what actually works for YOU. Coping skills, emotional management skills are all just that, skills you can learn. It boils down to the usual idea of change what you can control and accept what you can't change... the hard part is figuring out which is which. tl;dr, feelings.

It seems like a lot of your characters have pointed ears/"unnatural" hair colors-- I'm assuming they're something not-quite-human, so can you explain what exactly they are/what's the deal with their race/their culture? Does your storyworld(/storyworlds) have other common races? What's up with them?

oho, two questions! All my pointy ears characters are elves from the same story of which Errikan is the main character... I've been working on a website to provide at least a bit of overview and context for them. So its a fantasy world with several races but most of my characters are elves, and they are really only elves and not human because I love drawing big pointy ears, created them way back when I discovered legend of zelda and elfquest comics about age 14. :p It was kind of a blow to learn that most elves in fantasy aren't actually as cool as those so heh, I just had to make sure mine lived up to my expectations.

The fantasy takes place on a continent called Rethamnel, the elves are the majority humanoid race, but there are also dwarves, merpeople, orcs, trolls, giants, and centaurs. I won't lie, they are mainly there because it is fun to design your own versions of fantasy races, but its not a huge aspect of plot or anything, since by the time I decided to have lots of non-elf races my main characters were already established. I worked that into my history by making them the majority, conquering, culturally imperialist race with the dominant religion, so it fits :p heh

*~ the most beautiful bromance ~*

What college did you go to to learn how to be such a fantastic artist? And what was your major?

ahaha I don't know what you're talking about, I was a fantastic artist way before college *snortsnortsnort*

In SLIGHTLY more seriousness, I never finished college and part of the reason was because I felt like I wasn't learning anything (except how to be pretentious), I had professors looking at my work and asking me why I was bothering, and struggling with a severe depression ended up losing my scholarship, the only way I could afford to go to such an expensive school (Carnegie Mellon University).

... Though hindsight is 20/20 and honestly my mistake was majoring in Fine Art, it was a terrible fit. Still dealing with some residual bitterness to this day, for an idea of my Opinions on the matter I recommend the movie Art School Confidential, it mirrors my experience pretty accurately!

PW6 in three flavors- yacht party, indiana jones, and SCIENCE.

I'll stop drawing so many clothes eventu-LOLOLsorry couldn't even finish that sentence

I tripled the density of hair on this lacefront so it took a looooong time. BUT Im super happy with how fluffy it is without any product 8D 1. ventilated widows peak & sideburns added 2. trimmed bangs 3. micro crimped 4. rollers 5. heat set into a SWOOSH 6. combed out no teasing or hairspray! floof!

creepyeverything:

villainry:

a day to discuss and ask about your and your creative-type buddies’ stories, characters, concepts, the whole shebang! get talking, ~get inspired~

my ask box: here

reblog with your own!

I know it is not Wednesday anymore but I will remind myself to...

HEY I want to do this too! Worldbuilding is my favoritest topic of anything of all time so yes please, ask me stuff kthxbye

I've been using Sai for years and only just now tried the vector linework tools I AM SO MAD I didn't bother sooner they are perfect and wonderful. I can be as anal as I want and scootch the lines around, adjust the lineweight at every control point, and NO handcramps omg. INKING.

Linework tutorial here.

Drawing real people is haaaaaaaard. weh

Going overboard with layer fx in photoshop again. BEVELS

Fluorishes from the vector lab

This is fanart for my favorite band or something