ornamentedbeing:

c. 1890

Met

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wonderfinch:

I don’t know why, but I have been so into veils lately.

(Source: adjectival, via palaven)

vexedkitten:

For The Love of Blythe by kikihalb on Flickr.

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avali:

amberblade:

poisonlollipop:

coralinebluee:

Also, I get so excited when this guy’s photos pop up on the online Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool . He does some of the coolest poses for gestures and his body is just /ahhhh

~ u ~ . 

Photos by Marcus J. Ranum

FOUND OUT WHAT I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP

I’ve drawn one or two of these and they were really fun to do.

Woahhhhhh. *A*

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(via honeyed)

foervraengd:

UPDATE: For photoshop users. Use the LAB-sliders in order to get the right value for the colors;

I think I’ve done something like this long ago, but that tutorial is not really up to date since I didn’t 100% understood this technique back then.

But tonight, I finally understand how it’s done.

And I know that some people out there might be laughing or be surprised that I didn’t know this before, but hey - they never really brought up this subject in my art school (which also was aimed at comics and not really at digital art eheh.)

This method should work in any digital art software that has layer functions, the blending mode “Overlay”, “Multiply”, “Saturation” and a filter/mode that can turn the picture into grayscale.

First, I’ll begin with showing how saturation can fool your eye to believe it’s “lighter” than the midtone.

Here we have two blue eggs, or something. They almost look like having the same color on the highlighted part.

But if we turn the picture to grayscale, we can clearly see that the right egg has a lighter value than the left egg.

The colors are different on the eggs highlighted areas. The left one has a much more saturated color. While the other one simply has a lighter value.

However, this is more visible to the human eye if we turn it into grayscale! The contrast is much more visible in grayscale!

What I learned from this is that more or less ALL 100% saturated colors share the same value!

Here’s another example:

The warm colors in this picture all have the same value.

We can see this when we switch over to grayscale.

Having a good and wide range of values (light and darkness) in a painting, is what makes it pleasing for the human eye. This is why black and white photography i still very popular for example. 

That said, with a good set of values in the composition, you can make ANY kind of artwork in ANY kind of style give 10x more impact on the viewer.

So, how do we use this knowledge when we wanna color a grayscale value painting?

Well, first off you should take a look at how the color wheel works.

Or more like… color triangle!

Now, this is how the color wheel looks in Corel Painter. I removed some of the color wheel here because of reasons.

I DO NOT know if you can get the color wheel like this in Paint Tool Sai. I know that Photoshop use a square instead (that more or less works the same way).

The important thing here to keep in mind is that along the line where you can read “Saturation”, no matter how high or low the saturation is, it can still have the exactly same VALUE.

Now, let’s continue to the painting.

Here’s the value painting that I did in grayscale.

In order to color this, I’ll add a Overlay-layer above it.

Now this is some funky colors!

However, what we should keep in mind here is that ALL the colors on the overlay-layer has the exact same value. And that value would more or less be 50% gray. (Meaning, in the middle of the value-range from black to white).

Now, the purple and orange color in the background has both the same value (“lightness/darkness”). So this would mean that if we turned the painting to grayscale, the stripes should barely be visible…

Okay, the reason why the striped still are visible, is because I used a brush that is slightly blending the colors, so the outline of the strokes turn out a bit lighter.

However, this still proves what I told earlier.

So, if you just make sure that the colors on the overlay layer all has the same value. You should be able to color the painting in any kind of color, but still have the same values when turned into grayscale.

And this is why it’s so popular among Concept artists to work in grayscale when they for example do character/monster design; they can do several different versions of  one monster with different colors but still keep the same values.

Here’s a Note to Self (I’ll write it down here in case you can’t see the picture):

- Let the value painting) control the values - NOT the color-layer.

- All the colors on the Overlay layer should ALL have the same value. Vary the tones by the amount of saturation instead. (The amount of saturation should not affect the values.)

The left one is more or less the finished result. By lowering the saturation, I managed to give the skin different skintones. The one to the right is more or less the value-painting before I added color. Now let’s do a last test and check if I have messed up the values on the colored version…

Aaaaaand as you can see, it’s more or less the same values! Yes, there’s some small areas where it’ a bit darker, I discovered that some colors do affect the values even if it’s *supposed* to have the same value. However, the difference they do is very subtle and isn’t really a major problem.

I srsly feel so happy to finally understand how the heck this method works. This is more or less that part I never get to hear about in all those tutorials in value-painting. 

NOW GO PRACTICE VALUE PAINTING! >:D

(via quiixotical)

lolololori:

Cloud Lights - First, you need some cotton batting, a paper lantern, and three flameless candles, the type that Glade sells. Pull at the cotton batting until it looks fluffy, light, and cloud-like. Then, hot glue it to the outside of the paper lantern in various places. Make sure it´s fluffed to your liking, then light the lights and stick them inside. Hang the lantern wherever you´d like.

(via commanderlizabiz)

heysawbones:

I admit, I like to draw things that I find aesthetically appealing. I’m not above that.

That said, it’s important to me that a character is able to emote. When I’m drawing a guy, I usually know how to draw him emoting while still keeping the set of visual symbols that make the character attractive. If I only drew a ‘default’ anatomically correct face that couldn’t emote, I’d get bored. It would be easier, but, yeah. Very boring. I suspect other people looking at my work would feel the same way.

Illustrated women, on the other hand, often seem much more limited in their ability to “emote while being attractive”. Since our Western idea of what makes a woman attractive is much more limited than our idea of what makes a man attractive, we have been given a much more limited set of “attractive female” facial symbols to work with, than we have been given for men. It makes the prospect of drawing a woman really emoting daunting, challenging, and for some people, apparently not worth the effort. Since it’s so important to many illustrators that their females be attractive at ALL times, a lot of people don’t even bother with trying to give their women a little more… well, character.

I understand why a lot of illustrators shy away from drawing women making “crazy” faces. Yeah, it’s tough to do, especially if you’re concerned with maintaining aesthetic appeal. For me, as an illustrator, it’s worth the trouble.  I gotta say, looking at galleries and comic books full of women making the same two bedroom eyes/sweet smile faces is incredibly boring. And asinine. It might be worth it for you to learn how to draw women emoting, too.

I think sticking with the bedroom eyes status quo is lazy. And, it’s a copout. And, you can do better. Yes, you CAN learn to do it. The alternative is that your women are as boring as paste. They look so generic that they fade entirely into the background and stop even registering as “attractive” after a while, which defeats your point entirely, doesn’t it?

These are all taken from the same Nicki Minaj video. I hope someone out there finds them as inspiring and useful as I do.

(via galacticdrugdealer)

(via scumbag-vanguard)

moniquill:

nordic-drifter:

A Selkie is a creature from Scandinavian and Scottish folklore that takes the shape of a seal. However, the seal is able to shed its skin and appear human.

If one were to hide the Selkie’s seal skin it would render them unable to transform back. Selkies are only allowed to make contact with a human for a short period of time, after which they may not see the human again for seven years. But this can be avoided by stealing their skin to prevent them from transforming. In many stories this is the case; a man will steal and hide a female Selkie’s seal skin in order to have control over her. If the Selkie later finds her skin she will return to the sea, abandoning her husband and often her children as well. 

rebloggoing for reference

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