its been years since ive touched my prismacolors i'm surprised i didnt suck. after reading some fanfiction (ahaha yeah i read fanfiction even though i dont necessarily like it. i feel likefemale authors try too hard to make characters gay, and that doesnt sit well with me when theyre from a tv show or vidya game where that aspect isn't even touched upon. BUT I DIGRESS AND THIS WAS WORKSAFE SO W/E) feeling inspired i did a simple ink sketch and wanted to give it some flatcolors with maybe a hint of shading, but i can never keep it simple :/
that's it for now


OH HAHA DONE WITHOUT REFERENCE SO IT'S NOT VERY ACCURATE AT ALL LOL.
P.S. MOST GENERIC POSE EV4R
( P.P.S. LOL I USED PHOTOCHAWP )

im going to give DA another go, hopefully to build up a following, which i have been unable to do since FOR EVER. no really, if more than about six people liked my art, the rest of you did a damn good job hiding it from me >:/ seriously. i've been posting my art online since i was 11, pouring my heart into my work, and obsessing over whatever site i was posting to. and what have i got to show for it?? HUH WHAT?? so i decided, whatever is stopping me from becoming popular, I MUST BE DOING IT. first thing is staying holed up in LJ where only 28 people watch me. YEAH, GREAT WAY TO BUILD A FOLLOWING THERE, IDIOT BUTT. also, trying to be a sucess on FA and not being overly social or a pornographer.( the latter I STILL WILL NOT DO). and these huge absences i take from whichever site im posting to, i've noticed is really damaging; no one cares when i get back, ive been gone so long they've removed me from their watches or forgotten about me. another damaging thing is not giving people what they want. and people want CUTEEE!!! people want SEXXXY!! and none of my characters are that. i'm sorry. i tried to make this one cute but i really wanted to keep her stitches.

edit: added more pics, still no sign of actiontwiggs pchat. i'll make a second cut for the new stuff. oh god, the first cut needs to be organized better.

lol k thoughts?
posting art soon. like really soon

i was going to make a music post, i was going to make an art post, i was going to tell a story, i was going to make a post complaining about jeffree star and all the stupid surrounding him--


BUUUUUT i need to customize my journal, because you guys cant tell a thing about me from my plain black and white layout.
then i'll get to that stuff.

i'm sitting here, doodling some giftarts at nearly three in the morning, yep doing art all night. i guess its these times where i really see that i'm so devoted to art, and not going after science and biology like i used to. i remember thinking, when i was younger, in junior high school that i WAS going to be a geneticist, no questions whatsoever, and if i ever did anything art related it would be secondary. and that if i EVER started to feel differently i should ignore it and listen to my previous wisdom (haha the wisdom of a 13 year old girl ffffffrrrp). i think it was mostly because going into a scientific field was more financially secure. especially with the field i was most interested in, genetics,playing such a key role in our society at the turn of the century. my good luck that i was born in the time period its starting to take off. if i DO go into genetics i can be one of the pioneers of this area i guess. pretty sweet. but then i went to an arts high school. or rather-- i was under the impression Ellington would be like a regular high school, but with extended hours for arts instruction. this isnt really true. i feel like they focus more on the arts than academics. we do not have AP chemistry or biology because we do not have working labs. what the hell. we got a shit ton of money last year and you know how we use it? to give the dance department a new floor. AAAAUGH I COULD RIP MY HAIR OUT! so with arts bloc the only set of classes that are consistently living up to my expectations (big props to my teachers) i've noticed im focusing more on my art skills now. i frequently wonder what it would have been like to go to a regular high school or even a technical high school/ magnet school (FFFFF THE KIDS AT MCKINLEY GET TO LEARN MAYA AND PROGRAMMING. UNFAIR D:) i wonder if i would be as good at art as i am now. (although i was really devoted before i got to Ellington and had built my skills up to above-average for my age on my own). i like being surrounded by other artists my age at school (even if they arent in the same department) because we get each other. if i had gone to a regular HS i know for a fact i would not fit in at all. it would suck, but i mean what's another 3 years of enduring being socially excluded by my peers. thats all JHS was.

but anyway i guess this [HS] will all mean nothing once i go to college so i'm going to try to keep my grades up and be  as awesome as i can be so i'm noticed by a college of my choice. i cant wait to start taking classes at GW this fall. like a hundredsomthing kids applied to the HISCIP program and i was one of the twentysomething selected so i guess im doing something right :D!

EDIT EDIT!!! ACK I GOT OFF TRACK I WANTED THIS ENTRY TO BE ABOUT STUFF LIKE

i like working actual size on digital pieces, i feel that if you're constantly zooming in to 200%. like, constantly, maybe you should just resize it.
also if you're going to do colored linework i find it easiest NOT to paint over your mistakes in white and put the lineart on multiply. erase your mistakes on an otherwise empty layer (no white bg on that layer) so you can make a clipping mask over it and color your lines from there.

clipping masks are life savers. learn to use them. they have been so much SO MUCH help to me when doing flatcolor and cel shading art for my sparkledog alt account. and hopefully this will spare you the confusion i had when trying to set layer attributes (multiply addition overlay etc) for clipping masks.
the clipping mask will have the same attributes as whatever layer it's "clipped" to.
say for example you make a clipping mask over a multiply layer. the colors or whatever in the mask wont lay down 'solidly' like they would on a normal layer, but darker like the original multiply layer.

oh and if you make the base layer invisible, all of its clipping masks toggle off with it too. so you dont have to do it manually. also if you change the base layer's opacity, all of its masks will have their opacity altered too. but the converse does not work. by  toggling visibility for a mask off  you wount affect anything but that mask layer. same goes for opacity and anything else

OK IM GONE NOW. PEACE

EDIT. BACK AGAIN

if you're wondering what a clipping mask does, it prettymuch saves you from erasing stray marks/coloring outside of the lines. you get your lineart. color it solidly one color on a regular layer. erase your excess on the same layer (the last time you'll have to erase stray marks!) then make clipping masks! yes plural!! you can pile multiple clipping masks on one base layer so you don't have to give up layer-by-layer coloring (fff you know, if you're into that--gimme one or two layers and im fine personally AW SHADDAP CHANIT, GORD) however you cannot make clipping masks of clipping masks in SAI. i dont know about photoshop because i use almost exclusively SAI these days.

back
if you make your finished lineart from the same layer you sketch on, like me (and not many others lol) dont feel pressured to put your layer on multiply to get that darker color if you sketch in bright colors. hue/saturation can change whatever color something is (the lineart in this case) and make it lighter/darker/duller/ the WORKS. so yeah, always play around with that. hue saturation can be found in SAI under filter>hue/saturation and in photoshop under image>adjustment>hue/saturation. in both programs the shortcut is ctrl+u.

learn your short cuts. if you have a tablet where you can assign the buttons short cuts, DO IT.

when using cliping masks you might see that you didnt completely fill in your linework or you went out a little, i find its easiest to correct stray marks, especially around spiky hair or other really small important details, with your brush/eraser with a soft edge. i notice i dont have to rework the area nearly as much as i would if i'd used a sharp edged brush.