People Learn By Doing, Which Means That By The Time A  Piece Of Art Is Done, You Have Become Infinitesimally

Online, Five By Five, Alive and Amplified

Well, I finally got my internet all hooked up at home. You know what that means?

We's gonna be Livestreamin's tonight! Probably 4 or 5 hours from now... That's gonna be around 6:30PM (Eastern Standard Time) for me, 5:30 for those of you in on the east coast of the US, 4:30 in the central US and Mexico, and 6:30AM for those of you in the middle of Russia or Indonesia.

Still taking suggestions/requests for what to do! I'm gonna be drawing stuff this afternoon and screwing around with it digitally for the Livestream... if you'd like to see something, now's the time to speak up. Ask and Submit buttons are right over, you know how to use 'em. I might take requests in the stream, but I'd rather do the drawing and inking on paper in advance (I have a webcam, so I may be able to stream some traditional work. I don't have any of it actually set up yet, tho, so that's speculative at this point).

One thing in particular: If anyone has B/W or grayscale lineart they'd like to see coloured and rendered, I'd totally be up for doing some of that.

At any rate... see you there!

I’m dead certain that the first 20% of learning to draw, the first step, is learning how to handle the drawing utensil. They say anyone who can write can learn to draw, but they don’t mention that learning to write results in a whole lot of habits that have to be retrained.

Notice that the artist is not scrunching their fingers to inch the pen along? It’s all in the wrist and arm. Finger scrunching is good for up to, like, lines up to an inch long.

Quick Tip to Draw Straight Lines & Avoid Shaky Hand Lettering by Sean McCabe

Sketch of a heavily-armoured gauntlet for Galen. I liked how it came out, so I inked and coloured it.

You know you're  in a rough line of work when the dress code includes reactive armour plating. 

Man, I've been neglecting my tumblr.

Not dead, just busy. I'm trying to get this comic thing started, which involves a lot of design and concept sketches. Which are messy. So, I'm filling out three pages of sketchbook a day, but very little of it is presentable.

...And drawing dodecahedrons. I'll post about that some other time.

Here's another charcoal thing, I love it. Windy oaks have got to be the very epitome of spooky trees. 

For Jasper, my OC, I chose a specific breed: Irish Sport Horse, aka Irish Hunter. I'd consider that the equivalent of picking a race.

This was very closely related to his personality and character concept, not to mention his physical build and appearance (though, I didn't realize until later that I'd made him Irish and gave him a green coat).

His swooshy forelock was inspired by Superman's iconic curl of hair. I wanted give him a sort of hunky-dreamy sort of look. The ponytail and black ribbon bow was inspired by 18th-century hairstyles (Think Will Turner or Lieutennant Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean).

I actually did draw Jasper as a human at one point... I really should dig that pic up, I liked how it came out.

Hey guys

I’m just wondering, do you people with like pony characters make up the specific way your character would look if it was a human- like hair styles, race, etc.

I mean like

do you decide on the race your characters

do you decide on the body type

i mean whut.

Okay, some more alpaca pictures. There were three of them.

They're really soft. Shy, tho, so I didn't wanna pester them too much.

Unplanned Adventure Comics!

'Kay, so... after helping Verzi with his little April Fools stunt, I've come to a realization: I plan way, way too much. Seriously. Whenever I start up a comic, I spend months doing preparation work. Lame.

So I started a new tumblr: Unplanned Adventure Comics! In three days, I'm gonna start posting comics based on whatever I come up with on the spot, and just run with it. You guys can submit material for me to make use of, using the ask button (Labled "Suggest Something Unplanned") Or the submit button, I guess (Labled "Submit").

A few guidelines:

You can make suggestions for anything: characters, plot, setting, themes, art style, items, genre, you name it.

No copyrighted material. This is going to be all original material, I'm not gonna be throwing Naruto/MLP/MegaMan in there. I am willing to do something inspired by existing franchises, however. Parody, satire, spoof, or similar basic concepts.

Likewise, I'm not going to be inserting other people's characters. I'm looking for suggestions and ideas, not full character biographies. I want to sorta make this up as I go along, after all.

Once the "story" actually get going, there will probably be some homestuck/Ask Woona sorta stuff, where the story advances based on what the readers suggest, with a bit of whatever-I-feel-like thrown in for good measure.

So! You have two days: Do your worst, and I'll give you my best. Let's see what happens.

This is one of my favourite poems. ^_^

Happy Hallow' indeed!

Happy Halloween, folks!

Stream's over... I would have gone for longer, but eyestrain decided to kick me in the head. I'll probably do some more later in the week. 

Thanks to everyone who came out!

A random little drawing of Spooks, just hanging around.

Possibly because you're learning: in the time it takes to process and post your work, you've already figured out multiple ways to improve it.

Alternatively: maybe you spent a few hours working on it, so you're already sick and tired of it before it's even posted.

The only reason artists ever post things is that once you display something publicly, it's finished: it's like putting the final nail in the coffin... no take-backs, no do-overs. If you don't post something, you end up fussing with it forever. Once you post, you can put it behind you and move on.

Since artists learn by doing, by the time you're done, you're a better artist than when you started: as such, the features of the work you did at the beginning aren't as good as what you're capable of by the time it's done. So, of course it looks wrong in retrospect: hindsight is 20/40.

Why do I get the urge to delete all my art from the Internet the day after I post it? Am I tired of looking at it already????

UGGG.