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horrible news: in order for you to finish a wip, you have to work on that wip and not the 2543524 other wips you were brainrotting over instead of that one. more investigations at 7.

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MOOD!

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I have learned many important things from my librarian spouse, and I will now share six of them with my fellow non-librarians

Public libraries are not the perfectly silent buttoned down places of scholarship movies make them out to be. They're a place for everyone to access everything, from Minecraft to garbage romance novels to picture books. And everyone includes people who make noise. And that is okay and good actually.

They are also for buttoned down scholarship and they can help you with that. They actually really like helping you find information.

Libraries often have way, WAY more than just books. Movies, of course, but also telescopes and tools and 3D printers and board games and I heard of one that even has an apple press!

Being a librarian is pretty much never "sitting around reading books until you're needed." Maybe if you're at a niche private collection that happens? But no, not for public librarians. There is so much that has to be done every day. Sorry to everyone who thought that was a thing.

Put the books you pick up on the return carts if you don't check them out, this has some kind of positive effect on the collection. I don't know why, but do it or else

The best way to support your library is to use your library! And vote for library funding whenever you can. But mostly just use the dang library!

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Dear God, today I woke up. I am healthy, I am alive. Thank you. 🙏

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Hi there! I really love your comics and how expressive they are. How do you go about making the characters in your comic so expressive?

thank you! 💚💜💚 I am REALLY bad at explaining things, so my apologies if this doesn't make a lot of sense, but maybe there's something helpful in here somewhere. :')

1. warm up! drawing is a physical activity, after all! so if I'm planning on sitting down and drawing for a while, I usually start off by taking a couple of minutes to doodle a bunch of circles and lines and random shapes, just to get my drawing arm goin' again and get back into the physical groove. just stuff like this:

and just do that for however long you feel like! you can kind of feel when your arm starts to loosen up and your strokes get more confident. it makes it a lot easier to get those swoopy big lines and gestures!

2. play around with how you use your lines! paying attention to the shapes that they're making will change a lot about how much force and life your drawing feels like it has. (no way is better than another, it just depends on what effect you're going for and how it looks as part of the larger whole.)

and you can also use lines against each other to get different vibes:

it's not really a matter of "you need to make sure all your lines are always doing this all the time", it's more like...being aware of it, and getting that into the general thrust of a pose, if that makes sense? like a lot of smaller lines of action, beyond the big one that goes through the spine.

(just gonna use my own art as examples, apologies)

if you have a good foundation of tension, then all of the little bumps and contours of a character's details won't get in the way of it, and it'll still come through.

and don't forget about negative space either! the spaces between things have their own interesting shapes too!

I don't mean this to come off as, like, all these extra things that you need to be constantly thinking about and stressing over. more like...just try different stuff and then see how it works and how it changes the feeling! if you find a good shape, see if you can exaggerate it and make it more interesting, and how that affects things! angles and shapes are a LOT of fun to experiment and mess around with, especially when you're going more cartoony. :D

3. acting!

just...spending a little time to think about what the characters are actually doing! (aka the "figuring out what everyone is doing with their hands" bit.) this is more a personal preference, but especially in multi-panel comics, I like to have them be in the middle of doing stuff. not just big actions, but smaller things -- like even just how they're sitting or standing -- so that it feels like we're looking in on the middle of a scene, instead of a couple of characters just standing around neutrally and staring straight ahead while talking at each other.

this probably sounds really obvious, but it is one of the most fun parts for me! I love trying to find some little action or something that they can be involved in, especially if it's relevant to their character or adds an extra joke. (for some reason this usually involves me being mean to Sebek) (I'm sorry)

it doesn't need to be everyone Always! Doing! Something! all the time, especially if starts becoming distracting (sometimes they do actually need to just be standing around neutrally and staring straight ahead, especially if there's a bigger action going on that you want the audience to focus on instead). but even just figuring out some kind of non-neutral pose for them to be in can add a lot and make it feel less generic!

3. thumbnailing!

this is, again, very much a personal preference; unfortunately, every artist really is different, and we all have different processes that work better for us. so I can only speak to my personal experience! but I find what helps is to start REALLY rough -- not so much as in messy, as in not trying to start right into actually drawing everything out. like, literally just starting with stick figures and :O faces.

it probably doesn't sound relevant when talking about Drawing Expressively, but I find it's really, really helpful to have already figured out what everyone should be doing (acting!) and what the overall general layout and flow of things should be, before getting into the actual meat of drawing the characters. like having a sketch for the sketch!

(good compositional flow is something I struggle with, and text layout especially, so this stage also helps a LOT with making sure things are fitting where I want them and staying consistent/not breaking screen direction/etc.)

then after that, I can go ahead and focus on getting those Shapes and Lines and Angles and all that, without having to think too much about the layout or where things should go!

(of course, the downside of that is that my thumbnails are usually way better than my actual drawings, alas alas.)

4. this is more philosophical, but...give yourself some slack. the stress of Making Things Look Good is, ironically, often the biggest problem. (see: thumbnails looking better than the actual drawings.) so...let yourself draw shittier and without regards to accuracy. make things just for yourself without thinking about posting or showing them to anyone else. draw stupid faces and wrong proportions because they feel better that way. focus on what's fun and not on getting a perfect end result. "draw expressively, not well", as they say -- you can always tighten up things like proportions and details later, if you really want to.

that's all WAY easier said than done -- god knows I haven't really managed it -- but even just aiming for that attitude really, REALLY helps. if your lines are confident, they'll look a lot more alive and expressive than lines that are exactly technically precise but have no rhythm in them. (this is why tracing photographs tends to look so weirdly stiff and unrealistic, by the way -- even if you're drawing realistically, you usually need to exaggerate and stylize a little bit so it doesn't look lifeless.) it's a balance between caring about what you draw, but also being willing to let things go a little bit.

↑ I hope some of this helps! I don't know if any of this was actually what you had in mind, let alone much of it actually made sense outside of my head. :') but hopefully you (or other people) will be able to get something out of it!

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Guys look up Lara Kessia ASAP if you like artists with cute, stylized YA-esque illustrations and support her work if possible (I tried to see if she has other social media platforms but couldn’t find any; if you know this artist and know where else to find her, please mention them in messages/tags!)

I stumbled upon her work completely by accident and found THIS:

#not my art #support original artist #lara kessia #xmen evolution #x men evolution #rogue #rogue anna marie #xmen rogue #x men rogue #kitty pryde #katherine pryde #shadowcat #scott summers #cyclops #rogue and kitty friendship ftw #scogue #<- if you turn your eyes and squint #look how cute they are!!! #look at them!!!! #and i just love that there is a photo of scott with hearts around him #🥰🥰🥰 #y’all #do you know how rare it is to get x-men evo art that acknowledges Rogue’s canonical attraction to Scott? #also bff cuteness is always welcome!!! #but besides that #look at this illustration it’s so pretty and soft and AAAAAAAAA!!!!!! #*ahem* #anyway #please support the original artist #😁

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#shenanigans #disney wish #wish movie #wish 2023 #starsha #star x asha #star boy x asha #deleted scene #maybe? #Instagram

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#shenanigans #wish 2023 #wish movie #disney wish #deleted scene #??? i think #Instagram #rip for pookie

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#not my art #art by op #important #just create what you want #those who will like it will appreciate it #but most importantly #you will like and enjoy it

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I made something

#art by op #not my art #relatable #😂

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It makes me happy when they listen

#comic #art #austism #nuerodiversity #bowdoodles #adhd #art by op #not my art

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Is there rly any softer scene than when o'malley sees duchess and falls in love with her at first sight in the aristocats, complimenting her at every turn and climbing into a cherry blossom tree to make the flower petals snow gracefully down on her? How dreamy 🥀💕

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hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

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SCOGUE-“Tember”

Day “6”: BARBIE 👱🏻‍♀️✨

This Barbie is too Goth for this.

He’s Ken.

#shenanigans #scogue #otp: sensory deprivation #rogue x scott #scott x rogue #cyclops x rogue #rogue x cyclops #scott x anna marie #anna marie x scott #cyclops x anna marie #anna marie x cyclops #scott summers #rogue anna marie #x men evolution #xmen evolution #barbie #barbie movie #I haven’t actually watched this movie buuuuut #i couldn't resist #😆😆😆 #rogue actually looks really cute in this outfit and hairstyle i’m pleasantly surprised #and scott #👀 #👀👀👀 #👀👀👀👀👀 #look I know ken wore mostly black for this outfit #but I wanted to make him wear SOMETHING pink #my art #my artwork #scogue-tember

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Do current Marvel Writers hate Professor Xavier or something?

#the past years’ comics’ writing makes no sense for his character #not to say he isn’t manipulative or a chessmaster in planning #but it seems very clear to me that the writers are doing everything they can to make the founding leader and father figure of the X-Men #as comically irredeemable and unlikeable as possible #in comparison to their obvious favorites #professor charles xavier #is no saint #but his main motivation had always been for mutants and humans to live together in harmony #so it makes no sense for him to be so obsessive towards Krakoa #to the point of sacrificing his own people and dooming humanity #if you want the original team to grow past depending on their leader you can do that without destroying their relationships #and the whole ‘you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain’ schtick for charles is not a good look for Marvel #but this is just my opinion #an unpopular one but mine all the same #in my previous blog #I’ve said before that the only good thing to come out of the Krakoa arc #were the outfits #but now i feel like nothing about Krakoa was worth exploring as an arc #again #just my opinion #if the ‘97 X-Men series keeps fast forwarding through different arcs #i wonder if they will make the Krakoa arc easier to stomach if they include it at all #x men #xmen #marvel comics #marvel