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matchlocksunflowers · 7 months

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[APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY- check end notes for explanations- example images should be coming in future edits]

alright, another week has passed, another anatomy class was attended. this one was actually a lot more vague than the previous, with a lot of notions previously mentioned coming back in a way or another, and based itself a lot on showcasing examples. i wasn’t able to take that many “concrete” notes this time unfortunately, but i can still distill what i have written down.

anyway. here goes:

SCENE O-2: BLOCKING IN SHAPES

repeating once, when in front of your support of choice, whether it be a sheet of paper, your sketchbook or a digital canvas (or anything, really), there is a certain series of events leading to the existence of a drawing. these events are influenced by our own personal methods when drawing, such as how you start, what do you always draw first, etc. often these are patterns you follow without noticing.

once you’ve noticed your own patterns, you may start to question them. if you always start by drawing the head, ask yourself, why do you do that?

these may come from a more subconscient part of yourself. maybe that’s how you’ve always done it, maybe you saw an artist you love do it once and that affected you so much you now do it too.

an interesting exercise you may want to do to try and break away from these habits is starting to look at the world through different filters of perception (as mentioned in the previous post). teach gave us the example of looking at strangers in the commute with a single point of view: only focusing on their ears, their nose, maybe look at them like colored shapes. (if you do not commute/use a public transports system regularly, i suggest you try looking for references online, whether they be youtube videos or life model sites like quickposes or lineofaction. these two will be linked below.)

but, in any case, during this class (the one i am attending, i mean), there is one big first step which is: drawing the whole model in its simplest form.

usually, when doing just that, there are twoe factors to keep in mind:

Composition

Setting things up

to start, let’s talk about composition.

when composing an image, yet again, you have to think about certain factors (subfactors of factors! wow!). these generally are:

the 2D-3D perception of your drawing

knowing how and where to place your drawing within your canvas

negative spaces and the void

when drawing in structures (aka using inner “skeleton” lines at the very start) the drawing itself is existing only within a single dimension (1D). when drawing using “shapes” (aka at least three points connected to each other) the drawing transforms to become 2D. 2d adds a dimension of “thickness” to the piece, since you’ve now added a new dimension.

seeing the world in 2d is similar to seeing it like certain painters do: with the aforementioned “shapes” now colored flat, before starting to add in lights.

when drawing, proportion checking is actually done in 2D, and not in 3D (as you might, maybe think). think of it as very simple forms bound by lines. adding in volume is a very risky move, since it adds the notion of distance (“what is closer/what is farther away”), which can be too detailed for the simple block-in stage.

when thinking about this, you should also think about where you place your drawing within your canvas. when you are drawing, you are composing an image. drawing a character close up and standing in the bottom right corner of the page gives a whole other impression than if you were drawing it small, in the middle of the page.

when creating images, these images usually have a meaning, and this whole meaning and wanted feeling you want to transmit is heavily affected by composition.

when a more “academic” artist first thinks and thumbnails their piece, they may think “where will i place the horizon line?” which in itself is the very first step of composing your drawing.

the way you place your horizon line gives away most, if not all of your intentions with this piece.

finally, “void” and “negative spaces” in a drawing are part of what makes it legible and interesting. it is heavily tied to the concept of “silhouette”, and, with good placement within the canvas, adds a lot to the piece. but when drawing a model, these “negative spaces” are here to help you draw the correct proportions: the triangle formed by the arm and elbow when a hand is placed on a hip, the space between legs when the model is standing up, all this should be taken into account when drawing.

but, when drawing, you should pretty much mostly worry about drawing the “general shape” of the model, but accurately, as always, which in turn transforms into a general view of your drawing. in terms of additional things you may want to do when thinking about the composition and proportions of your drawing, you can always

try drawing “over” your model (simply put, hold your pencil over the model while trying to see important lines to draw, whether they be action lines or countour lines)

thumbnail your drawings using your fingers (putting them in a square shape framing the part you want to draw) or a template (like a card that’s been gutted to form a thumbnail viewer)

if you want to transfer your drawing to another surface, you can trace a grid over the sketch and use it as a guideline for the transferred piece (this technique is called “mise au carreau” in French and i cannot for the life of me find the english term, i’m afraid). this is a technique that’s been used since pretty much the beginning of “western fine arts” (aka stuff from the Renaissance era).

now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes:

setting up your drawing

when setting up your drawing, the ideal should be to do so with as little lines as you can. this can prove especially hard, especially when drawing a model from life.

what you can do is stop seeing the model’s body as a body, and more as a series of geometric shapes set one next to the other. (this does sound fairly dehumanizing, but don’t be afraid! the humanity should still exist within the shapes you draw, and will appear even more once the proportions are corrected and the details are added in.) the moment you add another line, you are adding in measures, proportions, and direction to your drawing.

your base should have a limited number of lines, but, as always, they should be proportionally accurate.

“i am simplifying and always checking my shapes”, pretty much.

(i think i am going to make you hate the concept of proportional accuracy with all the emphasis i put onto it… sorry!)

a small tip when drawing these shapes: draw them lightly! the block-in should ideally be very light for the later parts to be drawn with more force. (teach compared it to an architect’s plan, but i yet again cannot attest to the validity of this claim as i completely lost interest in architecture the moment i found out about Bravely Default and how cool the Job designs were. anyway,)

alright, so the rest of my notes are mostly about “mistakes you should avoid”, and given this is coming from only one person, whose ideas are being transferred by another (who is obviously much less skilled) to a post to be seen by others, you can see that this can rapidly become an opinion-piece about “what is good in drawing and what is wrong” (you know, kinda like youtube thumbnails with two drawings, one “bad” and one “good” posted by certain art youtubers…you know what i mean, right?)

so, i am going to share them, but do keep in mind that these are even more subjective than anything written before, so, as always, take them with a spoonful of salt.

so, these are:

drawing using very short lines, the kind that makes for a “hairy” looking drawing

pushing too hard on your pencil (see the paragraphs above for reasons, with the added reason of being really hard to erase afterwards and often leaving a dark mark after having been erased the best possible)

relying solely on lines for proportions, aka using one line as a reference, then adding up more lines until you think you are done, which nets you the risk of having a badly proportioned drawing by the end. (this is something weirdly common when drawing as a whole, but that especially shines when drawing architecture, in my own experience both drawing and looking at my classmates’ drawings).

fuzzy/blurry lines, which can strip the drawing of precision, adding noise where it isn’t needed. this doesn’t really apply if you only draw over the line only a couple of times, or is rather moderate, doing so has its own name in French which is a “repentir” (masculine word, i wonder if there is an English equivalent. “repentir”, aka repenting your other line with a more accurate one. “repent motherfucker!” )

a final note that i think is worth sharing is this one:

there is a whole system of proportional setups, multiple methods, but the more important thing is

i understand what i am doing

well, that should be about it for this week (or rather last saturday, oops). for some reason i have gotten exhausted these last handful of days, and i don’t even know thanks to what god i was able to wake up to attend class this week. it was only the second, too!! really would’ve been upsetting if i couldn’t have attended. but it didn’t happen, fortunately. next week should be about correcting your mistakes and proportions.

and, just like last time, all these notes are from a class by Mr. Francis Buchet i am attending to at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. if you live close to/in Paris, i suggest you look up what classes he is going to be teaching, as a live class is always a lot better than simple notes written down by a student.

and, may i remind you (again): these notes are only here to showcase one approach among many others, so they don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. i myself am in absolutely no way a professional, so please, take all of this with a grain of salt (or a spoonful, even). draw how you enjoy drawing, and find happiness in the way you want to draw.

Francis Buchet's instagram: x

[NOTE: this was written last weekend, in the hopes of being posted during a weekday with some added visual examples, but due to school as well as health related issues (physical exhaustion among others) i couldn't get to draw said examples in time, so i decided to just go ahead and post it without any and add them later via edits. is this a good idea? no, but i do not think i can give good examples when my shoulders feel like they'll drop from my torso. i cannot say when part 0-3 will be posted but i hope it will be quick. exhaustion is a bitch but i hope i can still manage eventually.]

#art tips #artist tips #art tutorial #art help #drawing tips #wow this ended up being even less concrete than the last one #ooooooh the magic of basing yourself off examples #teach mostly showed us Klimt; Egon Schiele and Degas as well as a bit of Sargent #i still apologize for the lack of personal handmade examples #and the huge delay #breating feels more difficult than it ought to sometimes yknow?#ah well #will do my best to get part 0-3 up before next weekend #no promises tho. sorry

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steddiehyperfixation · 6 months

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don't you forget about me (part two)

(part one)

Steve doesn’t know how long they sit there in silence, waiting. It’s making him insane. The seconds pass too slow; the seconds pass too fast. His mind is a storm; his mind is empty. He’s feeling too much; he’s not feeling at all. He paces the room; he sits catatonically against a wall. He needs to get out of here; he needs to stay.

He’s been here before, just barely over a week ago, tense and anxious and despairing and waiting for news. But waiting to hear if Eddie will ever remember him again really should not feel this much worse than waiting to hear if Eddie will ever fucking breathe again. Steve thinks there must be something wrong with him. He’s being selfish and stupid. His pathological fucking need to be loved is not what’s important right now. Eddie is alive and awake and okay and that’s the only thing that really matters. That’s the only thing he should really care about.

Steve’s pacing again now, yanking his hands through his hair as he does laps around the room until Eddie finally appears in the doorway.

Eddie must’ve just cracked a joke or something because the nurse is laughing as she pushes his bed into the room and he’s got this adorable grin on his face. Steve’s heart twists in his chest and he nearly bursts into tears all over again because god does he want nothing more than to press a kiss to those dimpled cheeks.

“Good news, boys,” Eddie announces. “My brain is fully intact.”

“There’s no physical permanent damage to his brain,” the nurse elaborates. “His amnesia is likely a result of psychological trauma and the temporary disruption of brain function from blood loss and lack of oxygen that occurred at the time of his injury. But there is no obvious reason why he shouldn’t regain his full memory, given time.”

So there’s hope. Steve breathes a sigh of relief.

“That is good news,” Wayne agrees.

Steve asks, “How much time?”

The nurse gives an unhelpful shrug. “Impossible to say. It could be anywhere from days to months, or even years. I’m sorry, there’s no way for us to know.”

Years. “Okay.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. He can keep it together. He can. “Thanks,” he tells the nurse. “I, uh-” He makes the mistake of looking at Eddie who looks right through him, and Steve can’t keep it together anymore actually. “I gotta update the kids,” he mutters, backing his way towards the door. Wayne nods in acknowledgment; no protests this time at Steve’s excuse to leave.

“See ya, Harrington,” Eddie calls after him, casual, impersonal, like they're nothing more than acquaintances passing by each other in a high school hallway.

Steve can’t get out of that hospital fast enough.

He makes it to his car in record time, slamming the door shut and sinking heavily into the driver’s seat. A ragged sob tries to claw its way up his throat now that he’s finally alone, but he forces it back, staving off his breakdown for just a little bit longer. As much as it was an excuse, he really does have to update the kids.

Steve fishes his walkie out of the glove box. “Code - whatever, I don’t know. Code Eddie,” he says. He doesn’t remember the kids’ system of codes, nor would he be sure which one this news falls under even if he did.

“Is he okay? Is he awake?” comes an immediate, eager response from Dustin. “Over.”

“Yeah, he’s awake, and he’s fine, except he’s got pretty bad amnesia. The doctors say it should be temporary, but right now he doesn’t remember anything since May of ‘85,” Steve explains, trying his best to keep his voice even.

“Steve, come pick me up and take me to see him,” Dustin demands, “right now. Over.”

“Me too. Over,” Mike chimes in before Steve can respond.

“And us,” Erica adds as well.

Steve pauses for a second, both to steady his own breath and to make sure no one else wants to jump in on this too, before he reminds them, “He won’t know you, any of you.”

“I don’t care,” Dustin says, bossy as ever. “Just come get me. Over.”

“Jesus Christ, kid,” Steve mutters to himself. He sucks in another breath; it wobbles dangerously. He’s just about reached his limit on how long he can keep himself from falling apart. “I- I need a minute, alright?” he manages through the walkie. “Can you just give me, like, an hour? And then I’ll take you guys to visit Eddie.”

Steve doesn’t wait for a response before he slams the antenna closed, tosses the walkie aside, and finally, finally lets himself shatter. That sob rips free from his throat, followed by another and another and another. Tears flood from his eyes; his nose runs. It’s an ugly, gross, visceral cry that leaves him exhausted and raw and aching to be held by the time the last sob shudders out of him. Drained and hollow, he craves the embrace of someone who knows him, someone who loves him.

He sweeps up his broken pieces, wipes the mess of tears and snot off his face, and drives to Robin’s house.

“Steve, oh my god.” Robin pulls him into a hug the second she opens the door and sees the look on his face. Steve clings to her. “What happened?”

“Eddie’s awake,” he mutters dismally.

“Oh! Not the tone I’d expect you to deliver that news in, but okay.” Robin pulls back, looking at him with narrow-eyed concern and confusion as she analyzes his puffy eyes and red nose and swollen lips. “And you look like you’ve just been crying because…?”

“Because he doesn’t remember me, Rob,” Steve sighs. “He doesn’t remember anything from the past 11 months.”

Robin’s eyes go wide now. “Shit,” she says, so plainly it startles a short laugh out of Steve.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Shit.”

She asks him more questions as she walks down the hallway so they can talk in her room. Steve once again reiterates what was said at the hospital.

“So you didn’t tell him you two were a thing?” Robin asks, closing her door behind them.

“Of course I didn’t.” Steve flops back onto her bed. “I didn’t want to spook him.”

She sits beside him. “You didn’t want to spook him,” she repeats, looking down at him with raised eyebrows, “but you told him about Vecna.”

“Well, yeah. I just-” He lifts his arms to gesture vaguely into the air as he tries to explain himself. “I mean, imagine how you would feel if you woke up in a hospital and some random guy you’ve spoken to maybe twice was by your bedside telling you you’ve been in a relationship with him for the past 9 months.”

“Uh, I don’t know, dingus, probably about the same as I’d feel if said guy told me I’d nearly died fighting some evil twisted creature from a hell dimension,” Robin retorts.

Steve drops his hands onto his chest with a huff, shaking his head. “No, trust me. He seemed far less surprised by that than he did to hear that we were even just friends,” he says, a bit bitterly. Tears are pricking at his eyes again as he looks up at his best friend. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me, Robin. All he saw was King Steve.”

Robin softens, snark replaced with sympathy. “That sucks, Steve. I’m so sorry.”

Steve sighs in agreement that yes this really fucking sucks. He sits up and scoots back so that he’s slumped against the wall, hitting the back of his head against it. “I think I’m a horrible person,” he admits, just venting now, “because of course I’m glad Eddie’s alive and all I really want is for him to be okay, and I know the nurse said he should remember eventually, but there’s still some sick part of me that thinks maybe it would’ve hurt less if he had just died.”

“I don’t think that makes you a horrible person,” Robin assures him as she settles next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “I think you’re just grieving, and grief is weird sometimes.”

“It was one of the worst things I’ve ever felt,” he mutters, “when he looked at me without recognition. To see it on his face, just the- the absence of everything that we’d built. I’ve never felt so- so- I don’t know, it was like I couldn’t breathe. He just- he doesn’t know that I love him. He…he doesn’t know that he loved me...”

Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s not that he’s lost someone that he loves, it’s that he’s lost someone who loves him. Because Eddie’s not gone, just his love for Steve is, and that’s what’s tearing him apart. It’s the fact that there’s one less person in the world who loves him. It’s the fact that Steve’s got this big gaping hole inside of him that’s always made him so desperate to be loved, liked, wanted, needed; and his biggest fucking fear is becoming obsolete. He could probably trace it back to his parents, the first to forget him, the first to stop loving him, but the fact remains that now Eddie has fulfilled that fear too. Now Eddie has carved that pit a little deeper, a little darker, validating the voice that whispers within it and tells Steve that he is forgettable, unlovable, so easy to abandon and erase.

“Well, I love you,” Robin tells him, like she can read his mind (which, at this point, she probably can). She slides an arm around his shoulders, hugs him close. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

Fragile as he is right now, Steve falls apart again in her arms, and she holds him together. Because she knows him, because she loves him.

It’s a quieter cry this time, soft and sniffly. Whereas the last one wracked through his body and left him fatigued, this one flows from him almost gently, and when his tears finally subside and he lifts his head from where it had been buried in his friend’s shoulder, Steve actually feels a little bit better, a little bit stronger. Which is good, because he’s gonna have to face Eddie again soon.

“Thank you,” he says quietly as he pulls away from Robin, wiping at his eyes and glancing at the clock on her nightstand. It’s definitely been an hour by now, probably more. He stands. “I have to go, I promised the kids I’d take them to see Eddie.”

“Then I’m coming too.” Robin stands with him. “For moral support.”

Steve gives her a grateful smile. “I love you so fucking much, you know that?”

“Yeah.” She grins at him. “I know.”

The nurses have changed his bandages and upped his morphine, so Eddie’s considerably hazy now but at least he can raise his headrest and prop himself up a bit without nearly blacking out from pain. He’s boredly flicking through channels on the shitty TV in front of him, alone since Wayne had to leave for work, when Harrington returns followed by a very unexpected group consisting of Robin Buckley and four strange children.

“Sorry,” Harrington announces their presence with an apologetic shrug, “I know you don’t know them anymore, but they insisted.”

“Eddie!” a pudgy, curly-haired kid shouts before Eddie can even react, coming barrelling towards him and trying to hug him.

“Ow!” Eddie yelps, pain flaring even through the extra morphine. “Fucking Christ, kid! Be careful!”

The kid jumps back immediately, eyes wide. “Shit. Sorry.”

“S’fine,” Eddie grumbles.

The kid looks at him expectantly for a moment before seeming to realize, “Oh, right, you don’t remember me. I’m Dustin.”

“Ah, so you’re the guy I sacrificed myself for,” Eddie mutters, and Dustin looks a little sheepish. That means these must be ‘the kids’ Harrington had been talking about earlier. He surveys the group for a second. “Actually, I think we have met before,” he tells Dustin. “And you too.” He glances at a pale, dark-haired kid. The other two - a Black boy with a flat-top and a younger Black girl - look less familiar, though. “There was this, uh, open day thing at the high school for next year’s incoming freshmen; I talked to you about Hellfire.”

“Yeah!” Dustin’s whole face lights up, so bright and infectious it makes Eddie grin too. “Yeah, you did!”

“So you guys joined the club, then?”

This sparks a very animated conversation about D&D, the rest of the kids (Mike, Lucas, and Erica, as they soon reintroduce themselves) gathering around his bed now too to join in. It makes him feel a bit more like himself again, familiar, normal. Except, of course, for the fact that they’re not only talking about how they defeated Vecna in Eddie’s “totally epic” and “sadistic” campaign (adjectives courtesy of Dustin and Mike respectively), but also filling in more pieces of the story of how they defeated him in real life too. Still, it’s nice, fun. He totally understands how he could’ve gotten attached to these kids.

At some point, Eddie glances over to find Harrington hanging back and just watching them talk, fondly, wistfully. Robin whispers something to him and he sort of smiles, just a trace, and whispers something back. They seem close, intimate. Eddie wonders if they’re dating, and then he wonders why that thought makes him feel a bit sick. He waves them over. Harrington looks like he’s about to protest, but Robin gives him a Look and he allows her to grab his hand and drag him to join the crowd around Eddie’s bed.

“So, what’s your deal, Buckley?” Eddie asks her. He doesn’t know her very well, they’ve only crossed paths a few times in the bandroom, but right now that makes her the most familiar person in the room to him. “Are you and Harrington a thing now? Is that how you’re involved in all this?”

Robin wrinkles her nose and drops Harrington’s hand. “Ew, no. Definitely not.”

“She’s my best friend,” Harrington says.

Eddie snorts, doesn’t know why he finds that so comical. (He’s starting to get tired and it’s making him loopy. Or maybe it’s just the morphine.) “You've got a funny choice of friends nowadays, don’t you? Me and band geek Buckley and a bunch of nerdy freshmen.” He looks at Harrington with incredulous amusement. “Who would've thought, huh? Steve Harrington, collector of geeks and freaks.”

Harrington doesn’t seem to find it as funny. He shrugs. “Yeah, well, it’s better than King Steve, collector of asshole bullies and shallow one-night stands.”

“Yeah, ‘course it is,” Eddie agrees through another huff of laughter that breaks off into a yawn. “Didn’t mean it as a bad thing, Stevie. Was a compliment.”

“Alright.” The barest hint of a smile flickers across Harrington’s face now, but then he’s looking away and corralling the kids and saying, “We should head out, let you get some rest.”

And Eddie kind of wishes he’d stay.

(part three!)

taglist: @romanticdestruction @daydreamsandcrashingwaves @paintsplatteredandimperfect @hallucinatedjosten @mugloversonly @estrellami-1 @alongcomesaspider @thatonebadideapanda @tell-me-a-secret-a-nice-one @dragonmama76 @wxrmland @nuggies4life @sirsnacksalot @myguiltyartpleasure @marklee-blackmore @vinteraltus @sebastiansstanswhore @0happyeverafter0 @scarlet-malfoy (only tagged people who explicitly asked to be tagged; if you would like to be added or removed from this list please lmk!)

#still angsty sorry #we're getting there tho! this will have a happy ending eventually! i promise!#i finally get what ppl mean when they talk abt setting out to write a oneshot and ending up with a longfic bc it's happening to me rn #steddie #steddie angst #steddie fic #steddie fanfiction #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #fanfic #mine #1k #dyfamsteddiefic #<- specific tag for this fic

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