My faith build needs work

 I've been playing Elden Ring lately and I'm doing a faith build but having a hard time figuring out how to balance out the stats for RL 125. I want to do 80 faith but I'd be kinda squishy but I'll come up with something eventually. Also, pretend that's a piece of paper, what does the paper say? Cause I have no clue.

Improvements across the board

 

Getting better than usual results lately with putting down what I see in my head, getting closer to that end goal so to speak. I don't know what really improved, but I think I have just been more careful with my lines and decision making recently and really "feeling the form". Hopefully it's not just temporary, but we'll see.

I don't even know who this is

 Having a lot of fun with line art now, any jagged lines you see are mostly me working without an sketch underneath. Not at that god tier level where you can just draw the lines you need with ink and no construction, not even sure if I want to be at that level. I would definitely develop a bad habit of going with what I draw and not what I visualize and want... yeah who am I kidding I developed that a long time ago. Also, I don't know how this is, I've drawn the same anime girl with the same hairstyle like 3 times in a row now, don't know what's up with me lately.

We have leveled up in lineart

I have been making a lot of progress in line art and drawing in general, I finally managed to get a proper hand technique that let's me make straight lines well on the tablet. It's been several years that I started using a tablet, but still, better late then never.

Alright it's definitely a skill diff

 Learning that deciding on your lines and finalizing them is just good practice for shapes that don't look awful... Still trying to figure out how to apply subsurface scattering effectively, specifically which layer does the job best. I've tried multiply, overlay, and lighten so far, will try to figure it out by tomorrow. Also, I don't know how to get rid of the fuzzy selection outside of the line layer, like on the left side of the face, you can see the skin layer poking out from the line art. Probably have to mess with some settings with the magic selection tool, but I thought it would work fine if I used a 100% black line, guess it's the anti-aliasing, but I'm sure I can figure that out. Also trying to apply gradient's to shapes smoothly, I hope it's noticeable to someone.

a humble attempt at lineart

 

Trying to do lineart with the new smoothness settings, definitely better than before but I'm going to see if I can learn better technique from watching better artists draw and go about it. Also, this is the same sketch from yesterday but worked on it a bit more.

Think I've seen this face before...

 Reminds me of zero two from darling in the franxx, the eye shape and all.

It's a JG gap

 

Trying to find more eye styles and shapes to work with, and using the new custom brushes are nice. They aren't anything fancy, they're just the hard round pressure brushes but tuned a bit for my pressing strength. Naturally I press a little hard so I try to be soft a lot of the time.

The LAYIN brush

 Using a new brush for lay-ins, I should really spend more time making my own brushes with my preferences, makes drawing a lot more fun.

I forgot about smoothness

 

Turns out I had smoothness at 0% in most of my brushes, I think it's because at one point I was using Lazy Nezumi's stuff instead, but then I was getting some issues. They do something really weird, you basically pay for a year's worth of updates but then they stop giving you them for your license. You can always download the latest update they came out with, but only if it released during your license period. Which is pretty lame imo, there were some issues I was having that they fixed in later updates but I didn't want to pay again. Back to built in smoothness, which is fine for most people I'm sure.

the grind is coming soon TM

Phone posting today since I did a lot of drawing away from my computer. This sheet was me just messing around while playing cards. Expect another grind arc soon.

Put honey in your cheerios

 

These proportions seem pretty realistic to me but Ill check back in a week and see if I feel the same. Also, Cheerios are better than honey nut Cheerios. I don't know why, but the honey nut ones kinda make my stomach upset. I just put local honey in the plain cheerios and boom profit.

ears, hmm, yes, interesting

 Just drew this head real quick, no construction or going for a specific style. Turns out, bumping up proportions can make things interesting.

4 hours of sleep

 Not really good with getting little sleep, I'm inclined to believe my body needs 9 hours regularly. It'll get it someday. Don't draw many dudes' backsides and it shows.

Waking up late again

 

 

Been waking up at noon again, the weather is dumb cold and my feet are freezing. Cold weather usually keeps me in bed because I'm too cozy in the sheets. This is just a timed 10 minute sketch.

I've been playing Cobblemon

 Playing this relatively new minecraft mod called Cobblemon,you can tell I've been "busy" since I didn't draw any hands.

Need to learn more anatomy

 Just getting the post in, might show the rest of the drawing tomorrow.

What is chibi

 

Quick 3 minute drawing for today, time passed like crazy today. Slept for 12 hours and woke up at noon, much needed sleep after depriving myself from it for the pass week.

Form worms, my old friend

Been meaning to get back into dynamic sketching and rendering, these little guys helped me out with understanding form and lighting, but I still have a problem. I really suck at edges and shading, I don't know how other artists make their gradations so smooth and controlled. My edges are choppy and shading is rough, I'll look into what other artists do in the meantime.

Do you lift it?

 Guys, are you supposed to lift your PC's power supply to fix a boot loop your computer got out of nowhere? Maybe to enhance electrical polarity? An offering to the elder gods perhaps? Sync with the earth's electromagnetic frequencies to revive said power supply? Mind you, the power supply turns on and boots the computer just fine, but it's stuck in a boot loop. I know the answer already, just thought I'd ask.

Hitting new lows

 Drew this basically same haircut 3 times in a row, very cool. If you think this character is loosely inspired from a specific show... you may be onto something.

huehuehue

Gotta draw some nice contours every once in a while, and pretend those things around her arms are the sleeves of a half worn hoodie. I really should just look up reference for things I don't know, and learn them that way. Anyways, "just getting the post in™" today, will be back on the grind shortly.

What are skin folds

 Just churned out a quick drawing today, nothing fancy. Really bad at armpit folds as you can tell, getting better at hair though.  Also this is a guy, despite what some contours may tell you. That's all from me for now.

Small hand small knife

 

Drew this from imagination, no construction, no planing. Hard round brush with size pressure. Took almost an hour, very cool I know.

Styles are like pokemon

 Was looking back at the previous posts so far this week, was kinda impressed how many styles I learned so far. Impressed with my own art, pretentious I know. Also, I'm currently watching pokemon right now, episode 64 I think. Didn't realize how much I missed it, also, the top left character is based loosely off my vague recollection of Ash from the show. I didn't realize until watching the subbed version that his actual name is Satoshi, weird how different the Japanese and English version of the shows are.

404 mouth not found

 This draw started off a lot worse but managed to salvage it, took around a little over 20 minutes. I have a layer with some shading on it but didn't manage to get it done in time. Speaking of which, that shouldn't be a problem. Why am I still posting at midnight you ask?... I'm not sure either. The past couple of days I started my drawings in the morning but never "finished" them until after dark. Posting at night is the danger zone cause at any moment I could pass out. Oh well, will still try to improve on it.

Much realism, much wow.

 Drew a realistic face for change of pace, it's been a while and I had to take it slowly at first. My head's feeling better but the tingling/burning sensation is still there. Think it has something to do with caffeine so I'll stay away from it tomorrow and see how it goes. Also, this should be a boy's face, but it comes off kinda feminine and/or young. Not sure how the proportions go for young faces, but I might look into it.

Head on fire

 May or may not be posting this at 11PM, which is not a morning post... But for real, I was busy today, and was drawing for most of it so it's fine. Haven't been feeling well today, ever since a couple days ago my brain feels like it's on fire. Not in a temperature or fever kind of way, but like in a inflamed or irritated sense. It happened after I was super overthinking something and I guess I basically fried my brain, but I never expected it to last this long. I looked into it, apparently it can be caused by overthinking or anxiety/panic attacks, so I guess it was par for the course. It can also be a symptom of an immune disorder, wouldn't be a health scare without the possibly fatal notice. Gonna get some sleep now and see if that'll help, catch ya tomorrow.

IM LOCKED IN

Two years in and ~380 posts... that means I skipped a year's worth... hurts thinking about. But what DOESN'T hurt thinking about is Yuno and Yukki!!!! He looks a lot better this year compared to Yuno, but I think it was that way before too, I'll work on drawing better anime girls this year, specifically her. 

They both definitely look a lot more like their anime counterparts though compared to the this blog's first post two years ago. I used heavy reference on this one, especially Yuno but I'm still not satisfied with how she turned out. It's funny though, the creator of Future Diary said that she was hard to draw for him at first too so we have that much in common.

So for this years resolution its better looking anime girls and... drumroll please... MORNING BLOG POSTS!!! That's right, you read that properly. I will now be trying to do my anime posts ASAP from hear on out, hopefully getting them done by noon. Wondering if I should allow myself breakfast before or after I post, but that's pretty hardcore as it is, we'll see how that turns out. If you remember last year's resolution, it was to have no more "placeholder" posts. While I am still embarrassed that needed a new year's resolution for me to stop, this is where we're at now, so I will just try to focus on now.

Anyways, I'm feeling back on track with the daily grind, with the improvement mindset and whatnot, lets see how long it lasts this January.