>> Cheap prints! <<

Or at least at a discount.

If you like any of my pieces, you can find them there to hang on your wall or maybe on a friend. Your friends will appreciate having cool art hanged on them. Powerful bonding, that is.

If a painting of mine isn't there and you want it, just let me know and I'll add it.

FIVE TYPES OF THUMBNAILS

by RON LEMEN

It's great insight on the process and utility of creating thumbnails for illustration. I recommend reading it to anybody who has trouble with composition or who have found themselves trying to figure to many things out along the process of creating a piece.

Lemen provides descriptions and usage explanations of five thumbnailing techniques, ranging from the very rough sketchy ones to the ones that contain late stage information for the piece.

July 2024 - The leaning

A month of changes.

Stopped watching Youtube for good.

Stopped listening to podcasts for good.

Quit social media for the most part, only ArtStation and NewGrounds being used in any capacity. 

Will probably upload stuff to youtube but not watch anymore, unless it has some crucial tutorial or something like that. Even in those cases I've looked to not enter the site. It's a timesink, where opinions I don't really care about waste precious brain bandwidth. As Jon Blow said "social media brings about low quality thoughts" (give or take). 

I have always been regretful about getting hooked on listening to stuff while I worked or sketched. The best ideas come when you are bored and entertaining yourself with dumb jokes and random stories. Podcasts/streams/videos/audiobooks meant muffling that voice so I could get through the day undistracted, but not really having been there. Thoughts never too bright, always with something in my mind that wasn't meant to be there. I'll say it here so it's set, I don't really care about the gaming industry, the movie industry, the culture wars, AI, politics, blah blah blah; they were always an excuse to procrastinate. I don't want to consume other people's anger fuel, I just want to be a better husband, a better son, a better friend, and a better artist (and a better fucking padel player). The world could turn upside down and I would still want the same. Didn't Sam Neill say something about killing gods by turning our back on them in his iconic role as Merlin? Maybe.

After I got married I realized in a very deep way, how much of my time was being wasted by "participating" in culturally relevant conversations. In reality, most of the time I was just another voice in the cacophony of unheard opinions, and for what? For some online personality's approval? For fake internet points? To feel "in on the current thing"? I realized I didn't want to be that ever again, even if it makes me look dumb or dull to other people. Call me willfully ignorant, or myopic (I literally am shortsighted), but I think we've been sold on a false need to be always "informed" while most information is just an iteration of yesterday's iteration, all the while we ignore our geographically and personally closest people's needs.

"I know, I know, health issues, Dear, but have you thought about the character designs in the Chinese game you don't play?"

There is also something perturbingly dark about listening to some dude as background noise, as if he was an old fridge or AC unit. Specially grim when your inner monologue starts having his voice, as if not even your thoughts were your own. I've caught myself repeating opinions as my own without really considering if I agreed with them or not.

In that line, I feel a lot clearer minded (English, amirite). I've started doing more intellectually interesting things, like reading and studying. At this point I've started to see habitually using social media as drinking or doing drugs. I don't want to be preachy, though; to each their own.

So here is a list of things I did this month, as a form of journal for when I say "Damn, got nothing done lately":

- Read Mistborn Secret History, pretty neat, although a bit fanservicy as a premise.

- I got about 2/3 done with Outpost by Dmitry Glukhovsky, it's been a slow read because the book is fucking boring.

Watched The Simpsons a lot while working and quit that too (can be replacing one distraction with another).

Listened to a lot of game music. I played about 20 minutes of Genshin Impact and although I dig the aesthetic, the game is not for me at all. Even so, I found most of its OST to be super nice to listen to.

Wrote this.

Shaded about half a comic.

Did a book cover and then I repainted most of it.

Did a book illustration and a half.

Sketched again, which I had stopped doing.

Studied some, which I hadn't done in quite a while.

Created a tool that was pretty cool, and then I realized it already existed. Mine is better because whoever made it before wasn't me.

Torn my calf muscle lmao. Couldn't jump for a bit. I started stretching with some Slovenian dude's videos, guy's overweight but has great flexibility.

Practiced with Blender daily -> did half of this course and will continue to practice in 30 minute increments (it's all I can spare right now). I've been starting and stopping with blender for years now, so sticking with it daily has been a personal victory beyond its actual effect on my blender skills, which I gotta hone by practicing. One of my dreams is to design merch in 3d, making this a step into a personally meaningful path.

Studied Japanese -> I just like the language. I've been doing my daily reviews in WaniKani and started using LingQ, which isn't the best. LingQ divides words and phrases weirdly in Japanese, but at least it's been helpful to read difficult texts.

It isn't nearly enough, but some of the changes I made will aid that progress to be steady this time and that my initial goal for this year being the "Year of the lean" will get accomplished.

I probably did more stuff on the personal side of things, but that's for my physical journal.

Cheers, see you next month :)

Cyan

Created The Fill Lasso Tool

It's really good for blocking areas, creating silhouettes, etc.

It's the lasso tool but also fills, so you can make super quick shapes. I've been using it to do shading work and it's hyper quick and fun to use. I hate creating shapes and then filling them with the bucket tool, it always leaves a pixel unpainted.

Really cool for sketching

I've been using it a bit for sketching. It's surprisingly friendly for drawing lines, but the shape part is the best.

Opacity

You can also use it changing the opacity, meaning you can quickly create gradients without blur or soft transitions.

So, if you want to use it, just head on to, it's free:

https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=2102053

Have fun with it!

Music you've never heard

Here is some music you've probably never heard that I really like.

America America - Nino Bravo

An ode to America and its immense beauty. I could simply post Nino Bravo's discography because every one of his songs were beautiful. This year I will be older than he ever got to be when I turn 29.

Yo quería ser mayor - Roque Narvaja

A song about appreciating youth and not rushing into life without enjoying it.

Qué Par de Pájaros - Paz Martinez

A song about a man betrayed by his wife, although he suffers more the betrayal of his best friend.

It's very old music, but for some reason it resonates with me beyond many others. Of course, I listen to new music (or newer at least), but I'd hate if people forgot these exist.

Darkness took me. The world disappeared right before my eyes and then there was nothing. Not even myself. I tried lifting my hand and bringing it close to my eyes, but there was nothing. I tried grabbing my face, but I felt nothing. I realized, then, that I couldn't sense anything, not even my own body. In that darkness, I could only think.

"Where am I?", I thought, "How did I get here?"

I had gone walking. A disappointing morning had turned into an insufferable afternoon. My body had stretched and twisted every time I had tried to focus.

"I need air.", I had thought.

As I walked through the streets I had seen a man approaching me, his face known to me, a famous face. A face I hated with all my being. A face I had dreamed of ruining, of changing so it could never be seen without a reminder of the pain that man had caused. He had approached me to ask me a question, a cameraman behind him. Oh, that voice, how I hated that voice. He sounded just like every invading thought I had ever had.

That's the last thing I remembered. After that, the world had zoomed out, my senses disappearing, my body no longer mine.

I felt the wetness before I saw the blood or heard the crying. Something man-shaped lay under me, its 'torso' between my legs. It couldn't be a person, though, for people had heads and this... thing didn't. Where one would expect a face, there was a red mess, bits of white hard stuff protruding from a crimson pulp. I zoomed back into the world and I felt a kick at the back of my mind, the sound of room full of tubes turning on the electricity filling my ears. Around me, a cameraman had put his camera on the ground and was pulling me away from what used to be a man, probably his friend. I saw the mess of blood and bones I had unequivocally created and sunk. All my hatred had left me, all my anger spent. I had done something unforgivable, but I didn't feel sad. I had been excluded from the experience, a deeper self taking over for the act itself. I realized It had been brewing, churning, growing, and waiting for years. From the moment I had first hated until that act of relief, another me had lived alongside myself within my body. It had ceased the opportunity to be free and left without concerns or consequences.

We stop ourselves from engendering the Entity of Festering so we may be in control of our lives.

Book of Nightmares, 1, 2

The Book of Nightmares is a collection of short stories used to describe my biggest recurring fears and nightmares. One of those is the idea of losing control of my actions, which sometimes happens just as I wake up. I've often felt my body is inhabited by another in those moments between fully waking up and being asleep. I've made terrible decisions in that state, often regretting them as I wake up and become conscious of those actions.

Discord gave me Genshin Impact stuff. I don't play nor do I intend to ever play, so here is the code and the link to redeem it:

3A97GDC9B98Z

https://genshin.hoyoverse.com/en/gift

Cheers

Spiderman doesn't even end.

Went to see the sequel to Into the Spiderverse and ended up feeling scammed.

The new animated Spiderman movie came out last week. Saw it tonight. The first half is a regular movie and the second half is stretching 20 minutes to fill time until they run out so they can hit you with a "To be continued". I went in expecting a full story, like the first one, and got half a story bloated similar to the second Hobbit movie, where the ending could have been in the movie but alas we've filled the time with other things so we can sell you another ticket.

This is the second movie I watch this month where that happens. The first one was F&F-X, which wasn't even enjoyable. Spiderverse 2 Part 1 was enjoyable for the most part, but it kept going and going and going... nowhere.

I don't really think I'll be watching anything in theaters for a long long time. I'll use whatever time I get to either play the new Zelda game, or just watch old things, read old things, or make my own stuff. Feels bad man.

Blasphemous II is coming :D

Look at this gorgeous sequel trailer to the gorgeous Blasphemous.

COOL ARTS

GIT

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite works from my feed:

Check out more here! https://cyangorilla.newgrounds.com/favorites/art

See ya next week :D