Wizard Advice 🔮

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wizard advice 🔮

More Posts from Plutotheunseelie and Others

plutotheunseelie

2 years ago

Patches // Cat Coven on Etsy

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plutotheunseelie

1 year ago

Do you have any advice on how to get over lack of skill? I want to do the Astarion Lestate trend but I don't think my skills are ready for it. I have references pictures of Astarion pulled up when I'm working, and even have the game launched so I can turn him if I need to (mostly for the attempts I did at his hair) but everytime I tweaked something or started over nothing looked right. I keep getting frustrated 😭

Hi anon- Sorry this took me a while to get to, i hope you and others can still find this useful! While the basic advise to get over 'lack of skill' is PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! i hope this will help you knowig where to get started with that!

I'm going to put my teacher pants back on, this might be a bit long so buckle up- I'll go over a few areas:

Primitive Shapes

How to Use References

Delete your work (hear me out)

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Primitive Shapes:

This is your foundation. Everything starts with this, and while you may find it boring to think of your art in terms of cubes and spheres- i kid you not it will help elevate your work.

If/when you are stuggling to draw a complicated pose, or a specific perspective, refering back to the form in these basic shapes can really help to simplify your process and help you problem solve.

A chill/silly watch for a more in depth discussion on what i mean / how this can help - Give Pikat's 'Draw boxes (correctly) to improve your art' a watch. They also mention this in the video but @/Uncomfortable on youtube also has some great fundermental videos.

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How to use references.

Okay so references are great 10/10 very useful. But, unless you know WHAT to study from a reference, they can sometimes fall flat of their usefullness.

Anatomy studies are something a lot of us will be recommended as artists, but actually knowing what to pay attention to can boost your confidence in your work. Start with a goal, what do you want to get out of this sketch session? Do you want to get better at understanding the 3D form of a specific part of anatomy? Better at poses? Try to narrow down your learning each session to make it less overwhelming.

In this i'll focus on understanding the form so, lets start with a reference. Linking back to Primitives again, start off by braking down your anatomy into forms. Sketching over the top of your references is totally fine. But make sure you are doing so critically, otherwise it may look like a flat/unnatural trace and you're not really learning from it. Via the first sketch you can see where the primitive shapes fall on the body - think of it like a ball-jointed-doll, hips, knees, shoulders ect are ball socketed whereas arms, legs ect can be made up of tubes. (See the first image, when sketching your tubes, sketch your contour lines too- this can help determind how clothing / hair will fall over the body, and can help you understand the 3D Form.)

Do You Have Any Advice On How To Get Over Lack Of Skill? I Want To Do The Astarion Lestate Trend But

A BIG IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE - When using photo references, do be very aware that they may be distorted due to the height of the camera, or camera focal length - (you can see in my sketch i had to edit the torso and head because the reference was a little top heavy)

A few artists/books for some extra reading / reference : - Andrew Loomis (OG for body proportions, books are a little outdated but fundermentals are still useful), - Tenten云画画 (his stylised anatomy breakdowns are very interesting to me) - Anatomy Essentials (I've had this book for years, it covers lots of areas, is a bit complex though, i myself should reread it again 😅

Also, if you can't find a reference for a specific pose, don't be afraid to use 3D programs! Anatomy 360, DesignDoll, Clip Studio, Magic Poser - all nifty options~

SO taking when we've learnt from the primitive forms, you can now try applying that to the Lestrat Picture. (which, granted is a complicated pose, as it also has forshortening and an odd top down perspetive of the bottom character- so don't panic if you don't get it the first time!)

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Final points- Delete your art (hear me out)

What i mean by this is, sometimes reworking the same face over and over again can bog your down. It can make it very difficult to actually see whats wrong. So, get rid of it and start again. (hide the layer/use a different piece of paper, please don't actually bin it (yet))

Next, redraw it. Use what you've learned the first time, and redraw it from scratch. (in this case, that might be just specifically the head, or the hair, or the eyes ect - you don't have to bin the whole thing, but sometimes it can really help give you a new perspective)

Once you've done this, unhide your original, compare, this may help you understand what you were doing wrong the first time. Or if there are areas of one that you like- its an opportunity to combine them as you see fit! :)

On a side note for Astarion's Hair, the lovely @mistercrowbar actually posted a breakdown yesterday! (i use p much the same method so-)

I HOPE this was of some use- do feel free to ask any questions if you've got them! i'll try to answer in a more timely manner next time 😅

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art resources art tutorials

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plutotheunseelie

7 months ago

don't worry someone picked him eventually

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plutotheunseelie

8 months ago

I've explained how to divide a rectangle into even thirds to three board artists on the team in the last couple days, so hey, if YOU don't know how to do it, then here's how! pic.twitter.com/mXvIeXS0MY

— summerskeet (@dumbbitchskeet) July 1, 2019

really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

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plutotheunseelie

1 month ago

op made the post unrebloggable, can you repost what you wrote about the christan anti sex work group?

Sure thing! I don't blame them for turning off reblogs. I had to block some antisemitic creep who reblogged it from me with a rant about how actually it was feminism's fault, so clearly it had broken containment into the gross side of tumblr. Here it is with OP's handle and icon removed so they don't have to be connected to it anymore.

It's not just the advertisers- that's definitely also part of it, but this is also the direct, targeted action of a specific christian fundamentalist group, the "National Center on Sexual Exploitation," previously "Morality in Media" and "Operation Yorkville," a political lobbying organization that campaigns against pornography, who claim "Pornographers are committing the biggest crimes of the century!"

Screenshot from a Slate article called "The Onlyfans Fight Isn't Over" by Kelsy Burke, which reads:
In the conference session a few hours later, Laurie explained that there are two main crimes committed by pornographic websites: the crime of obscenity, meaning the distribution of any material so offensive that it is not protected by the First Amendment, and the crime of facilitating illegal activities, including sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking. “Obscenity is not now, nor has it ever been, legal in this country,” Laurie explained. “Obscenity in 2019 is as illegal as it was in 1919 and 1819, but nobody is enforcing these laws,” she told us in an exacerbated tone. “Internet pornography is a complete cesspool full of rapists and pedophiles who are documenting their crimes,” Laurie said to nodding heads. “If the laws were enforced, pornographers would be off the streets and where they deserve to be: in jail.”

It was*this group specifically* (accompanied by another Christian anti-porn org, Exodus Cry) that put pressure on mastercard and visa to stop facilitating electronic payment for sites that hosted nsfw material. Faced with the risk of losing their ability to process payments, the sites partnered with visa and mastercard had no choice but to agree to porn bans.

They were behind Onlyfans flirting with banning sex workers last year, and they were one of the principle supporters of FOSTA/SESTA. I can not understate just how much influence this one well connected, well funded group has.

From their about page:

Screenshot of NCOSE's about page which reads:

WHAT DOES NCOSE DO?

NCOSE is the leading 501c(3) non-profit organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual abuse and exploitation.

Taking down the multi-billion-dollar sexual exploitation industry is no easy feat. NCOSE has built the infrastructure that is equipped to stand toe-to-toe against the world’s pornographers, pimps/sex traffickers, sex buyers, and exploitation profiteers. With an expansive grassroots network, Research Institute, embedded litigation law firm, training team, and global coalition—paired with our cutting-edge public policy and corporate advocacy tactics—NCOSE is realizing major progress every day. Victories that used to take years are now happening within weeks!

NCOSE convinced mastercard and visa to cut ties with porn not for the sake of advertisers, but because they convinced them that they could be potentially liable for facilitating illegal activity- the exchange of CSAM, prostitution and human trafficking- happening on the porn sites they were partnered with, which in NCOSE's opinion is all porn sites, and all porn period, since they believe all porn is human trafficking.

Excerpt from "The Campaign Against Sex Work in the United States: A Successful Moral Crusade" (2020) by Ronald Weitzer which reads:

A prominent abolitionist equates pornography with the trafficking of persons in an article boldly titled “Pornography as Trafficking”:

In the resulting materials, these people are then conveyed and sold for a buyer’s sexual use. . . . Each time the pornography is commercially exchanged, the trafficking continues as the women and children in it are transported and provided for sex, sold, and bought again. Doing all these things for the purpose of
exploiting the prostitution of others –which pornogra-
phy intrinsically does –makes it trafficking in persons.
(MacKinnon 2005:993)

The conflation here of “materials”and “persons”is even more striking in the bizarre statement that “the pornography industry, in production, creates demand for prostitution, hence for trafficking, because it is itself a form of prostitution and trafficking”(MacKinnon 2005:1004).

This is just the second half of the text included in the alt text for the previous image. I had to take two separate screenshots because the first half of the quote was at the bottom of the page.

NCOSE has been around since the 60's, but hasn't seen much success until the last decade. Their previous campaigns, focused on pushing for the enforcement of obscenity laws from the 1800's and fabricating blatantly nonfactual research about porn as a mental health crisis, were not as widely received. But they've had much more success since they've started weaponizing concern for victims of abuse and trafficking, appropriating progressive language and trading in on the white moral panic about child sex trafficking that grew directly from the "Stranger Danger" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse" moral panics of the 80's and 90's- both themselves the result of a right wing reactionary movement using concern trolling about the safety of children to rail against drugs, loud music, and tabletop rpgs.

Blaming the sanitization of the internet solely on the vague specter of "advertisers" ignores the real, nameable groups and their extremely straightforward christofacist goals. It promotes apathy, pointing at an ambiguous target that feels as impossible to combat as the machine of capitalism itself. When it's literally just these specific guys, and like two or three similar, equally identifiable organizations!

I'm not saying sites like facebook don't have a vested interest in looking squeaky clean and family friendly, but tumblr, pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad did not move to ban porn because of advertising. Tumblr has never attracted the kind of advertisers who care, and pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad don't make the bulk of their money from ads, but from user transactions, which MUST be facilitated by an electronic banking platform in order to be safe and reliable.

Tumblr's porn ban was due to FOSTA/SESTA meaning the could not continue operating unless they either dumped nsfw content or went adults only and implemented costly and draconian age verification protocols that, frankly, no one was going to put up with for a mediocre blogging platform. The others folded under pressure from the electronic banking platforms, which threatened to drop them as partners due to the pressure *they* were under from NCOSE weaponizing public opinion to create a flurry of anger and condemnation towards these companies "facilitating human trafficking."

The enemy is not hiding, we know their names! They come not in the name of capitalism (who merely rides their coattails when convenient) but in the name of puritanical Christian Fascism.

So no, it's not the puriteens. It's their parents and grandparents, on an open crusade to enforce Christian anti-sex beliefs on as much of the world as they can manage.

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plutotheunseelie

1 year ago

RTVS Palestine Fundraiser, April 12th-14th

This weekend, Radio TV Solutions will be holding a 3 day marathon fundraiser event for the people of Palestine.

All weekend long, we will be streaming a variety of games and events in an effort to raise money for on-the-ground aid groups and direct Palestinian support campaigns.

The event will not be a traditional stream fundraiser, rather than pointing people at one donation point, we will be suggesting many different support recipients, and you may donate to any of them. You can then submit your donation amount to be tallied into our rough total.

The information document detailing suggested groups/campaigns to support will open up closer to when the event starts, as well as a schedule of events for the weekend. The event will be hosted on my twitch channel, where http://stream.rtvsfundraiser.live/ links to.

Lastly, if you know of any GoFundMe's or similar site campaigns for Palestinians that you trust as legitimate, please send an e-mail to info@rtvsfundraiser.live with links and details, and I will add as many as I can to the event document.

Please tune in and support however you can, whether that be through donations, spreading the word, anything and everything helps. Even if you can't or don't want to tune in, please consider donating. See you this weekend!

poster art by the one and only @logmore

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plutotheunseelie

3 months ago

first slide, titled "how to draw some burn scars" with "some" being underlined. The text under reads "3rd/4th degree mostly, because most people on this website apparently never seen a burn survivor." below that is a red box with text reading "(all caps) all scars are different! (end caps) there is no one correct way to draw a scar. this is more of an overview than a step-by-step tutorial".
the right side of the slide has three drawings, each showing a person's forearm. The text above them reads "there's many types of scars, actually". The first one shows a hypertrophic scar, with the text "draw a darker patch of skin and shade underneath to show depth. notes: it sticks out a bit, it can be slightly discolored (darker), it's not really this bright red color that people draw burns with, it interacts with the rest of the skin - you can see it pull skin inward".
The second one shows a keloid scar, with the text "it sticks out a lot, much more discolored, it can be red, pink, purple, it doesn't with the rest of the skin as much - it has sharper, more defined edges". The third and last arm shows a severe contracture with the top of the hand resting on the forearm, with the text "burns make skin contract; scars affect range of motion (ROM) and can lock or limit movement, they afect all areas of the body vbut are most visible on the neck, joints, and hands". There's a fourth additional drawing showing a man's torso; he has a lighter burn scar on the far side of his ribcage, with his arm seemingly fused to it above the elbow. He has visible body hair but is lacking it on the scar itself. The several notes around it read "healed scars can also turn lighter; a burn scar has a tendency to pull surrounding structures* inward, here it makes a contracture. *-not only skin. scars affect cartilage (like in ears), nipples, etc. also notice the lack of hair on the scar".

second slide, titled "how do burns look like (for people who draw them but don't seem to know)". there's an arrow labeled "not like this (heart)" leading to a drawing of an anime girl with half of her skin being plain red and no other changes. text box below her reads "'don't worry man I watched ATLA when I was 14' type OC", with the following noted; "the Red, has fingernails despite 3rd degree burns, has eyebrows despite 3rd degree burns, has hair despite 3rd degree burns, eye is totally fine it's only fire LOL, nose and ears also fine, why is it red, more flexible than your average abled person, why is it red". below is a disclaimer reading "(one or two is fine, but why is it always all of it? burns do things, especially one as seveer as implied here)". the right side of the image shows pictures of body parts with burn scars on them, the first being a hand with a severe contraction in the fingers. the burn and contracted joints are labeled on the image. next to it is a drawn comparison between a non-burned hand with stretched out fingers, and a burnt hand with curled fingers. photo under that is of a pair of feet being held by a hand. the link below goes to "SurvivorNotVictim.com/Scar-Photos". my added text reads "not red! the scars mostly show through texture and tissue damage" and "no toenails". next to that is art of a scarred leg from the mid-calf down, it has visible skin pulling, no nails, and discolored patches of skin. text reads "some pinkness/redness can show, but it's A) not going to be a consistent color, B) other aspects of the scar still show up. Remember the body is 3D and skin pulls accordingly (more or less); scars form toward the ankle because it sticks out". at the bottom of the image is a portrait photo of Marzieh Ebrahimi, an Iranian woman with a chemical burn on one side of her face, smiling. Text next to her reads "a scar can be more defined in one place and less in another (forehead/chin); the skin is darker and less saturated, not red; Marzieh's scar is more visible because of her eye and nose than the discoloration". Next to that is a simplistic portrait drawing of her recreating the picture. Note reads "just some darkening of the skin, lighter and darker lines to imply skin pulling, and attention to some basic effects of burns (e.g., scar on eyebrow ridge = no eyebrow) looks more like an actual burn than the red paint thing".

Third slide, titled "skin grafts". On the right is a photo of a white woman posing with her scars visible to the camera, the source is linked as SurvivorNotVictim.com/Scar-Photo. Text reads "one of the most common visible kinds of skin grafts is the mesh one", with an arrow pointing to the woman's arm, where her skin has a mesh pattern. There is a drawn comparison of non-burnt skin and skin with the mesh graft for comparison. Text box reads "it leaves a specific kind of texture in the skin. Grafts sometimes have stronger highlights than other parts of the skin (you can see it on both photos)". Under that is a photo of Kenny Matthews (@IKenDawg), a Black man with burn scars. There is a text box on the right that reads "skin grafts will usually be thicker than the rest of the skin and thus can stick out; they can be discolored (both darker or lighter, more yellow or red, more/less saturation, etc.) and have a visible start and end. It applies to all skin colors BTW". Below that are two portrait drawings, one of a Black man with a large, darker skin graft on his cheek, and a white woman with yellowish grafts on her jaw and nose.

Fourth slide, titled "nose and eyes". The left side features various nose drawings, while right and bottom show different kinds of eyes. The text in the nose section reads "Usually if nose was visibly burned, it will be seen on the nostrils and septum". The first nose drawing shows someone with pale skin and nostrils pulling strongly downwards. Second one shows a person with darker skin and fourth degree burns; his eyes are covered by skin and the external parts of the nose are largely gone, leaving the red internal part visible. Text attached reads "With very severe burns, the external part of the nose can be removed. In this case the nose will be red because the insides of the nose are red". Third drawing shows a white man with burns below his eyes; his septum is completely gone, and the nostrils pull to the sides. Attached text reads "Nostrils can also pull to the sides, making the nose wider. Sometimes the septum will be absent if burns were severe enough. That generally causes some degree of asymmetry". Last nose drawing shows someone with a lot of keloid and hypertrophic scars on his face, with one of them formed around their nose. Text attached reads "Nose can also pull to one side. The constricted nostril can then be very flat". There's a simple sketch underneath that shows a nose with symmetric and asymmetric nostrils from below. Eye section. The first text box reads "Eyes are not affected as often as you'd probably assume (mostly because blinking and all) but eye damage is frequent in chemical burns (as opposed to thermal)". First drawing features a darkskin person with burns on their forehead and around their left eye. The skin pulls their eyelids upward and to the side at a 45-degree angle, resulting in the red of the eye showing on the sides. Attached text reads "Eye pulls out and up, so the red parts show accordingly. The eyelids themselves are stretched, eye is fine". Second drawing is of an Arab man with a chemical burn on the left side of his face. He's missing his eyebrow and eyelashes on that side. He has ptosis and his actual iris is blurrier while the white part is redder. Text reads "Here eyelids pull down so the eye looks like it's drifting up". Third drawing shows a person with tan skin and severe burns. They have no hair of any kind, and their nose bridge is significantly pushed to the side. Their right eye is wide open with a red shiny eyelid at the bottom, their iris pointing extremely outward, and blood vessels showing. Their left eye looks very small with swollen eyelids and partially opaque iris. Text reads "The redness you can sometimes see is a result of chronic conjunctivitis, it's not an open wound situation. Here the right lower eyelid is missing so it looks like it's red and shiny. The left lower one is turned outward and it causes corneal scarring, which results in parts of the eye looking white(r) and the eyelids to swell". The bottom section features four eye adjacent conditions and their characteristics. The first one shows a person with one of their eyes missing and an empty pale-red socket visible. It's titled "Enucleation". Text underneath reads "If the eye is as badly damaged as in 90% of OCs with burns then they will get it removed. Despite popular perception there is quite literally nothing 'gore' about an eye socket. The redness/whiteness is the same thing as on your eyelid when you pull it. The empty socket has a much smaller opening and is very flat in comparison to a full socket. If the character has a protruding brow ridge, the shadow will fall on the whole area". Second one features a dark-skinned person's eye, which is brown with a white spot on the lens. Text reads "Cataracts is a condition of the lens, so it affects the lens by making it to appear clouded. Causes blindness". Third one shows an eye of a pale person; it's slightly red with blood vessels visible and the irid is blurry with a large opaque spot in the middle. Text reads "Corneal scarring causes pain, red sclera, and the opaqueness that can happen over the whole eye, not just lens. Also causes blindness".

Continuation from the previous slide. Last one shows an eye with the upper eyelid fallen down. Text reads "Ptosis is caused by nerve damage more than anything else. It makes the eyelid fall down, but does not affect the eye itself. Can technically make someone unable to see if the eyelid doesn't open". Fifth slide description starts from here. It shows a three-step process of drawing the skin texture. First step shows a patch of light skin, titled "get a base". Second step puts various brown lines of different sizes on the skin, largely going from the upper left to bottom right, spreading out on the right. Text reads "Draw slightly darker lines of various lengths to imply contractures". There’s a second, smaller drawing, first with the lines going in similar direction and the other with the lines all pointing different ways and going over each other. Text above them is "try to keep them going in a direction that makes sense" and "not just random strokes" respectively. Third step adds some shadows and highlights on the scars. Text reads "add subtle shading to show texture changes, can also add highlights". Below that is a small drawing of a patch of skin with a red line going through it; one side is shaded and one isn't for comparison. The upper right has a drawing of a man shown from the back; he has burn scars on his left shoulder. That shoulder is less muscular than the right one, and he has keloids and grafts visible. Text underneath reads "You really don't have to draw 10000 lines to show the contractures. A few smaller and some bigger ones do it just fine. Remember that you can ad keloids, hypetrophic scars, and graft discoloration!".

sixth slide, titled "other things to think about". it features a few different burn survivor characters and the text "no two burn survivors are the same". first one is a Black woman with a burn just on her face and neck, empty eye socket, and no ear, wearing a very wide-brimmed sun hat. note next to her reads "sun protection". below her is a white man with scarring on the side of his head, including two large keloid scars. he's missing a lot of hair on his scalp. underneath him is a drawing of a Latino man with short black hair and contracture scars on his forearm, fusing it around the elbow; he's wearing a large compression glove on his hand. in the center of the image are two women; a South Asian young woman wearing a pastel hijab using crutches with a visible prosthetic leg, and a Black woman with short pink hair and all four limbs amputated using a powerchair. The first woman has no actual burns visible while the second one has her stumps covered in distinct discolored scars, but they're both smiling at each other. text between them reads "burns can result in amputation, either because of the initial damage or infection. sometimes burns are visible, sometimes not so much". under them is a portrait of a white woman scratching her neck with her remaining fingers. she's completely bald with scars on her head, face, and hand. her eye is slightly red with a discolored white part in the middle of the iris. text next to her reads "research actual symptoms of burn scars (like scratching) (like sun protection), etc."

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Screenshot that reads, "In a 2022 survey of the burn community, Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors found 59% ranked 'burn survivors & the media: changing the portrayal of the survivor' as a top need for support."

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

Tags

digital art digital illustration my artwork digital painting mermaid mermay merfolk mermay 2023 speed paint artistic nude painting process mermaid aesthetic seaweed kelp forest process video

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plutotheunseelie

11 months ago

I am consumed by fear that my mother might die in Gaza while I am far away, unable to help her. The thought of her suffering alone in such a dangerous place breaks my heart. I feel so helpless and terrified, knowing I can't be there to protect her or bring her to safety. Every day is filled with anxiety and dread, as I hope and pray for her survival amidst the chaos.