carryalaser:

WATERCOLOUR CHEAT CODES

I made really quick tutorials full of swatches to send my mom who wants to take up watercolour painting for a hobby. I’ll share them here as I find time to type what I wrote her.

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The first two pictures illustrate discoveries in mixing skin-tones. I try to find paints that make it faster/easier to mix skin colours - even if you’re adept at making these tones out of other colours, the right combo of purple and yellow can cut out a lot of time and money. The one I have most success with is “violet gray”, then “permanent magenta” for darker and wider ranges, and “purple lake” when I was cheap and it was on sale.

Mix these (sparingly) with raw sienna. The darker the purple the less you’ll need to add to your yellow (yellow ochre works as well). Ultimately, watercolour is tricky to mix so if you’re not confident right away make sure to paint swatches before putting a loaded brush to paper, otherwise be ready to mix with water on the paper.

For a lighter, paler, redder skin tone, raw sienna + brown madder is what I prefer, although as you can see in the first image (about half-way down the page on the left), “cadmium yellow pale hue” and “cadmium red deep hue” work just as well, and might be cheaper on you. With that combo, however, it’s easier to get stuck mixing a ton of orange. 

Back to permanent magenta, it’s great with browns to get darker tones, not just for darker skin but for shading. I keep three browns on my “skin” palette (last pic), “burnt umber”, “burnt sienna”, and “vandyke brown”. Mix it with some skin-tone, even just a little, to keep it from looking straight-out-of-the-tube.

So mix your skin tones, make a few test swatches to figure out how much water you need (every brush behaves differently), and lay down some washes.

In the middle of the first piece of paper is a gradation in a skin tone (violet gray + raw sienna) from really warm (“brown madder”) to really cool (“turquoise”). This was done wet in wet, to show what kinds of tones you get from adding warm and cool colours. 

To the left on the bottom are a couple light washes of colours painted over a skin tone (same ol’ raw sienna + violet gray) to show how different colours look on this mix when applied dry on dry. Blue (I used turquoise again) is great for some shadows, implied stubble, and veins close to the skin, reds and most browns for warmer shading, yellow for jaundice or boogers… you get it.

On the bottom right is an example of really warm vs. really cool shading on the same skin tone mix (just guess). The initial skin tone wash is a bit warm for the cool side, but the contrast makes the shadows really evident. Different colours in shading will have different effects that way. The only surprise here is the use of dark blue “indigo” which is great for coming close to black when mixed with other colours.

On the second page are two more noses, different skin tones, and just three extra passes with skin tone washes - although difficult to tell because I was lazy and didn’t wait long enough for them to dry after the 2nd pass. The extra passes aren’t particularly warm or cold leaning, but simply draw off of the initial tone I placed.

IMPORTANT: These little quick studies serve to be as economical as possible, using few colours but still not looking just like an awkward mix of red and yellow or brown and yellow. For a more detailed or accurate representation of skin tones, a ton more colours might be added - for instance the darker skin tone on the right would have more pinks, and of course different parts of the body appear to be tinted differently. Also never forget no matter what colour or how dark skin is, skin is shiny. Be mindful of even diffused light. At the same time - perfect representation of skin is hardly necessary. More expressive colour treatment rules.

But ultimately - colour in skin - who cares! Just play around with colours you like, build a base that’s easy for you to mix quickly for wet on wet or however you prefer to work. Play with colours on different planes or surfaces of the body, with light, and take everything I say as a tips - not rules - ‘cause watercolour is really unpredictable and that is often the best part.

Another note: I use pencil tins for palettes, it keeps things portable, easy to mix, minimal paint waste, and I can rearrange paints easily to make mixing easier. I usually have three but you could get away with one or two. If you try it out, keep the paints and empty space clean with jut a bit of water and the wipe of a cloth/kleenex.

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The third picture shows a really quick, easy, natural black mix I make. It’s simply “Hooker’s Green, Dark” and “Dioxazine Violet” at almost equal quantities. You can mix it with a blue or red or yellow for a warmer or cooler black, depending on which you need. I included some gradation and overlapping swatches. Just keep in mind black can be very powerful in watercolour, or any opaque application of the paint, so use it sparingly and with a plan in mind.

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Despite my shitty watercolour sketches up here, I spent a huge amount of being a child working at a cooperative gallery with some contemporary and purist watercolour painters alike so I picked up a lot. If anyone wants me to be more specific about something, or maybe produce a more specific guide or sketch for a problem you have, let me know and I can try to help out.

These were things my mum asked for and that I produced with her knowledge of the medium in mind, so if it really did interest you but you’re stuck on something, or found something I said vague and confusing, let me know.

EDIT: A tutorial I made to talk about paper. It’s important stuff. [link]

holajupiter:

dandywolves:

tersaudades | pasylree:

#safetytipsforladies: A hashtag about how tired women are of being told to do stupid, ineffective, unrealistic things to avoid being raped. 

“The majority of rapists are known to the victim. Consider not knowing any men.” PERFECTION.

“If you are non-corporeal, you are less likely to be raped. Consider becoming a ghost to protect yourself.”

ON IT

harveyjames:

SPRINGFIELD IS ABOUT TO E•X•P•L•O•D•E

Whew. Just assigned pages to over 300+ artists. Feel a bit like I just ran a marathon. Anyway, here’s the final cast for the Bartkira project. Some aspects of the cast list might be surprising,  but I’m confident that you’ll see the logic and consideration that went into the choices I ended up making when you read the book. Believe me, I went through nearly every reasonable combination of characters and this roster works the best, in terms of character motivation and interaction. 

Lisa is Lady Miyako. I don’t mind if the artists draw lisa as an old lady, a woman, a teen, or a little girl. Since she’s a powerful psychic, it’s reasonable to imagine that she’s capable of changing her appearance. 

As for minor/background characters, that’ll be up to the artist to decide who they’re gonna slot in there. There’ll be no co-ordination on this aspect of it, so it should lead to some interesting results. I don’t mind if you put in generic background cast or known characters we’ll recognise. 

If you want to see the artist roster as it stands right now, it’s here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvXKD7Va1OYedFJDeTJRSk41RDVhQ2NSNERSV3NkVnc#gid=0

Here’s the rules and guidelines for the project. This is going to be in the email I’m about to send out to all the contributors, but in the eventuality 

RULES AND GUIDELINES

I want to keep this as free-wheeling as possible, but I came up with a couple of rules just make sure the whole thing reads nicely as a whole.

-Please put the page number bottom-centre of each page you work on. Be sure to write your name discreetly on the bottom right of the last page you do, too, so people will know it’s you. 

-ALWAYS always change character names in the dialogue to their Simpsons equivalent. So Tetsuo is always ‘Milhouse’, ‘Akira’ is always ‘Ralph’. Mr. Nezu is always Mayor Quimby.

-When spoken in dialogue or narration, ALWAYS change the words “Neo-Tokyo” to ‘Springfield’. ‘Japan’ to ‘America’. ‘America’ is now ‘China’. 

-however, DON’T change location names when they’re referred to in the dialogue. if you want to change the council chambers to look like Burnsie’s power plant, though, that’s up to you. 

- it’s up to you whether a character wears their outfit from The Simpsons or their equivalent’s outfit in Akira. Sometimes costume changes are worked into the plot, though… so if Tetsuo puts on a cape or a fur coat, then you should probably give Milhouse a cape/fur coat too.  

-in the few occasions where I’ve cast against gender, you should swap the gendered pronouns- so ‘Kiyoko is in her room’  becomes ‘Todd is in HIS room’.

-Make it awesome

SUBMITTING YOUR WORK

 

Eventually, I’m going to put this all together in one torrent file available for everyone to download. To make things easier on me, when you’re finished, send your work to the bartkiracommittee@gmail.com inbox in the following format:

Subject header: SUBMISSION

attach your files as one .zip file

JPEG format- highest quality compression

dimensions: 1020 x 1492

filename : Bartkira_X_pYYY.jpg (where X is the volume number and Y is the page number.)

Feel free to put your work on social media as soon as you’ve done it, too! There’s no moratorium on breaking ‘street date’, or anything like that. tag it with #bartkira, of course. and if you want to help out, include a link to my tumblr at harveyjames.tumblr.com, since we’re still in need of artists. I’m also @jamesharveytm on twitter.

GETTING THE BOOK

If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can get it from your local library- or pirate it via torrent software, so long as you buy it for real later. I’m sure it’s readable online in a bunch of different places. Don’t ask me for pages! 

I could probably say a whole bunch more, but I feel like the less guidelines I give you, the more surprised we’re all going to be at the end.

Good luck! 

“Embrace Nothingness” - Lisa Simpson

If you still want to apply, email bartkiracommittee@gmail.com.

e1n:

because we all could use a happy little encouragement every now and then.

(Source: bourbonbadger)

aidenpond:

abqandnotu:

merosse:

TINY TURTLE INVESTIGATORS: THE CASE OF THE LARGE STRAWBERRY

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

O

(Source: animalkingd0m)