RatCreature's Journal

I suck so much at coloring hair. I need to draw more bald people. Or they could all wear hats. Better yet, paper bags. That would take care of a whole lot of other difficulties too. Sylvester Jr. would be the ideal subject...

I'm not sure whether anyone is interested, seeing how the art itself got very little reaction (only two comments and one kudo so far *sulk*), but since I took the pictures of the in-between stages, I might as well post them.

( many images of the work in progress )

To give myself incentive to draw something, and others incentive to rec over at fanart_recs I've decided to offer anyone who signs up to rec a fandom in May (just four recs as a minimum!) a sketch as a bribe. It would be more elaborate than the ultra-quick drawbles I do, but I won't promise a painting or anything like that (those can take me up to 100+ hours after all), just a pencil sketch (or rather a scan of a sketch) that fulfills a request. I'm offering any fandoms I've drawn before, i.e. DC, Marvel, SGA, Merlin, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Dresden Files, and Temeraire, and all other fandoms I'm into would also be possible, which is a long list, among them Sanctuary, LOTR, Sherlock Holmes, Terminator, Farscape, Murdoch Mysteries, Avatar the Last Airbender, Star Wars, X-Files, Sentinel...

I'm fairly flexible, however I don't do any kind of RPF, nor pornographic art. The limit for sex in my art is pretty much things like kissing, groping and cuddling, but I'm not particular wrt pairings. There are a couple of non-explicit kinks I don't think I could realize well, for example genderbending, crossdressing or mpreg art.

Anyway, if you are willing to be bribed, just comment here with a description of your request, and I'll say whether I think I could do a sketch like you have in mind. Then sign up the usual way on the rec comm, and I'll hopefully be able to finish your sketch before May is over. BTW, should you happen to be one of the three awesome volunteers already signed up for May, you can also ask for sketch, if you'd like.

ETA: If you don't have a DW account which you'd need to post recs in the comm, I have plenty of invite codes to share.

With my last acrylic painting I tried for the first time to skip the lineart inking, and now I'm wondering which version of my style viewers like better, if they have a preference at all, i.e. without inked lineart like in this Star Trek art, or with inked lineart like for example in this SGA art or pretty much any color art I've done before.

One of the moments to wish for roommates: you find yourself tediously posing for some position, trying to catch yourself on autotimer with your crappy camera, and not just that, but actually half-naked because it turns out that if you photograph yourself wrapped in two layers, one of it a cozy, thick fleece, you can't easily deduce how the limb looks. I'd actually even take a tripod to put a camera on, because balancing said crappy camera on something a workable height facing in a direction where I can pose on doesn't really work all that well. Argh.

Surely not everybody can be at VVC? Why is it so quiet? Where is my entertainment? *poke*

Well, maybe incentive is better than a stick: I haven't offered drawbles in ages (and not drawn anything else either, sigh), so if you prompt me, I'll draw you a doodle.

As usual: I'll do my best for any fandom I'm familiar with, or random stuff (monsters, steampunk machines, animals...) or I can just pick prompts from your interests. I don't draw porn though, and I'm not good at portrait likeness. Also keep in mind that these are quick doodles, so for a prompt that is a description of some epic scene you've always wanted to see realized in fanart the results aren't going to very satisfying for you (or much fun for me).

If you want to see the quality (or lack thereof) you can expect, look at the drawble tag. I don't make any promises for results or a timely delivery, but the past I've usually managed to draw something for everyone who prompted me for these non-demanding, open drawble offers.

I was attempting to do a grayscale value thumbnail for my Trekreversebang artwork as preliminary to painting it, and couldn't figure out how the shadows would look, not even in so far as to roughly fake it. So now I have resorted to trying to make a rough pseudo-maquette simulating at least the broad masses. Of course I don't model or sculpt, so I do not have any of the materials or skills needed for actual maquette making. Instead I am making a contraption from some old cardboard, toiletpaper rolls and play-do. >.<

Unrelated to this, I still do not have the newest Dresden Files book, because I ordered the UK edition (which was sold about four euro cheaper than the US edition by the German Amazon), and that apparently came out a few days after the US one. But I did just get a notification that it's in the mail, so it will arrive soonish. I hope.

I gacked this from glockgal, but the original empty template comes from Kamaniki at dA. The time span for chronicling art in this meme fit me well, because I started posting fanart in 2003, so I took it as a sign that I ought to be a memesheep.

( a huge image behind the cut, it might be considered NSFW by some strict standards due to kissing and groping going on in some art samples )

I'm beginning to feel oddly understanding about the stupid "sex kitten" poses female characters are so often stuck with on covers and such. It's not that I'm getting fond of the sexism, but it is frelling hard to come up with engaging poses when you just want to draw some character, portrait-like I mean rather than some scene with an inherent action. And while the message isn't great, at least the stripper body language says something rather than having the character stand around dumbly, looking very boring.

How do people who are good at portraits figure out how to arrange the character? I totally fail at this. My attempts always look stiff or stupid or both.