HOME | DD

Description
It started out as just a little pose sketch. I wanted to edge closer to perfectionism again, after months of "doesn't matter how good, 20h is too long". I know I need to get faster even now, but simultaneously, finishing something to a satisfactory point doesn't seem to be enough. More polish is what impresses people, and it's what makes milestone pieces so alluring. I think I should have highly polished things and sketches/lineart, not mediocre pictures all throughout. And in ways, even this is still mediocre and a little messy. plus there are massive value issues, John is supposed to read as black all over. The light source is sorta vague. Serves me right for not studying enough.

Concerning studying, I've only put approx the last 2 days into this. The rest of the 8 days since my last upload have been dumped into various things, including sadness. I have several half finished pictures, one of which nearly drove me to madness until I completely overthrew the composition, and I have finally begun using Affinity Designer, a vector program, to design a cover page for my next short story. I'm getting into typography and layout now apparently, I've come so far as to trace a few edited letters with vector shapes and am now applying little details, rearranging, filling in with gradients, and planning how to combine the letters with illustration (storiated letters are a medieval manuscript thing but I wanna make it modern).
Too great that Affinity Publisher is the next thing they'll be releasing, I'll be able to use that instead of having to subscribe to Adobe for InDesign. Right? That means I'll be able to polish my own turds so hard that you'd be able to break the fourth wall with them. My plan is to combine ornamentation, illustration and modern layout to create atmosphere, the result is both art and literature.

It's a horror story btw. It's tied into John and Arthur, but I've paid attention to make everything species ambiguous, so people around me will be able to have a look at it and understand I'm not actually useless. It's called Cistern. You might not think cisterns are creepy, but I think they're much too scary to justify them. When I was a child, in the middle of our yard was a raised and painted platform covering a long unused cesspool, and the way my parents told me how the ground could cave in if I set ONE foot on there made an impression. Later my mom had a bf who we helped move to a country house in the middle of nowhere and we had a cistern there, and she came at me with the no walking over that again, and we even had a look inside through this iron trapdoor. The water was pitch black but you could see the faintest ripples. Ever since then Cisterns had a special place in my heart. And then I saw footage of this huge one in Istanbul from Byzantine times and it never really left me.

Imagine a huge, dripping wet barrel vault over your head, glistening in the faint light of your torch, receding into nothingness. And you have no idea how deep the water goes under you, but you've heard the word "cathedral" before. Your crude little boat begins to rock on the still lake. And when you wake up, it's everywhere below you, the cavern that collects the rain of all souls. The ground is fragile. Wherever you go, you might step on a weak spot, and never be seen again. That's the concept at least.

Description
It started out as just a little pose sketch. I wanted to edge closer to perfectionism again, after months of "doesn't matter how good, 20h is too long". I know I need to get faster even now, but simultaneously, finishing something to a satisfactory point doesn't seem to be enough. More polish is what impresses people, and it's what makes milestone pieces so alluring. I think I should have highly polished things and sketches/lineart, not mediocre pictures all throughout. And in ways, even this is still mediocre and a little messy. plus there are massive value issues, John is supposed to read as black all over. The light source is sorta vague. Serves me right for not studying enough.

Concerning studying, I've only put approx the last 2 days into this. The rest of the 8 days since my last upload have been dumped into various things, including sadness. I have several half finished pictures, one of which nearly drove me to madness until I completely overthrew the composition, and I have finally begun using Affinity Designer, a vector program, to design a cover page for my next short story. I'm getting into typography and layout now apparently, I've come so far as to trace a few edited letters with vector shapes and am now applying little details, rearranging, filling in with gradients, and planning how to combine the letters with illustration (storiated letters are a medieval manuscript thing but I wanna make it modern).
Too great that Affinity Publisher is the next thing they'll be releasing, I'll be able to use that instead of having to subscribe to Adobe for InDesign. Right? That means I'll be able to polish my own turds so hard that you'd be able to break the fourth wall with them. My plan is to combine ornamentation, illustration and modern layout to create atmosphere, the result is both art and literature.

It's a horror story btw. It's tied into John and Arthur, but I've paid attention to make everything species ambiguous, so people around me will be able to have a look at it and understand I'm not actually useless. It's called Cistern. You might not think cisterns are creepy, but I think they're much too scary to justify them. When I was a child, in the middle of our yard was a raised and painted platform covering a long unused cesspool, and the way my parents told me how the ground could cave in if I set ONE foot on there made an impression. Later my mom had a bf who we helped move to a country house in the middle of nowhere and we had a cistern there, and she came at me with the no walking over that again, and we even had a look inside through this iron trapdoor. The water was pitch black but you could see the faintest ripples. Ever since then Cisterns had a special place in my heart. And then I saw footage of this huge one in Istanbul from Byzantine times and it never really left me.

Imagine a huge, dripping wet barrel vault over your head, glistening in the faint light of your torch, receding into nothingness. And you have no idea how deep the water goes under you, but you've heard the word "cathedral" before. Your crude little boat begins to rock on the still lake. And when you wake up, it's everywhere below you, the cavern that collects the rain of all souls. The ground is fragile. Wherever you go, you might step on a weak spot, and never be seen again. That's the concept at least.