I Felt Like My Headphone Cords Draped Around My Head Would Make A Neat Aesthetic. I Was Right. Also,

This has been an idea I’ve been meaning to implement for a while...and by a while, I mean a few years now. For a while, I didn’t have the emotional fortitude to think about it, let alone sitting down and actually making it.

I still don’t think that this does a whole lot of justice regarding the sheer devastation I feel towards gun violence at this point in my life, but at least I finally gathered the guts to make this today. In a sense, I’d like to think that I’m not as plagued with the idea as I was now that I’ve let this come into existence.

Oh, by the way — I did listen to Childish Gambino’s This Is America while working on this.

Today's #throwbackthursday is brought to you by a WIP based off of UCF's branding. It feels oddly appropriate to bring this up while I'm seriously thinking about going back to school at FSU. . . . . . #artistsofinstagram #digitalpainting #illustration #ucf #pegasus #yellow #black #gold #horse #wings https://www.instagram.com/p/B1fhsxihN13/?igshid=htgdbyvvckia

I’ve been doing super duper rough speedpaints of Jotaro and Joseph in between points where I’ve been frustrated with the approximately 50 icons I have to design for an actual company.

Of course, these two aren’t finished by my actual standards, but I’ve been pushing myself to try to do smaller things on the side so that I don’t get overwhelmed with the sheer number of things I have to design. Also, I’ve been legitimately happy that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure stood my “two month” test before I get bored with a series and dump it...so it’s in league with Panic! at the Disco and The Legend of Zelda in terms of fandoms for me at this point. (Although Joseph is inexplicably my favorite Jojo, and I’m disappointed that my intro was Jotaro back in the day with the fucking garbage OVAs, because NO WONDER MY INITIAL IMPRESSION WAS BAD AND I INITIALLY DIDN’T LIKE IT, JEEBUS.)

I’m glad I’ve gotten 80% of what I needed to finish while spitting these two things out too. And a few other non-essential things.

I kinda want to legitimately finish these. And make a few other Jojo things, too. I want a damn Kakyoin sketch for myself.

I was thinking about how I starting learning Adobe Photoshop stuff way back in 2007 when I was 15…and back when Adobe Photoshop CS2 was cutting edge, you had to pay for it. Which is unlike now, where CS2 is officially free from Adobe (sort of), but Creative Cloud subscriptions are a thing, but that’s even more expensive.

I also thought about the first album design I ever made back then as well, and my dad kindly posted it on Facebook and tagged me in it.

I forgot how bad it was. Dear lord, the back and front have no cohesion, warped text is terrible, there’s way too many fonts, and tilting text is generally a no-no unless you really know what you’re doing… but I actually appreciate looking at it, because I’m looking at it and going “Oh wow, I’ve improved a lot in the past 10 years.”

It’s also really interesting to see what’s stayed the same, because there’s a few things I can clearly pinpoint as consistent things. Firstly, I clearly like either A) bright colors, or B) dark and moody stuff. Secondly, I am clearly a nerd, considering that the first one has a modded amp tube diagram on the back, and the second one has a Sierpenski gasket. Thirdly, I always seem to have ridiculous ideas for song names.

It’s nice to have reminders of how far you’ve come. It really is. I was the kind of kid who got frustrated with a lot of my work and would just wantonly throw things I made out if I deemed it to be terrible for what I could do later. That hasn’t helped me too much nowadays.

(Also, I’m very, very tempted to redesign the old one. I could probably make something a lot better now.)

I have 50 followers now! I’m planning on doing a Twitch stream around 6:30PM EST or so in order to personally celebrate. (And I will uncharacteristically draw fan art chibis. Probably.)

I’m dead serious about this seamless dolphin vector pattern I made a while ago.

I ended up scrapping this a while ago, simply because pastel dolphins really aren’t something that fits in with the rest of my main portfolio, but...yeah...I did make this a while ago.

Dolphins. Yeah.

Here, have an animation for Star Trek’s 50th anniversary!

Even if it was technically an assignment for my advanced illustration course, I had fun with my sorry excuse for fan art (Yes, I grew up with Star Trek in the 90s. My parents and I would watch both TNG and Voyager together, and TOS on occasion.)

I also had fun revisiting nebulas and space as subject matter for digital painting, and this was a lovely excuse to do that, too. Also, this was actually the first time I’ve ever used overlays in something, to be brutally honest. You’d think I would have touched them at some point if I’ve known Photoshop for years...but nope. Not once.

I may have to make a Zelda 30th anniversary illustration and a Pokemon 20th anniversary illustration to accompany this as well, as I grew up with those, too...(and without parental influence.)

I normally don't like photos where I'm wearing my glasses because I haven't been able to afford anti-glare lenses for the past five or so years, so I inevitably get lens flare, but looking at a recent selfie where the rest of everything is more or less well polished is always nice, and I'm happy I have a stash of them that kinda look Leyendecker-ish. Also, I don't like the cold, but I do appreciate the consolation price of wearing coats.

So, I had this commission for a friend that I finally finished—I have to say that I’m proud of myself for getting Photoshop CC’s current liquefy tool to recognize this as an actual face and let me make a few slight tweaks as if it was a photo of an actual person. I legit did not expect that.

I’m always baffled when a throw away doodle of mine pops up somewhere else on the internet.

This time, a quick 5-10 minute meme speedpaint challenge I drew came up on Google. I spent the last five minutes laughing. I can’t believe that it spread past the one thread it was meant for.