being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager
and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five
someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help
me: my what
What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.
when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much.
Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential.
So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’
1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust!
2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:
a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it!
In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support.
I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose
b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me!
c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface
d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)
e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them
f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics.
g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.
h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more.
And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc.
This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah.
Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks.
so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!
How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense
Oh this hit all my red flags, I’ve torn down 3 already just walking Malaya to the park
If you see shit like this Especially outside your local highschools rip it down there’s a 80% chance this is a trafficking scam
Thankfully seems I’m not the only one in town who feels this way
This is totally ok to rb by the way
Scam signs:
Targeting teens
No actual mention of the job company or what you’ll be doing
Paid daily
Promises of trips and prizes
Encouraging you to bring a friend or relative who’s also a teen
If it is NOT a trafficking scam (still likely it is) then it is a Multi-Level Marketing/Pyramid Scheme. There are a lot of them that try to scam either teens or college students with “same day cash pay! Win prizes! Work your own hours!” etc.
Avoid anything to do with these signs and if they mention Vector Marketing, Cutco, Aerogrow, Ambit, Xoom etc its a Multi-Level Marketing scam.
Neither option is good so avoid it either way, warn others. They are especially prevalent on college campuses or around college housing!
It’s not a fucking trafficking scam, they’re not out here advertising GET KIDNAPPED INTO SEX SLAVERY on telephone poles. Y'all sound like QAnon believers.
Everything mentioned in the “sex trafficking red flags” list is a multi-level-marketing red flag.
Common targets for pyramid scheme companies include high school and college students, stay-at-home parents, military spouses, disabled people, and anyone else for whom a 9-5 job is difficult to get.
Amway is notorious for operating under different names/not giving a name until they’ve hooked you in with their promises, because they know people are on to them. Herbalife operates “cafes” without advertising whose products they’re selling. Lesser pyramid schemes rebrand and rename all the time as the bad publicity catches up.
Companies like Primerica or the cluster of door-to-door sales companies known as Devilcorp will outright list “administrative assistant” jobs and then tell you after several rounds of interviews (mainly to get you hyped up about working there) that they don’t have any of those but they have these great sales jobs you’d be just perfect for.
Some MLMs will pay your commission any time you make a sale, in order to keep you feeling excited and productive. The big asterisk there is you get paid daily if you sell daily, but you don’t make any wages.
The most famous prize is the Mary Kay pink Cadillac, which is leased by the company when you’ve reached a certain sales rank. If you drop out of that rank, you take on the lease payments yourself. The trips usually mean that you get a free hotel room but have to pay for event registration and travel and spend your “vacation” getting pumped up with company propaganda.
This is just the basic mode of pyramid schemes: bring more recruits! Recruit your friends!
I promise you sex traffickers are not operating in the open snatching dozens of teenagers daily, this is not a thing.
And DONT REPOST stuff that’s already here! WHY do we even have to go through this again huh? DON’T. DO. IT.
And if you share something from a different platform that isn’t on tumblr already you ASK the creator for permission and then give CREDIT!
reblog, don’t repost, this
Terminology reminder: reblogging is Tumblr’s in-site sharing system but REPOSTING is saving a picture from a post and then making your own post
I have seen genuine confusion about this in the past (largely from ppl more used to other sites that don’t have a reblog system) that’s the only reason I’m adding the explanation
Also reminder bc uuggghh
“Credit to original artist” is not credit. Credit means “this specifically is the person who made this.” So you can tell them how cool it is, or buy a print from their shop, or look at their other work, or follow new works they make, or comission them etc. etc.
Its not just acknowledging that youre not sharing your own work.
Idk where you’re getting those numbers. It’s predicted that up to a one quarter to a third of the country could be underwater by the end of monsoon season.
Nearly 500k homes have been destroyed and as of this article published this morning, August 29th, more than 3.1 million have been displaced.
Here are some aid organizations you can donate to (don’t worry, I looked into them and checked Charity Navigator and stuff). You can also call on your country’s government to provide aid and if you live in a country participating in the IMF you can urge them to send IMF aid too https://www.imf.org/en/Countries
Tahu drops the broken remains of a large Pyro Blade in the center of the room.
Tahu: So, who broke it? I’m not mad, I just wanna know.
Onua: …I did, I broke it-
Tahu: No, no you didn’t. Lewa?
Lewa: Don’t look at me! Look at Kopaka!
Kopaka: What?? I didn’t break it!
Lewa: Huh, that’s weird, how did you even know it was broken??
Kopaka: Because it’s sitting right in front of us, and it’s broken.
Lewa: It’s suspicious.
Kopaka: No, no it’s not!
Pohatu: If it matters, probably not but Gali was the last one to use the armory.
Gali: Pohatu! You know I don’t use fire weapons!
Pohatu: Really? Than what was all the crashing earlier?
Gali: I was fixing my hooks! They got bent on that stupid giant spider, remember?!
Onua: Okay let’s not fight, I broke it, let me fix it Tahu-
Tahu: No! Who broke it?!
*Dramatic silence*
Kopaka: …Tahu, Takanuva has been awfully quiet-
Takanuva: OH REALLY?!
Kopaka: Yeah really!
*Incoherent arguing noises as Lewa, Gali, Pohatu, Kopaka and Takanuva start fighting*
Tahu, whispering to Onua: I broke it. It cut my hand so I punched it. I predict in ten minutes they’ll be at each other’s throats with their Golden Kanohi on full blast and a Bohrok head on a spear.
