Minneapolis and Saint Paul, in Minnesota, where we're being overrun by ICE, and very little is being done by anyone in power to assist.

Oh that's so incredibly kind of you ;_; I'm very blessed to have several friends in the area and great neighbors - the community here is honestly better than anywhere I've ever lived before, so I'm doing ok despite it all. I hope things are OK for you and yours, hang in there and stay safe!! 💕

Thank you so much darling 🫂💕

Philo's sweet little smile gives me cute aggression 😭😭😭

oooh the delicious moody palette works sooo well for this... 👀💗

- and I think a lot of getting good at representational drawing is about learning to draw what your eye sees and not what your brain thinks you see. Not that you have to draw still life in order to be good at gesture drawing of course, that's just what I think was particularly helpful for me.

gesture drawing is about capturing the basic shape of a body; how good are you at capturing the basic shapes of other things? I think drawing lots of still lifes in school honestly helped me with drawing bodies, bc it teaches you how to properly judge shapes and angles. Our brains are very tricksy -

I thumbnail a ton! Whether I'm just doodling or I actually have a specific idea of the pose I want, I start tiiiiny so I can't get too lost in detail, and just fuck around until I'm happy. I fail and have to scrap it a lot. And sometimes I'll use clip studio models, esp if I want a particular angle!

my fav thing to draw! I'll try to whip up a tutorial soon bc it's complicated to explain w/o visuals, but basically I block out general shapes depending on the texture of the hair, then slowly break it down into smaller and smaller "chunks", eventually getting totally lost in the weeds as I detail 😅

ooh, I might have to do a little tutorial for this. I usually take a textured brush and loosely block in a base layer, leaving open spots for highlights, and then lock it so I can color and keep the light spots open. Then I make a layer underneath the base with a bright color for highlights!

;_; thank you so much, that's so nice to hear!!

oh that's a great idea!! It may take me a little time, but I will try to do a "how I draw nipples" tutorial 🫡💖

while my mind wanders, and in letting my mind wander I usually circle in on an idea I want to draw. I find the "idea paralysis" before beginning can be really daunting, my way to combat it is to start drawing *something, anything, asap,* and just keep doodling until I get an actual idea, lol.

I mix it up a lot! I try to do a direct study at least once a month, just trying to recreate a photo as closely as I can, whatever pic caught my eye on reddit or wherever. I doodle a lot, too, where I don't think at all about what I'm doing, just silly expressions or ugly animals -

- of myself if I need particular help with an arm or a leg. But tbh I find referencing directly pretty limiting a lot of the time, since it's so hard to find a PERFECT reference, you know?? Esp if you're drawing a variety of bodies, but most media you can find is full of skinny/athletic people.

- and use much lighter / more delicate lines for fine details or areas I want to be subtle. But I really am just fooling around until I'm happy, lol
- references... honestly I'm terrible at using refs. I sometimes use clip studio models to help make sure my anatomy isn't TOO fucked, or take photos -

line weight is my fav!!! I tend to have a very scratchy lining style, rather than make one smooth line I draw over and over it (which you're not "supposed" to do lol) to give it the thickness/darkness I want. I tend to make lines heavier where there's shadow, or to define one area from another -

- the whole pose, like the way an arm or leg is bent for example. In that case I'll take a photo of myself or my partner and loosely reference that, or I'll use clip studio models!