Avatar

I Draw Things

@vanillamidnight-us

multifandom I reblog random shit and occasionally draw.

Q&A ASK :

  1. What is your oc like in an argument ?
  2. Does your oc have any tics ? Are they aware of them ?
  3. If your oc could change one thing about their appearance, what would they change and why ?
  4. How generous is your oc ? Are they more of a giver or a taker ?
  5. Can your oc drive ?
  6. What upsets your oc ?
  7. How easily does your oc give up ?
  8. What would your oc’s theme song be?
  9. What does your oc look for in a friend?
  10. On average, how many hours of sleep does your oc get a night?
  11. What kind of music does your oc like to dance to? Would they dance with others?
  12. Does your oc remember names or faces easier?
  13. How successful is your oc at flirting with others? Do they do it a lot?
  14. What does your oc's voice sound like and what is their accent like?
  15. What are some things your OC has taught themself over the years?
  16. What is your oc’s favorite animal?
  17. What is the weirdest thing your oc regularly eats?
  18. If your oc could have any eye color, which color would they choose and why?
  19. What is one thing your oc will refuse to eat under any circumstances?
  20. Is your oc bothered by the sight of blood?
  21. What are some things your oc says to their loved ones to tell them they love them?
  22. Does your oc cry easily? What are some things they would cry about?
  23. How does your oc react to being catcalled ? Have they ever been catcalled ?
  24. Would your oc hide an injury and why?
  25. Does your oc initiate kisses? What types of kisses do they like (mouth kisses, forehead kisses, etc.)?
  26. Does your oc have a type?
  27. What's the worst thing your oc has ever wished upon someone, and who was it?
  28. Do others ever flirt with your oc? When it happens, how do they deal with it?
  29. What is your oc like as a partner?
  30. How does your oc handle jealousy?
  31. What are some of your oc's habits that would be considered strange by others, but completely normal by them?

Please use the ask box to drop in a question, there is a maximum of three questions per ask. My OCs are : Tora Bushida, Jeanne and Zeng Qingsheng, you can find their profiles here !

Hope you have a good day/evening and I'll be waiting for your ask !

HELPFUL LINKS FOR NEW TUMBLR USERS!

i can update this with even more as time goes on or make a another post and link it at the top. if anyone else has helpful links please comment them.

grabbing new writers by the shoulders. it is important to write what you love and to love what you write. if you spend all your time trying to make something other people will approve of you will hate yourself and everything around you. learn at your own pace. you have time. i’m proud of you

Avatar

I think one of the kindest things you can do for yourself as an artist is to accept that you will make bad drawings sometimes and just…stop caring about it. It’s not like that bad sketch you drew was your one and only chance to ever draw the thing. It’s so much easier emotionally to just say “lol what is that?” delete it and start over than it is to spend the next six hours crying about it. Once you stop treating every single thing you draw as something precious and learn to just throw stuff away it takes so much stress away. One bad drawing doesn’t make you a bad artist, or a fraud. Even the best pro artists are gonna have moments where they draw things wrong. You’re going to make bad drawings so just go out there and make them so you can move on with your life. Chances are your second attempt will be better. 

PSA for artists during disability pride month

CRIPPLE YOUR ART

From experience: Sleeping with a prosthetic limb on is like sleeping with a backpack still strapped to you after a long day of school ok yall gotta stopppppp making art where characters are wearing a prosthetic to chill or nap or have sexy time come onnnn now

Yes yes i acknowledge nuances and suspension of disbelief and magic and exceptions blah blah blah but the point of this post is that as a limb different bitch IM TELLING YOU yall gotta get past the aesthetic of able bodiedness and get comfy w understanding and representing disabled bodies in their natural state bc it's limiting your art and yall don't even know it. Cripple your art, you cowards!!!

(This is a desperate plea from a one-armed Trigun 98 fan art enjoyer)

Avatar

Hey, friends with poor memory. This is a sign to go ahead and learn anything you want, even if you're afraid you're going to forget it all. Read Wikipedia articles, watch documentaries, take free classes, and delve deep into books and lore. Maybe I'm the only one who has this fear, maybe not. But learning for pleasure is just as much--if not moreso-- about the joy of the experience as it is about memorization.

Man, I think the best and worst part of Knives’s character is just how compelling he is*

I get it. You get it. We all understand exactly how and why he is the way he is. So many people have put this idea into better words than I could. He witnessed an unspeakable horror at an incredibly young age. He knew he was different, that he was other, and a worry set deeply into his bones that humanity would reject him for being born who he is. 

And he was right. It was so much worse than he could have ever realized. He was born to be an object for humanity to use as they see fit. All he wanted was love and peace for himself and his brother. And after seeing that? What they did so mercilessly to Tesla? Who can blame him for not believing in any future with humanity in it. Who can imagine a future without unbelievable strife and prejudice when you’re outnumbered and are seen as an item to dissect and toy with as you see fit

And yet

And yet

In his fear, in his need to control and correct, the cycle continues. The abused becomes the abuser. He assaults his brother multiple times. He takes away Vash’s autonomy and manipulates his body without his consent. Hell he happily experiments with/tests and uses Vash’s body while unconscious. He says he loves Vash while refusing to hear a word coming out of his mouth. Because, if he has a moment of doubt, any hint of weakness, all of that anger slips away and he becomes that boy again–afraid and weak and alone

In his fear, he takes plants. He strips them of their independence and will, denying them their souls. Again, he uses the bodies of his siblings against their will. He displays their corpses to keep him angry instead of putting them to rest. He kills and breaks apart the body of his sister so that he doesn’t have to die, so that he can be reborn. He willfully denies the thoughts, dreams, and pains of his sisters and instead absorbs them, impregnates them, tries to kill them in the “right” way

In his fear, he drove humanity into hurting his kind more. He forced their hand into injuring and killing more plants than they’d ever dreamed of harming. He’s the one that put Vash into a constant position where he’s gaining mountains of scars. (His brother who, on the opposite end of the spectrum, has let the cycle of abuse continue while using himself as a shield instead of breaking free from the pattern.) He uses and discards the humans near him no matter the kindness and devotion they shows him

The same behavior Knives shows everybody and everything else

He’s awful. Absolutely sick and perverted and so stuck in his own mind that all he does is hurt and hurt and hurt

And yet

I get it. I’ve been traumatized to the point where all I want to do is cause pain in return. To feel that justice can exist and will come to pass, no matter the cost. To be so afraid that anger is the only safe emotion you can cling to. It’s what makes him one of the most compelling antagonists I’ve ever seen. Kudos to Nightow for fucking me up about Knives and his pain more by the day, honestly

*Except for ‘98 Knives lmao, that man is fabulously unhinged and overly dramatic about everything and I love him for it

Both twins go the opposite unhealthy route for trauma survivors. Knives goes abuser himself and Vash goes people pleaser.

It sucks, because deep down Knives wants to be understood and wants to feel safe. But years and years of repeating his mantra of hatred has him in complete denial about reality and causation. Knives has so much power, but it is never enough. Behind all of his masks, Knives is still a little kid that feels rejected and threatened by the bad humans. His anger hides fear and sadness. Anger is a much safer emotion since it enables you to act upon it. Anger makes you more than a victim. Anger makes you strong. A fallacy, but one that is not easily understood.

Knives has many examples of humanity’s depravity. But he cannot see that he is a cause for it. Many examples are his own making and thus become a selffulfilling prophecy. Vash’s body is an examply of all the bad things humans do. But Vash clings to other memories, memories where he was successful, memories in which he helped and in which people thanked him.

We can talk about the different Knives and how it looks like Stampede Knives has the most control over human leadership, after that Trimax Knives (from the looks of it). But powerscaling is not the important part about this. It is that Knives is an active parcipitant in maintaining his delusions. And that is the tragedy for me. Knives needs someone stronger than him to cut through his delusions and slap some sense into him. But there is none. His brother is the only one. But he is too occupied being his complete opposite as a people pleaser and avoids the conflict with his brother. Knives is too big and too strong and too scary for anyone to stand up to him. And that leaves him and his inner child that so desperatedly needs someone at his side isolated, rejected and alone.

Knives is strong now. Next to no one can hurt him. He has won. But at what cost?

Had a few folks interested in how I made the patches I posted for Solarpunk Aesthetic Week, so I thought I'd give y'all my step-by-step process for making hand-embroidered patches!

First, choose your fabric and draw on your design. You can use basically any fabric for this - for this project I'm using some felt I've had lying around in my stash for ages.

Next, choose your embroidery floss. For my patches I split my embroidery floss into two threads with 3 strands each, as pictured. You can use as many strands in your thread as you prefer, but for the main body of my patches I prefer 3 strands.

Next you're going to start filling your design using a back stitch.

First, put in a single stitch where you want your row to start.

Poke your needle up through the fabric 1 stitch-length away from your first stitch.

Poke your needle back down the same hole your last stitch went into so they line up end-to-end.

Repeat until you have a row of your desired length (usually the length of that colour section from one end to the other). Once you have your first row, you're going to do your next row slightly offset from your first row so that your stitches lay together in a brick pattern like this:

Make sure your rows of stitches are tight together, or you'll get gaps where the fabric shows through.

Rinse and repeat with rows of back stitch to fill in your patch design.

When you're almost to the end of your thread, poke your needle through to the back of the fabric and pull the thread under the back part of the stitching to tuck in the end. Don't worry if it looks messy - no one's gonna see the back anyway.

This next step is fully optional, but I think it makes the patch design really pop. Once your patch is filled in, you can use black embroidery floss to outline your design (or whatever colour you want to outline with - it's your patch, do what you want). I use the full thread (6 strands, not split) of embroidery floss to make a thicker outline.

I use the same back stitch I used to fill the piece to make an outline that adds some separation and detail. You could use most any 'outlining' stitch for this, but I just use back stitch because it's just easier for me to do.

Once you're finished embroidering your patch, it's time to cut it out!

Make sure to leave a little border around the edge to use for sewing your patch on your jacket/bag/blanket/whatever, and be careful not to accidentally cut through the stitches on the back of the patch.

If you have a sturdy enough fabric that isn't going to fray, you can just leave it like this. If not, I recommend using a whip stitch/satin stitch to seal in the exposed edges (I find that splitting your embroidery floss into 3-strand threads works best for this).

And then you're done! At this point you can put on iron-on backing if you want, or just sew it on whatever you wanna put it on. Making patches this way does take a long time, but I feel that the results are worth it.

Thanks for reading this tutorial! I hope it was helpful. If anyone makes patches using this method, I'd love to see them! 😁

GREAT tutorial on patches. sharing is caring, my friends.