Octo's Wrongs

[Octo]

Ok ok so I wanted to prove I haven't done nothing with this, just next to nothing A few rough sketches. Normally I'd have farted about in photoshop to make them look a little less shit but dead laptop is dead so...

Spoiler: a David Bowie owl

Spoiler: Freybs sleeping disembodied head and a Moomin toy

These are meant to be separate sketches but I'm saving paper innit?, and yes they're meant to be that way around too.

Gonna try some other of your suggestions in the coming days, but I lost a load of reference pics when my laptop died

 

[Keveh Kins]

Holy shit Octo, that dog in the OP is class!

Following on the owl theme, I suggest drawing Bill Bailey's disenfranchised owl, trying to draw the woodland together with a mixture of revolutionary politics and his theme song

 

[Cabaret]

Damn lady you rock! I love the softness of your drawing, it's really comforting.

 

[Strangelove]

my name on a picture and labyrinth references

my day is made

 

[Octo]

I HAVE DECIDED

that I'm just going to load up Photoshop onto Mr Octo's comp, because theres no way I'm going to be able to afford a decent desktop and big monitor. He'd suggested the idea a while ago but I was reluctant, but now I've got my old hard drive and a pipe to connect it so I won't be clogging up his comp with badly drawn dwarf porn photoshop files.

I'm just putting this here so I don't have an excuse not to sort it out tomorrow.

As an aside, I love doing traditional ink/pencil/paint on paper stuff, but I find that it tends to look a bit crappy once scanned in, any impact it has in real life gets lost. So I guess I have to evolve and get back on the graphics tab.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I want to see your dwarf ladies.

 

[Octo]

All in good time my friend. I decided what I'd do was to draw the wives/girlfriends of various members of the company. Except for Ori who has a strange beautiful platonic handholding thing with a trainee archivist - who's as innocent as he is, any time he plucks up enough courage to ask her out - Dori turns up out of nowhere with a spitty hanky to wipe his face, or Nori tries to sell her some stolen goods. So she's just a 'friend' for now.

But fucking hell, hairstyles are hard, especially drawing braids. Jesus.

I need to find a reference picture of an awesomely ancient lady to be Oins girlfriend. I just thought it would be funny if Oin and his gf had been going out for 150 odd years and just never got round to gettin hitched - they figure 'why spoil things?' She's a better midwife than him though

Oh noes I'm going on again. And yeah, I realise that it's statistically unlikely that they would all have relationships, what with dwarrowdams being rare, but it was a starting point for me.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't know, they all seem like fine specimens of dwarfhood to me; I'm sure they'd all find ladies.

Do you know this site?
https://travsd.wordpress.com/tag/bearded-lady/

 

[Octo]

Fucking hell, Annie Jones is awesome.

TBH I was ad-libbing a lot with the beards, just sort of drawing a female face and then adding a beard to suit. I guess I have difficulty with full beard/moustache combos, like I don't want to lose the (conventionally) feminine element. Maybe I'm being culturally insensitive or body fascist or something? It's hard. I mean it sort of pisses me off when you see a fic tagged 'dwarf women don't have beards in this universe' and stuff. Like is it that hard to get over? But maybe I'm a hypocrite if I'm only doing neckbeards?

I suppose what I'm worried about, is that its kind of hard to get dwarf woman across instead of a guy in a dress.

This is a discussion I never thought I'd be having in a million years

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I thought dwarf women did look like men in dresses; I thought it was impossible to tell them apart.

I have this sort-of head canon in which Kili actually thinks Tauriel is quite ugly, but he's increasingly attracted to her spirit which seems very dwarf-like to him (i.e., less selfish and arrogant than most elves, and much more comradely). It's like she's different but she's also the same. Plus, she's willing to listen to his stories. And she saved his life twice. I feel like dwarves are less concerned about the surface of things than elves; they can see through the skin of the rock to what lies beneath.

If it is not unknown for men to fall in love with bearded ladies (apparently there was a bearded woman in the bed next to my mother's in the maternity ward where I was born, and my mother said this woman a. had hugely entertaining stories to tell about her love life and b. had a totalled devoted husband... so anyway, if a man can love a woman despite her beard, then a dwarf can love an elf despite her lack of one. But it definitely makes her less beautiful by dwarf standards.

 

[Octo]

My headcanons are all over the place. Sometimes they're quite serious, and other times I just think things are funny. Eg, to us Thorin, Kili and Fili are attractive, but to dwarves they think 'ewww - must be the result royal inbreeding that!' But I guess that's what I like about it all, the chance to subvert stuff. Plus from a fanart pov, I've grown pretty sick of drawing (or trying to draw) pneumatic boobed, wasp waisted, superwomen types. Like I admire it, but at the same time it sort of makes me unhappy that I'm basically contributing to/reinforcing 'conventional beauty standards'.

I have this sort-of head canon in which Kili actually thinks Tauriel is quite ugly, but he's increasingly attracted to her spirit which seems very dwarf-like to him (i.e., less selfish and arrogant than most elves, and much more comradely). It's like she's different but she's also the same. Plus, she's willing to listen to his stories. And she saved his life twice. I feel like dwarves are less concerned about the surface of things than elves; they can see through the skin of the rock to what lies beneath.

I like that. I can't make up my mind about whether or not Kili and his cheeky flirty attitude is a front and he's really an inexperienced little virgin OR (and for dirty reasons I lean more towards this ) he's actually a naughty little scamp who got up to all sorts of things en route to the Shire

Either way, I don't think either Kili or Tauriel have ever been in Love. I think Tauriel has a thing for Legolas, but its all tangled up with a sense of duty, with wanting approval and being the best and stuff. Legolas probably does love her in his way, but deep down knows it could never happen, and can't bring himself to cut her out of his life/distance himself from her accordingly. So the poor sod sort of lives in this torturous limbo.

Right now Oin's gf looks like pope Jean Paul II according to Mr Octo I shall have to come back to it tomorrow, but now I have to go to stupid bed

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Moar Tselena, and in color.

(Was the ref pic from Twilight? Just guessing based on the inherent embarrassment.)

 

[Octo]

Moar Tselena, and in color.

(Was the ref pic from Twilight? Just guessing based on the inherent embarrassment.)

Spoiler

*Hangs head in shame* Yeah, bloody buggering Twitlight

I should do more colour stuff (And tselena) but I always ruin things whenever I colour, I drew an elephant the other day (commanded by my daughter) and I've got it to a stage where I'm really happy with it as a pencil outline, but I'm afraid to start colouring.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

For a sec I thought I was a winner because I suggested Tselena and you were going to choose to do that but then I realized I had just won the Twilight guess and became disappointed because then maybe you won't draw moar Tselena.

I could help you find some color tutorials maybe? Here's a good general one:
http://ravynnenevyrmore.deviantart.com/art/How-I-See-Color-A-Tutorial-184642625

 

[Octo]

I probably will draw more Tselena at some point - they're my FFVII OTP

And thanks for the link, like when it comes to real life - paints, inks etc I'm fine, but digital colouring is a whole other animal.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Sometimes a good brush can make the difference too. Here are the ones I use and how I use them:
http://ravynnenevyrmore.deviantart.com/art/Ravynne-s-Custom-Manga-Tools-252882427

And I find with digital painting you generally want to embrace the medium and not try to make things look super smooth or else you get into uncanny valley territory. let the brush strokes show and rely on color theory to do its thang.

Like, say, this: http://crimsonsun.deviantart.com/art/Frost-206314278

 

[Octo]

And I find with digital painting you generally want to embrace the medium and not try to make things look super smooth or else you get into uncanny valley territory. let the brush strokes show and rely on color theory to do its thang.

THIS x 100

In the past I've tried to get everything super smooth and it takes absolutely ages and most of the time looks rubbish (unless it's for super stylised stuff - but even then its probably easier to use gradients or something)

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

I mean, some people pull it off and are amaze. Those people are probably professional illustrators working for Blizzard or something. Normal humans should probably accept our limitations.

 

[Octo]

I've done like....3 sketches today that didn't totally suck. I'd scan them in but the scanner is buried down the back of the couch.

I need to get it through my thick skull that sketchbooks are for sketching and stop approaching doing any drawing/painting/etc like its such a huge deal. Cos basically I set myself up for a fall that way.

I would like to get an A3 scanner if I could, A4 is just too small a size to be working on.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Alternatively, if you use the paper for sketching and have a tablet, you could always snap a cellphone pic to digitize it. As long as you hold it sufficiently straight and don't warp the proportions of the image, just ink it digitally from there and no one will ever be the wiser.

 

[Colours]

Hahaha, love the two drawings on page 2. Tseng and Elena eh...? Nice drawings!

 

[Octo]

Psst....

Poast a picture....

...a good not blurry one...

...I try and draw ur faec...

Itchy...

...tasty...

 

[Keveh Kins]

Spoiler: Challenge: Make this mug pretty

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Or, y'know, accept that such a feat cannot be done and just recreate said mug instead If you need a better picture or something just shout, I'm curious to see how this turns out like the quietly self-absorbed bastitch I am

 

[Octo]

Ok, I'll make a start tomorrow

 

[Ghost X]

I've been waiting on photographs to come in since the weekend, as soon as I get them, I'll give you one of them to draw. They're pretty funneh.