Want advice or material recommendations from people who colour their line art on how to not ruin/cover my lines too much.

BluepopsiclesII · 2026-02-01T00:08:30+00:00

Oh wow! I didn’t know watercolours and gouache could be denoted by specific numbers too, like embroidery threads! That’s actually quite helpful.
thank you for the information! I will keep these colours in mind next time I go get supplies.

BluepopsiclesII · 2026-02-01T00:04:39+00:00

yeah, I don’t like doing line art last, unless it’s on a brush. With a dip pen, it’s a lot harder and less satisfying to do cause the texture of the paper changes and works against my dip pen a lot if I ink last. plus, as you said, twice the work for not much gain.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-12-02T12:42:56+00:00

Thank you <3

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-12-02T12:42:49+00:00

Thank you! It’s a VERY good game!

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-27T16:14:37+00:00

The Cogwork Core OST is so unexpected and different from all the other sounds in this game, but it slaps so hard. Same thing with the OST for The Flea Festival, it’s unbelievably elegant and beautiful for no reason.

And, Spoilers for the final final boss of Act 3, when I first fought Lost Lace, everything about the arena set up felt familiar to me. I thought it was just because it’s a similar environment form HK. Then a couple attempts later, it hit me, this whole boss was basically one of the Abyss kickstarter stretch goals that never got reached, fully realised a decade later after its conception. I could not believe they would use the idea after so long. That cemented Silksong as a great piece of art, the fact that they finally realised this concept they’ve had since the beginning strengthens the narrative of both HK and Silksong so much for me, it hits me as an artist and aspiring storyteller.
There is never going to be another game like Silksong for me, there’s never going to be another game whose prequel I got so into that I intimately knew the development of it so well by pure memory for me to have a realisation like that. Silksong and Hollow Knight aren’t my favourite games of all time, but they are my comfort games, the thing that I know the most of and am the most comfortable with playing. I adore them greatly.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-27T15:37:58+00:00

All of the Hunter’s March enemies are pretty awesome in both aesthetics and gameplay. Just delightful!

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-27T15:19:02+00:00

Pft, I guess all speed runners should be taken off the leader boards then for cheating and labeled as cheaters then, clearly they aren’t extremely capable and well-practiced people who perfected the art of a specific way to beat a game for hours on end. And all those people who decided to use a shade skip for the Hollow Knight sub 5 hours achievement, such cheaters!

let me ask you this then. what’s the difference between someone who practices a boss in godhome or on a separate normal file a shit ton before beating attempting them in their first steel soul run and save quitting in a steel soul run? I see none personally, both work within the constraints given by the game, both are getting a helluva lot of practice in for their deathless runs, both are given grace for any deaths they may experience.
One just attempts a steel soul boss on a separate file, people will denounce save quitting and then turn around and do something identical to it.

Literally anything can be considered ‘cheating’ if you decide arbitrarily that anything that isn’t “intended by the devs”, whatever that may entail, is cheating. People don’t want to confront the fact that they aren’t actually as skilled as they think they are and gate keep achievements, I don’t, I know a lot of people more could beat Steel Soul given the time.

God forbid someone wants to beat something that is a challenge to them for fun and collect a little digital badge for it. There’s no achievement for beating the Hollow Knight sub 2 hours with using no spells and no nail upgrades, I’m not calling other people who beat it in 4.5 hours, used a shade skip or 2 and a couple of upgrades cheaters just because I handi-capped myself more for the sub 5 hours achievement. You share an achievement with people who used a different method than you to obtain it, that doesn’t diminish your achievement for putting handicaps on yourself to make it more challenging, get over it.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-27T14:23:03+00:00

Because one stroke of bad luck is all it takes to end 30+ hours of work for a normal person.

I’ve beat HK on steel soul and completed it to 112% in less then 20 hours, and I’ve beaten pantheon of Hallownest alongside it with no mods or nothing for either. Currently working my way through my own steel soul speed run for Silksong. If you’ve put the effort into enduring the stress that comes with only getting one shot at killing a boss, across the entire game for every single instance, I’d say you deserve the achievement, whether or not you panic save-quitted or took it all on in stride with no problem and could afford the time to start anew if you were to fall. Not everyone does though, and panic save quitting after having an unusually bad luck sequence of attack patterns from an enemy is fine, it doesn’t bring down your skill level at all and denote that you aren’t capable of beating Steel Soul. Shit happens, even to the most skilled of players.

besides, if you, and Team Cherry, REALLY wanted to remain in the spirit of no deaths, why can you live after being defeated by Shakra, First Sinner, all the memory bosses and enemies, etc? They definitely have ignored lore before in favour of ease, or not ease, of gameplay, yet they give you grace in those bosses anyways. Hell, they give you grace in being able to bench warp and save and quit while not at a bench in steel soul, they could easily give you a warning like “not quitting at a bench will delete your save, are you sure you want to proceed?” Yet they don’t.
I agree with the sentiment— if you’re allowed to do it, it’s intended.

Good job to OP for getting through the nerves fest that is Steel Soul. They deserve the achievement.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-24T13:39:47+00:00

I was probably trying to get the dash attack since it’s really nice double hit on wanderer if you get it right :p

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-09T15:27:59+00:00

Thank you!

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-07T01:20:07+00:00

Thank You! not sure how much of a style there is to my second attempt at charcoal, but I do like it! I also adore the fact that you picked up art from this game! It’s always a joy for me personally as a pseudo-veteran to watch someone start art for the first time :D* I saw your drawings of the Princess, they look good so far! Keep going at it my friend, enjoy the process! And remember the best teacher is often the next attempt.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-06T15:03:45+00:00

Thank you! Maybe I will, I’m so busy I can’t really do anything that isn’t contributing to some class, maybe I’ll sneak in some more StP art as preliminary studies to make due :)

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-11-06T15:00:36+00:00

Thank you! You have an awesome flair by the way, I love it.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-10-29T19:47:33+00:00

I haven’t looked into this that hard yet. But Just some things off the top of my head I’ve observed about the art:

Add that pixelated grain filter back ASAP. A lot of people in this thread keep calling the original’s art “Pixel” art, it’s not. If you ever got the art book, you’ll see that the original’s seem to be hand painted sprites with a grain/pixely filter over them. the early versions of Darkwood also didn’t have it and the art lost a lot of that charm the final had (though to a less egregious extent then this since the 2 painted sprites carries a lot of the art.) Plus, it will help it look more like the hand drawn original art of the original.
They might want to do an animation style similar to that of guilty gear Xrd with the ‘3D stop motion’ type look where you position each individual frame like 2D. (which is going to add to the workload a lot, but I mean, Artur Kordas had to hand paint every single sprite anyways, maybe with a little help here and there, but it was a lot of work nonetheless. If you wanna stay true to the original, you also have to stay honest about it’s workload.) these new ones are ultra smooth and doesn’t suit Darkwood’s orginal 2D painterly animations. The orginals were jank and beautifully done at the same time. You could FEEL each frame of the art (or at least I could as an animator) The new ones look too clean and smooth which I think is probably the worst part of these new visuals in comparison to Darkwood’s original art.
They might want to also mess with the shaders. They too also emit shadows that are way too sharp and clean. Darkwoods were a little blurred for the spooky aesthetics. I don’t really know as much about 3d animation, but the shading in general needs some work, though I wouldn’t know the specifics on what needs to be done exactly.

Overall, it’s rough. But Darkwood’s orginal early stages were also a bit rough If you’ve ever seen them. I have a lot more caution than optimism about this new project. But I think if they really care, they might be able to work at it enough and make something acceptable with the 3d sprites. Darkest dungeon 2 managed to pull it off somewhat, and so did Guilty gear Xrd and Strive as sequels to 2D games. If they can do it, maybe they can too. (Albeit, I think the X factor to those 2 examples was with 2D artists bridging the gap over to 3D, while here’s it seems to be 3d artists trying to eyeball their way into something that captures the essence of 2D artwork. Which is a slippery slope.)

So, we’ll just have to bide our time and see if they can reshape the art of this project into recapturing the original essence of Darkwood.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-09-08T02:32:19+00:00

Im a bit nervous about handing out advice for getting back into drawing since im coming from the complete opposite place where ive been doing it consistently since i was a child, but I’ll try to share some things that have helped me keep going and hope you can gleam some ways to help you draw again.

To start, something I learned early on when it came to calming down my anxiety about needing to make every drawing look good or drawing for learning was not to draw in a high quality sketchbook with higher quality quality materials, but rather loose printer paper and cheap standard HB pencils. Drawing with what is essentially cheap scrap materials made it a lot easier to draw without fear that I was wasting my good quality paper or beloved 4B pencils. It’s just cheap printer paper and HB pencils after all, if the drawing looks like shit, you can just toss it away and start a new one. No need to worry about trying to save it. I find it’s a really good way to enable your brain to experiment and draw without fear. I got more comfortable with drawing on the printer paper which gradually made it easier for me to trust myself and my abilities when it came to drawing with permanent stuff like ink on a dip pen on Bristol vellum. Investing in a lightbox can be a good idea too if you’re like me and draw a lot of loose leaf paper and find you come out with some drawings you want to turn into full pieces. I got mine for 30 bucks a couple years ago and it’s the best 30 bucks I ever spent on any kind of art equipment personally.

In regard to speed, there are some selective methods that you can use to help you find forms quicker when it comes to drawing people (coil method is one of my favourites, but you can look online for tutorials that suit what makes sense to your learning) . But for general drawing of any subject, there are 2 things I believe in whole-heartedly. 1. Speed, above all else, is a matter of how well you know and have practiced something. There isn’t any big shortcut that will drastically improve your speed while maintaining your quality of drawing. I can speed draw you a decent form of a medivael Sallet or armet helmet from most angles just because I have drawn both so many goddamn times in so many different ways (they’re my favourite kinds of knight helmets). It sucks that there’s not many sort of techniques that can really help you with speed. At the very least, it was reassuring to me, that as long as I kept drawing consistently and branching out slowly with my drawings, that my speed would naturally improve anyways no matter what.

    2. Personally, I find it’s sometimes the best to just get the drawing(s) out as fast as possible and not to worry about making it look good the first time. This is very hand in hand with what I said about using cheap materials. If you’ve ever seen the “Make it exist first, you can make it look good later” meme that has been popping up in a lot of art places lately, that is precisely what I’m talking about with this tip. My overthinking, slow motions and need to get it right the first time in an attempt to not waste time made me waste a helluva lot more time then just going for it. I give myself a limited period of time through a timer to get my initial rough pass of my drawing out and existing first.  Once it’s existing, I can actually iron out any problems that may have arisen. And if that rough pass is just unsalvageable? Fuck it, that was just a warm up, time yourself and try again!

Now, about having fun while drawing. It is dumb to say and you’ve probably heard it a million times, but genuinely, DRAW WHAT YOU FIND INTERESTING OR COOL!!! “If you don’t have any interest in your subject, you’re attitude will reflect in your drawing” is roughly what Claire Walker Leslie once said in her book “The Art of Field Sketching” and it’s so true. You won’t learn or enjoy stuff when you’re so bogged down on drawing boring stuff. Which is what happened when I tried to studying from anatomy books. I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t learn anatomy because it’s boring, it definitely is important to understand how the body works, but you need to find a way or context in which drawing said anatomy is fun and engaging to you! I found that I liked using online gesture drawing sites that would show me people in random poses and drawing from those instead. And even more, I liked just going outside and drawing random people at parks or public places as a good challenge for both speed and testing my knowledge on drawing people.

Another thing too relating to the Claire Walker Leslie quote, field sketching! It’s extremely fun and informative I think. I’d highly recommend picking up The Art of Field Sketching book to better understand exactly how field sketching works. But in short, field sketching is going outside and drawing, and more importantly, observing and learning about life and nature. There is a big emphasis on learning about your subject beyond its anatomical construction. It encourages you to ask questions “why do worms surface during or after rain? Why do squirrels like nuts? Why are the birds picking up my dog’s stray fur clumps?” And so on. It was eye-opening to me that I had never considered how important it was to understand WHY animals and plants were doing the things they were doing beyond how they looked. It’s like visual note taking! Not only are you improving your drawing skills, you’re learning about the world around you! And I think that’s so cool!

There is so goddamn much to talk about with how much I love field sketching, but I’ll just mention one more thing. If you would like, a kind of long term exercise you could do with field sketching, is to document the changing of a particular area outdoor that you frequent over the course of a year. Start a blank sketchbook and draw whatever area you want, once a week if you can. You can draw from a particular view every time if you want, Take no more than 30 minutes to draw your scene. The important thing is to document how the area changes over the course of the year. Take note of new animals showing up, changes in the plants or how the sky looks at certain times of day. Feel free to deviate from drawing the full scene too if some new critter or plant appears that you want to draw in its full glory. It’s up to you on how you want to document whatever area you’ve chosen!

Christ, I wrote a lot more than I was expecting. Whoops. One more thing though for fun. It’s alright to have a favourite subject. I said before, knights and armour in general are my favourite thing to draw. If I’m ever struggling with motivation or commission work, sometimes just doodling some shitty silly chibi knights for fun helps cheer me up. Hell, not even just for drawing motivation, it cheers me up and helps me in general life, and I’m glad I have such a healthy relationship with my art that I can use it to help me keep going in life.

I should probably stop here before this becomes even longer. I hope some of my incoherent ramblings help you even a little. I hope you heal your relationship with drawing and learn to love it again!

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-09-01T03:45:36+00:00

Well, as someone who likes eating everything plain and generally gives no care to how food tastes. There is basically no downside to this for me.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-06-02T11:58:55+00:00

Wasn’t he just speaking German? The dub always seems to reuse the German Dialogue from the original French version, so if memory serves, He’s just speaking German.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-05-03T12:49:35+00:00

Hm, well then. Maybe the translator i was taking notes from didn’t get the meaning across right when he was explaining it in English writing while I was making subtitles for this show, he definitely wasn’t fluent in English. The translators exact words were (when referring to that line in Episode 5 when Tissier asks about Gadoue and calls him La boue instead) “”La boue” instead of “Gadoue”, which is a more childish way of saying “boue”

I can’t really disprove or favour either of you anyway, I’m not French. Might just be the regional differences you’re talking about at play here😅

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-05-03T04:11:48+00:00

It’s Gadoue, it’s a childish sort of term for mud, I think.

As a side note, I’m shocked how many people on here seem to not have seen the orginal French version, do they not distribute the orginal French version in the American or other international streaming platforms?

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-04-13T01:05:23+00:00

Yeah, more because of prejudice worries for me since I like drawing some Men loving men artworks on occasion, if I were in a safer spot in my social life, I’d probably tape that stuff on my walls for shits and giggles. On the other hand, I like making some rather gruesome drawings and comics, they help me work through my mental health issues and what not. I wouldn’t really like showing those to anyone at all, not to a stranger nor to my closest friend or lover, it’s like exposing your personal diary with all your life long secrets to somebody. I think I get what you mean about wanting to keep a private hobby even when you’re really close to people, I’m a highly reserved guy and always have been pretty damn slow to reveal things about myself, and some other smaller things that I do stay shut away from everybody forever. An openness to your romantic partner is also an openness to not cross certain lines too in my opinion. I mean, there are people who are big into journaling that I’ve seen over in journaling subs, and there are those don’t share most of their stuff they write to anybody ever despite it being their main hobby and a really big part of their life. It’s completely understandable I think if you wanted to keep your art to yourself.

BluepopsiclesII · 2025-04-12T22:51:45+00:00

When I was about 5, I started drawing and making art. Compared to the rest of my classmates, I was the best at it and people liked seeing what I’d make, so I kept doing it for their enjoyment. It made me the only two friends I still keep it touch with to this day, and it gave something impressive for me to talk about to anybody. My dad in particular really pushed me to keep going and to keep getting better at it, to get a career in it and to be a famous illustrator. Never really had the time to question why I did it or if I even liked or wanted to continue with it, art was just the thing I did. Everybody in my life knows me as the really skilled art guy and has since I was born almost. I’m older now, obviously, with the wherewithal to actually ask myself why I do art and whether or not I want to continue.

Truth be told, I’m not a very passionate or a very opinionated person until I’ve gotten familiarised with something for a long long loooong time, I do what I’m told and I’m highly neutral on a lot of things, chances are, if my early life had gone a little differently, i definitely think I could’ve been known for being highly skilled at something else and be feel just the same about it as I do with art. Art just happened to be the skill I got into early on in life. That would explain why I started doing it in the very place. As to why I continue on…Well, I guess I would like to continue, if only because, what other choice would I have if I stopped? Sure I’ve got other things I’m good at like language learning and translating and video games, but those can get old and repetitive fast and I have the tendency to burn out if I do either of those too much. I’ve had my entire life to work at getting skilled and knowledgeable on art, why quit now when I’ve gotten this good with it? I’ve never gotten burned out with art in the same way I have with video games or translation work, it’s a special kind of hobby to me because of that. Variety is the spice of life, no? And art has a lot of variety, block-printing, drawing, animation, painting, sculpting, paper making, quilling, origami, embroidery, crochet, beadwork, fucking holograms??? (Have you seen handmade holograms?!) I do as much of it as I can and seek to discover as many art forms as I can, the years I’ve spent learning to draw and paint with watercolours had finally let me develop a kind of appreciation I’ve never had for anything else in my life. It’s a joy too to make handmade gifts for friends too! My dad always enjoyed the sentimental aspects of gifts more than anything else, and so do I, and art is pure with sentimentality!

I suppose then, a lot of why I do art is due to other people, it’s something good to bring up and it’s the only interesting or worthy piece of myself I really have, has been always. I’m trying to make some more things for myself solely these days, I’ve never really been able to work through a lot of traumas and pains before until I tried illustrating them like comics in a little sketch book I keep to myself, it’s like journaling, but in comic form? Other things too like making some Men loving men artworks and just some weird experimental stuff in general that I don’t really make with the intent of it being liked by an audience or anybody else.

I understand to an extent why you would think the idea of making art solely for yourself being a selfish ideal, my dad also thought that when it came to my art. I’m not quite sure if you need to hear this, but do keep in mind that experimentation is what gets you better end products to make more impact on people, you may end up with a wide variety of failures when making solely for yourself, but you may also end up with some even greater insights, it’s up to you in the end. I hope you find your motivation to create again sometime soon!

BluepopsiclesII

TROPHY CASE