Ever Since I Learnt Bout Angel Tiers As A Kid I Always Wanted To Draw Em All But Only Now Did I Get Around

Ever since I learnt bout angel tiers as a kid I always wanted to draw em all but only now did i get around to it-

Wanted to have it where they progressively get more abstract and inhuman the higher the tier goes cause who doesnt love a lil cosmic horror? I also took some liberties with the descriptions of all the angels cause lotta them kind of overlap and sound similar.

Just improved a bit on my artstyle so uh yeah here's a redraw

The Ascen Mind

"Oh dear traveler, have you come to seek ascension?"

[An entity who simply guards the void and allows the worthy to ascend after they've gotten through the 108 karmas]

(Design is based off of rainworlds Guardians, iterators, and echoes alongside some biblically accurate angel aesthetic)

some angel lore because they make me happy : )

i've considered having their form be based on some sort of angel hierarchy - it's been a lot of fun reading how they've been classified in different religions - but i'm not sure if i want to use that after all! for now, they're all equal.

the angels quickly realized that most creatures would fear them less if they looked similar to them. while the results weren't perfect - the "reshaped" angel would still be made of the same substance and glow - it was enough for them to approach most animals. humans were an interesting case. while many required the same treatment as other creatures, some didn't seem to mind their real form - and some were even interested in seeing it.

How to draw Afro textured 4c hair - an explanation/Tutorial

For those of you that don’t know what 4c hair is, 4c hair is a hair texture type that contains coils to small and tight that the hair appears to be more puffy rather than curly ( like to photo below ) this is in NO WAY to be confused with curly hair. there is a drastic difference.

As a black artist that primarily draws characters with 4c hair, I’ve been asked many times to do a tutorial on 4c hair so here we go~

before we get into 4c hair, lets take a moment to fully understand it by talking about hair texture in a general sense first

let’s take a look at this example of straight hair vs curly hair ( 1 type straight hair vs 3 type curly hair )

If you take a moment to compare the two you’ll notice straight hair is flat, it has no texture. Straight hair perfectly hangs down similar to liquid-like silk. It’s lack of curl pattern is the reason as to why it hangs perfectly flat.

curly hair on the other hand doesn’t lie down flat and silky like straight hair, It’s more thick. Curly hair in it’s raw and unstyled state has a trapezoid like shape this is because the sides of the hair spread more outward.

So why is this? Why is straight hair flat and curly hair thick?

the answer to that question is a thing called piling up. When it comes to hair texture, the shape of the hair strands aren’t the only thing that matters, its how the strands coexist with each other, Curly hair strands coexist by piling up on top each other.

moisture also effects hair texture too, different hair types absorbs moisture differently, thus the thickness of each hair type is different. 

…..soooo, how does this all relate to how to draw 4c hair?? 

Well let’s take a look at the drawing below. Notice how the arrows go outward more as the hair texture gets curlier. As we’ve already discussed, this is because hair piles up, The curlier the hair texture, the more it piles up on each other, the bigger it gets, the more outward the arrows go.

Out of any hair texture, 4C hair has the most curls. Because of this, the hair piles up on each other so much that it doesn’t lie down flat like straight hair, nor does it make a trapezoid like shape like curly hair, it instead becomes more cloud like.❤️

This is what you need to take into account when it comes to drawing 4C hair.

Think of it as piling up a bunch of cotton balls on each other. The most cotton on top of top to lead to a bigger patch of  cotton. this is 4c hair.

How to not draw 4c hair:

Garnet fanart. Let’s talk about Garnet Fanart. I notice a trend that when artists draw Garnet from Steven universe, her hair texture is usually changed to 3 type curly like texture. This subtle form of White washing has confused me because this is inaccurate. 

Garnet’s hair is in the shape of a cube. Though 3 type hair piles up on each other, it isn’t curly nor thick enough for their hair to stay in the shape of a cube. Curly hair lies down more than 4c hair. So garnet’s hair being in the shape of a cube is a dead giveaway that it is 4C. Why do you think hairstyles like flat tops are usually seen on black men with 4c hair? It’s because, the 4c hair texture is thick and strong enough to stay in whatever shape you put it in.

please, if you’re drawing a character with 4c hair, avoid drawing it like curly 3 type hair, this is very anti-black and texturist.

So, how do you draw 4c hair?

honestly, its the most easy thing in the world

i wanna clarify that blobby looking 4c drawings ( like the one on the top left ) can work depending on how cartoony your art style is.

Another thing that I want to greatly clarify when it comes to drawing 4C hair is, YOU. DONT. NEED. TO. DRAW. EVERY. HAIR. STRAND!…..like, seriously. I’ve gotten many messages about how 4C hair is hard to draw, and it’s always left me confused; but then I find out that the same people that have trouble drawing 4C hair, attempt to draw every single strand of hair. This is unnecessarily time consuming because it’s merely impossible to get every single detail down, especially when you have a simple cartoon style. 4C hair does not require much effort, all you’re doing is drawing lumps. It’s that simple, nothing more nor nothing less.

The reason why I greatly advise all of you to avoid drawing every single hair strand is because in real life, when you look at a 4C textured Afro, your eyes don’t pick up on each individual hair strand like straight or curly hair. 4C hair, appears to be more undefined and cloud like, so attempting to draw each and every individual strand is unnecessary and will most likely end up looking inaccurate.

Anyways! that’s it for now! there will be a part 2 to this tutorial that will come out next week! i hope you guys have learned from this and apply it to your black character in your art!~

Michael, Lauviah, Poyel, and Veuliah chilling with the Putti's/Putto's

Just some older angels chilling with the younglings

so, my original question was this:

how do you go about writing topics like abuse, sa, etc., because i had thoughts about adding these sort of things in a storyline of mine, but i'm not sure how i would do it without being seen as somehow offensive. i want to do it mainly for awareness purposes, definitely not to romanticize it or justify it, as well as vent a bit personally (thats more with the abuse topic though)

so i was just wondering how you think of it, is all. thanks!

this is really long and meandering so. under the cut. also, might be a lot of typos, i'm not re-reading all of this to make sure :P

i mean well. yknow. ok so like. i'm not really an expert here, cause I mainly write stuff how I'd want to read it, and there's a lot of people who do NOT want to read abuse stories the way that I write them and that's fine. me personally? I like getting into the graphic bits. I remember what happened to me, for the most part. I also like getting into the complicated feelings (like for example the weird kinks you can get from trauma) but I mostly avoid posting that stuff here because. well. because of a lot of reasons, mainly that people actually do not enjoy when abuse survivors aren't chaste about the ICKY parts of their abuse heahfshaf.

BACK TO THE POINT THO: the main thing that i've usually seen other survivors get annoyed at is the sa & abuse being used for shock and nothing else. like, the victims of the abuse not mattering or being used as fodder. and also, victims not having much of a life outside of their abuse.

I know that's rich for me to say cuz I can't stop abusing my characters and I tend to not have much time to do things other than what I'm REALLY interested in- so to a lot of you guys my characters can seem like they're kind of just going through it 24/7, but that's not really how I see them since y'know, I see the whole thing in my head.

but I've noticed that myself and others like it when abused characters also have like, other shit going on. imagine that, I know. A lot of people want characters who's abuse is kind of tangential to them. (not my preference, but this is something I've seen a demand for)

in a way I have a similar thing going on, though I frame it more as "let them get silly with it" hah. As in, I like when characters who are abused or sexually assaulted get to also be silly (editing this to be more clear: It's nice when a character experiences a full range of emotions & experiences. or has a normal day, or does things completely unrelated to their abuse. it feels jarring to some people but the reality of living with abuse is often jarring, as i'm sure you're aware. because one moment you're having a normal ass day at school or something and the next you're at home experiencing things that people consider too horrific to even talk to you about. so a kid hanging out with their friends being a normal silly kid can go a long way to making what happens to them feel more real, at least to me)

I also like it when abuse victims don't react in pretty ways to their abuse. when they get messy with it, when it makes them mean and preemptively lash out at people, when they fight back and aren't innocent. and maybe they never were innocent (which doesn't mean they deserved abuse, but a lot of people subconsciously believe that if you are a bad enough person then your abuse doesn't count or it doesn't matter as much)

one of my favorite characters when I was younger was (and still kinda is) Yuudai from Sakana. for a lot of the comic Yuudai was a genuinely mean person. Sakana is a comedy comic tho, so of course things don't get too dark for too long and people mostly ignored or just scowled at his jabs, but the main character was genuinely scared of him. So if you think about it, you really wouldn't wanna be around Yuudai irl because he was NOT fun or nice haha. long story short Yuudai's got some personal stuff going on, including (spoilers) an emotionally abusive ex who tells him on screen that no one else can stand being around him because he's so mean.

AND THE THING IS,, that's not entirely a lie??? like, it's a lie that no one else could ever love Yuudai, but it's not entirely untrue that Yuudai is kind of mean. which is what makes it effective. it also makes it clear that not all people who are mean are abusive. which i like.

OK THAT WAS A HUGE TANGENT so let me try to actually give some advice.

FOR ME, writing about abuse is akin to writing about, for example, race. in that you really do need to know why it's wrong to be racist in order to make an anti-racism story. You need to go deeper than just "we're all people" and really understand the malicious and insidious history of race science. you need to internalize that race, as it's thought of in modern day america, is NOT REAL. it's completely constructed. there is no genetic difference between people that you can figure out based on the color of their skin and their facial features.

you need to understand that all of that was made up and pushed by a lot of people to justify a lot of things. and you need to understand, at least generally, the state of various races oppression, and the histories there too.

it's like that, to me. which isn't even to say that you need to understand the exact histories, just the general mechanisms, y'know? (unless you're making a story about a specific kind of racism in which case you kind of do need to look into stuff. like, at least listen to activists and the like)

but like, you don't have to study every case of abuse to write about abuse haha. you just have to understand a lot of the contemporary issues abuse victims have. yknow, the reasons people get abused, the reasons people can't LEAVE abusive situations. how abusers get away with it. which is easy enough to do cuz the internet means you can listen to abuse victims by like, category or something. and that's another thing, not every kind of abuse is the same.

for me, I like expressing the feelings of abuse victims. especially parental relationships. including stuff like how much they might love or have loved their abuser. rage, pain, pleasure, adoration, helplessness, denial, the addictiveness of being given a sliver of praise, or the horror of living with a monster who does nothing but hurt you :D! the slow realization that someone who was supposed to love you absolutely does not. or at least, they don't love you in a way that's good.

umm this has all been very meandering and i'm not sure if its been helpful, so here's a very meandering bullet point list of things i try to do (these are NOT requirements for a good story or anything, they're just rules i follow for myself so I don't lose to the plot. you can and absolutely should do things outside of this these are my personal thoughts I'm spewing over here)

at no point should the narrative imply that the abuse was justified or necessary (for example, imagine a narrative where a magical child is abused and that abuse is said to be the reason they can control their magic instead of hurting people. in the broken earth trilogy, multiple characters with magic-earth abilities have their hands broken as children to prove they can control themselves. we're told this is for their benefit, but we later on see a small island that raises their magic babies just fine without hurting them, so the idea that this systemic abuse is necessary is disproven by the narrative. this is cause that's how it is IRL, corporal punishment has never made someone more disciplined or emotionally regulated and that's just a fact)

Focus on the abuser can be extremely minimal to extremely extensive. it really depends on the story you're telling, but how much you focus on the abuser vs the victim can majorly shift the tone & what the story is about so it's important to consider this going in (in Switch by A. S. King, the abusive sister who's fucked up the entire family isn't even named. She's a hole in the narrative. Switch is largely about taking the time to heal from something bad once it's over, so this make sense. in the Broken Earth trilogy, one of the main POV characters is both a victim and perpetrator of some pretty extreme abuse. I'd say that abuse wise, the broken earth trilogy is more about trying to fix things the best you can, moving on, and trying to be better, even if it hurts)

There are a lot of different ways to react to abuse and it will change you (I would recommend looking into different people's experiences, or common ways people react to abuse. a lot of people aren't aware they were abused until it's long over. or, if you're lazy like me, you can mostly just draw from your own experiences hah. but if you're gonna like, for example, write an entire cast of people who've been abused, it can be good to get more variety in there. some people react in ways that are completely incompatible with other people. which can be fun in fiction, cause then it gets messy :D)

What are the other environmental factors? (race, gender, class, sexuality, species, etc. these can all play a fun role in how someone reacts to being abused)

What's the point/Why does this matter/Why am I even making this? (I ask this about all my stories, sometimes it's just "because I want to share it" and sometimes it's like, "because I would want to read it" but it can also be more high concept, like for example, there are a lot of stories out there about the cycle of abuse and how abuse victims can end up reenacting things that happened to them because they've just internalized it as normal behavior.

don't forget to have fun :) (fictional characters are toys and if you're not getting silly with it in a fulfilling way then whats the point. loosen up a bit! it doesn't have to be a PSA!)

I would worry less about being offensive and more about being genuine tbh. really, even if i don't like the way abuse is written about sometimes, it hurts way more to see an author just using Tragic Shit as fodder. abused characters as nothing but place holder NPC's to be saved with no thought put into how they feel about it. that shit sucks.

if anyone else wants to add something more concise or important, or like, ACTUAL writing advice, PLEASE do. I'm only one person and I'm not even that good of a writer. i only write because if i don't then I'll die.