This Took Me Way Too Long - Tumblr Posts

Im sorry Ive been fairly inactive this week but Im back with a post for this Queen. Enjoy!

I have been working on this art for months... After seeing a certain scene in CQL and being like... what if this but happy? So... the first of my art on this blog... There is quite a bit I want to improve on.. but for one of the first attempts I am not mad at all.

Alright, my lovelies. I am calling this done because every time I try to do something to make it better the changes make me angry because I don't like them. Here is Cursed Sophie!Hua Cheng.

I struggled with how to convey "ugly" for several days until I was reading the manhua and came across the line "What if I look vicious, with out-of-place features, as ugly as a demon, and as disgusting as a malevolent spirit?" And it struck something within me. I got thinking about other media (besides drawing) that might have demon iconography in it and then realized I wanted a mask. So, I started looking into the masks of Chinese Opera. And that somehow got me thinking about The Mask with Jim Carrey (please don't ask how my mind works, I don't even know) and I thought. What about features from an opera mask that have become PART of Hua Cheng's face. Thus, we get the red around his eyes and the big wide nose and the black lines at the corners of his mouth. The articles I read talked about the colors of the masks, but not the patterns. So red is a fairly positive color, the color of the protagonist, the color of someone doing something for the right reasons. Black is for decisive characters. I wanted to go farther, but I couldn't straddle the line between something that stylistic and what I enjoyed looking at. The outer robe is blue in a nod to Sophie's blue dress and his clothing is fairly simple in a nod to that dress. I wanted to bring in some butterfly iconography, but I couldn't get it to work quite the way I wanted, so I dropped it and instead used a silvery gray for his sash. I gave him leather braces to tie into the sensibility that I get from Sophie's costume. And he's shorter than Xie Lian, about shoulder height and a little grumpy about it at the moment.

When my skills improve I think I would do some sort of simple but elegant butterfly patterning in his clothing, nothing fancy, but nice still, and I would try to do a more stylized mask face. Maybe something taking more after a mask like this but with my own twist:

I present the character design I came up for for Howl!Xie Lian. This isn't even the final form! Next, I will work on Sophie!Hua Cheng and then I plan on making some art of them both interacting. This is all due to the post @unforth made about a Howl's Moving Castle AU HuaLian.

I had a lot of fun working on this. It has been ages since I have had the motivation to draw.

Some notes. I wanted to draw on some of the elements of Howl's design without just putting Xie Lian in Howl's clothes. So, we have the big coat, which I view as an affectation of Howl's to make himself bigger and more impressive and dapper of course. This coat has golden chrysanthemum embroidery. I usually pick my emblems for a meaning. In this case, the chrysanthemum is meant to represent nobility, new life, and longevity.

I looked at a lot of pictures of both the Fang Xin Guoshi and Crown Prince eras of Xie Lian to kind of figure out what sort of fancy feeling I wanted to go for. I really enjoy the peach to dusky rose ombre of his clothes and the mint accent was meant to keep it fresh. The touches of white are a nod to the main outfit we see him in in TGCF.

The earring is another nod to Howl's design of course.

I will probably reblog this when I finish Spohie!Hua Cheng.

Piff you're so awesome and cool for giving me more excuses to yell songs at people thank you so much u-u

a - Autotheist by Baby Bugs

n - NVREVR by Anti-Flag

e - Eat Your Friends by Jhariah

x - XOXO (Kisses Hugs) by 6arelyhuman

i - I Am Going to Kill The President of The United States by Leathermouth

s - She Thinks She's Punk Rock n' Roll by Hands of Gretel

t - They/Them/Theirs by Worriers

i - I'm Gonna Tell My Therapist on You by Pinkshift

n - Nice Nice by Dazey and The Scouts

g - Goth Queen (Reign Supreme) by Destructo Disc

e - Eden on Acid by Tokky Horror

x - [do you really think I know a second song that starts with x?]

i - Innocent Consent by Caroline Carr

s - Shambles by Band-Maid

t - The Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson

e - Eat Them by Lady Pills

n - Na Na Na by My Chemical Romance

c - Crusher by Free Refills

e - Ego Death by Vial

I don't know that many people well enough to know whether or not they're going to yell at me for tagging so I will not tag as many people as my name is long but instead: @vollerey @theauthorinaugust @wib-was-here

url song game

i was tagged by @firesmokeandashes, thanks for the tag!

so the rules of the game are to write one song for every letter in your url, and then tag as many people as there are letters in your url. okay? okay.

a - a young understanding, sundara karma

d - disaster, conan gray

o - out of my league, fitz and the tantrums

u - undercover martyn, two door cinema club

b - black fins, ricky montgomery

l - look after you, the fray

e - electric love, BØRNS

n - nerve, destroy boys

e - evil, melanie martinez

l - looking out for you, joy again

i - i kissed a girl, katy perry

e - eraser, ricky montgomery

s - stuck on you, new politics

e - eleanor rigby, the beatles

so im supposed to tag 15 people right now, cause there's 15 digits in my url. but honestly i dont know anyone on here, and almost all of my followers are bots?? so im only gonna tag a few ppl. sue me 🤷‍♀️

@kristinazhuk @vicaridoo @kahtherinee @bitchlessbychoice @heartintherye @dumb1ebee @greyladyblue @bkdkisdoingwhat @cremateyourlife

TRIGGER WARNING FOR MILD BODY HORROR AND MILD GORE

I might fully finish it someday, we’ll see BUT IT’S MOSTLY FINISHED AND THAT’S WHAT COUNTS 💯💯

OH SHIT RIGHT the song

Murphy’s Law AU Masterpost

Art:)))

Thank you to a [[cool person]] for unintentionally teaching me how to draw better.

Colour pallets are such a pain urgh...