Deirdre’s Musings

  If you're anything like me, you were likely one of those horse crazy gals in the early 2000s. And you never “outgrew” your phase either. At least, I never did.  Back then, if you were a horse obsessed kid then you were required to watch this and the 1994 adapatation of Black Beauty. You also likely watch The Black Stallion and Flicka. You get the picture.  Out of all those pieces of horse media, Spirit still stands out the most to me. Not only did it inspire me to draw horses, it also.got me to look into how horse coat genetics so that I could come up with my own OCs (that were of course foals belonging to Rain and Spirit). I even remember watching the early 2000s fandom discourse, mainly with people getting mad whenever they'd invent a new mare to be the dam of non-paint foals for the sake of OCs. Yup. Spirit OCs were serious business back then.  The animation is still just as beautiful looking now as it was in 2002. The nice thing about the blending of 2D with 3D...

If there’s ever been a piece of art advice I’ve loathed, it’s “just draw everyday”.  Drawing everyday is all fine and dandy if you have a plan as to what to draw/improve upon. Usually, when the advice is given, it’s super vague and doesn’t exactly instill a sense of confidence that I know what they’re talking about. Thankfully, the good folks over on the DeviantArt forums have pointed me in the right direction: that I need to work on the fundamentals. I was then linked to Marc Brunet’s 30 day challenge. At first I thought I'd do it all digitally until I remembered how I learned to draw horses: traditionally, on paper first. In order to reap the full benefits, the switch to traditional ended up being a wise choice in the end. As you can tell by the sketchbook pages struggle with shapes. Normally I use the ruler function in Medibang Paint to get the circles- however in order to reap the full benefits of these exercises I decided to pick up a pencil and paper. Some of my spheres came ...

  Once in a while, I’ll come across a video on YouTube that I find equally as baffling as I do charming. The idea behind the story has potential to be a piece of comfort media for people struggling with infertility, or struggling to fit in as an outsider. I acknowledge that it isn’t easy to tell a story within fifteen minutes, so I imagine that the writers must have felt pressure from the limited time run. It’s no “Rapsitte St Kids” levels of quality, it surpasses that film in many ways. However, it stumbles mainly in the story department as it doesn’t explain things very well. I agree with all the comments which state that this is a film that would have benefitted from being a full feature length film. I’d say that if it was given anywhere from forty minutes to an hour and twenty, it might have been able to flesh out the story in a more natural way. It’s for this reason that, when I approached this iceberg of a topic, I half expected it to be a window into partial lost media. This...

  Nothing makes me block an account quicker than looking at their about page to see that 90% of their comments are “Do you take requests?” Or some variation of it. These people never bother reading any sections on your page that clearly states whether or not you’re actually taking requests. Almost 90% of these people inquire about requests from people who they aren’t following. Once in a while, you’ll find one of these people take offense to being told that you won’t work for free. And why should you? These people aren’t going to support you financially, nor do they have enough clout to give you extra exposure. If they did, they’d have the art skills to draw their own art.  Sure. They have a lot of page visitors, but how many come from the people they ask requests from? Luckily, I had one of these people ask that I block them after I informed them that they’ll have to pay $3 for a request. That was a first for me and I’m not too torn up over it  Good riddance. There was a...

  Would you believe me if I told you these two were created by me a week apart from each other? No?  In today’s blog, I will explain how this improvement happened so quickly. The top one is my most recent drawing of Eevee, while the bottom one was drawn only a week ago. While the bottom one has a cuteness of its own, the biggest issue with it is that it has an almost cylinder shape to it that makes it look like it has a long body. I also skimped out on the shading and the placement of the front paws look weird. The top one, on the other hand, is rounder. That’s because I realized that the thing that makes Eevee’s design work so well is that it is drawn spherically. When you design a character with spheres, you’ll make them look soft and huggable. I also made the head bigger and applied more colors for more interesting shading. I also had some sharper lines going on to make it appear a little fluffier than usual. Working through Marc Brunet’s 30 day challenge is quickly changin...