Tes' Commissions

[ThisEmptySoul]

So... a few things:

1.) The current WIP that's up isn't even where I left off when I ended up dropping Icy's piece and I had made kind of a lot of progress on it in the form of working on it in small snippets throughout the year.

2.) In the future, I should never put a piece down for as long as I have put this one down as I'm finding I now have no ******** idea what my method was and am having to just try to make s**t up and hope that it blends with whatever the ******** I was using before.

3.) A big part of my dropping it had to do with not knowing how to approach the fur. When I started it, I figured I was just going to use the fur brushes I downloaded for this piece, but quickly found that I actually didn't like them anymore and didn't think they suited the way everything else was being shaded.

4.) I suck.

Today, I opened up the file and decided I'm going to figure this s**t out instead of avoiding it like it's going to magically figure itself out and lo and behold, I found something that works using my usual shading brushes without much effort emotion_facepalm I really suck at this whole "doing art in a timely fashion" stuff emotion_facepalm But the good news is that I'm back on the project and will hopefully have a new WIP up within the week.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Icy Reign

New WIP

Next steps from here are smoothing out the shading, figuring out the hair, and doing the makeup.

I've also come to realize what it was about the lips that have been bothering me this whole time: the lipstick color. I thought it might have been the shape or the placement and kept tweaking with it in the beginning stages and even considered doing a clean wipe and starting over when I picked it up again, but instead I played around with color replacement and found they looked perfectly fine to me where and how they are when changed to a dark color. But being this is yours and you seemed to think the lips looked fine after I initially fixed them {at least shape, size, and placement wise}, I'll leave it up to you whether or not to change the lipstick color. Just let me know what color you want.

Really, I should have realized the whole time that the lipstick color I chose was going to look weird to me because I always thought bright colored lipstick, especially on those with darker skin, looked weird in real life emotion_facepalm

If there's any other tweaks you'd like made {such as adding some more piercings, body marks, etc.}, just let me know.  

[Icy Reign]

ThisEmptySoul

Icy Reign

New WIP

Next steps from here are smoothing out the shading, figuring out the hair, and doing the makeup.

I've also come to realize what it was about the lips that have been bothering me this whole time: the lipstick color.

If there's any other tweaks you'd like made {such as adding some more piercings, body marks, etc.}, just let me know.

So, after literally staring at this for about 30 min, yea I still can't say that I'm against the lip color. If it was stark white or extremely contrasting against her skin, then I'd definitely have to agree with you. I'm for adding shading around the lip line to help it blend better, however. Like instead of a single color that you have, a blend of maybe three starting with the darkest shade and work your way in. Examples would be the purple/blue hues they use for ice or the new winterstorm hues. If using my normal chocolate shade works better then that's fine as well.

The fur looks -really- good and I'm loving the lineless look. As for piercings, I'm very much in love with her snake bites, but I've yet to figure out proper placement without it looking weird. Being a piece that was started way before the addition of the snake bites and brow piercings, I think it's fine not to add them. We'll save them for a more recent piece. ninja Honestly I'd forgotten about this piece until I jumped on tumblr(only because they sent me a couple msgs asking if I still wanted my username and that I needed to verify my email) and scrolled through my feed finding the WIP on it.

Seeing this latest WIP was a pleasant surprise. As I've always told you, I love your work and am willing to wait for it. I'm glad to see this picked up again.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Icy Reign

I'm for adding shading around the lip line to help it blend better, however.

As I've always told you, I love your work and am willing to wait for it. I'm glad to see this picked up again.

I think my brain just has a hard time processing bright lipstick for some reason despite what it might look like to others. Possibly because I expect the lips to be the darkest part of the face? I can't really say. I do know that if my lips are lighter than my skin, then I'm sick as ********. In any case, if it looks fine to you, then that's good enough for me.

Additional shading might help it look better to me at least and I'll experiment with it when I get around to doing the rest of the make up, which I'm also hoping will help out in it not looking so off to me personally. I'm liking the winterstorm hues so will probably sample a few of those and incorporate them into the make up.

It's always been the case that I tend to enjoy working on your pieces the most. Aside from the delicious skin emotion_dowant , I honestly don't think I've come across someone who appreciates art as much as you do, which of course helps feed my already inflated ego so... that's always a plus emotion_awesome  

[Icy Reign]

ThisEmptySoul

I'm liking the winterstorm hues so will probably sample a few of those and incorporate them into the make up.

It's always been the case that I tend to enjoy working on your pieces the most. Aside from the delicious skin emotion_dowant , I honestly don't think I've come across someone who appreciates art as much as you do, which of course helps feed my already inflated ego so... that's always a plus emotion_awesome

The winterstorm hues are a nice change to the light blue/turquoise/teal/white and blue/pink/purple hues used for ice/winter items.

Speaking of art appreciation, I'm in serious withdrawal of TESxRy, whether it's in picture or written form(especially written). emotion_drool So, all I have to say is this: rain, rain, rain, storms, thunder, rain, rain, rain. That is all  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Icy Reign

I'm in serious withdrawal of TESxRy, whether it's in picture or written form(especially written). emotion_drool So, all I have to say is this: rain, rain, rain, storms, thunder, rain, rain, rain. That is all

rofl I think my creativity in the writing department just really needs a kick in the pants. I've been drawing a blank on TesXRy interactions for quite a while, except for in relation to Super Lesbian Schoolgirl, which I mentally flesh out a little every now and then {usually when I'm trying to sleep... and often followed by completely unrelated wet dreams for some reason...}

I need to start doing more actual work on that project if I ever hope for it to come to fruition, but I'm so easily distracted these days that I may as well be a dog emotion_facepalm I started out strong by sketching out those Tesuko concepts pretty quickly and easily, but then I just kind of wandered away for no good reason stressed But I think working on my backlog is important too so at least I eventually got back to that in my wandering.

As I'm working on smoothing out the shading, I'm finding that it'll probably be wise for me to do both ab and leg studies afterward because those are the sections that I'm having the most trouble with. I remember one of my earlier WIPs, the midsection looked all sorts of messed up. I had to redo it a few times over before I got something I was okay with, and while I was smoothing the shading after picking it up again, I redid the midsection yet again. Still not entirely satisfied, but I need to keep from lingering on it for too long and worry about learning how abs work later. As for the legs, I thought I'd be more satisfied with them once the shading was smoothed out, but that ******** knee bothers me so much. I painted over it and redid the shading to look better, but now it doesn't seem to match the direction the foot is facing classified_fu

In better news, I started adding in some of the highlights. Before the highlights, while I liked how the skin was coming out, it just didn't have that same tasty look to it and I was a little concerned that with this coloring style, it just wasn't going to. The highlights fixed that though emotion_dowant emotion_omnomnom  

[bandaidd]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about but thought it might be okay to post here about recent thoughts. I love the "swimsuit" picture you did of Bandy.

I have a thought of another pic I might love. I think it would be hard/crazy but here it is.
Bandy with open skull. Amazing neat things come out and are flying all around, like nice clouds, flowers, stars, waterfall, plants, rainbow, birds... nature things and lovey hearts.
The doc cut a huge question mark on my left side, with the down part in front of the ear. Can send a pic if that helpful. Would love to get on your waiting list if this all sounds possible. Totally understand if not.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Sounds complicated, but I'd be willing to give it a try. References would definitely be helpful. I'll have to look over my backlog again to see where to put you, but I definitely want to at least finish Icy's first.  

[bandaidd]

Definitely. I don't wanna butt in line. Thanks for considering.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

I really need to stop putting Icy's piece down because I seem to find something new wrong with it every time I open it stare I think at this point, I need to just really focus on finishing it rather than redoing the same parts over and over.

Looking at it now, if I can manage to keep from trying to fix everything, it looks like all that's -really- left is hair and make up, plus playing around with the background a bit. The fur trim could be refined in places, but I think that's one of those things that I would get hung up on and should just leave as is.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Icy Reign

aaaaand it's finished, unless of course there's any tweaks you want made.  

[Kits Rose]

I love the little snowflakes on her skin! The fur and hair look awesome too. I'm sure Icy will feel that it was worth waiting for. cat_3nodding  

[Icy Reign]

ThisEmptySoul

Icy Reign

aaaaand it's finished, unless of course there's any tweaks you want made.

I love when I leave for extended periods of time only to come back to delicious art!!! emotion_drool As always, you are so worth waiting for, even if I did disappear for awhile. wink I'm actually just passing through tonight and not sure when I'll be back, but hopefully that'll change soon. The only tweak I'd like is to have this sized for my sig with your stamp on it. Stamp it, lick it, rub it down! Oh nooooooooooo!!!! Wait, isn't that a song....? Anyway, thank you Tes! emotion_hug heart I love seeing Icy through your eyes  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Icy Reign

I've become so lazy of an artist, it even took me a while just to get around to resizing emotion_facepalm here it is, Gaia signature restriction friendly and my sig on it redone. I think if I were to even continue on to Gaia commissions, I'll need to learn to work better with smaller files. Hell, even for doing a comic, I'll have to learn that emotion_facepalm It's easier to work on details in a large file so that's why I tend to go large, but the large images can also be impractical unfortunately.

In other news, I think what I want to do next is work on churning out a head or bust shot of Draa with the new hair emotion_drool And maybe experiment a bit with the color of it, since Gaia's options to make the hair are more limited than my imagination for it. Then next on the list of back orders is Psy's piece with Vass and Ry.