Forgiveness (Sketchtember 2024 - Day 3)

Forgiveness (Sketchtember 2024 - Day 3)

Two sisters come to terms in the afterlife. The lady-in-white cradles her estranged sibling, shedding tears of sadness, remorse, pleading for the other woman to come out of the darkness. They can move on together, says the lady-in-white, because as it turns out, the afterlife isn't as judgmental as she thought it was when she was alive.

Choi: I might have the unpopular opinion that spoilers don't have to be treated like the entire story has been ruined. I can understand if one person feels like they were robbed of the journey, kinda like how my friends got upset when they found out Dumbledore died. Sure, it's shocking, but I never understood people who stopped reading entirely without finding out *why* the death even happened to begin with.

Besides, wouldn't it just give you more context and the thrill of dramatic irony when you can't change the outcome? And maybe, just beyond the death scene, that perhaps there's a more satisfying conclusion to it all? Or maybe I am the weird one.

Food for thought... 😗

Got duped by an AI art account on Cara ugh.. Managed to delete my comment and undo the repost/like just to keep our distance from it, but man, it was rather disappointing to feel like we accidentally endorsed something that appeared legitimate.

It took a hot second for there to be any real reason to report the account, but then when it went from hyperfixating on babe-licious witches with titties (yes, Izzy and I are very simple, primally driven animals) to suddenly drawing a wizard "for the first time," it definitely was a head-tilter.

Like, witchy anime waifu with maybe some unevenness to eye shape styles? Not everything has to be symmetrical. Art's allowed to be free and we'll grow from our mistakes.

Or at least I thought so, until I noticed the account never showed any of its rougher works. Not everything has to be a polished piece, and yet this account would show nothing but finished pieces. It's reasonable to think that that maybe there was a back log of stuff to upload.

But then, the unexpected style change when they finally "drew" a wizard? The style shift alone from drawing anime-waifus to a singular hot black man with a white man's hair texture was such a red flag. Forget the fact that the wizard's entire left arm blended into the folds and it wasn't fully "rendered" 😑

For awhile, I felt foolish for thinking it was a legit mechanical pencil drawing with some natural messiness to it. But then to see how easily the account garnered at least 60 followers in just 4 days of activity? Clearly I wasn't the only one. Even a user with the Cara verified professional icon thought the account was legit. It's astonishing to see how much AI art is improving that it's easy to overlook a work simulating traditional graphite. The way the user tried to throw in smudges, eraser marks, and even paper edges, were actually clever touches. While I didn't know what to expect when people said that AI art is getting trickier to detect, I can now at least add this to my experience.

On a final note, it's reassuring to see how consistently Cara practices their anti-AI art stance. This would be my second time reporting a suspected account. There were times when I was nervous about hitting the report button on the accounts, because what if I was wrong? I've seen more than enough artists getting accused for being AI art when they're not. But the way the moderation team handles them professionally and discreetly instills a lot of trust into them. It's just nice to reliably go to a platform and not worry about seeing a heated discourse or a callout post that turns into a witch hunt.

Sketchtember 2024, Day 1 - Tender

[Sweet Nightmares]

Choi: Go figure that on the first day I'd already run into an obstacle. This was done in 3 hours, but halfway through my entire PC crashed on me right before I could ctrl + s... (lll￢ω￢) anyhoo --

Here's Jaeon (Jeh-uhn, left) and Sedrik to kick off Day 1! We have so many relationships that I can't wait to share with you all, and I'm glad that the next in line would be these two. There's a lot to say about these characters, but for now, just know that Jaeon is a vampyr noble and Sedrik is an immortal burdened with a dark secret. This is a snapshot after Jaeon's rival Vintola, a vampyr who disregards the hierarchy within their nightkin society, beat up Sedrik to send a message to Jaeon. You can barely see it, but Jaeon is actually snarling protectively underneath all that mane :)

While Sedrik protests that he's not made of glass, they're not displeased by the tender affection the towering monster has to share.

Fairy flowers appreciation post

Secret (Sketchtember 2024 - Day 4)

Choi: Vance has a secret, and that's his pent up aggression. As disciplined as he is with his temper around his family, day-to-day microaggressions of being a human-passing spirit can build up a lot of pressure like a geyser inside Vance. So they find catharsis in an underground fight club, where humans and spirits test their might and wit against each other, consequences be damned.

After this sketch, I'm finding I just really like drawing my characters in the middle of a transformation. Likely an influence from flipping through The Animorphs books back and forth lol

This is something that I really want to improve on because there are quite a few spirits that can shapeshift between human/spirit forms, and I'd feel very silly if I didn't continue practicing and studying. Our dear monster boys and girls deserve to shine during their monstrous moments ^_^

So earlier in art class today, someone drew a characters hands in their pockets and mentioned that hands are really like the ultimate end boss of art, and most of us wholeheartedly agreed. So then, our teacher went ahead and free handed like a handful of hands on the board, earning a woah from a couple of students. So the one from earlier mentioned how it barely took the teacher ten seconds to do what I can’t do in three hours. And you know what he responded?

“It didn’t take me ten seconds, it took me forty years.”

And you know, that stuck with me somehow. Because yeah. Drawing a hand didn’t take him fourth years. But learning and practicing to draw a hand in ten seconds did. And I think there’s something to learn there but it’s so warm and my brain is fried so I can’t formulate the actual morale of the lesson.