wizardscience:

scotchtapeofficial:

geepm:

atomicmangos:

cannoliao:

discretely-obvious:

tiny-raptor:

thedovahcat:

jateshi:

aeolian-mode:

I’m absolutely embarrassed that I never knew this before but…

The pen stand that most Wacom products come with?

It twists off and has a bunch of nibs in it.

I’ve been buying extra nibs when they were in this stupid thing the whole time.

Reblog to save a life.

ARe YOU KIDDING

I just checked and HOLY FUCK

For anyone who has a Wacom Intuos that looks like this 

The spare nibs are on the back of the removable panel where you can change the pen loop colour. 

Also there’s a little hole in that compartment that looks like this

You see the little eject symbol? This guy is how you remove your worn down nibs.

Press the pen nib in on an angle like this and lift up.

and ta-da! you just removed your pen nib!

HOOOLLLLYYY COOOOW

I feel like an idiot for not knowing this.

FUCK

ok i’ve never had an intuos but im reblogging this because it’s funny as fuck why the hell is wacom so god damn extra like literally what other consumer electronic product would have a hidden removable panel that contains customizable color attachments, replacements for worn out parts, and a mysterious “eject hole” with like ZERO EXPLANATION

WHAT OTHER COMPANY THIS VAGUE AND EXCESSIVE ?? THEIR STANDARD PARTS REPLACEMENTS ARE HIDDEN WITHIN THEIR PRODUCT SO SECRETIVELY THAT MOST PEOPLE ARE LEARNING ABOUT IT FROM A TUMBLR POST AFTER OWNING THE PRODUCT FOR Y E A R S

im screaming its literally in the directions

hixxiart:

ishgardian-rose:

hixxiart:

So @dreriart made a post about commission pricing and I thought since it is doin’ the rounds I’d copy-paste this thing I wrote on DA over to Tumblr because for some reason I … never … did that … before??

So one recurring thing I see a lot in the art community in many
different formats is ‘how much should I charge for my commissions?’

What
normally follows is a lot of bad advice. Terrible advice. So I’m here
to give you some good advice and tell you all about how to value your
skillset and price accordingly. This guide has been written with the
intended audience of folk who are just starting out with commissions,
but I hope it will encourage other artists to give themselves a fair
wage and, of course, a lot of this can be transposed over to other
creative professions as well.

So let’s answer the question of ‘how much should I be charging people for work?’

The answer to this is deceptively simple. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself to form an appropriate response:

1. Where do you live?
2. How old are you?

For obvious reasons I cannot assist you with these. But once you have these you go to Google and you type in the following:

‘minimum wage per hour in <location name>’

Which is more than likely going to bring up an official government page for your area. Here is the one for the UK since that is where I live.Now
what? Well. How old are you? Because some locations have different
rates for those in different age brackets. But essentially all you need
to do is get the following info:

How much is the minimum wage per hour for my age in my area?

Now
that you have this, how long does a piece take you? You do not need to
be exact. A rough guesstimation will do. This will form your base price
of:

Minimum Wage x Estimated Hours

Therefore if I take five hours to paint a portrait and my min wage is £7.83 then my base price for a painted portrait is £39.15.

That is the absolute minimum you should be charging for your work.

And please take into considerations the following:

• Working outside your comfort zone will up times taken on a piece.
• If you’re working with traditional materials, how much for paper/canvas/paint/pens/etc?
• Minimum wage is quite often garbage anyway.

Whenever
I say this though, I often get a variety of responses in the negatory
for this method. I have answers for each of them. So, let’s run a
sort-of-FAQ on this method shall we?

I’m not good enough to price that high.

Yes you are. Who says? Your government, for starters. Also me. Here’s the thing. No matter the quality of your art, you deserve a fair living wage for your work.

There
are lots of people out there with no understanding of the time, effort
and tears that go into honing artistic skills. Digital art, making
comics, mastering musical composition, sculpting, or whatever it is all
takes time to learn and we are constantly growing and improving. And if
someone wants to hand you money for what you are producing guess what?
You ARE good enough. That is the proof right there. Another human being
wants to give you cold hard cash for something that only you can make.

If
it puts a different perspective on things for you, think of job roles
that would be traditionally minimum wage. Probably the one most people
will go to is ‘burger flipping at McDonalds’ as an example of a low
skill occupation that is stereotypically easy and for those who failed
in life etc. etc. (spoiler alert: it isn’t, but that’s a journal entry
for another day). Why should this theoretical failure of humanity earn
more than you doing a job that ‘anyone can do’? Because art is
absolutely more difficult than cleaning out a McFlurry machine (that’s a
legit fact by the way: I’ve cleaned one of those and art is way
harder).

Also, art is a luxury product my friend. No one needs to
be buying commissions of their MMO character. They want it? They can
play by our rules. And they will.

My family member/friend/random internet guy said that’s too expensive and I should lower my prices.

Your
family member/friend/random internet berk is a fucking idiot at best,
or intentionally trying to get you to undersell at worst. Firstly, I’d
be willing to bet that the person who said this to you is not an
artist. If so, what makes them more qualified than another actual artist
to tell YOU how to price yourself? Because you trust their opinion?
Yeah, but what if their opinion is formed on a factually incorrect
assumption of how much art costs/the time it takes to produce because
that is a HUGE deal in our community right now. And what if they just
want you to stay cheap because it threatens them? Or, as a consumer,
want you to stay cheaper for their own selfish purchasing habits? What
then? Tell them to fuck off.

But there is someone better than me charging less! Why should a client pick me over them?

Spoiler
alert: there will always be someone better than you charging less.
There are thousands of mega quality artists out there. I’m considered
expensive for what I produce, especially as I live in a country with a
currency that translates highly to other currencies. Yet people
constantly ask me for commission work. So what gives? Here are some
reasons why a prospective client might chose you over someone else:

• You are nicer than they are.
• You are faster than they are.
• You’re working in a niche sector.
• They know you personally.
• They like your art style better.
• You have lots of good feedback.
• A friend recommended you.
• They aren’t even open for commissions right now.
• They had a bad experience with that artist in the past.
• You’re easier to purchase from.
• You have a larger following and purchasing from you exposes that audience to them by proxy.

There
are lots of other reasons but price isn’t necessarily often the
deciding factor for a lot of clients. Don’t spend your life being
concerned with how other people are better than you or you’ll never be
happy.  

I’m nervous about pricing so highly! What if no one wants my art?If
a client doesn’t want to pay you a fair living wage for their luxury
item purchase then that’s a client you can probably do without to be
honest with you.Someone complained about my prices being so high! What do I do?

Refer them to this:

Something worth noting is that minimum wage is normally used for people who are employed (not self employed). So people who work contracted 16, 24, 37 or 40+ hours per week for an employer.

Anyone who is not guaranteed work for a set amount of hours per week is absolutely within their right to charge well over the minimum wage, to cover those hours that they are not guaranteed.

Ever wonder why the plumber is so expensive? Or the electrician? The pc repair guy (£60 to transfer my data? Really? All you do is plug it in and leave it for a few hours..)

That’s why. Because most traders/self employed people don’t have work lined up 9-5 mon-fri (though it’s great news if you do!). If my lovely pc repair tech only charged me £20 to transfer my data, or £5 labour (half an hour) +
>insert price of laptop screen here< to repair my screen, he’s never going to make enough money to stay open, because he doesn’t have people coming and going in his shop all day every day.

If you’re considering being a part or full time artist, then perhaps consider not just how many hours it takes you per piece, but how much of your time you want to spend on commissions. If you plan on spending 20 hours per week on it (not just the art itself, but consider things like liasing with customers and promoting yourself as well) then calculate the hours with the minimum wage (in the above instance, it would be 20 x £7.83 = £156.60). Then you figure in that week you can hopefully (and realistically) complete let’s say, 3 commissions. That would be £52.20 each. Already that’s more than the base price stated above (which I am not saying is wrong at all). But you’ve covered yourself for the additional work and downtime hours, and given yourself a real expectation that of what income you’ll be earning per week.

This is a TOP QUALITY addition to my post.

judasfox:

mto-art:

Trouble with scratchy lineart?:
Zoom out to be able to cover the distance between point A and point B with one stroke.

Put your line art brush at 93% opacity to make connections look smoother.

(Sidenote, you can color your lineart at any time by locking the layer or putting a clipping mask ontop)

My art uploads fuzzy?:

Make your art at a high resolution and scale it down for the website you want to upload it to. For example I draw at a 4000x6000px resolution and scale it down to 900x for tumblr.

Also want to recommend Waifu2x if you’ve got an image you drew small and want it bigger. This does a FAR better job at resizing than any art program I’ve ever used.

sage-wilde-va:

rani-bow:

step one build that shit in minecraft

step two take a fuckin screenshot n then trace that shit

step three what the fuck is up!

…

Y’know, there’s a lot about the Minecraft fandom that turns me off. But this? This is brilliant.

foo-of-the-forest:

Step 1: take out and plug in tablet

Step 2: open up art program of your choice

Step 3: pull up a reference image or two

Step 4: set a music playlist

Step 5: scroll tumblr dash for 3 hours

Step 6: cry