Hello everyone! How have you been? It has gotten a little quiet on Steemit, so what are you guys up to?
Today's post was inspired by @artygirl 's recent contest that you can see here: https://steemit.com/contest/@artgirl/artgirl-s-draw-your-previous-steemit-post-pet-animal-contest . Sadly I'm much too late to participate, but this was still a very fun exercise. The point is to take personally taken photos of animals and to draw them in any way you wish.
All of the drawings, photos and banners in this post are under creative commons 4.0 attribution licence. @kristyglas
Here are my photos
Very recently I bought some adorable T-shirts with some cat prints, so I decided to try a simple, cute, cartoonish artstyle.
The Art Process
I started with a simple pencil sketch, capturing important features and the pose. Sometimes drawing in a simpler style can be more difficult than a realistic drawing, because it requires more creativity and decision making.
Next I used a 0.4 ink pen (Unipin) to draw all of the details. Afterwards I used a 0.8 ink pen to thicken most of the lines and to make some variations. Thinner lines are in the light areas and thick in the shadows.. Then I erased the pencil sketch and did some corrections. I felt that some features didn't turn out great so I used a wipe out, because I planned to clean up the drawings digitally anyways.
After scanning the drawings I did a simple and quivk color pass. Eventually I decided to make a banner, as I have missed my usual separators post.
The font is from dafont.com : https://www.dafont.com/brouss.font?l[]=10&l[]=1
You should use filters when looking for fonts, as many fonts are free only for personal use. You shouldn't use those on Steemit unless you bought the commercial licence. There are more than enough free and public domain fonts for you to try out.
You may color it if you wish!
Weekly Posts
For now I'll continue posting once a week, but longer posts. So you can expect a new post a week from now. I will continue regularly resteeming cool posts. I know many of you are busy, so one longer post seems like a more efficient use of everyones time. Moreover, I plan to add a bit of variety to my posts, not only the art and process. Also, I'd love to know on which days do you use or browse Steemit the most?
Another upside of posting less is that it allows me to use tags to their full potential. Discoverability on Steemit is sadly chaotic and there is too much spam. So tags are currently a crucial way to get discovered, as well as discord channels. A few tags are heavily and strictly curated, but also with specific restrictions. Some tags are quite nieche and some are limited to a specific days of a week.
I hope the artists and others will find this list of tags useful and help you boost your posts' visibility and payouts. However, most of these tags require high quality posts and you can read more here on how to improve your post presentation here: https://steemit.com/art/@kristyglas/improving-you-posts-and-getting-noticed-artists-edition
Warning! Spamming these tags can get you blacklisted!
Tip number 1: Don't misspell a tag (like I did in this post)
The following is mostly based on my experience, so I recommend additional reading.
#ocd-resteem - A strictly curated tag. Only high quality posts get accepted. If your post gets curated, don't use this tag again for at least a month. Check @ocd for more info
#originalcontent- use this tag only on high quality posts! I believe almost all of my posts that have been upvoted by @curie had this tag. However, this mighy just be a coincidence.
Curie votes are rare and they usually only happen in the first 24 hours.
#slothicorn: this was first intended only for creative commons art, but now it's open to all art. You have to include a specific licence or "all rights reserved" in your post. Curated by @slothicorn. More info here
#artzone- a tag for artists and there is also a new discord channel. Tag limit is once per day to get an upvote.
#steemartists- a nice community for artists. There is a discord channel.
@melooo182 curates the community's posts.
#mspsteem- this is my first time using this tag. More info here. It is a weekly contest to help minnows grow and you must submit your posts' links. If you win there is a cooldown time.
#busy- if you use busy.org for posting, you can use busy tag to get a vote from them. Busy also shows you who followed or mentioned you. And you can see how much someone voted on your post.
#needleworkmonday- my brother @ivan-g enjoys this community very much. It's meant to be used only on Mondays and for needlework.
Are there any good tags that I missed that I can add to this list?
If you enjoyed the post and use the art/banners, please upvote and resteem! Your support means a lot as I'll be posting only once a week longer posts.
Bonus Photo
All of the drawings, photos and banners in this post are under creative commons 4.0 attribution licence. @kristyglas