elysia's drawings

CONTENT WARNINGS

our drawings reference violence and negative (sometimes destructive) mental health a lot! several overtly have blood in them, and some have weapons.

we believe in you! if these sound potentially upsetting for you, we hope you're able to listen to your feelings and take care of yourself ❤️ we believe in you.

in the future, we'll probably add content warnings to each individual drawing as we put more and more on-line. we don't know how to do this yet :)

intro

we'lldoour best

drawing is like pretty pictures (which includes photography and graphic design! they're all part of similar special interest(s)😊). the main background image on our website uses some pixel drawings, and so does our special interest icons.

we like drawing a lot, it gives us a lot to do and can be very expressive! it can also be frusterating for us when we don't get what we want.

our favourite way to draw is to feel like drawing and then draw :)

want different background image for this page, containers for each drawing, and to align them to the left and right of the body portion of the text.

we'd also like a way to expand these images on site, or to optimise their size for different screen sizes.

want to change css for figcaptions for drawings on this page so they have different styling from body text.

we''re awesome

how we draw

learning

we like watching speedpaints of other people's drawings that do something we want to try, and picking up how they draw.

watching speedpaints, or just drawing with a reference, can help a ton at learning how to draw, learning different strategies and techniques.

we like tracing and doing redrawings of things we find to try and get in the mind of the artist and figure out why they made the choices they did or learn ways to make things look a certain way. speedpaints are very useful since we can see all stages of the drawing! they also show us how others draw.

this, combined with experimenting with different drawings all the time, is how we learn! yay! we draw a lot and we also spend a lot of time looking at and engrossed in other people's art so we think we learn lots!

oftentimes, we'll make mistakes in our lines and they'll inspire us with a exciting idea to draw. this helps us learn how to make things look a certain way! we can think about why our lines make something look a certain why and reflect on that (we also do this when studying other drawings).

making mistakes helps, because it gives us a bunch of lines we wouldn't ever otherwise think of, and also gives us a bunch of ideas we wouldn't otherwise have! like, if we accidentally draw a face in a way that looks like a different perspective or expresssion we meant, then we can get inspiration to draw that way intentionally. like, changing the rest of the face and body to match that perspective or expression!

related to this, we like drawing guides and very very rough sketches of what we want instead of forcing ourselves to try and draw exactly what we want first try. doing this gives us a way to judge the size and scale of something, and how it fits in place with other things, and also helps us judge how we need to draw perspective to make it look how we want. it is otherwise very difficult to understand how to drawy perspective for a scene for us! and it helps us understand what lines we need to make to have it look how we want.

a guide we use often is drawing two eggs for a face. we also draw almost like a motion capture appearance of bodies to try and communicate perspective and to get an idea of how to position different parts. like a mesh or cage representing bones and general body outline with basic shapes like trapezoids and cylinders.

the magic of digital drawing

primarily, we draw with durian, a computer tablet friend we have. we wrote about our drawing setup in this blogpost!

drawing digitally is spectacular. drawing programs, at least on desktops, pretty much always have a bunch of different brushtypes, and redrawing brushtrokes is really accessible with undo and layers and diversity of erasers.

rights information

Unless otherwise specified, this art is entirely my own, and it is at my discretion how that art is used.

if you would like to share or publish my images publicly or to a large audience, please contact me and make a request first. sharing my images in small private groups without permission is okay (keep in mind what counts as this is under my discretion for each circumstance).

in addition, using my art in a computer algorithm without my written and direct consent is strictly prohibted. This includes neural networks, AI, and machine learning of any kind.

drawings

jump to 2023
jump to 2025

currently, this page only includes discrete drawings that we wanted to share. discrete means "whatever we wanted!"!!

it is also ordered in creation date. we use maple and durian to draw usually, and kitten system when doing graphic design and pixel art, or when maple/durian are inaccessible.

they are sliding off of the pretty train, being kept on by a spike. dress. the train is slanted, so the spike is working against gravity.

this is one of our favourite drawings. cadence gave us idea for leggies posing (on accident).

we'd like to redraw the head and neck and face to be more softer and friendlier, like our other drawings! currently, it feels far too stiff and intimidating(?)

we also feel some interest in redrawing left arm, but we're a lot less interested in it. we'd like to make it more anatomic, and we don't find much interest in redrawing because it isn't a part of the drawing we look at our that is important to us, in contrast to how the head is for us.

we made this drawing in a software called mypaint, on durian. it is cute. we really like it.

we want to make a blogpost about mypaint and our thoughts. previous drawings were on maple with hostile software that didnt have brush or layer settings. maple is comfier size than durian, durian with mypaint is still much easier and contstructive to draw on!

cutie cadence coloured them in! they have a really pretty world :)

we think it is extremely cool and makes us happy that it is both of our art :) it so fucking cool and happy! happy to share this with them !!!!!

this is a drawing of pearl from double life [fandom link].

it's the third season of the life series. we've never found interest with the previous seasons, and found them unengaging or confusing. we've tried to watch, and then stop!

double life was the same way. our friends and elysia really like etho slab, so we all watched them. we think it's funny etho got paired with the one person they said they didn't want to be paired with.

after episode 2 or 3, we lost interest, and didn't continue watching the series.

a while later we decided to watch tango tek's videos to see if we liked them more, and they were fishing for a warden! while we began trying to watch other people's perspective for the warden, we learned about how pearl was feral and unhinged.

we began watching pearl's previous episodes for context! and we found them engaging and happy. pearl is a murderer in double life, and her actions made us stim a lot while watching, especially in the finale episode. we loved it!!!

it is so good. we love it so much.

we drew this without layers.

this was drawn without using layers, or an eraser of any kind. i like the right hand fingers. we like the cat ears lots.

doing physical drawing and painting is a much bigger barrier for us for expressing ourselves than digital, and experimentation is punished heavily. we've actually done most of our drawing and painting physically, and not digitally. we think it's really accessible to start doing, and after having started using digital drawing we've learned new techniques that make physical drawing more fulfilling, but it's still really punishing.

we also have bigbig sensory issues with drawing physically. last time we painted we did it for a community art poster. we painted a background mural and then we brought it to the event, where people could draw on it and put their names on it in bold black marker. the paint was upsetting to use, and it was so upsetting when we'd make a mistake. we think that physical art is a lot more accessible to imediately start, though, it's just really punishing. we really loved experimentating with the paint it was just, not really something we could do much of since we were making it for something, not neccesary for ourselves (although we did our best to make it important to us!).

drawing specifically is really hard. most common paper is really hard on our skin and it's overwhelming 🥺, and pencils and erasers are really upsetting to touch as well. dedicated drawing paper is signifcantly nicer for our hands, and we used to carry around a sketchbook that made us happy, although we don't anymore. we should try that.

beyond the sensory barriers, it is really frustrating when it feels like we are stuck because we accidentally used a very aggressive pencil or had too much paint on our brush. it is really punishing. in addition, sometimes we just, Don't, have the things necessary to communicate what we want. in particular, regular writing pencils are really terrible to try and draw with for us. and getting new supplies is expensive and feels completely avoidable with digital art. and, when we make a mistake, we can get rid of it! a little, but that mark is still somewhat permanent, and it's so hard and physically draining to change if we made a mistake, or if we later decide we want to change a big part to be something else.

in general art is really iterative for us. we make lineart and no colour drawings because they both take a lot of time. starting drawings is hard because we have no perspective established! we want to draw going back to old drawings that we have source files for and adding more to them. we've actually always planned on doing this, and it makes us happy! we love our webby site so much.

we tried some cool things we saw in cool drawings On-line. how we use colours especially.

our drawings represent our brain.

this is an important drawing.

we tried drawing outside today because we like the outside but we didn't actually want to draw so it hurt. this drawing is important to us because it has a lot of our brain inside it and we can't articulate that (if we could, there's a good chance we wouldn't have drawn this! this)

we think that, being able to articulate it, or being able to draw more panic and invasive behaviour, would be good for us.

looking

we really like the friend in the top right. we explored drawing eyes a lot while making this and we went through lots of different iterations for the main friend. we drew this with lots of inspiration from other faces and hair to learn what we liked. we wanted them to have a silly soft curious expression and we think we did this :)

this was the first drawing we did outside of our own home. we did a signficant amount of this while we were doing day tasks! which we have lots of. actually, the outfit the main friend is wearing is extremely similar (almost identical) to what we wore on our body while drawing it while outside, which, we didn't realise we did that! hehehe we think we may have done it on purpose, we can't remember.

we are proud of how the face and head is shaped lots. we think we're learning new drawing techniques really really quickly by looking at and trying to deconstruct what works in them by redrawing :) this isn't a redrawing though, this is our brain idea.

we love drawing faces so much 🥰

yay!

in this drawing we used a drawing technique where we drew solid colours before doing lineart, for the most part, and it worked really well. this drawing only took 1 hour and 30 minutes!! for context, friends took multiple days of drawing, and littlevoid took 7+ hours of drawing constantly. we think doing solid colours first helped a lot!

we've also started drawing with a stylus, ever since predator. we've noticed this makes getting the lines we want feel a LOT easier, and we think this also helps us draw more quickly and comfortably and happily.

the text about public transport handle is talking about a drawing in the friends layer file. scavenger hunt! if you want you can look for it :)

the picture in the background is a very perspective warped image we took! grey and cold looking. we like myst because it makes it so that it's almost impossible to overexpose an image or get the washed out ickyness of the sun :)

:)

we draw littles, mainly, because we are little lots, and drawing helps us feel safe and helps us think of our partner, who acts as a caretaker for us a lot, especially when we're little (we love them).

these drawings are really important to us and our mental health.

this image is really, unfinished, and, there is a good chance we will change it in the future. for the time being, we want to put it online :)

we are still really happy with it. this is actually the first time we realised we could draw a safe person keeping a little safe! it made us SO happy and we've been working on this drawing for a very long time to make it exactly how we want. it isn't there yet! but we're really happy with the little's design and how we drew them, and so we want to share that if we don't finish.

these drawings are so important for our mental stability and safety :)

one of our system members drew this and it makes some of us really really happy as a self portait :)

super duper important. we, um, we really want cat ears on our body! a lot!

we love experimenting with faces and facial expressions. in this drawing we wanted to communicate a specific expression and we think facially we accomplished that.

experimenting is so much fun and so important. we love drawing.

we think the shape of the face and maybe some of the small positioning things is tough for this. something feels very slightly off. it could be line thickness or related to hair or proportions.

we'll probably figure it out through time :)

in this drawing we consiously learned about how different line widths communicate different things, and we think we would prefer experimenting with that with a pressure sensitive pen. right now it isn't too bad.

we also really thought about fingers and hand size. we use guides for hands but it doesn't help us actually draw fingers, because we don't know how to apply that detail or how to draw fingers either. we love how fingers look in lots of other people's drawings, and we sorta have an idea why, but we struggle to recreate that.

we were experimenting with a gradient because we've found drawing blades very difficult :) then we got a message called goth cat and we got excited with an idea to draw a face indirectly looking at the camera, with significant eye shadow and menacing expression.

we think elysia drew a softer goth cat (different elysia gender) face and we like that, too, although it doesn't fully communicate what we were imagining we think. we are putting this online because we still like it without that context :) those aren't contradictory!

something we think about a lot is challenging ourselves to draw characters from different angles in order to get better at drawing when we practice. we usually don't actually try to do this unless we specifically want to draw in a certain way! and that is pretty happy. we think because we have so many images to learn from that trying new positions isn't actually that big of a barrier to drawing what we want, and because we learn a lot when we do drew positionally, for the sake of drawing positionally. we're good at drawing three-dee :)

we think the face is exactly what we wanted aside from the specific eye shape being softer than we wanted.

in the eyes there are less dense areas of black ink that make it look like it is three-dee, which we think makes it look awesome. we actually did this in slumber party too! we think part of the reason we drew physically then was because we found drawing depth and eyes more accessible due mainly to pressure sensitive graphite! a lot of our drawings have cute history in them and that's one of the coolest things to us about having a page about drawings :)

the hair was actually going to longer and more intimidating initially but our initial sketches of hair style and head shape guides looked really good when viewed like hair. something we've been thinking about a lot is showing depth between hair and head, which we have done on accident a lot, but haven't been able do on purpose before! in this drawing we were able to do it really well and we think it helps communicate the facing angle of the head a lot. we also think that adding shadowing was really good.

we love this face and the ideas it gives us.

we had inspiration to draw this from the character on this youtube channel.

we really like their design.

we think it's really cool how this drawing looks and we want them to explore other parts of our website :)

we tried drawing their pose physically but it made us cry so we took a break and then tried again on maple and it made us happy. we think small form factor helps us draw proportionally, or maybe mypaint just starts way too zoomed in.

we really like putting lots of colours in hair and face :)

we spent a lot of time trying to draw leggies. one behind and one stepping in front. we had to redraw it twice because they were too big both times we felt comfortable with them. we feel indifferent to right sized leggies. they are close enough!

when we were younger, we sometimes thought how strong and cool people were for being able to try and finish everything they wanted in their visual arts. we knew it took a really long time just to get the complete idea in a sketch !

with our drawings, we always have idieas of things we want to adjust and change. we almost never make these changes, because we're happy with our art as it is, and we know that it could be painful because of how much time it takes!

this drawing is the first time we've kept going back and editing the drawing long after we had come to something we are happy with. first we changed the ear to be droopy, then we redraw middle finger, and we decided that we could keep doing more tomorrow. so we wrote down notes!

this is the original drawing we put onto our website. If you want, you can try and search for some differences! remember to stop when you stop having fun :)! please be safe!

surprisingly, we do not have repetitive strain injury, or that bad eye strain, which is a good thing! we think it was because of the form factor. we drew in a comfortable position because we didnt really need to support touch screen, which was our cellphone! with durian, we need to support much heavier thing and it's also much easier to accidentally touch in wrong spot, forcing more hurtful and rigid poses. we dont like any phone drawing software, it's all capitalist, so we draw in a relatively friendly, limited photo editor.

colours and lines are so much fun to draw, and experiment with. we struggled drawing the outfit, and we didn't have any ideas. we ended up drawing a frilly dance outfit :)

we think drawing eyes and hair is our favourite things to draw right now, it's great!

it feels like a long time since we've drawn person with long hair, that's cool! elysia fact: if we don't put our hair up, we have long hair! we've been coming up with more ways to style it recently :)

we think if we were to make changes to this drawing, we'd change how fingers and chin interact with rest of drawing, and change the lines and shading on the left side of the hair :) YAY 🐈️ we love the colour palettes and how the lineart contrasts with the colouring.

our mindspace and how we visualised the world around us changed as we drew, and it remained mostly healthy. we think we're getting better at recognising that we don't have to have certain mental brain spaces and visualisation internally, and better at understanding that there are lots of very similar but very different interpretations of same stuff! some stuff is nasty!! but it doesn't have to be nasty if nasty context is bye bye!

we did have a breakdown while drawing but realised why we were hurting and that we could fix it.

2023

used mouse and made while building somewhere cute in minecraft java edition creative mode in a swampy tree place.

found comfyy kitten system pose.

me too i love durian im autistic also

finger drawinging because stylus nib broke :(

wanna give them happy little red coat and toys and accessories they like like trains but drawing is exhausting.

think that hair and face worked out really well and didn't feel that frustrating especially once we hit certain milestones in structure and shape. even without stylus, which makes making precise and accurate lines hard.

we love this one a lot. we think we did a really good job at the tail ribbon especially!!

we went back and forth on hair styles a lot and are not totally satisfied with the bangs parts. we're posting cuz we don't think we'll ever do this more :)

2025