TODAY'S FEATURED POST

Happy Thanksgiving (X-Men Edition)

Lauren Panepinto

Since I've pulled the Thanksgiving post this year, here's a personal fave of fantasy art thanksgiving: Uncanny X-Men #308. This issue was published in 1994, written by Scott Lobdell with cover & interior art by John Romita Jr. I was a sophomore in high school, working at the famous comic book store Jim Hanley's Universe in New York, and reading every X-comic that came in the door. This issue was an adorable one, and I…

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EVERYDAY ORIGINAL

9 of Wands

YESTERDAY’S POST

Image

Short Take: Foreground Darks

Gregory Manchess

August 6, 2025 - Recently in one of my online classes for SmArt School, a few students were having trouble creating visual interest in their compositions. The pieces lacked depth. The culprit wasn’t the design of the main elements, but the distribution of values. Generally, the students think of the background as dark, but they also wanted to put their main subject in dark clothing, and all the darks in the subject were the same darks as in the background. They initially thought the farther away from the foreground subject, the darker the background becomes. But unless they were depicting someone in a subway, or darkened room, the background can be lighter. What was necessary for them to gain depth and enhance the silhouette of the foreground subject was to slightly lighten the background color value and allow most…

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