Hey, I’m Meta (they/it)! This account is basically for saving references/tutorials for myself.
Main/art account - @puddleorganism
Reblog account - @puddlereblogs
CW: I reblog bugs (including spiders), snakes and other reptiles a lot! If you don’t like those this isn’t a good blog for you
how to draw arms ? ?
holy fuck
holy fuck is right… but… does it work with legs???
yes !!
but how much extend
^^^^^^^^^^
I NEARLY CHOKED
ENJFDFNFATFVFDF
finally. i can be accurate
This is too fucking great to not reblog
I give it MASCLES
BIG MACHO
🤣🤣
LMAOOOOOO
Okay but for anyone who legit wants to know how to calculate it correctly:
The elbow joint on average rests a couple inches higher than the navel, so if you measure how long the distance is from the middle of the shoulder to that point then you have the length of the upper and fore arms!
So if anyone’s wondering about legs too, the simplest rule of thumb is that the length from the top of the leg to the knee is equal to the distance between the top of the leg and the bottom of the pectorals:
And I wanna stress that when i say “top of the leg” i’m not talking about the crotch (please don’t flag me tumblr it’s an anatomical term) i’m talking about the point where the femur connects to the pelvis, which is higher up on the hips:
It’s easier to see what I’m talking about in this photo of a man squatting:
So yeah if you use that measurement when using this technique you should get fairly realistically proportioned legs:
But remember! messing with proportions is an important and fun part of character design! Know the rules first so you can then break them however you please!
HOW THE HELL DID I FIND THIS POST OMG
Licherally in the midst of drawing a guy and crying at how bad the arms are. Thanks Tumbles
I only ever saw the part where people started drawing the limbs outrageously long and genuinely wanted to know how to fix that, so I’m really thankful to see the rest.
Reblogging for my art buddies!
This is super helpful for me now :D
Looking at Pinterest drawing tutorials to make myself angrier and more full of rage
Much has been said about unrealistic female anatomy, but is it not even more bizarre and fucking terrible that <90% of generic male drawing tutorials show some kind of monstrous aftermath of bodybuilding, steroids and extreme dehydration and are like "this is a basic male torso"
In the nicest way possible, if you see this as "basic" male anatomy and all other possibilities as variations on this, your art will be Not Good except in circumstances of dumb luck
99% of men Do Not look like this, ever, at all, and out of those that ever do, they Do Not look like this 99% of the time.
Abs don't appear defined unless you're tensing and flexing your whole abdomen, and they don't appear that defined unless you're unhealthily dehydrated. You don't get abs like that in the first place unless you're doing intense workouts, dumping protein in everything you eat, and probably restricting food unhealthily specifically to get that kind of look
But it's not a problem just because it's unrealistic, it's a problem because it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what muscle is and does.
Like, drawing bodies in dynamic poses is not going to be very fun for you if you don't get that muscle is squishy when relaxed and you're imagining it as this tough, stiff pulley system
like, if you look at renaissance and baroque paintings of men, which were painted by masters of anatomy who did intensive studies including disections to learn how to depict the male body, the men in those paintings and sculptures DONT look like the above. they almost never have defined abs.
for instance, if you look at rubens abduction of ganymede,
an idealised figure of a man who is meant to be very attractive. hes literally ganymede! but not only does he not have abs, you can see rolls of fat where his trunk bends. his arms are clearly muscular but the dehydrating looking hyperdefinition is clearly lacking. below is michelangelo, who specialized in painting extremely muscular men and did more dissections than the average doctor (apologies for image quality but it shows my point)
so yeah please dont learn to draw men from tutorials that look like that. learn it from secret pope-sanctioned dissections
Eternal Flame Falls sounds like the coolest concept for a fantasy book. A path you follow down into a ravine until you find an ever-burning flame inside of a waterfall? That’s fuckin metal! But it’s not in a fantasy book it’s like an hour away from my house I can literally go see it any time! I remember it like once a month and lose my shit over it every time
Look at this. Tell me this isn’t the basis for a cool religion in an epic fantasy novel.
OP whats it called? Do you know how it works??
It’s called Eternal Flame Falls, in Orchard Park in western New York. 400 feet below the surface is a 400-million-year old shale formation that contains natural gas, and the grotto contains a leak where that gas is escaping. The flame can and does go out, but the gas can be re-lit with a lighter like a gas stove. It’s super, super cool from both an aesthetic and a geologic perspective!
Oh so dark souls is just real okay
may you make art long enough to realize all the advice you learned online as a tween is made up bullshit
tracing refs is ok and a very commonly used technique, art supplies dont have to be expensive or cheap but you should reasearch them, commissions costing 5$ should never be an average price no matter your age or skill level, Illustration is not the default feild for people who have cartoony styles and you can do many things, drawing from life is crucial no matter your style, realism isnt boring and has much variety as other styles, graphic design isnt the well paying consistant art job you think it is, fanart is real art but its not accepted in portfolios often because its seen as derivitive at a time people are looking for unique and personal expression- not bc it lacks skill or merit, color theory is a complex subject and so is anatomy- you will likely have to work on it for years before you get somewhere you like
learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase
since a couple people sent asks: it means you can't be precious about your own writing when the time comes to edit. sometimes you will write a really good scene, or a really good line, or a really good description. it will be your new favorite thing you've ever written. the kind of thing you want to post on tumblr attributed to "the book i haven't written yet" because it's just that good. but when the whole thing is done and you're reading it over, it just. it doesn't actually work. it stands out like a sore thumb. it fucks up the pacing, or maybe once you've really got a handle on characters you realize it's ooc. "kill your darlings" is about learning to delete those bits, even though they're really good, because they're making the work as a whole worse.
... but a lot of people i know don't actually delete them because it's 2023 and you can just cut and paste them into a different document titled "bits" until you write something where they'll fit. and sometimes it actually does fit in the work, but you tried to put it in the wrong place or in the mouth of the wrong character. but learning that you can put a lot of excellent paragraphs together to make a story that's worse than the sum of its parts is the important part.
Pill millipede (not an isopod/roly poly), Glomeris klugii, Glomeridae
Found in Europe and northern Africa
Photos 1-4 by ingridaltmann, 5 by vytautas_tamutis, 6-7 by amujcinovic, 8 by phtevendrews, and 9 (for scale) by bianca_t
[Image IDs: all images are close-ups of pill millipedes, which are small arthropods (bugs) with a similar appearance to roly polies. They are pill-shaped and segmented with shiny scale-like plating that goes to the ground and covers up all their lil legs.
ID1: a rusty red pill millipede with a black head and mottled black spots on its segments. It’s segments are edged with a pale, slightly translucent yellowish color. It’s photographed from the side. It’s standing on light grayish tree bark.
ID2: another photo of the same or a similar millipede. This one is photographed from a higher angle, making it easier to see black backwards-pointing triangles running down its back. In this image it’s standing on bark covered in moss.
ID3: another photo of the same or a similar millipede on a similar background. This one is photographed from directly above.
ID4: another photo of the same or a similar millipede on a similar background. This one is on its back and half-curled up so its head is right-side up. Its belly and legs are a tan-ish; and its little legs stick up like it’s reaching out.
ID5: two of the red/black millipedes completely curled up on their sides, completely hiding their heads and legs in their plates. These ones are sitting on grey granite. One is slightly smaller than the other.
ID6: a similar millipede to the others, but this one is a much darker maroon red and less shiny. This one has a bright copper stripe behind its head. It’s on leaf litter.
ID7: another darker millipede on leaf litter and coniferous twigs (fir, I think). This one is curled up, but is upright like a wheel.
ID8: a collection of four millipedes on rough grey bark. There is one to the left, two in a vertical row to the right, and one in the center. All of them are curled up except for the center one. The one on the left is orange with black mottled spots and black diamonds running down the center of its back. The one in the center is an ochre color with darker orange edges on the bottom of its segments. It is sparsely mottled with black, with a black head. Behind its head is a yellow stripe, then a black stripe, then no more stripes. It has tall backwards-facing triangles along its back that get smaller and smaller until they disappear, after which there is one big black triangle at the end of the millipede’s body. The top right millipede is a blue-green-grey, similar to the color of lichen. Its segments are edged with thick orange-grey, and it has connected black diamonds running down its back. The bottom millipede is mostly covered in black spots, with orange stripes peeking through at the edge of its segments. There are black diamonds running down its back, which are separated from most of the other mottling by grey.
ID9: a photo of a pill millipede from above and a bit further away than the others. The millipede in this one is almost entirely black, with a bit of gold peeking through. This one is on a pale-skinned person’s hand, and is just a bit shorter than the width of their fingers.
/End IDs]
[Image IDs: All the images are photos of clouds at sunset/rise, with beautiful high-contrast orange and dark blue color palettes. In all of them the moon is visible and there are airplanes with long, lit up contrails.
ID1: In this one the clouds are huge thunderheads clustered mostly in the bottom half of the image and to the left. The moon is a waning crescent in the close to the center of the image. The contrails of the airplane cut through the higher clouds on the left, moving diagonally up and to the right, ending just under the moon. There are stars in the sky.
ID2: Just the top of a large thunderhead is pictured in this one, with a very bright waxing crescent moon just above it. The airplane is this one is a bit bigger and more visible than the others, its contrails cutting across the image to the right/top diagonally, disappearing behind the cloud. The sky is a slightly lighter blue in this one, but there are still stars in the sky.
ID3: This is the only image that shows the ground, which is hard to see because of the low light, but appears to be an parking lot overlook on the top of a mountain with a city below and to the right. The clouds in this one are more scattered and wispy, but are still huge and cover most of the sky. The sky is bright yellow near the horizon, turning to a rich, starless blue at the top of the image. The contrails strikingly travel straight up from the horizon, behind the clouds and up to the moon; which is a thin waxing crescent.
ID4: Dark clouds billow up and to the left, a dimmer contrail cutting through the peak of them diagonally up and left. The moon is a bright waxing crescent. It’s so bright the shadowed side is still visible, and it’s also off-center, resting just above the highest point of the clouds. The 3 stars of Orion’s Belt are the only ones visible.
/End IDs]
[VIDEO AND PHOTO TAKEN: MAY 15TH, 2023 | Video and Image IDs: A video and four photos of a dark multi-colored (metallic blue, red, black, white, and orange) stilt-legged fly, waving its front legs around. In the video it is standing on a green leaf of a small plant, while in the photos it is standing on a rough grey concrete brick /End ID.]
I've never seen this kind of fly before! Apparently, the reason why it's waving its front legs around like that is because it's trying to mimic the antenna motions of a wasp, as a defense mechanism! Another interesting instance of a bug saying "Don't fuck with me" by way of dance,,,
Just a reminder about fatphotoref.com—it exists!! I'll be updating with new photos next week and hopefully more regularly after that. Request access by going to bit.ly/fpraccess 💙🧜♀️ happy mer may!
actually a really good look at the kind of strength and balance being a fat motherfucker grants you: chunky bro at the start lifted the vacuum like it was nothing because he easily outmasses it and he stays perfectly centered while he waves it around. his center of gravity was low and stable.
gym bro was strong enough to lift the machine easily, but he had to use his hips and shoulders in counterbalance to stay planted, and even then it was a clear effort for him not to be pulled off base. he’s strong enough to lift the machine and throw it around, but his center of gravity is too high to actually wield it effectively.
[VIDEO AND PHOTOS TAKEN: MAY 8TH, 2023 | Video and Image IDs: A video and six photos of a yellow and black eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica) crawling on and chewing a hole into a brown walking stick in front of a grey background and a few other objects /End IDs.]
my writing fundamentally changed forever ten years ago when i realized you could use sentence structure to control people’s heart rates. is this still forbidden knowledge or does everyone know it now
?????? *raises hand* I’ve been writing for years and don’t know this trick by these words! do tell?
Okay, so a few people have asked for me to cite the dark magics at them, and i’m super happy to share because it’s my favorite thing ever.
so, let’s see if i can explain this the same way that i learned. read a sentence out loud. you come to a full stop when you hit the period, and you take a normal, breath. but, when you hit a comma, you take a slightly longer pause. and when you hit a dash - you take an even longer pause.
this is a natural rhythm that we pick up when we’re first taught to read; we do it without even thinking. but when you start to think about it, you realize that it can become a tool.
think of your heartbeat. a period is badump. a comma is badump-dump. and a dash is thump badump. one breath. a longer breath. two breaths.
that means what you read automatically affects the rhythm of your breathing and your heartrate. which means that you can control the amount of physical tension your reader feels… by altering your punction and your sentence structure.
for fast paced scenes, you use short sentences. a lot of hard stops. mostly periods, with just a few comma’s thrown in for the full breath. your reader’s heartrate accelerates. their breathing is slightly and unintentionally, on their end, quicker. you hit the dramatic ending of the scene - and your reader’s body phsyically feels the gasp, the breath of fresh air, of these longer sentences.
now, read that paragraph again ant take note of your natural pauses, and how it subtly affects your breathing.
the same thing can be said of comma’s and dashes. while they can be used as a breath of fresh air, they can also cause a new line of tension as they lead your reader to hold their breath. during this section, you should use longer sentences; breaking up the harshness of the pauses by using variations of punction. read this paragraph out loud from the start and take note of how long you go between pauses and full breaths.
and then, comes the biggest trick.
the hard stop.
the paragraph.
because while the periods, commas, and dashes are variations on a short stop, the paragraph is a hard stop. you take a full breath. you pause for a moment, then move to the start of the next paragraph.
which means you can create an entirely new sort of dramatic tension. read the sentences that are in bold. see how you take a naturally longer pause at the end of each paragraph?
see how it makes you feel?
how it makes you breath different?
how doing it once, twice, or three times creates a different line of tension?
this little magic trick can be used to cause a reader’s heartrate to speed up during a fight or chase scene. it can be used to cause their breathing to slow down during moments of dramatic tension, sorrow, or softness. and it can be used to create hard breaks that add a new level of physically felt emphasis to your written work.
i hope these examples make sense! it’s my favorite writing trick!
Want to avoid the action movie effect and make your character’s injuries have realistic lasting impacts? Have a sick character you’re using as hurt/comfort fodder? Everyone has tips for how to write Dramatic Intense Agony, but the smaller human details of lasting or low-level discomfort are rarely written in. Here are a few pain mannerisms I like to use as reference:
General
Limb pain
Nausea/fever/non-pain discomfort
If you have any more details that you personally use to bring characters to life in these situations, I’d love to hear them! I’m always looking for ways to make my guys suffer more write people with more realism :)
When I’m in pain I sigh a lot, especially if I don’t realize I’m in pain. I have chronic abdominal pain and I also prefer to lay down and do tasks if possible because it feels better when my abdomen is horizontal. Even better if I can flip over a bit and get my butt higher than my shoulders.
I thought I was the only one with the sighing thing! Good to know I’m not
how can I gain a cow's respect dm me
A few months ago, I wrote a small guide on good disabled characters and why they were good that gathered quite the attention, and I thought that doing another more specific guide this time would be interesting for writers or just people that are curious ! This guide will include general informations, some things to do, some things to avoid and some ideas that might revolve cane users's lives.
Cane users are pretty diverse, and putting us in little boxes usually isn't the best idea if you want to make a character that has substance and isn't just "the disabled one". Here some infos about cane users that might be helpful knowledge !
I believe that is all I had in mind. I may add some more details in the future if I get other ideas, but this should already be a good start. I would be thrilled to answer questions if you have some, either in my askbox or through DMs.
I will tag this post with characters holding canes that aren't necessarily considered cane users but that some people may be interested in writing as such. Feel free to tell me if you'd like to see tags being added !
Edit : I'm highly encouraging everyone to look at the tag section under this post where a lot of other can users are sharing their experiences !!
This post is so good it makes me want to create a character with a cane immediately
[Image ID: A picture of a bee and a wasp, both labeled. Both are colored yellow and black. Facts are listed about each one in their respective columns.
Bee:
Wasp:
At the very bottom, in smaller text, is the URL bug-maniac.tumblr.com. /End ID]
NO ANTI-WASP SENTIMENTS ON THIS POST
