IT’S HALLOWEEN TIME TO GET SPOOKY

I T S T H E M I D D L E O F J U N E

I T I S H A L L O W E E N T I M E T O G E T S P O O K Y

ok who the fuck got this on my dash it’s still june

get spooky

how does this appear every june

@nooowestayandgetcaught

STOP BRINGING THIS BACK EVERY JUNE

… I’ve just queued this up for next June. Because reasons

Hey, y'all, does anyone know how to counter the Wall of Flesh opening????? The answer is time sensitive.

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense

https://youtu.be/pMC0Cx3Uk84

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

:3

Reblogging to save a wrist

shoutout to all the trans spec fiction writers in the house

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I - the alphabet as seen from the side

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

the alphabet as seen from directly above

Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

In my very informed opinion it is absolutely essential to read Chapter 55 with visual aids. Here are some highlights pulled from Ishmael's Most Hated depictions so we can all be on the same page about what whales definitely don't look like.

2. Robert Sibbald was the first naturalist to officially describe a blue whale and I'll give him a pass on being first and blue whales being incomprehnsibly large even now, but this really is not accurate in pretty much any way.

See below the cut for more "monstrous" depictions!

I was already ranking this as one of my favourite chapters thus far but this post makes it even better. C R Y I N G

Have you ever gotten your ass kicked by a bunch of Nantucketers? Would you like to? Just draw a whale badly!

I love making gaybestfriends who I can have sex with

@shetheyslay Think again, bestie 😌

thank you tumblr user and famous abstract expressionist artist mark rothko

Jorts would have something to say about this.

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

Cats fighting 1786. Oil on canvas.

@sabotabby

Average succession fan

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.

Non-Natives reblogging this are great and wonderful

Please remember that "land back" does not mean "indigenous people are mystical elves with innate epigenetic wisdom of land stewardship and they don't belong in big cities," nor does it mean "non-indigenous people can't be farmers." What it DOES mean is that "non-indigenous farmers should be paying the equivalent of property taxes to the native governments their land was stolen from." It means, "there's a great deal of indigenous scholarship on sustainable agricultural practices that farmers should be taking into account, because indigenous agriculture was more advanced than European agriculture at the time Europe invaded the Americas and western agriculture *still* hasn't caught up in terms of figuring out how to produce equivalently high crop yields without compromising the ecosystem." It means, "non-indigenous farmers should be in an intellectual discourse with indigenous agricultural scientists and indigenous peoples that still do traditional farming, figuring how to repair the damage western farming practices have done to the ecosystem."

It also means that indigenous peoples should regain the right to sustain themselves on the land according to the practices they want, and they should have free reign to perform their cultural practices and protect their holy sites, as opposed to the current model where if they try to honor their dead on public lands they get violently removed.

As a white Australian, know and understand whose land you stand on. Learn the true names of places and how to pronounce them. Stay out of sacred sites. This isn't even the bare minimum, it's just basic manners, and so many of us struggle even with that.

Today’s reminder that in so-called Canada, 80% of the land is “Crown land” and at bare minimum that can be immediately returned without it even affecting settlers.

This is how it feels to watch the show loool

This a Moonmelon, scientifically knows as asidus. This fruit grows in some parts of Japan, and is known for its vibrant blue color. What you probably don’t know about this fruit is that it can switch flavors after you eat it. Everything sour will taste sweet, everything salty will taste bitter, and it gives water a strong orange-like taste. It’s also very expensive…costing about ￥16000 JPY (which is about 200 dollars).

or you know this could be photoshopped

but idk

you tell me

this is alexandrias melon (wow)

it never grows seeds but it can still produce other melons (its magic)

it is grown deep in the jungles of peru and can prevent you from aging well into the hundreds

it is known by the natives there as k’uhul ajaw cacao shi-jiiy.

its really strange how all of these pictures look exactly the same because everything on the internet is true

This is the Peppermeloni. (seriously gosh just look at that sexy mother fucker) Its scientific name is Tumblrous Pepperonus.

The only known specimen is in a pot in David Karps treasure dungeon. It is a tradition that a single slice is given to every tumblr blog that reaches 500,000 followers.

It has the remarkable property of being as healthy as watermelon but tasting like cheesy pepperoni pizza.

This planet is really just so amazing guys wow.

Patrickmelon

The taste of this melon will always surprise you.

I’m fucking done with this site

This is the evermelon.

If you cut this watermelon a certain way you will find that it has seemingly regenerated. You can do this an infinite number of times and will have a neverending supply of melon.

OH GOD I haven’t seen this post in YEARS and THAT is the fucking additon to it!?

ALRIGHT THATS IT ITS TIME TO STOP

Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Ravenmelon and I’m ebony black  (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips, and a lot of people tell me I look like watermelons (AN: if u don’t know what dat is get da hell out of here!).

Nothing will ever be better than the last one

HASHBFJGJDHRJFKFKRJ

That last one took me out at the god damn kneecaps-

Someone wrote a really interesting article about why people believe these sorts of things so easily.

the fact that omegaverse might be our last defense from AI scraping fic for shitty generated novels is giving me so much life on this delightful monday

❤️ god bless you omegaverse writers ❤️