This.

So Gregor Mendel (yes, the guy with the pea plants) wrote down that he wanted to be given a thorough autopsy after he died. The year he died was 1884. Autopsies were increasingly common at the time, but Mendel was an Augustinian friar and the arguments preventing donating your body to science for teaching autopsies, research, etc. were theological. The “ethical” source of teaching cadavers for doctors to autopsy was (in many places) the bodies of executed criminals, as a sort of post-mortem punishment.  Mendel became a monk specifically because he couldn’t afford to study otherwise, even after one of his sisters donated her dowry to the cause. He did too well as a monk to continue his work as long as he wanted: he got promoted to Abbott and the last sixteen years of his life were spent doing administrative work, and his experiments weren’t properly replicated, or examined as a viable alternative to then current theories on inheritance, until 1900. But he chose to donate his body to science (which he loved) and be of material benefit to the field of medicine, which he didn’t practice but two of his nephews did.  There’s just something beautiful about a guy who lived through the era where having your body dissected was the height of dishonor, in an institution that had advocated against the practice, deciding that anything that helps humanity as a whole was worth doing. There’s something just as beautiful about the fact that he was exhumed for genetic sequencing on his 200th birthday - usually we don’t just dig people up and grab their genes as a surprise party, because in addition to it being a lot of work we can’t assume they would have appreciated it, but Mendel? He would have been jazzed. 

Good news! Not only have we discovered that tardigrades thwart destruction by turning themselves into glass, but we potentially have a future in which we can use their proteins to freeze-dry medications and vaccines to transport to disadvantaged communities!!

Just saw a tweet like "REAL libraries check for quality!" as some kinda gotcha at AO3?? But I'm a librarian, so... heads up that "quality checks," AKA "weeding" or "pulling," means looking for damaged books or ones that haven't circulated in a few years to clear up shelf space. We don't Quality Check for if the library books have nontoxic romance or good grammar. :U I assure you every library in your area has absolute ABOMINATIONS of bad storytelling as well as your favorite pop lit.

Wow, King’s first glyph is so cool. I wonder how he came up with that design. It kind of looks like a very simplistic Titan, or even…

Oh. It’s the light glyph. Of course.

And the circle is right in the middle of the figure’s ‘chest’, because Luz’s true light is her metaphorical heart!

Are all his glyphs going to be like this? Maybe the fire glyph could reference Eda, because of red and gold and her general personality and role as a firebrand. Her hair already has a fiery shape and it did used to be orange. Would Lilith be ice, then? For the plant glyph… Willow, because she’s the most Plant person he knows? A vine or flower stem symbol that could be Hooty with a few leaves on it, to keep it in the Owl House?

How Do I Do Stuff

The question was phrased a little strangely, and I don't want to embarrass the person by posting exactly what was said, but I'll answer it and hope this clears everything up.

I do almost all of my drawing by hand. No, I don't trace in Photoshop. Not a judgment on those who do, but I come from a generation of artists who did not use Poser programs or other digital tools. We learned to draw using a technique called the Sight Size method. I know a lot of people assume everyone - including the old masters - traced everything using optical tools, but while it is true some people did, it is just as true that most didn't, and you can draw with great accuracy if you learned how to draw the old fashioned way.

Sight Size breaks everything down into its barest components of geometric shapes and you build from there. Once you learn it, you never forget, and it applies to everything you will ever draw.

I learned it using a set of Famous Artist Course books my mom had since she was a kid, and they are still the gold standard. They're often on ebay. If I were you, I'd buy them.

I actually find using figure reference really annoying because I like exaggerations and modifications from reality in my final work.

This page from Neil Gaiman's Chivalry was drawn and painted without figure reference of any kind.

I don't know why people assume I trace all the time. If you were to try to use photographs to replicate these figures, you would find they are slightly off. There is no tracing here.

This is not to say I never use reference. This page, for example, was referenced from a photo of my mother. Isn't she pretty.

But this page of Sir Galaad was drawn and painted without reference.

He's pretty, too.

If he were real, I'm sure a lot of people would be very happy about it. But he's not. And had I reference, the art would have gone a lot faster. I had a time trying to nail this face that is very alive in my head but doesn't really exist.

Back in the ancient days, all cartoonists had to learn to draw and paint extemporaneously because reference was limited and digital tools didn't exist. While some high end artists had photography studios and professional models with costume and sets on hand, small fry like me were limited to what was in the house or available at my small local library, which was no bigger than a few rooms of my current house.

Artists kept extensive "morgue files" or "swipe files" which were collected from magazine clippings and photographs so we would have as much of what we might need on hand for quick reference. These ephemera collections could get unwieldy. I have thousands of photographs I've simply never sorted. I finally dumped most of my files this past year.

Have I ever traced anything? Of course, especially if I have to re-use a shot or setting over and over. Making extra work for myself is just silly. It's my job to make pictures, not to perform magical feats, like copying one shot after another over and over without making a mistake.

However, for almost 15 years of my career, I refused to copy or trace anything, and did not even own a lightbox. On the one hand, that forced me to learn to carefully examine what I saw. On the other hand, it was a stupid hill on which many deadlines died.

Only after I realized many professional artists had lightboxes and overhead projectors did I finally break down and get one.

The one thing I use my lightbox for more than anything is for tracing my thumbnail sketches to the final drawing paper. Instead of trying to capture the liveliness of the original sketch by copying what I see - only bigger - I blow the thumbnail up to the size I want the final art to be, then I trace over the thumbnail using a lightbox onto the final drawing paper.

Here's a look at thumbnails from the graphic novel Neil Gaiman's Snow, Glass, Apples.

I enlarged these on my computer to fit onto 11"x14" paper, and traced the thumbs before finishing the art which was drawn in pen and ink and colored in Photoshop.

While I obviously made some changes, the essence of the thumbs is there in the final work. Tracing my thumbs retains some of the looseness of the original sketches, which is often lost otherwise.

So, there is a valid purpose to tracing at times, though in my opinion, too much tracing can weaken drawing ability, substitute for developing skills, and make the work kind of stiff.

If you want to, I'm not your judge. But it's weird to me that people think I must be faking my skills in some way.

Ironically, the word cartoon comes from the Italian word cartone, which is a large heavy sheet of paper - also, the origin of the word carton.

Preparatory sketches were made on this paper which was then transferred to the final work surface via either tracing or by stamping little holes in the paper through which dust was sprinkled, recreating the contours of the drawing for the artist to follow.

So the origin of the word cartoon comes from a process often used...for tracing.

IMPORTANT PSA

Please share for UK residents!

The public alert will go off on Sunday 23rd April at 3PM (15:00) BST.

The decision to issue the alert was made against the advice of NGOs who warned this could put vulnerable people in danger. Please spread the message.

 Guys, I heard children outside in the backyard of my school, and i’m on the fifth floor, but right above the playground, so I threw a paper airplane with a little message on it to them, and then they got excited so I threw another one, and then I threw another, and then another, and then they started making requests like “tell us a story” and I wrote a little thing about me throwing airplanes out the window or “draw us a picture of yourself” and i drew a picture that didn’t look too great but they thought it was fun and they’d expectantly wait and I’d throw another and they’d be screaming and chasing it and trying to figure out who i am and stuff and after twenty minutes, and, like, forty airplanes i sent one that said “do you wanna see me” and they were excited and started chanting so i threw one that said “countdown” and they counted down from ten and then i actually poked my head out the window because they still hadn’t seen me yet and i had a handful of, like, twenty paper airplanes with me and i threw them all one at a time as they tried to catch them like a giant ticket blaster at chuckie cheese, and the look of pure delight and joy on those kids’ faces was worth all that time and paper.

Imagine dragons sleeping the same way giraffes do

Yessss! I wanna draw sleeping dragons tooo

Maybe they sleep like camels…

or cats…

or…. uh… snakes?

Yeeeeaaaaah

Or maybe they sleep on trees

There is nothing about this post I don’t love

maybe they sleep like bats

@elektronx

This is not what I thought they meant when they named a band Imagine Dragons, but I’m all for it.

I wish I was better at crochetingg!!!!

About the beard

Still like make fun of Hunter, he’s so done

Awesome 👏

Dear lord!

@advanced-procrastination iM

drift compatible

it took me a moment to realize what was going on with their hands. Drift compatible indeed!

RAW Irish Gay Music

[video description: two women playing a violin and a banjo. where ordinarily each instrument is a two-handed single-player operation, one hand working the strings on the neck of the instrument and the other plucking the strings on the banjo body or bowing the strings on the violin body, here both instruments are two-player because each woman is working the neck of one instrument and the body of another. partway through, a third woman comes up with a tin whistle, which again is ordinarily single-player, requiring both hands on the holes and mouth blowing into the mouthpiece; here, the third woman does the hands part for the whistle while one of the first two does the blowing.]

anyone got long mchanzo fic recs

Crown of Horns by pocketpom is 150k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11228187/chapters/25090317

Spring Onion and the Silver Bullet Blitz is 67k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643344/chapters/17401666

The Hunter and the Demon (series) by WinterOcelot is 91k. https://archiveofourown.org/series/628904

Redemption from Resemblance by Demon_Apostle is 150k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/8233972/chapters/18870022

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors by vandoodle is 75k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7509139/chapters/17070001

Here There Be Dragons by Frostysaurusrekt is 123k. https://archiveofourown.org/series/561917

Dangerous Territory by interrobang is 46k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/8744131/chapters/20046139

Knock the Ice from My Bones by vickjawn is 73k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/10632402/chapters/23521002

Lone Wolf (series) by AsheRyder is 66k. https://archiveofourown.org/series/586498

A Losing Combination by manic_intent is 42k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276855/chapters/16524235

One Long River by SugarMaddy is 165k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307597/chapters/25304055

If you don’t hate other ships:

Out in the Big Wide Woods by LegendaryBard is 196k, reaper76 https://archiveofourown.org/works/8312551/chapters/19035583

First Name Basis by BadJuJuJibberish is 244k, Junkrat/Symmetra https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685881/chapters/17507962

You’re gonna need it.

I really need someone to put some facial hair one David Oyelowo and get him in Andor and give Tiya Sircar a pretty helmet and colorful armor and stick her in Mandalorian. What is taking so long?

The Passover Story in Memes

My family has an annual tradition of telling the story in a creative way so here it is, told through memes:

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.

Exactly this.

fiction is a safe space to think of unsafe things if you feel it's messing you up, step away. don't assume it's messing everyone up and you need to eradicate it because you caught a case of the feel-bads from something. go sit with that and think about why instead of pissing in everyone else's cheerios.

Caracal 獰貓 #dinnidworkshop #handmade #leather #leatherart #leatherwork #leathercraft #leathercarving #trioleatherart #Caracal #leatherCaracal #皮雕 #皮革 #皮雕課程 #皮雕工藝 #皮雕藝術 #皮雕作品 #仨革藝 #獰貓 #leathertooling（在 Trio Leather Art）

ways to tie knots on pendants and keychains

You wouldn’t download a duck

This is great but the best bit imo is not only did you pirate a duck, but you pirated a Clarence Court duck, aka a duck owned by the King himself.

A true pirate if ever there was one!

you have seized the means of pro-duck-tion, good job comrade.

Me: *picks up “dead” bat in my yard so my dog doesn’t eat it*

“Dead” bat: O_O

Me: O_O

Me upon realizing I am holding a very not dead bat and not dead bat realizing it has been picked up by a large creature at the exact same second: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

He scream

You want rabies? That’s how you get rabies

1.I picked it up with a towel and gardening gloves and never once touched it with my bare hands.

2.

3.The bat was at the bottom of my porch where I have to take my dog out but I guess I should have just left it there for her to eat right?

4.It was in a position that made it clear that it was most likely hurt from hitting my house and not just sick. It’s warming up in my area and they are just coming out from the winter and it was most likely confused because I live right next to the highway and there’s a lot of noise.

5.You can only get rabies from a bat by being bitten or otherwise getting its saliva in your bloodstream. And it was two inches long and I’m a grown ass adult with a towel and gardening gloves and a thick ass sweater.

Good thing you tagged it as “stupid people” because you obviously don’t know enough about the situation

I’m sorry I tagged it that way. That was incredibly childish of me. I’ve just had it pounded into my head that you don’t mess with sick or injured wildlife because of the risk of exposure.

I’m a registered Veterinary technician and I’ve worked with a rabid cat and it was terrifying

I’m sorry I got so defensive. I’ve seen a lot of bats killed in my area because people are misinformed about the rabies situation. I used to play with them as a kid by throwing sticks in the air and watching them swoop to get them and each year they were noticably fewer until they were just gone.

That was the most adult way I’ve ever seen an argument addressed on the internet.

It was great.

I really wish we vaccinated all mammals for rabies, that thing is scary.