botaneon

[botaneon]

the breath that carried me 

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I don’t believe in love at first sight with humans

But I do believe in love at first sight with dogs

Because every time I see a dog I immediately love it

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cryptid spotted

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blue garden at hitachi seaside park.

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I just traded my neighbour a jar of raw honey for his parakeet’s corpse.

It is also worth noting that the only reason I have so much raw honey is because I made a dress for a beekeeper’s daughter.

And that I need the parakeet bones to make a necklace for the woman who fixed my antique cello.

And that I got the cello as payment for juggling at a child’s birthday party.

When did my life get this weird?

[botaneon]

:-: One of my favorite characters from the series. He’s so beautiful.

Random sketches! im trying to figure out how i wanna draw Kakyouin :D im really not happy with what ive come up with so far, but its always fun to try to figure out drawing new characters >v<

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Abuse, cruelty and neglect - why they’re different and why that matters.

I want to talk more at length about something that was touched on briefly in the A Dog’s Purpose article: why it’s so crucial to differentiate between different types of problematic animal treatment. That’s not something that is commonly done - they’re often treated interchangeably - but I truly believe that distinguishing between them is the key to creating successful advocacy around animal welfare topics.

In the article, I made a point of defining the terms ‘animal abuse’, ‘animal cruelty’, and ‘animal neglect’ as distinct concepts. To recap:

Animal abuse: deliberately causing harm or suffering to an animal, whether through action or inaction, either out of a desire to harm the animal or a complete lack of care for its welfare.

Animal cruelty:  hurting or causing animals to suffer because unnecessary external objectives are being prioritized over animal welfare.

Animal neglect: causing harm and suffering to an animal unintentionally, either through lack of knowledge or inability to do better.

These are not legal definitions. In fact, they’re not even the definitions you’ll find if you google the terms. When I was writing the article, I was frustrated because a) all of the definitions of the terms were massively varied, b) they were frequently used as synonyms for each other by advocacy websites and c) the definitions were far too broad for useful education. When ‘abuse’ is defined as ‘anything bad happening to an animal, ever, no matter if it was intentional or not’ there’s no way to effectively differentiate between problems of any real severity and an animal being kinda stressed.

I see this on the animal blog a lot, actually, because animal rights campaigns have made ‘abuse’ a really broad spectrum term that can be applied liberally for shock, awe, and click-throughs. Even if you aren’t really into AR things, the omnipresence of the term kind of sinks into the way your brains interprets animal media. I’d say that maybe 1/5 of the tags this blog got when it started two years ago would ask if animals in the videos were abused (it’s about 1/20 now, because the blog covers more than just stressed animals and we’ve taught you guys a lot about how to critically interpret media before you ask - now we get a lot of ‘I see this thing and I can’t tell if it is bad’ which is a huge improvement). When we’d get these tags, I kept finding myself going ‘nah, it’s shitty or unkind or whatever, but this isn’t extreme enough to be abuse’. For a long time I thought it was because people were over-reactive, but after a while it clicked that ‘abuse’ was the only concept people were being taught for responding to things that made them uncomfortable.

You know the thing about cultures not being able to conceptualize things they don’t have words to express? It definitely applies to this scenario. There’s so many nuances to animal treatment that by lumping them all under the umbrella of ‘abuse’, the current rhetoric has pretty much removed our ability to actually understand them. (Sometimes I wonder if this is intentional, because having everything be horrible is a much easier campaign to fight than having to explain the shades of grey). What’s really awful about that, though, is that treating anything negative as automatically being abusive really undermines attempts to improve welfare: if each type of bad situation is caused by different intention, it’s impossible to rectify all of them with a one-size-fits-all response. (And man, I’ve learned this first hand responding to things on the blog. It has upped my skills as an educator so much to realize how delicately different intentions needs to be approached for maximum success).

People who are accidentally neglecting animals are going to be horrified and distraught if they’re immediately condemned as abusers for simply not knowing any better; similarly, people who genuinely don’t give a shit about the welfare of animals aren’t going to be swayed by appeals to their best intentions. Cruelty situations require a really sensitive touch a lot of the time, where people have to feel like their agenda is validated but still need to be convinced that welfare concerns should be a higher priority. When you try to respond to them the same way - the way the AR movement does, with “you’re bad and you should feel bad” - you alienate people who could have been reached with more targeted educational tactics. Lumping everything under abuse creates a really nasty dichotomy - “good” people who believe the lives of all animals should never include anything negative at all (which is a whole other can of worms) and “bad” people who justify animal abuse as being okay. Once that false dichotomy has been forced it’s almost impossible to come back from and then you’ve effectively screwed over the animals you’re purporting to want to help - you can’t educate people you’ve alienated into being completely unwilling to interact with you. I really believe this is why the animal rights movement gets so few true welfare improvements done and is so reviled - they’d rather push people away as long as they can maintain a moral superiority for their movement.

With nuanced education, there’s so much more that can be done to reach people and help them understand why it’s important to change what they’re doing. You can educate folk who are perpetuating accidental neglect, work with people who were being cruel to find compromises that fulfill their needs and also prioritize welfare, and save the energy, revulsion, and media outrage for the folk actually abusing animals. And that’s really what folk who care about animal welfare and try to educate people about it prioritize - getting things done, changing animal lives one person or one company at a time.

So yeah. I ask you guys to use these definitions in your life, in your conversations with family or friends, or when you comment on other media. Let’s see if as a community we can start bringing some clarity back into conversations around animal welfare issues and prioritizing successful outreach and education over inflammatory rhetoric.

[botaneon]

Screenshotted this thread because you all need to see it.

(Cis LGB, I’m expecting you to reblog this.)

[botaneon]

THE RANDOM DRAWING IDEA GENERATOR 3.0! Now with less than a one in five thousand chance to get Batman Being Batman!

This time around, it’s got it’s own little mini site where you can click and get your results! It should be even easier now to mulligan until you get a result that actually makes you NEED to draw it. And when you do draw it, please remember to share you creation with the tag #randraw. I’d love to see it!

All thanks go to Alexander Lozada for putting the code together. It’s been really swell working it out. And you should go check out their other projects, including the awesome Creativity Cards you might’ve seen going around.

This is the best, but certainly not the last you’ll see of the Random Drawing Generator. There are over 5000 possible results, and many prompts are infinite by design. But there’s still room to grow. As always, I’ll be polling for ideas on what else to include. So, guys, what’ve you got?

[botaneon]

Do you get art block? How do you escape it? Here’s how I do it! Patreon - DeviantART - ArtStation - Facebook

[botaneon]

To be honest, I usually have a hard time curing my own art block—BUT FEAR NOT! I can name a few things that have helped me in the past. I hope you find something that can help you because art block is the worst, man.

NEW MUSIC. Sometimes listening to all the same old stuff causes my mental pattern to repeat and when it’s repeating while I’m in art block, my art block naturally persists. Sometimes if I find some new tunes that I really like, they can help get my creative process goin’. Go out in search of new music!

Stare at art you like. Visit some of the galleries or blogs of your long-time favorite artists and go through their pages, all the way back to page one! Think back when you first discovered them and look back at the old pics that might have motivated you in the past. Sometimes that can rekindle your motivation, remembering what motivated you about that picture.

This doesn’t have much to do with art block as much as it does, maybe, just being discouraged from drawing, but it’s good advice nonetheless:Never let the good art of your idols or artistic friends that you might feel are ‘better than you’ discourage you, ever! Instead of letting that make you feel worse about your art and make you want to stop, turn that feeling into determination to become better instead. It all started somewhere with any artist. Look at them now, they’re great, and you will be too. And remember that the more you draw the better you’ll become. Every picture, even ones that you think are failures, give you experience points.

Watch speedpaints. This is great for inspiration, watching how other artists do their thing. When you get to see a good picture from the beginning stages, it makes the sight/idea of a blank canvas less depressing or intimidating.

Get obsessed with something! Seriously, this helps me a lot. When I find an obsession with a show or game or comic, that usually gives me inspiration to be creative myself, even if it only fills me with desire to draw fanart of whatever I’m obsessed with. Which brings me to…

DRAW FANART. This has pulled me out of many art blocks (THANK YOU, POKEMON!). Fanart is art too, so after I’ve stretched my legs with a good hearty helping of fanart, I find myself more able to draw my own OCs and things more freely.

Try a different medium or program. A simple change of scenery can help a lot more than you might think. Sometimes when SAI isn’t doing it for me, I’ll doodle on MS Paint or at an oekaki and I’m back in the swing of drawing in no time.

Fool around with your style or subject matter or both! Like the change of scenery, mixing up what or how you draw can really help. Feeling restricted to the same artistic routine sucks. Style consistency is great and all, but you want to feel free with your art, so break a few rules, and maybe apply some of the things that make you feel liberated to your ‘official style.’ That might prevent you from getting into a rut later on.

That’s all the ways I can think of off the top of my head. I hope you find your way out of that art block!

(Rebloggable by a couple requests!!)

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°˖✧*•  Shop, Patreon *•. ✧˖°` I have to specify this is for people with anxiety, not those in toxic relationships or environments. <3

[botaneon]

study for your future. study to prove others wrong. study to make your parents proud. study to change something. study to reach your goals. study for yourself.

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[botaneon]

It’s been too long since I shared/uploaded any new shots here, so here are some that I went ahead and posted in my shop. If you’re interested in prints or something else with any of these images on them, please go to https://society6.com/botaneon and you can find prints and other products for all of these on sale. I can’t work right now and won’t be able to for at least a semester or two, and if I do get to work it’ll likely be between academic semesters so the money I make will have to stretch a good deal and mostly get put into savings, so any sales, shares or promotions are really appreciated.  Society6 is having a sale on wall art tomorrow, so if you’re interested in getting something to put on your wall, like a print or a clock, you might want to check the site again tomorrow. c:

[botaneon]

Prints for Sale!

In the interest of making more time for photography and art in my life, staying inspired and creating more often I have started using society6--if you’re interested in looking at my work, please feel free to browse! I don’t have any expectations in terms of earnings from this, if I could get some money for savings or pocket money that’d be nice but it’s more for my personal use and creative growth. If you like anything please feel free to promote/heart it, give me constructive feedback and share my work with anyone that you think might be interested! Any signal boosting or sharing would be super appreciated. <3

https://society6.com/botaneon