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Birb

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A WIP that I took that is much better quality. Before I finished, of course, but it gives a clearer sense of the line work and vibe. I took the above photos in my dimly lit cubicle, where I keep him because he kept watching me sleep in my studio apartment and creeping me out, lol.

Painted Longlegs for some reason!

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an old art assignment from undergrad where I had to draw some of the scenes from italo calvino's novel invisible cities

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Painted Longlegs for some reason!

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me making cheese board, candid - 2024

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These tattoos are called Sicanje or bocanje and were a widespread practice by primarily Roman Catholic Croat and Bosnian teenagers and women as a means to identify or trace their origins to a particular site or village during Ottoman rule.

The most common symbols tattooed were the cross (križ), bracelet (narukvica), fence (ograda), and branches or twigs (grančica). Furthermore, the cross design had many variations, with one of the most common ones including small branch-like lines called "grančica" or "Anjelica" (pine tree). Bracelet-like designs were sometimes tattooed around the women's wrists with crosses or a symbolic fence-like motif.

Many non-Christian or pagan symbols were also used in these designs, with the most common consisting of circles believed to be connected to the villages' traditional circle ("kolo") dances. 

Pagan and Christian symbols were mixed relatively indiscriminately, with the first originating from nature and family in Illyrian times and the other with later adapted Christian meaning. The most common areas to tattoo were the arms, hands, fingers, chest, and even the forehead.

In modern reports or informative content surrounding the practice, primarily uploaded on platforms like TikTok, users have said that this was a method to protect from being enslaved or kidnapped by Muslim Ottoman invaders since, in the mainstream modern interpretation of Sunni jurisprudence (including the four madhhabs: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali), tattoos are not considered permissible, much less favorable.

However, these contemporary users' statements on the history of this tattooing tradition are not entirely historically accurate, as Kurdish (both Muslim and non-Muslim) populations within the Empire practiced deq, a form of tattooing similarly practiced by the Yazidi people of Western Asia/Kurdistan. Additionally, the practice of Sicanje in some areas of the Balkans predated Ottoman rule by many centuries.

Further Reading(s):

[1] Tradicionalno tetoviranje Hrvata u Bosni i Hercegovini - bocanje kao način zaštite od Osmanlija by Monika Jukic

[2] Stari običaj ‘križićanje’ ili “sicanje” izumire by Marija Medic Bosnjak

[3] Die Tätowirung der Haut bei den Katholiken Bosniens und der Hercegovina by Dr. Leopold Glück

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I took this screenshot 2 weeks ago before I truly knew what was about to go down between the long-haired men fr 🙏

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I love Star Trek because yes it's a utopian socialist future of science, empathy, and exploration, but they don't just say "one day we stopped arguing and it all just sorta worked out" they very much had genocide, fascism, and WWIII and then afterward, when all the things we're terrified will happen had happened, we still had a chance to be better and we didn't waste it. That's the beauty of it, not that we magically overcame our differences, but that the worst happened and we didn't succumb to nihilism.

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Who knew I got dat naturally occurring babushka hunch when browsing things...

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Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase (Nintendo DS, 2008)

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Abe Sapien and Princess Nuala... :(

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clearing my head

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life lately

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"The Gumsmack Shack"

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Swamp Grandma (name TBA) character design, a bit outdated.