#and i mean that So Positively

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Hi! Excuse my anonymity, you’re super cool and I’m super anxious

I’m an artist starting out on tumblr, do you have any advice for getting my work out there to more people?

I understand if you can’t really answer, but you’re one of my favorite Tumblr artists, so i figured I would come here!

Sorry if this caused any inconvenience-

hm... i think my best advice is to be consistent(ish), confident, and to tag accurately!

people tend to respond more to posts where the creator is positive about their own work - in the post body, and in the tags. even if it's something you're not sure you like, Someone will, and they'll be more likely to interact if the work has confidence (fake it till you make it! it) this also does wonders for mental health surrounding your own work - it's been my method for a while and it's not half bad!

with tags, make sure your search tags are within the first 20 (or they won't count) and that they're accurate. people Will get annoyed / report you as spam if you tag, say, a picture of a peach with "grapes" or "will smith". but thorough accurate tagging makes sure your work is in sight of as many people searching for the subject as possible

and another thing that can help is adding on a little "reblogs are appreciated" to the post body (or the first tag, but i'd suggest the post itself so that the phrase sticks with rb-s). it's a nice, non-pushy way of enticing people to reblog - a simple phrase like that can add a little extra delight to reblogging, & it makes rb-ers feel like they've helped out! which, yk. they have!

(and to anyone reading this who doesn't really post & is new to tumblr, reblogs do wonders - they keep tumblr running and creators creating. if you like a post, why not show it by reblogging too? it only takes a second to make someone's day!)

[nexus-nebulae]

shoutout to people who don't have a "before" the trauma.

shoutout to people who don't have any sweet or nostalgic childhood memories. to people who don't remember enough of their childhood to know what the before was like. to people who lost their innocence before they ever learned the word for it. to people whose pasts were too painful to keep around in any form. to people who only knew trauma, and don't have an idea of what life would be like without it. to people who can't long for "the better days" because there weren't any.

you deserve a good future. i hope it's there for you soon.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[starleska]

as a cringe selfshipper who's been in fandom for decades and draws nothing but blushy ship art, i feel so seen and so attacked right now 😂💖💖💖

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The musical episode.

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[tzarrz]

i listen to fog lake too much

[pangur-and-grim]

also some good blood news! I’ve been needing transfers every few months, but since I stopped eating gluten, my irons levels not only stayed level, but have GONE UP! for the first time in years!

so it was definitely damaging my digestive track. I’m suspicious that it also stopped me from properly absorbing calcium - it seemed so weird that my leg shattered from such a minor fall.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

anyone else have multiple traumatic memories associated specifically with holidays/family vacations? because that is a topic I never see discussed in all the So You Had A Shitty Childhood, Now What? self-help books i've been reading. but for me, it was a significant thing. and the more i think about it the more it seems like this would be an (unfortunately) common experience. would be grateful to hear if this matches other peoples' experiences...

[myiliterallyhavenolifegoals]

i'm unwell!!! because in stede's eyes, ned low was right!! ned says "he [ed] only likes you because of your bumbling amateur status" and calls stede blackbeard's "pet" just like izzy did in series 1

so stede steps up as a captain, kills the man who harmed his crew, and suddenly, for once in stede's life, he isn't a joke! the gentleman pirate is taken seriously and welcomed into the pirate community!

and what happens less than 24 hours later? ed calls their night together a mistake, AND LEAVES.

yes, obviously the situation is more nuanced, and these old men are once again struggling to communicate, but i 100% understand why stede went a bit of the rails at the end of episode 7. stede's been so focused on trying to help ed, that he's completely ignored his own ongoing identity crisis and trauma, and after the incident at the academy in series 1, this meltdown was long overdue.

[thatsitso]

So I finished orv

[witch--btch]

Sleeping positions…

Official Art by Satoru Nii

[gejnialnie]

hi I don't think this duo gets enough love, so here are my fave screenshots of Raph and Leo mirroring each other! :D

+bonus:

look at this frame! don't their poses look similar, even though they're in totally different places?? well, there's a simple reason for it! we can see raph in the driver seat, his left hand on the wheel, while the other one's searching for someting, it's symbolising his active role as leader, while leo stands alongside him, his left hand on a handhold while he gestures with the other, showing him being less active and more of a passive presence, but he's ready on his feet, it's symbolising his potential as raph's co-leader but also him not yet being ready, still gripping the safety rails instead of the driving wheel-

(nah i'm kidding- like, was it just artists drawing similar poses in one scene? oh yeah most definitively! will that stop me from over-analysing? nope! :D this basically wrote itself!)

[uncanny-tranny]

Every time I think too deeply about how we've found the bones of thousands and thousands of years old ancient people and we've given them people names I just

Guys, do you get it? We put to name these ancient peoples whose bodies vaguely resemble us and we go, "you're one of us, and we will give you a name that we have invented". They are not here to have a voice for themselves, but they are here to be remembered.

To be named is to be loved.

[personinthepalace]

I'm completely obsessed with this photoshoot

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Burning Rotten Bridges

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[ionomycin]

mermay