#anyway go forth and make

[chipped-chimera]

Ok sorry but hold on a sec while I get real neuroscience/social psychology-ey about this.

So I have been a good 'drawer' since I was very young, but I also have a keen interest in psychology for mental health (and honestly autism) reasons. I think one of the most formative things I've ever done in my young life with regards to my perspectives with art, was read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. At like, 13 (see what I mean about the autism? lol).

Did I need this book considering I'd gotten into my high-school with a literal art scholarship with my demonstrated skill? No. But I was interested in the neuroscience perspective of art + if there was anything I could draw from it that would help my own art improve.

I don't remember the specifics, but my main takeaways were this:

Absolutely no one pops out of the womb with innate art skill. Like language and reading, it is a developed skill, not born out of biological necessity. Natural talent doesn't exist.

Because skill in art tends to be devalued in western society across the board ('starving artist' mentality, how shittily VFX artists have been treated for years, OpenAI already knowing how to ask for permission to make an AI ethical because they were scared of the music industry but threw that out the window crawling for training data for stable-diffusion, how art is constantly stolen and reposted with 'credit to the artist!' without actually linking or crediting said artist - LITERALLY TAKE YOUR PICK) being artistic is not encouraged. As children we all draw (to make art is human, I sincerely believe this), but there will be a point where it goes from being an encouraged part of child development to 'this is a childish waste of time' and actively discouraged as a poor career choice. If you wondered why most people's artistic skill level is 'frozen' and can only draw like an 8 year old - this is why.

The reason people remain stuck in this frozen state is lack of education, because our societal structure doesn't emphasize the use of art. It's considered 'optional' or a 'hobby'. It's not a critical part of the curriculum like math or english. Reading and mathematics are not innate skills either, they have to be trained. The difference here is you straight up just did not get any education to make progress.

As an adult, we tend to get discouraged when we can't draw well at all for all the aforementioned reasons and give up (or if you're extra scummy, make AI art and claim artists are 'gatekeeping' as your excuse) but the only difference between you and someone who can draw, like me, is I grew up in an environment where drawing was encouraged, not torn down as a 'childish activity'. So I've literally spent most of my childhood practicing, that's the only reason I draw better. I just have more years of practice under my belt.

There's no such thing as talent in art. You might be able to pick colours well instinctively, heck you might be a tetrachromat (like I suspect I am) giving you an advantage that is innate and biological. But beyond that I honestly believe the only talent you can have is being stubborn and doggedly aiming for and perusing your goals, even when you feel discouraged. You will always see what is wrong in your own art, no matter if you started drawing seriously yesterday or 30 years ago. It's what I call 'the curse of the artist's eye' - but it is a good thing, because it means you still have room for improvement! You still have things to learn! If you think something about your art is shit, use that as motivation. Learn from the experience. Go find drawing books about the thing you're weak at drawing. Come at it from a different angle, utilize references. Keenly observe what you're looking at.

Also lastly, the most important one: the biggest barrier to improvement for most people is having to wind back years of ingrained symbology and actually start seeing. What do I mean by this? When you draw a portrait of yourself, ears, eyes, nose, etc. you aren't drawing your face at all - you're drawing a collection of learned symbols, the representation of an eye, a nose, a mouth, that you may have learned at 8 years old - then never progressed further. To break out of this you have to stop seeing 'eyes' and 'noses' you have to start seeing shapes and lines. One of the activities to demonstrate this in the book was to take a picture of a still life scene or something and do your best to draw it. Then take that picture, flip it upside-down and draw it again but upside-down. Generally comparing the two pictures, the upside-down version always had a drastic improvement - because you basically forced your brain out of using recognized, ingrained symbols and had to rely on shapes and structure instead.

Also as a side note: Having ingrained symbols isn't a bad thing - it's the backbone of artist style. But this is why most professional artists, even with highly stylized style recommend learning anatomy and doing life drawing first - because they have spent time learning to understand how things actually look and improving their skill, before basically developing a symbolic shorthand. I can usually tell my symbolic associations are getting too strong or I've 'forgotten' how to draw things when I start getting a lot of 'same face syndrome' in my art. That's usually a sign I need to go hit the books, practice drawing from life again so I can remember that. I don't just practice drawing eyes once and never do it again - I probably do a refresher, at minimum, once a year. And each year it gets a bit better.

So that's it. Talent doesn't exist, everyone can draw - all you gotta do is be stubborn enough to keep learning. Go forth and draw shit!

No really, this is literally it - in my lifetime I've infected at least three people with the drawing bug telling people this, girl in my italian class went from going 'I wish I could draw' to sitting next to me in fine arts in my final year of school. Just practice dude - and be stubborn about it.

truly the best thing to say to someone who self-deprecatingly tells you they "can't draw" is "why?"

[lilianade-comics]

Thinking about how Dani's episode is called Kindred Spirits, which implies that her unique narrative role is to mirror Danny and act as a foil to him, and then the episode is like "Here's some ✨superficial similarities✨. She is now going to leave the plot entirely and be 💖homeless💖"

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.

[aghostsnail]

so I’m a BIG fan of apocalyptic landscapes and unrealistically large megastructures so I

BACK TO THE USUAL STYLE YAYYYY and my comfort zone landscapes

I meant to lock in and do hw I swear

BUT THE VOICES DEMANDED I DRAW CONCEPT ART

@keferon apocalyptic ponyo au

[that-faerie-in-the-corner]

you know what I find fascinating about how Helen is talked about in the works in the epic cycle?

everyone has argued to death over whether she was kidnapped, went willingly, was influenced/controlled/threatened by Aphrodite, whatever, but the thing is the actual TEXTS can't seem to make up their minds on Helen. everyone will be cursing Helen's name as an unfaithful wife and destroyer of men in Agamemnon but then Paris will be called a "robber-rapist" which would obviously heavily imply that he stole and assaulted her (plus the part where Clytemnestra basically says "shut the fuck up about Helen she didn't force you to do all that", although how much we're supposed to agree with her is debatable). In Iphigenia In Aulis we're going to war to get REVENGE on the Trojans AND HELEN but then Agamemnon will accuse Menelaus of "lust(ing) only to hold a lovely woman in (his) arms", calls him crazy for wanting her back, and then when Menelaus changes his mind about killing Iphigenia to get the winds back he says "Could I not obtain A perfect marriage elsewhere, if I longed for Marrying? But a brother whom I should Most cherish, I was about to forfeit To gain a Helen, so bartering excellence For evil" which is still pretty spiteful towards Helen but also really fucking weird to say if he only wanted her back to kill or otherwise punish her. Then, in the same play, the Greeks are described as wanting to sail to Troy so "That they may halt the plunder of marriage beds And the rape and seizure of Greek women" which would also imply Helen was, in fact, raped and seized, otherwise why would it be phrased like that and not like, "seduced" or "whisked away" or whatever? In Orestes Elektra and Orestes interpret Helen's actions in the worst possible light while when Helen actually speaks she seems generally sympathetic towards them, distraught and grieving over the whole situation, and claims that she went because Aphrodite made her mad, which could absolutely be a lie, but the thing is we just don't know who's the unreliable narrator here Is this a translation thing? Indicative of a really weird idea of what rape is? Is this an intentional writing choice? This got me to thinking and then I realized that if Menelaus was away when Helen left then he almost certainly doesn't actually know what happened. He didn't see or hear what happened, he doesn't get a chance to talk to Helen and have her explain until after the war, and obviously none of the other Greeks would know for sure either, right? And I just think it is kind of a missed opportunity that adaptations don't really do anything with this kind of unspoken conflict at all. Paris the Musical kind of does (Menelaus believes Helen was abducted when she ended up begrudgingly going with Paris trying to help him to escape) but like, why do all the greek men have one idea of Helen in adaptations? Why don't they argue about it? Why don't they question Menelaus about his motivations more? What if (especially if Aphrodite fucked with her head, as I am one to believe) Helen doesn't even trust herself on her own intentions? What if Menelaus tears himself up debating this with himself every night? Like, could I trust that she wouldn't do this to me and our daughter? Is it better that my wife doesn't love me anymore and is safe with her new lover, or that she does but is trapped against her will having who knows what done to her? Do I know my wife anymore? Did I ever know her in the first place? What if he lays eyes on Helen, his Helen, for the first time in ten years and his sword slips from his grasp as he realizes that yes, of course he knows her, how could he have ever doubted? Or maybe he still doesn't know if he knows her, but maybe he doesn't need to, because he knows that she is tired and scared, and he still loves her, and he just wants to take her back to their home? What then? Hm?

[lucabyte]

A belief in Nominative Determinsim

[obsob]

one small step for. kitties

[disgruntled-rat]

Annabelle and Butch almost kissed once.

Really, you could say they almost kissed several times, when one of them let their thoughts drift just a little too far and very nearly went for it. But there was only one that really counted.

It was night. The two sat outside, watching the stars. Butch was talking. Telling a story, maybe. Annabelle was staring at her friend. She was awful handsome, with the way her hair curled over her forehead and the way her hands moved about as she talked, and something about the gleam in her eye is just so enticing, and really it's not Annabelle's fault that she couldn't help but lean in. She just had to capture that spark in Butch's eyes, the one that seemed to appear whenever she saw Annabelle. Butch wasn't talking anymore, she noticed, just staring at Annabelle with a look of surprise and adoration and longing that made Annabelle feel warm and fuzzy all the way down to her toes. They were very close, suddenly. Butch's face was red. Annabelle's heart was thumping out a steady beat saying kiss her, kiss her, kiss her. Butch let out a shakey breath and Annabelle opened her mouth to say something along the lines of I love you. But what came out of her mouth instead was:

"Butch...do you wanna rob a bank?"

And just like that, the moment broke. But neither of them ever forgot that moment, that almost-kiss under the stars.

[the-red-planet-mars]

500 notes on this and you write that angsty mars fanfic

JKDHGHOIJWEHBGEHUIWO FINE!

sigh im making the deadline to 5th May despite knowing this will reach half the goal in under an hour

[strongermonster]

i have a hand-me-down metal colander that i really love and use all the time, but a couple weeks ago one of the handles snapped off so now it's both kinda awkward to carry + the area it broke is fairly sharp. i really didn't want to get rid of it, so i thought fuck it and stopped at this auto body/wrecker/whatever it's called place that's on my way home from work and was like "hi lmao sorry if this is so weird or i'm bothering you, but could i pay you guys to weld a handle back on to a colander?"

and not only did they do it for me, the guy was like "i'm not charging you for that. it was 2 seconds. what would i even put on the bill? 'fixed a gal's spaghetti bowl'? no way, it's on the house." so yaaay ♥

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

Something Extraordinary

historical platonic-romcom

an aromantic woman tired of feeling unworthy when the people closest to her leave her behind for romance, and a gay man in unrequited love who is planning on giving up and marrying a woman in misery and drunkenness

she kidnaps him the day before the marriage to stop him ruining his life, suggesting that they get platonically married instead - and on the ridiculous journey to scotland to elope, they have to convince each other if it’s what is best for them, and what they want out of life/love/and friendship

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

hate becomin rabidly into movies that were made near 20 years before I was born cause who the hell am I gonna lose my mind to? blorbo so old the fandom consists of me n my dad

[yesokayiknow]

What fic ideas do you have for Belinda?

i got annoyed about ummmm aspects of 15's whole run so i've decided to write out a 2 series (13 eps each + specials) long au in which bel & ruby travel w 15 at the same time lol

[serpentface]

Here's canon in-universe pronunciations for most character names I've mentioned more than once, the Faces of God, and Wardi provinces

(character names spoken in typical surname->given name order)

[wildtornado-o]

Laurence's Ls (stands for both lieutenants and losers)

I like these 4 maybe. Perhaps. I enjoy them I think

[saltpepperbeard]

a pensive babygirl™

[picture source]