#artists you are so excellent

[anamelessfool]

Everyone's art in this fandom is SO GOOD!!! I've never seen such an amazing variety of styles, compositions, media, interpretations. I've never been very invested in fandom before this one but I've got the feeling that some of them focus on one specific take or appearance. But here It's so encouraging to see how diverse everybody is OUAGH

I've never drawn so much in MY LIFE

[merrigel]

I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward

[rubenesque-as-fuck]

Stressame Street

Acrylic on canvas, February 2024

[izel-scribbles]

marker sketch that i uh. got carried away with. lyrics from you are the apple by lady lamb. every jarthur shipper go listen to it right now (this is a direct order)

for that matter, here's my malevolent playlist

[archnemossis]

a banhammer or a vinestaff perchance? 👉👈

how about both? :]

[mtndw-whteout]

I'd love to see your take on middle aged or older Terumob!

Dumb Old Men :)

[parisoonic]

you draw like the official tf2 comics... i am EATING it

thank you! that was a fun excercise - it's always interesting to analyse why styles look Like That! some of it is technical (chunky thick black outlines w/ no broken lineart for easy point-and-click colour filling for a 70 page comic) others are more subtle (everything has 3 shadow tones more or less and you can have shadows WITHIN shadows which is crazy to me...i never do that in my personal art haha) I was learning how to draw people for the first time by looking at tf2 comics 12+ years ago so its makes sense that there's a bit of influence hanging around as the bedrock of my style even now

[friedunicornstudio]

In other exciting news, we can finally share our full pieces for the Of Folk and Fable tarot deck, where we painted all four ace cards!

Aces in tarot are all about new beginnings, so the idea behind each of these was that seeing something ordinary in the right circumstances can turn it into something extraordinary! With these cards, we really wanted to push the visual of the real mixing with human imagination, so I tapped into my wildlife painting powers while M rendered the "mythic" elements of each card.

First up is air, where a sighting of what was probably a simple owl leads to a tale of a mysterious cryptid!

[unspuncreature]

just a little ahsoka doodle from a bit ago <3

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art tag | art log | links

[marciaillust]

so like uh. uhh. superhero/journalist au revamped

[steakout-05]

so i kinda learned how to draw Captain Picard for my dad's birthday card and i am quite proud of it :D

[ghost-t-cryptids]

A fake book cover I made for my LoZ fanfic!

(My commissions are OPEN!)

[natjennie]

the idea of "influencers" both confuses me and pisses me off to the highest caliber. like what do you mean. what qualifications do you have to be influencing anyone. what are you famous for... being famous? I don't get it.

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: March 27

"Long Time Gone" by The Chicks

[tracle0]

Next - here Previous - here

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

so i finally got my hands on a copy of Grimm's fairy tales again and The Frog Prince is still so fun and baffling to me:

just a reminder that it starts with the coolest opening line of all time: "In den alten Zeiten, wo das Wünschen noch geholfen hat..." (In the olden times, where wishes could still aid...)

confusingly, the focal character of this fairy tale is not the frog* but the princess, which is an underrated fact (and another thing that made me feral about Neverafter because Gerard giving up his name for Elody's is actually the ideal reasoning for why this story seemingly just refuses to have the obvious protagonist be the protagonist)

there's a theme going on where the princess AND the person-turned-frog* are both very childlike outside the castle and then framed as much more marriage age and/or sex-aware age inside: the princess is playing with a toy and cries loudly over losing it and the frog expressly asks to be her "Geselle und Spielkamerad" (companion and playmate!) at the well, not her husband or bedmate or anything

(the appendix mentions an earlier version where he demands to be the "Schätzchen" (sweetheart) of whatever princess comes to the well right out the gate)

but then inside the castle the princess is expected to be responsible and true to her word like an adult and also reacts with a lot of disgust specifically to the idea of the frog* being in her bed and soiling her clean sheets (they're really going in on those sheets), and rates this as far worse than having him eat out of the same bowl of soup as her.

and the frog* demands to specifically sleep in her bed with her

There's an interpretation that this fairy tale is a metaphor for the princess's sexual awakening and how she has to come to terms with herself as a sexual entity (i paraphrased this kinda poorly from memory, for more info see here in the German wikipedia entry of the fairy tale), and so far all of this would work for that.

The whole nature/culture split is a big deal in German lit of the time, so that's also an angle to look at it.

But then once they're alone the frog* says he wants to sleep in the bed simply because he wants to sleep "as well as she does"? It's really hard to say if this even is a metaphor for sex on his part or if he genuinely just wants to have her life for a bit?

Completely unrelated to any of this but the frog takes a full day to make it from the well to the door of the dining hall, which is deeply tragic and very funny

The frog* is kind of dick. He's also a fucking snitch: "Take me into your bed or I will tell your father!" (direct quote)

She doesn't just throw him against a wall. She throws him against a wall "aus allen Kräften" (with all her might) and says "Nun wirst du Ruhe haben, du garstiger Frosch" (Now you'll have your rest, you disgusting frog!). She straight up tries to murder this frog*.

Upon which he's immediately transformed not just into any prince, but specifically a prince with "schönen und freundlichen Augen" (beautiful and kind eyes)? i'm pretty sure that was never in the more modern versions and it should be

Also, yes he immediately becomes her husband/betrothed "nach ihres Vaters Willen" (as per her father's wish), which is very funny because it does read very "listen kid I would really prefer if you married the handsome young stranger I made you take into your bed with you. I really think we'd both look bad if you didn't."

i am however surprisingly touched by the insta-marriage part because it is SO soft for a Grimm fairy tale actually? He doesn't just become her husband, he becomes her "lieber Geselle und Gemahl" (dear companion and husband), which is? actually very sweet? Because I really do get friendship-based marriage from that.

Post wedding a whole 1.5 lines (which is kind of a lot of real estate for a fairy tale, and just as long as the info we get on them getting married!) is devoted to them just falling asleep together and being woken by the sun the next morning?

Iron Henry remains both so touching and so confusing to me. Touching because a) this dude just loves his young master so much. He probably raised this kid! He was devastated to see him gone! He's so fucking happy for him! b) Heinrich's inclusion is actually, in tandem with the "kind eyes" part, really interesting in regards to the princess. Because both of that screams, this man is a great choice for you. He is kind. Even his subordinates love him so much that his misery nearly killed them.

Confusing because yes, I know why**, but it is still a hilarious unending mystery to me why the guy who was this upset about his master getting cursed wouldn't just, you know. Hang out with him by the well?? And give that kid some fucking company???

* I had a little ramble in the tags at some point about how weird it was that the English translation makes him a frog prince instead of the Froschkönig, frog king - because if he's a king, he's probably an orphan. If he's a prince, his father (and possibly living mother) are just the worst parents? Iron Henry knows that his master was turned into a frog (which is wild, see above), but then he would have told the king! They must have known what happened to him! Don't they have a well at their castle?** This spawned a top-five throwaway line of parental abandonment on D20 (and that is saying something!): "Yeah, they haven't looked for me that hard. I've been missing." Like yeah! In a world where a prince can make his whole kingdom look for a woman whose shoe he found, you'd think the world would be on the lookout for a missing prince???

Anyway the confusing reveal from the og Grimm's version is... it's... both? The title says Froschkönig, but then after the frog collides with a castle wall there appears a "Königssohn" (literally king's son, a prince) with kind eyes? But then when Henry comes with the carriage to take The Man Formerly Known As Frog and his new wife to his realm, he is referred to only as the young king? Listen, this is not new. These stories do not give a flying fuck about internal cohesion, but in this specific case there are so many implications to it and it will never stop making the wheels in my brain go brrrr.

** I knooow this is a fairy tale, and they don't work like that and I'm looking too hard at a thing I should accept as given. He was cursed to live as a frog in a well until x event breaks his curse. Chances are this curse included "you must be an anonymous frog in a well, basically dead to all your subordinates and loved ones and removed from all your luxuries". I still think this is fascinating and i rotate this in my head at all times.

good luck trying to figure out what the trigger for breaking the curse was btw! "until you have enraged a young woman by being too forward"? "until a woman is so disgusted by you she attempts manslaughter/frogslaughter"? Just "until a princess throws you against a wall"? He does even say "sie allein" (she alone) could have broken his curse, which opens up more questions. She alone as in, a woman who now (inexplicably) loves him? That doesn't work because she definitely did not love him when she threw him against the wall. She alone because she was the closest princess? Or she alone as in, this specific princess and nobody else? Because she is so beautiful it surprises the sun every time it shines on her face (verbatim quote)? Because no other woman could have thrown him that hard??? We'll never know and I think that's hilarious, actually.