#finessing

[reincarnatedonthefirst]

Taken from a post by @bootobeneficiary…

[involuir]

shamayne williams

[acorviart]

Super flattering that this piece made it into the top 300 quarter-finals of the Pokémon Illustration Contest 2024! Good luck Feraligatr, I hope you make it into the next round ✨

[benevolenterrancy]

Art prompt of Shen Qingqiu holding the aro flag (fits his color scheme)

the real reason this man doesn't realise he's tripping every romance flag in the story

[daveinediting]

Facebook was kind enough to remind me of a song Linzy wrote when she was, oh... well, it was 2011 and it the second song she wrote and she was still in jr. high.

A long, long time ago.

She had already whipped out an original song once, maybe six months before. My plan was to take her through the process of writing a song without inspiration. Writing a song because you're choosing to write a song.

My wife was not a huge fan of this idea. She felt it was an awful lot of pressure since the effort would end in a live coffee house performance that was about a week away.

Me, I thought it was a perfect teaching opportunity because I'm a professional creative. It doesn't matter if I'm feeling it. I get paid to create when the job hits.

So we settled on a compromise. Linzy had a cover of one of her favorite songs ready to perform. If her second original didn't pan out for any reason, she'd perform the cover. No sweat. And, frankly, a no lose proposition.

I don't remember how the timing worked out but I'm sure we didn't do it all on the day of the performance. I know we were still working on it the day of the performance... but I'm guessing that at the very least we handled the song in two sessions, two days. The first day focused on lyrics.

So.

What's the song about?

Which immediately brought us to Step One: it doesn't matter.

Huh?

That's right. Because when you don't already know what the song's about, you don't worry. What the song's about. Instead, you focus on conjuring words and lines and ideas. In today's terms, you concern yourself with generating content. But you don't sweat how that content hangs together yet.

At the time we sat down to tackle the words, Linzy had in her possession a poem a friend of hers had written. It was a little on the dark side... but it was as good a starting point as any. Bringing us to Step Two: grab a piece of paper and a pen or pencil, sit down with the poem, and write down any impression that comes to you while you’re reading. Any impression. Nothing held back. Including questions begged by what you’re reading. Including images that are evoked. Including individual words. Phrases. Fragments. 

Anything.

The point's to generate content. And then try to make some kind of sense with that content.

Once whatever time we settled on was up, we shared our work with each other. And whatever came to mind from that presentation... well, we wrote those reactions down, too. Questions. Images. Words. Phrases. Fragments.

Anything.

Okay.

So now we've got a bunch of random content minus the original poem from where we started. Bringing us to Step Three: underline, highlight, copy down, or tear out anything that speaks to you. A word. A phrase. A fragment. An image. A question.

Anything.

Once you have that...

It's time to start.

Okay so now what's the song about?

Back to Step One.

It doesn't.

Matter.

Which brings us to Step Four: from the page of favorites you just created, what literally jumps out at you?

Fortunately, something had already jumped out. A few things, really. Which is how the verses got underway.

Now, I don't wanna give the impression these were finished verses. The idea was to create the scaffolding for a song. An outline with some of the details filled in.

With me?

So creating these verses was an exercise of grabbing elements that already spoke loudly... and putting them together in a way that made sense.

Ish.

Remember. It's just scaffolding.

Linzy did ask me what the song was gonna be about... and I told her we didn't really have to know the answer to that until we were halfway through the song.

So we continued fashioning our favorite fragments together, discovering how most of it reflected self-doubt. With that in mind, then, I suggested contrasting the verses, contrasting that self-doubt, with fragments stitched together in the chorus that reflected self-confidence.

Which is how we discovered what the song was about.

Which brings us to Step 4: Short Cuts. Or, rather, one huuuuuuuge and helpful shortcut. Which was to take the statements of self-doubt in the initial verses and flip them to statements of confidence, basically repurposing what was already written. 

It was barely a re-write, it took so little effort to accomplish.

So now.

Breathed into existence was the scaffolding of Linzy's next song lyrics with some of the details filled in.

As I said before, I'm not sure how the timing worked. At this point, I'm thinking we had a session for scaffolding. Then a session for music. Then, on the day of the live performance, I think it was all polishing, memorizing, and rehearsing.

By the end of our first session, if you haven't guessed already, the heavy lifting was already done. This song was conjured from thin air and without intention. Now, it was about something. It had a reason for being even if there was no reason other than wanting to write something.

So.

By the next session, when it was time to write the music, the music needing to be written already had a purpose. It needed, in some way, to illustrate the scaffolding of lyrics. To build on the vibe of those lyrics. And believe me. That's much easier to do than simply conjuring music from thin air.

And the words? The ones that were temp'd in?

Those words and phrases and lines changed and flexed to meet whatever the music was doing. So, in a way, the words informed the music. The music, though, also informed the words.

Most importantly, this whole creative endeavor had gained critical mass. It had velocity. It was going somewhere you could see.

And that's the point of this kind of process.

The day of the performance was still a bit of juggling all the pieces of the song. Fitting them together. Which they eventually did a little before 230 that afternoon. Then it’s practicing like crazy until 430. Jump into the shower. Get dressed. Hamburger for dinner (no cheese). At 530 we jump in the car and she works on vocals some more until we get to the gig.

Now it's 5:50ish.

Kimmer gets there a little after 615, bringing Linzy's guitar with her, so Linzy practices in the van some more, tweaking and memorizing, tweaking and memorizing, until shortly before 7.

Of course of course of course by the time she takes the stage, yeah.

She's ready.

Even though the song.

Doesn’t.

Even.

Have.

A title.

So there it is. It is possible to create without being in The Zone. The trick is to get yourself there by creating enough mass and giving the process enough momentum so that you quickly transition from creator... to editor. From writing to tweaking. From composing to re-arranging, remixing, and finessing.

And yes. Of course it would’ve been great to have more time to work on that song. But in the real world, you work with the time you have. Not what you wish you had.

In the end, the lesson I was trying to get across other than not relying on being in the Zone is this:

Creating is hard. But if you don’t worry so much about what you’re pulling from your mind and more about getting a lot out of it as quickly as possible so you can start playing with the pieces, well...

It’s can be a much less intimidating and much more rewarding process.

☺️

[doggirlhen]

the thing is you have to get a good grade in being an art commissioner. you cannot be a bitch when paying for art. you have to be patient and nice. i have not been perfect in my years of paying other furries for art of my funny animals but i can, with confidence, say ive gotten a good grade. artist friends of mine agree im awesome and fankly the Keys to being Awesome at being a commissioner are just like. being nice and recognizing artists arent machines. theyre people who have their own lives and are not infront of their tablet drawing for everyone 24/7. youll find them posting about some game or movie when youve been waiting three weeks for something and thats fine. youll find them having difficulty getting something exactly like how it is in your brain because, like all people, they cannot read your mind. you gotta have everything ready and upfront and be ready to answer questions. its fine to be a little nitpicky and a little "sorry im not quite sure on this pose, could you do X Y and Z" and not be an asshole about it. after a certain number of "can you do X different" you have to realize its either not going to be exactly how you want it to be or the artist is going to want to kill you with hammers. and thats fine. i think artists have every right to want to kill you with hammers.

[zegalba]

Tokujin Yoshioka: Lexus L-Finesse (2006)

Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka's installation for the Lexus exhibition at Milan Design Week 2006 gave visitors the chance to experience a tangible sensation of light. Having filled the space with 700 km (435 miles) of backlit transparent plastic fibres.

[classybougieratchet]

COSPLAY IN THE CLASSROOM

[mymotherthemilf]

[kickedin17]

Me and who vol 2

[reincarnatedonthefirst]

I read through some sugaring discussion threads and picked up some useful tips about training your boyfriends/daddies/clients to respect your time and boundaries…

Set boundaries from day one. Never text back within an hour. Do not text back right away. Answer their texts within 24 hours but never right away. Take a long time to reply.

From the start, let them know that in your personal life, you have an 8-hour work day, you need time to eat, time to shower and use the bathroom, time to talk to your family over the phone. Let them know that after all your necessary day-to-day tasks are done, that’s when you notice and respond to texts.

When you are together, in person, that is when you make him feel like a king. Make him feel like he is the most intelligent, attractive, and funniest guy on earth… but reserve this treatment only for when you are together in person. Set boundaries outside of that so they are trained to respect your time off.

[involuir]

shamayne williams

[anyataylorjoys]

Mary & George (2024) 17th Century Jacobean Era Costume Design by Annie Symons ↪︎ @lgbtqcreators creator challenge: layout + rainbow

[piningintrovert]

My bad, Yak. I wasn't familiar with your game. Congratulations on the horizontal beach tango.

WANDEE GOODDAY (2024), Ep. 4 // Ep. 12

[canisalbus]

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