#it doesnt help that I have to improv poses and expressions and stuff a thing that Im not good enough at style emulation to do well

[arolesbianism]

I love drawing Aris as sif so much she's so cutsies. It almost makes up for the horrors of having to draw her as sif. Almost.

[bluegiragi]

ok im going to be brave and not be on anon for this because i need to send screenshots as i rave about how INSANE ABOUT THE REDRAW IS. IM NOT OKAY. HOLY SHIT IT WAS SO GOOD. i went frame by frame to compare and im losing my mind because the two year improvement is so OBVIOUS and im like. balls to the walls insane. (i hope this was okay i'm so normal i swear but this was just SO COOL. and showed so much growth i need to speak about it because it was so cool and i was very inspired hi) first off, i didnt even REALIZE it was a redraw. the original was just that good in my mind. i saw it, saw your style and didnt even QUESTION the jump in quality cuz "ah yes ofc thats always been how i saw it in my head" anyways. i have things im literally clawing at the walls for. first things first! GOING INSANE AT HOW OBVIOUSLY YOU IMPROVED IN ANATOMY UNDERSTANDING

LOOK AT THIS. THIS IS SO COOL. THE DETAILS. THE IMPROVEMENT. THIS IS SO INSPIRING. IM GOING INSANE. when i read the og i LOVED the way the hands moved, but the change makes so much SENSE. i love how theres less tension in the redraw, it feels like he's being casual about it. he's calm, he's not kickstarting his engines like he's eager to rock konig's shit!!!! his body is more serious and relaxed, it feels less flirty and more a genuine lesson he wants to teach konig to help the guy out again, the ANATOMY UNDERSTANDING!!!!!

improvement goes SO hard im staring im staring im staring but also haha i see that you drew the right hand this time its not cut off heehee BUT ALSO THE BODY LANGUAGE. in the og he doesnt look tense he just looks uncertain, in the redraw he looks like a startled meerkat standing at attention and again AUGHHHH IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE IN CONTEXT OF THE PLOT HERE. CUZ YEAH HE JUMPED TO ATTENTION WHEN GHOST CALLED HIS NAME YOURE SO CORRECT IM GOING INSANE AT HOW YOU MANAGED TO CONVAY THAT IN THE REDRAW. but also slay you kept his slutty little waist yippee we never stray far from the source material HUIEHFDIEURFIER ugh i LOVE the soap redraw

in the redraw they feel so much more weighted and aged and grounded and im clawing at the ground CUZ WHOA LOOK AT THAT JUMP IN UNDERSTANDING AT LIKE THE PLANES OF THE FACE AND STUFF WHOAAAAA YOU CLOCKED IN FOR THESE TWO YEARS I LOVE HOW IN THE REDRAW HE TILTS HIS HEAD UP he looks so SMUG and sure of himself it shows off so much CHARACTER UGHHHH HIS EXPRESSIONS FEEL UNIQUE AND BELIEVABLE FOR HIS CHARACTER also heehee i see hand improvement (slay!) i LOVE the head swivel cuz it feels like his eyes are!! leading!! us!! to where!! we should be looking !! next!!! UGHHHH THE IMPORVEMENT.

it adds movement IT FEELS SO ALIVE!! IT FEELS SO MUCH MORE IMMERSIVE!! SHEDDING REAL TEARS!!! AUGHHHHHHH THE ANATOMY IMPROVEMENT (i scream for the millionth time) but also HEEHEE HAND IMPROVEMENT !!! I SEE HAND!! AUGHH IM SO INSANE ABOUT HOW MUCH THE HANDS IMPROVED THEY CONVAY SO MUCH IM STUDYING HOW YOU DRAW THEM SO HARD

also i saw the redraw and went "heeehee he's so burly omg" before i realised it was a remake and now im insane over how much you beefed him up. thats so real and correct of you actually. OKAYYYYY WE'RE GETTING TO THE ACTION. WOW I HAVE SO MUCH TO YAP ABOUT.

LOOKAT THAT IMPACT. UGHHHHHHH LOOK AT THAT ANATOMY UNDERSTANDING AND HOW IT FEELS LIKE REAL MUSCLE HITTING THE GROUND. UHGHHHH IM SO INSANE THAT LOOKS SO GOOD IT LOOKS SO AUGHDYRYURRJHEHBFHFEVHBEH im doing laps. i love how you hint at existing muscle im studying your art under a microscope. THIS SHOT. THIS PIN. its almost the exact same pose but UGHHHH THE IMPROVEMENT.

i love how theres so much more tension in the way you draw figures. it feels so purposeful. i love the bunching of muscles as they interact with each other and the slight camera angle change that makes you FEEL the weight of ghost pressing down. i love the change in expressions too!! it feels like konig is taking this seriously and actively struggling against ghost's grip and IUGHH i could go on forever but also HEE HEE HANDS!!! HANDS WERE DRAWN!! HAND UNDERSTANDING IMPROVED!!! (i love. so much. sorry i keep pointing it out) THIS. IMPACT. GOES SO HARD UGHH.UHEWFHIUFIUHFRDF. i love LOVE the experience that putting FORCE into the movement speaks to

i LOVE HOW DYNAMIC IT IS I LOVE THE SLIGHT ANGLE OF THE GROUND TO REALLY FEEL HOW IT REELS TO HAVE YOUR FACE SMASHED INTO THE GROUND LIKE THAT hehe i love hand i LOVE hand i love how you draw hand THIS SHOTTTTTT THIS SHOT THIS SHOT THIS SHOT (i say. but i am fully aware ive just been going frame by frame)

I LOVE THE CHANGE IN ANGLE I AM SCREECHING I AM FROTHING AT THE MOUTH I FEEL SICKKKKK. THAT PERSPECTIVE CHANGE IM GOING INSANE ITS SO DYNAMIC IT FEELS SO GROUNDED i love how your character interact with each other and the way you draw the give of flesh and cloth is so :((( IS SO. IM STUDYING OKAY. IM LOOKING. IM STARING SO HARD. but also the redraw really makes you feel what its like from konig's perspective and and how ghost is looming over him and you feel it so much more keenly cuz he feels like he's looming over US (the audience) and and THE COMIC MAKING SKILLS SHOW THEYRE SHOWING THEY SHOW I SEE THEM I SEE THE SKILLS love the weight of his knees hitting the floor. love how CLEAR you made it in the redraw even though it was totally understandable in the og love how you panel things you make it look so easy and i KNOWWW its not and its just so AUGHHH

love the perspective change again love how CLEAR AND CLEAN IT IS TO REALLY FEEL KONIG BEING CHOKED (slay) AND THE NEW PERSPECTIVE CREATES SO MUCH TENSION IN FORM AND ADDS SO MUCH TO THE STORY AND AND i love the slight change in konig's pose cuz he's still trying to break free and in the redraw its like a show of ghost's strength and skill that he's not budging even when konig is making a genuine effort AND AND IM. IM SO. UGHHH ITS JUST DONE SO WELL OKAY. HEEHEE THE HAAANDSSS i love how you posed them a little differently to give the readers clear view of what theyre both doing while still keeping pretty much everything the same

BUT ALSO THE BODY LANGUAGE. in the og (i loved this shot of the og btw it still goes hard) he looks slumped over, it feel passive, its like he's defeated and just letting ghost whammy him into the ground over and over which is real but the redraw adds so much DETAIL AND STORY OKAY ITS SO AUGHHH LIKE LOOK AT THE LITTLE WORD ADDITION I FORGOT THE NAME it makes it feel like he's trying to catch his breath and also like he's moving instead of being slumped over and it shows he made an EFFORT in the spar like lOOK HE'S BREAKING A SWEAT HE DOESNT LOOK DEFEATED IT JUST LOOKS LIKE HE'S STRAINING WHICH HE SHOULD BE CUZ HE'S PARTICIPATING IN THE LESSON ITS SO REAL ITS SO IUERHFIUREHFGIURFGRIUGIU ITS SOOOOOO. but also heeehee ghost is so burly in the redraw i love how you gave him a little bit of pudge but thats not the point here sorry i got distracted AUGHHH THE HAAAAAANDS sorry ive been struggling with hands recently and seeing you draw them so well is making me spin circles in joy

BUT THIS. THIS SHOT. UGH. I LOVE HOW HE HAS HIS HAND BRACED AGAINST THE GROUND AND ITS LEANING BACK IN THE REDRAW. he looks shy and startled instead of nervous and uncomfortable AND THATS SO. ITS SO STORYTELLING ITS SO PEAK POSING ITS SO IMPROVEMENT ITS SO. i really struggle with having characters interact believable with the things around them and the redraw just shows how weighted and grounded your art feels and and its so inspiring actually sorry if i keep using the same words but its TRUE love the realistic change of the mask being yanked from the chin instead of grabbing ghost's face and also i love how much more real? the fabric looks bunching in his hands AND ALSO EEE the HANDSSS

but also i cant reall say anything here that i havent said above so instead is repeating myself like a freak i will scream and shout into the void unintelligibly AUGHHHHHH THE POSES THE HANDS IUIE3RIHFTRIUGTUG EEEEEEEE THE ACTION LINES I DONT KNOW WHAT THEYRE CALLED BUT AUGHHH THEY ADD SO MUCH LIFE AND MOVEMENT AUGHHHHH. HEEE HEE HANDS but also i love how he looks angry/intense here instead of shocked like the redraw. its a lovely reminder he is, at the end of the day, a dangerous violent guy in a violent profession. very cool 10/10 change

skipping over ghost being pinned cuz i have nothing better to say than "heehee. nice." and im getting dangerously close to the 30 picture limit ugh i LOVE how you draw ghost looming every frame he's in. he's such a solid undeniable presence that feels so correct with his character. i love how he's so looming he's covering most of konig which adds to the feeling of konig scrambling back like YES. THIS IS SO CORRECT. i love how in the redraw konig's hands are tucked to his chest instead of waving like he's trying to make himself smaller and less of a threat. VERY COOL. very sick. very nice.

to end it off, i love how smug you redrew johnny. like look at that fuckass smile. look at that SMIRK. that eyebrow raise johnny i know what you are. i also love how the long mullet propaganda from the monster au came back to haunt the redraw 10/10 excellent wow that took so long to put together holy shit. IN SUMMARY. dude. i'm sure you dont need me to say anything. dont look at me. but i've been following your art for half a decade (only found this account last year by accident but i've been on the other one) and your improvement is so incredible and its so inspiring and i've been looking up to you since i first started drawing (this is not an exaggeration) and i love your comics and you've always been such a pillar in what i strive for in my skills and I DUNNO MAN YOUR IMPROVEMENT IS SO OBVIOUS AND IM ALSO VERY EMOTIONAL AND ITS SO COOL and i love your art and LIKE AGAIN, ME SAYING THIS MEANS NOTHING BUT like. i know deeply how much WORK goes into skill like this and its so ugh i know ive used the word inspirational like 30 times BUT I DONT HAVE A BETTER ONE and yeah. love your stuff. perceive your skills. sorry i went insane in your askbox i really hope you done mind. i also hope you know how cool you are. <333 have a nice day! :)

"me saying this means nothing" it means everything jelly...(i hope its okay i call you jelly, i went to your blog to see what you like to go by bc after such a long and thoughtful message i felt like i couldn't not refer to you by your name). ive been having a real tough time for a while struggling with my relationship with my own art and my stamina and how things that used to come so quickly and easily seem to come so much slower and. just the fact that someone out there feels so much about my work that they'd sit down to write such a long message (with screenshots!!!!) means so much more than i could put into words...like you interpreting all the little things like slight alterations in posing or angles and even the shading like...the care....im just so touched

im really so unbelievably grateful and happy over this message, it made me genuinely grin from ear to ear seeing you appreciate all these little details and my art improvement and god, you saying you've been watching my work for half a decade is OOFT but so, so humbling and kind. and. yeah uhhhh thank you so much? for all of this? and being here still, somehow? i just. yeah. im kinda just lost for words. thank you so much. what a wonder it is to be perceived...

(also, idk if you ever stop feeling like you don't know how to draw hands, im definitely still in that boat looking at some of my peers!! which isn't to deter you or be condescending and i hope it doesn't come off that way, just that it's a relatable feeling and I definitely know how you feel some days ;_;)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 29 Feb 2020 (EFF dream-job, Medicare For All Bond Villain, Bloomberg's Sackler connection, Tory housing crisis and more!)

Today's links

EFF is hiring a new tech projects director: It's a once-in-a-lifetime dream job.

Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to sign a binding arbitration waiver."

FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL: A 26% alcohol habanero spirit from Empirical Spirits.

Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations: Just helping out the "Friends of Mike."

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis: No one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII.

Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts: Tories are always swallowing spiders to catch their flies.

This day in history: 2012, 2016 (leap years!)

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

EFF is hiring a new tech projects director (permalink)

There are lots of ways techies can help EFF – contributing code to our projects like Certbot, Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere and/or joining up and writing a check. But right now, there's a rare chance to work directly to make profound change with us.

That's because EFF is hiring a Tech Projects Director.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/eff-seeks-tech-projects-director-lead-awesome-technical-team-and-help-us-save

It's a huge gig, the kind of thing that only comes up once in a very long while. You don't just get to oversee the impressive roster of EFF projects, you also get to set future priorities.

"Some people join EFF having been burned by unfeeling tech companies or corporate law jobs, and coming to EFF can feel like coming home – a place where everyone genuinely wants you to be successful, where we do our best to leave drama at the door even as passion is welcomed."

I've been with the org for EIGHTEEN YEARS and this is so, so true.

Even if you're not right for this gig, keep checking in with our help wanted page.

https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/jobs

We're growing fast, first because the world is severely messed up, and second because our member-donors recognize how well situated we are to make a difference and they're funding us to expand.

Bond villain monologue, Medicare for All edition (permalink)

We're all familiar with the Bond villain setup: "Mr. Bond, I see you've ingested my poison."

But what follows in Matt Haughey's "Monologuing" is a fabulous satirical take on the Medicare For All moment.

https://a.wholelottanothing.org/2020/02/28/monologuing/

"No, Mr Bond, I expect you to…"

Locate in-network doctors on our website

Cross-reference with the benefits PDF you were sent last month

Create a login

Verify your last three home addresses

(before the poison hits)

Call your doctor and agree to see a physician's assistant so you can get treatment in less than 3 week

Agree to a $100 urgent-care co-pay

Pay $1200 for the ambulance to the ER

"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No, I expect you to continue to wait on hold because your call is very important to us and may be monitored for quality assurance purposes."

FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL (permalink)

"FUCK TRUMP AND HIS STUPID FUCKING WALL" is "a habanero spirit made from a base of pearled barley, Belgian saison yeast, and koji. The clear product is rectified with a habanero vinegar that gives it a 27% ABV. This imparts an intensely fruity habanero profile without any of the heat."

It actually sounds delicious.

https://us.empiricalspirits.co/products/fuck-trump-and-his-stupid-fucking-wall

It's $85 plus $35 S+H in the USA for 750ml.

Serving suggestion: "With red grapefruit juice, topped with sparkling water and cornichon as garnish"

I'm a little bummed that they take out the capsaicin, as I love spicy booze.

My current favorite is a spicy, sugar-free Old Fashioned:

2 shakes Hellfire bitters 2 shakes Angostura bitters 1 jigger decent bourbon Orange zest (wipe over rim, squeeze into glass, then drop in the drink) Serve over a whiskey rock in a lowball glass

Mike Bloomberg helped the Sacklers launder their reputations (permalink)

The Sackler family became some of the world's richest billionaires through the actions of the family business, Purdue Pharma, which committed a string of felonies as it conspired to addict the world to its killer opioid, Oxycontin. The company's bribery of doctors, scientific frauds, and corruption of its regulators allowed it to kickstart the opioid epidemic, which has so far claimed 200,000 US lives, more than were lost in Vietnam.

And yet, until very recently, the Sackler family was primarily known for its art philanthropy, firehosing its money and name over some of the world's most prominent art institutions. As the family's role in corporate mass murder came to light, artists demanded that institutions remove the Sackler name. It worked! Nan Goldin's stunt of showering the Guggenheim with Sackler opioid prescriptions was just one of many amazing actions.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/nan-goldin-leads-a-protest-at-the-guggenheim-against-the-sackler-family

The Louvre also removed every mention of the Sacklers from its spaces.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190721-sackler-name-removed-louvre-opioid-crisis-france?ref=tw_i

But you know who DIDN'T ditch the Sacklers as they were becoming social pariahs? Guess who expressed rock solid billionaire class solidarity with the poor, beleaguered plutes when their reputation laundry failed them?

Mike Bloomberg, of course!

As @propublica reports, when the Sacklers worried about their collapsing reputations, they knew who to turn to: the ex-mayor whose return to his news organization meant that reporters who chased billionaires were sidelined.

https://www.propublica.org/article/bloomberg-sacklers-opioid-crisis-public-relations

While Bloomberg had been mayor, his newsroom created a "billionaires team" that investigated the doings of the super-rich, including the "Friends of Mike" (FOMs) whom everyone understood to be untouchable under Bloomberg's management.

Upon his return, he heaped scorn upon these investigative reporters: "Why is that news? Why do we have to probe into that stuff?" Mike's return to the newsroom created "a culture of not wanting to upset billionaires."

So naturally the Sacklers turned to him! And Bloomberg obliged. After meeting with Mortimer Sackler, Bloomberg gave the Sacklers crisis communications advice and helped them his old mayoral press secretary, Stu Loeser. According to Bloomberg, Loeser was perfect because of his new communications company's "political instincts and deep connections."

Loeser went on to work with the Sacklers as they pushed out the story that opioid addiction was the fault of weak-willed criminal addicts, not corporate drug-pushers.

Loeser now works as a Bloomberg presidential campaign spokesman.

With Bloomberg's help, the Sacklers were able to continue to leverage their philanthropic donations to shore up their reputations, particularly by embarking on joint projects with Bloomberg Philanthropies. Bloomberg posed with Sackler heiresses at the opening of the Sackler Wing of London's Serpentine Gallery (which eventually took the Sackler name off the building), and then served as chair of the Serpentine Sackler Galleries.

His news organization ran multiple, glowing stories about the Sacklers' generosity, and continued to work closely with the Sackler families, even as they were committing a string of crimes.

For example, money laundry to the tune of billions.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Fraudulent misrepresentations of the company's role in the opioid epidemic.

https://www.propublica.org/article/data-touted-by-oxycontin-maker-to-fight-lawsuits-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story#167506

And giving some of the weirdest, most risible, most terrible testimony in the history of corporate criminal depositions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

Just more Friends of Mike!

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a climate plan as big as the climate crisis (permalink)

The climate crisis is an existential threat to our species (and many other species besides). It turns out that Keynes was more prescient that we knew. He proposed that you could start an economy by paying half the unemployed to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. Instead, we spent more than a century subsidizing our ancestors to dig up fossil fuels and now we'll have to pay our descendants to spend 200-300 years getting all that carbon back into the ground.

If we don't, our civilization will collapse and our species may go extinct. There's no time for half-measures. That's why Bernie Sanders's version of the Green New Deal is such a big deal.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615292/bernie-sanders-has-an-audaciousand-hugely-expensiveclimate-plan/

He's the only leadership candidate whose plan actually confronts the scale of the crisis.

The $16T (yes, TRILLION) plan includes $2.5T to convert all US energy to renewables, "ending subsidies, mountaintop-removal coal mining, and the import and export of fossil fuels."

He'll also ask the DoJ to investigate criminal frauds committed by energy sector companies that spent millions to delay action on climate by pumping out disinformation along with their CO2.

The budget also includes $2T for a retrofit of our homes and workplaces, $1T to retrofit roads and other infrastructure.

There's $3.6T to convert the US's vehicles to electric, $85B for charging stations and $100B to improve electric car manufacture.

There's $900B for mass transit and high-speed rail, and $150B to improve emissions from aviation and marine transport.

In all, the plan creates "20 million jobs, while offering wage guarantees, job training, and other assistance to displaced energy workers."

As James Temple writes in MIT Tech Review, there are some odd quirks, like a rejection of carbon capture, but these are issues in the margin that administrative agencies staffed by independent experts (not corporate shills) might tweak.

But this is the plan we need. Remember, no one ever asked how we'd pay for WWII, and a Nazi victory would have merely put half the human race in mortal peril, while the climate crisis threatens us all, and without the hope of regime change down the road.

The purpose of the economy, the justification for markets, is that they promote human prosperity and progress. Scratching in flooded rubble for canned goods and drinking your own urine is not "progress." If our spreadsheets can't figure out how to allocate capital to heading off an extinction-level event, we need new spreadsheets. As our friends at Prager "University" like to remind us, "facts don't care about your feelings."

Cutting the UK housing subsidy led to massive homelessness payouts (permalink)

Margaret Thatcher sold off council houses to create more Tories, on the theory that home ownership made you a Conservative. But the end of council estates just meant that private landlords were able to gouge local governments for substandard housing for poor people. Predictably, this only worsened, with rents spiraling for poorly maintained, dangerous housing. Eventually, David Cameron got a genius idea: he'd cut how much money families could spend on private rent.

After all, this was much more politically feasible than ordering landlords to provide decent housing at a fair price. Landlords make campaign contributions and vote Tory, and a majority of Tory MPs are landlords themselves.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/corbyn-tried-pass-law-make-homes-safe-last-year-conservatives-rejected/14/06/

By contrast, council tenants vote Labour and are (by definition) too poor to bribe politicians. Just as with Thatcher's selloff, the outcome of Cameron's policy was totally predictable to anyone whose wealth didn't depend on their denying it.

People couldn't pay their rent, so they became homeless.

You know what's more expensive than paying rent for poor people? Helping homeless people. The savings from Cameron's cruel policy of limiting rent subsidies were totally wiped out by the millions more that local governments had to pay to find temporary shelter for the wave of homelessness Cameron had created.

That's not all, of course. Voter turnout among affected households plummeted, and when they did vote, it was in the Brexit referendum, where the housing benefit cuts strongly correlated with a Leave vote: "We also observe that a one standard deviation increase in the level of exposure to the cut in a district is associated with up to a 2.2 percentage point greater level of support for 'Leave'."

https://voxeu.org/article/housing-insecurity-homelessness-and-populism

The inability of the British private sector to build affordable housing and the unwillingness of the public sector to fill in the gap has produced a ghastly quality of life. In Camden, £1500/month gets you a 27sqm "flat" whose bed is literally a mattress wedged next to the toilet.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/uk/london-renting-compared-berlin-gbr-grm-intl/index.html

And yet, Greater London has never had a better ratio of bedrooms to people. It's just that HALF the beds in the region are empty on any given night. But with 60% of the UK national wealth represented by property in the southeast, the last thing the Tories want to do is fix this misallocation, which has been such a boon to the ownership class.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/14/great-housing-disaster-danny-dorling-review

This day in history (permalink)

#8yrsago In Minecraft, a fountain of cats at the top of the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iNw2YcAK9Wc#!

#8yrsago Smithsonian building archive of printable 3D scans https://www.cnet.com/news/smithsonian-turns-to-3d-to-bring-collection-to-the-world/

#8yrsago Finance industry bemoans hard times in an era of reduced bonuses https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex

#4yrsago Crapgadget apocalypse: the IoT devices that punch through your firewall and expose your network https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-internet-of-things/

#4yrsago Press looks the other way as thousands march for Sanders in 45+ cities https://web.archive.org/web/20160314104804/http://usuncut.com/politics/media-blackout-as-thousands-of-bernie-supporters-march-in-45-cities/

#4yrsago FBI claims it has no records of its decision to delete its recommendation to encrypt your phone https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160226/14181133727/fbi-claims-it-has-no-record-why-it-deleted-recommendation-to-encrypt-phones.shtml

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Alice Taylor (https://twitter.com/wonderlandblog), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/) and Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/.

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[teapotteeth]

Not to be a bother, but do you have any tips for staying motivated? For example, I just picked up drawing last year after being too depressed and doubtful in myself to do it for many years before that. But even though I have a desire to improve my skills now, I have an immense amount of trouble getting myself motivated to do the practice actually needed to improve. Like, at most, I practice only a couple times per week. So I'm not improving at the pace I want, and I'm really dissatisfied tbh

Thats understandable! I know exactly what thats like! Sometimes, practice doesnt seem like fun and can be difficult to understand or like, even DO. I learnt that! When i was younger I would get frustrated because I wasnt improving, It didnt seem like i was doing better and I was doing all of those little ‘improvement exercises’! Like you know what the professionals do? With the circles and the crosshatch and the big fancy proportion tutorials.

And while those are super useful and definitely suggested! What really helped me was picking something i was really interested in; my characters, my favourite characters, places i liked, things i enjoyed and incorporated that! So I would practice portraits with my characters, Id use my art not just as ‘practice’ but building things up to go into a project! I gave my art its own little purpose so my practice on poses would express something about the characters personalities and backgrounds would include as much personality and lil hidden things as I could give them!

I also looked at art styles I really liked and incorporated bits of that into my work too! Its tricky, but once you use practice as another way of drawing stuff you enjoy and working to get to a certain style you enjoy; it will be a lot more fun and motivating! It also helps to have a few ideas! So writin down a few things you want to see or want to aim for! I dont usually follow my list to a T, but it helps offshoot other ideas and what i want to achieve yknow?

Either way I know youll find a way that youll enjoy and have fun with!! I know im not very helpful but I hope something made sense there! Good luck!!

[freakypumpkin]

dude seeing your art makes me so happy everytime, it's so beautiful i don't even have words. i was just wondering how you practiced drawing bodies when you started out, and if you maybe had an example on how you work on construction lines and such? bc when i draw bodies they always end up looking stiff and the proportions look off and weird and yeah. i'd really want to improve /quickly/ or efficiently but everytime i try to practice i end up frustrated bc it doesnt look like i want it to at all

Thank you very much :) I’m always happy to hear, that people enjoy my art experiments :D and just art in general.

As for your question, I pretty much practiced through trial and error and youtube tutorials. By now there’s great and helpful stuff on youtube. Important is, that you see everything as half-true, nobody has the perfect wisdom for you because nobody draws like you. You should look through some things and see what works for you or what kind of result you want. (The same for whatever I have to say, btw, if it doesn’t work for you, then it’s not because you’re bad, it’s just not the right method for you.)

I hope, something of this will be somehow helpful, but as always feel free to ask when there’s still something unclear or you have more questions. (I always feel like I ramble a lot.)

What I did:

Learning about the general measurements of the body.-> I have a mental checklist by now, I keep in mind when drawing bodies and on there I have different information about how big/long the parts of the body are in comparison to other parts: Most prominently I use - the thighs have about the length of the upper body- your elbows are at the height of your waist- the full length of the arms reaches the middle of your thighs- the hands with fingers are as long as the face- the lower arm is slightly shorter than the upper arm … basically, when you think, something is off, look at your own body and sometimes it also helps recreating the pose and see how it looks and how far, for example, your arms can actually reach, when you make a certain move. 

The same goes for the face. Like, depending on how realistic you want to work, the space between your eyes has the length of your eyes for example. Or that the line of the lips is parallel to the line of the eyes, and that the eyes are usually more in the center of the face, than you’d think. (I have the tendency to place them too far towards the corner of the face.)

These are the proportions, that often help a drawing, when you feel like something is off - at least for me - it tends to be because an arm is longer than the other or something like that, the head is too small/big, etc. If you’re not sure, go through the different parts and look how they behave in size compared to the rest of the body. And when you look at photographs, look at how long something is compared to something else or how thick and also when you want to draw somebody muscular, look at references and look at where the silhouette of the body differs from somebody non-muscular, how do muscles influence the proportions and where are they (you often already get different necklines for different body types).

Then about movement: 

First off: Fluid movement is difficult, don’t beat yourself up about it too much. And I already mean something ��simple’ like walking or running, because it’s one thing to make a drawing where somebody can recognize ‘Ah, the character is running’ and where they can actually feel them running (sounds cheesy, I know), where the weight is positioned right and the hair moves accordingly and so on.-> So, start small, don’t aim too high too soon, if you try to skip the steps in between, you’re going to hurt yourself.

(Second: With portraying movement well, the composition of your drawing also plays a role, too. So there are a lot of factors, that play into whether or not movement looks good. It’s not something you do on just one level.)

Now, what I mostly did here, is learn and practice foreshortening and  perspective in general, and not just with bodies, just drawing simple objects in a certain perspective can already help to work up your three-dimensional thinking and the awareness of the fact, that in a certain perspective or position for example parts of the body are simply not visible. 

Other than that, I usually look at drawings, that I admire because of their motion and try to analyze why I like them so much, what catches my attention about the motion, then I try to copy that and break the often more complex drawing down into the most basic lines. You don’t need details and shading to sell the motion itself, they help, but don’t carry it. For this, it’s also always interesting to look into behind the scenes drawings of animators and such. Well-animated animes are always great for that study or movies.

Also, first practice proportion, then go into motion. If you don’t have your proportions worked out, your motion won’t look good.

And now just some general things about improving efficiently. 

- Daily practice, just stick to pencil sketches. (If you want to, maybe try out sketching with color pencils, so it’s not always grey.) But do at least one each day, fill your sketchbook pages.

- Concentrate on what you want to practice, choose smaller parts of the body. One week you only draw hands, the next one it’s only feet, then you get to full upper bodies or facial expressions, take your pick, but if you’re having trouble with full bodies, go step by step. (The human body is complex as hell.)

- Watch the people around you (as creepy as that sounds, but try not to be creepy). If you see somebody talking with their hands, look at for example, with what hand gesture which part of the fingers are visible, how big/long are they compared to each other.

- Erase every line, that doesn’t belong. You drew a perfect hand, but it’s not in the right space? Erase it, you will draw great hands again.

Some technical stuff I do:

- For the first sketch, when you hold your pencil, move your fingers a bit further up, so you’ll have less control over where exactly the line goes, which helps to create more dynamic lines and it helps with not putting too much pressure on it right from the start.

- I started sketching with an 0.35 mechanical pencil, which gave me more room for details, which ended up being a lot more relaxing for the sketching process. :)

And in the end: Don’t stress yourself, seriously. If you practice every day, you will notice, how some things will get easier, how you start building up a form of archive of lines for different things, and you will get faster at getting the right expression down on paper.

Be kind to yourself, breathe. If you don’t get anywhere with one sketch, start another, just don’t throw your sketchbook out of the window. :)

P.S.: Unfortunately I don’t have anything, that would show my work with construction lines properly because my sketches tend to get very messy or I just erase the helping lines when I don’t need them anymore. I would have to film the process to show how I do it, I think. Would there be an interest in seeing how I sketch?