#maybe post old artwork

[lillia-bloom]

I should probably start posting here again huh.

[bllmak]

a very important conversation

[sableeira]

always wanted to arrange my artworks in a gradient and since I started drawing again over a year ago, I was finally able to put this together 🫶

[batclawsss]

im sure he knows!

[quackshley]

uhhh the scrunkliess!!!!!!!

[lesbiangiratina]

Oooouuhh okay thats just an oldweb archive blog but the artist talked about that piece on twitter. And drew testament again when they were added to strive. I think kayleigh mckee signed prints of it??? Okay yes. Crazyyyyy

[gearsphere]

[crabussy]

its u, its the mf who restarted my william afton addiction 🫵🫵

IM SO SCARED HOW DID I DO THAT. I AM SO SORRY GET WELL SOON

[leafgorge]

fuck it

okay uhh

i guess i’ll do one of these?

100 notes: i’ll write more poems and finish my wip paintings

250 notes: i’ll try to fix my sleep schedule

500 notes: i’ll clean my shithole of a room

750 notes: i’ll tell my parents about how detrimental to my mental health they are and seek therapy and a diagnosis

1,000 notes: i’ll come out to my parents

good luck bitches

EDIT: since this is close to getting to 1k notes, i’m going to add a couple more goals :3 i’ll be updating soon on actually doing some of these that i’ve already hit

2,000 notes: i’ll try to actually start hydrating (impossible)

2,500 notes: i’ll pick up guitar again

3,000 notes: i’ll post some of my old works on here

4,000 notes: i’ll try to get prints of my artwork and sell them (get my work published!!)

5,000 notes: i’m going to actually make a plan on how to not buckle under the weight of my own expectations

7,500 notes: i’ll try to stop starving myself

10,000 notes (final boss): i’ll try to get gender-affirming care and maybe cut my hair short (this one probably isn’t going to happen)

edit: oh my god you people terrify me what

okay umm this post has actually genuinely helped with my mental health so uhh

[girlshadowthehedgehog]

oh, maria...

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The thing with the Mari Lwyd, though, is that it's being... I don't know, 'appropriated' is the wrong word, but certainly turned into something it isn't.

Thing is, this is a folk tradition in the Welsh language, and that's the most important aspect of it. I feel partly responsible for this, because I accidentally became a bit of an expert on the topic of the Mari Lwyd in a post that escaped Tumblr containment, and I clearly didn't stress it strongly enough there (in my defence, I wrote that post for ten likes and some attention); but this is a Welsh language tradition, conducted in Welsh, using Welsh language poetic forms that are older than the entire English language, and also a very specific sung melody (with a very specific first verse; that's Cân y Fari). It is not actually a 'rap battle'. It's not a recited poem. It is not any old rhyme scheme however you want.

It is not in English.

Given the extensive and frankly ongoing attempts by England to wipe out Welsh, and its attendant cultural traditions, the Mari is being revived across Wales as an act of linguistic-cultural defiance. She's a symbol of Welsh language culture, specifically; an icon to remind that we are a distinct people, with our own culture and traditions, and in spite of everyone and everything, we're still here. Separating her from that by removing the Welsh is, to put it mildly, wildly disrespectful.

...but it IS what I'm increasingly seeing, both online and in real world Mari Lwyd festivals. She's gained enormous pop-culture popularity in recent years, which is fantastic; but she's also been reduced from the tradition to just an aesthetic now.

So many people are talking/drawing about her as though she's a cryptid or a mythological figure, rather than the folk practice of shoving a skull on a stick and pretending to be a naughty horse for cheese and drunken larks. And I get it! It's an intriguing visual! Some of the artwork is great! But this is not what she is. She's not a Krampus equivalent for your Dark Christmas aesthetic.

I see people writing their own version of the pwnco (though never called the pwnco; almost always called some variant on 'Mari Lwyd rap battle'), and as fun as these are, they are never even written in the meter and poetic rules of Cân y Fari, much less in Welsh, and they never conclude with the promise to behave before letting the Mari into the house. The pwnco is the central part to the tradition; this is the Welsh language part, the bit that's important and matters.

Mari Lwyd festivals are increasingly just English wassail festivals with a Mari or two present. The Swansea one last weekend didn't even include a Mari trying to break into a building (insert Shrek meme); there was no pwnco at all. Even in the Chepstow ones, they didn't do actual Cân y Fari; just a couple of recited verses. Instead, the Maris are just an aesthetic, a way to make it look a bit more Welsh, without having to commit to the unfashionable inconvenience of actually including Welsh.

And I don't really know what the answers are to these. I can tell you what I'd like - I'd like art to include the Welsh somewhere, maybe incorporating the first line of Cân y Fari like this one did, to keep it connected to the actual Welsh tradition (or other Welsh, if other phrases are preferred). I'd like people who want to write their version of the pwnco to respect the actual tradition of it by using Cân y Fari's meter and rhyme scheme, finishing with the promise to behave, and actually calling it the pwnco rather than a rap battle (and preferably in Welsh, though I do understand that's not always possible lol). I'd like to see the festivals actually observe the tradition, and include a link on the booking website to an audio clip of Cân y Fari and the words to the first verse, so attendees who want to can learn it ahead of time. I don't know how feasible any of that is, of course! But that's what I'd like to see.

I don't know. This is rambly. But it's something I've been thinking about - and increasingly nettled by - for a while. There's was something so affirming and wonderful at first about seeing the Mari's climb into international recognition, but it's very much turned to dismay by now, because she's important to my endangered culture and yet that's the part that everyone apparently wants to drop for being too awkward and ruining the aesthetic. It's very frustrating.

[transgirl-from196]

Silhouette Tree

[dismies-art]

a little reference of mary i did for artfight so people could see her vibes :-)

[bweirdart]

nearly oc-tober time again - time for some prompts for 2024

F.A.Q

do i have to draw?

not at all! you are free to participate with any medium that suits you... writing, artwork, free bases and templates, simple text posts, in-character-as-your-oc roleplay, whatever! (just no stealing or AI)

do i have to make new content?

nope! re-uploading old stuff that fits the prompts is allowed (and encouraged) ... old art that didn't get the appreciation it needed always deserves a chance to be shared again, it's a fun throwback!

do i have to post every day?

nope! only 10 days are mandatory (the ones in red with a star symbol) and everything else (yellow) is 100% optional! if you're busy or tired, please skip as many as you want

can i start early?

you can prep your posts in advance if you need to ... but please wait until the right day in october to share them!

can i re-upload your prompt list to another site?

i would prefer if you dont - i have accounts on most sites, so just reblog/retweet/share from me!

event tag?

#bweirdOCtober

have fun!

image desc/text version ↓under the cut↓ or on bweird.art/october

prompts:

WEEK 1: OC INTRODUCTIONS

WEEK 2: BUILDING BACKSTORY

⭐ 1: FAV OC

what makes them your fav?

2: NEW OC

how recently did you make them?

3: OLD OC

how long ago did you make them?

⭐ 4: UNDER-APPRECIATED OC

an oc you feel like you don't talk about enough, or you haven't fleshed out as much as you would like

5: RE-DESIGNED OC

an oc who has changed a lot (what changed about them?) or, if you haven't redesigned an oc: is there anything you might want to change about an existing oc?

WEEK 3: FUN + GAMES

⭐ 6: PAST

where is your oc from? what did they look like as a child?

7: LIKES

what do they like (and why?)

8: DISLIKES

what don't they like (and why?)

⭐ 9: RELATIONSHIPS

doesn't have to be romantic! can any kind of relationship (frienship, family, rivalry etc)

10: PERSONALITY

what are your oc's main personality traits

11: SYMBOLISM/THEMES

what represents your oc? is there a specific colour you associate them with, or a specific animal?

12: FUTURE

what will your oc look like in the future? do they have any plans or goals?

⭐13: MEMES

do any memes remind you of your oc? are there memes your oc would find funny? maybe you want to redraw your oc as one?

14: WHO/WHAT INSPIRED YOUR OC

are there existing characters that your oc looks like? was your oc based on yourself? is your oc originally from a specific fandom?

15: MUSIC

share a character playlist, write a songfic, post lyrics that remind you of them, etc

⭐16: EYES CLOSED or NON DOMINANT HAND

draw a picture of your oc with your eyes closed or with your non domminant hand, write or type a paragraph about them without your eyes closed, etc ... have fun, and don't worry about it looking "bad" -it's meant to!!

17: DnD ALIGNMENT CHART

put all your ocs into a DnD alignment chart, or any other similar chart if you prefer

i've compiled a few templates on my site, but you can find more easily if you google "oc alignment chart"

⭐18: SWAP

swap something between your ocs - their role in the story, hairstyles, personalities, fashion taste, species ... whatever you want! how would this difference change them?

19: PALETTE CHALLENGES

draw your ocs with as many of these colour palettes as you want (or just skip if you don't draw/don't like doing these!)

WEEK 4: COMMUNITY

hex codes for the colours:

palette 1 - #3C1E81 #6D1EA2 #B059E8 #FE0876 #FE5284 #FE7C96 #E0CFE3 #FFD5C3

palette 2 - #352823 #673F28 #AB541C #BA8233 #897128 #A68B2F #F7BF6A #DAC3A4

palette 3 - #A42E25 #D7412B #E47C29 #F7A233 #FCC02D #FCE4A6 #486548 #FEFDE8

palette 4 - #2F4769 #39597E #53779C #94D1E7 #AADDE7 #D48DB7 #D498B5 #D2BABA

some ideas for what you could do: talk about a friend's oc you like, make gift art/writing of them, collabs, trades, reblog/appreciate ocs in the event tag, make interactions between your ocs and other people's

20-26: A WHOLE WEEK OF SOCIAL STUFF

if you don't have the time/energy to do every day this week, ⭐ day 23 is the only one marked as mandatory! you can skip the rest!

WEEK 5: HALLOWEEN

⭐27: FEARS

is your oc scared of anything? do they have any phobias? are they startled easily? would any of your ocs try to scare ppl on purpose?

28: MONSTER

what would your oc be if they were a monster (eg: werewolf, vampire, eldritch beast.. whatever) or, do you have an oc who is already a monster?

29: PUMPKIN CARVING

your ocs carving pumpkins, a drawing of a pumpkin carved to look like your oc ... or even carve it in real life!

30: GHOST

this can be literally a ghost, or a concept that haunts your oc! up to you!

⭐ 31: COSTUMES

what are your ocs wearing for halloween?

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Obligatory post about the newest #MonkeyCruise piece!

The original is based on a painting by Elihu Vedder, an American artist living from 1836 to 1932. He was producing work that is put into the category of symbolism these days.

Elihu produced some really nice work but his painting "The Questioner of the Sphinx", that I used here as reference, is probably my favorite. You can read more about his work here: https://www.incollect.com/articles/the-mysterious-art-of-elihu-vedder

The primate I took for this image is the just recently described Buronius manfredschmidi, a small, early hominid from the Miocene of the Hammerschmiede locality. It's not known from much material, just some teeth and a patella, but it's unusually small and perfect for this piece.

Hammerschmiede preserves a river system with all sorts of critters, most famously another hominid, Danuvius guggenmosi. So it wasn't really a desert like on the original painting, which is why I also have some forest in the background.

(artwork by Mauricio Anton)

The setting which I imagine here is that after a larger flooding event, maybe caused by rain storms up in the alps, leading to this scene of mud and exposed old bones of a deinother. It's also inspired by current events in Bavaria where heavy rain is causing lots of flooding, thanks climate change.

[late-draft]

Hello, Dema here!

First off—I have fallen desperately in love with your artworks. You have a very particular style, strong and fluid all the same, and I can't help but admire the way you draw and how you approach character design.

And talking about character design...

I saw your post about Zuko's bold design in S1 when compared to what we got in S3 and—as much as I love S3-Zuko—I completely agree with you. Something I've always loved about Zuko in S1 is just how striking he was, how much of a presence he had, even when he was being tossed around by a twelve-year-old. That being said, I love Zuko, I love him in armor and pointy shoes and with a ponytail, and I loved your alternative design for him.

What do you think about his S2 character design? How does it flow with the story beats and his overall character arc? Much has been said about the Hair-Growth-Means-Character-Growth (and I find it interesting, also, that he cut his hair again before joining the Gaang), but I'd like to know your opinion on how that translates to character design and how the decisions made in the show could be either good or bad in that regard.

Sorry about the long ask! I've just been thinking about this a lot, lately, and would like to know what you think. Hope you have a good day ❤️

AAAA Dema hii!!! I'm so happy I got a message from you, I didn't expect it!!

I'm super glad to hear, I'll wear it as a badge of honour and I must tell you that I also love your art, you wonderfully do volume and the shading done through a contrast of sharp and soft areas! Super solid anatomy too and I'd be lying if I said I didn't look up to your art!

Yess the character designs in the show actually are rather strong, I like a good balance between memorable and functional. Zuko is just *chef kiss* but, considering just how many appearance changes he goes through, some are bound to be weaker than the starting one. That said, I'm gonna go through a few of his S2 looks and make this reply long, ha!

The starting one when he ends up huddling with uncle Iroh with other poor refugees, fits extremely well for the narrative at the moment. It's actually one of my least liked looks for him, and that's great!! It's precisely how it should be, because he's also arguably at one of his two lowest moral points in the story - he basically lost almost all hope, no clear goal, nothing to fight for, he's desperate precisely because of the lack of orientation and thus his morals degrade and sink veeery low. He gets on my nerves so goddamn much in this period LMAO I want to beat him up, he looks like a recovering drug addict... annoying, entitled whiny jerk stealing food and anything shiny for his uncle, but even then he just does not cross the moral event horizon. Excellent characterization. He just looks atrocious and it's great because it fits this low point.

Next he gets the standard boyish square of a hair, no notes here...

But theeeen, he arrives at one of my favourite looks of his, and it's not just because the clothes fit him very nicely (I've seen fandom say they look too big for him which, maybe?? But it doesn't look like he's swimming in them to me) And a thing I've noticed which, maybe it was just an accident on design part but I'm not sure considering they colour coded the entire cave scene; in this part his clothes match the shape of Katara's, first one in bottom then the one in top. The collar is the same haf-circle design but I don't know, maybe there was a limited pool of clothes designs guide which they cycled through. Or, he really is meant to come close but miss Katara by a beat, like sine and cosine chasing each other.

But besides this outfit fitting the inconspicuous Earth Kingdom customer service persona, it also (perhaps inadvertently) does this VERY cool thing:

It makes his shape look closed off and guarded, supposedly non-threatening. It's most visible in his fight against Jet, whose shape is open and goes in many directions like an aggressive star. But then look at what Zuko's shape does:

When he attacks, it opens up to reveal the hidden aspect, again the aggressive star shape shows up! The same thing happens in "Zuko alone" episode but I think it's most clearly visible in this fight against Jet because here he has a direct contrast and comparing with Jet. I think this is an example where the outfit, whose similar design exists irl, overlaps with a great visual metaphor and enhances the narrative at that moment in story. He's still that combative firebender but he has to keep that aspect concealed most of the time. Plus it just looks badass as hell!!

Animators really knocked it out of the park with many frames. I think Jun was too early and missed his better hairstyle, but Katara was just in time.

I agree it's super funny how his hair in the Beach is awfully long, covers his face to an uncomfortable degree and then he apparently shortens it before joining the Gaang, insane behaviour Truly an "I'm so angry and depressed I won't show my face nor be capable of seeing anything because there's nothing nice to see in my life" look...

I guess all his appearances in S2 cover his mental states, but only one of them is extremely Extra (the tea server, doesn't even take the apron off and goes to fight) and I don't see any spot where a similar tier design could be shoved in, narratively speaking. So all in all, S2 did as much as S2 could have. More tea server arc please though, the Guru episode really feels like it skipped 800 km of plot and everything that happened in it is so crammed and pretty sus in terms of character behaviour.