#personalized brushes

[abuddyforeveryseason]

This is the Buddy for May first. It's May Day, so Buddy's wearing his finest summer suit, and the blackwood trees are blooming with red, bloodlike flowers.

A couple of personalized brushes were used for the background - the red spots are classic Kirby dots, the ones I use a lot for drawing smoke, energy, hair sometimes... The trunks of the trees themselves were made with a roller-type brush I mde on FireAlpaca. I kind of wanted to make them look more organic with a few white notches, but they ended up looking rather same-y, so I don't think I'll keep using that brush.

Not that it matters since I lost that particular brush last time I wiped the computer. I can always make it again, but there's no point.

I like a story where the bad guy's wearing white, though. I don't really know why, it's just a fun design choice.

You know, even though Taxi Driver is the best movie of all time, it's created a blueprint for other, worse movies, where the main character is supposed to be a conflicted villain, or someone who becomes villainous due to the circunstances around them, but the audiences sees them as a realistic anti-establishment hero.

Sure, that's happened with movies before it, like The Third Man, but that's a more adult movie, it's a different context, and in many ways that was the implicit point of the movie. That's kind of what makes it the best movie of all time.

But it feels like Taxi Driver paved the way for a throng of movies that are just wish-fulfilment fantasies of reactionary violence, with the creators insisting that the idealized hero isn't supposed to be idolized and that the fans just "missed the point".

But, seriously, if the fans are missing the point like that, doesn't that mean the moviemaker is just incompetent? Or, you know, maybe they should stop making those movies, since it's obvious the fans will "miss the point" again? Considering how much money these movies bring in, that's not too likely.

The worst movie of all time is one of those, and despite the "misinterpretation" of the story by the fans, there was even talk of a sequel that would once again be "misinterpreted", not that it affects the director's profit margins.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is a movie like Midsommar. It's pretty cool, and some critics (morons, mostly) say that the movie's being misinterpreted as being about a radical feminist heroine. That hasn't really been happening, but it's an attempt of going "well your side's doing it too" when defending against criticism of the crap they love.

Although I'm not sure if Midsommar is a movie I should be discussing today. Does it take place during May Day? I know there's a may queen coronation ceremony, but I'm not sure the midnight sun thing happens during May.

Well, I'm far from an expert on the subject. Nevertheless, it's still the best movie of all time.

[winterofherdiscontent]

. moon kitty (2021)

[magentasnail]

I'm just a toy to you my love...

I saw someone comparing ford and fiddleford's relationship to ford and bill's relationship and I haven't been the same since

[lazylittledragon]

mombin pt 9!! it's been too long i'm sorry

(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)

[bananafire11]

He has arriiiived. I think i got almost everyones suggestions.... oh and wretched is there too

[hinamie]

realizing how much i like drawing him a million years too late :<

[pistachiar]

this was originally like a whole different composition lol but yk severance ref

[stankworth]

Soft spot

[wilimia]

Snack for the road

[hellenhighwater]

Ho sorry to bother you

I’ve been lurking for a while loving all your sculptures and your kitties!

I’ve had cats my whole life, but they’ve always been short-haired. I rescued a long-haired stray not too long ago and unfortunately had to get most of his fur shaved off due to matting.

Now it’s grown back to a decent length and I was wondering if you had any tips or tricks to keep his fur from matting again.

Malice, Vice, and Mayhem always have the prettiest looking coats so I was curious if you used any particular brush for them and how often do you groom them?

Thanks so much for giving us awesome kitty content! Hope ya’ll have a wonderful day!

Brush regularly! I mostly use an undercoat rake, a slicker brush, and a regular hairbrush. Mayhem and Vice don't actually need help with their coats (that may change when Maybe outgrows her baby fluff) but Malice absolutely does. She's got incredibly dense fur that she doesn't do a great job with on her own. The undercoat rake is going to do the most to prevent matting near the skin.

Malice is very, very prone to matting, more that any other cat I've had. And she haaaaates being brushed, even when bribed. She does prefer a wet brush, though-- it's less staticy. I just dunk the brush in a container of water intermittently, which does also make the shed fur easier to gather up.

I've tried a lot of different brushes with her and haven't come across any she prefers, so I'm sticking with the effective undercoat brush and bribing her. I should note that if a mat does form, I often cut it out instead of trying to brush it. I'll brush out what I can, but she doesn't mind the little round-tipped fur scissors at all and it's less stressful for her. Sure, it'll occasionally result in a little short patch, but it's less stressful for her and that's a higher priority than her looks. I try to finger-comb knots out too, which is also less hated than the brush.

It may be that now that your cat is in better living conditions, he'll be able to keep up with his coat without help-- it really does depend on the individual and the coat texture.

[ljesak]

painting practice

[katabay]

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A KNIGHT...

the visual inspiration for this was a combination of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs and also Bernardo Cavallino's The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin

this was supposed to be just a one off illustration to get the thoughts out of my system, but then I started thinking about medieval politics and warfare and plagues and a castle and home as both a place of refuge, a prison, and a tomb, so perhaps they will end up as ex voto characters as well.

you may say, hey! that rosary looks like it has too many beads! it's a fifteen decade rosary, probably. dominicans are really into marian devotions. it works out.

also. spiral style stair cases. oh boy. it was that unexpectedly more difficult than I originally thought it would be to draw. the more I think about it, the less I understand them, even though I had a million photos of the stairs in front of me while I was drawing it.

⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!

⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[llemon-soda]

joy and whimsy

[thebibliosphere]

My Grammarly subscription finally ran out in December, and I'm not renewing it (see my various past rants about their introduction of AI), but I just got my final "insights" email, which tallies up how many words you've written for the past week but also since you started using it.

I almost want to frame it as a fuck you to my "I'm not doing enough" brain worms because, since September of 2019, when I reinstalled Grammarly for a pro-editing job (required by the company, as many of them now do 🙄), I've written over twelve million words.

I primarily used Grammarly for my emails.

That's 12,834,172 words of telling people they're gonna be okay. Sharing resources, doctor information, and just general words of comfort. That MCAS isn't a death sentence. That MCAS from long-covid isn't the end of their life; it's just going to be different from now on.

And here I was, feeling guilty about setting up auto-responders with links to resources because I got too burned out to do it one-to-one anymore...

...Yeah. No. I did enough.

I did enough.

[hinamie]

theyre soft your honour

[solarpunkani]

Hot 4am take but I feel like if we want to get people more interested in making their yards a more habitable space for wildlife like insects, we have to acknowledge that ‘Don’t want bugs in your house’ is still a 100% fair and valid point of view. ‘Loves nature’ and ‘doesn’t want roaches spiders and mosquitoes in the house’ aren’t opposites.

And with that in mind, when we propose to people that spraying pesticides around houses is Not A Good Idea, Actually, I feel like we need to give an alternative asides from ‘deal with it.’