#procreate has taken over majority of my drawing time

[mildcrow]

sketchy veggie laois before bed 🥕

[ladytygrycomics]

Hey there!! I just read all of Unguarded, and I loved it! You are a fantastic storyteller, and add a lot of depth and nuance to Freeza, who's by far my favorite DBZ character. I have a question for you, as a gay man what originally drew me to Freeza was his effeminate mannerisms and looks, and while it came from queer coding that is very common in villains, I found it very cool to see such an iconic character seem so unashamedly gay. I was wondering what your opinion on Freezas sexuality is?

    Hello! Thank you for the kind words. It always makes me smile when someone tells me they’re enjoying the story. It continues to update twice per week on ladytygrycomics.com and three times per week on the patreon; there is plenty more story to come!

    I can count on one. . . finger the amount of cold questions I’ve gotten over the last year so I will try my best to make this count. 😊

    Please forgive me my verbose tendencies but I feel like a simplistic response isn’t the way to go here.

     One of the paradoxical blessings and curses of Toriyama’s writing is that he doesn’t overthink decisions like these (if he considers them at all). Like you said, Freeza is interpreted as heavily queer-coded, at least by many Western fans—typified even more if they are fans of the Funi dub. I tack on that clarification because I’ve heard it argued that Japanese audiences read his mannerisms differently and I don’t have the background to comment one way or another on that.

    In addition to not addressing these types of questions, not that I blame him given the tone and genre of his story, Toriyama is inconsistent with the decisions he does make. Similarly, the responses he gives in interviews have to be taken with a grain of salt. It is hard to read them as anything other than Toriyama shooting from the hip since they almost never see fruition in the actual story.

    I mention this because it really gives fans the freedom to interpret these characters however they want. When fans have a blank slate, they sometimes project their own preferences onto the characters and they start to look for clues throughout the series that reinforce those interpretations.

    Now, the reason I brought all of THAT up is because I feel the need to differentiate between my interpretation, what I actually write, and what the showrunners are likely to do if they ever had to commit to a decision.

I’ll start with the canonical show. For reasons of practicality, I imagine the character is intended to be asexual. Toriyama developed a tendency to trot out female characters when [Saiyan] offspring were needed only to toss them to the wayside once the addition is done.

    We saw asexual procreation with Piccolo and Cell. The current showrunners seem to struggle with writing female characters in general and based on how they handled (or didn’t, rather) the Kale x Caulifla relationship, I don’t see them changing up the formula any time soon. DBS is trying to step outside old tendencies in that regard but it’s baby steps.

   Growing up, Friends was the most popular TV show with my peers. I personally preferred Frasier. By the time I was in middle school, this was likely one of the key reasons why I was familiar, and comfortable, with metrosexual men.

    My personal experiences growing up involved a lot of frustration in people misinterpreting my sexuality solely because I had interests and hobbies that were traditionally masculine. I also preferred t-shirts and jeans (still do) over traditionally feminine clothing.  While I no longer harbor insecurity about that sort of thing, this, coupled with the metrosexuality oozing throughout Frasier, was likely a big reason why I didn’t see Freeza’s mannerisms or appearance as an indication of his sexuality.

    Stepping back from any intentional implications from Toriyama, I presently view the character as either asexual (if his species is revealed to procreate that way canonically) or pansexual. Freeza is very much his own being and if he has an interest in someone, I feel like someone’s gender isn’t going to stop him.

I suppose the next logical question would be related to how Freeza’s sexuality is presented in Unguarded. In case anyone who is curious happens upon this response and feels this is important in deciding whether to read my fan comic, the sexual experiences I have planned for him are those of convenient proximity and utility. I’m not above raunchy fanservice (it’s actually one of my favorite things to draw) but the inner working of Freeza’s sexuality is not something I plan to make a major focus.

Still, even if it oversimplifies everything to answer this way, I feel I should give a straightforward reply: his sexual encounters in Unguarded are depicted as heterosexual.

Tl;dr He’s an alien. He could be anything. 😊

[lgbtanimes]

As someone who uses the ipad pro and iphone x max constantly for school, I tend to dab around looking for the perfect apps to suit my needs and hobbies. If anyone wonders what apps I use for school, here are some “fundamental apps” I pertain to.

schedules and lists:

Calendars 5 - Calendars 5 is complete re-imagining of what the best mobile calendar experience should be. Calendars 5 is smart, excels in both tasks and events and runs on any iOS device you might have. It’s the calendar app you have been looking for.

Taskade - A great organized app that helps you organize your tasks or write simple notes.

Minimalist - a minimalist themed app that lets you list tasks very simple with other functions such as music and scenery to help you focus on those tasks.

timing, relaxing, and focus:

Clock - This is the default app that comes along with your ios device. I would say the functionality in it is very helpful to maintain alarms and a steady sleep schedule with the sleep function!

Tide - The tide app is an amazing peaceful app that lets you choose a time setting for how long you will work with soothing sounds playing in the background. The sounds really do help me focus and I highly recommend this app.

Flat Tomato - This app helps you split your time and measures it. For example, you would work for 25 minutes and then you would have a 5 minute break. This app really helps me with splitting my time and my tasks accordingly.

Forest - The forest app is absolutely great if you need help with staying away and off from your phone. The app grows a tree for up to two hours of constant studying which you would grow your tree in the meantime. If you do go on your phone and switch the app, the tree dies.

Flora - This is an alternative if you cannot or do not want to buy the forest app. It sort of works just like Forest, but you have a small 2D garden rather than a square terrain you see your trees grow on.

Oak -  Oak helps the monkey-minded decompress by transforming meditation practices from experiments into habits. We support you from your first session to your 500th, with mindful, loving-kindness, and sleep meditations as well as unguided sessions and breathing exercises. Individualize your meditations by duration, and customize with silence or calming background sounds. Oak tracks your progress and encourages you to continue building a healthy meditation practice.

drawing and art:

Procreate - My absolute favorite app that works so well with art. I draw most of my art work in there and occasionally make headers and calligraphy with it.

Ibis Paint X - This app is the pro version of another art app which has a few advantageous functions than procreate, but nonetheless helps a lot with making some really fine art.

titles and notetaking:

Over - The Over App is perfect to made headers and titles that are easily transferred to the goodnotes app.

Phonto - The Phonto app is another perfect app to make the titles with, but it isn’t easily transferred to the goodnotes app and you would need to save the image as a png to upload it to the page, but there are more fonts you could and you can add a lot of your own fonts as well.

Keynote - I use this app to make folders and planners and this works as a powerpoint but for apple of course. There are a lot of great tutorials that help with making cool planners and notebooks with this app.

Docs - Helps download videos and documents off online through mobile devices and organize files accordingly

Goodnotes - One of my favorite apps I use to take majority of my notes. It helps me organize my courses into different notebooks all in one app.

PDF Expert- I use this app in order to view my textbooks straight from the drives I use and occasionally edit and note take directly on my PDF books.

resources and flashcards:

Chegg - College resource with a flashcard app as well.

Course Hero - Upload documents to open documents related to the courses that you may be taking! Free when you upload your own documents, so try it! Great place to get accurate study guides.

The Khan Academy - App to take practice tests and get guidance on material related to your courses. Great app to get you on track and help you focus!

Quizlet - great app to organize flashcards and practice tests

DuoLingo- A wonderful language app that helps me keep a streak and maintain my language learning.

Periodic Table - This app is what it says it is. The periodic table. As someone who’s major focuses on Chemistry, I really do need this app and hopefully this app is useful for you all as well!

photos and editing:

VSCO - My favorite app that filters and edits images to make them look vintage or clean.

Snapseed - Another editing app with more controls and settings to help edit the images and color in areas to make them brighter or dimmer.

Afterlight 2 - A great editing app that helps add effects and details to images

PicPlayPost - an app that helps with organizing my images into collages or video cropping to make my images look neater. I also use it to edit my watermarks

Analog Seoul -  Analog Seoul is the eighth app of Analog Film City Series. With the specially created Analog Seoul photo filters, you can edit your pictures as if they were taken in Seoul.

printing, scanning, and storage:

Printerpro - A great app that helps with printing wireless from your iPad.

Scanner Pro - Scanning documents high quality and upload them to cloud

Drive - The best and foremost easiest storage to use and because I go to school/ university I have unlimited space for my files!

iCloud Drive - I only use this for photos or back ups, but occasionally it works well when I need to transfer files through apps that only use this form of storage.

Dropbox - Another storage application, but I usually use this for items I don’’t really need unless there’s an emergency. I use it to store mostly audio files and heavy files for keynote

entertainment and reading:

Netflix - To watch all my favorite movies and shows

Crunchyroll - I watch all my animes that I can here on this app

Kissanime - of course an alternative to crunchyroll is kissanime if you want to find animes for free (there are ads though)

Youtube - I mainly use this app for tutorials and guides to homework and projects

The CW - I watch all of my favorite local shows like the Flash, DC Legends, and Riverdale on this app for free.

MangaRock - I read most of my mangas on this app

iBooks - the installed app by apple where I transport a lot of my books into for reading and entertainment

VLive - For all my kpop friends, you know what this is for.

To be updated…

[thisnorthernboy]

Off the radar

Hi all, apologies for the lack of blog posts in the last few months. I've become a little disillusioned with social media lately and that's meant I haven't been posting content as frequently. I'm not sure if that'll change too much, algorithms and the like are taking a bit of the joy out of it. When you post something and it gets half the engagement a similar post was getting a couple of years ago, despite having more than twice the number of followers, it's a bit discouraging.

Anyway, here's what I have been up to since summer.

Patreon. I've continued to work on my Patreon project - Weird Field World. There's a bit of info about it here. I'm really enjoying fleshing out the world, adding background, history, little stories and characters. The engagement with my supporters there is great, and it's very energising to have people to discuss the project with. You can support me here.

Inktober. I failed to finish Inktober this year. I think I just ran out of steam and enthusiasm for the project after a couple of weeks. My plan was to draw a series of little building based, loosely, on the play Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas. I started off OK, but there wasn't, perhaps, quite enough to go on for a whole month of building drawings. I think I managed 14 or 15 in the end. I was reasonably happy with most of them, and I might add one or two more at some point. A bunch of the illustrations are available to buy, so I'll add a separate post soon.

Illustration work. This year has been a disappointment compared to last year. Working on a couple of books, plus work in a couple of magazines, some t-shirt designs and a little concept art work meant that 2018 was by far my best year for paid illustration work. 2019 by comparison has been awful. I've had a steady flow of private commissions this year, but no major commercial work at all. I've worked on concept art for a couple of clients, but both of those projects fizzled out due to publishing or financial issues. It has made me realise that I need to be much more proactive in seeking work, so in the last few weeks I've been getting organised. The year has ended brighter, a few little commercial projects have come in over the last two weeks, and I've had enquiries about a couple more.

Digital Illustration. A year or so ago I bought myself an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, hoping to dive in to the world of digital illustration. One of the main reasons for doing so was to be able to produce super clean linework that would reproduce well in print. I have found working digitally a huge, and difficult, leap. The simple act of drawing on something other than paper, even with a matt screen protector on the iPad, has taken a huge amount of time to get used to - and there were many times when I thought it simply wasn't going to be possible for me. The turning point was a suggestion from Rob McCallum on Twitter that I simply give up working on paper for a while, and only sketch on the iPad. It might seem like an obvious solution, but to draw digitally, and not get the results you want, for even a day was quite a task for me. Gradually, over the course of a couple of weeks things began to feel more natural. I got used to the feel of the stylus on glass, to the way digital lines worked, how to tweak brush settings to suit my way of drawing. Now, although I still have huge amounts to learn, I really do feel comfortable working on the iPad. I even enjoy it. Part of that is down to just how good the iPad and Pencil are, and how great a piece of software Procreate is. Together they are really quite formidable. Adobe and Wacom should be worried, particularly with the lacklustre release of Photoshop for iPad.

Parklife. I've continued to get out for walks as often as I can, if not as often as I'd like, in Bushy Park. Getting out in to the fresh air, and out in the open is hugely important for me, particularly if I've been stuck at my desk for a few days. I still get a thrill from seeing the variety of wildlife in the park - Red and Fallow deer, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and a huge number of other different bird species. I can't recommend getting out in to the countryside enough. Make the effort if you can, you won't regret it.

Reading. I've struggled to find moments to read this year. Not commuting in to London at all has been one factor - the only good thing about a three hour commute each day is that it gives you three guilt-free hours to read each day. Apart from that I just don't seem to have been in the right frame of mind. Perhaps it's a feeling of guilt - spending time reading when ideally I'd be working - even if I haven't had the work to do this year. I've tried to put things right in the last month or so. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Gareth Powell's sequel to Embers of War - Fleet of Knives. And Ann Leckie's Provenance, set in the Imperial Radch universe she introduced us to in Ancillary Justice, was a great read. Currently I'm reading Wilding by the appropriately named Isabella Tree. It's the story of how she and her (affluent) family set about rewilding large parts of their 1400 acre estate in Sussex.

That's it for now. I'll do my best to post more often. Do let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like me to write about.

You can find prints of my work here

I also have a Patreon page

And you can find more of my work online… Twitter Instagram Facebook Blog

[callsignbaphomet]

For the ABC OC Ask, randomly selected: C # 1-5, D # 1-5, F # 1-5, G # 1-5, I # 1-5, M # 1-5. It's a lot of questions, take your time & feel free to answer as few or as many as you want. :)

Ooh, no worries, I looooove lots of questions. Also sorry, wasn’t ignoring this. I’m a scatter brain with no sense of time management. Since a lot of these are repeated I’ll skip over them since they’ll be in the previous post. Also I’ll give the answer to whichever OC I think best fits the question.

C: Comfort1. how do they sit in a chair?Angelus sits horribly in any chair especially if he finds it uncomfortable since he’ll be twisting and turning every which way until he finds a comfortable enough position.

3. what is their ideal comfort day?For Jelani it’s a quiet day where his phone doesn’t ring and he can get up at whatever hour he wants though even if he tried he can’t really sleep past 8:30 and he can spend the rest of the day in the art room reading while his husband is drawing.

4. what is their major comfort food? why?For Angelus it’s totally steamed dumplings. Just had one shitty day once and was taken out to eat but he wasn’t feeling up to eating much but nibbled on a few and loved them instantly so from that moment on every time he sees steamed dumplings it’s like instant serotonin.

5. who is the best at comforting them when down?Abigail? LokeLoke? JelaniJelani? LokeAngelus? GingerGinger? AngelusTrevor? LokeTre? TrevorLatoya? Abigail

D: Decoration2. how would they decorate their child’s room?So Fae is actually a graphic designer and in her spare time an interior designer so when she head her first baby, Leah, she went overboard with the latest trends but made it cute and neutral since she wanted it to be a surprise. Now with the triplets she wanted to know their gender for sure given the fact that she was dealing with triplets. Again went with the latest trends turned cute but she stuck to neutral designs anyway.

3. how do they decorate their own room?Ginger and Abigail have a bit of a gothic theme to their whole apartment but their room is especially heavily themed. The rest of the place is subtle but not their room. We’re talking Victorian goth, black silk sheets, dim lighting, dark reds and deep purples and lots of black.

4. what type of clothes and accessories do they wear?Okay so for a while now I’ve been sketching and writing Angelus as a cross dresser and idk I think it fits him well plus he’s super into cute things. Any kind of skirts though he heavily prefers short and really short skirts, especially loves heeled boots, thigh high socks, baggy sweaters or any cute tops really. He mostly sticks to soft and pastel colors. Men’s clothes he’ll go with darker colors.

Accessories? He’s really into bows, flowers and really subtle bracelets, necklaces and earrings. No, he isn’t trans, he’s very cis. He just likes to cross dress and no, he isn’t doing it as a way to mock trans people he just really likes how he looks and feels while wearing women’s and girl’s clothes.5. do they like makeup/nail/beauty trends?Going with Angelus again, yeah he loves that stuff especially makeup. He’s gathered a pretty big collection of it over time gotten dozens of nail polish of all kinds of colors, and has a ton of makeup. He’d wear acrylic nails but 1) he’s super clumsy and 2) I’m not so sure it’s a good idea for a werewolf to do that.

F: Fun1. what do they do for fun?Most of them just really enjoy getting together, ordering a few large pizzas or just buying a bunch of tacos and bring a bunch of beer and soda and spend a few hours playing video games. Bringing their own consoles to have more people playing and if they feel silly enough probably stream it for friends who couldn’t come over to watch. If they don’t feel like going to one apartment they stay in their own and meet up online on whatever game they wanna play at the moment.3. who would they have the most fun with?Honestly a lot of them have known each other for literal centuries and have grown close and sometimes intimate so really they all just have a lot of fun together.4. can they have fun while conforming to rules?They can but Loke and Jelani are constantly holding the group back from making any idiot mistakes. Unless it’s to defend one of them they’re pretty chill when out.5. do they go out a lot?Not that often really. With the job sometimes they’re out for weeks and even months and when they finally have some down time they’re too tired to do much of anything else. They do go out though but just not when they’re on call.

G: Gorgeous1. what is their most attractive external feature?Jelani? Everything!2. what is the most attractive part of their personality?Abigail’s ability to always be encouraging and her bubbly personality just triples that.3. what benefits come with being their friend?Jelani: spoils friends and family every chance he gets, is always just one text or call away no matter if it’s an emergency or for fun, and is faithful to the end. 5. what parts of others do they envy?So out of all Angelus has the lowest self-esteem and he just thinks the worst of himself. He wishes he was as good a person as Loke is or as talented as Ginger or as confident as Jelani. Not just personality wise, he genuinely believes he’s some ugly monster that needs to be hidden (was raised to believe that and unfortunately stuck). He just wishes he wasn’t him on bad days but he’s been working on all of that and has done really well to the point where he doesn’t feel that way about himself all the time.

I: In-the-closet1. what is their sexuality?Angelus: gayJelani: pansexualAbigail: lesbianLoke: bisexual (demisexual)Latoya: pansexualTrevor: pansexual (aromentic)Ginger: bisexualAlly: ace/aroSanaa: queerIngvarr: bisexualJørgen: queerMason: gayTre: straightLeah: bisexualAnette: lesbian2. have they ever questioned their sexuality?Well, shit a bunch of them have at one point or another. Some took a little to settle their feelings while some took long years to realize certain things about themselves.3. have they ever questioned their gender?Asher did for long years though he wasn’t sure of what was actually happening and why he was so confused over a lot of things. Wasn’t until much later that he finally figured himself out.4. would/was their family be okay with them being LGBT?Angelus’s abusers, if they ever found out, would just use it as another reason to hate him even more though I won’t really touch up on that. They’re just incredibly hateful and abusive people.

M: Maternal1. would they want a daughter or a son?Loke wouldn’t care especially considering that they may end up being trans. He just wants one or two at the most.2. how many children do they want?Angelus wants none. He doesn’t hate kids or anything like that, he’s pretty good with them, really soft spoken and patient with kids. When Jela babysits his cousins he goes with him and helps out especially since it’s a teenager and three 7 year-olds. He’s just scared to death that he’ll end up abandoning them like his parents abandoned him (when I mean I abandoned I mean sold him) or worse that he’ll be like his abusers and he wouldn’t want any child to go through what he went through. Luckily his husband doesn’t want kids either.

As for Jax they’re Angelus and Jelani’s hypothetical child. Just something I wanted to have fun with. A Maker and a werewolf end up making a demigod hellhound btw!. Would this change in the future? Hell if I know, man. Maybe, maybe not.4. what would they name a son? what would they name a daughter?Trevor eventually ends up becoming a single father, accidentally but nonetheless he was super happy about it and will be a pretty great dad. He ends up having a son which he named Damien and had it been a girl he woulda named her Rosemary. If it wasn’t obvious Trevor is a huge horror nerd.5. would they adopt?Ginger and Abigail have talked about it a lot and since neither can have a kid (vampires in my setting can’t procreate, they’re very undead) they’ve decided to adopt but not yet. Not till they feel like they can be fully prepared.

[forksofwisdom]

Twilight Characters Cast as Greek Deities - pictures + explanations

Warning:

This is a long one (but there are a lot of pretty pictures!)

By Greek Deities I mean all of them - the Primordial gods, Titans, Olympians, Daemones (personified spirits), and Nymphs. I focused on the deities personalities, abilities or history to find the right fit! Relationships are not taken into account!

Thanks to the anon who encouraged me to combine my love of Greek mythology with Twilight! This is for you!

These are simply my headcanons, so you're free to disagree or expand on them as you like!

The Olympic Coven

Carlisle's foremost characteristic is his compassion and desire to heal others. He saved the lives of most of his family members; Edward, Rosalie, Esme, and Emmet. Asclepius, the son of Apollo and famed physician, was punished by Zeus for saving the life of mortals from certain death. He was elevated to godhood in death.

Esme is described as the heart of the family. In ancient Greece, the hearth was the center of the home and family. Hestia received the first offering in every household since she presided over the preparation of the family meal.

Jasper participated in two major wars, both as a major and then as a second-in-command. He isn't rash or sadistic enough to be Ares, but his gift for strategy and charisma makes Pallas, the Titan god of Warcraft and military campaign, an excellent choice for him.

Alice has the gift of foresight, but her vivacious personality is why I chose the Titaness, Phoebe, out of all of the prophets and oracles. Phoebe is derived from the Greek word "phoibos" which means bright or radiant!

Emmett has superior strength than most vampires. Kratos is the personified spirit of strength, might, power and sovereign rule.

Rosalie was a difficult choice because she's like the lovechild of Aphrodite and Athena. She's beautiful, passionate, and desires children (procreation) but a she's also intelligent and interested in mechanics and engineering which is Athena's domain. I went with Aphrodite in the end because Athena is a maiden goddess and asexual.

Edward was an easy choice however because there are surprisingly few gods who rule music. Apollo is the god of music, poetry, and healing (to name a few) and Edward has an interest in medicine. To my knowledge, there are no Greek gods with the ability to read minds as Edward does.

The Quileutes

Sam was forced to keep the Alpha position by Jacob, which is an immense responsibility. Atlas was condemned to bear the entire sky for leading the Titans in their war against Zeus. Atlas came to mean endurance. (I thought of Hades at first, and I totally agree with you anon - he's got the 'hard on the outside soft on the inside' thing down to pat, but Hades fit another character better!)

Jared has the penchant for gambling. At first, I thought Hermes would be a good match for him, but Hermes many other titles (so, so many titles). I decided that Caerus, who is the god of opportunity, critical time, advantage and profit, was a better fit since those are attributes of (successful) betting.

Paul has a temper, but he's not a sadist like Ares. Poseidon is infamous for his temper tantrums, causing earthquakes and tsunamis (he's also a petty bitch, and I wouldn't put it past Paul to be one too if he could get away with it)

Jacob has a love for mechanics, and not many can say that they built their car! Hephaestus became the god of smiths, fire, and metalworking and his creations are prized and sought after by all the other gods!

Leah was challenging to cast. Initially, I thought she'd make a good Artemis, but that goddess has notoriously born hatred for all men since her birth. The only side of Leah we get to see in canon is the front she puts up - burnt and bitter. She's argumentative, sharp-tongued, and downright vicious. Eris is... not pleasant to be around. I think Leah would join Artemis and become her handmaiden once she's calmed down and away from Sam and Emily.

Seth is our sunshine boy!!! (need I say more???)

Embry is reserved and likes his space. I think he's the type to take advantage of the trails around La Push and go on long walks and enjoy his own company. Pan was the god of shepherds and forests of the mountain wilds. The Greeks associated his name with the word pan which means "all." However, its true origin lay in an old Arcadian word for rustic, but I couldn't resist quoting Hitchhiker's Guide in the picture - it's my favorite. I'M ONLY HUMAN!)

Quil is remarkably relaxed and cheerful for a boy who's supposed to be raging with testosterone *cough* Jake *cough* Paul *hack*. He seems like the sort of guy to enjoy a good party, and Dionysos certainly does. It doesn't hurt that he's best friends with Pan (Embry).

Emily was against Sam imprinting her at first. She was a victim of circumstance (it’s still shitty what they did to Leah), and Persephone was precisely that: a victim. Hades asked Zeus for the hand of one of his daughters and Zeus said that he could have Persephone, but that he'd need to kidnap her because Demeter would never allow him to have her daughter. He stole her and later tricked Persephone into staying with him for eternity. They fall deeply in love by the end tho.

Kim's personality isn't known in canon - other than that she's shy. She's a favorite of mine though, so that's why she's here! In my headcanon, Kim is intelligent and offers great advice. She's cunning as well, and nothing goes past her - Jared doesn't stand a chance. Metis was a councilor of Zeus during his war against the Titans and hatched the plan which would make Cronus regurgitate Zeus's siblings. (She's also the mother of Athena - pls read her story it's incredible! ಥ_ಥ)

The Swan Family

Bella is a shield, both in her human life and as a vampire. She does what she can to protect her loved ones, even going as far as to sacrifice herself by drawing blood as a distraction during the battle against Victoria. Soteria is the goddess and personification of safety, deliverance, and protection from harm. Deliverance, the action of being rescued or set free, is appropriate since Bella saved Edward from his inner demons as well.

Charlie represents the human laws in Twilight as a police officer. He's calm and more accepting than most (though he has his limits *cough* Edward *cough*). Rhadamanthys was a famously just lawmaker during his mortal life and was appointed as one of the three Judges of the Dead and King of the Elysian Fields after he died.

Renée tends to shift her hobbies and interests from one to another. Horme is the personification of effort and represents setting oneself in motion, and starting an action.

The Volturi

Aro is the current king and ruler of the vampires. He isn't a philanderer, so Zeus was out, but how he murdered his sister, Dinyme, in cold blood to keep Marcus from leaving the Volturi (and thus losing his power) reminds me of Cronus's desperate attempt to thwart his prophesied defeat at the hands of his child. Cronus ate his own children and familicide was one of the worst crimes you could commit in ancient Greece.

Marcus was DEPRESSED after he lost Didyme, his mate. The guy whispered "finally" when his head was about to be ripped off. Penthos is the personification of lamentation and mourning.

Caius is a sadist whose answer for everything is death and destruction. Ares revels in war for its own sake. He delights in the din and roar of battles, in the slaughter of men, and the destruction of towns. When Thanatos (the grim reaper) went missing, and people stopped dying, Ares sulked and famously said: "What's the point of war if no one dies?"

Jane was easy. She experienced such pain when she was burning at the stake that she could wield it with her mind when she became a vampire. Lupe is one of The Algea, who are three sisters that are the personification of pain and suffering - in both body and mind - grief, sorrow, and distress.

Alec's power reminded me of Hypnos, who puts you to sleep before Morpheus gives you dreams. Alec shuts off all of your senses - kind of like turning the off switch.

Sulpicia isn't given much of a personality in canon, and in Life and Death, Smeyer simply turned her into a female Aro by giving her his abilities of tactile telepathy. She deserves more credit; she's incredibly old, and I like to think that while she's locked up in the tower, Sulpicia keeps up with the times by watching the news on TV or reading news articles on the internet. Mnemosyne was the Titan goddess of memory and represented the rote memorization required to preserve the stories of history and myth before the introduction of writing.

Didyme's power was inducing happiness. Euphrosyne was one of the three Charities and the goddess of good cheer, mirth, merriment, and joy.

Athenodora is said to be one of the oldest vampires still walking the earth. We don't know much about her, but I bet she's created a few vampires in her time to keep the species going. Gaia was born at the dawn of creation, and all of the heavenly gods are her descendants.

Corin's addictive power is what persuades the wives and Chelsea to stay content in their imprisonment. You go through severe withdrawal by leaving, but it can be done since Eleazar, whose ability Aro coveted, left with Carmen. Peitho personifies persuasion and seduction - not 100% fitting to Corin's talents but the best I could think of...

Felix is a high-ranking guard and relies on strength and combat techniques to serve his leaders. His physical capabilities are so powerful that he has maintained within the guard for centuries. Alexiares, whose name means unconquerable, is one of two brothers that preside over defense and fortification of Olympus's gate.

Demitri's tracking ability and "Casanova lifestyle" immediately reminded me of Hermes, who is the god of herds, travelers and hospitality, roads and trade, thievery and cunning, heralds and diplomacy. It's fitting because Demitri is also shown to be polite and restrained, but he undoubtedly has a few aces up his sleeves to have survived in the Volturi guard for centuries.

Chelsea's ability to strip people of their emotional ties and forge new ones is unnerving. Ananke was the primordial goddess of necessity, compulsion, and inevitability. She emerged from Chaos fully formed at the beginning of all creation and is thought to be untouchable by all, from mortals and the immortals. She's able to control the fates of other gods and make them slaves to their own urges if she so chooses.

Afton's ability to make himself invisible is not found in any Greek deity, but Hades owns a helmet which is made of darkness and renders the user invisible.

The Denali Coven

Eleazar's ability to see other's potential reminds me of Prometheus's forethought and the unshakable belief he has in the humans Zeus forced him to create.

Carmen is pretty chill and peaceful from what we get to see of her in Breaking Dawn. She isn't overly troubled by the legality of things since she accepts Renesmee, whose existence goes against both the laws of vampires and those of nature, at once. We see that Carmen is maternal and gentle when she asks if she can hold Renesmee. Eirene is the personification of peace, and for Carmen, I interpreted that as personal peace and not upholding the legal system. Statues of Eirene often depict her as a maiden holding the infant Ploutos (Wealth) in her arms.

Kate is OOOLD but not the oldest vampire in existence. Since the power of lightning is solely in Zeus's domain (and Kate isn't a serial rapist), I had to overlook her electric ability. Electricity is used as a source of light, so I think Hemera is a good choice for Kate. She's the primordial goddess of the day and would disperse her mother Nyx's dark mists every morning to bathe the earth in the light from the ether.

Tanya reminds me of the Titaness Eos because they both have an insatiable desire for handsome men. Eos shares Hemera's domain, and later took over her duty of bringing the dawn to earth by opening the gates for Helios's chariot.

Irina thought the Cullens had created an immortal child, which was the outlawed. To her, it seemed like the Cullens thought they were above their laws and reported them to the Volturi accordingly. Nemesis is the goddess who exacted retribution against those who succumb to hubris.

The Irish Coven

Maggie can detect lies. Aletheia's the personification of truth and sincerity.

Siobhan's talent is outcome manipulation, which I assume means she can affect the outcome of some event. Lachesis was the second of the Three Fates. She distributes the 'thread' of a life. "Lanchano" means to obtain by lot, by fate, or by the will of the gods.

The Amazon Coven

Zafrina's ability of visual projection reminded me of Pasithea's past time of inducing hallucinations and relaxation. She was one of the younger Charities but later married Hypnos and now resides with him in the Underworld.  

Kachiri was the first out of the Amazon Coven to be bitten, but she didn't want to be separated from her two best friends, Senna and Zafrina, so she went back and turned them as well. I'm endlessly fascinated by their coven, so I didn't want to separate them here! Macaria is the goddess of "blessed" death which reminded me of how Kachiri came to collect her friends.

Senna is the quiet one, but that might be because she was wary around the Cullens. Gorgyra is a nymph in the Underworld and gave birth to Hade's orchardist. I can see her chilling with Katchiri and Zafrina in her son's orchard.

James’s Coven

James is an asshole. He’s so petty that he couldn't deal with the Cullen's refusal of sharing their meal, so he tricked Bella into coming to him by pretending to have her mother (how would he know who Renée was and wasn't she in Jacksonville??? Use your brain, Bella). Dolos is the personification of trickery, cunning deception, treachery, and guile - so basically, he's a nasty piece of work. He and James deserve each other.

Victoria was the first one I cast. She instantly reminded me of Hera because instead of punishing her husband/mate for his wandering eyes (greedy, in James's case) she goes to great length to punish Edward by trying to kill Bella, who is the innocent one in this whole shitshow. Hera, the goddess of marriage, should have picked a better husband because Zeus already was notorious for panting after every attractive face that came his way before they wed (heck he even cheated on her during their wedding celebration).

Laurent didn't give me a lot to work with since he's only portrayed as a coward. That doesn't seem correct because he came back to warn the Cullen's of James's plans and he later returned to Forks as a favor to Victoria. Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus, was the Titan god of afterthought and excuses. I think Laurent regretted his decisions in the end, both for having traveled with James, and for having listened to Victoria. He also gave Bella the excuse that he had to kill her since Victoria was his old buddy.

Nomads

Peter was another difficult choice. At first, I thought Thanatos might be a good choice since Peter enjoyed fighting in Maria's army.  Thanatos's gentle touch kills instantly, but Jasper was the one who killed the newborns. Peter fell in love with Charlotte, whose newborn powers eventually expired, but instead of "delivering" Charlotte to her death, Peter told her to run and chased after her. Kharon (Charon) transported the dead across the waters to Hades in his boat but refused those that couldn't pay for the ride.

Charlotte is a survivor. She isn't a fighter by nature, but she made it through the Southern vampire wars alive and then fled with Peter to roam free as a nomad. Nike is the goddess of victory - both in war and in peaceful competition. I think Charlotte conquered all of life's trials and also when it came to love.

Alistair is an ancient hermit. He's suspicious by nature and rather displeased with his lot in life. I don't blame the guy since he was betrayed by his father and as a vampire, the falcons Alistair loved flew away from him in terror. Ouranos was the primordial god of the sky and was later betrayed by his sons.

Garrett was a hotheaded patriot who willingly fought for the colonies' right to self-govern. He was a true believer in the American dream. Menoetius was the god of rash actions and violent rage. The Greek word “menos” means might, force, passion, and battle rage.

Maria isn't a nomad, but I thought I'd include her on the list. She lived in Monterrey with her coven, her mate and two others that were like parents to her, before they were destroyed in the vampire battle for territory. Maria was the only survivor, and she built an army to extract revenge and get her territory back. Poine is the personified spirit of retribution, vengeance, recompense, punishment, and penalty for the crime of murder and manslaughter.

The Egyptian Coven

Benjamin was a tough one because of his elemental powers. The Greek gods divided the four elements between them, so there isn't one deity that has control over them all at once. Phanes was the primordial god of creation in the Orphic cosmogony. He was the generator of life and the driving force behind reproduction in the early cosmos. Phanes hatched from the world-egg, a primordial mix of elements split into its constituent parts. So he sort of had control over the elements at one point before dispersing them among his siblings. (Phanes was later known as Eros).

Tia was a quiet woman but when she did speak her words were insightful, and there was gravity to everything she said. Epiphron was the personification of shrewdness, careful consideration, and sagacity.

Kebi was Amun's slave while she was human. He chose her to become his mate because of her good looks. She was helpless from the start, and we never get to hear her speak or show any indication of being unhappy with her situation. Aporia is the personified spirit of powerlessness, want and difficulty.

Amun was tricky because, to be honest, he's a bastard, but we mustn't forget cultural relativity. Slavery was considered to be a-okay back in the days, and it was probably a fantastic way to keep a vampire's kitchen stocked. Now not so much but Amun doesn't seem like the type to evolve with the times. He's possessive and paranoid, keeping Benjamin locked away in an ivory tower so the Volturi won't come and steal him away as they did to Demitri. He also deprived Kebi of her choices and made her his slave/mate in death as well. Along with ruling death and funeral rites, Hades is also the god of the hidden wealth of the earth, from the fertile soil with nourished the seed-grain to the mined wealth of gold, silver, and other metals. Benjamin is Amun's hidden treasure.

Humans

Jessica is a normal teenage girl. She likes having friends, gossiping, and has a crush on the most handsome boy in school who doesn't return her affections. Echo was much the same; she gossiped, but she wasn't meanspirited, and genuinely wanted to help her friends in the conquest of love. She lied to Hera, who cursed her to have an echo of a voice as punishment for distracting her from Zeus's affairs with her endless chatter. She later fell in love with Narcissus who spurned her affections.

Angela is the sweetest, most kindhearted person we get to meet in Twilight. Philophrosyne is one of the younger Charities and is the personification of friendliness and welcome.

Mike has the hots for Bella. He has an on-and-off relationship with Jessica but only asked her out because Bella told him to. Himeros is the god of sexual desire and the personification of longing, and yearning.

Lauren is jealous of everyone who is pretty, despite being the most popular girl at school. She's also standoffish and snobby. Hybris is the personified spirit of insolence, hubris, violence, reckless pride, arrogance and outrageous behavior in general.

Let me know what you think!

Please don’t repost the pictures without asking for permission first and don’t remove credit!

[rachyrosa]

RSA - Brief 9 Moving Pictures - Change is Necessary 

Evaluation

Colour

Throughout my animation I have the three colours yellow, blue and green with black as a place holder for the original mindset. The colour is harsher at the beginning but becomes softer as the animation continues, to convey colours mixing as the mind changes and evolves, showing fluidity through colour as well as the movement. At the end of the animation the colours are very soft compared to my original idea of having an explosion of spinning colour moving around the screen. I decided to move away from this as I felt it would look too chaotic and confusing whereas now there is a heavy focus on the centre point changing and adapting within the line movement as though the mind is at peace and is in a better place now.

End Scene

In my end scene;  (‘And then, finally, we join together with others in diverse coalitions to build regenerative communities and systems that benefit the majority of life on earth, not just a tiny minority of one species’)

It is a tunnel for everyone’s thoughts coming together like a nervous system (diverse coalitions to build regenerative communities and systems) that is ever changing and growing. It is an organic development from an initial concept of the rigid mind. 

Your eyes are drawn to the centre of the shapes through the animation especially the end, as it is leading you down a path. To do this I played with the negative space to create the focus on the centre. The shapes that are formed are organic and regenerative reminding me of flower petals.

Music

For my animation I have created my own music which is a learning curve as I have not made music before. I used GarageBand for this where I wanted to create sound that sounded like my head is in a goldfish bowl. My overall thoughts about the music is that it is a bit repetitive, as there is more I could add and controls I can play with to make the sounds change as the animation does. At the end the sound could become clearer to show the new mindset.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a very long process and even though I enjoyed making the animation I believe the colour could be improved as some parts are too messy and not consistent all the way through. To draw the colour in procreate and overlay it on top in Aftereffects became much more difficult than I thought, and Tumblr has been compressing my video causing the quality to be partly taken from it, which is very annoying. To improve this, I should have given myself more time to draw the colour on the layers so there is more of a flow. Also, I could have been more experimental with the frame rate to convey the message. I struggled when adding the grain over the animation which, I continually contemplated whether it was a good idea, as I am not sure if it looked a bit odd in the end. The purpose of the grain was to remove the crispness of the shapes so they would look fuzzier to represent the mind processing new information. A better way to do this would have been changing the colours in procreate to have a grain on top of them as this would reflect the quality of the colour in a better light. I looked at a lot of risograph animators and I feel that if I had done my animation with riso printing then I would have been able to convey this. However, this would have taken much longer to achieve and unfortunately my time was limited.

I believe that I have highlighted the message in Sarah’s transcript, and I am happy with my animation, but I believe it could be developed further.

[linespider-blog]

Optimal Flow State Narration

I've been wanting to write more on comics/my comics process for a while now, but the challenge has been really having something to say in a way that would be substantial and worth the time it would take to write it out, which I'm trying right now.

Currently I'm processing two different comics in wildly different mediums: Megg, Mogg and Owl by Simon Hanselmann and Rain Like Hammers by Brandon Graham.

MMOG is not easy to explain, but it's very dark, humorous, and bleak, and depicts the dysfunctional misadventures of a witch, her cat familiar, a werewolf, and a humanoid owl named Owl, and their toxic codependency on each other and substance abuse, while navigating what it more or less apartment living in a mundane but also disgusting city. It's been a weird ride, and the story is ongoing, an is an examination of the long-term effects of the characters' addictions, their inability to move on in their lives, and the effects of their actions upon one another.

I got invested in this comic over the beginning of the Pandemic last year, as the creator already had a long-running series of books but began posting new storylines set in the Pandemic that were, on the whole, significantly more farcical, and considered not part of the ongoing plotline in the books. I ended up buying the most recent book, Bad Gateway, mostly in an attempt to better understand what I was seeing, and to better determine if I enjoyed it or was disgusted by it. Honestly it's a bit of both.

Since completing the Pandemic book, Hanselmann has been posting earlier stuff in his Instagram, as the collected book, titled Crisis Zone, has now won an Eisner and likely has grown his career a great deal. It's now come around to the point where I find myself reading the updates from Bad Gateway, on Instagram-the very book I've owned for over a year now that sits on my shelf. Part of the interest in this point is that the updates on Instagram are not merely shots from the book itself-they are carefully taken images from the original physical art, creating the strange effect of looking on my phone at artwork that is better than the actual physical pages of the work-you can see the texture of the paper, the use of whiteout, and so on. And yet I was doing this even before it dawned on me that the Instagram version was of the original images and not just the book online.

Hanselmann manages a 3x4 grid of squares on most of his pages in book form, which coincidentally allows the individual frames to work quite well on Instagram. There is really something to seeing such dedication and resolutely maintaining this form. The composition in each frame works, it's immediately easy to understand, easy to read, big obvious strengths. I like it, but I don't know if I could do it myself. I don't know how I would, right now, but I definitely see its advantages.

Rain Like Hammers by Brandon Graham is a far-flung future science fiction story. It was made by Graham during a time of deep depression in response to events in his career and his personal life that are hard for me to get enough of a read on to document here, but they certainly influenced this book. It is a strange book, and even though I have read it three times now, I'm still struggling with its story.

Graham's style is a lot more free-form, and has strong manga influences, often peppering his images with small notes, explanations of devices, or even tiny dialogue balloons expressing a single sidelong thought, and there's clear Moebius and Herge influences going on with his depictions of the fantastic (Moebius) in a simplified, clean art style (Herge). There's a character that clearly represents the author himself, and the story attempts to say some things about the transitional nature of identity, public ridicule, and the ways societies can normalize some behaviors while ostracizing others. It is, quite honestly, a very difficult read for me, and I have been familiar with his past works, but something else is going on here I still haven't unlocked.

I honestly want to write more on Rain Like Hammers but I'm still trying to understand it-for one, I still don't even know why it was given that title it has. It feels less like an explicit story, even if it attempts to present itself as such, and more like something...not necessarily dreamlike, but as a sketchbook that over time came to life and began asserting relationships between the separate ideas happening on each page. It floats. I can't tell if it works or not, it's just quite simply very unfamiliar feeling, in a way that makes it hard to translate its strengths. It's going to be a puzzle for a long time, I think.

Which is all to get at my own work, and my own thoughts on my work. I haven't used my iPad in a considerable amount of time now, in fact I have it turned off, as once every month or so I suddenly notice it's almost out of power and recharge it for a night and then do nothing with it, again. I'll no doubt bring it out when Procreate introduces its next major update, which appears to hint at some kind of 3D modeling aspect that is probably not quite what I am hoping for but time will tell...

A major reason I fell off the iPad was my realization on the importance of physical drawing on physical paper with a physical tool. The importance of leaving evidence, an object that can be considered and no just disappeared in another object. I also realized an odd feeling that...and this is hard to explain adequately, but...

When I draw on paper, I'm drawing on my brain. All the senses, the tactility of the page and the pencil, all of that travels up my arm and is written on my brain as I do it. With a stylus I get maybe 1% of that sensory information. Obviously I am not against digital art...but this difference is why I struggle so greatly to produce something digitally without realizing it on a page.

The other thing I want to write down here, is that...when working on comics, the drawing is the writing. I've been having a very hard time with Leonardo Da Vinci, which I won't get into here, but as an example, I knew I needed to really work out his role and presence in the story, as he's crucial and yet also...well, again, mainly it's important that I have him somewhere to serve the purposes he's meant to serve, as well as tie up some loose ends involving the armillary sphere that only he can deal with.

So I've brought him back to the barn on the castle grounds to work on that, and then I realized I wanted to bring the Penguin into the scene, so I had the Penguin climb through a window and greet Leonardo through the window. I'm still struggling with this frame, but, I had the Penguin standing in the window, holding one wing out to Leonardo pantomiming a greeting. Which leads to the next page, where Leonardo is standing up from his work bench, away from his projects...and I didn't know what to do there.

So I had Leonardo standing there, and behind him, the Penguin standing on the workbench, looking at Leonardo, both facing the reader. And I didn't know what to do. I kept circling back.

And then I realized that in the prior page the Penguin could, instead of waving to Leonardo, but holding a little scroll out to him, to add reason for his appearance, and enhance the interaction, so I added in the scroll.

Cut back to that next page, I have Leonardo unfurling the scroll to look at it, but the Penguin is still standing behind him, passively. I redo it again, and I realize the Penguin can be peering over Leonardo's shoulder to be looking at the contents of the scroll as Leonardo is reading it (for the record, the Penguin probably can't read, but he'd still be curious to know what's happening), so now we have the two figures interacting again and responding to this bit of news.

And like that I have rewritten this moment at least five times, reshaping the event forwards and backwards. To be honest, I still don't know what's in the scroll I've given the Penguin to deliver to Leonardo, and I have a lot to work out there. The biggest challenge with comics is that I find I'm usually try to think about at least five things at once:

-Story

-Composition (the interior of the frame itself and what it depicted therein)

-Character Performance/Interaction

-Set Design

-Layout (the composition of the various frames on the page and how they relate to eachother)

These five different things compete for my attention and often influence eachother. Surprisingly, the story is often the most passive participant...because so much, moment-to-moment, comes out of what is going immediately.

Anyway, I have much to do, and may day has only gotten started, and there will be groceries to take care of before work.

[myprofessionalpractice]

speakers

Al Murphy

Website Instagram Tumblr

The main point of his talk, Al said, was to reassure those who are nearly graduating, were nervous or worried about our degrees or life as an illustrator, as well as how to make the jump between having graduated and having a job. He shared that he was very scared in his final year, “freaking out” and wondering how or when he would get a job or be employed. Al said he now has an agent, that gets him jobs, and this is the best route to go down. Jobs take all sorts of different forms (such as the one below!). Many of his jobs now are editorial, promotional or for advertising, and he mentioned he would love to do more animation but so far his career hasn't taken that turn. 

His work, self-described, is usually character-based and humorous. Every aspect of his brand is bright, colourful and humorous too, including his website and his various social media. One quote from his solo show reads he’s been “described as the Ipswich Town FC of illustration”, in that “he’s been around for a long time but it’s hard to recall any of his major successes”, just an example of the kind of self-deprecating humour he uses in his work and his advertising. Another that also made me laugh was: “having spent ten years living in Berlin and New York he has recently returned to London where he spends his time telling disinterested others that he just spent the last ten years living in Berlin and New York”, which is relevant to our talk, and also funny. 

My own work rarely ever includes humour. It’s often character-based, however. I have never really thought about including humour in my work as it’s always been based on aesthetics for me, but it’s obvious that humour has a big hand in Al’s projects and how he gets employed for advertising. It could be worth trying this in future; seeing how humour can incorporate itself into my work.

Similar to Al’s work above, painted on a wall, is that of Sha’an D’Anthes. Although probably less about humour and focused more on ‘cute’ and aesthetically pleasing small illustrations, her work is similarly used below.

I have loved Sha’an’s work for years. I love the colourful nature of it - although the below illustrations on the glass are only in white, most of her work is bright and happy, like the first image. Personally I would love for my work to jump off the page in the same way, however the watercolours I mostly work with don't always allow this. I would like to work in more bright, colourful traditional ways and see how it translates. 

Sha’an posts vlogs on her YouTube channel and documents her process, talking about life as an illustrator. It’s a fascinating insight into her career and I would love to do the same with my practice eventually. 

Al spoke about his influences and how growing up, you don't always realise that something influences you as its happening. I thought this was an interesting reflection as I always find it quite funny to look back on my work from when I was younger and see how very similar it looked to a Disney Princess film! We collect plenty of influences over the years, all of which have an effect on our work.

Murphy’s work itself is very visually appealing; it’s easy to see why companies want to use it for advertising and promotions. It jumps out at you and is expressive and attention-grabbing. 

He described a few times about working with companies, big and small. Seeing as much of his work is advertising and promotions for companies, he has lots of experience with this. It’s always interesting to hear about working with brands and how the exchange works, especially as it’s likely I’ll experience this for myself after I graduate. I imagine it’s something you get better at through experiencing it for yourself, and you only really learn through doing, but it’s very useful to hear what companies expect from artists and the different ways they communicate it. 

Although not from the talk, an article about Murphy in Creative Boom reads “on the one hand, [advertising] has fed and clothed his family and led to award-winning success, while on the other, it has made him question his own morals as he takes the money to help sell brain-melting products to children”. I thought this was a very interesting point as it is always relevant to discuss what we want from our careers and how we feel our talents are best used to affect the world around us. It’s not necessarily something that’s brought up often, especially as commercial illustration is a very popular road to go down and can be the source of quite a lot of money and success. There’s many other paths in illustration, however, and it’s always worth considering which options make you happiest, which ones you can get the most out of, or which ones you can contribute the most to. At the end of the day, I think creating for a living is a great privilege, and if you don’t love what you’re doing, it’s going to be very difficult to do it. 

Simon Spilsbury

Website Instagram

A freelance illustrator, Simon Spilsbury’s philosophy is that drawing, and ideas, are central to process. His website says that his work is “spontaneous, energetic, quirky, inherently humorous, adaptable and elegant”. At first, he said that every day there will be a new image, one that’s never been seen before. I thought this was a wonderful thing to start the talk with - a comment on creativity, and how it’s never the same twice. 

He asked us, what sets you apart? In order to be creative, you must make collisions, and take your brain out of its comfort zone. I rarely do this; I’ve always stuck to what I know, especially as everyone says to be successful you need a specific style that people can recognise you by. In Simon’s words, however: “you never know where you're going to end up. If you do, you're not being creative.”

He stressed that your reaction to a brief only happens once. You should make a starting point, and the rest will follow. Personally this is something I struggle with; I find it really hard to bring myself to start something, as often the size of the task scares me. Usually once I’ve broken it down, it’s not so difficult. 

Simon also had some specific illustration advice, a lot of it on emotion and expression. He advised that if you want to draw someone performing a specific action, you should do it first. The action also informs the rest of the image. If you're drawing somebody pick up a rock, for example, you draw the rock first. 

Simon’s practice is centred on drawing. Most of his work is sketchy and illustrative in a way only achieved through pen on paper, or digital pen on digital paper. It kind of captures the way that many artists sit down and absently doodle on a page, a bit like a stream of creativity. 

I do most of my work through painting, or through digital software like Procreate. It’s very easy to capture the magic of drawing to Procreate now with very advanced software and plenty of traditional-style brushes. I don't think the emergence of this software changes the creativity that comes alongside drawing and art. Personally, in my head I separate quick, simple sketches on pieces of scrap paper from digital work or painted work as it might take less effort or time. Listening to Simon’s talk reminded me that maybe I shouldn't, seeing as both use lots of creativity. Arguably, quick sketches use more, seeing as they are thought up on the spot and require no planning, brainstorming or practice. 

You must understand what you’re drawing, Simon says, with no preconceived ideas. I liked his approach to illustration - it was inspiring to hear about his version of creativity, especially as I haven't felt that creative in a while. My process has become sort of robotic, always the same, often on a screen and through a computer and rarely just for myself. Although Simon didn't address this directly, his ideas about creativity and leaving your comfort zone really struck home with me. I left wanting to do it much more often. 

Neil Sheakey

Website Instagram

Neil is a design director at Uniform, in Liverpool, established in 1998, which he described as one of the few companies outside London with a wide variety of creatives. He completed his degree in graphic design at the University of Derby in 2004. He showed us work his company had done with brands like Mitre, Ideal Standard, Innocent and Encona. 

His personal creative process was broken down into stages: empathy, perspective, direction, creative and action. It’s always interesting to see or hear about other people’s creative processes, seeing how they differ to our own. Neil also introduced something else interesting, his idea of a 360 experience, also in stages. These were to see, hear, touch and feel, his way of trying out whether and how a brand connects to customers.

Most of Neil’s work is digital and for advertising. He placed a big focus on process, which I’ve not thought about for years. My A-Level Fine Art teacher drilled it into us that process is the most important part of a project. You need plenty of ideas and research to back up your work. I do this a lot for university projects, but not very often for personal projects. I would really like to try this for a personal project and are if it makes any difference to how much I like the finished product. 

Neil gave us some useful advice about presenting. If your audience is frowning, it means they are concentrating, which is not a negative reaction. Presenting, he said, means talking about yourself and your ideas comfortably. However, if your idea bombs or does badly, ask questions: why? What can be fixed? How can it be better? I think these questions apply themselves very well to presenting but also to personal work, especially when I have produced something I don’t like (which happens a lot more than I’d prefer).

Most useful was Neil’s 10 tips. He didn't specify them as such, but they certainly are useful tips.

1. Explore - being creative is all about exploration.  2. Find your voice - something that is always talked about in the community. 3. Collaborate - I’ve learnt a lot about collaborating with others this year; people on my course, my friends, etc. It makes me more creative! 4. Think, do, reflect - always look back on your work and see what you liked, what you didn’t, what you can take forward from it.  5. Craft your portfolio - something I forget about! Having one online means people can always look at it, or stumble upon it. 6. Give 100% - I’ve got worse at this. I find it very difficult to motivate myself, but I’m trying harder, because this is something I love to do! 7. Value your time - I’m bad at time management, but my time is also precious, and it does well to remember that. 8. Look after yourself - one of the most important things, if not the most important one. Being creative for a living can be draining and also a lot of pressure. Looking after yourself is essential. 9. Be yourself - your creativity is what can get you jobs, commissions, etc. It’s important that it’s your own! 10. Enjoy it! - of course. Being creative for a living is fun! I’m not as good at this any more, as my whole life is creative now - when I was still doing exams, it used to be my escape rather than my degree, my hobby and my dream career. Hopefully I can get better at enjoying it and appreciating it.

Other Speakers

Due to illness, I unfortunately missed a couple of the speakers we had visit the university, and another was cancelled to to the COVID-19 pandemic. To fill in the gaps, found and listened to some more talks online. 

Maria Kalman: The Illustrated Woman This talk was wonderfully random and eccentric. Kalman seemed to really run with the idea of thinking outside the box and almost trusting your first thoughts. She talks of being a dreamy child and dreaming her way though life, all the way until college. Interestingly, Kalman didn’t start drawing until after university. I often worry about where I’m at professionally but I often forget that in the grand scheme of things, I’m still very young. The landscape of illustration is different now than in the 80s, but I still have a lot of my life ahead of me. 

An interesting concept she mentioned was “if you know too much, you’re stymied”. This is the second talk this concept has appeared in: Simon Spilsbury also spoke about not knowing where you're going to end up, as if you do, it isn't creativity. Like I mentioned in his talk, this is something I am very bad at. I prefer knowing which direction I’m headed in and I’m often too nervous about a project and how it will turn out to even start it. This talk, and this point, was a brilliant reminder that you can’t plan everything, and sometimes your first thoughts are your best thoughts. 

Janet Echelman: Taking Imagination Seriously  This was one of those talks where you think it might have changed your life, or at least your outlook. Janet Echelman went to India for an art show and her paints got lost in shipping. As I was listening to this story my heart dropped -  I couldn't even imagine what I’d have done in this situation - but Echelman took it in her stride. On a walk, she saw the natives weaving nets on the beaches and  sat with them to learn how to do it. Since then, this way of working has become her best and favourite way of working. 

I was fascinated by this. As someone that is sometimes too intimidated to try a new type of paint, or to paint or draw a more difficult perspective of something, I found Echelman’s willingness to open herself up to new ideas inspiring. There have been plenty of obstacles in her creative life, but when those arise she simply found ways to solve them. There are often times when I find a challenge too hard, or too intimidating, to even start it. Deep down I know that if I attempt it, even if I fail, I will have learnt something from the experience, and you can only get better through trial and error. Even so, sometimes the nerves I feel about a new project or challenge can overwhelm this logic.

Echelman has carried out briefs for very important clients but despite this, her talk is still filled with the wonder and joy that sparked her creativity in the first place. She places great importance on how art should make you feel, and how you should strive to create things that make other people feel something too. It even made me tear up at the end.

Alexa Meade: Your Body is my Canvas  A reoccurring theme with these talks for me is how good these creatives are at simply new ideas. I think the idea of creativity has taken a back seat for me over the years, and I know at A Level and GCSE there was a big focus on technical precision and talent instead of just having a good idea, and running with it. Although my degree places importance on elements of this, in my work it seems to have disappeared. Maybe creativity comes quite easily to me, in that I’m given a brief and instantly have ideas to put down, or maybe I've forgotten about it altogether, and I’ve managed so far to work without much of it. It might be that creativity is different for all of us. This talk still serves as a reminder that we should always be trying to access our creativity in everything we do. 

Meade seems to have creativity down pat, however; if you could describe it, it would be this. Her work is fascinating in that she doesn't paint on canvas, but she actually paints on the subject she is painting. What comes from this is what looks like two dimensional paintings, but is all 3D. These talks are all inspiring, but Meade has taken an idea from the past and made it into a career that nobody else had done before. 

Jarrett J. Krosoczka: How a Boy Became an Artist  There is something so inspiring about holding art and creativity so close all your life, and Krosoczka’s story is this exactly. It places huge importance on using your imagination: “writing is using your imagination on paper”. It was another wake-up call to be reminded that at the basis of what we do as creatives, we’re always using our imaginations. 

“Celebrate your own style” is among the wisdom in this talk. Krosoczka had a turbulent life but recognises and passes on the importance of good stories, for children specifically. There is a confidence that is threaded throughout his talk and his life, almost like willing something into existence. Again, it’s inspiring to see someone with the confidence to know that whatever happens, it’s always possible to meet your goals and fulfil your dreams. In a creative career it’s easy to let adversity get you down, but it’s also amazing to look back on your life so far and celebrate the achievements you've made. 

What I took away from this talk is a reminder that even if I feel down about my art or my abilities, I always have the tools to get better and develop. I think this is something always worth remembering. 

A few other links to interesting talks/podcasts I found by artists:

Anthony Gormley in Conversation with Iwona Blazwick

Tracey Emin RA on her largest-ever text piece

Building a successful career as an illustrator with Furry Little Peach

RCA Talk with Subject Matter: Women Artists & A Brave New Art World

Béatrice Coron: Stories Cut From Paper

In Summary

All in all I enjoyed the talks. It was inspiring to get a fresh perspective on art, illustration and creativity, especially as we often seek out ideas similar to our own and flock to people that share them. Naturally it was useful and equally as interesting to hear from people established in their fields, how this came to be, and even how they felt - and now feel - about it. 

It was also a bit of a wake up call as I know plenty of people, me included, tend to stay focused on the present and the work they're involved in right now, instead of making plans for the future and looking ahead. I don't think it’s advisable to plan out every aspect of my future, but I rarely think about it. It was interesting, fun and quite daunting to sit on the train on the way home from some of the talks and imagine a career that spans as long as some of our speakers. Maybe one day I’ll give a talk of my own!

One criticism I have with the talks is the lack of diversity. I understand it is difficult to get people in to give talks, but one thing I noticed as soon as we got a list of who was visiting was the lack of women on it. I was hoping to get more of an insight into women in the industry. Instead, this was something I sought out myself; the extra talks I needed were mostly by women. Of course the women giving these talks were equally fascinating and knowledgable.

This concerns other aspects too, not only gender, as it would have been interesting to hear from people from different backgrounds and different ethnicities, as all of the speakers we had visit were very similar in that respect. It’s interesting to hear from anyone in the field, but I’m sure people from different walks of life would have something extra interesting to add to their talk or something different in their story to share. Not only for me, for my own curiosity, but also for other students that come from somewhere different to me, somebody that might appreciate a different insight that they can relate to. It would be easy to feature this in a range of visiting artists.

I felt there could have also bee variety in types of illustration, as the talks I heard were mostly from those in advertising and promotions (of course, the two I missed due to illness may have been different). I know Louise Lockhart, the final talk that was cancelled, is a children’s book illustrator, and gives me all the more reason to be disappointed about missing it! There are so many different ways to use skills and experience in illustration and although advertising is a very common one, it would have been useful to have more variety in this aspect.

Of course, it’s always encouraging and refreshing to hear from established artists and to take away something from a talk. There’s always something you can learn. Even with the extra talks I needed, I felt more and more interested with every one I listened to, and felt encouraged to find and learn more. It strikes me that with platforms like YouTube and Instagram, where we follow and subscribe to fellow artists and creatives, we are doing the same, always wanting to find out more and learn from people around us and people we admire. 

[iamthestrangerinmoscow]

“Autistic brain as the extreme Homo sapiens brain” hypothesis by me, an autistic biology undergrad (oh boy will this get long and controversial)

To help you understand this hypothesis, first let me break down some evolutionary concepts. Let’s talk about speciation.

New species appears when two things happen: there is a new trait that gives a population better chances of passing on their genes through procreation in a certain environment (apomorphy: a new, derived trait), and there is reproductive isolation from individuals without that trait. New traits appear through random mutations and most of them are harmful. Useful traits get more and more common with every generation until a population separates and can no longer create fertile offspring with those most closely related to them. Wham, speciation.

This is hard to understand if you aren’t into biology so example. There’s a fish which has more muscle in its fins than all other fishes. That trait is new, it’s extreme and rare. However it allows the fish to move better in shallow water, where it has less competition and more food. It produces a lot of offspring, some of which has the same trait. They continue to live in shallow water and they meet other fish that also live in shallow water. Repeat that many many times and you get a new species of Sarcopterigii (muscle fins! technically that’s us). Apomorohy: more muscle in fins; new environment: shallow water; reproductive isolation: geographical.

Now back to humans. Apomorphies of the genus Homo were things like bipedal locomotion, use of tools, language, and so on, and our new territory was the savanna (as opposed to forests). However we still aren’t a sure what defines our species, Homo sapiens, and where to draw the line between hominids and us. My anthropology professor always laughs when talking about Homo species like habilis or erectus because he doesn’t know whether he should call them “males and females” or “men and women”. We just don’t know what is our defining trait(s).

But we do know that there was something about sapiens that allowed us to outlive all other Homo species, including Neanderthals and Denisovans, and it is obvious that we have a difference. Well I am here to present a thrilling new hypothesis: we will realize what that trait is if we study autistic people, because the autistic brain is the extreme Homo sapiens brain. Just like the fins of fish continued to develop to help it navigate land, human brain continued to develop to adapt to our lifestyle, and that adaptation is autism.

Looking at some common autism traits we notice that a lot of them are neurotypical behaviors taken to extreme. Stimming is extreme fidgeting, special interests are extreme hobbies/interests, routines are extreme schedules/planning habits, sensory processing disorder is extreme sensory perception. Hence the intense world hypothesis.

Looking further, we notice that there are other characteristically human traits that autism takes to extreme: like noticing patterns, memory and imagination. Even further, if we look at developing baby brains, we see that if a child’s prefrontal cortex is growing faster and is bigger than typical, that child is more likely to be later diagnosed as autistic. And prefrontal cortex is the most characteristically human part of our brain!

So what I see is that a lot of autistic traits are Homo sapiens traits taken to the next level, and it might come from increased prefrontal cortex growth as well as more local connections between neurons. So arguably a lot of things that were Homo sapiens apomorphies just went further to better suit our new society with all the tool making, hunting, gathering, agriculture, art, science and religion.

Now I hear you saying “but Mattie, humans are very social and autism is a social disability!”. Well yeah, you’re right: social interaction problems are major autism criteria. However I’d like to talk about why that is the case. Autistics struggle with social protocol, which is supposedly a set of unspoken rules of existing in human society that relies on ability to read certain cues like facial expressions, body language, tone of voice and so on. And yes the majority of autistics suck at that.

But you know what? So do allistics! I know it sounds counterintuitive but social protocol is shit. It is constantly changing, imprecise, highly dependent on time and culture and impossible to define. It’s just sloppy. Allistics think they are masters of reading social cues but in reality they are making a ton of guesses. Research shows that cognitive empathy (subconscious guesses based on all that body language and stuff) is worse than conscious analyses, meaning that I, an autistic person who has to use conscious analyses to understand others, is technically better at it than an allistic person who uses cognitive empathy.

Allistics get away with this because they are the majority. When everyone’s bad at something together, there’s no way of telling you’re bad at it. They are flexible and go with the flow and they don’t see how illogical and sloppy social protocol is. But still, miscommunication is the most common comedy trope and there’s always so much misunderstanding in society, which means it is not perfect.

Autistics however seek structure, predictability and order. Sloppy and illogical isn’t good enough for us. Our brains just can’t find patterns in that mess of social cues. So if we were the majority, we would not get away with hints and subsequent miscommunication. I think we would develop a much more structured and well-defined social protocol which would leave much less room for misinterpretation and ensure better communication. Maybe we would have a system of gestures and hand signs to communicate different things, maybe we would use technology, maybe our language would change to accommodate it. Either way, if we were the majority, there would be no social disability.

Now you may ask, well if autistics are extreme humans, why haven’t we replaced allistics as a phenotype more suited for life in our environment? Well, civilization happened and natural selection went to hell. Now we don’t change to fit the environment, we change the environment to fit us. And because the autistic neurotype was still that extreme, rare, “weird fish with muscly fins” population, we got screwed over. Allistics - the majority - built a world which was great for them and incredibly bad for us. It became especially prominent from the rise of industrial revolution, and even more prominent in the last hundred years, which is when it was described for the first time and is now diagnosed in like 1-2% of the population.

I don’t think autism has a chance to become more common now, because due to ableism and other reasons we are less likely to procreate. Autistics aren’t gonna create a new species either because we have no reproductive isolation now. The only thing we can do is to change the environment through education and accommodation to make it better for us, and maybe autism will stop being a disability some day.

However I think it is important to study autism, and not with a purpose of preventing us from being born, but because it may reveal the truth about the nature of humanity and show us what might have happened to our species if it wasn’t for civilization. In my opinion it is just fascinating and it might finally prove why we need accommodation for autism and how to do it the best. Until then, these are just random thoughts of a nerd obsessed with biology.

If you have any thoughts about this, please let me know.

[shadow-daughter]

So. A friend of mine got to talking, and he had a thought about the term ‘POC’ that he wanted to put out for debate with people, because he wanted other POV’s and to learn the counter arguments to his points so he could consider them. (He likes debating social justice stuff.) BUT. He does not have a tumblr, because he doesn’t have time for one. So I agreed to post it for him, and convey the replies to him. Without further ado, here’s his essay.

“This document of thoughts is addressing everyone who uses and advocates the term "people of colour".

I find said term unfair for both of the "proposed" sides it draws out and categorically unnecessary.It puts everyone who is not Caucasian in a smelting pot that says "we're all non-whites" as if to make a statement of "everyone who is not us is bad" or "look at how bad we have it". That's an arbitrary, non-inclusive definition meant to separate two kinds of people. This sets up frontiers meant to be ridden into conflict by itself. It also eliminates any heritage some people might be proud of.

The only time when I hear the term "people of colour" it is used in a derogatory way to point some fingers at Caucasians for whatever reason or to show how the non-Caucasians have it much worse, often regarded to in payment. Which I find funny because Asians in the USA alone are statistically paid better than Caucasians. But yet they are included in your "people of colour" statement, which I start to believe you're not even aware of how many wrongs you do with it. So why do you believe everyone who is not Caucasian automatically wants to be put into that smelting pot? I thought everyone who uses those arguments is all gung-ho for equality and diversity? How is being put into a blender which has nothing better to do than polarizing arguments a good thing? Diversity doesn't mean to squish things together in an indistinguishable mass. Diversity means having a multitude of facets to enjoy. If your goal is to eliminate superficial judgements, then why did you even have to create a term which exactly shows the opposite?"People of colour" in itself is a race-based statement, no matter which direction it is used. Didn't you want to get rid of racial preoccupations? Because in a nutshell we're all humans and no sane person has a problem with the definition of us all being human. Because that's what we are.Humans are a species. All variations of a species (called races) can interbreed with each other. You can't breed with a weasel, a crocodile or an oyster. You can't even breed with one of our closest primates, the Chimpanzee. They're a different species. The genetic patterns simply don't line up. Procreation is impossible (the only possibility would have something to do with already mismatched chromosomes which indicates a genetic defect, and the majority of people born with a chromosomal defect are infertile anyhow, for another variety of reasons). Races have distinguishable, physical traits which separate themselves from other races, and skin colour is only one tiny part of those. Physical traits can also be below the skin. Bone structures, metabolic predispositions, endogenous retroviruses, digestive systems adapted based on centuries of certain diets with all their sensitivities and tolerances, etc. Just look at nature for other variations of non-human species and their respective races.A race however, has nothing to do with ethnicity since this is a more culturally associated concept which is based on the lifestyle and general region of a group of people living there for an extended period of time, with all the development of traditions and the like. Race has nothing to do with ethnicity. So the next time anyone wants to call someone racist because they supposedly said something against Brazilians? Brazilians are not a race. Only because "racist" is easier and faster to say than "Ethnicicist" or "Nationalist" or even "Continentalist" or whatever word you fancy in [current year] doesn't mean it should be done. Anyone who always takes the easy way out and cannot even properly formulate themselves is unable to be taken seriously by default.All this is commonly accepted consensus because of tried and proven concepts which at least make some sense.

"People of colour" doesn't make sense. Just like the loosely affiliated "skin colours" don't make much sense either, but at least they've been a concept of "eyeballed association" that is around for long enough that people understand what is meant, and also understand how it has no inherently negative or biased consensus to it. This is being added (or not) by the opinion of a personBut seriously, whites are not white, blacks are not black, yellows are not yellow, reds are not red. If you don't believe me, take some crayons for starters and put them next to your and other people's skins. Look what matches whom best. Be in for a surprise. Not to mention that "Black" is the absence of reflected light, hence the absence of colour and "White" is all colours reflected in the visible light spectrum to varying degrees. And don't forget how light skin tones have the ability to tan darker and more saturated with higher exposure to the sun and dark skin tones can brighten up with less exposure to the sun. That's Melanin for you. Which again is based on the genetic predisposition of said person, as it indicates how fast the body can adapt to the environmental influences or not.So from all the evidence, the predisposition is that "people of colour" should mean "everyone except whites" being always used as a derogatory differentiator. But in fact it doesn't even mean "everyone". It only means "everyone except whites who currently fits that bad thing I want to talk about which whites will totally never understand and find themselves in" which is utter and ridiculous nonsense. Yet this isn't even my main reason for disliking said phrase.I dislike the term "people of colour" not only because it does injustice to those addressed in said phrase.

I dislike it since it is based on something as superficial as can be. If anybody judges anyone simply because on their looks, even if it is only the colour of their skin, then they've already damaged credibility before the debate even started. And this is true for BOTH sides of that phrase.

You just selected people based on a genetic imprint they were unable to influence in the first place.

You just uttered one of the most degrading, superficial and unfair selections ever, and it targets exactly the individuals you think you're trying to advocate for.I form an opinion of people based on what they do. I judge people on their body of work. And last time I checked, everyone who is not a brainless prick and who has a grain of common sense does so too.

Do racists exist? Yes, sadly they do. And they should be held responsible for what they do, up to a court case. No matter which skin colour they have. Being non-Caucasian does not exempt you from being a racist. Only your actions from not taking that low exempt you from being a racist. And as long as you use the term "people of colour" to segregate everyone else from Caucasians, you will always appear to be racist. Because you exert the same behaviour common to racists.

If you justify your doing because "the other side does it too" then you are not making things better. You don't prove how you're above and beyond, you prove the opposite. If you want to be taken seriously, base arguments in something that is not superficial. Don't convince with loudness, labels and allegations of shallow origins spewed with pointed fingers. Convince with evidence. Bring reasons that are not based on wild accusations, imagination and make belief. Bring cases. And by that I don't mean the recently spindoctored article of your favourite tabloid. Before you quote something, look up the source. Read through the study. Oh my it is 50 pages long? So what? Do you want to be a regurgitating mouth-breather or actually want to know what you are talking about and also be able to differentiate between a good study and a bad one? Maybe take that time off twitter, tumblr and facebook to start getting proactively informed about the opinions you so casually formulate. You are and always will be responsible for the world around you. Because your actions and inactions were instrumental in shaping an outcome. Don't you want to be certain of what you do and say? You will see that nobody will need any definition that describes anyone's exterior to have an opinion or judge over a person's actions. And if your arguments, reasons and cases in front of an analytical, fact based audience are found wanting it's not because of your skin colour. It's just because your sources are incorrect and/or your assertions were wrong. That's nothing personal. 2+2 is not five and not twenty two. The teacher who taught you math is not going to hate your guts forever until their dying breath only because you made one mistake. Skin colour is meaningless. It should never be any point of argument anywhere at all.If you want true diversity and equality, it's inclusive of everyone. Not just "everyone EXCEPT these people."

If you want to see an improvement, stop making skin colour your shtick and get to the real stuff.”

[koolforlife]

5 Tips to Help You Free Yourself from Mental Illness

Guest writer: DreamyPisces

I want to share a little of my story with you with hopes that you will be comforted in knowing that it’s another person in this world that has had many struggles through a lot of trial and error. I have been on my path towards healing for almost 4 years now and I finally feel bold enough to be expressive about where I came from and what I have done to heal myself.

Mental illness plagues millions of people in one form or another. Statistics show that 1 in 4 people suffer from mental illnesses which equates to about 450 million people. That’s a lot! Those figures show that we have a really big problem going on in the world. We are taught how to go to school, get a “good” job, how to procreate and spend. We were never taught a class on how to love ourselves and to heal ourselves.

I had to learn on my own with the help of some great motivational speakers such as Les Brown and dear friends that support me. If you don’t know who Les Brown is, I recommend that you find out. He focuses a lot on helping people to reach their dreams and to also deal with the past. I can hear his voice right now as I type this, “DON’T FORGET ABOUT YOUR DREAM…YOU HAVE TO BE HUNGRY!!” Les Brown is right. In order to heal you must be hungry for change.

Mental illness strips away all desires to create change. What actually ends up happening is that you end up laying in mental quicksand which succumbs you. Your quicksand can be the negative voice in your head that tells you that you are worthless. It can be the tape that continues to play in your head over and over again of past experiences, trauma and let downs caused by others. Your quicksand can be caused by the death of a loved one. We all say that the good ones are taken too soon and the evil ones get to stay here and prosper. Mental illness can cause physical ailments such as muscle soreness, stomach discomforts, migraine headaches and lethargy.

Mental quicksand can force you to become more and more introverted where it becomes difficult to even leave the house on some days. When you do interact with people and you have mental quick sand in you, you can be filled with so much anxiety but you may mask it with a smile. On the inside you could have a tsunami of emotions and nervous energy swirling within you but no one knows but you. Do you cry in silence because you are afraid to share your vulnerability to others? I know that feeling.

The worst part about mental illness is that voice that comes in…you know that voice, the one that says “Kill yourself, no one loves you anyway, everyone is better off without you.” That voice plagued me for majority of my life until I realized my inner power. One day I woke up and I said “ENOUGH!!” to that voice in my head and I decided to fight back. No more suicidal thoughts or attempts. I had to make that decision for myself but it took a long time to get there because death seemed so much better than actually living. The crazy thing was that though I was scared to live, I was kind of scared to die also. I used to hope I would just pass away in my sleep. I asked God many times to take my life. Only to continue to wake up day after day.

Many people deal with their mental illness by overeating, drinking excessive alcohol, shopping, sex, smoking cigarettes, taking pills or doing anything they can to escape the claws of their depressed reality. Of course these are only temporary fixes and they never really help, they just suck you deeper into the quicksand. I could go into all of the reasons why I was so depressed but this blog would be 100 pages long so I will spare you. But what I do want to share with you is how I finally found some concrete ways to alleviate my depression. I found the cure for myself and I will share my secrets with you. When we find helpful ways to help ourselves it’s important to share those techniques with others to create the global healing that we all need.

Today on the brink of my 38th birthday, I feel more balanced and confident within myself. I realize that the voice that used to summons my mind into the darkness was nothing more than a program. It was a program that was created throughout my life from circumstances created from family, friends, media outlets as well as my own actions. Unfortunately those closest to me couldn’t heal me so I had to learn how to heal myself.

I want to encourage you. If you are reading this right now and you feel lost, unsure, with a lack of confidence I have to give you a wake up call. My friend, SAVE YOURSELF. You have to save yourself. There are people who will throw you a life preserver but you have to be the one to grab on to it to live. But what if you don’t have anyone around you to throw you a life preserver? What if you don’t have anyone to encourage you? You will have to encourage yourself. That sounds like a crappy deal huh? Well, maybe but in the end you have to be able to control your own thoughts and actions. No one can do that for you. Let’s get started.

#1 SEEK THERAPY

If you feel that you are sinking deeper and deeper into your mental quicksand, it’s time to get help. I found that on my healing journey that it was imperative that I release my emotions verbally to a therapist. She was a little sweet lady who was there to listen. She would ask me probing questions to help me to figure this out within myself. Make sure you find a therapist that you feel comfortable with. If you start therapy and you don’t feel like you are getting good vibes from your doctor, find another doctor until you are comfortable. Remember this is about YOU not them. Be open and honest. I found that in my healing, being transparent helped me to release. It helped me to get things out that I had carried within myself for years.

Be open and trust yourself and know that seeking therapy is a huge step towards transforming your life. Psychiatrists and Psychologist will probably recommend prescription drugs to you in many cases especially if your depression or mental aliment is severe. I feel that medication is sometimes okay as a temporary fix to help to stabilize you but we have the power to heal our minds without substances. I used meds for a time and then I took myself off because I felt that I was strong enough and I had learned how to calm myself when my triggers were hit. I’m not recommending you to quit your meds. That’s what worked for me and you have to find what works for you. Just be honest in the process and be open and know that you are strong with or without the crutch of anti-depressants and mood stabilizers.

#2 REPROGRAM YOUR THOUGHTS

Did you know that you can actually change your entire mindset from negative to positive? In the past my negative thought patterns ruled my life, most thoughts were telling me that I was no good and they focused on everything I ever did that was wrong instead of the things that I was doing right. It all starts when you go to bed at night and when you wake up in the morning. If you wake up and the first thought is “I hate my life…I’m tired…I wish this day was over already…etc.” then it’s time to start reprogramming your mind. This is not something that will happen overnight and in all actuality your mind and heart will be resistant to the positive voice that you have to start projecting and affirming in your life. When you go to bed at night say something to the nature of, “I release my stress and depression, I release my inner pain. I am healed and I am whole. I love myself, I forgive myself and I will rest peacefully on this night”. As you awaken in the morning, in spite of what you may physically feel say, “I arise with energy and self-love. I am positive, I can do this. I am strong I am healed on this day.”

The point is that you must take the time to reprogram your thoughts with strong I AM statements. Something as simple as an affirmation that says “I AM STRONG” can change your entire day and in time it will change your entire life. Do this over and over again. Instead of saying “I am a failure, I can’t do anything right” you must say “I am healing, I am loving and I am capable of greatness no matter what!” I am a witness and this works if you continue to do it daily. There are no days off in your healing journey. You must fight for your sanity because the enemy within is always waiting to pounce back on you. You must remain diligent in your mind.

#3 WRITE IN A JOURNAL

Sometimes we can’t find someone to listen to our laundry list of problems so a great way to express your feelings is to write them in a journal. I have been journaling since I was 13 years old. I always felt like my journal was like a friend where I could pour my heart into the pages. I would pour out all the good, bad and ugly into those pages. I would cry and write, just trying to expel my confusion and depression into those pages. Journaling is so powerful because it helps you to get it out. You may not get full relief but writing is extremely therapeutic. Get some colorful pens, markers or colored pencils and add drawings and artwork to your entries because that also helps to stimulate creativity. It’s healing in creativity. Write notes to yourself. Write notes to others. Write notes to your future spouse and children.

It may seem silly because these people may not exist yet but do it anyway. Write down your wants and needs. Write about what you like about yourself. Write about where you would like to travel. Dream and dream big. Write down specific affirmations for yourself. Write down your goals. When you write things down you are actually creating an energy source which can attract your wants and needs towards you. Write, breathe and release.

#4 CONFRONT WHO HAS HURT YOU

This is really difficult. But I have to tell you that you must come face to face with the big bad wolf, whatever that may be to you. It could be a parent, an abuser, a bully, a teacher, a friend, a deceased loved one or it could be yourself. Now, you can confront the person face to face and tell them how you feel but I must warn you, you may not get the response that you are hoping for and that other person may not change for the better. That’s the downside. But the upside of having a confrontation is that you are finally standing up for yourself and you are releasing your pain. It’s all about the RELEASE. You have to get that stuff out of you! Write them a letter and read it to them, you could mail it, read it over the phone or if you are unable to do either one of those options you can write a letter and then burn it or cut it into a million tiny pieces after you read it aloud into the atmosphere. As you cut or burn it say, “I forgive you and myself and I release you from my mind and my heart in peace.”

Chains will fall off of you even though you may feel sick and nervous while doing this. If you choose to do a face to face confrontation, have your words written so you won’t forget what you have to say. REMEMBER this is for YOU, this is for your release so even if they don’t respond in the way you hope, know that you did your part to assist with freeing and healing your soul and accept the gift of peace within from this release. You are brave and you can do this…you have to if you want to take your life to a more positive level. Ignoring the issues will never heal you.

#5 GET HEALTHY

My favorite thing to do is to go for a long walk in nature. Nature heals me. When I’m stressed I go to the gym and I work out more focused and can lift more because I am transmuting that negative energy into a positive activity that will strengthen me. I personally decided to let meat go from my diet because I was able to make the connection that meat made me more depressed. As those hormones from meat were removed from my bloodstream I automatically started to feel better. Exercise your body, mind and spirit. Sweat out the toxins. Dance, laugh, paint, write, sing…do whatever it takes to create positive energy around you. Bob Marley said “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Find some music that soothes you.

I enjoy instrumentals, such as meditation music. I enjoy positive artists which are sharing love and not spewing more negativity and hate. Music can heal you. Get healthy by being with those who encourage you to be your best. Be with those that can make you laugh. Listen to motivational podcasts. Start reading books to help to exercise your brain. Turn the TV off because the shows that are being played normally are not helpful at all towards your healing. You see we must replace all negative forces with positive ones and we must be intentional towards our healing. Move your body, exercise your brain and breathe deeply with your hand over your heart to energize your spirit.

I want to thank you for being you. I want you to know that you are not a mistake. You are here for a great reason you just have to figure out what that reason is. We have all been gifted with greatness inside but if that greatness isn’t cultivated within, it will continue to lie dormant and depression and other mental illnesses will ensure. It’s time for you to break this cycle and you can.

If I can do it so can you! If no one told you today, I love you. I’m able to love you because I learned to love myself. Dry your tears my friend because you are stronger than you know. Once you get to a point in your healing where you feel strong, all I ask of you is to share it with someone else. Tell your story when you are ready. Someone needs to know that they are not alone. Use your life as a platform to help to heal all the other broken souls that you may come in contact with. I hope you will share your story with them but let them know that they must go on the journey on their own just like you did. We all have the power but we must have the desire and the courage to change and to stick with it. We must stick with it even when people aren’t cheering us on or giving us a pat on the back. The enemy within will always be there waiting in the shadows to remind you of everything you did wrong. One day you will stand boldly and declare, “I REJECT THAT THOUGHT! That is not who I am, I know who I am. I know myself and I love myself…enemy you no longer have power over me! And just like that the enemy will flee. Do this over and over again.

You have to become a warrior for self within your own mind. The more that you know yourself the less people will be able to tell you about who you are. No matter what you have done, and no matter what you went through, you can be free within. You deserve peace. It’s time to stand up and walk out of the quicksand into healing green pastures that are waiting for you. Take the first step today. Be courageous. This is your book of life. Take back the pen and write it how you want to write it. Be well and I pray for peace to abide in your heart, mind and soul on your journey towards healing. You are never alone.

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