My Collection of Interesting Internet Items

And some of my art here and there ---- Christian/male/artist/ace

[a-universes-demise]

sometimes love goes like this:

i love my mother. i hate my mother. my mother fucked me up in ways i’m only beginning to unravel. i cry knowing i’ll never be held in my mother’s arms again. i feel sick when she touches me. i want to say i love you. i want to say goodbye. i want to disappear in the middle of the night without warning and leave her wondering why i left. i don’t want to break her heart. she deserves better than this. i deserved better than her.

and that’s okay.

[kajijiart]

A February Surprise

Gore Warning: Heads up 

For my sister followers who don’t like the sight of blood, other then that enjoy the mini comic XD

Keep reading

[darkstormgts]

I’ve never seen a watermelon Xenomorph before but I like it. It’s like Alien vs Little Shop of Horrors

[catastrophic-writer-deactivated]

Story Time:

Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:

This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I've scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, "Um," from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.

And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We're just... in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?

She didn't even have garlic bread in her cart.

I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.

Well, the registers don't like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she's not by her pager.

At this point, both myself and the lady are just... dumbfounded. She's not even mad. I'm not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There's a bit of laughter, but it's mostly just... confusion.

I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she's not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.

"What... did you do?"

"I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea."

She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn't scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.

My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, "I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price."

And that's when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn't take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don't. But I swear to God it happened.

TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.

[hixxiart]

Pricing your Art

So @dreriart made a post about commission pricing and I thought since it is doin’ the rounds I’d copy-paste this thing I wrote on DA over to Tumblr because for some reason I … never … did that … before?? So one recurring thing I see a lot in the art community in many different formats is ‘how much should I charge for my commissions?’ What normally follows is a lot of bad advice. Terrible advice. So I’m here to give you some good advice and tell you all about how to value your skillset and price accordingly. This guide has been written with the intended audience of folk who are just starting out with commissions, but I hope it will encourage other artists to give themselves a fair wage and, of course, a lot of this can be transposed over to other creative professions as well. So let’s answer the question of ‘how much should I be charging people for work?’ The answer to this is deceptively simple. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself to form an appropriate response:

Where do you live?

How old are you?

For obvious reasons I cannot assist you with these. But once you have these you go to Google and you type in the following: ‘minimum wage per hour in <location name>’ Which is more than likely going to bring up an official government page for your area. Here is the one for the UK since that is where I live.Now what? Well. How old are you? Because some locations have different rates for those in different age brackets. But essentially all you need to do is get the following info: How much is the minimum wage per hour for my age in my area? Now that you have this, how long does a piece take you? You do not need to be exact. A rough guesstimation will do. This will form your base price of: Minimum Wage x Estimated Hours Therefore if I take five hours to paint a portrait and my min wage is £7.83 then my base price for a painted portrait is £39.15.

That is the absolute minimum you should be charging for your work.

And please take into considerations the following:

Working outside your comfort zone will up times taken on a piece.

If you’re working with traditional materials, how much for paper/canvas/paint/pens/etc?

Minimum wage is quite often garbage anyway.

Whenever I say this though, I often get a variety of responses in the negatory for this method. I have answers for each of them. So, let’s run a sort-of-FAQ on this method shall we?

I’m not good enough to price that high.

Yes you are. Who says? Your government, for starters. Also me. Here’s the thing. No matter the quality of your art, you deserve a fair living wage for your work. There are lots of people out there with no understanding of the time, effort and tears that go into honing artistic skills. Digital art, making comics, mastering musical composition, sculpting, or whatever it is all takes time to learn and we are constantly growing and improving. And if someone wants to hand you money for what you are producing guess what? You ARE good enough. That is the proof right there. Another human being wants to give you cold hard cash for something that only you can make. If it puts a different perspective on things for you, think of job roles that would be traditionally minimum wage. Probably the one most people will go to is ‘burger flipping at McDonalds’ as an example of a low skill occupation that is stereotypically easy and for those who failed in life etc. etc. (spoiler alert: it isn’t, but that’s a journal entry for another day). Why should this theoretical failure of humanity earn more than you doing a job that ‘anyone can do’? Because art is absolutely more difficult than cleaning out a McFlurry machine (that’s a legit fact by the way: I’ve cleaned one of those and art is way harder). Also, art is a luxury product my friend. No one needs to be buying commissions of their MMO character. They want it? They can play by our rules. And they will.

My family member/friend/random internet guy said that’s too expensive and I should lower my prices.

Your family member/friend/random internet berk is a fucking idiot at best, or intentionally trying to get you to undersell at worst. Firstly, I’d be willing to bet that the person who said this to you is not an artist. If so, what makes them more qualified than another actual artist to tell YOU how to price yourself? Because you trust their opinion? Yeah, but what if their opinion is formed on a factually incorrect assumption of how much art costs/the time it takes to produce because that is a HUGE deal in our community right now. And what if they just want you to stay cheap because it threatens them? Or, as a consumer, want you to stay cheaper for their own selfish purchasing habits? What then? Tell them to fuck off.

But there is someone better than me charging less! Why should a client pick me over them?

Spoiler alert: there will always be someone better than you charging less. There are thousands of mega quality artists out there. I’m considered expensive for what I produce, especially as I live in a country with a currency that translates highly to other currencies. Yet people constantly ask me for commission work. So what gives? Here are some reasons why a prospective client might chose you over someone else:

You are nicer than they are.

You are faster than they are.

You’re working in a niche sector.

They know you personally.

They like your art style better.

You have lots of good feedback.

A friend recommended you.

They aren’t even open for commissions right now.

They had a bad experience with that artist in the past.

You’re easier to purchase from.

You have a larger following and purchasing from you exposes that audience to them by proxy.

There are lots of other reasons but price isn’t necessarily often the deciding factor for a lot of clients. Don’t spend your life being concerned with how other people are better than you or you’ll never be happy.   I’m nervous about pricing so highly! What if no one wants my art?If a client doesn’t want to pay you a fair living wage for their luxury item purchase then that’s a client you can probably do without to be honest with you.Someone complained about my prices being so high! What do I do? Refer them to this:

[rowanlea-101]

Something worth noting is that minimum wage is normally used for people who are employed (not self employed). So people who work contracted 16, 24, 37 or 40+ hours per week for an employer.

Anyone who is not guaranteed work for a set amount of hours per week is absolutely within their right to charge well over the minimum wage, to cover those hours that they are not guaranteed.

Ever wonder why the plumber is so expensive? Or the electrician? The pc repair guy (£60 to transfer my data? Really? All you do is plug it in and leave it for a few hours..)

That’s why. Because most traders/self employed people don’t have work lined up 9-5 mon-fri (though it’s great news if you do!). If my lovely pc repair tech only charged me £20 to transfer my data, or £5 labour (half an hour) + >insert price of laptop screen here< to repair my screen, he’s never going to make enough money to stay open, because he doesn’t have people coming and going in his shop all day every day.

If you’re considering being a part or full time artist, then perhaps consider not just how many hours it takes you per piece, but how much of your time you want to spend on commissions. If you plan on spending 20 hours per week on it (not just the art itself, but consider things like liasing with customers and promoting yourself as well) then calculate the hours with the minimum wage (in the above instance, it would be 20 x £7.83 = £156.60). Then you figure in that week you can hopefully (and realistically) complete let’s say, 3 commissions. That would be £52.20 each. Already that’s more than the base price stated above (which I am not saying is wrong at all). But you’ve covered yourself for the additional work and downtime hours, and given yourself a real expectation that of what income you’ll be earning per week.

[hixxiart]

This is a TOP QUALITY addition to my post.

[whimsical-gibbon]

[singinglinkachu]

How to Live with a Strict Parent

Need to make a game plan to help stay sane up in here.

Pack! Just start packing everything. Doing something for the future will help keep the mind off of the present.

Library time. Get a head start on those good grades. Also gets you out of the house.

Get rid of clutter. Make evidence of your presence there less and less noticeable. If explanations are needed just say you’re cleaning your room.

Start cleaning the kitchen floor and vacuuming regularly. Maybe that’ll help keep the peace and make life easier before you get out of there.

Spend more time studying in the office/place you’re less likely to be bothered. Steer clear from conflict for the most part if you can.

Go to sleep early, wake up early.

Think very carefully before you speak. Don’t forget about manners. Bow down on the floor if you have to. It’s for a good cause, after all.

Start making your own money after graduation as soon as you can and save as much of it as possible.

Get a car. You can do it.

Make more money of your own and continue to kiss ass at home the best you can.

When you’re ready, get out of there. Find someone looking for a roommate. Preferably, make it about getting closer to work/school if possible. Good luck.

Also, don’t get pregnant.

[spidyspence]

[lotsarecoverymemes]

[keeperartwork]

Veska Region Residents

These are some of the prominent NPCs in my Pokemon Dnd game that I've never drawn before. A good chunk my players requested to see and some I just really wanted to draw. And of course there's some I couldn't even add in since they haven't met them yet. Maybe a project for another day

As of the characters here, we've got the Propeller Unit - ChiHarGro (Chico, Harpo, and Groucho) the Dodrio, Ken the Tropius, Silky the Steelix, Ikoba the Drifblim, and Pok the Golurk. The two zombie fossil pokemon Ra-Ra the Aurorus and Forge the Tyrantrum. The King Kago Royal Family Emperor Nakatomi the Ninetails and Princess Chiyuki the shiny Alolan Vulpix with the Head of Guard Chief Kina the Kommo-O. Residents of Newton Humphery Hoffmen the Sableye, Srux the Swampert, and Giotos the Haxorus. Then we've got the eccentric blacksmith Vulzel the Galarian Meowth. And lastly we have our lingering big bads - Vaughn Dawnthorn the Gallade and Vionetta Dawnthorne the Gardevoir, and Shai-Nefer the Cofagrigus

Lots of fun characters to play! Probably more will spawn out of nowhere that my players will get attached to. Can't wait to see what'll happen next!

[darkstormgts]

By @flaresiram​

• if I were a month, I’d be: October-November

• if I were a flower, I’d be: Peppermint

• if I were an album, I’d be: Starset - Vessels

• if I were a mineral, I’d be: Kyanite

• if I were a sound, I’d be: Ocean waves

• if I were a colour, I’d be: Blue

• if I were a drink, I’d be: Hazelnut coffee

• if I were a fruit, I’d be: Apple

• if I were a quote, I’d be: “I started with nothing, now I stop for nothing.” - unknown

• if I were a television series, I’d be: Hero Academia

• if I were a movie, I’d be: Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them

• if I were a fashion brand, I’d be: Rothco, I guess

• if I were a mythological creature, I’d be: Vampire

• if I were a taste, I’d be: Sour patch

• if I were a scent, I’d be: Old books

• if I were a fabric, I’d be: Fabric blend that makes the military-grade parkas

• if I were a body part, I’d be: Amygdala

• if I were a song, I’d be: This Life is Mine

• if I were a queen my 2 attributes would be: Kind and Strong-willed

[darkstormgts]

Double Tagged

Tagged by @yadedaj​, the chicken girl herself, and @flaresiram, mah bro.

Rules: Spell out your url with song titles and tag 10 people

D - Dancin’ - Aaron Smith (Krono remix)

A - Ascension - Joel Nielsen

R - Rock Thing - Creo

K - Kerosene - Crystal Castles

S - Sous Cette Pluie - Alys

T - The Fountain - Pendulum

O - Other Worlds Than These - Starset

R - Ready to Fall - Rise Against

M - Meltdown - Kagamine Rin

G - Ghosts - Malik Bash

T - Television Rules the Nation/Crescendolls - Daft Punk

S - Slingshot - Trocadero

K and O were difficult, I had almost NO songs for those letters.

Gave me a nice little quarantine playlist, thanks guys. I have no one to tag that hasn’t been tagged already.

[yadedajart]

“I’m not stealing bird seed! What are you talking about?”

My friends and I like doing those Picrew avatar makers and this round it was an RPG version (artist @G0966). So I drew my Overwatch/ Raft friends based on their design. I personally I love the idea that I got unless winged ears. Bok Bok!

@flaresiram, @mist-me, @hannihilator, ncsanimations (insta) @darkstormgts, @kajijiart, Peachiiessprout (Insta)

[pascalcampion]

So you want to be an Artist? #pascalcampion

[outofthebluecomics]

Break’s over everyone, back to work!…

In all seriousness tho; lockdown’s a bitch. I found myself in the worst funk in recent years and just didn’t have the energy to continue the weekly comics. That and a lot of personal junk made this a not fun year, and made my creativity lobe have to take cover in the recesses of my brain to wait for the storm to pass. Hence the year-long hiatus.

Back now tho, in case anyone is still watching this account and ready for more adventures from our fine-feathered fiends.

[shining-chemicals]

[hazy-october]

Beautiful illustrations by  JR’s Arts

[littlesmartart]

after the huge amazing response I got from my ace!Jiang Cheng comic - all of the ace people saying how amazing it felt to be acknowledged, and all of the people who came to me saying that they hadn’t realised they were ace until they read the comic - I decided I wanted to make something for ace awareness week. it’s not quite as pretty or feelsy as the other comic, but there are so many people even within the LGBT+ community who just… genuinely do not understand asexuality, I figured even something basic would help :)

happy ace awareness week! please remember: everyone’s experience with sexuality is different! be kind and support each other!