how do you have SO much resources for all kinds of projects? trust fund child? inheritance?? there's no way you have a full time job, you wouldn't be able to cook food, do dishes AND post on tumblr AND do hobbies... early retirement???
Well since you asked so politely, here is an IN DEPTH response to all of your burning questions!
I work full time, and mention the fact that I work pretty often. I think the secret is that I'm usually neglecting a bunch of shit (dishes and cooking being good examples... but also I tend to cook one big thing and then eat leftovers for several days).
Due to chronic pain, I now work from home (i.e. bed) about 60% of the time, which has vastly improved my quality of life and ability to do things outside of work. I literally used to just come home from work and get into bed -- never cooked real food, mostly just got up and microwaved some bullshit for dinner at some point, then went back to bed. It was not a great existence. Now that I'm doing better, I have this constant sense that I need to make up for lost time.
With that said, I often post about projects as I am having the ideas, but you aren't seeing the backlog of ideas, or how long it takes most of them to actually come to fruition, or how many simply never go anywhere. I am not doing all of the things all of the time. Usually I am doing one or two things and thinking (and perhaps posting) about five more.
Note that I am 40 and have been into making a variety of things since I was a child, which means that I have been accumulating various tools and supplies for over 30 years (I am not exaggerating). This makes it easy to switch between hobbies without having to invest time and money in a whole new setup each time. Ceramics is the major exception, and I'm not going to be able to do that after September (currently I'm getting a half price deal on a studio membership for summer, which I frankly do not have enough time for, but also when else am I going to have access to a ceramics studio for so cheap??).
And the other OTHER factor is..... I think I've probably been overmedicated TBH. Like I just asked to have my adderall dosage lowered (not for the first time) when I got it refilled this month, because I've been way more motivated than I have the physical capacity to keep up with. This will not stop the flow of new ideas, but it will hopefully keep me from trying to immediately do them.
But I have to ask, if you see somebody on tumblr posting a bunch about doing one hobby -- say it's knitting, or maybe playing video games -- do you assume that because they're always talking about knitting or gaming that that's all they're doing all day? That they must not be working because they talk about their hobby way too much to have time to do that hobby and work full time AND make food? And knitting and gaming aren't cheap, either. Yarn is expensive. It seems like most of the people I know who are really into gaming are buying new games every week or two. These are investments.
Is it the fact that I work with a variety of media that makes my having a job seem implausible? I WISH I could invest my full attention and enthusiasm in one thing -- I'd probably be a lot better at that thing than I am at the dozen things I cycle between, but I just can't get myself to do that.
hi Anon, I was going to not respond, but I actually have two things I want to say to you.
Rude.
Your "question" claims a few things. To have hobbies you must be rich, and you must not work. Which is your capitalism mindset showing. Yes, like Crow said, hobbies can be investments, but they can often be mitigated by thriftshopping, gifting, etc. And really? Crow's latests projects are literally a needle and some coloured threads. Trustfund for sure! (Heavy sarcasm). Not having time or funds for hobbies or other leisure activities is a sign of the noose of capitalism around your throat. You might want to unpack that.
It's done! I am so freaking thrilled with how this came out. It was immensely fun taking the old poster and trying to figure out a balance between the old art and a modern take on fire management, as well as how to make it my own while retaining as much of the original style and color as possible. And I'm not normally one to stick my whole logo on my illustrations, but I wanted to match the original poster which as the USFS logo there, so!
Shout out to @vaspider for helping me puzzle out better wording for the bottom chunk of the poster.
You can get prints and shirts with this design in my Printful shop! If there's another product you'd like to see it on, let me know!
Some more thoughts and ramblings about this piece below the cut, including a side-by-side with the original poster.
The Death Rides poster was produced in 1933 by the US Forest Service, but I've sadly never seen the specific artist named anywhere. It reflects the pretty typical attitude of the time that fire=bad, that it leads to death as a negative thing. It's also one of the most popular pre-Smokey Bear fire prevention posters. This thing is EVERYWHERE, especially in wildland fire circles. It's on posters, shirts, even a few logos.
I have never seen a GOOD reproduction of the thing. I feel like there's got to be a good quality one sitting around somewhere, but it sure doesn't seem to have made its way onto the internet. They're all grainy with strange color splotches, but that's never seemed to effect its popularity.
I do really love the concept of the original poster, and the simple phrasing that drives home the clear message. For my redo, I wanted to keep the overall look and feel, and the simple, clear message, but changing it to match modern understandings of fire and its place in the cycle of life in forests. I set out with the following goals:
Show fire as a part of the natural cycle that helps keep landscapes healthy.
Make the horse less distressed looking.
Remove the gendered language from the messaging.
Keep as much of the original posing, composition, and colors as possible.
Showing the renewal cycle was the trickiest part, because the composition really didn't leave a lot of room to show the regrowth portion. I think I came up with a good balance, though, by having the forest very overgrown, dark, and unhealthy, then having the strong dividing diagonal/arrow of fire bringing light into that dark overgrowth, and the open, regrowing portion behind the smoke and flames. I also had the regrowth coming from the horse's hooves so that the horse is more of an active piece of the story, rather than being forced through the whole affair.
The regrowing plants in the background are fire poppies and fireweed, as well as a few distant aspen saplings, all of which are some of the first plants to come back after wildfires move through. Death also got a fire poppy as the clasp of their cloak.
For the phrasing, I came up with "Death Renews the Forest" almost immediately, but I had more trouble with the bottom portion. I wanted the phrase to not be gendered anymore, so switched it to "we." Initially I thought about something like "When we are educated in its use." But I wasn't a big fan of "use." While the poster does feature Death doing an intentional prescribed burn, I also wanted the phrasing to apply to letting naturally lightning caused fires burn. So less "use" and more embracing fire overall. This is especially true given that in the US we have, unfortunately, gone back to a full suppression strategy as of 2026 thanks to an executive order from the orange menace. So, despite decades of research showing how much harm that causes, we've been ordered to start doing it again. Which, to me, just makes this redo of the poster even more relevant right now.
Spider helped me puzzle out some other phrasing ideas, and I really liked this final one. I think it is balanced really well with the top portion of the text, and the overall message of the poster.
So yes! Had a lot of fun with this. I probably will do some more redos of other famous prevention posters at some point, but I'm not sure when or which ones.
"The earth's rain belt." Pictured knowledge. v.1. 1916.
"(I)f you could get far enough away from the earth to look back on it, as we do on Saturn through a telescope, you would see a belt of clouds around it. The water of the equator, under the hot sun, is constantly sending up vapor which turns to clouds in the cooler atmosphere of the upper regions and then comes down in rain."
tangentwithtanner
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
sugurugetos
