beads and beasts

art, beading, warhammer 40k characters, ecology and conservation I have a patreon for those who want to see how I do things: www.patreon.com/Fluffysminion

[fluffysminion]

Commission Info

I do digital, watercolour and beadwork commissions specialising in creature and character design and illustration. I can do fantasy, sci-fi and horror; for more examples please see my portfolio.

I am happy to work from photo or art references, writen descriptions or stick-figure drawings, and I will always send a sketch for your approval before finalising it. I ask for payment upon completion but before delivery, upon receipt of payment I'll provide high and low resolution versions of the image, as well as a version optimised for printing.

Traditional Art

Primarily watercolour paintings, my traditional art is priced by the size of the finished piece. If you want me to send you the original I will be happy to do so as long as you are happy to cover the shipping cost.

A5: Small paintings 

Normal price: £50

A4: Large paintings 

Normal price: £150

Digital Art

My digital artwork's price is more variable, as the medium lends itself to pieces epic in scale and complexity. As such I offer one option for fixed price digital commissions of a single character or subject, and anything beyond that in scope is priced on a case-by-case basis. I am always happy to give price estimates though, so please do ask if you are interested.

Simple digital piece

Normal price: £60

Complex digital piece

This can really be whatever you want it to be. A stained glass window summarising a character's emotional arc over the course of a story, an epic fight scene, a ridiculously detailed dragon? All are possible and I'm always happy to discuss what I can do and at what price, and help figure out how to achieve what you want with the budget you have available.

Beadwork

My beadwork also has a lot of scope for varriation in complexity so rather than have pages and pages of things I could do and what I'd charge for them, I think it's easier for all involved to say ask and I'll give you an estimate.

Enquiries

If you want to commission me or have some questions about what something might cost please either send me a message on here, or on discord (where my username is fluffysminion). I'm always happy to answer questions, even if it doesn't end up going anywhere.

In addition to my standard commission, I also offer time-limited discount commissions of things I'm particularly inspired by at the moment, so keep an eye out!

Patrons get discounts based on their supporter tier!

[pnglove]

Mate, you’ve got a chubby lizard on your dashboard

[markscherz]

Graced by Geckolepis typica from Madagascar. I love that they’re quite round creatures and then they have these dainty little toes. Also, their scales are full bone and both scale and skin come off when they get grabbed, which is…unpleasant. Consequently, catching these geckos for research without damaging them requires special techniques. 19th century researchers used bundles of cotton wool, but I imagine this wasn’t very effective, because cotton still has a lot of friction and the friction would pull the skin and scales off. In my (quite extensive) experience, the best technique is to carefully and quickly flick the geckos from their tree trunk or branch into an open dry plastic bag using a finger or stick.

[mrskayathefrog]

'scuse me, Mr @markscherz, does it harm the gecko for the scales to come off?

like, of course it harms them but... can they grow back? like how some lizards can drop their tails and eventually the tails grow back

[markscherz]

Not only do they grow back, but they come back so well that we cannot even tell where they have ripped off before. This is very weird, because when a lizard loses its tail, it is very obvious where it has been lost and regrown. Not so these chaps. They seek out a humid place to hide, and within a few weeks, skin and scales have started to regrow. The fact that they can do this so well is the reason a team has just sequenced their genome. I believe it is hoped that the skin regeneration tech they have built into their cells could eventually be harnessed for human skin grafts.

[barksbog]

Oh Wow Hammerhead Worms!!

finally you can grab one of these without risking being poisoned! and they are so soft and floppy! just toss them around! slap them! gently pet them!

adopt a little guys fresh from my bog

barks-bog.com

[barksbog]

the worms are back in stock!!

[elodieunderglass]

You 🫵 person in Europe who’s finding it unseasonably hot and you suddenly don’t know what to wear on, like, a hot train.

You’re going to go on Vinted or eBay and put in “made in Italy”, “moda Italia” or (translation of same.) add the search term “silk top.”

What you want are tops that consist of these really thin jersey vest tops with a floaty pure silk layer over them. You’re looking to spend £8-20. You might need to specify “floaty” or “lagenlook.”

There will usually be a healthy secondhand collection of these online. Try to get a pure silk overlayer if you can - some of them are silk blended with viscose.

You’ll probably find the designs kinda mid or old-lady-ish. Don’t worry too much about this. They’ll actually look pretty cool on, and everyone will be jealous of your freedom from suffering.

These tops will keep you much cooler than skimpier ones.

[elodieunderglass]

General benefits of the design:

Quite compatible with office looks.

I find they don’t do the rumpled-commuter thing as badly as linen does. I like a linen trouser + these tops

Swishy silk layer is cooler than wearing nothing.

Keeps the sun off the arms/ chest.

I don’t know how to get these secondhand in the USA or other places, or if they’re prohibitively expensive, but if you’ve had luck doing so, do let me know.

[autisticplants]

literally the most evil part of the Doodle Industry imo is people advertising the dogs as low maintenance as in you dont need to brush or groom them. why are you setting EVERYONE up for failure. dogs with hair CAN be easy to take care of grooming-wise but only if you know what you need to do to stay on top of it + what tools make it easier. otherwise you’re gonna end up in a cycle of Miserable Dog and Damaged Hair That Tangles Easily

[pangur-and-grim]

that's my issue too, just the deception! I have one set of family members who bought a doodle on the basis of never having to groom it, and the thing immediately matted to the skin. it now gets taken to be shaved every few weeks.

and then my aunt bought this doodle advertised as a Bernese Mountain Dog x Poodle, and it is like...... 12 pounds sopping wet. stick figure animal. looks more like a tree frog crossed with a sea sponge.

[plaguedocboi]

I feel like you could put an Anomalocaris in a touch tank and jt would genuinely be fine. Like tbey didn’thave any truly hard biting parts they jist had little graspers for grisping up soft-bodied prey and cramming it into their mouths. I could pet Anomalocaris and teach it to take treats out of my hand. And it would feel like a velvet worm but Big and Wet

[alexriesart]

A creature I designed for Subnautica 2: the Hycean!

Inspired by pelagic snails like heteropods and siphonophores.

[fluffysminion]

Written to my local mp about AI stealing my art

going to go cry in a corner now, but maybe it will do some good

[connemor]

idk if i can ever top this piece tbh. i need this on a tshirt.

[fluffysminion]

@anguishedvelociraptornoises

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

obsessed with the concept of characters that are great to talk about but would absolutely be nightmares interacting with in real life. like for example hamlet? great character. love the character. thinking often about the character. but you already know he would absolutely obliterate the vibe of any room within seconds with his jaded asides and nightèd color

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

lancelot irl would be like you just start running

[palaeoplushies]

Working on BIG SHRIMP

[botanyshitposts]

a really funny thing about working with seeds in a day to day capacity is that you really need the seeds to stay in one place at any given moment, and the seeds disagree. so it’s just like, seeds end up on the floor. seeds end up on the desk. seeds appear in the crack between the glass plate of the microscope stage and its surrounding metal casing. seeds are around the dumpster outside. sweeping up seeds, patching up bags of seeds, picking seeds off your clothes and from between keyboard keys, very carefully transferring seeds into containers less likely to cause catastrophe should the seeds breach containment, like it’s just an uphill battle built into the work. almost as if the seeds are hyperevolved to disperse themselves or something

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

lancelot yelp review for that castle he stays in during knight of the cart

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

[pardalote]

Finished stitching my Oversight series.

12 small embroidered poem-objects in wool, linen, cotton, silk, stitched on canvaswork mesh and edged in glass beads.

[finnlongman]

Are there any mentions of the Gáe Bulg being made of bone in the original manuscripts? It's oft-repeated that it was made from the bones of a monster (the Curruid?) that lived in the Red Sea, but aside from 1 specific poem, "The Making of the Gáe Bulg," (that might be a late addition?) I can't find any references to bones or sea monsters. The closest is Dunn describing it as a "white" spear.

Actually, is it's appearance or composition ever described?I've been told some versions say 3 heads, or 7 heads + 7 barbs, or that it's smooth like a javelin.

Some verses say it "opens up" or "swells" into 30 barbs, while the passage of Ferdiad's death implies it grows into a cancerous thornbush inside the body.

I have just the article for you! JSTOR link (let me know if you need help with access):

Pettit, Edward, 'Cú Chulainn's "gae bolga"—from harpoon to stingray-spear?', Studia Hibernica 41 (2015), 9-48

This article pulls out various descriptions of the weapon's appearance and use, as well as looking at how it develops over time, and I think should answer all of your questions more thoroughly than I could manage in an answer without just plagiarising the article at length.

One thing I would disagree with Pettit about would be that he says Eachtra na gCuradh is seventeenth century; I assume this dating is based on the idea that it has the same author as Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus, as some have thought, but Ruairí Ó hUiginn makes a pretty convincing argument on linguistic grounds for that not being the case and dates it to c.1730 (I'd link you to that article, but it's both print-only and in Irish). This is very small and makes no substantial difference to his argument, just figured I'd mention it. I don't know how I actually feel about his stingray argument and the classical parallels; I haven't really thought about it enough to come to any conclusions on that. But the summary of What The Different Texts Say is certainly very useful.

Also, I forgot that this article does actually discuss Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus somewhat (I think I last read it years before I cared about TGG). I will add it to the very short list of articles that mention this text.

But general summary: the sea monster origin seems to be an early modern development -- in TGG it's from the skin of some kind of monster, in EnC from the barbed tail of a beast, and in the poem it's originally made from the bones of a monster's skull and then copied; Cú Chulainn's is the copy. Pettit, however, notes that "surviving medieval sources ... make no mention of the gae bolga's derivation from a sea-monster", and they don't mention it being made from bone. Dunn's translation is there drawing on the Stowe Táin, which is fifteenth century, and already bound up in the early modern tradition somewhat. (It's also a major source for TGG, but that's a different matter.)

Anyway. I think that article will provide lots of useful information about the gae bolga that you will enjoy :) As I said, let me know if you have any difficulty accessing it.

[mumblesplash]

it’s so magical and beautiful that there are sprawling interconnected cave systems carved deep into the earth by various geological forces and you don’t have to go in them. there are miles and miles of stone passageways in total darkness that require you to exhale all the air out of your lungs to squeeze through parts of them and you don’t have to be there. some of these squeezes are underwater and require cave divers to take off their oxygen tanks and push them through ahead of them and me i am above ground looking at the sky as we speak. there are untold subterranean wonders no human has ever seen and i will not be the one to discover them #grateful #blessed

[mumblesplash]

so true there could be any number of undiscovered species down there all of which are none of my business and never will be. peace and love on (the surface of) planet earth 💕

[redstonedust]

is there a name for the thing where people find out that a cute animal is still an animal that kills and fucks and does things that would be bad for humans to do to eachother so they start going "did you know DUCKS are EVIL?? did you know DOLPHINS will NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF GOD?? did you know your CAT is MORALLY BANKRUPT??"

[oneirophasia]

I propose "misanthropomorphism".