Inking Imps Art

Monochrome illustrator fascinated by death, folklore, cryptids and magic. ° Ink and graphite preferred medium. °

[inkingimpsart]

I have a website going up! I might even have a blog eventually! I'll still post on Bluesky and Tumblr, but going forward I'll be updating my gallery with any new works.

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge, hand mobility! 🙌

X

[ruffboi-mags]

1) do this even if you're under 40. seriously. I definitely should have been doing something like this for years and I only turned 40 a month and a half ago

2) if you're like me just now trying this going "oh god i've only done 15 and i think my hands are cramping" start lower than 30 and increase by 5 once whatever number you're doing no longer makes your hand cramp up. I can manage about 15 per exercise at the moment.

[creations-by-chaosfay]

If you're hypermobile, be especially gentle.

[sunspotpony]

Yeah I have Hypermobility and tried these and immediately fucking hurt my hand real bad.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

Split-joint seals (骑缝章qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.

[ariaste]

OMG I got so excited about this because they used a really similar (though far less refined) version of this for contracts in the European medieval period!

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Delights me when human beings find similar ways to solve the same problem at two different ends of the world. <3

[inkingimpsart]

The various stages of the Sister of the Cog-Toothed Crown, a character made by @dumbrobotstuff.bsky.social from the kit-bash he did.

Done in red and black ink, gold gel pen, and Faber-Castell pencils.

[elwenyere]

-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"

[oldshrewsburyian]

I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:

Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.

[moj-cien]

Silly stuff that took me a whole day

Guys you gotta read the Abyssal Edge

The Abyssal Edge by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. From the anthology Sons of the Emperor. Narrated by Christopher Tester. Belongs to BL and GW …yadda yadda… you know the drill.

[wh40kartwork]

Chaos Primarchs

by Christopher Regalario

[inkskinned]

my most ungrounded and unresearched fear is that so many companies are pushing AI in part because it builds them a pathway towards a subscription model for a huge number of things that should not be subscription, but theoretically could be:

do you want to talk to verizon's help desk because there's an error on your bill? to access a real agent, you have to pay for Verizon Access+, only 5.99 a month.

want to filter out all the fake job postings from the real ones? subscribe to Indeed: Advanced Tactics and only verified postings will appear on your dash.

sick of the infinite ai slop? buy Google Premium; it'll automatically detect ai within a site and gives it a credibility score. with premium plus, you can shuffle high-credibility results to the top.

do you want a "luxury" experience? well, you'd have to pay for that luxury, and since the company sure doesn't want to pay its employees; the cost would fall to the consumer.

when automation has made every experience unpleasant; the experience of genuine humanity will be commodified.

[marzipanandminutiae]

This is already happening – one of the softwares used by a museum I work at only lets you talk to a human help agent if you have their premium subscription. It's such bullshit

[inkskinned]

the fact you are not the only one in these notes saying "no this is already happening; i have to pay money to speak to a representative" is just... really awesome! you said a software used by museums is doing this shit? okay! great! wonderful!! anybody know where i can scream

[inkingimpsart]

Model and kit-bash @dumbrobotstuff.bsky.social (on Bluesky) gave the thumbs up for me to use their amazing kit-bash model for artistic endeavors.

Here's my sketch for the yet unnamed Sister from the Order of the Cog-Toothed Crown.

[inkingimpsart]

Cogs, cogs, cogs, cogs, cogs~🎶🎵

[inkingimpsart]

Djinn Series

Illustrations done with heavy inspiration of the djinn/jinn of Middle Eastern folklore and legend.

[inkingimpsart]

Djinn III.

11x14 inches, traditional ink on bristol, with light graphite and gold gel pen applied.

[inkingimpsart]

Djinn III.

11x14 inches, traditional ink on bristol, with light graphite and gold gel pen applied.

[warsmithbelashk]

To Wake a Sleeping Bear

Rating: Explicit

It is Midsummer Day! Hail Freyr!

Enjoy some 3000 words of Kim and Harry fucking nasty!

(Part of the Bear Necessities timeline, in which Harry discovers he's a Bear. The big fat gay/bi kind.)

[inkingimpsart]

Model and kit-bash @dumbrobotstuff.bsky.social (on Bluesky) gave the thumbs up for me to use their amazing kit-bash model for artistic endeavors.

Here's my sketch for the yet unnamed Sister from the Order of the Cog-Toothed Crown.

[mads-schubert]

Part 9 in my weekly poster series for 2026

[targetedknowledge]

[warsmithbelashk]

@inkingimpsart Runic works on AI, spread the word. ;-)

[antarctic-octopus]

PSA