Here We Go

In progress

[schmergo]

The summer between the end of high school and the start of college, I wrote a ridiculous play about pirates and put on a staged reading with some friends at an amphitheatre at a local park before a small audience of friends and family. It was never published or staged again. But I just got a message from an old high school friend I haven’t seen in years. He accidentally quoted the play in a conversation with friends, was asked what he was quoting, he couldn’t remember either, and wracked his brain until he finally remembered it was that silly play reading that we did one day in the park over 10 years ago. It made me happy. (The line was, “Huzzah for mercantilism!” by the way.)

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

I just love that this is part of human life. Our memories don’t just pick up quotes from great art, literature, and music, but little things, too.

[ohcorny]

Hunger's Bite was nominated for a Ringo Award!

If you're a professional in the comics industry--which includes self-publishing, webcomics, and non-artistic roles in publishing--you're eligible to vote in the Ringo Awards! And I'd appreciate very much if you'd consider voting for Hunger's Bite as Best Children's Comic or Graphic Novel-- Ages 12 and Up (a mouthful, I know!)

You can vote in the Ringo Awards until August 26th, and you can find Hunger's Bite in your local library, or you can grab a copy from Bookshop! (or you can vote for it without reading it first, that's always been allowed❤️)

Thank you for your consideration! Please share to your comic industry friends~

[unimpressiveboyfriend]

i’d love to talk more about how trans men/mascs actually DO have a an original culture that is so stigmatized that it is almost impossible to engage with it without opening oneself up to harassment and hate crimes, even in queer spaces but i think FAR too many trans men/mascs have internalized transandrophobia surrounding our culture (due to the aforementioned stigma) to not blatantly ignore this discussion out of discomfort. when we ignore our culture as trans men/mascs or dismiss it as a mere caricature, we throw our brothers who resemble it more closely than us under the bus, and for what? to keep placating all the people who want us to assimilate?

trans men/mascs have a culture whether you participate in it or not. whether you find it cringe or not. whether it’s in queer bars and on stages/screens or not. whether you ignore it or not.

[unimpressiveboyfriend]

i don’t like to use the term self-hating but this mentality does nothing but hurt your community. it’s why trying to engage with or even discuss transmasc culture is almost impossible. we have a culture, you’re just embarrassed by it. you hate your community. you hate yourself.

[dykepuffs]

THANK YOU

Long ramble below!

Like, in the late 2000s and early 2010s the combination of recording equipment being comparatively cheap and accessible, and a general air of optimism about transition, meant that there was a whole custom of trans men singing duets with themselves, with the "girl" voice recorded before vocal transition and the "boy" voice recorded after. It wasn't just a white or an anglophone thing, though a lot of the early examples were were either white Australians or Black British guys - I don't know where it started, but it was very common as a format, usually singing or reciting poetry, occasionally doing an interview or a conversation.

Think how much you have to be able to forsee a hopeful future for yourself, to do that! You record the first half, maybe do a few takes or a few different songs, then wait patiently for a few months or years before recording the second half, and then share it to a community that you can trust will not see you as any less-of-a-man for it!

It was beautiful, it was unique, it was something distinctive that trans men and transmasculine people did, which gave hope to younger and newer trans men (because it was a way of seeing comparisons of what testosterone does to the voice, as well as a symbol of how things can get better over time) as well as being something that just boosted the morale of the people who made them.

It died out because first it was mocked endlessly by conservative trolls (because it was "so girly" and unlike anything which cis men were doing at the time), and then by other queer people ("lol okay aydenbraydenkayden shouldn't you be trying to autotune your squeaky frog voice?" "Wow, you did a duet? With yourself? And the lyrics are about loving and protecting each other so it's like it's about loving yourself? So original! Such groundbreaking art!?!") And then finally by more socially-conservative trans men who were disgusted by the idea of trans men having identifiable community and cultural touchstones which weren't completely indistinguishable from comparable cis men.

But it was beautiful! Like, it is so beautiful when trans men transition and then want to be culturally linked to other trans men, rather than just to vanish into stealth. It's beautiful when we pick names that are "trans boy names" out of love for our trans cultures rather than trying to be invisible (and again, this isn't just a white anglophone thing, every culture has its "trans boy names"), it's beautiful when we dress in ways that shout across the room that we are trans and that we want to talk to other trans people.

It feels like plain transphobia, that onlookers always assume that these things are a mistake and a sign that we are silly, childish, careless "girls" who haven't observed cis men well enough to imitate them, rather than being a matter of not wanting to imitate cis men and having our own cultures that we want to participate in.

[hellenhighwater]

Ohh I just had a good thought.

I love when I can combine projects for more powerful presentation. Prometheus X The Last Sequoia!

More to follow.

[hellenhighwater]

Wait wait wait wait

[murphysletsdraw]

The Heist (gouache) I didn't take a lot of reference photos in CPH, but this little tree was worth painting. I named this painting after the Jaylib track. This will be my postcard print for July. Join my postcard club on Patreon if you'd like this mini print in the mail - link in my pinned post!!

[hellenhighwater]

Okay, I've officially made a buttload of bunting (over 70 ft) and some of you have asked how I did the appliques because yay not sewing those on.

To do this you need:

quilting cotton fabric, any pattern you like. Nothing too heavyweight!

heat and bond iron-on interfacing (link is amazon; your local fabric retailers should have it. Buy local if you can!)

an iron and ironing board

a computer, with access to www.photopea.com or an image editor of your choosing.

a cricut or other cutting machine that works with sticky mats to feed material.

A roll of vinyl transfer tape--you can do this project without it, but it will be easier with.

To begin, make your design in your image editor. You want large, single color, relatively simple shapes on a transparent background. I have a 12x24 cutting mat, so I made my image 11.5x23.5. Export it as a PNG, and then upload it into design space or whatever application runs your cricut or cutting machine.

Prepare your fabric by cutting it to the size of your mat. For me, that's rectangles of 12x24 material. Also cut the same size out of heat-and-bond. DO NOT REMOVE THE BACKING PAPER FROM THE HEAT AND BOND. Once you've got rectangles of fabric and rectangles of heat and bond, attach the heat and bond to the fabric with an iron.

Prepare your sticky mat by attaching a layer of vinyl transfer tape face-down, so the sticky side is up when you remove the backing paper. This will prevent the fabric from leaving lint all over the mat, and the backing paper for heat and bond is very prone to tearing--without the transfer paper, you'll be cleaning your mats a lot between every cutting.

Stick the heat and bonded fabric face-up on the mat, so the paper backing of the heat and bond is adhered to the transfer tape. Smooth out to remove bubbles. And then load the mat into your cricut! I've got an explore air 2 (several years old now) and I used my normal blade at its deepest cut settings, and fire away. (Designs do not need to be mirrored.) Before removing your finished cut from the sheet, double check that the blade has gone all the way through and you will not need a second pass-I never did, but check just in case!

Peel everything off the mat, discarding the paper backing/transfer paper layers, then iron your fabric designs onto your bunting! If you want things to be really durable, you can sew the edges down like a normal applique, but for bunting, I didn't feel it was necessary.

[hellenhighwater]

I used the leftover appliques to make a skirt

[hellenhighwater]

I have found a stash of little golden tassels and I'm adding them to the tips of each bunt.

[baleful-meat-worm]

apologies to anyone who followed me for tma. cow studies :) ❤️

[badjokesbyjeff]

New York is the exact opposite of Minnesota. New York is where the Big Apple is and Minnesota is where Minneapolis

[mckenzie-t-canis-lupus]

JEFF WE TALKED ABOUT THIS.

[therobotwig]

One year ago today I posted this practically shot Iron Giant photo I created using real figures, lighting, miniature sets & my trusty old tin foil for water technique & cotton wool for the splashes.

[earthen-were]

🐱Jared 🌈

🔺02 red earthenware, underglaze, glaze

An urn commission for a sweet boy!❤️

[jadafitch]

HAPPY NATIONAL MOTH WEEK! Celebrate with moth art! Moths of North America poster Saturniid Moths of North America poster

[drops-of-universe]

please dont vape your blueberry ice flavor around my kid. we are raising him on marlboro reds exclusively.

[hunter-rodrigez]

So I do 3D modeling and printing as a hobby, and a few weeks ago I designed wheel guards meant to prevent office chairs from running over cables and clothes... or your pet's tail.

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

[chekhovs-raygun]

@bonyfish

[ink-the-artist]

Girls when their periods sync

[ink-the-artist]

do not even worry brother ive thought of everything

[everydaylouie]

LOUIE'S PICKS VOL. 1 - vinyl/cd/cassette/guitar picks now available on needlejuice records!! a compilation album of some of my favorite tunes from over the years, one side of vocal tunes and one of instrumentals

(please pardon the album art, i made it in 2023 when i was still a blender newbie lol)

[plaguedocboi]

So every year, my aquarium does a captive lobster hatchery project (hence all the loblings). The reason we’re doing it is because in the wild, loblings only have a 1 in 25,000 chance of surviving their larval phase. They’re plankton as babies and everything eats them. Additionally, as the Gulf of Maine warms, they are having even lower survival rates because the blooms of copepods they feed on as babies are happening earlier in the year, and they’re missing it.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Conservation is so fucken sick

[positivelyqueer]

”I have this artistic idea but not the skills to achieve it to the standard I want.”

congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!

Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?

Don’t let the fear of it not being perfect on the first try stop you from being Weird About It!

[jaseroque]

Please view Hokusai's gradual working towards The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, over a period of 39 years.

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.

It's all there; Mt Fuji, the ocean, the wave. The boats are gone, but replaced with birds, flying with the wave instead of fighting against it. It's not as famous as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but that's not what motifs are for -- each successive work does not have to surpass the previous in terms of success, especially in terms of external success. They're there for you to keep playing with, keep remixing and re-experiencing, for as long as you think you have something to say.

[jaseroque]

I also want everybody to know that Google and most of the internet think that all of those paintings bar the last one are called "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa", so I had to do a sort of middling deep dive just to find their actual names. And then I was like "I don't think those translations are very accurate", so I went on a second quest to retranslate them, which was particularly difficult with painting three (A View Of Express Delivery Boats) because for some reason he titled that one entirely in hiragana, and it's all archaic words that were very hard to chase down without their corresponding kanji. Google suggested "the push-off is a transportation route", which wasn't particularly helpful.

All of which is to say that I probably spent a bit too much time on all of that, but it was fun; and at least I know what those paintings are called now.