Something Something Birds

Archive and reference blog for bisexual-kelsier

[abaddecisionagoodstory-deactiva]

Some important tips on making/writing Asian OCs

Try to stay away from the smart/nerdy Asian stereotype. Plenty of Asian people are very smart, just like in any other race. However, stereotypical racial representation is worse than none at all. By all means, you can have an intelligent Asian character but make sure their intelligence is not the main factor of their personality.

Write more than just East and light-skinned Asians. In most cases, if an author wants to have some Asian representation they’ll throw in a Chinese or Japanese character. And while yes, there aren’t very many Chinese and Japanese characters as opposed to white, there are even less Southeast, South, and Middle Eastern Asian representation. Not all Asians have light skin, even in East Asia. There are plenty of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese people with dark skin!

 Do your research when naming Asian characters. Unless you want to end up like J.K. Rowling who’s sole Asian character was named Cho Chang. Do not just throw a last name with an ‘ong’ or an ‘ang’ at the end.

Represent plus size Asians. Asian women are stereotyped as petite, and just like white plus size women, plus size Asian women need representation in media.

Asian people don’t eat everything with chopsticks. I didn’t think that needed to be said, but here we are.

Create Asian characters with an alternative fashion sense/style. Asians with dyed hair. Asians with piercings. Asians with tattoos.

Stay away from the strict parent Asian stereotype. In fact, stay away from every stereotype, okay?

Keep in mind, stereotypes for other races aren’t the same for Asian people.

By all means, write about Asian culture. BUT MAKE SURE IT IS ACCURATE!!!

Write Asian characters who get in trouble and/or are reckless. Asians that swear. Asians that break rules. Asians that get detention.

WRITE ATHLETIC ASIANS!!!

Do not, under any circumstance, use the word ‘chinky’ to describe an Asian character. Just. Don’t.

Asian people face racism too.

Don’t fetishize or demonize Asian culture.

Asian people, feel free to add some more on! If you’re white or non-Asian POC do not comment if you reblog! (Unless it’s to say something like, oh nice tips! Or thank you, I didn’t know that!)

If you can, reblog. I haven’t seen any for Asian OCs.

(x)

[spirallingintotheabyss]

Can I add

-remember that guy in ATLA who helped Aang unlock his chakras? Don’t. Please, please don’t.

-please don’t write us as evil.

-if you want references to good rep, just ask (me,or any other Asian people you know.)

-if you do have Asian characters, don’t be afraid to make them queer, disabled, or anything else that’s under-represented. We are not just cishet,abled people.

-again, as op said, do Not make them a stereotype. Search up stereotypes. And avoid them. You may want to ask for sensitivity readers too

That’s all I can think of now!

[lila-baard-deactivated20201206]

Hey just gonna add some more stuff

-reiterating OP’s first point, the smart/nerdy yet socially inept Asian? Don’t do that. Please.

-Asia is full of several diverse cultures and many different religions. Often times, religion becomes a part of the culture. Please, please do your research before you utterly butcher one or both of these. 

-Elaborating on the above point, I have read quite a few books where a character (mostly from Asia) who either wears a hijab or continuously uses Allah’s name, but are as far from Muslims as one can get. Its cringey and honestly sometimes just painful to see. A few words and a head scarf do not make a Muslim. (I am sure there are other religions as well as cultures who have possibly suffered a bias like this , but since I don’t know them as well as my own, I’ll refrain from commenting upon any)

So yeah that’s pretty much all I have to add, if any one has more tips for Asian characters, please, feel free to add them here!

[abaddecisionagoodstory-deactiva]

Important additions!!!

[lnfini-deactivated20230930]

speaking from the perspective of an east asian:

asian people are not anime. anime aesthetic blogs and weeb culture =/= asian culture. do not solely base your view of us based off anime lmao

asian cultures also aren’t interchangeable. specify your asian characters’ ethnicity past “asian”. don’t limit yourself to only east asians, south asians exist and are severely underrepresented in western media.

wikipedia pages on stereotypes of east asians in the us and stereotypes of south asians

stop making rat jokes abt asian characters it’s been historically used as anti-asian (especially anti-japanese) propaganda

east asian men have historically been portrayed as emasculated and sexless compared to white people or as sexual threats to white women, as well as misogynistic. asian girls are either fetishized or deemed less sexy than white women. don’t <3

on tumblr, especially in ship art, light-skinned asian characters are periodically portrayed as comparatively feminine and submissive to their white counterparts whereas darker-skinned characters are cast as the more dominant and aggressive half. this is a trend tied to colorism in general. avoid it.

almost every single asian character ive ever seen (by white ppl) on this site lacks body hair. what the fuck we arent made of porcelain give us hair like Human Beings. draw us with arm hair, leg hair, mustaches, don’t only uplift us when we cater to western standards of white beauty

also if ur writing abt an asian character and u describe their skin as “porcelain” and emphasize the Pure Whiteness of it…………….. fuck you

yes asian people largely have dark brown hair and eyes

yes asian characters who lack those traits are still just as asian they don’t lose that status just bc theyre blonde (re: people saying reigen from mp100 isn’t japanese because he doesnt “look” japanese)

your “me no speakee engrish” jokes arent funny.

not every asian character needs to be associated with tea. or sushi or katanas or cone-shaped hats or rice

to be clear. a feminine asian character is not inherently bad. an asian character drinking tea isn’t inherently racist. it’s the fact that 1. these are used as the Main Indicators that these characters are ‘authentically’ asian and 2. they are about as deep as most white portrayals of asian culture go. the overlap with colorism means that, largely, asian ‘representation’ in white circles is largely light-skinned, inaccurate depictions of east asians that border on caricature.

support asian artists i promise we will do a better job of portraying our own culture than a white person ever could lol

[dazzlingmagicfox]

Southeast asian here. Regarding skintones. Yes, making us look lemon yellow is racist. But making us look always rosy white or ‘correcting’ the yellow undertone of our skin is whitewashing. Having a yellowish undertone is normal for those with warm olive skintones. If ya’ll can learn to differentiate blackface from a normal dark skintone, then ya’ll can learn to differentiate a normal warm olive skintone from yellowface. The pic above is a good example. The one on the left still kept a normal golden yellowish undertone while the right is basically piss yellow skintone. Having a yellow undertone is normal for many asians. Just not a yellow skintone. Learn the difference between skintones and undertones please.

[viralfrog]

The best sleeping positions when you are injured.

[forest-enby]

In

Pain???

d e p l o y

PILLOW

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

Okay but what if everything hurts

[marsupials-of-mars]

Princess and the pea mode

[meangirlnurse]

this feels like a good reference (and if possible, from personal experience, i’d recommend packing ahead of time if you can…your panicked brain is not as effective as you think it is)

[ieropun]

Image description: a text list of suggested items to acquire in the event of an emergency.  The full transcription of the lists are under the read more. The lists are separated into time segments and suggested items needed. There are blank entries in ‘number of vehicles’ and at the end of each list where you may add additional relevant information.

Keep reading

[cassandrasroguelevels]

#even at 15 min warning birth certificate / passport/ citizenship docs#anything that proves that you exist and have citizenship / permanent residency where you live#its very much possible to become stateless after a diaster#keep your important shit to hand#especially if you are likely to be a target for deportation by the government 

[drawingsober]

POC blush tutorial

Feel free to repost, but please credit me

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

listen I ended up regretting saying anything about this on my old blog because people will interpret literally any and every statement maliciously on this hellsite but I want to start like. a helpline for people who are like “hey I pretty much only read YA but I’m like 22 now and don’t relate to teenagers as much, it’s such a shame that there are no fun books written for adults :(” because boy HOWDY are there some fun books for adults 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

maybe I’ll start a big google doc or something one day but for now *deep breath*

The Beautiful Ones (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - absolutely BUCKWILD romance with a dash of telekinesis; nonstop high society drama and misunderstanding from start to finish, happy ending guaranteed. STRONGLY recommend if you, like me, are a basic bitch who enjoys a bit of Pride and Prejudice. 

Binti (Nnedi Okorafor) - a math prodigy runs away from Earth to become the first of her people to attend a prestigious university in space, but shit gets real when a crew of hostile jellyfish aliens attack her ship. 

Chilling Effect (Valerie Valdes) - a spaceship captain and her crew take on a series of convoluted missions in order to rescue the captain’s sister, who’s been frozen and held for ransom. 

The City of Brass (S.A. Chakraborty) - an 18th century conwoman and a mysterious djinn team up to go looking for a legendary hidden city.

The City We Became (N.K. Jemisin) - a scrappy bunch of Chosen Ones have to band together to defend New York City (which is very much alive) from a huge ass monster. 

The Empress of Forever (Max Gladstone) - a lady supervillain gets blasted into space and meets an even bigger, planet-destroying evil space empress. literally WHAT is not to like?

The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo) - high fantasy royal drama about a woman making her way to power in the wake of a political marriage that left without friends or allies. 

Escaping Exodus (Nicky Drayden) - a space-faring clan are creating their latest spaceship from the insides of a giant monster when absolutely everything goes to shit (as things are wont to do in science fiction stories). 

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars (Kai Cheng Thom) - a trans girl runs away to the big city, where she uses her martial arts skills to team up with other trans woman and form a vigilante gang to defend their own when police look the other way. a fascinating blend of poetry and prose and magical realism. 

Finna (Nino Cipri) - two exes working at an IKEA have to team up to save a customer who disappeared through one of those interdimensional portals that all IKEAs have laying around. you know how it is.

Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) - come on, you’ve heard about this one. it’s the one with the lesbian space necromancers? yeah, that’s the one. you got it.

In the Vanishers’ Palace (Aliette de Bodard) - a Beauty and the Beast retelling based in science fiction and Vietnamese fantasy, featuring a young woman falling in love with a “beast” who’s actually a motherly dragon after becoming a tutor to the dragon’s two powerful children. 

Jade City (Fonda Lee) - urban fantasy gang wars, pitting one magically enhanced family against rivals and a new drug that lets anyone mimic their abilities. 

The Library of the Unwritten (A.J. Hackwith) - hell’s librarian gets sent on a quest to find a runaway soul. 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers) - aka one of my favorite books ever, essentially slice of life science fiction following an interspecies crew of deep space truckers making the longest and most complicated delivery of their lives. very warm and fuzzy. 

Mort (Terry Pratchett) - one of many MANY Discworld books, but a very good one to start with, following the adventures of a boy named Mort after he’s taken on as Death’s apprentice. you know, like the Grim Reaper? that Death. 

River of Teeth (Sarah Gailey) - historical AU in which the United States imported and domesticated hippos in the Mississippi River; follows a crew of hippo-riding crooks and hooligans as they plan one heck of a caper. 

Space Opera (Catherynne Valente) - a washed up rock star and his old bandmate get roped into performing in an intergalactic singing competition that will determine the fate of the entire planet Earth. full of aliens, attempted assassination, art, and emotional turmoil. 

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) - time-travelling assassins from rival factions fall in love in a poetic and breathless story that spans centuries and reality. 

Under the Pendulum Sun (Jeannette Ng) - fairyland is real, and Victorian England is sending missionaries. a woman and her brother attempt to bring the good word to the fair folk, but start to suspect the queen might just be screwing with their heads. PEAK gothic horror with a creepy fairy twist. 

Witchmark (C.L. Polk) - a doctor and former soldier with magical powers of healing is trying to live a quiet life and avoid his controlling, aristocratic family’s plans for him, only to get tangled up in a massive political conspiracy when one of his patients mysterious dies. accompanying him in his investigation is a mysterious and gorgeous faerie man. romance ensues. 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

for those of y’all who like goodreads I’ve started a shelf of adult books for ya fans, which is currently 40+ books strong and will continue to grow

[xekstrin]

ok so like…. you know how in miraculous ladybug marinette says she adds rice flour to her french baguette recipe? i actually added rice flour to my baguette dough and the end result is fucking. ethereal. im still thinking about it a solid 12 hours later. I want to make more but then I would be eating bread all fucking day!!!! it’s so good!!!! I’m trying to isolate the other things I did differently but the only major difference is the rice flour so that must be the difference!!!!!! 

[siderealsandman]

r…resippy?? 

[xekstrin]

UPDATE ON THE BREAD RECIPE: I made it again and this time wrote down what I was doing and used ACTUAL MEASURING EQUIPMENT AND A TIMER OMG so it’s slightly different from the half-remembered one I posted earlier!

anyway in a big measuring cup or small bowl you need 

2 cups warm water 2 tsp white sugar 1 tsp honey 2 tsp dry yeast 2 tsp whole milk ½ tsp flour

mix this together gently and let it sit for about five minutes or until it is nice and foamy!

While you’re waiting for it to foam up, in a separate bigger bowl,  mix together 

4 cups bread flour ½ cup sweet white rice flour 3tsp salt Now pour your yeast concoction into the flour mixture, I used a spatula to mix it all together. the dough is VERY sticky.

Let the bowl sit in a warm room, covered with wet towel, for 2 hours. it should have doubled in size. knead it with your hands until you’re satisfied (unfortunately no exact measurement for satisfaction has been discovered).

This makes enough for two loaves! I immediately plopped one unshaped onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets and baked at 365 for an hour. 

I left the other to sit out in a warm room overnight to see how it differed and just finished baking it. It looks pretty good! 

they were both nice and crunchy-crusted, fluffy and chewy on the inside, and overall super delicious. but I slightly preferred the one that I immediately threw into the oven over the one I let sit out overnight.

[neechees]

How to Draw Native People: a Tutorial/Reference Guide

As requested, here is a basic guide for how to draw Indigenous peoples (mostly focused on North America)! Also please note that this is not an exhaustive list of Native American phenotypes/features, and more like an intro on very common features that can be found in us, and even then, not altogether at once on a single person’s face. I highly encourage the use of references and care taken into research when drawing. I may do a part 2 that goes slightly more into depth, but for now, enjoy part one.

Resouces:

How to draw Native Skin tutorial (don’t draw us red!)

List of Native American Celebrities, which include their tribe(s) and home country, with 1,250 names, to use for your referencing pleasure

How to draw black people by Peachdeluxe, & Black hair in depth by misslaney for mixed black Natives

How to draw East Asian People, a guide by Chuwenjie, for mixed Asian Natives AND because it includes a lovely tutorial on monolid eyes, a shared feature of Native people

get drawin!!

[clowniconography]

i am a:

⚪️ man

⚪️ woman

🔘 person with adhd

and i am seeking:

⚪️ men

⚪️ women

🔘 meals that can be prepared in under 5 minutes

[john-marshall]

Here’s a low spoons meal plan that I made as an autistic, mentally ill person, mostly made for a good friend with ADHD and chronic pain.

All of the recipes don’t require any more cooking than a microwave or toaster, and don’t require any utensils other than a fork or spoon. I tried to make as many ingredients as possible shelf stable so that you can pick and choose as needed. It’s made to minimize dishes, time, and gross motor skills required.

[nonbxnary]

Calling my trans siblings that do injections (and anyone else that does regular self-injections)!

This is a ShotBlocker. It’s perfect if you have a fear of needles, injections, injection pain, or any other kind of injection anxiety. You place the plastic spikes on your skin and firmly press them down while doing your injection. Having many different points of pressure distracts you from injection pain and I’ve found it helps mentally as well.

I’ve been doing T injections for about a month now and tonight I didn’t have to work myself up to it like I’ve had to in the past. AND it wasn’t as painful as my other injections! I highly recommend getting one of these if you’re struggling to do injections. You can get them for $5-$7 online and they are reusable.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

This is such a great thing for anyone who, like me, is super squeamish about needles

[mayalaen]

I’ve been asked many times what someone should look for when trying to find a good artist. The best way you can do this is to look at their portfolio, whether it’s in a book at their shop or online. If they don’t have good work in their portfolio, they’re probably not good artists.

The shop may be clean, the people there might be nice, and the design they draw up for you might be exactly what you want, but if your artist doesn’t stand up to the points listed above, then you’re going to get a bad tattoo.

It’s okay to walk into a shop, talk with an artist for a while, and decide you don’t want a tattoo from them. Even if the artist has a bad attitude about it or tries to convince you to just let them do it, remember this is going to be on your body for the rest of your life.

[unforth-ninawaters-deactivated2]

This is fucking fantastic thank you!!

[supervillainny]

So important. I had an apprentice tattoo me once without any supervision - wound up with a blurry tattoo, and a messed up tendon for a while after >:(

[lesbiansitara-moved-deactivated]

I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao

[darcylindbergh]

There is a way to do this but I can’t recall how to do it. it’s something you type into the box for “other filters” or something, I don’t remember. who knows?? It’s not a great option, and I don’t know if you can sort out authors that way, but it’s better than nothing if someone can reblog this with how to do it!

[fordeductions-blog]

Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!

So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know I’m going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))

Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because that’s a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration. 

With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results: 

As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Let’s pretend I’ve read all their fics, or that I just don’t like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right: 

In “Search within results” I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:

There goes earlgreytea68! But now I’ve decided that Crack is just not my thing, I’m sick of that, too, for heaven’s sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.

Well, then I add this to my search:

Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:

Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!

You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example, “Secret Relationship” is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words like “DubCon”. 

I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better. 

Good luck!

[darcylindbergh]

An excellent in-depth guide! Thank you!!

[eyesofmedusa]

omg changed my whole ao3 rarepair game

[stucky-ficrecs]

An excellent guide to filtering on AO3!

You can filter out phrases by enclosing them in quotes. For example, if ABO and Hydra Trash Party are not your things, try:

-“alpha/beta/omega dynamics” -”hydra trash party”

[possibly-an-obsession]

I have more advice!

Say, you’re in your random fandom- I went with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since I’ve been reading Iron Man stuff recently. Tony Stark is awesome.

But anyway, you’re on the page, and you see that there are 174,774 works! That is way too many for a casual afternoon’s browsing.

And you see that the first one is Peter Parker/Tony Stark and that is not your jam. It doesn’t work for you, or it squicks you, whatever. Wouldn’t life be easier if you could browse without seeing that pairing (or whatever pairing you don’t like)? You can!

First, click on that pairing tag(You may want to open this in another tab, actually.):

and it’ll take you to the page for that pairing tag. Click this button:

and then look at the address bar! The actual page is unimportant. Copy the numbers located here:

and go back to the original search page! Down on the side, in the same place you can get rid of other tags, type -relationship_ids:”the number you just copied”

Then hit ‘sort and filter’ annnd… magic!

The fics with that pairing are gone! You can also do multiple pairings, get rid of any tags you don’t like, and sort it by date or length or kudos, or whatever.

Enjoy.

[irenkaferalkitty]

I’d just like to add that these sorts of search modifiers ALSO WORK IN GOOGLE AND MOST RESEARCH DATABASES. The more you know.

[itsmajel]

Just a quick reminder that AO3 uses Lucene as a search and index engine.

That means you can pretty much use all the Lucene Query Syntax in the “Seach within result” field.

I don’t think AO3 indexes the whole fic for searching but definitely it’s meta data. Combined with Lucenes awesome query syntax you can do pretty much every search you heart desires.

Addtional Lucene Query Syntax that has not been mentioned yet and you might find useful:

Wildcard Searches

You can use wildcard searches within single terms. For a single character wildcard search use the “?” symbol. For a multiple character wildcard search use the “*” symbol.

AND/OR

Lucene allows you to combin terms through logic operators. You’re looking for fics that are either “reunion” or “enemies to lovers”?

Just put in >“reunion” OR “enemies to lovers”< into the field

and you end up with all the stories that are either or but not both.

But wait, now you’re looking for fics that are both “reunion” and “enemies to lovers” at the same time? Now worries Lucene got you covered.

Just change it into >“"reunion” AND “enemies to lovers”“<

and you’ll get all the fics that mention both “reunion” and “enemies to lovers” somewhere in their meta data (note: it’s not just tags. It’s also title, summary …)

Boosting

You can also boost specific terms when doing a multi term search.

You can use the “^” Operator followed by a number to boost a specific term.

Say you’re interested in fics that are either “first kiss” or “bed sharing” but you’re much more interested in “bed sharing” fics and feel they are more relevant.

You can use the search >“first kiss” “bed sharing”^5<

to manipulate the order of your results in a matter that the score of every fic that contains beg sharing is multiplied by 5. Therefore all fics containing that term are given priority and shown at the top of the list.

You can also combine all of the above, target specifc fields (that’s what you did with the “relationsship_id:xxx”) and many more things.

For more info about the Lucene query syntax check out Apache’s Lucene Query doc.

[thefriendlypigeon]

^ sharing this because we all love fanfics and @itsmajel is a freaking nerd 👌

[ruffboi-mags]

I’m not sure why it’s missing, BUT you usually don’t have to do an exclude “search within results” for characters, ships, or popular tags, etc when you’re on a tag? Because of this:

I don’t know if the original guide is old or what, but when you’re sorting within a tag/canon/ship/etc, there is an “include” which you could do to sort for only M or E rated fic with the “Steve Rogers” tag (in marvel, that is), but you can specifically exclude any fics that are, say, “Steve Rogers/Tony Stark” or are tagged with the “non-con” archive warning.

Very important to know.

[saltoftheao3]

Yeah, I think the “exclude” feature is fairly recent (and awesome). Still this is a good guide to database search 101. Also if you don’t want to have to type in all of your squicks and NOTPs everytime you do a search you can bookmark the page with your “exclude” search settings and then modify the rest of the search as needed.

[greensaplinggrace]

Honestly I was so glad when the exclude feature finally popped up. One of my favorite updates to the ao3 database like damn I hated having to type in ship codes and memorize all the stops. It was exhausting.

[thewritershandbook]

Types of Ships

Parts of the Ship

Wind Directions

Sides of Boats

[fixyourwritinghabits]

my bad, should have reblogged from here. 

[scriptmedic]

Oh my gods, guys, this looks so useful!!

[rychillacases]

Reblogging for future reference.

[writing-in-the-grave]

A reference I desperately needed

[dungeonmastercole-deactivated20]

For all those seafaring adventurers.

[nudityandnerdery]

Finally, a good shipping post on this website.

[succubusboyfriend]

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

[succubusboyfriend]

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

[suave-eddboy]

[thepioden]

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

[sparksel]

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

[concerningwolves]

[flowersandmagic]

Witch idea

When you know that a storm or heavy rain is coming, draw sigils on the street with chalk. The impact of the rain charges it and releases the magic by washing the chalk away.

[milkteaandlavander]

I never THOUGHT ABOUT THIS SUCH A GOOD IDEA THATS SO CREATIVE THANK U

[honeyrenaissance]

My professor talked about how women aren’t used to asking for things in the work place, such as raises, because we’re conditioned to downplay our achievements and hold off on asserting our value. She discussed how, even now at this stage in her career (a published doctrate), she shakes when she askes to be considered for a raise and about the first time she was really successful at getting one. After class I asked her what she asked her boss and she winked at me, took me to her office, and asked me to take notes.

She said she practiced this technique like 5 times in her office before she requested a meeting with her boss. I’m gonna share it with you guys because I really loved it.

You start off by thanking your employer for their support (whatever that means in the context of your work environment). You then say that you would like to take some time to discuss next year’s salary. You say, allow me to refresh your memory regarding some of my accomplishments or contributions from the past year, and you present a written summary of all that you’ve done. You close by saying, I hope that next year’s salary reflects this list of contributions and you thank them for their time and see yourself out.

I just loved how she made it seem so much less daunting of a task. She said not to underestimate your achievements as women have a tendency underreporting what they’ve done.

The fact that she shared this with me really meant a lot as well as women really need to be there to empower each other and help guide each other towards success. So if you end up using this, let me know! I want to see how it works for you ^_^.

[niqabisinparis]

!!!

[artandstarstuff]

NPCs for all the needs! More tables to come.

[awed-frog]

Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but - it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration - why do assholes always come out on top? - and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.

“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”

[youngnoblewoman]

This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.

[skeptictankj]

Everyone, everywhere, without exception, should play this thing through.

[anathaeum]

Don’t check just this - check out all of Nicky Case’s work. They’re a brilliant creator and I heavily recommend checking out at least one of their projects.  Their website can be found here.

Parable of the Polygons - an interactive experiment that shows how tiny individual biases can collectively cause segregation on a massive scale.

To Build a Better Ballot - an interactive experiment that shows the alternatives to the voting systems we currently use and how they can be more representative and democratic, along with their faults.

Coming Out Simulator - a short interactive story/novel about coming out, based off of Case’s own experiences. Not one I’ve played myself but still one I can recommend.

Loopy - a very simple but useful tool to show how systems interact with each other and how things can self-propagate.

We Become What We Behold - “ a game about news cycles, vicious cycles, infinite cycles.“ A short five-minute game about news and media. Warnings for violence, blood, death and stress.

[makeitdewey]

306 Culture & institutions