In Search of Art that Inspires Me

cw bugs, gore/body horror, suggestive/nudity. I'm Mercury, a mid -20s aroace gay guy who made this blog to collect things I find pretty, inspiring, resonant or meaningful.

[mercurialdispositions]

Links // https://mercurialdispositions.carrd.co/

Bulk reblog // @mercurialventures

Oc / Art blog // @mercurialpassions

Tag classification under cut — currently not tagging posts in queue; it's going to be easier to queue them and tag later via archive than to go through the literal 12000 posts in my drafts and tag them before adding them to queue

Technique

#Linework

#Brushwork

#Shape

#Colour

#Figure

#Lighting

#Embellishment

#Process

Classification

#Critters

#Creature

#Anthro

#Human/oid

#Taur

Type

#Fur

#Feather

#Shell

#Scale

#Other

#Material

#Skin

#Character

#Outfit

#Armour

#Figure

#Scenic

#Structure

#Building

#Cityscape

#Vehicle

#Interior

#Prop

Nature?

#Plants

#Rocks

#Little Nature

#CAVES

Moods

#Gloom

#Lament

#Agonize

#Drift

#Seethe

#Dread

#Relinquish

#Comfort

#Revel

#Charm

#Dwell

#Affection

#Console

#Atmosphere

#Enchant

#Enliven

#Loom

#Bask

#Placate

#Desolate

#Eerie Beauty

#Harrowing Innocence

#Flesh Fantasy

#Intimate Decay

#Wrought Nihility

#Exquisite Monstrosity

#Staggering Aberrancy

#Piercing Vulnerability

Aesthetics

#Gild

[cuttledreams-bugs]

Attacks (and one revenge) on aviornova, egreonna, meloompa, seeturtl, MarmaladeSparrow, and Adeadguy!

[atrusovaartist]

acrylic, canvas 30*40 cm "lavender cloud" 2025

[awanqi]

Artwork done for Subterranean Press's limited edition of The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang. I really enjoyed working on this one, too. I love the ocean and bodies of water and stuff like that :)

Sketches and other bonus content are available on my Patreon.

[captyns]

wuff

// acrylic portrait for theofaux

[dr-wormman]

Varkouda for dragonarrt on insta

[ancient-rome-au]

new frontiers in horse girl [laudatory] [source]

[treeen]

[ID: A screenshot of a Bluesky's post by user itstessinadress.bsky.social reading:

"I like the horse designs on iron age Iceni coins so much that I got them as tattoos which I like so much that I sculpted, molded, and cast them as coins again!"

Attached are four photos, the description is taken from the ALT on the original post:

Photo 1: An ancient Iceni coin depicting a stylised horse figure with a circle containing a cross above it.

Photo 2: A woman's leg against a white background, showing 2 of the several tattoos she has of a band of stylised Iceni horses around her calf.

Photo 3: A modelling clay sculpture of an Iceni style horse on an otherwise unadorned disc on a wooden block, next to a silicon mold of the same, both on a worn workbench.

Photo 4: Two identical silver looking coins, each bearing a horse in the stylised fashion of the Iceni tribe.

End ID]

[wolfeblock]

cat w/ a ciggy

[baranarts]

assortment of random doodles

[jayarrowdesigns]

i saw these wonderful doodles from @baranarts and i knew i was going to be sketching some bugs today. as well as a tiny dragon and chibi dragon

two were a character study front and side veiw of baranarts sketches. and my fat bug was based on thier one as well.

i love my fat bug. baranarts does amazing anatomy sketches, so i was able to follow the anatomy. not that im bad at it. just trying to branch out my body types as im trying to get rid of the ingrained skinnyness that was forced upon me all my life :/. that and my own body image is getting better with more people sharing thier thiccer characters:)

and thank you for sharing @baranarts

[pageis]

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Obsessed with the concept of dinosaurs as hunting dogs

[romanceyourdemons]

it’s a pretty well-known phenomenon that you only get a couple seconds with your horror creature fully visible onscreen before it gets “chuckied,” a term coined by yours truly referring to the shift between the first and second acts of child’s play (1988) as the audience gets used to seeing the little chucky puppet moving around and consequently can no longer buy into the film’s serious slasher tone in the absence of the horror of the unknown. the tuunbaq in the terror and the dogomorph in alien 3 (1992) are also famous victims of chuckying—just like how lovecraftian horror usually falls flat on the screen, too much visibility and your scary, amorphous creature will become a very morphous puppet or cgi’d in picture. the easiest way to combat this is of course to keep the creature obscured for as much of the piece as possible; for instance, despite their oppressive presence throughout their respective works, the beast in over the garden wall is shown for less than six frames and the eponymous kaiju of cloverfield (2008) is never properly shown, allowing each to retain their mystery and danger. another route is to simply lean into the campiness of it, like the later child’s play franchise and alien resurrection (1997). in the case of the blob (1958) a mere satirical title sequence song is enough to completely transform a fairly standard creature feature into an enduring masterpiece of hokey fun. the third option to combat chuckying is for the horror creature to constantly transform—the thing (1982), the fly (1986), and aliens (1986) show their creatures in loving detail, but there is always something the audience hasn’t seen yet, something they don’t know to brace themselves for. it’s a fine line to walk, of course, but that’s the nature of the game when you want to turn the concept of the unknown into something knowable enough to bite you

[monstersovka]

✷ 🍂 ✷

[rockchomper]

[blackberrys0da]

Artfight attack to _ sto0veE

[effiecalvin]

I have this idea for a video game called Are You Out There? where two players control two different alien civilizations and the goal of the game is to invent spaceflight and then manage to find one another in a ginormous universe. You can try to leave signs for each other to find, or send out probes and radio waves, or colonize many systems so you're a bigger target, but its hard because the universe is really big.

Idk just a thought.

[rebeckeronie]

Took a quick stab at the most recent drawfee prompt. Didn't have time to clean it up but I like where we got :3 I lov freaky guys