potatoart

I'm Liz. I draw things and sometimes I even scan them. Portfolio: @elizabethpatricianart

[rabidpotato]

HEY.

HEY YOU.

Have you been tootling around my blog and seen this post floating around? or this one? Or perchance even this one? And have you thought "Damn, that's some sweet-ass fish...ass, I want to color that!"

WELL NOW YOU CAN.

Yes indeed, after promising for years I finally got around to it. They Never Specified Which Half: A Fun and Educational Mermaid Coloring Book features:

New and updated art with more detail and backgrounds

50-PAGE 300dpi printable PDF scaled for 8.5"x11" paper

Way too many terrible foot puns

Instant download

Pay what you consider a fair price, $1 or up.

Available on Gumroad here:

https://gumroad.com/products/YEpnw/

[elleskinner-justart]

Commission duo of Senshi and Marcille for @rabidpotato. The goal was to do fanart of these characters with the vibes of her and her guy, so we have Senshi painting minifigs and Marcille obsessing over rocks.

Loved doing this for them <3

-

patreon | kofi | commissions

[rabidpotato]

I love theeeeeeeemmmmm 💚💚💚

[caitmayart]

Feeling rough lately.

[spicychestnut]

I want to take a moment to address this since I’ve been seeing a lot of it lately—and as someone who does something creative and (at least it often times feels) superfluous for a living (photography), I’ve been feeling this myself as well.

You can and should keep doing the creative superfluous things. They matter, for multiple reasons. I will go into why in more detail, but the short of it is this:

Fascism seeks to change the landscape of daily life and the notion of what’s possible to deepen its control. It is imperative that we preserve the things it seeks to erase, both for ourselves and our posterity.

Making The Good Fight your whole life is a good way to both lose the fight and destroy yourself in the process. The key has always been to incorporate activism and community building into your daily life as a part of the way you live, not to become an activist ubermensch.

I’ll start with the second point.

Hyperspecialization does have its place, and it’s true that some people are dispositionally suited to and personally interested in focusing on politics or activism or protest as their main thing. And that’s great! But that’s not everyone. Society is a system and that system requires many different parts. Not all of those parts see the same kind of engagement or the same amount of engagement and they each do vastly different things. You can contribute to bettering the world in a lot of different ways, and it’s important that you consider where your skills, interests, and abilities fit best.

And to be clear—I do think that everyone should be active in some way right now. In this current political climate, if you are able-bodied it’s fairly morally reprehensible if you’re not doing anything at all. But whether something is Big and Draining isn’t and should not be the measure of whether you’re doing something useful.

Here’s an Example:

I do not have a lot of resources. I don’t have much money and I don’t have a lot of time or energy. But every month I put together care packages for the unhoused.

I go to Grocery Outlet while I’m out doing my usual shopping and buy snacks. I consider what would be easy to eat with dental pain or missing teeth (a common struggle among the chronically unhoused), take care to be mindful of common allergies like nuts and gluten, and pick targeted snack combos that offer a good balance of nutrition and have a reasonable shelf life. I usually spend $15-$20 in total, and that often makes 8-12 care packages.

I package about 500 calories worth of snacks with a small water bottle in a brown paper bag. Then I add in a note card I type up with up-to-date information on local resources: food pantries, relief shelters, mutual aid groups, addresses and phone numbers and comments if I have any (Current wait time calling into the EBT office is about 2-3 hours, construction on X street in front of the relief shelter thru June, etc). If I have a chance to stop by the chamber of commerce sometimes I’ll thrown in a local bus route map.

I keep these in my car and whenever I see someone on the side of the road with a sign asking for help, instead of ignoring them or panicking and digging scant change out of my wallet, I’m prepared and I can give them one of my care packs (I usually go through about 3-5 a week).

I chose to do this because:

It was something I could consistently do.

I asked someone who spent time living on the street what kinds of things they received that were most helpful and this was something they recommended.

I looked at where help was most needed, and found it was in the day-to-day struggle to survive. A lot of the focus of aid to the unhoused is top-down big-picture stuff. More transitional housing, a larger budget to food assistance, expanded medical care. And that stuff IS important! But there are already lots of people focusing on it, and fewer focusing on connecting those in need to those resources, or helping them survive long enough to receive them. So I tried to step in and help there instead.

Now before y’all go yelling in the notes about how “yeah but that isn’t doing X or Y, or OP’s point was Z”, I bring up this example for this important point:

You have to start somewhere—and that somewhere should feel approachable and doable; and only by starting do you learn how best to incorporate activism, mutual aid, and political activity into your life in a balanced way. Only by starting do you build up to bigger things that have bigger impacts.

A favorite tool of fascism and authoritarian regimes is the shock and awe tactic: bomb people with things so overwhelming so quickly they’re left dazed and demoralized, too befuddled to think straight let alone fight back.

It’s what makes people like me (and OP), who make a living doing something that feels frivolous and useless, really struggle. Look at Gaza! And Ukraine! And Musk! And LGBTQ rights! Attacks on trans healthcare! Reproductive freedoms! ICE raids! And what am I doing? Drawing pictures! Editing pimples off someone’s face! Who does that help?!!

But here’s the thing about shock and awe: it’s not a measure of actual power or control held by the enemy; it’s meant to make you feel like the enemy has control of the battlefield. It’s a tactic to skew perception. The point is to make what you’re doing feel useless, to inspire hopelessness and inaction and compliance before the battle has even really started. The point is to make you lose perspective.

While it’s true that drawing pictures or editing photos won’t feed a family in Gaza or stop attacks on LGBTQ rights, carrying on with those boring frivolous everyday things holds its own inherent value in this particular climate, and here’s why:

Fascism seeks to change the landscape of daily life, to narrow the definition of the acceptable and the possible—to control reality (or our perception of it), utterly. And it will destroy so much before this is all over. The next generation of children will grow up never knowing certain norms, thinking the ceiling of possibility is so much lower, never even considering ways of life that to us are foundational—because those things simply won’t be there anymore. They’ll never have seen it, so to them, it won’t exist.

Therefore we need to hold on to as much of the world they’re trying to destroy as we can. We need to remember the childhood dreams and the lives we envisioned that drove us to become professional artists or photographers or pastry chefs or fiction authors or historians researching fascism or scientists developing vaccines because those perspectives are being erased. We need to carry on our crafts and live the lives those choices led us to because those lives and the unique work born of our perspectives and experiences are being destroyed.

Because one day when we beat back the darkness, we need to remember what we had, and have a clear vision of the world we want to build upon the ruin of their would-be kingdom.

In the immediate urgent now, no, just doing my professional work isn’t going to solve the problems strangling the world, my country, or my community; but I still need to eat and pay my bills. And so do you, OP, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. And because I know taking photos of frivolous things won’t contribute to solving some of those problems, I make time to try and help in other small ways instead.

Knowing I’m doing something to help makes me feel better. Feeling better enables me to handle the shock and awe without falling victim to its terror. And that gives me more energy to do more for my community, to be there for friends and family when the terror gets to them, and to grow into a person who can do more to fight back.

The thing I want people to take away from this post more than anything, is that you don’t fight fascism or shock and awe with your own retaliatory concussive blasts. Sometimes big shows of force are needed, that’s true; but that is not the foundation of resistance—and you have to start at the foundation.

Instead, you fight with the slow and steady creep of personal development, coalition building, mutual aid, grassroots organizing, and focused, fearless persistence. If fascism is the rocket blasting apart the city, resistance must be the weeds and wildflowers growing stubbornly through the cracks in the rubble, varied species working together to overtake the catastrophe as they create their own ecosystem with each budding flower and deepening root, vines winding around the machinery of war and oppression until the cogs break apart and become nothing more than the stepping stones to something better.

[rabidpotato]

Guess it's time to bring this back, huh.

Lesson #1: DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE.

Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny from the Twentieth Century

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn

[qqueenofhades]

Okay all -- few quick thoughts about the Elon Muskifying of the government, especially the takeover of the Treasury and associated financial data for every single US citizen and organization, that we are learning about in detail today.

Don't panic. This sounds bad, because it is bad. It's really, really bad. It's outrageously fascist bad. But we've still gotta take a deep breath and get through it.

This is the kind of shock-and-awe exercise of untrammeled fascist power where they are absolutely counting on gleefully terrorizing, paralyzing, and stunning you into mounting no resistance, or just giving up and giving in. They are literally live-tweeting it in real time and boasting about all the access and influence they have right now. They want you to know about it and feel like you can't do anything, so you might as well let it happen.

We have to show them that's not true.

TIME TO MAKE SOME NOISE. Because it's Sunday night, I've gone ahead and contacted my state Attorney General and both senators by email (but come Monday morning, we should all be calling). Here is the email that I wrote to my AG:

Dear Mr. [AG],

As you will be aware, today (February 2, 2025) the Trump administration has granted wide-ranging access to sensitive US Treasury data, including the personal and private information of [state] citizens, to Elon Musk's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency." Musk is an unelected private citizen who has no legal right to access this data, and is engaging in extensive intimidation and coercion to fulfill his personal and harmful ideological agenda. The present and material harm that this causes to US citizens, [state] residents, and basic laws of government, privacy, and financial security is direct, unconscionable, and actionable. I strongly urge you, in your capacity as [state] Attorney General, to file direct suit against the Trump administration, Elon Musk, the "DOGE" office, and any identifiable individuals who have taken part in this action, in order to protect consumer data, citizen privacy, and basic faith and trust in government.

All the best,

[Qqueenofhades]

Short! To the point! Doesn't waste time, tells him what I want him to do, how Elmo's nonsense directly harms the residents of my state, and why he should take action to stop it! And frankly, given how on-the-ball blue-state AGs have been thus far, they're probably already working on it. You are very welcome to copy-and-paste this message and fill in your AG's last name and your state as appropriate. Super easy to do. Takes five minutes. Call tomorrow.

If you are in a red state, your voice is particularly important right now. The Trumpsters are counting on and are even emboldened by blue state pushback, but you really need to make it start coming from Republican strongholds. Congressional Republicans will only feel the slightest amount of unease about docilely enabling this BS when it starts threatening their own personal power. Hit them where it hurts.

Other lawsuits are coming. Marc Elias, Democratic lawyer extraordinaire, is well aware of this situation and has noted on Bluesky that more lawsuits are in the works. He often wins his cases. This does not mean that you shouldn't loudly make noise elsewhere, but please remember that this is one of those 24-hour periods where, as noted, they are counting on demoralizing you with a nonstop blizzard of bullshit. It does not say anything about how this will play out long-term or the opposition that can and will be mobilized to stop it.

Once again: courage. Take the small steps that you can do today. Then take a breath and get off social media for a little while. Try to take the long view. One step at a time, we will get through this.

Courage.

[pieklo]

Reblog daily for health and prosperity

[bacon-dragon]

Some cleansing positive energy for your timeline

[heritageposts]

🇵🇸 From BDS:

This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week will be the most important since IAW was launched 20 years ago! With the ongoing Nakba at its height, Israel is carrying out the world’s first ever live-streamed genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza while it continues to entrench its 75-year-old settler-colonial apartheid regime against all Indigenous Palestinians. Over the past few months, people around the world have carried out inspiring actions building people power to end state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s #GazaGenocide and contribute to the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. With the failure of the international system, under US and Western hegemony, on full display, we will organize IAW throughout the month of March to bring justice from below. Save the date - March 1st - March 30th; an entire month of action and BDS mobilizations to end complicity in genocide, build grassroots power towards liberation and the dismantling of Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime. Let’s make this year’s IAW our most impactful ever!

In anticipation of the upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week, BDS has called for an escalation of our boycott campaigns.

To find out how you can join a specific BDS campaign, or how you can contribute towards IAW, you can use the search function on their website to find a BDS-affiliated organization in your country.

If you and your organization have an event planned for Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), you can register them with BDS here.

🇵🇸 For individuals unaffiliated with an org, you can still support and participate in IAW by:

Boycotting all products from Israel and from companies profiting off the occupation of Palestine. Here are the official BDS targets. For a more extensive list of products, check in with one of the BDS affiliated organizations in your country (they might tell you, for instance, what processed food items at your local grocery store should be avoided).

Share information about BDS on social media, with friends and family, and with your local community.

For BDS targeted brands, refrain from making or sharing any content that helps that company's outreach and branding. No more memes mentioning the brand, no pictures showing their logo, no more free advertising. Boycotting here isn't just about the loss you as a costumer can inflict on the company by not purchasing their product, it's also about damaging the brand's reputation, and limiting their customer outreach.

I highly encourage you to join a BDS-affiliated org, but if for whatever reason you can't, then these are concrete and actionable steps you can take.

Again, for more information about BDS and Israeli Apartheid Week, you check in with the official BDS website.

[el-shab-hussein]

The interview itself is 'old' but the clips featured of zionist terrorist attacks are recent.

Hajo Meyer, Holocaust survivor, and physicist. He passed in 2014.

Allah yirhamou, may his memory be a blessing.

[la7ma-mafrooma-deactivated20251]

This is extremely important and needs to be boosted.

[poniesart]

Bisan Owda's call to action

eSims For Gaza

For USAmericans: Call your reps | Email your reps It takes only a few minutes and there are scripts if needed. If you call after hours, you can leave a voicemail.

US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action Toolkit

Jan 26th Int'l Day of Action Toolkit

Google Drive of posters to print

Other infographics about the strike: here and here

I will be queuing this post for every day this week. IDs in Alt text!

[staticnoisesss]

how you can help palestine

*i regularly update this post with any new info i find so please always reblog the original post*

Donations

donations currently reaching gaza:

help buy e-sims for people in gaza (PLEASE HELP CONNECT GAZANS TO THE WORLD. if you would like to stay updated, please follow @/Mirna_elhelbawi on twitter)

currently holafly e-sims are needed. please donate.

donate to get food packages to gaza - care for gaza

support palestinians: buy a keffiyeh from the last and only factory in palestine - hirbawi

secondary donations:

palestine children's relief fund

palestine red crescent society

save palestine - islamic relief canada

send medical supplies to gaza - palestinian american medical association

click to donate - arab.org

donate for the recovery of hisham awartani - gofundme

one of the three palestinian students shot by a racist in vermont for wearing kufiyas and speaking arabic. hisham’s injuries have left him paralysed from below the chest.

help bring down israel's weapon trade - palaction

NOTE: journalists based in gaza are saying a demand for ceasefire is the priority as not all donations are reaching gazans (focus on the donations that are directly reaching gaza). so please contact your local MPs every single day demanding as such. palestine need a permanent ceasefire.

Petitions

petition to investigate war crimes committed by israeli military

demand ceasefire - amnesty.org

open call for immediate ceasefire

american government call for immediate ceasefire

american government to stop funding israeli military

ceasefire and increase humanitarian assistance - oxfam au

petition to get canva to address their pro-israel stance

invoke the genocide convention to call for ceasefire in gaza - world beyond war

location specific petitions

gaza call for ceasefire - oxfam (UK)

end israeli occupation - parliament uk (UK)

email your MP - medical aid for palestine (UK)

protect gaza civilians - islamic relief (UK)

stop fuelling genocide - action network (USA)

@ biden: call for ceasefire now - move on (USA)

ceasefirenow.com - jewishvoiceofpeace (USA)

call congress and demand a ceasefire - uscpr (USA - they provide a script of what you should say, so don't worry about it)

note: you can call everyday. they tally the number of calls per issue. so more calls = higher chance for them to take action. p.s. you mainly go to voicemail so don’t worry about phone call anxiety. fight through it just this once please.

australia call on israel to stop attacking palestinians - apan (AUS)

immediate ceasefire and increase in humanitarian aid in gaza - actionaid (AUS)

email your MPs - stand with palestine (AUS)

[EN5622] call for ceasefire and end to occupation - parliament of australia (AUS)

closes 13 dec @ 8.59pm AEST

[EN5628] retract governmental support to israel and demand ceasefire - parliament of australia (AUS)

closes 13 dec @ 8.59pm AEST

sign to send letter to MP for ceasefire - nccm (CANADA)

ceasefire now! - ijv (CANADA)

ceasefire and allow aid to enter gaza - oxfam (CANADA)

house of commons petition 4661 (CANADA)

closes 9 dec @ 11.03am EDT

cessez-le-feu et un couloir humanitaire - le mouvement (FRANCE)

write to your député - assemblée nationale (FRANCE)

skydda civilbefolkningen i gaza! - mittskifte (SWEDEN)

singaporeans call for immediate ceasefire (SIN)

contact your elected reps and demand a ceasefire (GERMANY)

write to the EU demanding a ceasefire (EUROPE)

template of letters you can send (EU)

guide on how to contact your MPs in EU

p.s. if the template is outdated, just use it as a guide and add a few sentences here and there that reflect the current situation. i can’t find any recent templates so :/ at least this is something

multiple actions you can take to help palestine - plant een olifbloom (NETHERLANDS)

includes: links for donations, emails to MP, emails to media, links to petitions and demonstrations

den haag, maak nú werk van vrede in israël/Palestina - the right forum (NETHERLANDS)

māori call for palestine - ourActionStation (NZ)

special visa for palestinians in gaza with family in NZ - NZ parliament/pāremata aotearoa (NZ)

deem israeli actions as war crimes - NZ parliament/pāremata aotearoa (NZ)

basta ao genocídio em Gaza! - awaaz (BRAZIL)

globo e grande mídia, parem de desumanizar civis palestinos - the intercept (BRAZIL)

Campaigns

friends of al-aqsa

❥ UK-specific

urge your MP to speak up for palestine

hands off al-aqsa

stop administrative detention

petition for UK to stop arming israel

❥ International

boycott puma — email them to end their partnership with israel

boycott coca-cola

palestine action

join the resistance

islamic relief canada

urge your MP to rally for ceasefire

decolonise palestine

poster campaign to raise awareness on the war crimes being committed against palestinians | (very very important please share + read the sources provided)

text/call campaign for people living in USA

text CEASEFIRE @ 51905 to call for a ceasefire

text RESIST @ 50409 to send a letter to your representatives to pass HR3103–a bill that prohibits tax dollars from going to israel

download 5Calls app to contact members of your congress | (more info)

fax campaign for people in the USA

go on this website to send 5 free faxes per day

here’s a link to a pre-written fax copy you can download to send (the first link on the linktree)

here’s a video that explains how to fax your senator (it’s very easy and all you need is a valid email address)

BDS movement

get involved in boycotting companies associated with israel

please let me know if you have any more links. i will add them in. and please reblog the original post!!

UPCOMING PROTESTS

PALESTINIAN LITERATURE READING LIST

[rabidpotato]

I was stuck for inspiration and my friend @paperrebellion (Instagram) hit me with this palette challenge. I rather like the results and I’d like to revisit and push the concept some more.

[rabidpotato]

DONATE:

https://linktr.ee/RazomForUkraine

https://neweasterneurope.eu/2022/02/24/ukraine-under-attack-how-to-help/

EDUCATE:

https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1489977861549314050

FIGHT BACK: 

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1496865471995523080

https://www.stopputin.net/home

[rabidpotato]

DONATE:

https://linktr.ee/RazomForUkraine

https://neweasterneurope.eu/2022/02/24/ukraine-under-attack-how-to-help/

EDUCATE:

https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1489977861549314050

FIGHT BACK: 

https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1496865471995523080

https://www.stopputin.net/home

[rabidpotato]

Last day of @trephaweek! Some cuddling and a reprise of the “Will you come with me?” scene from season 2, because the prompt was “love language” and I see theirs as being touch and trust. I got to play with a bunch of new clip studio brushes too, which is always fun. 

(narrator: it was not fun. she screamed a lot.)

[rabidpotato]

Day 6 of @trephaweek, prompt: Legacy. Trevor contemplates the enormity of not being the last Belmont anymore.

Reference from Getty, because babies are weird and funny looking. 

[rabidpotato]

I love these two dorks way too much. 

Day 5 of @trephaweek, Tea/Banter. I’m coming back to Fairy tale/Story, don’t worry. 

[rabidpotato]

Two days late, whoopsie! Day 3 of @trephaweek, prompt scars/trust.

This was my favorite prompt so I definitely want to come back and make a proper artwork once I’ve got more time.