Sapling 🌱

disabled watercolor artist obsessed with queer OCs | gay genderfluid disaster irl | Muslim artist | 30s | EN/ES

[sacredsapling]

Hi all! Time for an updated pinned post! 

🌟 he/they | genderfluid | 20s | survivor | chronically ill/disabled | EN/ES 🌟

I mostly paint in watercolor, with a little gouache or rarely digital...and I love my OCs! It’s been liberating and fun to shape their stories. Most are queer and polyamorous. 

A lot of characters have trauma, some with difficult responses to it. I don’t condone any toxic behavior or abuse by talking about these traumas. It’s all about nuance and love and overcoming and more. 

Right now, I’m the most active on Instagram. :)

🌟 My Instagram | My Twitter | InPrnt | Commissions 🌟

OC tags: 

Ephiel (Angel OC)

Sariel (Angel OC)

Chamuel (Angel OC)

Kokabiel (Angel OC)

Nzuzi (French OC)

Nsimba (French OC)

Lucas (French OC)

Mila (French OC)

Ousmane (French OC)

Marion (French OC)

Nico (Quad Squad OC)

Nano (Quad Squad OC)

Melchor (Quad Squad OC)

Gabriel (Quad Squad OC)

Rosie (Gabriel’s sister)

Miguel (unrelated to other OCs)

And here’s my tutorial tag.

Asks about OCs or my art process are perfectly welcome! Some personal questions are fine too. :)

[concerningwolves]

i am so so gently asking abled storytellers to try this little exercise: consider that maybe the main character doesn't miraculously get through traumatic event number 8277 with minor injuries. maybe they don't make a full, narratively-convenient recovery. there are tangible, long-term effects on their health. they are disabled. there are lots of ways to be disabled, and you can pick whatever makes the most sense. the point is that because they're the main character, they have to stay at the heart of the narrative. what happens to your story after that? just for the sake of this exercise, you're not allowed to have them spiral into helpless depression, or collapse under self-loathing, or turn their story into a quest for a cure or an uplifting recovery narrative. think it through instead. how can you tell this story with the character's disability? what needs to change? are there any reasons why these changes can't happen?

at the end of it, you might change nothing. but I think this is worth doing, because sometimes you'll find that the reason you didn't want your character to have a limp, or lose a limb or sense, or have some kind of SFF-appropriate fantasy disability is because of internalised biases. those are worth challenging & i truly believe that creators miss out on richer stories when they view disability either as a fate worse than death or as nothing more than a catalyst for tragedy.

[taplingzines]

Applications are now OPEN for "Moments of Euphoria", our new trans joy art book!

🌟 Infodoc (please read before applying!)

🌟 Page artist application

🌟 Merch artist application

[fleshandbrandy]

Being able to accept the concept of “we all struggle, but some of us struggle more severely/require more acute attention and protection” is an insanely important thing for your activism. please. i beg you. “we all struggle the same way so we shouldn’t rank it!!!” is rarely ever meaningful or helpful. people WILL struggle more than you. people ARE more marginalised than you. and it’s okay to admit that and still demand your own support. both can and should coexist. you should not be screeching “oppression olympics” when someone is trying to bring light to the difference in degree of marginalisation. someone struggling more than you does not mean you are not struggling.

[lisondraws]

Focus on my sticker sheet stamps for the"We've Always Been Here" Zine by @taplingzines !

The zine celebrates queer history through time and cultures, which we need now more than ever! I'm super grateful to be part of such a beautiful project with so many incredible artists. You can learn more and support the project on Kickstarter right now!

[taplingzines]

🎉 Live on Kickstarter! 🎉

We've Always Been Here: A multicultural art book celebrating queerness throughout history, with illustrations from over 50 incredible artists! 🌈

Get the book and limited edition merch here:

Coming soon: We've Always Been Here: A multicultural LGBTQ+ art book

50+ artists worldwide have come together to illustrate how queer people have always existed, and always will, all around the world.

@trans-zines @queer-joy-detector @zinefeed @zine-shop-channel

[sacredsapling]

Apologies for neglecting this account so much over the past year! I’d love to get more active on here and hope to mid-next year. My disabilities have worsened so I have to leave my job, which I hope will allow me to do art more regularly inshaAllah. 🩷

[taplingzines]

Sapling ( @sacredsapling ) is bringing us to Al-Andalus during the Islamic Golden Age, with two queer Muslim men wandering the royal grounds to the Alhambra, one of which is Tuareg and visibility disabled. It’ll be painted in watercolor!

[taplingzines]

Jan Falk ( @thistlearts ) is planning to bring us a European, Rococo-style piece, with some Achillean and gender-nonconforming representation. Expect decorations like silk, taffeta, powdered wigs, and other fashion of the time!

[taplingzines]

Want to fight queer censorship with art? Follow for collaborative art book projects, including our upcoming zine!

In this age of digital censorship, we’re returning back to print media—so no one can censor our queer joy. ✨

Don't forget to reblog and tag your friends! 🌈

[sacredsapling]

Sapling 🌱 (@sacredsapling.bsky.social)

#Watercolor artist, OC enthusiast, and biblically inaccurate angel ✨ some 18+ he/they, 20s, disabled, queer 🇪🇸 EN/ES OC Info: https://fre

Hi all! I'm not really on Tumblr often anymore, but if you want all the good disabled and queer OC lore I have to offer, come find me on bsky!

[saszor]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

[saszor]

How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

[sillymodezeenith]

If looking at someone makes you squeamish, with all the compassion I can muster, you have to get over it.

Don’t be an asshole. Privately desensitize yourself to seeing scars. Engage with art & media & disabled people’s blogs. Imbed it into your brain that they’re normal. And, for some fucking reason, you don’t feel like doing that, JUST MOVE ON. It’s absurdly childish to point at people like a playground bully and go “EWWW”

[sacredsapling]

This is genuinely one of the BEST scar resources I've ever found. As someone who also studied this to accurately portray OCs with burn scars, I can't even begin to describe how useful and well put together this resource is!

[sacredsapling]

I'm beyond excited to be a part of the Demons & Divinity zine from @13daysadvent! Please check out the zine and see how you can support an amazing charity too~

[2boldlyqueer]

Listen, I know we're all exhausted, but we gotta get better about adding image descriptions to disability related stuff. Everyone should be IDing everything anyways, but there's a particularly cruel irony in disability related stuff not being accessible to folks with low/no vision.

[sacredsapling]

Just so everyone low vision/blind knows, the bluesky community is really good at adding alt text! I'd highly encourage we bring that culture here too!

[sacredsapling]

Meet Nsimba: the identical twin of Nzuzi! ✨ Nsimba was the reason his brother and him were taken out of the DR Congo.

As a young child, Nsimba was badly burned and blinded. When his burns become infected, he was taken to a missionary hospital…and then “rescued” to France. The only reason Nzuzi came with him is because he absolutely refused to leave his brother’s side in the hospital.

Orphaned and badly scarred, Nsimba never really made friends growing up—despite a silly and social personality. His education was minimal, but he eventually taught himself English through podcasts and articles—meaning he’s trilingual (Lingala, French, and English). Although, he’s illiterate in all three.

Having no career prospects, his young adult life was mostly spent stuck indoors—working out and listening to audio stories.

At the pestering of Nzuzi (and once he qualifies for disability aid), he eventually attends a school for the blind…which leads to him finally breaking out of his isolation and depression.

[sacredsapling]

He loves dresses~

[strange-as-it-may-seem]

I wish I had the ability and energy to write skin positivity fiction… the amout of milky and smooth descriptions of skin is just…

Idk, there is so little fiction that celebrates and accepts skin that doesn’t fit beauty standards (even while claiming to be body positive): dark skin, hairy skin, rough skin, couperose skin, skin with acne, moles, discolouration, blemishes, bumps, scars that aren’t just “single white slash from a fantasy sword”, keratosis pilaris, vitiligo, eczema, other skin types and conditions and so on