I draw fantasy art and character sketches. You can also find me on DeviantART as CallMeShaudo.
If you're looking for my opinionated personal blog, look for me at shaudo-of-a-doubt.
i've gotten this question a few time both online and irl while working on my mural so i made a lil worksheet to hand out to kids and also anyone who wants to try it here :3
art block is your brain telling you to do studies.
draw a still life. practice some poses. sketch some naked people. do a color study. try out a different technique on a basic shape.
art block doesnt stop you from drawing, it stops you from making your drawings look the way you want them to. and thats because you need to push your skills to the next level so you can preform at that standard
As a scientific illustrator- this is 100% true and going to review your basics will fix it every goddamn time. Not only does it keep your skills sharp, when you’re not emotionally invested in the final product of a piece, you relax and your brain makes more/better art juice for you. So, when you get back to that big/important piece? You’ll know what to do and how to do it.
Nothing in nature blooms all year round. Rest, and take care of yourself.
Write a description of an object. write the weather today. Write a made up characterization of a random photo of an actor from the internet as to the character they are in that picture. Write a little story about your pet’s day. Write about spilling soup and make it super dramatic and tragic. Write about someone’s day being ruined and make it funny. Write a meetcute coffeeshop AU of two OCs you’d never put together- maybe from different stories. Write them breaking up.
Write a bunch of short stuff meant for no audience ever and super duper self indulgent.
I found out relatively recently that it really helps if I write short fiction surrounding the novels I write. Like oh? I’m stuck for a bit? Ooh there was that section I wanted to explore but doesn’t fit in the plot really. There was that what-if that could never happen in the actual story but would be fun to explore. It keeps me in the characters’ headspace (tho that’s not always what I’m needing) but not right where they are exactly.
Yes! I have gotten past writers’ block multiple times by writing drabble collections. Making something coherent happen in just 100 words is a very different challenge from writing a long story and it also lets me get past plot points that I don’t want to explore in-depth.
I am also going to have to start drawing studies now…
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
Jack Dorsey funded this with his nonprofit AndOtherStuff. The home page for the organization explicitly lists AI as one of its pillars, saying a goal is "making NOSTR the best social protocol for open source AI development and implementation"
A collaborative Nostr funding initiative to develop strategic pillars for the Nostr ecosystem
What is open source AI?
It's a program that publicly shares its code for free online, so that anyone can use it for themselves. This means that anything this AI is trained on could eventually make its way into any business, social media site, etc. That uses this code. Or, if not, it'll have the ability to harvest content as well as this.
Even since the app doesn't allow AI openly on the videos themselves, the app is likely to use our original content to train its AI. You might have seen that some AI have experienced a positive feedback loop of declining quality, training itself on other AI slop until anything it produces is unintelligible.
This is likely an attempt to prevent that in video format
Then, any other company that wants to use the code can use this better trained AI to make it even harder to recognize AI across the board.
You can read about the connection to AndOtherStuff, as well as the developers' reasons for the project here:
Jack Dorsey backs diVine, a Vine reboot that includes Vine's video archive of six-second, looping videos. A new app called diVine will give
TLDR; do not give Jack Dorsey any credit for this, do not download the app, and tell others not to either. It's a nostalgia-bait attempt at fueling another AI model
as of march 12th clip studio is on sale celebrating their version 4 release. it's an incredibly powerful drawing program you will NOT regret getting, especially if you want to ditch adobe. the sale ends in 5 days so if you were looking into getting it, now's the time
Your go-to art studio for illustration, animation, manga, & webtoons. Fully packed with customizable brushes & tools. Draw on your smartphon
and since i see this brought up often when i make these posts:
for pc and mac users, there's a perpetual license option; you do NOT have to get a subscription to use clip studio unless you're on an ipad
you can forever own the version of the program you buy; if a future version has things you want, you will be able to upgrade for a discount
future update releases won't make your current version unusable. you simply won't have the features any new release will include. for example, i will not be upgrading from ver 3 to ver 4 because i'm not interested in the new features
pro is for illustrations, character art, concept work; ex has handy tools for comics, webtoons and animation. both can make use of their 3d assets
Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever
If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.
(I am not defending the usage of generative AI/ChatGPT/Character.ai etc etc i am very much against it - I am just curious as to the correlation between using it and utility price surge please don't come at me this is a genuine question)
ChatGPT uses so much energy that the US is literally reversing course on coal and gas usage to make up for it. In Santa Clara, for example, data centers used 60% of the ENTIRE CITY'S electricity.
ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water for cooling for every query you put into it. This is FRESH WATER, which is evaporated and eventually mostly returns to the ocean, effectively removing a lot of it from our already dwindling fresh water supply on the planet. It also consumes 17 THOUSAND TIMES more electricity than the average American home.
The AI boom wastes so much electricity that we are very immediately risking US cities having to have rolling blackouts just to keep up with the energy demands, as early as NEXT YEAR
Gen AI's water usage is projected to hit 6.6 BILLION meters cubed by 2027
More AI use = more data centers = power drain on local cities = gas, electricity, and water utility prices rise because all of our resources are being funneled into a machine that makes garbage
I think at some point in time we need to sit down and start explaining to artist who want to make a career out of art that there are FAR more options than just "living off of commissions" and "posting my art online and praying I get paid for it".
I don't know where this idea that the only way to make a living off of your art online is to simply do commission work, become a social media star, or join an industry comes from. I've fallen into this pitfall before as well, but I don't understand how it came to be.
I broke out of this mindset, though after I started helping a working artist. She had been an artist for over 40 years and started at a young age, and her main source of income? Doing local craft and garden shows. She had owned a gallery, done gallery work, done charity work, and now mainly works in using upcycled materials to create all sorts of products.
I used to think that my only options as an artist were to become popular enough that people would commission me or just give me money via patreon, but that's not the case. You can sell at craft fairs and conventions, you can provide a specific service, you can create assets and asset packs people can pay for, and you can create all sorts of physical or digital products to sell... and that's just the tip of the iceberg!
If you are constantly turning art into a numbers game to see how you can make enough money by posting the right™ stuff online at the right time, you're only going to make yourself miserable.
The best way to make a living off your art has NOTHING to do with popularity, getting lots of engagement online, or besting an algorithm, it's all networking. It's all about finding the right people who want what you make. If all you focus on is your follower count and post engagement, you're just going to end up hating art.
"Having fun doesn't pay the bills", who told you that? Why did you believe them?
One of the coolest people I know is a 60-something year old professional artist. Her life is a series of gigs. She works NONSTOP.
She barely has a website, though she can do Photoshop.
She works part time at my workplace setting things up / arranging stuff / creating displays. She's FAST and super creative and can work on a tiny budget so management loves her. Over the years she has also learned a lot about plants from other staff so she can also sell plants and stuff too. This gives her steady-ish income.
She always has some upcoming art show, often with long time collaborators. These are often not local art shows, and they all happen due to artistic networks and connections she's maintained in different places she's lived. In between everything else she is doing, she is making art for upcoming shows. Mixed media, she's heavy into collages.
In Asheville she has a booth at one of the places the tourists go to, it's one of those places where she herself does not have to run the shop she just has to keep her booth filled with art.
She also makes stuff like curtains for rich ladies.
She's a trained hat maker, something she learned from another artist when she lived in San Francisco.
She also makes puppets.
She can do all manner of botanical dyeing, especially with indigo.
She makes costumes for ballet and modern dance troupes, for operas. She can make gorgeous wedding gowns though she's sworn off it (before we met, I attended the wedding of the person who received the last wedding gown she made, it was incredible).
She designs and helps create sets for theaters and operas.
With no training on it, or practice, she just started making stunning dried flower wreaths at work! I've been learning from her and another staff artist but honestly they can just "see" things better than I can (she tells me I just need to practice more).
Her skill list is extensive and honestly I learn new things she can do pretty often.
She is fueled by green tea, avocados, dried figs, and ???? She is petite, with wild fluffy white hair. All of her clothing is 100% natural, and unique creations she made herself. She just buzzes around like a colorful little whirlwind and creates, creates, creates.
This is for the people who are online today specifically to spend money.
Please buy my mug.
Sleepy coyote mugs are now available.
I've also got a black cat mug for anyone who's still celebrating Halloween in their heart (or just likes void kitties).
I need to make at least six sales today to cover some sudden shop costs. If you don't like these enough to buy one, but think one of your followers might, please pass it on. I appreciate it!
Sob story under the cut.
I always wanted to make my living as an artist, but had my dreams squashed really early. Now I'm revisiting the option - not by choice, but as a last resort!
College was a bust. I wasn't doing what I was great at (art), but what I was told would be useful, so I floundered. I all but abandoned art in my pursuit of a steady wage. First retail, then freelancing...then a significant and terrifying few years of nothing but relying on other people, which I found out doesn't have to be as scary as it once sounded.
I'm asking for help again. My last full-time job ended at the beginning of October (for reasons that friends and family have told me much have been workforce reduction or office politics at work) and I can't find a new one. Even local seasonal jobs have been filled by now, with none of my contacts or applications turning up any kind of success. I started working on my shop when my job searching task list ran dry one week, but it's slow going, because I'm out of practice and don't draw quickly...and because I'm not willing to copypaste others' work for my gain like so many other print-on-demand sellers, either through a machine or blatantly direct theft.
I want to extend into commissions and sculpture, and in fact have had some commissions during this hard time, but I can't yet draw as much as I need to draw to pay rent in any given month's time. Instead, I'm trying to make some relatable or purely aesthetic designs and put them on objects that people can use in their everyday life. I'm using a print-on-demand model to reduce up-front costs and to free up time for making more art and searching for more work.
I don't have a lot to sell just yet. Please buy if you like what I'm selling; I'm not asking for charity (although I won't turn charity down, or say no to Ko-fi. We all need help sometimes).
Ohh, so I was looking at my storage and found these! I originally shared them on twitter before yeeting the platform. Anyway, feel free to use! Art memes for your oc :D
The term “masterpiece” originally and traditionally meant a piece of work that an apprentice or other aspiring craftsman created to show off to his master or the town’s guild. So naturally, it was intended to be the best fucking thing that you could make, demonstrating just how fucking good you are at what you’re making - 100% to flex your skills. And if it was approved, the applicant was accepted as a member of the guild and could now call himself a master, and work in this craft in this city.
So the next time you’re looking at The One Great Thing you made and think “this is it, my masterpiece, I have peaked, it’s all downhill from here”, consider looking it the other way: Making your masterpiece means you’re only getting started.
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