As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.
Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.
📺Here is my list:
Proko (Free)
Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard)
Aaron Rutten (free)
BoroCG (free)
Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)
Jesus Conde (free)
Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)
Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price)
SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)
Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)
The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney)
Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)
Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.
📚Here is my list:
The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.
"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.
"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.
"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.
"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.
"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.
"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.
"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.
"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.
Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.
As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are more expensive.
For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.
💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.
Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates)
Procreate ( pay once for $9.99)
Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, ect Free)
PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)
Krita (Free)
mypaint (free)
FireAlpaca (free)
Libresprite (free, for pixel art)
Those are the ones I can recall.
So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.
I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.
This post is basically a transcript of a speech I give to newbies to the D/s scene all the time IRL. I figured it might be useful not only to people curious about kink IRL but also to smut writers here on the smut writing website.
For the purposes of this post, I am sending specific physical acts out of the room. Right now they don't matter, because you can meet an emotional need through any number of physical acts. So when I say that there are many ways to dom and many ways to sub, I am not referring to many kinds of physical acts. I mean that there are many emotional needs that doms and subs bring to scenes, and those can change the scene more than the choice of physical acts that will occur in that scene.
I say this to newbies to the scene because they tend to have a narrow view of the motivations and needs that bring people to D/s, biased by both the newbie's own preferences and the depictions of D/s they've seen in media. The same is true of people who write kink fic. Kink fic is very biased to a narrow subset of the wide range of emotional needs that people might bring to this kind of play.
It's really important to understand this in D/s IRL because a mismatch or miscommunication about these needs can lead to a bad scene. For example, let's take the approaches of sub-as-beloved-pet and sub-as-object. If a dom treats a sub as a beloved pet when what they really want is to be treated like an object, then a sub who went into a scene needing to be ignored, or at the very least the illusion of being ignored and disregarded, is suddenly in the spotlight of a lot of intense attention and affection. Again, I will note that both of these scenes could potentially involve the same physical acts, just approached differently. Let's say it's a service submission scene where the sub is naked and cleaning the room for the dom. Sub-as-beloved-pet would get frequent praise and lots of patiently repeated instructions, while sub-as-object would get one detailed instruction at the beginning and no reinforcement except a punishment if they get part of the instruction wrong.
I'm going to go through a bunch of different styles of dom and sub, with the emotional needs that underlie them. This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of or encountered, so feel free to reblog with additions. It may also be a bit dom-biased because I'm a dom, but I think that might be for the best, because the emotional needs of doms are generally less understood than those of subs.
Various consensual kinks discussed below. Kinkshamers in the notes will be blocked with extreme prejudice.
Dom-as-control: This may seem obvious or even trivial, but it shouldn't be dismissed: many doms are motivated by an emotional need to have some part of their life where they have total control over what is going to happen. Something that I love about this style of domination is that I always know exactly what will happen next (except if there's some emergency, safeword, or other issue to address.) There are no wild cards in a controlled D/s scene except for those I explicitly allow (like if I ask a sub to choose which whip I'll beat them with.) This is also a reason why I personally have a very hard time switching; I have difficulty with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. It should be noted that this style of domination is fairly incompatible with the bratty style of submission, as the brat is constantly throwing wild cards into the scene.
Sub-as-blankspace: The other side of this coin is the sub who needs to not have to think anymore. They've spent all day deciding what to wear and what to eat and which toothpaste to buy and they just want to stop. This is a very common motivator. This sub needs specific and clear commands from a dom, without too many steps, or else needs to have a well-established protocol of kneeling and service that they can do by pure muscle memory. This sub does not want the dom to offer them a choice of whips they can be beaten with, because that forces them out of the blissful blankspace of not needing to choose.
Dom- or sub-as-service: The same emotional need can sometimes motivate domination or submission! Many people dom or sub out of a desire to please their partner. It's about taking on a defined role that you know will meet your partner's needs. It feels good to be needed, after all. This motivation for D/s is generally the best understood by the public, especially as a motivation for doms. It's generally more socially acceptable to want to control and torment people if you're doing it selflessly in order to please them. A big part of my motivation for making this speech to people, and for writing this post, is to point out that this is far from the only style of domination, and pleasing their subs is far from the only emotional need that doms might have.
Dom-as-whumper: I'm using this terminology because of the website I'm on. I'm not into whumpfic, but I recognize in people who have a visceral need to see their blorbos whimpering and bleeding the same need I have to tear apart a cute kitten with my bare hands, or to crush a sub beneath my booted foot. It's the cuteness aggression approach to domination: sometimes your sub is so cute your hands itch with the urge to destroy them. This is where domination and sadism bleed into each other; this style of domination does not work well for the sub who wants to submit without being hurt or humiliated.
Sub-as-object: Subs who like to be treated as furniture, robots, or objects are often motivated by a need to enjoy a sexual or kink situation while being free of attention and scrutiny. Obviously, some baseline level of attention is needed for BDSM safety; the dom needs to be able to notice if the sub is injured or upset. But beyond that baseline, it can feel very freeing for a sub to be turned on, blissed out in subspace, crying, drooling, whatever, without anyone closely watching or listening to them, so long as they fulfill whatever their purpose as an object is.
Sub- or dom-as-flex: Both doms and subs can be motivated by a need to feel competent. I definitely feel awesomely powerful and competent when I do a style of domination that requires specialized skill, such as hypnosis. Submission can also provide a feeling of competence: look how long I was able to stay kneeling on the hard floor! Look how perfectly I cleaned the room, exactly as Mistress told me to do it!
Dom-as-troll (or mad scientist): The sibling to this kind of dom is the writer who thinks "wouldn't it be fucked up if....?" and then writes a freaky nasty little horror story about it. A great thing about D/s is that you can have a thought like "wouldn't it be fucked up if I tied up my sub and then ate their favorite snack right in front of them?" and then you can just do it (provided you know your sub likes to be tied up and tormented.) Then you can find out how your sub would react to your terrible ideas and laugh evilly at the results. The emotional need being served here is the goblin part of your brain that wants to break things just to see how they shatter. All you need to do is find someone who wants to be broken.
Sub-as-brat: Brats are often discussed as a single type of sub, but in my experience, there are two rather different emotional needs that drive brats. Some people are brats because they need the assurance that they can act out all they want, and it won't derail the action; the dom is strong or skilled enough to subdue them no matter what nasty tricks their goblin brain gets up to. Other people are brats out of a need to live in a predictable and fair moral universe. Those brats want a very clear system of rules and punishments for those rules. Then they test the rules, and they get meted out exactly the punishment they were promised. Within the world of this scene, the world is fair, and the same misbehavior will always face the same consequences, something that rarely happens in the real world. These types of brats are rather different, because the first kind of brat doesn't care as much if the consequences of their misbehavior are inconsistent, while the second kind cares a lot.
Sub-as-beloved-pet: Or beloved child, if they're an ageplayer. I find that subs that like to be a beloved puppy are driven by an emotional need to be loved, treasured, and supported unconditionally, even if they make mistakes, even if they behave messily or clumsily, even if they look silly, because that's how a good pet owner should treat a pet. There might be discipline involved, but the discipline is very supportive and patient.
Dom-as-nurturer: Some doms are motivated by a need to be in a nurturing role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a man who wants to express affection and tenderness to his partner but has a hard time doing so because of the way he was raised may be able to unlock that ability if his partner plays a sweet puppy and he's playing the puppy's doting owner. Basically, the D/s scene creates a little world and a set of roles in which it's expected and normal for the dom to be nurturing, even if that's not true for the dom outside of that scene.
Dom-as-enfant-terrible: The other side of the coin is a dom who needs to be in a role where they can be unreasonable, demanding, and selfish, a role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a mother who spends all day thinking about her family's needs may relish the opportunity to center her own desires without worrying if she's being "too much." She can be impatient and fussy and demand the sub do things over and over until she's satisfied, all of which she can't do when she's working as a teacher or other caring role.
Dom-as-artist: I think this is a hugely under-appreciated motivator for doms. Many have a need to be creative and imaginative that they fulfill through domination. I've been to workshops and demos at kink conventions where I've been awed by another dom's fiendish creativity. I once watched a hypno dom with a sub who got off on being afraid, and he hypnotized her and crafted an extremely elaborate horror scene in the room, filling it with menacing shadows and phantasms. This is where I'm contractually obligated to link A Dom DM because this is where domination overlaps a lot with game running and game design.
Sub-as-aesthetic-object: The flip side of this coin is that many subs enjoy being an aesthetic object or canvas for a dom's art. Very often these are subs chasing a need to feel beautiful, or at least enjoyable to look at. Subs who want to be aesthetic objects may enjoy wearing special outfits during scenes, or being posed in sexy or appealing positions. Subs in this kind of scene may enjoy letting go of worrying about whether they look good to the dom, because the dom is shaping them to their own preferred aesthetic, whether that's via poses, makeup, shibari, or something else.
Sub-as-sexual-creature: A lot of subs enjoy being called sluts, offered up for free use, or otherwise being hypersexualized. Why is that? Well, our society has a lot of shame and repression around sex, and it can feel much easier to relax and enjoy sex if it's couched in the fantasy that you have no choice because you've been reduced to a purely sexual creature. The sub has an emotional need to give up responsibility for choosing to have sex and be sexual, because that responsibility is a heavy weight to carry.
Dom- or sub-as-taboo-breaker: This is a huge motivator for both doms and subs. We all live in a society, and sometimes we feel a need to break the rules of that society. Both domination and submission provide opportunities to do so. It's taboo to piss yourself as an adult, but a watersports scene creates a space where it is acceptable or even desirable for a sub to break that taboo. As a dom, I personally get a huge taboo-breaking thrill from slapping a sub across the face. There's something about the sheer disrespect of it, and the memory of being scolded for doing it as a child, that fills me with impish glee.
Dom-as-hunter/sub-as-prey: For the hunter to catch the prey, there must first be a chase, or at the very least an ambush. This need not be a literal chase (we sent physical acts out of the room, remember?) but it is a dynamic to hunter/prey-flavored BDSM: the hunter has to earn it. This fulfills an emotional need for both dom and sub: a dom who struggles with feelings of unworthiness can feel like they've earned their partner's submission, and a sub can feel that the dom cares enough to put in the effort to catch them. Hunter/prey also allows dom and sub to explore some pretty dark emotions within the safety of consensual kink, such as fear, obsession, and consumption.
Dom-as-shadow: I mean shadow here in the sense of shadow work. Many doms take inspiration from people who bullied them in school (and many subs enjoy re-enacting scenes of childhood bullying in a safe and consensual context.) There is a real emotional need served by claiming the power of those bullies for yourself. Those childhood cruelties can be utterly transformed by the change of context. For example, the catty whispers and sneers of straight girls who bullied me for being queer comes out very different when I perform those same catty sneers as a genderfucky adult.
Sub-as-lesser-being: While some subs like to be beloved pets, and others like to be disregarded objects, some like to be pond scum. There can be a real freedom that comes from occupying a role of being disgusting and horrible. Nothing good or useful can be expected of you, and nothing you do will ever earn praise, and so you're free from worrying about or pursuing any of those things. Sub-as-lesser-being is also a space to explore difficult emotions like shame and humiliation in a safe context.
he was there during siege of the North. he infiltrated the spirit oasis. he has an uncle who studies spirits and the spirit world. he watched the sky go dark then the moon suddenly reappear like everyone else in the entire world did. and most importantly he watched zhao get eaten by a giant godzilla fish spirit.
Also, Iroh was there? He literally watched Sokka make out with the moon spirit. And you want to tell me that a romantic sap like him would not have immediately told Zuko about this romantic tragedy? Please, Zuko has known about this for ages, he just knows that this is not an acceptable situation in which to say “yeah, I know.”
I do not for a moment believe that Iroh was the only one absolutely besotted with that particular story. Even if Zuko isn’t so much into romance, the tragedy would have captivated him.
Imagine if one of your blorbos came to life and started a conversation with you about one of their traumas, which happens to also be your favorite part of their story.
Even Zuko recognizes that responding to this moment of vulnerability with a total breakdown of themes, tropes, and his thoughts on the poetry of the moment; is, mm, not correct.
It took me about 15 seconds in to realize what was happening in this vid, but the second I did, I legit came. This is… I got chills and got so much validation for my theories about tap and pretty much any genre of music here…
They’re tap dancing, a kind of dancing typically associated with being old-fashioned and kind of silly. Personally, even tap dancing to old music is awesome in my eyes, but this is on a totally new and exciting level
The thing about tap is that it’s so often seen as a fancy, old-fashioned dainty dance that only posh (and generally white) people do in tuxedos but it didn’t used to be the case.
Way back in the early days, it was where black performers in Vaudeville were legendary for it in Jazz and Jive routines. At about 1:37, this is where the Nicholas brothers go off.
It’s such an expressive and joyful kind of dance and matches so well with hip hop beats and rhythm, which is why the modern reworking of it is so awesome.
Im sure a lot of people also watch the op video and they assume that “clap” sound is part of the music just because a LOT of modern music samples that sound and in some music it is just the sound of hands clapping, but no that is a sound being made by all their shoes at once.
I am gritting my teeth at the mere suggestion that tap is primarily associated with dainty white people.
Tap is a distinctive American art form that comes from a blending of African dance traditions with Irish dance traditions. It was developed by Black and white dancers and came up alongside and deeply entwined with jazz.
Certainly the tap that ends up in musical theater often seems old-fashioned and white but that’s a musical theater issue, not a tap issue. That is only one small part of tap, which continues to have a strong African-American tradition.
The Nicholas Brothers, above, are in a clip from the film Stormy Weather, which has an almost entirely African-American cast. Some of the other scenes in the film include Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, one of the greatest tap artists of all time. He was very well-known generally and was in quite a few Shirley Temple movies in his day. (Shirley Temple, herself, was a tap dancer – which I’ll be real is probably contributing to people thinking it’s old-fashioned and white, because it’s easy to forget the Black man dancing alongside her, I guess.)
Here’s Bill Robinson with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather – he’s performing a variation of his famous “stair dance” in parts of this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3fbvBRiaM
Here’s probably the most widely famous version of the “stair dance”, from The Little Colonel:
There’ve been a lot of white tap dancers through the years – see, for example, everyone’s favorite clip of two men torturing a speech therapist:
… but a lot of its most famous practitioners have been Black and it’s weird to me that people don’t know that.
Today I’d like to talk a little about Savion Glover, who is one of (if not THE MOST) famous living tap artists. This is from 2002:
and this from 2014-ish:
And if you are saying, well, I never heard of this guy, I guess today you are going to learn about this guy. But I bet you know THIS guy:
Mumble’s dance is choreographed by, and mo-capped from, Savion Glover.
This guy. This guy is SKILLED, ok? He’s in his 50s now; he’s been a professional tapper for over FORTY YEARS – he made his Broadway debut at age 11. He’s in that movie, Tap, that I linked a clip from above. Sometimes his tap seems a little old-fashioned – other times it is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. This is intentional – he’s paying tribute to his teachers and tappers of the past by learning and performing their signature moves, but also he’s got his own style.
It is absolutely worth going through whatever you can find on YouTube. Look for “Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk” – he was Tony nominated for the choreo & his performances in this musical. (The MDA telethon performance above is an excerpt – he did these for several years on the telethon.)
I like this one, because you can watch modern African-American tap alongside modern-traditional Irish dance and you can see that these are related, but distinct, art forms. They share a common ancestor, but they’re also so different. Right around 4 minutes, Colin Dunne (the man in the cover image below) and Savion Glover start dancing together, trading off, and it’s AMAZING.
Sidenote, if anyone ever hears of a revival of “Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk,” please tell me, I want to see it liiiiiiive.
Let’s finish off with Glover’s special guest performance at the Stockholm International Tap Dance Festival last year:
i kept thinking about this today, laios being insecure about being king and kabru comforting him. this is hella rushed but the idea had me so soft i had to doodle something
i kept thinking about this today, laios being insecure about being king and kabru comforting him. this is hella rushed but the idea had me so soft i had to doodle something
i kept thinking about this today, laios being insecure about being king and kabru comforting him. this is hella rushed but the idea had me so soft i had to doodle something
i kept thinking about this today, laios being insecure about being king and kabru comforting him. this is hella rushed but the idea had me so soft i had to doodle something
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