{a love letter}

Some stuff went wrong, then a lot of stuff went right.

[killrockstar]

thriftbooks better world books half-price books wonder book pangobooks libgen archive.org ubuweb kanopy (library card required; free) tubi pluto tv

storygraph

abebooks, book depository, and goodreads are all owned my amazon.

[laurenfoxmakesthings]

And if you're looking for physical media, ebay and WowHD.

[modogoblin]

[modogoblin]

[gayvampyr]

i hate that every time i look for color studies and tips to improve my art and make it more dynamic and interesting all that comes up are rudimentary explanations of the color wheel that explain it to me like im in 1st grade and just now discovering my primary colors

[gayvampyr]

“red and green are opposites 🥰” cool now how do i paint a tree with pinks and blues without it looking like a child’s finger painting or incongruous blobs of rainbow vomit

[gayvampyr]

ok i can’t explain it very well but im looking for tips and techniques for rendering art like

with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing

is it too much to ask

[moreclaypigeons]

gonna drop some sources I have saved on Pinterest! I don't know if these all link back to the original sources so apologies for that

cohesive but still contrasting

This kind of talks about color and composition

This is a bit about landscape specifically

Values & composition

Contrast in composition

Balance in colors & values

This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones

Cohesion within compositions/lighting

"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!

This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!

Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process

With the oranges painting you put as an example, I noticed they painted the lighter values more toward yellow - they also exaggerated the hues of the undertones of the photo, so I'm guessing they either did it in their head or bumped the saturation up to get a closer look! I really love these paintings you shared and I definitely share your desire to paint/draw like that :)

[gayvampyr]

thanks this is super helpful! /gen

[gallusrostromegalus]

If you'd like 2 Print books that I absolutely reccomend to every visual artist regardless of Media, Color and Light and Imaginative Realism by James Gurney are basically religious texts for artists, even the 3-D people because his understanding and explanation of how light and form work is that damn good.

If you're wondering about Mr. Gurney's chops:

James Gurney is the Dinotopia Guy (that link includes his Dinotopia books, prints and online classes too)

[weltenwellen]

Peter Mishler, The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken

[c3rvida3]

There's drama in the vintage community about people buying rare and expensive pieces on eBay and Etsy, and then taking them to their local Goodwill and filming it so that they can act like they found it in the wild for old people clout.

[c3rvida3]

They make YouTube videos like, "RARE $10,000 1920s FLAPPER DRESS FOUND AT SALVATION ARMY IN PERFECT CONDITION???" and then somebody will comment, like, "YOU DIDN'T FIND THAT THERE! I SOLD THIS TO YOU LAST WEEK ON ETSY. YOU'RE A LIAR AND A FREAK ASS," or however old people type, and everybody gets their ass until they delete their channel. Obsessed with it.

[lesbianlimbo]

Everyone’s posting their favorite vines, so I thought I’d hop on this bandwagon.

[freehugsfromvoldemort]

this is absolutely the best compilation ive seen

[sonypraystation]

youtube to mp3 websites have done more for mankind than any government

[macarbe]

[annatorv]

im cleaning out my phone and found that i have saved this tiktok no less than Five separate times

[laughconfetti]

serotinin administered

[chuckdrawsthings]

talking is hard

[freeartzombie]

Meeting The Man: James Baldwin in Paris

(via Mubi)

[jellyfruit]

☀️🌈 - Sacra Luna

[notbecauseofvictories]

what's your favourite early historical church story?

Not technically “early” church, but it is my favorite historical church story and because my bff hosted a drunk history party a couple months ago, I have a powerpoint! So come, join me as I talk about...THE CADAVER SYNOD!

Our story starts in Italy at the very end of the 9th century. The Roman Empire has fallen, leaving behind some Italian kings and a massive power vacuum. These are extremely dark times for the Catholic Church, and it shows in the biographies of the popes:

....no, I won’t explain what the Photian Schism is, because it’s very dumb.

Anyway, all this leads up to Pope Formosus, being named Pope in 891 CE. He was an okay guy, for the given value of “okay” since he was pope during this extremely tumultuous period. He was power-hungry, of course, but pretty much so was everybody. He was pope and then he died. (It is unclear whether of natural causes.)

HOWEVER, while he was alive Formosus had made the huge error of picking the losing side in a squabble over the French throne, and made enemies out of the powerful Spoleto nobility. So when the Spoleto-backed Pope Stephen VI took over (there was a 15 day blip in the middle for Pope Boniface VI) Formosus was in for a reckoning.

No, it did not matter that he was already dead.

The Cadaver Synod happened in early 897. Formosus (RIP) was dug up and dressed in papal vestments, and then Stephen VI and the college of cardinals proceeded with the trial. Of a dead man.

Their case hinged on a particular quirk of canon law---namely, being bishop was supposed to be a lifetime appointment. If you were made a bishop, that was it, you were bishop of that place until death. But ambitious Formosus had been Bishop of Porto when he accepted the triple tiara, so his papacy was illegitimate.

For this, the Church condemned Formosus to damnatio memoriae.

Theoretically, this should have been the end of it, but even violent Rome was horrified by the “Synodus Horrenda” and Stephen was arrested and killed shortly afterwards. This led to an even more chaotic period of the Catholic Church, where the powerful Spoletos essentially decided among themselves who was going to be pope. This is commonly known as the “Rule of Harlots” or “Saeculum obscurum” (literally, the Dark Age) or...

It is also a super fun time in the history of the church.

Eventually, Formosus would be reinstated and it was written into canon law that a dead pope can’t be put on trial. (One of those rules you don’t realize you need until some idiot puts a dead pope on trial.) But it doesn’t really change things---none of this gets sorted out until the 11th century, when Pope Gregory VII finally takes a look around and goes “damn, we live like this?” and told everybody to stop fucking around. 

No, he literally said that: clerical celibacy was instituted by the Gregorian reforms.

[barnhills-blog]

‘WAULKING’ THE TWEED

Waulking is a finishing process that is applied to woven wool tweed. In Gaelic language, the process of waulking is called luadh (“loo-ugh”) and the songs of waulking are known as orain luaidh (“or-ine loo-ie”). There were four parts to the waulking process. The first, similar to the fulling process, entails shrinking the fabric so it thickens to give a degree of wind and waterproofing. Then cleansing the cloth, folding the cloth, the process of giving it tension, after which came a rite of consecration. Waulking was a daylong project and once begun it had to be finished in one session.

When cloth had been woven and removed from the loom, a session was planned. The waulking women assembled at the house of the owner of the cloth after breakfast. The tweed, up to 70 yards long, was sewn together at the ends to make a continuous loop and then it was soaked in human urine, fualor graith, which was saved in each house for this sole purpose. The ammonia served to deepen and intensify the dye colors but also to remove residual oils used to dress the wool.

Waulking of cloth was done by pounding the material against a board. Women would sit around the waulking board and the cloth would be pulled towards you and beaten on the board then passed slightly to your left before pushing it back, moving it in a four-time clockwise direction. Cloth would be inches narrower when the process was complete in addition to being softer, thicker, and more tightly woven.

Accompanying this work were waulking songs, òrain luiadh, a musical form unknown elsewhere in Western Europe. Waulking was measured by song - not time - it was never said, “it will take another half-hour” but rather “it will take another song”. The songs, which have common themes of love, war, hunting and sewing, are very rhythmic and were composed to keep the beat as the cloth was being waulked. The best singer, the ban dhuan, would sing out the verse and then everyone would join in the chorus. The verses and choruses (sometimes there are up to 4 choruses) are very short, sometimes only a few syllables.

[venus-and-bluebells]

!!! Btw here are some of my favourite waulking songs, in case anyone wants to hear them:

(this whole album is a bunch of wool waulking bangers)

[glumshoe]

Oh THANK YOU for these links; I’ve been looking for good recordings all day and so many have been spoiled with instrumentals.

[chewbacca]

If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, it makes us feel as though our hard work ain’t been in vain for nothing.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)  |  dir. Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly

[trueloveistreacherous]

The Good Place (2016-2020) Created by Michael Schur

[soyoumusik]

And that’s why it’s my favorite

[levourdalak]

That’s because it wasn’t composed as a Christmas song. The music is from “Shchedryk,” about a swallow singing about fortunes in the coming spring, by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych, based on a traditional folk chant that predates Christianity. American composer Peter Wilhousky heard it and wrote unrelated Christmas lyrics, “Carol of the Bells.” Here’s a great version that explores its pagan origins.

It sounds scary to people because its first four notes sound like the first four notes of “Dies Irae,” which we have been classically conditioned to associate with death.