Expect no skill set whatsoever...

Pardon me if I'm not very original. Nor too deep. All else is highly random.

[monamoni]

[gremlinpeaches]

Castiel with Peonies

—

I don’t say this lightly, but I genuinely think this is the best piece I’ve ever created.

Every painting teaches me something, and this one feels like all those lessons finally came together. The course I’ve been taking has also helped me immensely, I t’s completely changed how I think about the painting process, and I finally feel like things are starting to click.

I did, however, almost lose my mind somewhere around peony number three… and then I realized there were a lot more peonies to paint. 😂

I’m incredibly proud of how this turned out.

Progress shots are under the cut if you’d like to see how it came together! Added as well the references used!

[oldpagesclub]

Evgenii Rachev illustration for "Havran Kutcha", book published in 1974.

(book from my private collection)

[bitterdatura]

[anais-ninja-bitch]

now THIS is a baroque painting. mannerist even.

[cipheramnesia]

Working with different business cultures all over the globe, my biggest surprise is that while the USA is bad, it's not actually the very absolute worst I've ever worked with.

[cipheramnesia]

I can imagine all the guesses, but if you haven't talked with a crap ton of people from dozens of countries, it's not obvious.

[cipheramnesia]

The key is business culture is like its own weird separate culture with rules and structures, but most places have a fairly comprehensible set of expectations. So most of the time, it's just remembering perceived differences in expectations. Some places it's polite to be what feels really overly friendly to me. Some places it's polite to be what feels obsequious and formal to me. It's like, whatever. A secondary form of language kinda. It's not even social cues, it's just mechanics of language really. Places with that stuff, those are all fine and wonderful to deal with because there's a framework to communicate and all that.

Part of why the USA shits the bed trying to talk with is because every business person here has like zero framework, it's all lies and bullshit, and everyone wants to be the smartest bestest boy. It's not business culture as much as daycare for toddlers who have millions of dollars and hate human rights. Not the worst though, not by far.

[cipheramnesia]

What's key to understand is this is all separate from things like the real people in different places. Business brain people don't have any relevance to real human behavior, it's this whole other structure of make believe which controls everyone's well being. It's important to know because I know how to email a business guy in South Korea using language that will feel appropriate enough after translation, but that's completely irrelevant to the real people living there. It's easy to talk to business guys in China or India or whatever. Germany, Nigeria, Mexico.

UK business guys are pretty bad too. Still not the worst but you have to put a lot of extra work in because business culture in the UK still thinks the Brittish empire exists. The majority of business dudes in the UK see no difference between selling something that has their company name on it, and making it themselves. It's like how all the stuff that says "made in the USA" is 99% made somewhere else, and then one staple is put into it and it's made in the USA, but if you talk to business guys here, they never confuse where things are made, just like... more basic realities like linear time and physics. UK guys go the opposite way, and always say they own everything. But that's all relatively navigable. It's like, okay, you all live in an imaginary world, but I can still get everyone to understand time and logistics and stuff enough to get everyone understanding the same information. I can translate imagination land to reality and back, they get it.

[cipheramnesia]

Australia business guys are the worst. Uncontested. I keep minutely detailed notes on every interaction I have with any business brained Australian. I don't want to do this. I have to. Working with business guys in Australia is like being stuck in a marriage with an emotionally abusice pickup artist. Their favorite way to communicate is using work appropriate language to imply you're stupid and your work is worthless. Luckily, there's also no way to explain what you do, because I think when you get a corporate executive level position in an Australian business, they surgically remove the part of your brain that takes in new information.

My average verbal or email exchange with an Australian business guy goes something like this:

"Okay, this is going to take around a month. We need so and so dollars to start. Also, the Earth orbits the Sun."

"Great, just to confirm, we're ready to deliver tomorrow, and the giant hamster rolls the sunball across the sky. Sounds good, have you started?"

It's infuriating in some ways, fascinating in others. Information simply vanishes into an Australian business person as if you hurled it into space, but something in space might theoretically end up somewhere and everything I say to Australian business guys doesn't. I've tried every way around it, and nothing works. And they become enraged when the things they imagined, which no one ever actually said, don't happen. Like you know those clips from Alex Jones in court being read his own words? Imagine that instead of blustering denial he demanded to know how the lawyer was so incompetent at lawyering because words don't exist and he was told this was a carnival cruise not lawsuit. And they have both of the worst traits of USA and UK business guys on top of all that. And I've never heard anyone even close to the same level of casual racism as business guys in Australia. I mean, business guys as a rules aren't great people, but nowhere I've ever worked with has been so consistently terrible to deal with. It would be one thing if it was an outlier, I've had one or two USA companies that were rough, sometimes companies in South Korea can be a real pain, navigating business culture in France if you're from the USA is a labyrinth. But Australia. Those business guys are on another level. Every other company with dodgy practices knows what they’re doing that's questionable. I don't know if business guys in Australia have the ability to understand... like... language. Do they understand laws, money, logistics, anything? Impossible to say! They walk and talk like people but they have discovered some means by which they never intake any information ever. It's like plausible deniability evolved into a new part of the brain specifically to make it easier to be as unethical as the manifest physical reality permits. The regular people in Australia all seem fine, just more people, but the business operators are like night and day. I can find ways to communicate with non-English speakers fairly well, knowing how to work language to adapt to translation is fun. I can't make fucking heads or tails of English speaking Australian corporate execs. If you speak any second language, any at all, know that you are doing better at it than these guys are in their first one. It's literally impossible to overstate how uniformly unpleasant it is to work with business guys from Australia. They are, without question, the worst.

[elodieunderglass]

@cipheramnesia have you ever seen these?

[ymfingsteadilyon]

@elodieunderglass Those look really interesting, do you have a link to a sharper version? (Or is there a joke about communication difficulties and you're not supposed to see what it says?)

[elodieunderglass]

Ha, yeah, I hadn’t expected Tumblr to compress it like that - “do you love the colour of business communication around the world?”

The body of work is called “Communication Patterns Around the World,” by Richard Lewis. The main book they’re from is at the bottom of the image, but they’re widely spread. Googling will lead to many articles and many images.

[mugwomps]

This is the funniest thing I've read in the last 24 hours, and has cheered me up enormously #family illness #family money worries #family run-around #business makes a refreshing stop

[montereybayaquarium]

Protect California's coasts!

No matter where you live, you can speak up and take action now to protect the coast of California from offshore drilling.

The Trump administration's plan for new offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters is expected any day. If finalized, drilling could begin off the California coast as soon as next year.

We need you—our Aquarium Tumblr community—to act right now.

📣 California residents: Tell your lawmakers to vote YES on AB 1448—closing loopholes that let old infrastructure fuel new drilling. Submit by August 3.

📣 Everyone: Tell NOAA to keep California's coastal protections strong. NOAA needs to hear from everyone who loves the California coast, no matter where you live. Public comments are due August 22.

Our coast can't wait. Take action now:

Protect California’s coastline

Take two actions to stop federal offshore drilling off California's coast.

[vastthroneviper]

May this curiosity be in all of us

[dddreamscape]

Mutuals do this

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

You've heard of parallel play, now get ready for perpendicular play.

[amuseoffyre]

Hot cross buns?

[objectlessondujour]

I've got you in my cross hares

[caffedinotte-deactivated2018020]

not to be a nerd but it’s so crazy how he (Bernini) really did that from cold hard stone……. truly a spectacle, truly breathtaking, an honor to behold

[maddieinmanhattan]

I think you should know he was 23 when he finished this and the ass gets a lot of attention but the hand on Persepina’s side/tummy is also exquisite

[assignedfaggatbirth]

before i saw the caption I knew that HAD to be bernini.

I try not to make sweeping statements but I think there’s a case to be made for bernini as the greater sculptor there’s ever been.

here’s his bust of costanza bonarelli

here’s apollo and daphne from the front, where she’s mostly human

from the back, where she’s mostly tree

and details

[bogleech]

this is the one art form I genuinely just cannot get my brain to accept as real. I’ve watched sped-up videos of it being done, read about it, seen in-progress marble statues and I still just can’t get it to sink in or stick. My mind doesn’t want to believe that any person has ever been able to start with a big block and break little bits off of it until it looks like a finely detailed person. At some point it has no recognizable shape and they still know where and how deep they should take a chip out of it that’ll still be the right decision 50,000 fucking chips later?!?

[butteredtoastcrumbs]

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa has a hidden skylight for gold rays of actual light to shine down on their expressions and clothes and clouds.

[kogiopsis]

Hi yes I have been there and seen all of these IRL and I have some more pictures to share:

Insanely detailed feet with veins from “Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius”

Another foot from the same statue because a) he textured underside of the foot and the folds of skin in the arch and b) can you see the light coming through the thin marble between the toes?

One of the mouths of Cerberus from “The Rape of Prosperina”.

Prosperina/Persephone’s facial expression and HAIR TEXTURE

Hades’ hair as well - this man was entirely too good at making CURLS out of ROCK.

A (poorly lit) close-up on the tree textures from “Apollo and Daphne”.

Hand, sling, and rock from “David” which I think deserves to be at LEAST as well-known as Michelangelo’s. Saw them two days apart and I prefer Bernini, honestly.

Facial expression from “David” - I just love the character in this so much.

Kind of a weird angle but look at the texturing on the sling pouch!!!

We also got to see one of Bernini’s earliest works (possibly his very first) in the Uffizi; it’s not currently on display, unfortunately, but look at this:

Forgive the poor photo quality but. He was 14 when he carved this. FOURTEEN.

Man was a straight-up wizard.

In conclusion: if you get the chance to visit the Borghese Gallery in Rome (which has the most Bernini sculptures gathered in one place), do it. The “Ecstasy of St. Theresa” is in a church a short walk away from there, too, and well worth a visit. There are also several more Berninis in churches around Rome which can be visited for free or for a nominal donation! Just… be smarter than we were and make sure you’re not trying to visit them on days they have services.

[drawingden]

Painting Grassfields Tutorial by slawekfedorczuk

Support the artist and get more tips by signing up for their newsletter!

[dominiqueramseyart]

World tiger day! I love these big cats

[cryptic-curation]

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.

Some of the bleach burned thru the shirt bc this was my first time bleaching anything ever, but it kinda adds to it.

[jilli1205]

[myspace]

Shakira seeing a camera phone for the first time in Japan, 2002

[enbyogre]

Immortalizing this tag

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

GitHub - zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI: Force Remove Copilot, Recall and More in Windows 11

Force Remove Copilot, Recall and More in Windows 11 - zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI

[creechie]

How do I... use this? I don't know what to do ;-;

[the-future-is-chrome]

here’s a youtube tutorial by the guy who made it

[gandalfsbignaturals]

what if instead of paying companies to delete our info off of databases periodically we like. idk. passed a law that said companies couldnt do that anymore. and set up some kind of task force to disband all the companies that do that. thatd be cool

[blignick]