Not today Justin
oozey mess
One Nice Bug Per Day
Product Placement
shark vs the universe
Claire Keane
hello vonnie
almost home
pixel skylines
todays bird
Sade Olutola
PR's Tumblrdome
d e v o n
Love Begins
$LAYYYTER
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Kiana Khansmith
i don't do bad sauce passes
No title available
Xuebing Du
seen from Greece
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Singapore
seen from Spain
seen from United States
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@variouslyarts
in honor of the Lilo & Stitch remake being a huge piece of shit here's a comic about what the original meant to me as an 8 year old
Lilo is one of the best kid characters of all time for a reason 👏
What is also realistic is the fact that Lilo gets punished for standing up for herself while Myrtle and her friends get off scot free.
widehead
“i’m not the same as who i was before [x] thing happened to me” does it help to know that you would not have stayed that person regardless
added a graphic to elaborate on the specifics of what i’m trying to say.
basically, everybody changes all the time for all sorts of reasons. don’t let the myth of static selfhood trick you into thinking you’re unworthy. the only way to go is forward, which would be the case no matter what, and that’s okay.
How I Study Anatomy
Everyone says NEVER TRACE!! THAT'S ART THEFT! Ok but we can do a little crime in the name of Learning.
Trace to learn, not to earn.
I like to take my own photos, but you can study whatever you want. Link back to original photos, and don't post copied artwork unless the artist is dead, cool with it, or both.
As always with learning, start every sketch with the intent to throw it away (trash for paper, quitting without saving for digital) This takes the pressure off and lets you make Bad Art, which is very important.
So let's make Bad Art of a Deer because I happen to have one handy
Start with a photo of your subject in a nice/neutral pose with all four feet visible. (so not like me)
Freehand copy it. Try not to stylize, focusing instead of matching proportions and pose. Don't get too detailed!
It's ok if your art looks terrible and has broken legs. I've drawn LOTS of deer so I have a leg up. Everyone's art sucks in their own eyes and here's where mine went wrong:
Either lasso-distort (recommended for beginners) or redraw a copy of your first sketch with your reference behind it (scaled to match the main body of your sketch)
Put the original and modified sketches together and compare the differences. Write it down if you want. This shows you where your eyes saw things the wrong size, so you can correct for that next time.
After learning about both deer and yourself, try freehand copying again.
Marvel at your newfound knowledge and skill!
but there's always room for improvement
You can stop here and move on to your real drawing, Or do another freehand-fix-compare cycle. I actually overcorrected my "draws heads too big" and veered into "heads too small."
Another note on tracing: Learning HOW to trace is more important than anything you could learn By tracing. Draw the Anatomy, not the outline. In real life, things don't have outlines, they have bones.
These are from the same shoot which is extra useful for consistency. The lines are minimal and follow where the animals joints are, and only important parts are drawn.
You won't know what Important Parts means right off the bat, which is where in-depth study comes in. You need to do learn the hard parts to do the easy parts right.
Next up: how to study bones and muscles.
How to study Bones and Muscles
"Study the anatomy study the anatomy" but they never tell you HOW. It's not "read a book," It's more like flailing around wildly and crashing your browser from too many tabs.
This is going to be about How to Make a bones and muscle chart. Because even if your art sucks, you learn so much more by doing than by seeing.
References I gathered: X X X X X X X X
Get Set up. Get a photo, like above, but it doesn't have to be the same photo. And now... gather reference.
We'll start with bones. Search up "[animal] skeleton" and get photos or super scientific illustration. Add in things like "top view" to spice it up.
Next, search "[animal] skeleton sketchfab." This pulls up 3D models that you can rotate in your browser. Remember that these are art and the anatomy is only as good as the artist, so pick a good one.
Time for bone!
The spine is the most important, and in a lot of animals it will surprise you. Draw it in over your photo and then add spikes because skeletons are punk. These are not scientific and I didn't count them because their number doesn't matter to art. So you better be referencing from scientists and not me!
The rest of the bones and some notes. These are my notes to myself about things I want to remember. My personal discoveries in anatomy that made my art better. You can make the same notes but also make sure you have your own thoughts on there as well. that's how you help yourself the best. Be as detailed or vague as you want.
Same deal with muscle. Here are my personal notes to myself. Label stuff that is important to you. I actually grouped a bunch of muscles together based on what is visible from the outside. Muscles are way more complicated than this, but Baby's First Anatomy Chart gets to be simple.
This is good enough for me because I have intimate knowledge of the other muscles working under and over these ones. Feel free to add as many or as few muscles as you like. You chart your own course.
This is very VERY much not an anatomical chart. I'm sure there's nerds out there pulling their hair out looking at this. But listen, it works for art!
And you know the wildest part about this?
I don't need to look at it to use it. The act of making your own anatomy chart puts that knowledge in your brain. Like how you can make "cheat sheets" even for tests that don't allow them - the act of making the sheet helps you remember what you struggle with most.
And after all that complexity? Your simplification will be based on Real Knowledge and you'll put those random circles in the right spots.
Look at all this hard work you've done. Eventually this will be second nature to you.
Show me what you make! I'd love to see what creatures yall make anatomy charts of.
Photo Reference Packs
I put together some photo packs and uploaded them to my gumroad. You can use them and this guide to study! So far there's only a Doe and a Fawn pack, but if I get sales I will put in the effort to do more for deer, horses, cats, birds, and anything else I can point my camera at.
Doe Pack
Fawn Pack
Animal Photo Reference Repository
@animalphotorefs is a great place to get photo refs of many different animals and is in fact made for that purpose! You can freely download the photos, use them in art projects, and if you want to trace them to learn, or upload whatever you make with them, it’s usually fine! The site has its guidelines listed, and anything not stated, you can contact the owner about
Boosting because this is a great guide on learning to see and draw anatomy.
To clarify prev: if you’re making art or learning to do art or even vaguely thinking about art-like ideas, you can use the repository photos!
As long as you’re not using GenAI for it you can trace, sketch, scribble on, scrapbook, decoupage, satirize, collage, sticker over, sculpt, animate, make cartoons of, paper mache, finger paint, wood-burn, and anything else you can think of with the photos.
The only guideline is for your use to be transformative/derivative in some way: please don’t reproduce a copy of the images without using them in something or changing something or making your own version. An exception here is if you’re showing the references you used alongside a piece - just link back to the site alongside it. You can post your art and sell art you made using the reference site with no restrictions - it’s your art!
the knight of swords
just an idea that came into my head while i was replaying DAI. i have not done anything in this tarot like style for two years and wanted to draw wyll so… here it is! i also tried to use his ingame portrait palette.
: Can't run Windows 11? Don't want to? There are surprisingly legal options
The 2021 LTSC is available in the plain vanilla version, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021, with end of mainstream support scheduled January 12, 2027, and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021, with an extended end date of January 13, 2032. They are not quite the same as the ordinary consumer editions of Windows 10. They don't include the Windows Store or any "modern" apps. Apart from the Edge browser, they have almost nothing else: no OneDrive, no Weather or Contacts apps, and no Windows Mail or whatever it's called this week.
...no OneDrive, Copilot AI, or all of the other useless crapware cluttering up the Start menu? AND patches/support through 2032??
Don't threaten me with a good time, Microsoft.
Jesus Christ is this REAL?! Can I... have Windows for YEARS more with no AI shit?!
Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.
Some fun stuff from the notes:
park ranger who has seen people spread bacon grease on their campsite in the hopes of seeing a bear
British person who is appalled that North American national parks kill people
people who lure bison calves away from their mothers to photograph them
a lot of it involves bison
a LOT of it involves people trying to swim in the yellowstone thermal vents
woman who tried to retrieve her dropped cell phone from a pit toilet and FELL IN
Lots of people reminding me that caves are a problem too. I know, I just try to forget that caves exist because I hate them.
Guys who tried to hike the entire length of Florida in flip flops
Someone who approached a bear cub because they thought it was a raccoon
Someone who works at an unspecified national monument and says dead bodies keep turning up at the picnic area (Hello???)
A few Alaskans laughing at everyone
Scottish person who wishes their parks were as effective at killing tourists as ours are
A few NPS staffmembers saying the NPS is far, far too incompetent to wage any sort of large scale conspiracy about disappearances
Several death threats against David Paulides
People accusing me of being Bigfoot (I plead the fifth)
A group who got on a raft in a river assuming it would loop back around... like at a waterpark
Person recalling a time they saw a hiker "saved by monkeys" but did not elaborate on that
BISON
I met a girl last semester who volunteered at a national park for several years and she told a story of the time a facility that rehabilitates bear cubs had a lady pull up with a Black Bear in the back seat of her car because she had hit the bear with her car and drove an hour to the rehab facility with the bear in the car with her. They had to make a post that was like "PLEASE DO NOT BRING BEARS TO US. BEARS WILL KILL YOU"
Anyone who would like to have these points emphasized to them should look up a couple of books that I read cover to cover and really enjoyed* (for certain definitions of "enjoyed"):
"Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite"
and
"Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon"
Both are by Michael P. Ghiglieri, along with others more specialized in those parks. They are both just basically "here is every single death (and quite a few disappearances) recorded in the park, and a sometimes brief, sometimes longer write-up about the circumstances of each". They're hefty books, but still, in the 100+ years that these parks have existed, it's a finite number, you know? And they're both VERY readable.
I happened to read them both after visiting Yosemite, but before going to the Grand Canyon; so that when I took a trip to the latter, I made sure to drill into my friends' heads "DO NOT EVER leave one person out of your sight", because the main takeaway from those books is, "And they were never seen again, and their body was never found." One of your hiking companions might sit down on a trailside rock to rest for a little bit and tell you to go on, they'll catch up, it's only a half a mile to the end of the trail... do not fall for this. It won't hurt you to sit or stand with them for a while until they're ready to go again.
But mostly the phrase that I made sure stuck in everyone's head was, "Do you have enough water? No, you don't -- here, take some more." Especially in the desert southwest parks (where we went during summer), but this goes for most parks if you're hiking in warm weather.
Because another salient example was that when we arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were walking into the visitor center, there was a big sign on a stand right beside the door, and it said (to paraphrase), "Are you in good enough shape to run a marathon?" It went on to report that, not that long before, a woman who had run the Boston Marathon was visiting the GC and went for a hike with a friend. Like MANY PEOPLE, they underestimated the distances (especially common in the desert parks, where you can see for a long way and you are bad at estimating how far away some of the things you can see actually are), and underestimated how much water to take with them, and underestimated how warm out it really was. They hiked for too long and didn't drink enough, and started to experience heat exhaustion. The marathon runner went into heat stroke sooner, IIRC. She sat down in the shade, while her friend tried to hike out to find help. The friend did make it out and survived. The marathon runner died.
The point being: even if you are young and very in shape and athletic, you can still make some very unwise decisions when you head out on a hike into the wilderness. Most people who visit the parks are NOT nearly that in shape or athletic, and they are often making bad decisions, too. Bright Angel trail is the most well-known trail from the South Rim of the GC down to the river. It's 7.8 miles down. (Another sign we saw frequently in GC: "Down is Optional; Up is Mandatory".) There is a park ranger who is stationed to hang around the first few hundred feet of the trail, where it finally just goes below the rim, and their sole purpose is to stop tourists who are descending the trail wearing flip-flops and carrying one (1) 12 oz. bottle of water.
Another anecdote: on the same trip, at the end, two of us went to Mesa Verde NP in Colorado. When we arrived, there were signs posted on basically every building door with a photo of an older man, who had gone missing only the week before. Obviously, the signs were to alert people to watch for anything unusual that might help find the guy (who by that point was probably no longer alive; and in fact it would turn out, he definitely wasn't).
This was Dave Stehling, who was 51. He was there with his wife and elderly parents. They all stayed around the visitor center, while he decided to go on a short, paved quarter-mile hike to a look-out. (Mesa Verde mostly consists of the mesa top, and most trails to see the cliff dwellings and other sights drop down into the canyons. The park is a maze of deep canyons and steep drops from the mesa.) He did not take water with him, although the temps were 90-100 F that day. His wife described him as a little directionally challenged sometimes; but he was on a very short and clear path near the visitor center. An extremely easy hike. Witnesses placed him as having diverted onto the longer (2.8 mile) Petroglyph trail; either he took a wrong turn, or he decided he wanted to see the petroglyphs. Even that longer trail should only have taken a hour to walk.
He disappeared. Despite a massive search (made difficult by the terrain), his body was not discovered for 6 more years. He was the subject of theories about paranormal activity by David Paulides (the guy behind Missing411, who is the source of a LOT of conspiracy theories about people going missing/dying in the national parks/public lands and the NPS covering it up; most of his theories involve Bigfoot, and/or portals to other dimensions, sometimes both). And yes, Stehling's disappearance seems to defy logic. How could you go missing on a short trail, where there is a very finite area into which you might have fallen, and not be discovered by a huge search and rescue effort?
But I've read enough about this kind of thing by now to have read statements by people who work in SAR. And one of the take-aways is that until you experience it firsthand, it's hard to appreciate how difficult it actually is to locate a person who is lost in the wilderness. There are multiple stories about volunteers who played the role of the victim in SAR training -- who would just go out and lay down in the woods and be still and quiet, while a search team tries to find them. And they consistently report the searchers walking past them within touching distance, but not seeing them. (Usually, that has to do with underbrush, but it's also just a testament to how much a body can blend in with its surroundings even if you would *think* it would not; even if you'd think the clothes or something would stand out.)
Stehling's body was found a little over 4 miles away from where he'd disappeared. It seems like he had fallen, probably sustained injuries, but tried to hike out of the canyon he'd fallen into by following it downwards. (I'm not sure that an autopsy was ever released, which is why I don't know if he sustained injuries or not; but in a fall like that, it does seem very likely.) He might have been unconscious during the height of the searching, hidden in dense, scrubby vegetation. In June, he would have had to hike further to finally hit running water. But in the temperatures they were getting at that time, he almost certainly succumbed to hyperthermia.
All of this is just to emphasize what's said in the posts above and in the replies or other posts. A lot of tourists visit the national parks, and they think the word "park" means that it's a tame, safe environment. So many people express shock at the idea that the environment and landscape can hurt them, even though the NPS does post warnings all over the place. They don't take the idea of hiking seriously, and often don't have the right supplies or equipment. They don't realize that even the shortest, friendliest-looking trail can have hazards. They think a running stream looks inviting and they'll just dip their feet in to cool off, and don't realize how fast the current is running or how slippery the rocks are. One of the shortest, flattest, best-paved trails in Yosemite (from the ring road to Mirror Lake) has a sign right by the road warning people that there may be mountain lions around, and not to allow children to run ahead, or trail behind.
And yeah: BISON. And bears. Just yesterday I opened my weather.com app on my phone and on the front page is a video story about some tourists who dragged two black bear cubs out of a tree so they could pose with them to take photos. (This was NOT in a national or state park, but is still an example of people being idiots about interacting with wildlife.) The cubs got away quickly, and authorities "decided not to press charges because the cubs were released quickly". (They should have pressed charged, ffs.) These people will likely never appreciate how lucky they were that the mother bear did not show up.
You really don't need Bigfoot to explain weird disappearances, or paradoxical undressing (something that regularly happens as hypothermia sets in). You don't need holes between dimensions to explain how someone wasn't found by SAR, but their body was later discovered in an area that had been searched previously.
All you need to know is that in 2023, across all of the properties in the national park system, there were 325.5 million visits; an increase of 13 million over 2022 alone. The total population of the United States is 333.3 million. I wish we had a way to estimate how many of those millions were unprepared for the wilderness, but who took risks they shouldn't have anyway. I'd be willing to bet that number is pretty high.
You can't have *nearly the population of the U.S.* venturing out into the wilderness and not expect some of them to die or go missing. Honestly, the surprisingly thing is that it's as relatively rare an occurrence as it is -- deaths and disappearances in the parks still make national headlines.
pulls up a chair and sits down. So small potatoes example compared to the above, deeply important, super true *nightmare litany*. But.
I grew up literally smack dab in the middle of the north-northern californian redwoods. And genuinely, I recommend if you have any ability to go and see them, you should. Its one of the most beautiful places in the world. Just please don't stop dead in the middle of a road that goes through the redwoods to take a photo, and don't drive 30 miles under the speed limit because Trees Pretty locals use those roads. Stop and pull over somewhere to enjoy the view.
But if you do stop and pull over. If you go to one of the beautiful national redwood tree parks. I need you to listen to me.
There's going to be signs saying to stay on the trail and you need to listen to them because otherwise you're going to fall into a potentially ten foot hole full of sharp sticks.
"What the fuck" you may immediately think. Well. Heres the thing.
Redwoods generate something called 'duft' from the bark being shed off. It's kind of a reddish fiberous substance, and tends to coat the ground a lot. It's light on its own.
The forests also sometimes have large dips and holes in even fairly flat looking terrain.
Redwoods also shed branches sometimes.
Hole fills with branches, which are often p sharp from having broken off trees during storms.
Redwood duft coats top of branches, but doesnt fill up the hole underneath.
Sometimes you even get clover growing on the duft over an absolutely deadly hole.
So in closing: Please take nature seriously and the signs arent just there to keep you from trampling the delicate ferns. But also leave the dag ferns alone.
Another good book to read is Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks by Andrea Lankford. She was a ranger in Yosemite and Grand Canyon among others, and she has a LOT of stories of people who got into trouble doing something stupid (the people illegally BASE jumping off El Capitan haunt me to this day).
I just visited Joshua Tree NP and every other sign was about proper hydration. The trails weren't rated on difficultly in terms of terrain or elevation but on how much water you should bring. My absolute favorite example was that every restroom stall I went in had an official poster (on NPS stationary in their standard fonts/formats) telling you how to assess your hydration levels based on the shade of your pee. Deserts are not a joke.
It also occurs to me that we should have called them national wilderness areas or something other than park because I really do think the word "park" gives people the absolute wrong impression of what these places are.
the first time I met my sister in law, we almost got rammed by a bison in a drive through park because some IDIOT stopped in the middle of the road to gawk despite clearly posted signs warning visitors that bison are Not Friendly.
The near-death experience did make me quite fond of her pretty immediately, though! (once my fiancee explained to my city girl ass how much danger we were actually in lmao)
concept: a facemask that says "Vaccinated But I Don't Trust Y'all"
This is puzzling the living hell out of me. If you're vaccinated you literally don't need to trust anyone. That's the whole point.
you know, i was just gunna ignore this, and let you be a ignorant on this, but since I’m a frontline healthcare worker, it’s going to bug me if i don’t tell you exactly how incorrect this statement is.
1. Yes, being vaccinated adds a great layer of protection against covid. The vaccines, overall, are extremely effective, in that they allow for 90-95% protection against some of the primary covid strains. Meaning that for many people who are vaccinated, they don’t have to necessarily put their full trust in others to also be vaccinated.
HOWEVER:
2. I cannot emphasize this enough, but BEING VACCINATED IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING 100% FULLY PROTECTED, ESPECIALLY NOT FROM COVID VARIANTS. Being vaccinated is not a bullet-proof shield against covid. You CAN still catch the virus, even if you’re fully vaccinated, and while for many people, vaccination will prevent them from experiencing severe symptoms if they catch, you can absolutely still get infected (even without symptoms) and still spread the illness to others.
NOT TO MENTION:
3. The covid vaccines, while effective, do not protect against many of the variant covid strains we are currently dealing with, and while the vaccine does offer protection against some of those variant strains, it doesn’t protect you as efficiently from them. My coordinator is a prime example. She is fully vaccinated, and has been since they first became available to frontline healthcare workers like us. However, she caught a variant strain of covid and experienced a horrific, month-long illness that she is still trying to recover from (months later) and that she will likely suffer with for years to come. Every classic covid symptom, she had it. Every symptom that persists past covid’s resolution (like brain fog, shortness of breath, etc...) she’s still experiencing. Upon antibody testing, they found she did develop full antibodies to the vaccine like she was supposed to; but they also found that after she caught the strain, she developed antibodies from that particular strain that were different than the vaccine antibodies she’d already developed.
Just because you are vaccinated, even fully, does not mean you are 100% safe, especially if other people around you aren’t fully vaccinated, or if they’re jackasses and are lying about their vaccination status just to take their masks off. You can absolutely still catch covid and its variants if you’re vaccinated; you can absolutely suffer the full extent of that illness even if the chances are reduced; and you can absolutely still asymptomatically carry the virus and/or its variants, and transmit it to others.
The vaccine is extra protection, and I’m so happy we have it. I’m thrilled to be vaccinated. I do feel safer; but I’m not letting that feeling of safety lure me into being careless. Being vaccinated is not a green light to ignore proper safety or to trust that others have your safety in mind. Despite what y’all want to think, this pandemic is still happening. People are still catching covid and its variants, and they’re dying from it. I’ve seen it in my hospital to this day.
Think of the vaccine like the seat belt in your car. That seat belt is critical and it has saved countless lives. But it’s not a guaranteed safety measure, and it doesn’t give you the freedom to drive like a maniac just cause you’re wearing it. Your seat belt also doesn’t guarantee that others aren’t going to hit your car in a way that’s so damaging your seat belt can’t help you. Having the seat belt on will absolutely make you safer!!! But it doesn’t mean you’re 100% protected from the dangers of a crash.
So no, even if you’re vaccinated, if you want to take your mask off, you’re still having to place your trust in others that they are vaccinated too. If you’re vaccinated and don’t want to wear a mask, you still have to trust that other people aren’t just being lying assholes and potentially still exposing you to covid and/or its variants, and thus enabling you to potentially carry and/or transmit it.
So don’t be stupid. Don’t blindly trust that every fucker out there without a mask is following proper CDC guidelines and is fully vaccinated and that you’re totally safe. You’re safer, if you’re vaccinated, for sure. Just like you’re safer in your car if you wear a seat belt. But that doesn’t mean you get full reign to be careless. We are not yet to a point of effective herd immunity for covid. Wear your mask. Wear your seat belt.
How my life has changed after being vaccinated:
I'm willing to use public transit, while masked. Even went on a plane trip. Masked.
I do gaming at other people's houses instead of online. All of us are vaccinated.
When I'm walking the dog and doing other small errands near the house, I only put my mask on when I'm near other people. Most of the time, it hangs around my neck. (Before, I kept it on all the time, just in case. Never know when someone's going to step out of their apartment just as I'm walking past their door. Now, I don't worry about that so much.)
That's it. I expect to wear a mask in public settings for several years. Maybe forever, if we can't get it across to enough people that vaccination is a really good thing. I am hoping flu numbers will be down this year because more people are masked in public.
Herd immunity is HARD to reach - notice how badly we've slipped on measles.
For my next door neighbor, who has an autoimmune disorder, being vaccinated meant that when he got Covid anyway, it was survivable.
It was scary, life threatening even, and he was hospitalized and put on a ventilator, but he's alive.
Get your damn vaccines, and wear your damn masks. My neighbor, and others like him, deserve to be safe.
I'm live on Twitch, come hang out! http://www.twitch.tv/VariouslyStated?sr=a
Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.
A mammoth with arms for tusks, that constantly flip one off.
I have a picture to go with my submission!! @shittycryptids
I finally got the chance to post it. :D @cancerousmonkey @mypissedoffsandwich
a thing i did in april
Various practices and character mockups.
but, some info on the piece.
had some fun with textures. Wanted the background to look like old-messy paper. and so the art itself is kinda half digital, half old-school crosshatch shading and the colors are inspired by faded pan-pastels
