I'm not gonna tell you how to vote, BUT...

Here are some truths about the upcoming United States election.

I really hope you make your peace with this now. Please, vote how you want, but with one candidate saying he will essentially outlaw transgender people, I can't imagine NOT voting for the only other candidate who can possibly win. Right now the polls are 50/50, which is absolutely insane to me.

In my experience, it's usually younger people who talk about either voting their conscience, or not voting at all to "send a message." I assure you, not voting doesn't send a message to the candidate who loses. Your message is only received by the millions of Americans who will suffer as a result.

I don't want to argue. I have no desire to fight with anyone over this anymore. And if you want to ask me "so I have to choose between two killers?" as a gotcha, then I'm sorry to say... The answer is yes. Those are the choices we've been given. And because the United States is no longer a true democratic republic, there's not a whole lot we can do to change that right now.

my advice for not going insane? try to do something every weekend. go to events, you’ll love events. and not like just hang out with ur friends or go clubbing , no, make a day out of going to some local market by yourself or attend some strange convention event you’ve never heard of. i cannot stress the importance of doing random events on a friday night or saturday or a sunday at r pm for mentally ill people especially if you’re depressed and have been searching for an anchor 2 tether yourself to. attend some events now

seeing a lot of tags on this like “i would do this but my social battery is low and i have social anxiety” great news! so do i! and YOU are the target audience of this post in fact! i speak from experience when i say that if you do this often enough then things will probably get easier for you and you’ll feel a lot less afraid around social environments. literally go to random conventions about vacuums or flea markets near where you live and like talk to the people there. ask them about their weird niche interests or what they’re selling like YOU don’t even have to be the one TALKING the great thing is you can just go to these things to interact with people for like one time and you’ll never have to worry about meeting them again probably. these are great for like test runs of social interactions ok. rule number one of my life do not block yourself off from things you could potentially be interested in because you are afraid of saying the wrong thing at them or something because that will just open you up into spiraling into thinking you are deserving of nothing good like this like you HAVE to stop thinking like that as soon as possible. and not because some random guy on the internet says that it’s good to shut that part of your brain off for whatever reason This is literally for your own benefit. so yeah go down to the library and ask the lady at the desk what her favorite book is not only will it enhance your life it will enhance the lives of others. fucking have fun and fuck it and ball and live joyously even in small doses cuz even small doses of living are still LIVING!!!!!!! GO HAVE FUN!!!!!!!! ITS GREAT

Kestrel-dad not sure how to dad but he’s trying his best.

Dad loves you and feeds you. But he is also dumb and feeds you a wonderfully done wagyu steak. You are 3 days old.

Okay, but check out this video from mid-May 2022 of a Kestrel Dad who just kept piling up voles and mice beside his babies when the mom was injured/killed/mia’d by owls…but then watched one of his babies just swallow a lizard and went “OH. I can feed them small food!” and learned to tear it apart!

EDIT: There’s a not-zero percent chance that this could be the same dad???????? The source is the same–Robert E Fuller–but they could be different birds. 

UPDATE: Not only has Mister Kes learned to feed his chicks all on his own…

….the three chicks who were taken out of the nest for intensive care after the mom disappeared were put back in, and he just started feeding them, too.

He’s a single father of six who does not possess the instincts to feed even one of his offspring, but he learned and adopted that behavior without difficulty and is now hunting and providing for six kids all on his own. 

Happy father’s day to the Krestel single dad of 6 Who is doing a wonderful job

How is it is supposed to work: your emotions are a response to your situation and surroundings. It is OK to feel the emotion. Now take that emotion and use your logical brain to decide which parts of the emotion fit the facts of the situation and which do not and why, and how you're going to respond to said emotions (which is what tweet said, and what therapists say)

How people seem to interpret it: any emotional reaction is perfectly fine and I am not responsible for what I do out of emotion.

Oh, hey, hey there! Hello! Sorry to bother you. Yeah I'll be out of your DMs in just a second. Yeah it's just I was passing by and realized the way you're expressing your gender or sexuality really doesn't cohere with the way that my extremely insular groupthink faction of the internet thinks gender and sexuality should be expressed. What you're doing is really problematic actually, given how much it really doesn't gel with how my group thinks gender and sexuality need to work. I just wanted to give you a friendly heads up and give you the chance to change before I do anything like call you out publically.

Oh what's that? If you change what you're doing to satisfy me, then a completely different extremely insular groupthink circle of the internet will be mad at you instead? Yeah that's completely true. Luckily this is easy! My groupthink's group-think is the correct and progressive one. Their groupthink's group-think is really problematic and narrow-minded. I hope this helps?

Oh you're still doing what you're doing. :/ Okay man it's just that there's kids in my group, you know? Teens. They're literally kids, and you're making them super uncomfortable because we told them to be uncomfortable. Won't you think of the kids? This argument has never once backfired on a member of the queer community.

Oh. Okay. Well, I mean I was being really polite and respectful and you've just been rude so. Tell you what. If in 5 years from now the narrative has shifted such that the common queer community now supports what you're doing, I'm gonna act like I actually always supported this and have always been on your side. That's a good compromise right? Cool.

Anyway, I think that's totally fair of me. I'm gonna go warn everyone I know about how you're an unsafe person to interact with. This is for protection of the queer community. I'm a very good person.

Get jiggy with it Watercolor, ink, gouache on cold press watercolor.

🐶🛟🌊🔜 Summer is only beginning to heat up💦 Details and full reveal soon ;-)

Know what I’m salty about?

In all my art classes, I was never taught HOW to use the various tools of art.

Like yes, form, and shape and space and color theory and figure drawing is important, but so is KNOWING what different tools do.

I’m 29 and I JUST learned this past month that India Ink is fucking waterproof when it dries. Why is this important? Because I can line something in India Ink and then go over it with watercolors. And that has CHANGED the ENTIRE way I art and the ease I can create with.

tldr: Art Teachers: teach your students what different tools do. PLEASE.

WAIT INDIA INK JS WATERPROOF ONCE IT DRIES????? THE ENTIRE REASON IVE AVOIDED MARKERS MY ENTIRE LIFE IS BECAUSE JNK BLEEDS AND YOURE TELLING ME INDIA INK IS

F U C K I N G W A T E R P R O O F

yall calligraphers out there this is extremely fuckin important if u wanna get into illumination shenanigans because i swear to you there will b discoveries like these^

heres some of mine, pls take with a grain of salt im a total gotdamn amateur:

Shit I Learned Working At Dick Blick: 

Some more, also from working at Dick Blick:

- Palette knives are for mixing paint and TRUST ME you want to learn how to use them. When you mix with your brush you loose paint and it’s hard in your brushes.

- DO NOT FIX YOUR ARTWORK WITH HAIRSPRAY. If you’re proud of your work and want to keep it, buy the actual spray fix. Hairspray is not archival in the slightest and will damage your work.

- On top of that, be careful how you store your work. Newsprint is handy and cheap, but also not acid-free and it will yellow your paper. Foamboard? Matboard? Also not always acid-free (but you can get them acid-free).

- There is no food-safe paint. Period. There are lots of ways you can decorate pottery that aren’t glazes, but only glazes are food safe (and even some of those aren’t).

- Also not food safe: Polymer clay (sculpey), air dry clay, oil-based clay, ceramics that have not been glaze fired, oil pastels, sharpie, glues of any kind, or mod podge (even the ‘dishwasher safe’ kind).

- Don’t even get me started on mod podge. It’s not consistent. It’s not archival. It’s not a sealant, it’s a glue (setting aside some of the weird hyper-specific ones they make that I’ve literally never seen in real life).

- If your glue isn’t archival or at least acid-free, don’t use it in your artwork.

- There are so many different kinds of paper out there, just go try them. But also make sure you know if it’s acid-free or not (it probably is).

- Marker paper is usually 15 to 20 lbs. News print is usually 30 to 35 lbs. Tracing paper is usually 25 lbs. Rice paper can range from 20 to 50 lbs. Printer paper is 20 lbs. Vellum paper is usually 48 to 55 lbs. Sketchbook paper is usually 50 to 60 lbs. Drawing paper is usually 70 to 80 lbs. Cardstock can range from 50 to 110 lbs. Charcoal paper is usually 50 to 65 lbs. Pastel paper can range from 70 lbs to board. Bristol paper can range from 50 lbs to board. Mixed media paper can range from 90 to 140 lbs. Printmaking paper can range from lbs 90 to 300 lbs. Watercolor paper can range from 90 to 500 lbs.

- The heavier and rougher the paper is, the more it will absorb. If you’re using a paper too smooth for your medium it will take forever to dry and may smudge. If you’re using a paper too light for your medium, it will warp and curl.

- If you’re working heavily with water, you need to stretch your paper (aka seal down your edges of the paper to a hard, water resistant surface). If you don’t like doing that because it’s a hassle, buy a watercolor block instead of a pad/individual peices.

- If you’re working on a thicker paper, and make a mistake that your can’t erase or cover- you can scrape and/or cut it out! With a really sharp exacto knife, you can very CAREFULLY remove the top layer of paper fibers on most paper.

- DO NOT USE ACRYLIC AS BODY PAINT. It’s plastic.

- If you paint with oil, buy a silicoil jar. It’s the best $10 you’ve ever spent.

- Acrylic paint is basically water-based plastic. It will basically fuse with anything plastic (like a plastic palette), and will not stick to anything oil-based.

- Acrylic paint and house paint are not the same thing and you cannot mix them together. Acrylic paint is made from a water-based acrylic polymer, and house paint is almost always latex and can come both water-soluable and not.

@pamelab has this amazing reference crossed your dash yet?

I got more (I haven’t worked at Dick Blick, but I worked as a colour pencil / ink artist for over a decade):

Sterling Silver Star [OC]

Speedpaint for my illustration, done with the clip studio recording option, below the cut

i cant even imagine where id be without "thats a really mean way to think about me, i wish you wouldnt think that i dont know what im doing when i love you." and "people want to be useful, trying to do everything yourself makes the people around you think that you dont trust them or that you think theyre incapable" and "people are made to be burdens. we are made to carry each other and not leave anyone behind." and "its rotten work / not to me. not if its you."