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Last night, i dreamed that i smacked a gay Seth Rogan on the ass. When he turned around, we attempted to shake hands, which i shook his hand with the opposite hand he was shaking it with, which made it awkward. he then placed my hand down on a counter and asked, "Brittany, why?" I couldn't stop laughing, i woke myself up from laughing so hard.

i also dreamed that my boyfriend turned into a woman at the mall and started singing about how she was going to rock this skirt because it was made by "Monet." I responded with, "That looks like it's from Walmart". I woke myself up from laughing at that as well.

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Handrail

Shooting date: Early April 2022

©Abeja Mariposa

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Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

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I respect the moon's unwillingness to be photographed on a phone

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Goth Brides

Watercolor on Black Paper

2019, 11"x 14"

Black Calla Lilies, Zantendeschia

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This doll came to me from a reddit user claiming she is haunted. She says that illness and misfortune happened to her family while it was in her possession.

She offered it up for free. I gladly took it. It spent the last two weeks traveling back and forth from the Nashville USPS, and back to her USPS. Until I contacted her and let her know that it was just traveling back and forth.

The woman finally contacted USPS and had it sent to my house ( even though the address was correct)

I'm curious to see what will happen now that it's in my position.

#haunteddoll #haunted #dolly #paranormal

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Beautifully written

i am a different person than who i was last year. my hair is longer and i cry less and i am stronger. i am a different person than who i was six months ago. i am free and different and am embracing change. i am a different person than who i was a month ago. i sit in the sunlight without worry and i don’t let things stick and i look up and smile. i am a different person than who i was last week. i explore more and look at the sky and laugh more. i am a different person than who i was yesterday. i let go and breathe. i am whole.

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we really are on a journey. we are meant to feel lost because that is literally the point. we are going to uncover pieces of ourselves the longer that we are alive. trust the process and surrender! you will find your way!!

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Describe your work in progress badly:

Woman has to get John Carter’d into a religious war on another planet in order to get a job with her linguistics degree

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i'm a bit obsessed with mushrooms, if you couldn't tell

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I was writing a paper on Walt Whitman and others of that era for eleventh grade English while on vacation in Delaware.

At a bookstore in Dover after browsing the comics I found a book of erotica with a plain cover

Mom bought it for me tossing it into her basket of magazines and Amish romances

I was then just beginning to feel like a writer myself and at 16 was quite captivated by poets

That’s why I write now about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman at a card table naked playing their last hand of poker

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Basic Brush Handling Techniques Oil Painting for Beginners

There are a number of factors why brushes create so many endless possibilities: the bristle type, the way you hold the brush, the brush size, and brush shape.  I’m going to explain the bristle types and how to handle the brush in this blog, this should cover the majority of the possibilities you can achieve with oil painting. 

Types of brushes:

There are two main types of brushes in painting, hard and soft bristled brushes. The stiff bristled brushes are mostly made from animal hairs such as hog. They hold more paint and also hold their shape while painting. Because they are more stiff, they allow more precise and bold marks in your paintings. 

The second type, the softer bristled brushes, made mainly from nylon, polyester, or sable, paints a lot smoother with cleaner strokes, which are great for rendering details and painting clean lines.

I won’t go over the details of different brush shapes, but if you are just starting off, I would recommend sticking to the filbert brush as they are the most versatile in painting organic objects, you can paint large areas, draw lines, dots, and different shapes with a filbert brush. I recommend choosing two large and two small filberts (size 4 and 2), so when you’re working on an area, you can focus on a dark and a light, working your way from big to mall.

How to hold your brush

How you hold your brush and where on the handle you hold the brush can yield many different possibilities. A mistake many artists make is holding their brushes the same way throughout all their paintings and the paintings end up looking very static, where there’s no contrast between bold and loose marks versus tight and small details. 

The key is that the closer you hold your brush to the bristles the more control you will have on the fine details. And vice versa, when you hold your brush further back, you’re able to create more bold and assertive straight lines, which are best for sketching out masses of shapes. 

Holding The Brush Near The End

This is usually best applied with a stiff bristled brush, where you are holding it like a magic wand for bold paint marks. This is great for line control, and allows you to focus on the proportions and angles of what you’re painting. You’re using your whole arm, and some artists even prefer standing, to be able to capture the full image of what they’re painting. You’re really sculpting an image onto your canvas

Holding The Brush Near The Middle

This can be a hard or soft bristled brush. When you’re holding it near the middle of the handle, you are also focusing on proportions and lines but with a lot more control. You can hold it like a pencil or a wand. The wand grip allows you to maintain that control over proportions and angles, where the pencil grip allows you to focus on details. When you are holding the brush handle near the middle, your arm is stabilized and your movement comes from your wrist.

Holding The Brush Near The Bristles

This is typically with a soft bristled brush, where you are holding it like a pencil, and focusing on fine details, precision marking, and rendering. This is the most intuitive for most people because it’s similar to how we write. One thing to keep in mind is to not start your painting with this grip because you always want to paint from big to small.  

As a tip for stabilizing while you’re rendering, you can use your other hand to prop up your painting hand, or use a Mahl stick to allow your hand to rest, which allowing more stable rendering without touching other wet areas of the painting.

How to use brushes with paint:

In terms of what you can achieve with the brush, here are the different possibilities: you can do an under sketch, apply a thin layer of paint, apply medium thickness of paint, apply very thick paint, glaze, and you can also dry brush

Sketching When you are sketching, using a hard bristled brush, hold the brush near the middle to the end of the handle, especially if you are painting from life and need to focus on proportions and angles. 

Thin coverage - When you are painting a thin layer of paint, for example in the initial layer of your painting, using a hard or soft brush, hold it at a right angle to the surface. If you are painting on canvas, you can scrub the canvas and really push the paint into the creases, this makes sure the surface is fully covered. If you are painting on wood, don’t scrub too hard because it will dull the brush really fast.

Medium thickness - When applying a medium thickness of paint, you can use a hard or soft bristled brush. You don’t have to scrub, but instead brush the paint in an alternating direction, at an angle that’s smaller than a right angle. You can still feel the canvas under the brush as you paint. 

If there’s wet paint underneath and you’re holding it at a right angle, you might be scraping the paint off. That’s why when you’re layering paint on top of existing paint, be mindful that you’re not scraping wet paint off of the previous layer.

Very thick paint - When applying really thick paint, you can use a hard or soft brush. In this technique, you can barely feel the canvas as you paint, the brush is almost flat against the canvas as if you’re applying icing on a cake.

Glazing- When it comes to glazing, I recommend using a soft brush to avoid brush marks on the painting. This is when you are painting with more proportion of oil medium to oil paint, using a transparent color. This allows you to add a transparent layer of color to existing dry paint without covering it completely. 

Dry Brush - Dry brushing in oil painting is a technique where a dry soft brush is lightly brushed over existing wet paint to smooth out unwanted brush marks, or to fuse colors together. I recommend using a dry sable brush and remember to always keep it dry, wiping it clean after every stroke and wipe it thoroughly after every use on a towel. Never clean it in solvents. This brush must always be kept dry. 

Keep in mind that this is different from blending colors, because you are not using this brush to mix two colors together. The key to oil painting is not to blend colors on your painting, but to apply every changing color individually, and using a dry brush to smooth it out if necessary