#I've filled my arting quota for the year

[rachelbigpeep]

Audrah—my human light cleric from our current dnd campaign🔆

[showmink]

ham/burr is the kind of ship where i love to look at art of them, but i don't ship them myself or wouldn't read shippy fic about them...

[saragrekey]

little art chat before I go to sleep… this is nothing important just a thought dump/update/blogpost idk

So we’re a little over a week into my junior year of college and as expected! I don’t want to do my schoolwork I just want to draw lol.

When I first started my whole -drawing everyday to improve- thing last summer, I was just drawing pinterest faces, so I’d spend 30 minutes in the morning doing a sketch and that would fill my quota for the day. Now that I’m learning how to draw from imagination, my goals are so much more lofty and I have a lot more to practice. Which is been so fun!

But maybe too fun!

I’m struggling to pull my focus away from drawing. This was already an issue during the summer when I didn’t have many responsibilities, and now I obviously have a lot more on my plate. And I just cannot bring myself to focus on school.

Which is something I’ve struggled with for awhile, I’m just completely burnt out of the cycle of working at maximum capacity and pulling all nighters for an exam or critique over and over again. I’m just very over it, lol, but on the same note, I have such deep rooted anxiety about getting in trouble for not having my work or getting a bad grade. So you can see the predicament I’m in!

Idk. I’m not very smart or gifted when it comes to school but I got good grades in high school without having to study, so I just never figured out how to really learn and study correctly. Every assignment, lesson, exam is just a task to be completed, not building upon a collection of knowledge. Why would I review the course a little bit each day when I can cram it all the night before the exam and get the same grade? /j

A lot of it is of course just skills I gotta develop. I definitely need to improve my discipline and time management.

This was not meant to be about school lol. But all that to say, I just can’t seem to care about my homework, and improving my art is infinitely more important to me. But that’s obviously not how it works. I have that thing where I crave routine but can’t stick to one. I daydream about having a super nice organized routine where I can fit a couple hours of practice here and enough time for homework and maybe a little time for video games every once and awhile. I miss video games.

Hopefully I’ll find my footing as we progress through the semester. If you see me start talking about doing any kind of inktober, yell at me bc I definitely don’t have time for it 😭

I’ve not posted any art in awhile! I have been going through a bit of a rusty patch, kinda from school disrupting my life and also I got sick this weekend so I didn't really draw at all. I think the current stage I'm at is really committing what I've learned this summer to memory, to kinda have this basic style to draw from. Because it's like, I have the knowledge but if I don't reinforce it I will forget lol. My next big focus is I want to improve on expressions and overall adding more character to my sketches. I feel like rn a lot of my drawings just look like dolls.

All this to say, I did not do my accounting homework I drew Amphibia fanart instead lol. Here’s a time skip Marcy doodle for reading. It’s actually a few weeks old but I really like it, I feel like the 3-dimensionality of her face is right.

Ok bye love u have a good day!!

[overheaven]

hhnnnnn

MFA program interview tomorrow (it's almost 4am now so technically today but shh)

honestly. i think i’m more nervous about what will happen if i'm accepted this time than the interview itself. the interview... i've been through it once, & my interviewing skills are good if i say so myself. but idk until last wednesday i had more or less accepted the idea that an mfa wasn't meant for me in this lifetime. i still WANTED it but i accepted that i might not get it— who do i get rec letters from 2, 5, 10 years down the line, when i’ve likely been just in the workforce and not a community that could speak to my art & study skills? what do i put in my portfolio if i’m too disabled to get out & find studios & make the art i’d want to create a graduate thesis out of?

but now i've got this opportunity and like. yeah you can be cynical about it & say they're filling a quota or maybe this is their M/O every year to bait more applicants & inflate numbers… but idk i’m trying to stop those suspicious, paranoid thoughts because they’re based in insecurity & hurt.

when a dept. head emails me the day before the deadline and says 'we were looking at past applicants and invite you to apply again; just reuse your previous application' and they offer me an interview the day after i send that and a few new materials, i need to think ‘yeah there's something in my art that they want. that the world wants.’ i do make good art, art that does what i need it to do. and i have worked SO hard. i know what i’m doing and what i want.

plus i got waitlisted last time so i was this close 🤏 i’m not going to be cocky but it sounds like a have a good chance this time. i think about how i got into RISD for undergrad i just couldn’t afford it. i got into RISD! one of THE most illustrious art schools in the damn country! only about 17-19% acceptance rate!!! my portfolio was good enough for that!!!!!

so if given this opportunity i will seize it because i have to. i will be grinding myself to dust while i’m there, i’m sure. i’m still spent from the last 4 years, but i am a fighter and i will claw my way through with torn nails and broken teeth if i need to. i’d rather do that right now while the iron is not exactly hot but still workable rather than wait for a nebulous “someday” or never get it at all. if i get it done now, school can be completely totally DONE for me. there’s nothing above a masters for fine art.

and i feel really good about giving this second chance at this MFA program everything i’ve got, without over analyzing or second guessing because my gf has given me a really stable life and we have a whole plan of where we wanna be for the next few years at least. i have a job too! a pretty ideal one for someone like me!! there is a LIFE waiting for me if i get rejected. i’m not hinging on this for student loans to live on and a reprieve from work that was making me suicidal.

but like. yeah i’ve been having a cart before the horse thing. i'm really scared of the idea of 2 more years of study while being away from a more permanent home precisely because we are so ready & prepared for stability and being somewhere that’s not temporary. i don’t wanna be in transition anymore! i want a home and a place to rest!! i want to stay in therapy! i want to go to doctors and fix my body!

but if i need to, i will.

opportunities have always been stolen from me, by circumstance & finances, having no support. i’ve never been in control of my life. i want to capture this one if it lays down in front of me. i really do deserve it.

and tbh i think it will be somewhat easier because it is just art and some TA stuf. undergrad was agonizing because i was trying to put together senior projects and manage portfolios while also having to fucking write busywork 1-2 page essays every week in each of my other classes and writing manuscripts and being the one to manage group project email chains and scheduling because the 18-20 year old students don’t like to just get shit done. i don’t want to say i’m better than students who went to art colleges but i am built different LOL

[picklestpickle]

'My Husband's Lovers' a redraw of My Wife's Lovers by Carl Kahler depicting phichit's hamsters! fun promo art for @borntomakearthistoryzine!! POs will open soon please look forward to it! c:

[jackredfieldwasmyjacob]

23 and 24 for the history ask! We need more history on our timelines lol

Thank youuu 🥰🥰🥰

23. What country’s history do you know a lot about besides your own? Why and have you been there?

In school we barely glanced over Spanish history until our last year (when it was exclusively History of Spain), so I got to learn a lot about the history of Italy, France, the UK, Germany, and other European countries. Out of them, I would say the ones I know the most of are:

Italy: I also studied a lot of its art history and literature in Art History and World Literature class, and in uni I studied all of Rome, so overall I think it's the foreign country I know most about.

UK (precisely England): My school was 'bilingual' (I put it in quotation marks cause it really wasn't, it just had more English hours and that's it) and to fill up the quota one year we studied History of England in English class, I remember I loved the textbook cause it had all these drawings, and I still remember learning about William the Conqueror and stuff (we only studied about around that moment more or less I think, we never went past the Middle Ages).

USA: This is mainly thanks to the internet and media consumption tbh, I wanna learn more about the pre-colonization era tho.

Out of these ones I've only been to Italy!

24. What made you fall in love with history?

I think it was largely due to my History teachers, they always made the subject really enjoyable, especially my Art History and History of Spain teacher in my last year of high school, Leonardo, he was incredible and I owe him a lot.

history asks

[forgedobsidian]

Hi. I hope you don't mind if I ask for some advice? I used to write fanfiction all the time but then I started to get a lot of anxiety about my writing. Nothing I try to write is good enough for me, and I haven't been able to finish and upload anything since around 2011 even though I've had plenty of plot bunnies. Do you have any advice that might help me start writing again?

Sure!! I’ll give what advice I can!!

I actually went through a period of not-posting-anything, myself. A spike of anxiety when one of my fics went completely review-less killed my motivation to post anything. It lasted about a year and a half, and only in the past couple months have I really gotten back into fic writing. Here is what I found helped:

- Getting in contact with other writers makes things fun!! I follow about 7 other fic folks, and talking to each other about what we write or even just leaving really long rambly reviews is a great way to meet really awesome people and boost some writing confidence. 

- Sometimes you just run out of steam. It’s okay to take breaks, even if they seem terribly long and you don’t want to disappoint any readers with rare updates or new posts. It’s chill to take your time. I know anxiety can be a real pain when you feel like you have to be constantly working on or posting stuff, but as both a reader and a writer I can say that it’s really important to take your time and only post when you want to. 

- Write down those plot bunnies!! Keeping track of your ideas is a good way to keep your creativity going, and then if you get burnt out on one idea there’s always another to keep you entertained. It’s okay if you never finish all of them. Fic is supposed to be fun, and there isn’t a ‘quota’ that needs to be filled. 

- Understand that the everpresent possibility of growth does not detract from you skill in the now. Chances are you grew a lot in writing skill and really developed your writing style from that first fic up to your most recent writings. I know I did!! You have skill right now, and it’ll grow the more you write. 

- Being unsure about your writing means that you’re holding yourself to a personal standard, which is a-okay! I have seen a few fic writers say that they were really able to write well when they stopped caring so much, but that’s not something I can do, personally. I like to feel good about what I’m writing and posting. When it comes to feeling like I’m not doing my absolute best, I like to remember that we are always harder on ourselves than anyone else will be, and I can always come back to it later. And creativity has it’s own time of hibernation, so expecting yourself to be constantly at 100% all of the time isn’t gonna work. ALSO: what might be something simple and rough and not-that-great to you will be pure art to someone else. 

               - ALSO: the bare minimum for fic is that it’s understandable. As long                    as you’re hitting that mark, any extra effort you put into it is just                          making it better!

- It’s okay to feel anxious about your writing. It’s a pretty common feeling, actually. I go through a solid hour of avoiding the Internet after I post something because I can get really jittery. When it comes to dealing with anxiety, I’ve found that stepping away from what I’m doing helps give me some space to think. I can go over some of my old stuff, or my more recent stuff, and it’s like “Hey, I did that, so I can totally do this.” Anxiety is such a pain, but it’s normal, and it can be worked around. 

- Splitting up longer works into multiple chapters helps if you get an idea that seems to keep growing the more you write it. If it turns into something REALLY LONG AND INTIMIDATING, it’s okay to put it on the shelf for when you feel ready. 

- Finishing something is always interesting. Unless I have an ending really planned out beforehand, I always feel like I should have been able to fit in more or write it better or that I made it too long and focused on the wrong things. If you’re really unsatisfied with it, rewriting some scenes or even the whole thing might help (scary, but it works). Also, since it’s fic, you can always go back and edit or add more chapters or a sequel or two if you really want to. 

- Posting work is hard! It’s sending out something you worked on, something you put time into, and you don’t know how it’ll be received or if anyone will like it or even if you’re proud of what you created. I post-and-run, honestly. Thinking back over all the effort I put into something sometimes gives me that push to click ‘Publish,’ though sometimes I just have to wait for another day or so. Then I usually feel more prepared and confident, even if I haven’t done any more work on it. I’ve also seen some folks just post little snippits of stuff they have in progress to get feedback, so that might help to sort of ‘test the waters.’

I hope these help!! Though this is just what I personally found useful when it came to writing again, so they might not work for you. I won’t tell you to make writing a habit, that at 5:00 each night you HAVE to sit down and you have to write at least 500 words. Fanfiction should be something you enjoy. If a long time passes before you feel like you might enjoy it again, then that’s okay. Self-compassion when it comes to your writing is more helpful in the long run than self-admonishment. 

So, overall, being gentle with yourself and remembering that you are always growing and developing is incredibly important.  You can only do you best - which will vary from day to day - at a given moment, and that’s more than enough.  

Hope I could help even just a little!! Happy writing!!

[mypunkpansexualtwin]

It's Goro Akechi's birthday and Loss.jpg's birthday. Naturally, my brain said "okay so we need to do a November 20th Loss edit" but unfortunately I can only art once every 10 months and I've already filled this year's quota.

[nightingaleinasilverycage]

Kept you sleeping and even and I didn’t believe them when they called you a hurricane thunderclap.

//a couple (many) hours in Paint Tool SAI