#find joy by giving

[lymphomalass]

"Find yourself joy in giving!

To my mind there's nothing quite like the joy of that "gotcha!" moment when you've found and given someone a truly great gift and you can see they really love it!

I remember when my brother gotcha'd me one big 0 birthday, giving me an album of carefully selected old family photos he'd scanned and had printed up. I was entranced and delighted by the photos of him looking in my crib, of us playing cowboys in the back garden and then sailing together. No pretence was needed. I just loved the gift and everyone could see it!

A few years earlier for his big 0 birthday I'd asked a really lovely fellow artist to paint an oil painting, of my brother helming his sailboat to victory in a race. My brother had not been sure he could top that, but he did!

My brother likes games that double as ornaments, and so for one Christmas I made a little embroidery of playing cards, set it in the top of a hand made wooden cards box, and added a couple of rather nice card sets. Another year I won him a beautifully hand-carved soapstone chess set in a little church raffle, by buying more than 50% of the tickets. I then wrapped each piece individually.... because I am the little blister! I remember my mother rescued him from all the unwrapping...

Obviously, some years it's just not on the cards. Time's too short or an idea just doesn't come, however hard we try, and then expressions of politely simulated pleasure may be the result. It can take months of looking around for ideas and preparation, but by really listening and thinking from the other person's point of view, it is sometimes possible to think of that special gift that'll be treasured for decades, and that's just magical!

One of my lovely customers picked up a commission today, which she asked me to paint as a Christmas present. She'd thought of it more than a couple of months in advance, and I think that painting may also turn out to be a gotcha gift! Well, I'm hoping!

I'll not say more as I'm keeping that piece secret till after Christmas Day, so the art I'm using today is of a pumpkin farm that my husband and I visited last year. Now, that was a lovely day too!

The art (without the text) is available printed on all kinds of lovely things at: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/129079869

Thanks!

Sam aka LymphomaLass xx

[hylianane]

Trying to remember how to draw the Deltagang (I never knew in the first place)

[thepeacefulgarden]

[an-internet-introvert]

Phil and Orange 🧡🧡

(Feat. Dan)

[ionomycin]

Hi Io - I love your illustrations and the emotion they evoke. I also really enjoy your color choices. Do you do illustration work professionally?

I wondered if you could offer a piece of advice to someone just starting out on doing commissions. I noticed that your link for commissions goes to a different page. Is this done through Tumblr, or is it a separate domain? Would you mind explaining how you decided on pricing?

Thank you!

Hi, thank you :)

Yes, I'm a full time freelance illustrator for a few years now. My commission page here is quite outdated, completely forgot about it actually so thanks for the remainder to take a look at it...

If you just want to do commissions as a hobby/side-income for private people (no commercial projects), I would start pretty small and simple to get a feel for it. Drawing for someone else is a whole another thing and not everyone enjoys it. I personally always preferred to have very small batches and finish them all before taking new ones to avoid stress on either side. For pricing, you'll likely want to start relatively low and keep it chill and casual in the beginning, but do increase your prices bit by bit as your experience grows. Looking at other artists' prices around similar skill level/style can be a good starting point! It's often a lot of trial and error in the beginning, to find what works for you. It's all about finding a good balance so you both get a good deal out of it!

I used a separate site to list my commission pricing and terms of service, but you can also list them in a post or whatever you prefer, as long as they're clearly available to potential commissioners. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to get all the info and to know where to contact you! Some artists prefer to have forms that people can fill if they want to commission you, whatever works. I prefer to keep it simple.

Best of luck with your commission journey :D

[violent-viscera]

the way the ppl whom we love can cut us the most.

after all the love and protection vi sought to provide powder with, a colossal mistake borne of grief and shock and she says, “you’re a jinx, do you hear me?”

after all the former years of idolizing vi then thinking she was dead for so many years, powder’s mental illness running rampant and further fuelled by being in the company of silco and his own insecurities. she thinks being jinx and going by jinx is reclaiming a former insult and turning it into her strength. but to vi, it’s the biggest mistake of her life, calling her baby sister something so hurtful. so i wonder how it feels to hear powder/jinx say, “but he didn’t make jinx. you did.”

and with everything that has been done to one another from each other, the words said to one another, well:

“are we still sisters?”

and isn’t that the most tragic part because there was never a moment where they didn’t love each other. they both said that the thought of the other sister is what kept them alive, kept them going through their darkest days—it was that LOVE that had been there and always there.

but now, they find themselves at the mercy of the other in the new season and all i can hope is that they still feel and can unearth that love.

i just cannot fathom that it’s completely died. maybe they can’t recognize one another after years of estrangement and after finding themselves on opposing sides.

vi doesn’t recognize the manic and chaotic terrorist jinx has become and jinx cannot recognize the sister who is chummy with enforcers and has priorities outside of herself (i am not condoning her perspective or mindset but it was adopted through years of being w silco).

even then, it was vi who said it herself:

“nothing is ever going to change that.”

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Nothing will be more hilarious to me than the party's - specially Ben's - outrage about Alex's sneaky reference to William Shakespeare slowly fading as they remember that half of the NPCs are actually historical figures. Like they are genuinally going "what's this assassin's creed? You put Shakespeare in the gift Augusta Leight gave to our honorary party member Oscar Wilde while waiting for Ada Lovelace and Nikola Tesla to see if we can talk to the brain of Charles Babbage about the mission Albert Einstein teleported us to? Shakespeare a whole historical person? "

[olasketches]

me and like two other sukuna stans making posts about how miserable he is

[wildfey]

I think my ideal fandom experience is just to log back in every six months, post about the most niche ships I can imagine and then leave again.

With that being said: The world's most hopeless cop falls for two people who cannot keep a job or avoid being murder suspects. I think they would have fun together. I think their relationship would be utterly incomprehensible to anyone else. I think Maggey and Larry literally cannot go anywhere together without finding a body. Good times.

[canisalbus]

I think it's fun that I stumbled into your blog when I was dozing on and off on the bus, I really believed your art was just so pretty that it was a dream and liked a post while I was half awake dsgfakh I could find one of your posts again and I'm happy! Your art is really neat and has something to it I really like, the shapes, the use of colors expressions, the lines gives me happy chemicals, I really like Machete! Your art makes me want to draw if I was abled, keep up the good work I believe you're doing great <3

I've had that happen to me, it's such a terrible feeling when you briefly see art that really catches your attention but then you fall asleep/the page refreshes/you forget to follow them and you can't find them afterwards ;v;

[moomoomooing]

jy sillies keep me sane

[vicontheinternet]

Ok but imagine this au joy is the chosen and nina is her osirian

[jrmblob]

early b0ston j

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

What's your opinion on malewife/house husband Adrien posts? I asked this to another blog, and like I said to them, I find them a guilty pleasure: The concept is cute, but I know that would be the last thing Adrien would ever wanna be after all his dad put him through.

I don't think that it would be the last thing that Adrien would ever want. I actually think it suits his character in a lot of ways, you just have to handle the topic with care.

First let's talk about why it suits him.

Miraculous has totally failed to give Adrien any sort of career-based passion and - if we ignore the senti complication - I honestly love that for him! I want more characters with no major life ambitions to balance out the Marinettes of the world!

I think that society places way too much pressure and value on finding the perfect career that fulfills us in every way while also allowing us to put food on the table. Most people will never find that and that's okay. It doesn't mean that you've failed or that you're lesser. For most people, the goal is to find a career that pays the bills and that you enjoy enough that you don't hate doing it 40hrs/week. Along similar lines, for most people, your passion will be something that doesn't make money. It will be something like a hobby or spending time with those you love or analyzing badly written French TV shows.

This brings us back to Adrien.

Adrien seems to get a great deal of joy from being around his loved ones and making them happy, so I can absolutely picture him finding a lot of joy in running a home. This is extra true because Marinette is pretty clearly career driven and she's planning to go into a creative field, so she'll probably have a pretty crazy schedule and struggle to stay on top of it all. Having a loving husband to take things like cooking and cleaning off of her plate would be a blessing and a gift that she'd greatly appreciate, but that would feel unbalanced if Adrien was working, too. (Yes, they could hire staff, but that risks the secret identity thing, so I don't see them doing that.)

If they both have power careers, then they'd barely see each other and I hate that for them. I think that it would make Adrien incredibly sad and depressed. Plus, while Marinette thrives off of competition and staying busy, only needing occasional breaks before diving right back in, Adrien seems to hate busy schedules and heavy work loads.

Given all of that, I think that there's a lot to be said for Adrien stepping away from the working world. Especially since he's been in it for years and being a child celebrity is no joke! I think it would be nice for him to escape from strict schedules and expectations. Dinner fails? Order takeout!

While we're on the topic of food, I really like the idea of Adrien falling in love with cooking. Dude needs a creative outlet and that's honestly a great one (I hate it when people write characters as unable to figure out cooking like it's some cute quirk. While an initial struggle is believable, it's not a mystical art that takes years of practice. Between YouTube, the wider Internet, and maybe some classes if he wants to get fancy, I think that he'll be fine.) There's so much variety with what you can do in the kitchen and the end result gets to be shared and appreciated by those you love. It just seems like a perfect fit for him, but I would never make him a professional chef because the hours are insane and the pressure to be perfect is high. I only see him loving it as a hobby where he can go at his own pace, take days off, and make lazy meals when he's not feeling like being a show off.

The big concerns that come with making him a homemaker are a lack of financial independence and a lack of socialization. I don't see the first thing as an issue for Adrien since he comes from a wealthy family, so that one doesn't phase me.

The isolation could very easily be an issue, but it could just as easily be a problem if he started working, too. It's not as if a job is a sure way to have friends or even just consistent positive social interactions, which is another reason why I don't really see a need to give him a traditional job. You can get a vibrant social life in lots of other ways.

Here are the two big things that I keep in mind when writing an Adrien-as-a-homemaker or similar setup as it is where I tend to have Adrien land for all of the above reasons:

Adrien needs to be active in some organization or project. Volunteer work is a good fit as is being an active stay-at-home parent or some combination of the two. Voice acting is also on my radar, but my default is to have him act as the head of team miraculous' out-of-battle activities. Scheduling meet and greets. Going to see sick kids. Jetting around the world for humanitarian aid missions. Basically let Chat Noir be his "career" which gives him a lot of much needed flexibility for making his own schedule, especially if he's a stay-at-home parent to any eventual kids. I also like the poetic nature of Adrien finally being proud to be the face of a "brand" via his hero side while his civilian side becomes just some guy that people kind of remember from old ads.

Consider having a non-traditional living arrangement. I am a big fan of hero teams living together, so my default is to take the Agreste mansion and remodel it into a secret HQ for the team. Adrien and Marinette would have their own apartment/wing/whatever, but they'd still be surrounded by their found family on a near-daily basis, so that social isolation is the last thing on Adrien's mind. There's almost always someone to hang out with! You could also just have Alya and Nino or other friends live in the same apartment building so that they're over a lot/Adrien has a place to hang when Marinette is working late because you know that she'd do that.

Basically, Adrien's rich, so he doesn't need to make money and he doesn't seem to have any interest in a normal job, so I really like letting him having a unique life where he doesn't have a traditional job. He is a superhero, after all. Unique career paths are pretty par for the course. You just have to be careful to make sure that all of this feels like his fully informed and carefully considered choice and not like you forced it on him to make Marinette's life perfect (I only brought her up earlier because this is a story and it makes sense to design characters around each other). I usually do this by sending Adrien to therapy in his late teens or by giving him some other parth of self discovery.

Do note that all of the above is inspired by my read of Adrien which may be totally different from your read of him and that's fine! I just can't picture him as someone who thrives in a traditional career path based on knowing people who strike me as similar to him and from whom I draw my understanding of how to write that part of Adrien's character. I think that he'd be perfectly able to have a traditional career path, but I also think that he'd be pretty miserable for a lot of reasons.

I'll also note that I'm not sure what posts spawned this ask, so there may be elements of those that I'd have criticisms of. This post was about the general concept of Adrien being a homemaker. I tend to avoid the broader fandom for my own sanity and the use of the term "malewife" has me concerned that I'm implying support of something I wouldn't actually support because that's a new one for me and it sounds incredibly sexist.

I'm not a fan of implying that the default definition of "wife" is "submissive homemaker" so a man taking on a homemaking role is clearly submissive and acting like a woman does while his aggressive, domineering wife is acting like a man, which is the definition of this word that I'm finding online and yikes! Wife and husband are legal/social status in my book. They are not clearly defined jobs/roles/personality types, so I'm not a fan of using gendered terms to refer to stuff like this especially since I do actively try to use gender neutral words in my own writing whenever I can, though I'm certainly far from perfect on that front.

I also don't see homemaking as a submissive act. It certainly can be, but that's not how I picture Adrien at all! I picture him as relaxed and plesent, but 100% in charge of the home and all choices about how it's run. I also see him being in charge of their finances like homemakers often were in the "old days" since they were the ones in charge of things like scheduling cleaners, buying food, and other things that needed strong budgeting skills while the person who worked wasn't actually spending money or managing the home since they were at work. I like to think that Nathalie would prep Adrien to be a wealthy man and so he'd have strong skills in finance management.

[life-in-toontown]

I’ve always thought Ren looked cutest when his ears were bigger and longer

[cringelordofchaos]

please eradicate my existence