#first time im posting a traditional sketch :o

[kyo-hiki]

some random stuff :))

[pansyfemme]

hi :) i adore your art, & i was just wondering how u developed ur style?

hiiiii ^_^ yeah this is. kinda a complex question! i’m gonna like. start with how i began drawing and then show some of my influences and then give a visual timeline if i can. long post with lots of images ahead

so i grew up in an artistic household, i’ve been making art of some kind my whole life. but very specifically, i chose to get into drawing around fifth grade using those how to draw anime books lol. When i started.. it was hard to get me to stop. Drawing became this priority in my life, i would practice for upwards of six hours a day, i became really hooked on it. I wasn’t super good at first, but i tried my best! around seventh grade, i hit some pretty major health struggles, left public school for good and was hospilized for long periods of time before eventually returning to alternative school in eighth grade, and during that time, i stopped making art as frequently, until i started again and it became a stronger interest than ever before, and became my number one treatment. I’ve been drawing all day everyday since then. It’s my favorite thing ever! Nothing in the world makes me feel as good as making art does.

I was really into the idea of gaining a ‘style’ when i started making art, but i fell out of that a while ago. Honestly, it just became about picking out what i like about other artists and applying it to my work when i can.

My first ‘crush’ on an artist was jill thompson’s scary godmother. I wanted to draw like her soooooo fucking bad it hurt. I spent a lot of time tracing her work, as well as archie comics! It’s hard to understate how much the archie comics style contributed to my work. And then i developed a series of other art obsessions. I was a really huge lumberjanes and nimona fan- ND stevenson basically was my gateway into comics- i got super into Skottie Young (specifically his oz character designs which i still love), Jillan Tamaki, Tillie Walden, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Hope Larson and Eventually Bryan Lee O malley- which led to the second era of my comics and art interests, where I began reading Snotgirl, saw leslie hung’s work, and it all went downhill from there.

i just listed a lot of names- but my current day biggest inspos art wise are def Leo Fox, Sophia Foster-Dimino (who is. my fave artist/cartoonist even maybe), Remy Boydell, Caroline Cash, Nick Drnaso, Jeremy Sorese and Elias Ericson. You can kinda see where im coming from looking at some of their work.

sorry to bombard you with names! but essentially. My work is a combo of a lot of artists and comics that inspired me a lot growing up. I’m really influenced by the idea of creative a narrative in all of my paintings, and making enviroments and spaces that feel lived in, and characters who have chemisty with eachother. My style is really based on how i can simply the body and enviroment into simple shapes without losing their flow and movement.

i don't have a lot of my early early stuff on hand, but i jumped around styles a lot.. esp with how i drew eyes. The work i'm showing is from the the era that i settled on simple eyes with blacked out pupils/irises, but there was a long era where i did sparkly anime eyes lol.

here’s a handful of old stuff. i maybe was 15 making these? when i was really new to digital art and didn’t do backgrounds.i didn't really know how to use digital at all, so just. made shit up. glad i did honestly. its a lot more interesting visually than it could have been.

i started playing around more with digital around age 16, and doing more interesting stuff with texture and color

when i was 17, i got.. super into digital collage and replicating traditional art digitially

and. i actually didn’t end up doing traditional (for personal work at least) again until senior year of highschool. Ingot into my current watercolor/gouache style around the time i started going to college. before that, traditional was more for sketches for me. but doing paintings traditionally again totally reshaped my brain!

a few of my early reemergance into traditional art lol

and then i started. college and then it’s where it is now! “Style” is just a fancy word for working genuinly with what makes you interested about art, leaning into the colors and textures that you enjoy as an artist and developing something that feels genuine to you. I’ve always been really interested in color and texture and pattern, so it became what i’m known for as a painter lol ^_^ some ppl have described aspects of my style as "complex backgrounds" "neons" "interesting figures" but none of those are really.. true in all of my work? there are def repeating themes, but a strong body of work imo is one that is united but diverse.

[petorahs]

Hi! Hope you're doing well. I really like the way your art looks, and wanted to ask if you have any advice on how to stop the endless ctrl+Zing that happens when you're doing lineart? (Was gonna post a gif showing it but it won't let me send links in asks) -- Have a good one o/

hey! i'm very glad to hear you like my art and even more that you'd ask for my advice! :D

me and lineart go waaay back... that is to say i liked doing it more than any other thing in the art process. i hate coloring and still do. lineart my beloved... but also, these days as my art evolved i stopped doing actual ""Clean"" lineart anymore. what you see in my more recent works are essentially the first and only "line draft" or sketch layer so to speak? i just spend a lot of time refining it. and this is how i do that:

duplicate + merge layers to achieve your desired lineweight and erase as needed!

also important to note is as much as i talk about drawing/lining/sketching on a single layer... if the drawing isnt working i will just do it the "traditional" way and make a whole new layer and start from there :0 if that is your preferred way then set the sketch to 10-15% opacity max... makes it so the finished lineart wont look "worse than the sketch"...!!

what else... hm i feel like my lineart game changed when i found a brush i liked. i currently use derwent, a default procreate brush under 'pencils' i think? to get that sketchy yet yummy thin at the end look. but i also change my brushes every time i feel like im in a 'slump'. experimentation is key! get curious and curiouser on what u can achieve with different mediums.

additionally, if you're looking for advice on achieving "line confidence" (like lack of ctrl+z-ing your problems away) then thats a whole other thing. what i find to have best helped me is essentially just doing what this video tells u to and profitting!! i realized ive been doing it for years as a kid just emulating my fav fanarts and yeah. ofc there's more i can say but this is getting long enough, feel free to shoot another ask and i can expand!

as always with art though, feel free to also break these rules as you see fit! :D have fun

[druid-teeth]

Your last comic update (without colors) made me wonder; Do you do the lineart digitally and the color traditionally? :o (Before that I thought it was all traditional, except for the speech bubbles) If not, whats your process? Either way, the result is super pretty and cool and thats why I was wondering :3 Been following your comic for years now (way before the redos) and Im always amazed with each new pages <3 !

Thanks for your support, I really appreciate it!

My process for making comics has not been purely traditional for a long time; I started sketching pages digitally years ago!

I print out my sketches, and use a lightbox to ink them onto a separate piece of paper that's good for coloring. This was my process for the first six chapters! Then I scan it in, add speech bubbles, color correct and make edits if I need to, and it's done! I try not to do too much editing outside of color correction, but I think I've gotten pretty good at making the transitions between traditional and digital smooth!

(Original on the left, post editing on the right)

For the chapter 4 redos were inked digitally as a time saver as I was editing parts of chapter 5 alongside them and it was just easier to do both digitally instead of hopping back and forth between my computer and easel, haha. Here's an example of the kind of edits I was doing;

(Original on the left, post editing on the right)

The chapter I'm working on currently is traditional lineart + digital coloring! Here's an example of that too;

I'm attempting to keep it similar/in spirit with how my marker art looks, but I am also enjoying making things that I just couldn't on plain ole paper :D

[straighttohellbuddy]

📓 !!

Okay im so excited please know I think about How The Light Gets In's world every day still, and so anyways here is a side story I want to write but there's a lot of set up regarding the reader and eef becoming friends again. For context, they were incredibly close around 2014-2017, but people were getting creepy and invasive and demanding about their friendship (think 2012 toxic side of the Phandom, if that makes sense), and a lot of the reader's relationships were strained at that time because while they had been successful before, they were absolutely blowing up after their first album released and they became far more mainstream. They felt like they were bothering the people they had become closest to, both because they're worried that they're a bother, and because gossip rags and paps would harrass their friends looking for a scoop, and so they ended up just completely cutting off contact without warning one day right before they went on their first tour. the start of HTLGI is about 3 years since they'd been in proper contact with any of the creators they were close to at that time.

DON'T LOOK AT ME on their 2017 ep Hyperfocus was a more general song in response to everything that had been happening in their life around that time, with a focus on how they stop associating with anyone for a while, without outright addressing it, but on their latest album n o s t a l g i a, read at 5am ft. Troye was specifically written at the start of quarantine, when the reader was getting back into YouTube, about their feelings regarding how their friendship with ethan ended, as they spent a lot of this time looking back of their YouTube career, and he was the person they were closest to for a very long time, before they iced everyone out.

OKAY SO THERES MORE OF THE BACKGROUND OF THE WHOLE FIC AND THE READER BUT

Werewolf Ethan & Mark. I'm sorry I don't make the rules. They have golden retriever energy you cannot change my mind. But also because this is the HTLGI you know that supernatural characteristics are able to be activated rather than just triggered by the full moon. What I'm trying to say is since this is set in the year of Unus Annus, they film a video together that's like, you know that show where a person has to try and outwit a professional tracker? Except its the reader being tracked by two werewolves at night in a national park. Reader is wearing some sort of night vision camera on themselves so whenever it cuts to them the audience can't actually see how they're using their powers, if that makes sense.

Also the reader agreed to this knowing it would probably be when they ended up telling Mark and Ethan about them being a demon.

Video is titled Hunting Down An Old Friend

A few Moments that the boys edit out:

The reader using their stupidly sharp prehensile tail to swing from tree branches, though they leave in shots where the reader's tail can't be seen.

Knowing that with the werewolves having advanced hearing, the reader would give themselves away by talking to the camera, they take a few minutes having flown up to a high tree branch, to pull out a notebook and do a little sketch of how Mark and Ethan appear in their Demon True Sight, and holding it up to their camera.

Werewolves being one of the animals who can kind of sense demons without being able to identify them, essentially like dogs can sense natural disasters and are often good judges of character, this can be heightened on command for werewolves. There's about 15 minutes of footage cut out of the boys discussing or mentioning how this place has awful vibes and that they should have done this during the day. It gets worse as they get closer to the reader, who didn't realise that the boys hadn't thought to ever use that particular power around them before.

("I say this with so much love and appreciation for you, dude," Ethan yells, looking up at you from the base of the tree they'd finally found you in, "but I- this is making me anxious I feel like something terrible's gonna happen, and we should probably get out of here and film the rest of the video back at Mark's." And behind him, Mark's nodding, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, eyes scanning the trees for whatever was most likely the cause of this terrible impending doom.

Oh. It's you. And they don't know its you.

Now or never, you suppose.

"Can you cut the cameras for a second? You're going to be fine I promise," you called back, and though they obligingly did, they both seemed antsy. You cleared your throat awkwardly, "that... that terrible feeling, that's not the park or anything in it- well I mean, it is, but it's just- it's me."

and later

"Dude your wings smell like rotten eggs."

"To YOU Ethan! And no they don't!"

"If it makes you feel better they smell like burning and rotten eggs."

"It does not."

(for reference, when enhancing their sense of smell werewolves can kind of distinguish various supernatural creatures, or parts of supernatural creatures. Some creatures have an inherent scent, but some, like angels and demons, only have distinct scents when they've activated certain attributesor abilities; demon wings smell like fire and brimstone, which unfortunately means burning and rotten eggs. I like to think angels wings are like the love potion in Harry Potter that smells like the things you love the most. Mark and Ethan usually don't enhance it around each other because they smell like wet dog to the other)

This gets about 2k notes on tumblr. The reader likes it:

Ethan finally finding Y/N at the end of Hunting Down An Old Friend (2020) Colourised.

Other things to note regarding all this:

It takes a while to rebuild their friendship to the point where they're comfortable enough to be on camera together (eef and reader specifically).

However, the Unus Annus video is the first thing they properly do together, and the reader, in an effort to connect more and make up for the past, will join in multiplayer gaming streams if asked.

Impromptu duet in proximity Among Us of Young Volcanoes by Fall Out Boy, which has their respective chats and fandoms losing their minds, except it stops abruptly after the first chorus as they both remember the opening lines of the second verse (make it easy, say I never mattered -- those lyrics hit a little too close to home)

But also the reader convinces him to join him for a proper cover in like, February of 2021, and it's something deeply sappy (I'm thinking Bon Iver by mxmtoon because I think its sweet and fits them well)

Also Ethan being reminded that the reader is kind of a much bigger deal than when they'd been friends before.

designed to hurt (touch me) from their ep Working On It is nominated for a Grammy for Track of the Year, and n o s t a l g i a wins Best Pop Album (because it's my fic and I said so)

FIRST OF ALL designed to hurt (touch me) is a beautifully produced song about Corpse (which people do not know) and the title itself is literally making fun of something he said IMAGINE his reaction to it being Grammy Nominated 😂😂😂 God he'd be proud but lowkey fuming, meanwhile the moment the nominations are announced the reader tweets:

me: here is an album where I processed my entire world view including heartfelt explorations of the trauma of existing and oversharing in the public eye from a young age without the traditional barrier between audience and entertainer

the grammys: that's cute BUT you know the song you wrote to bully your boyfriend and also be horny on main for him before you guys were even dating? THAT deserves its own recognition.

meanwhile Ethan's like..... this is the same person who I filmed a video with playing cards against humanity, and you laughed so hard you almost threw up. I am very proud but deeply confused.

The Hot Meme of Late April 2021 is "2 time Grammy Award Winning Artist Y/N" with a gif, still, or quote from the reader where they're just being an absolute chaos gremlin.

Of course we have "If I bleached my asshole for charity I'd do it tastefully."

2 Time Grammy Award Winning Artist Y/N speaking to their actual boyfriend in the year of our lord 2020: You are being executed for Clown Crimes.

ethan posts a short video to twitter simply of his screen where he's renaming a folder from "Never Before Seen Images of Grammy Award Winning Artist Y/N" simply changing it to 2 time Artist. The reader responds specifically to his tweet with a video of themselves asking Google how to hard reset someone else's computer.

So many screenshots from old videos surface that week.

I miss this world. Sorry this is rambly!!

[yourlocallosernamedgreenookie]

Akkinda!!  Adore You!!

@sushi-at-midnight aAAAAAAA PART 1/3?? Happy (now very late) Birthday!!

[jack-o-cel]

Never did an intro post thing sooooooooooo....

Hi! You can call me Jack or Cel, both are good. I dont have a preference. I use they/he pronouns. Im Panromantic Asexual.

A few things about me:

Im a writer

I mostly rp, but may occasionally do a short story

I do a lot of character bios and lore drops

Character creation and development is my favorite thing to do

Im pretty open with genres, but my favorites are fantasy, horror, and sci-fi

Im also an artist

I mostly do sketches of my characters, my friends characters, and characters i like from fandoms

I do both traditional and digital, but i have a preference for traditional

I play lots of video games too!

I would list some, but my mind just went blank

I play mostly single player games

I'll play most anything, but i prefer rpg, open world, horror, fantasy, sci fi, VN, mobile, and puzzle games

If it's multiplayer i prefer to play with people i know

And usually fun silly games, or puzzle games

But im open to play fps games as well

I also like asymmetrical survival horror games, like Identity V or DBD

Asks???? Requests???? Commissions?????

I accept asks and submissions! Send me anything, but keep it appropriate pls.

At this time i dont accept any drawing requests, but i do accept writing requests!

I'll do headcanons, drabbles, flash fiction, short short stories, so nothing too long.

You can also ask questions about my OCs! I'll post links to their info's below this section.

I do not do commissions, im just not ready for that responsibility.

Here are my children!

I'll be adding on to this as i accumulate more!

Not everyone may have a link to their info post, as it may not be made yet, so check back occasionally~

Deity Me (which will be my persona for here)

Ravager (UT OC)

Faolan (an OC for a Cryptid rp i started with my closest friends)

Ciara (Cryptid OC)

Aoife (Cryptid OC)

Ardscéin (Cryptid OC) side note: the info in the link may be outdated, as a lot has changed since i did then

Cunignos (Cryptid OC)

Vurugu (Cryptid OC)

13 (Little Nightmares OC)

Jiro (my very own precious OC i made for a series of short stories i started years ago. May add more from those stories)

I can't remember their names for the life of me, but i have these two Castlevania OCs that i really like

Jack (not me, an old UT OC)

Cel (used to be me, but I've made them their own separate person, also an UT OC)

I also have some aus!

Some of these i haven't touched in months, hyperfixation and all that, but i may come back to them someday!

Withered Shadows

This is my FNAF AU

It takes place after there's a huge nuclear war, 100 years after the fact

It's essentially a post apocalypse AU

I have some of the story planned

Lots of the characters are planned out tho!

Links on updates and stuff will be here when it's available.

Teaser post here

Circusfell

My Undertale au inspired by Underfell!

It's basically UF but circus vibes

But also a somewhat changed story

I literally have two characters designed

Asgore, and Papyrus

Papyrus here here here

Skele-o-ffee

My Undertale coffeeshop AU

I actually went pretty far into this

I have all characters planned and with their own work schedules

The story well wasn't really planned

I just enjoyed the coffee shop vibes

I have a whole menu too!

Intro here

SOF sans here

Soulshatter

A smaller UT AU

Where Papyrus has a soulmate that sacrifices themself when geno Chara/Frisk/You tries to kill Papyrus

It's a three part story

The first part is done, the second is a wip

Part one here

Red Petals

I have no idea if this has been done before, but it's essentially my take on a reverse flowerfell au

It's just one short story

It's not done, but here is my sneak peek

Masterlists

So here is where you'll find masterlists to some of my posts. Atm i dont have any, but it will list a link to a masterpost for each of my au's, and stories, for example there will be a masterpost with link for everything related to the Cryptid RP, and there will be a masterpost for my Withered Shadows AU

Yo, join my discord!

If you want...

Some organization things

Im usually consistent with tags...

If you want to see my writing, search for "da writing"

For my art, search "da art"

Anyways!

That's all for now! See ya! 

[picturebookmakers]

ATAK

In this post, ATAK talks about his fascinating creation process and he shares illustrations and development work from some of his wonderful books – including sketchbook pages for his forthcoming picturebook ‘Piraten im Garten’, which is due to be published in 2020.

Visit ATAK’s website

ATAK: My process is like hip-hop. Mixing and sampling.

I have a big box where I put material that I’ve found on the street or in magazines. Then in the summer, when I’m sitting in the summer house, I stick everything into sketchbooks.

These are important books for me. I often use them when I’m looking for an idea. I like to make connections between this and that.

Sometimes I steal things. Here’s an example of where I used a painting by Caspar David Friedrich in one of my images. This is a very important painting for the German culture; it’s romantic. It’s the first painting that’s like a window. You see with him and you’re led into the picture.

‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818.

When I take something to use in my own work, it’s more about the idea of composition and atmosphere. It’s not just a reference that people will know.

This is the sketchbook for my picturebook ‘Topsy Turvy World’. The publisher asked me for a book for children, and as I was tired of working with long texts, I thought this one should be a wordless book, where the images tell the whole story.

We have a German tradition from the 18th century of ‘bilderbogen’. This is like the origin of comics. They’re one-page stories. I was looking at some of these and I found some interesting ideas for ‘Topsy Turvy World’.

Here are some pages from the sketchbook.

Not everything made it into the final book; some of it was too heavy for my publisher, so he kicked it out. The smoking people had to go, otherwise we couldn’t have sold the rights in America.

Then there was a problem... My sketches had a lot of life and were fully-worked, so to transform them into the final artwork was very hard. After the rough version, I had this feeling that I was already finished with the book. Making the final ‘clean’ artwork felt like a kind of discipline.

My original paintings are always much bigger than they appear in the books. I never work to the correct size or format.

I often sell my paintings, but here is one I’ll never sell. It was done for the first children’s book I made, called ‘Comment la mort est revenue à la vie’ (How death came back to life), written by Muriel Bloch and published by Thierry Magnier.

It’s an important painting for me. I came from the comic world – black and white graphics – where I would draw out the whole scenes with all the details. In the middle of working on this painting, I had to go out to buy some food, and then I came back and thought, “Oh, it’s enough.” There’s a big difference when you work with colour. It’s like a sound, like a kind of music. This painting was very important for me in understanding colour.

Before I start working on an image, I often have a rough idea of what’s going to happen in the scene, but I leave a lot of space for other things to come in... And when I’ve started to work, I might see something in my studio or in a book, and it goes into the image.

I like this open process. And I like to be surprised. It’s very important for me that I don’t know in the beginning exactly what’s going to happen.

My way of painting is very old school. Traditional. Sometimes I paint over the top of something and you can see the trace of it behind. You can’t really fake things like this on the computer. For me, my original artwork is more important than the finished book. I once had an interesting discussion about this with Blexbolex. It’s completely the opposite for him: he sees his books as being the original artwork.

After ‘Topsy Turvy World’, I made a book called ‘The Garden’.

The original German edition was almost like a book for bourgeoise women... But for the French edition, they reimagined it for kids. It’s much bigger; you can really go inside. And the French publisher asked me to make some flaps to open up on the pages, which were not there in the original edition.

The sketches for ‘The Garden’ are almost nothing. It was very important that I didn’t repeat the process of ‘Topsy Turvy World’, where the sketches were very close to the finished artwork. I couldn’t work like this again. So the sketches here are very loose, but I knew exactly what was supposed to be in the pictures.

Working like this, you must have a very strong relationship with the publisher – one of absolute trust. I also have big problems with deadlines; I’m always late. With this book, my publisher Antje Kunstmann was so good. She phoned me every morning: “Hallo, here is Antje!” It was so important to know she was there, almost like a mother. It was a similar story with Wolf Erlbruch and his book ‘Duck, Death and the Tulip’. He was working for four years on this book. In the end, Antje came to his home and was waiting on his sofa for two days to take the last drawing!

The latest children’s book I made is called ‘Martha’.

I started working on it after reading an article in National Geographic about the passenger pigeon. I was fascinated. Because it’s a real story, it was not easy for me to make this book. It’s easier when I’m given a text because I have more distance.

Again, I worked very loosely in my sketchbook. These sketches are just indications – so I know something is here or somebody is there. It does help me that things are more open.

I don’t have sketchbooks where I draw from reality. I’m not good at this. You’ll never find me sitting in a crowd, making sketches. I watch and I observe instead. And I have books where I write ideas or note down interesting forms and shapes that I see.

Here are some pictures from ‘Martha’.

And here’s an idea for the dust jacket, where the kids could cut and draw on the paper, and make origami out of it to give a kind of rebirth. Martha is gone, but maybe she’s not gone if the kids could bring her back. The publisher didn’t go for this idea.

I went to art school but never finished. Just after the Berlin Wall came down, I was studying visual communication. There wasn’t a good atmosphere at my art school. I wanted to find like-minded people and work as a team, but it felt like most of the students were only interested in being artists, but not in working together. Then my daughter was born, and I never finished art school.

I’m now teaching art as a professor. The other teachers have diplomas, and I feel like I’ve come from the working class. I do like intellectual work, but when I work with students, I want to see something. I can only talk about what I see. I need it very visual. It has to catch me.

From when I was nine years old, I wanted to be an illustrator. In east Germany, illustration was a part of publishing. All the novels had illustration. It’s still unique now to see this, but in east Germany it was normal... So my plan was always to be an illustrator. This way I could wake up when I wanted, have no boss, listen to my music all day, and make my own work.

Speaking of music... The type of music I listen to when I work depends on the specifics of the book. For example, I made a book for Nobrow called ‘Ada’ (from a word portrait by Gertrude Stein). The idea for the artwork was to make handmade pixels, so I listened to a lot of electronic music; ping–ping–ping! It’s about energies. And for me, the music is also very important because I travel a lot and it can be hard to come back to your work – but when I listen to the music, immediately I’m back in the project, in the zone. It’s all connected – the music with the book.

Here’s my playlist for ‘Martha’.

Distortions – Clinic Go – Sparklehorse & The Flaming Lips VCR – The XX Song For A Warrior – Swans Avril 14th – Aphex Twin Quiet Music – Nico Muhly First Song For B – Devendra Banhart Last Song For B – Devendra Banhart How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? – Al Green Ash Black Veil – Apparat I Know They Say – Spectrum Opus 55 – Dustin O’Halloran Lost Fur – Karen O & The Kids Unfinished Business – The Go-Betweens Sometimes – My Bloody Valentine Lies – Sin Fang Bous Debussy: Suite Bergamasque, L 75 - Clair De Lune – Alexis Weissenberg Nimrod (Adagio) – David Hirschfelder Atmosphere – Joy Division Still Life – Elliot Goldenthal The Lake – Antony & The Jonhsons Flying Birds – RZA

I used to make hardcore comics with friends. This was our first, which we made before the wall came down. My work has changed completely. I can’t understand this now; it’s like another man made it! And they are not funny. It’s a very small humour; you really have to look for it.

Then, after my daughter was born, I did my own comic series called ‘Wondertüte’. In the comic scene, everybody told me that this wasn’t a comic. But for me, it was totally a comic. I liked the comic medium, but I didn’t see why there had to be only one way. From all my old comics, this is the one I like the most.

The idea comes from the ‘learn English’ books we had in school. It’s a bit like a poem, but with a more open structure. I think my older work was very closed, and this comic is where it really started to open up. I made it for me, not for the mainstream. I got no money for it. But you could find it in kiosks. Somebody told me he saw it in a kiosk in a very small village. He said it was very important to see this comic displayed in-between all the nice, fancy stuff... My audience is not many people, but they are passionate.

I don’t really consider myself as a children’s book illustrator; it’s not like this. But it gives me a lot more freedom. Some of my friends find themselves working on one comic for years! I respect this, but for me that’s like a jail. With comics, you have to take such care with narration. You go from one panel to the next panel to the next... The comic medium is a question of time. In a children’s book, the reader looks at one page for perhaps two minutes or ten minutes. They go deep inside. It’s a completely different work. Also in a children’s book you have a stage; it’s really like theatre.

I also think it’s very important in children’s books that you read the book again and again. You read a comic maybe once and then you kick it out or you give it to somebody. But a children’s book is like a ritual between parents and kids.

This is a cover version of the German classic book ‘Der Struwwelpeter’.

The stories here are new and full of humour. I made this book with Fil (Philip Tägert). It was after ‘Topsy Turvy World’, and for me it was so important that I could be free with the pictures. The publisher said make what you want. And it felt so good.

There are hundreds of different versions of ‘Der Struwwelpeter’. As with the ‘bilderbogen’, this was like the beginning of comic stories.

I once found an old version of the book from Denmark with an extra chapter. They didn’t trust all that dark stuff and they made up new stories. So in our cover version, we had this idea to make one chapter where literally nothing happens! We tried to make it as boring as possible, with the pictures saying exactly the same thing as the words. It was so hard to make a boring illustration! It’s really not easy!

My new book will be published next year. It’s for my little son; he’s three years old. You could see it as a connection between ‘Topsy Turvy World’ and ‘The Garden’. It’s called ‘Pirates in the Garden’. The German title is ‘Piraten im Garten’, so the title is like a poem; you hear it and you don’t forget it. I like this title very much.

This book will will be very simple, a bit like Sesame Street. One word on each page, so you make associations between the word and the image, and the parents can talk about it with their kids.

I’m working in the sketchbook at the moment, and I want to make the sketches really good. For ‘The Garden’ and ‘Martha’, I kept the sketches really open. But for this one, no. I know this is going to be my last book for children. And it’s for my son, so I’m going to make it special. In the future, perhaps I’ll make art books in small editions, more paintings, stuff like this, but not books in a commercial way again.

When I made ‘Martha’, I was thinking, “who needs this?” It wasn’t mainstream and I was so confused. It’s different from when someone asks me to make a cover or a painting; I’m never thinking about who needs this. But this was different. Sometimes you just don’t know if what you’re doing is important or not. So I was kind of depressed working on that book. This is the main reason it took me such a long time.

I sometimes feel very alone working as a children’s book illustrator in Germany. My style is not at all mainstream and I always just made my books for fun. It was never a big passion of mine to make children’s books for my whole life. But I always liked the roots.

So for my final children’s book, ‘Piraten im Garten’, I will make it for myself and for my son.

Illustrations © ATAK. Post edited by dPICTUS.

Buy this picturebook

Verrueckte Welt / Topsy Turvy World

ATAK

Jacoby & Stuart, Germany, 2009

A fantastical picturebook where mice chase cats, penguins live in the jungle, and cars fly! There’s few things that children enjoy more than catching grown-ups telling fibs. Discarding what’s obviously wrong is how they find out what’s right.

It’s a time-honoured children’s game; ATAK’s just given it a new twist, using lots of classic tall stories, and adding a few new ones as well.

German: Jacoby & Stuart

English: Flying Eye Books

French: Editions Thierry Magnier

Spanish: Fulgencio Pimentel

Italian: Orecchio Acerbo

Norwegian: Magikon

Slovak & Czech: Baobab

Portuguese: Planeta Tangerina (Portugal)

Portuguese: Companhia das Letras (Brazil)

Dutch: Boycott Books

Chinese (Simplified): TB Publishing Ltd (Everafter Books)

Buy this picturebook

Der Struwwelpeter

FIL & ATAK

Kein & Aber, Switzerland, 2009

Like a rock band covering their favourite songs, ATAK and FIL tackle the classic stories of Zappelphilipp, Hans-guck-in-die-Luft & Co.

And just as a Heavy Metal cover might sound harder than the original, you’ll also find tighter morals, harsher imagery, politically incorrect humour, and that ever-so-subtle touch of evil that has been pervading this book for more than 160 years.

German: Kein & Aber

French: Fremok Editions

Buy this picturebook

Der Garten / The Garden

ATAK

Verlag Antje Kunstmann, Germany, 2013

In silence, the garden wakes up. Thus opens this picturebook by ATAK, as an invitation to walk in a garden with a thousand surprises – a haven of peace, populated with animals and strange characters.

You’ll discover with wonder, the treasures and the tranquility of the garden, and you’ll observe the seasons and the passing of time.

German: Verlag Antje Kunstmann

French: Editions Thierry Magnier

Spanish: Niño Editor

Portuguese: Companhia das Letras (Brazil)

Korean: Bear & Cat

Buy this picturebook

Martha

ATAK

Aladin Verlag, Germany, 2016

Martha tells the tale of the extinction of North America’s native Passenger Pigeon – its shockingly rapid decline caused directly by humans – and is told from the perspective of ‘Martha’, the last of the species who died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The story begins with a feeling of greatness and awe, describing flocks of birds that were once so numerous that they would darken the skies for days, their beating wings as loud as motors.

German: Aladin Verlag

French: Les Fourmis Rouges

Korean: Sanha

[kleinpykon]

W O W, I am in total AWE. Your artwork is so fucking stunning. I love how in your pencil sketches you only shade the important parts of the face, as im someone who likes to do the E N T I R E thing, i really love your art style it's so mesmerising. How long have you been drawing? how old are you? What's your favourite medium?? I have so many questions !!

I’m finally coming around to answering my asks (which are never fail to brighten my day), I’m really sorry for the wait. Life is so hectic and I’m not good with words. I will respond to all of my asks in the near future, please be patient with me. Also my English isn’t the best.

Warning long post ahead.

Thank youfor your kind words! That’s really sweet of you to say. I’m happy that you likemy art! 

And it seems you are right that I tend to sketch only the prominent futures of a person/face.It’s just something I do without really thinking about it. I looked into yourblog and I really like your style. That’s the beautiful thing about art, thereare so many styles, so many ways to go about it and no style is better thananother.

To yourquestions:I am in my twenties. I’ve been practically born with a pencil in hand. Even asa little kid I was constantly doodling. My two best friends during elementary andhigh school were extremely talented, so I think that played a role in it too. Ithink there wasn’t a day I wasn’t drawing something. I’m self-taught and tendto stray from the “traditional” techniques and instead mix media and techniquesto get the result that I want. I’ve got my first watercolor set when I was 12or something, I bought myself a few anatomy books, copied a lot and justpracticed.

After Ifinished school I was like ok I now need to study for a job with good futureprospects (plus I never was really confident about my abilities, like there areso many talented artists out there why should I have a chance in this field),so I put all my art supply away and went to university, got my Bachelor ineconomics and business law and just felt empty. Of course, I still keptdoodling in my notes, because you can’t suppress your true self like that, butI did not work on real drawings or paintings during this time. After working abit in this field, I said to myself that’s not what you want to do for the restof your life (even so I really enjoyed the analytical part of it), so I wentand did my Master’s degree in information design and media management. And nowI’m able to combine my two degrees in my current job.

Aftergetting my degree this year I was like, ok I really want to get back intodrawing people. From here on onwards I want to do what makes me happy, what Ilove. And I made the decision to put myself out there. And I am still amazedthat there are people who seem to genuinely like my stuff. I think you canreally see looking at the pieces that I posted, that I did took a break fromdrawing (people) and that I had to re-accustom myself to doing it again. And I’mstill trying to really figuring out digital drawing. It’s fun, but I feel sinceI’m relatively new to it, that I don’t do with it all I could. (I bought myselfa Wacom bamboo tablet years and years ago, tried digital for a while, but neverreally got into it… until now).

My favoritemedium… that’s a hard one…. I would say either Watercolor or ink, as long as Ihave a brush in hand and can manipulate the color-intensity I’m at my best (Ifeel). 

Sorry for the way to long answer. If you’re still reading, congratulations you are a strong one. I hope you have a wonderful day 💜 

[4fn]

hey hey_01

hey hey every1!! this entry is going to be the first in a series of blog posts about the contemporary arts subject !! woo o ho o oo ! 🎉🎉

there’s not much else to say,, so let’s get straight to it lol

WHAT IS YOUR ACADEMIC GOAL FOR THE TERM?

for this term, i generally aim to improve - as a student, as a learner, as a classmate, a groupmate, etc. so which is why for this subject, i am particularly aiming to improve more as an artist.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL/S?

just like shakespear said, in order to improve, one should first accept learn that they always have room for improvement. just kidding. he didn’t actually said that, but it doesn’t make it any less truer. 

in my case, in order for me to improve, i have to learn to accept that im not always the best at something. i have to learn that i can’t do everything, especially in a short amount of time. i need to learn that sometimes, things are not always enough. hindi sapat ‘yung oks na ‘yan o ‘yung bahala na. if i want to improve, i should always take every task i come across as a challenge to learn and do more.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE SUBJECT WILL HELP YOU KEEP UP WITH YOUR GOAL/S?

as said before in the first question, i think that contemporary arts is a subject that i personally think would help me grow as an artist, especially in topics that i may need to learn more from. for example, i consider myself as more of a graphic artist, however, with this subject, i could hopefully explore more on the traditional medium.

WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FROM THE SUBJECT?

i honestly do not know what to expect from this subject, especially since this is the first art-related subject that i’ve had in years. from this, i’d probably expect the typical art lessons of famous painters and historical art figures, or maybe the usual portrait sketching here and there. but as a unique course subject in senior high, i hopefully would want to go past these usual lessons and go deeper into more topics that are both interesting and relevant to learn.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST USEFUL THING IN THIS SUBJECT?

as a passionate learner of the arts, i consider every aspect of art as relevant things to learn from. this is maybe because it’s important to me in my field of interest, but it’s also because i think it helps us learn more about rather than just the basics of painting and all those other projects. instead, learning about contemporary arts could further enlighten us about the nature of humans, its complexity, and what we could infer from these. this could be a chance for us to learn how to contextualize and open ourselves to things that are more than what meets the eye.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST CHALLENGING PART IN THIS SUBJECT?

for me, i’d definitely be most challenged by the more practical aspect of the subject in terms of, well, painting probably. to be honest, while i consider myself to be considerably okay with drawing, i know myself to be not so considerably okay with painting. or sculpting. or any other traditional means of art for that matter. i think it would be a challenge to actually try and make an attempt at one or two of these things.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO ADDRESS THIS CHALLENGE/ THESE CHALLENGES?

to address these challenges, i’d do the same approach of how i’d deal with achieving my goals, which is to be more open to improvement, which means to be more accepting to these challenges instead of getting intimidated by them and shy away.

yayyy so that’s done hehe,, i actually got carried away with some questions and so,,,,,, uhh this got really lonG tbh i liked answering the questions !! i got to explain a lot of things abt myself as well, which i found really cool

well, that was entry numero uno for Hey Hey™️ !!! second entry shall be published around the weekend lmao

[uniformbravo]

ok so. my day today

basically i spent a long fucking time today trying to Finally get off my ass and scan my traditional drawings so i can post them to my art blog, because like i have been drawing but these days the vast majority of my art is traditional sketches that im too lazy to scan so my art blog never gets updated and i rly want to work on that (i stg some of this shit is literally so old it’s from 2016 but whateverrrrr)

mostly the reason im finally doing this is that i don’t wanna wait too long to post my mp100 shit bc i’ve been drawing a Fucking Lot of that so i have enough to make a few posts now and i wanna get them uploaded while they’re still fresh, u know. the thing is since i was gonna scan those pages i decided it’d be a fun neat idea to scan the entire rest of the sketchbook bc Why Not

well i’ll tell u Why Not, there are several reasons Why Not:

it takes 12 yrs to scan everything because not only are there a shitload of pages but also the sketchbook is too big for the scanner so i have to do some pages 4 times to get all the edges and it’s horrible and bad, legitimately i was standing there for over an hour scanning this book, i put on an hr long video in the bg and got all the way through it and i Still wasn’t done

On Top Of That the scanner is kind of fucking garbage, as scanners are, so i have to take each image into photoshop to edit so they dont look entirely like trash (they still look kind of trashy anyway)

then for the multiple scan pages i have to patch them together so the images are complete / not blurry

then i have to collage all the drawings i want together because a lot of pages are either incomplete or only have like 1 thing i want to show on them so i spend like 100 years trying to arrange everything semi-nicely so that it’s, like, even slightly presentable, Maybe (idk i think the compilations tend to feel really cluttered tbh but Whatever it’s my STYLE), and also i have to take into account tumblr’s formatting so i usually have to make everything fit on a canvas either 540px or 1080px wide (this is even worse for pixel art bc it needs to be exactly 540px to look nice but i digress, we are talking about traditional art here)

so uh yeah that’s my process and Boy is it a Fucking Process

i think im complaining more rn because i have like a year’s worth of sketches im trying to deal with here, like. good god. i spent maybe two and a half hours working on this today (after the first hour of scanning things, just the scanning) and i did not get even halfway through the scans, and that’s just for the photo-editing stage, i haven’t even started putting together the compilations yet

god and like the Other Fucking Piece Of Shit Thing My Scanner Does is it tries to do this Smart Technology Bullshit and decide for itself where the paper ends instead of looking at, like, the actual paper’s boundaries, so even if i line everything up perfectly, a small part of the image fucking always gets cut off and if i were a stronger person i would engage in the full process of scanning the images, taking the flash drive back to my laptop, opening each image one by one to figure out which ones got cut off, going back to the scanner and re-scanning the pages and just repeating the process over and over until everything is in order but as it stands i do not have eighty-five thousand fucking years on my hands nor even a fraction of the mental capacity required to pull that off so we are just going 2 sit down & deal with some cropped images like mature adults

(tbh with all the cons of scanning the art, and there are a Lot of cons, i feel like it would probably make more sense to just take pictures using a camera instead, but on the other hand do not get me started on lighting, focus, unsteady hands, sifting through millions of copies of the same photo trying to determine which one came out the clearest, retaking photos that didn’t work out, back aching from being hunched over the paper for so long trying to get the perfect straight-down angle w/o casting any shadow, etc etc etc)

im just??? honestly, typing all of this out is making me sit back and think why?? why am i even doing this. this is so much goddamn effort for shit that probably won’t get very much attention, which is fine and all but god. jesus christ. im really putting myself through some shit for this

in any case i think i’ll probably be posting some of the more recent stuff first, like all the mp100 shit because like i said i want to post it while it’s still fresh and if i work on this whole project in chronological order u probably won’t see the things i drew this week until like next year hgkdslkdgn

[apsbicepstraining]

How sleep grew the brand-new must-have

Somehow mattresses and pillows have become exciting

If tiredness was measured in duvet togs Id currently be at a winter-weight 13.5; my seeings made of crispy, my figure a Frube. Its been a long week, with a sick child who came and slept with me, her reeling body falling out of bed and on to the floor with a clinical thump each time I fell asleep. I tell you this knowing exactly how assuming it is to talk about tiredness. Talking about sleep is as monotonou as talking about how much you booze the night before; as talking about the Labor party with a politics bro in a overflowing prohibit. A brolitician. And hitherto, here I am.

Im talking about it because I can, and I can because you are. Sleep, how little, how much, is a dialogue you will hear in every role, every ballpark. Whereas formerly it was a mark of standing to exist on merely a couple of hours sleep( it symbolized you were working harder ), now the opposite is true. To boast of eight hours is to explain that you have invested in your form, a temple of wellness, to optimise the day.

Today, sleep is fetishised, marketed, precious and gold. Kickstarter is swollen with innovative pillows. Mattresses, formerly “the worlds largest” bovine of purchases, have become almost exciting. A glut of new online corporations deliver them to your opening in minuscule little caskets, and they inflate and unfurl in your bedroom like indoor fireworks. The firms advertise on podcasts and social media as if theyre exchanging brand-new opening bunks for millennials, rather than the same sandwiches of sud and old-fashioned skin weve sleep on forever.

Theres one particular mattress advert on the Tube that I often find myself waiting in front of. Its imagery seems to take in order to infuriate. I realise theyre is targeted at the young. People for whom sleep is still something you have enough vigour to feel you can restraint: theres an sketch of a mattress for sneakerheads with a boy sleeping, contained within shoes; a mattress for political animals with a mule sparring with an elephant on the bottom. If cigarette ads rely on the relevant recommendations that inhaling stimulates you examine cool, and chocolate ads on the relevant recommendations that it is sensual, then are todays mattress ads selling the idea that sleep does you a better banter-merchant?

But can good sleep certainly be bought? In direct opposition to the traditional admonition to remove all screens and blue daylight from the bedroom( along with advice to drink water, to keep cool, has become a “cat-o-nine-tail” ), one of the ways we are sold sleep is through phone apps you take to bed. By monitoring your REM and snoring in a more efficient behavior than your ex ever did, you can quantify your sleep and then, obviously, use it to compete with your peers( the moment of all apps at all durations ).

Theres something very sinister to me about turning our every concern into data, about wearables the word itself is Orwellian. And, yeah, Im sure there are some people who sleep longer after use an app and yet more who feel like they do because, having downloaded a implement, they believe they have inhibited it. But, like the recent examine that presented fitness trackers dont handiwork( instead often helping their useds to put on weight, whoopsie ), surely there are more sleep-app customers who pay their coin and then precisely lie there, waiting.

Like weight-loss foods, isnt the simplest, oldest, most boring solution to good sleep the only one absolutely proven to work? Less nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, more exert, a regular routine circumstances that we wouldnt have needed to mimic when our days were expended away from a attached desk in a strip-lit room. Modern life is brilliant, but for all it leaves, it takes away, too.

The sick child saw me sick, and I sit in berthed with my laptop coughing in a manner that has preserved my whole flat, carpeted with discarded tissues, awake for two long nighttimes. I sleep until I wake myself up with this throaty racket and then I lie here trying to remember how a ordinary people inhaling musics when they sleep. I weigh other seasons Ive lain wide awake at sunrise, either obsessed or mothering or both, and for all the anxiety that Ill never sleep again, I tell myself I have, many times.

As the sleep industry picks around our beds like a long-lost nephew angling for endowment, I remember that even without engineering, sleep comes. It always does. Perhaps I wont get all the gags tomorrow, but soon I will feel better. Failing sleep neednt be anything to lose sleep over.

Email Eva at e.wiseman @observer. co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

The post How sleep grew the brand-new must-have appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2yaLoDV via IFTTT

[apsbicepstraining]

How sleep grew the brand-new must-have

Somehow mattresses and pillows have become exciting

If tiredness was measured in duvet togs Id currently be at a winter-weight 13.5; my seeings made of crispy, my figure a Frube. Its been a long week, with a sick child who came and slept with me, her reeling body falling out of bed and on to the floor with a clinical thump each time I fell asleep. I tell you this knowing exactly how assuming it is to talk about tiredness. Talking about sleep is as monotonou as talking about how much you booze the night before; as talking about the Labor party with a politics bro in a overflowing prohibit. A brolitician. And hitherto, here I am.

Im talking about it because I can, and I can because you are. Sleep, how little, how much, is a dialogue you will hear in every role, every ballpark. Whereas formerly it was a mark of standing to exist on merely a couple of hours sleep( it symbolized you were working harder ), now the opposite is true. To boast of eight hours is to explain that you have invested in your form, a temple of wellness, to optimise the day.

Today, sleep is fetishised, marketed, precious and gold. Kickstarter is swollen with innovative pillows. Mattresses, formerly “the worlds largest” bovine of purchases, have become almost exciting. A glut of new online corporations deliver them to your opening in minuscule little caskets, and they inflate and unfurl in your bedroom like indoor fireworks. The firms advertise on podcasts and social media as if theyre exchanging brand-new opening bunks for millennials, rather than the same sandwiches of sud and old-fashioned skin weve sleep on forever.

Theres one particular mattress advert on the Tube that I often find myself waiting in front of. Its imagery seems to take in order to infuriate. I realise theyre is targeted at the young. People for whom sleep is still something you have enough vigour to feel you can restraint: theres an sketch of a mattress for sneakerheads with a boy sleeping, contained within shoes; a mattress for political animals with a mule sparring with an elephant on the bottom. If cigarette ads rely on the relevant recommendations that inhaling stimulates you examine cool, and chocolate ads on the relevant recommendations that it is sensual, then are todays mattress ads selling the idea that sleep does you a better banter-merchant?

But can good sleep certainly be bought? In direct opposition to the traditional admonition to remove all screens and blue daylight from the bedroom( along with advice to drink water, to keep cool, has become a “cat-o-nine-tail” ), one of the ways we are sold sleep is through phone apps you take to bed. By monitoring your REM and snoring in a more efficient behavior than your ex ever did, you can quantify your sleep and then, obviously, use it to compete with your peers( the moment of all apps at all durations ).

Theres something very sinister to me about turning our every concern into data, about wearables the word itself is Orwellian. And, yeah, Im sure there are some people who sleep longer after use an app and yet more who feel like they do because, having downloaded a implement, they believe they have inhibited it. But, like the recent examine that presented fitness trackers dont handiwork( instead often helping their useds to put on weight, whoopsie ), surely there are more sleep-app customers who pay their coin and then precisely lie there, waiting.

Like weight-loss foods, isnt the simplest, oldest, most boring solution to good sleep the only one absolutely proven to work? Less nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, more exert, a regular routine circumstances that we wouldnt have needed to mimic when our days were expended away from a attached desk in a strip-lit room. Modern life is brilliant, but for all it leaves, it takes away, too.

The sick child saw me sick, and I sit in berthed with my laptop coughing in a manner that has preserved my whole flat, carpeted with discarded tissues, awake for two long nighttimes. I sleep until I wake myself up with this throaty racket and then I lie here trying to remember how a ordinary people inhaling musics when they sleep. I weigh other seasons Ive lain wide awake at sunrise, either obsessed or mothering or both, and for all the anxiety that Ill never sleep again, I tell myself I have, many times.

As the sleep industry picks around our beds like a long-lost nephew angling for endowment, I remember that even without engineering, sleep comes. It always does. Perhaps I wont get all the gags tomorrow, but soon I will feel better. Failing sleep neednt be anything to lose sleep over.

Email Eva at e.wiseman @observer. co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

The post How sleep grew the brand-new must-have appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2yaLoDV via IFTTT

[apsbicepstraining]

How sleep grew the brand-new must-have

Somehow mattresses and pillows have become exciting

If tiredness was measured in duvet togs Id currently be at a winter-weight 13.5; my seeings made of crispy, my figure a Frube. Its been a long week, with a sick child who came and slept with me, her reeling body falling out of bed and on to the floor with a clinical thump each time I fell asleep. I tell you this knowing exactly how assuming it is to talk about tiredness. Talking about sleep is as monotonou as talking about how much you booze the night before; as talking about the Labor party with a politics bro in a overflowing prohibit. A brolitician. And hitherto, here I am.

Im talking about it because I can, and I can because you are. Sleep, how little, how much, is a dialogue you will hear in every role, every ballpark. Whereas formerly it was a mark of standing to exist on merely a couple of hours sleep( it symbolized you were working harder ), now the opposite is true. To boast of eight hours is to explain that you have invested in your form, a temple of wellness, to optimise the day.

Today, sleep is fetishised, marketed, precious and gold. Kickstarter is swollen with innovative pillows. Mattresses, formerly “the worlds largest” bovine of purchases, have become almost exciting. A glut of new online corporations deliver them to your opening in minuscule little caskets, and they inflate and unfurl in your bedroom like indoor fireworks. The firms advertise on podcasts and social media as if theyre exchanging brand-new opening bunks for millennials, rather than the same sandwiches of sud and old-fashioned skin weve sleep on forever.

Theres one particular mattress advert on the Tube that I often find myself waiting in front of. Its imagery seems to take in order to infuriate. I realise theyre is targeted at the young. People for whom sleep is still something you have enough vigour to feel you can restraint: theres an sketch of a mattress for sneakerheads with a boy sleeping, contained within shoes; a mattress for political animals with a mule sparring with an elephant on the bottom. If cigarette ads rely on the relevant recommendations that inhaling stimulates you examine cool, and chocolate ads on the relevant recommendations that it is sensual, then are todays mattress ads selling the idea that sleep does you a better banter-merchant?

But can good sleep certainly be bought? In direct opposition to the traditional admonition to remove all screens and blue daylight from the bedroom( along with advice to drink water, to keep cool, has become a “cat-o-nine-tail” ), one of the ways we are sold sleep is through phone apps you take to bed. By monitoring your REM and snoring in a more efficient behavior than your ex ever did, you can quantify your sleep and then, obviously, use it to compete with your peers( the moment of all apps at all durations ).

Theres something very sinister to me about turning our every concern into data, about wearables the word itself is Orwellian. And, yeah, Im sure there are some people who sleep longer after use an app and yet more who feel like they do because, having downloaded a implement, they believe they have inhibited it. But, like the recent examine that presented fitness trackers dont handiwork( instead often helping their useds to put on weight, whoopsie ), surely there are more sleep-app customers who pay their coin and then precisely lie there, waiting.

Like weight-loss foods, isnt the simplest, oldest, most boring solution to good sleep the only one absolutely proven to work? Less nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, more exert, a regular routine circumstances that we wouldnt have needed to mimic when our days were expended away from a attached desk in a strip-lit room. Modern life is brilliant, but for all it leaves, it takes away, too.

The sick child saw me sick, and I sit in berthed with my laptop coughing in a manner that has preserved my whole flat, carpeted with discarded tissues, awake for two long nighttimes. I sleep until I wake myself up with this throaty racket and then I lie here trying to remember how a ordinary people inhaling musics when they sleep. I weigh other seasons Ive lain wide awake at sunrise, either obsessed or mothering or both, and for all the anxiety that Ill never sleep again, I tell myself I have, many times.

As the sleep industry picks around our beds like a long-lost nephew angling for endowment, I remember that even without engineering, sleep comes. It always does. Perhaps I wont get all the gags tomorrow, but soon I will feel better. Failing sleep neednt be anything to lose sleep over.

Email Eva at e.wiseman @observer. co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

The post How sleep grew the brand-new must-have appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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