hey so protip if you have abusive parents and need to get around the house as quietly as possible, stay close to furniture and other heavy stuff because the floor is settled there and it’s less likely to creak
socks are quieter than bare feet on tile/wood and for the love of god don’t wear slippers/shoes if you can help it
climbing ON the furniture will disrupt the pattern of your footsteps and make it harder to hear where you are in the house
crawling will do the same and if you get caught crawling you can pretend you fell
the floor near the wall can be really loud if the floorboards/carpet is old and not completely flush to the wall
do NOT attempt to use a rolling chair to travel without footsteps. they are extremely loud and hard to steer
Also. Breath with your mouth and not your nose. Your nose will whistle. Trust me. If you need to get into your fridge, jab your finger into the rubber part that seals the door closed and create a tiny airway. This will prevent the suction noise when you open the door. When drinking liquids (juice mostly), pour out your glass (or chug from the jug) and replace what you drank with water. If it was full enough in the beginning, no one will notice. DO NOT STEAL ALCOHOL. THEY WILL NOTICE IF IT’S WATERED DOWN. Bring a pillowcase for dried foods like cereal and granola. It helps to muffle the sound it makes when it pours.
If your house has snack packs (like gummy bears or crackers or chips), count them every day until you know the rhythm that they get consumed. (This took me a week and a half with my twin brother and sister). Then join the rhythm when you make your nightly visits. It will be that much harder to figure out it was you.
KEEP A TRASH BAG UNDER YOUR BED FOR WRAPPERS AND STUFF BUT DONT FORGET TO THROW IT OUT WHENEVER YOU CAN. BUGS YKNOW. Hope this helped.
some more generic #abusetips by rae
observe your abuser’s patterns so you can learn how to avoid them when they’re prone to rampages/being drunk or violent, etc.
if you have siblings and can safely do so, talk to them. it’s easier to deal with this stuff together.
carry around something small (pocket knife, etc) that you can use to defend yourself in a pinch.
avoid alone time with your abuser AT ALL COSTS.
password your phone, password your laptop, clear your search history, don’t leave anything for someone to get angry at
become familiar with your surroundings (neighborhood/woods/city/whatever) in case you need to run away. look for motels within walking distance and memorize their locations
if your parents don’t make you food or there isn’t much in the house, pasta and cheese is amazing. cook some pasta (macaroni or really any other kind), put some cheese on top (again, any kind) and microwave that bitch for :45 and you have yourself a surprisingly filling meal with only 2 flexible ingredients. if you’re tired of/don’t have cheese, ragu/tomato sauce is great too. i could alternate those 2 meals and live on it for weeks honestly
document EVERYTHING, as it happens. abusers are great at twisting your memories and making you think you’re exaggerating in your mind. write down abusive things that are said or done to you (or take pictures) so you can use them to reassure yourself later that the abuse isn’t in your head. don’t do this if you don’t have a secure place to keep the proof.
and my favorite
have a small bag (walmart bag or equivalent size) that has a few days worth of essentials ready to grab and go! fit some stuff like
– money ($20 ish, more if you can) – a water bottle or 2 – granola bars – light jacket – change of clothes – flashlight – tampons, hand sanitizer (amazing for cleaning w no water)…
and whatever else you need and can fit into a small bag, and keep it under your bed or in an easy grabbing location. i call it the Shit Hits The Fan bag, for if you ever need to just book it outta there asap.
if you can store one in your home somewhere and one outside (in a weather-resistant location like a shed or in a tree) it’s even better.
A compilation of stuff I know about drawing Asian faces and Asian culture! I feel like many “How-To-Draw” tutorials often default to European faces and are not really helpful when drawing people of other races. So I thought I’d put this together in case anyone is interested! Feel free to share this guide and shoot me questions if you have any! I’m by no means an expert, I just know a few things from drawing experience and from my own cultural background.
The dos and don’ts of designing for accessibility are general guidelines, best design practices for making services accessible in government. Currently, there are six different posters in the series that cater to users from these areas: low vision, D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers.
[…] Another aim of the posters is that they’re meant to be general guidance as opposed to being overly prescriptive. Using bright contrast was advised for some (such as those with low vision) although some users on the autistic spectrum would prefer differently. Where advice seems contradictory, it’s always worth testing your designs with users to find the right balance, making compromises that best suit the users’ needs.
I’ve been wanting something like this to reference! Boosting for the others that like to dabble in code/design.
This is some of the most lucidly written accessibility advice I’ve seen. Making accessible web pages should be the default, not an add-on. It’s really not that hard to do, especially when you think about it from the start – and it benefits everyone.
(Obligatory note that there are exceptions to some of these guidelines, e.g., “bunching” some interactions together is an important way to cue which interactions are related to each other, but that’s why these are guidelines, not absolute rules.)
young web designer: thank you oh my god no one has been able to explain this quite as well and this is just good shit
yo here’s a useful tip from your fellow art ho cynellis… use google sketchup to create a model of the room/building/town you’re trying to draw… then take a screenshot & use it as a reference! It’s simple & fun!
Sketchup is incredibly helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.
There’s a 3D model warehouse where you can download all kinds of stuff so you don’t have to build everything from scratch.
reblog to save a life
This is an incomplete tutorial, and it drives me crazy every
time I see it come around.
We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to
a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of,
but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of
using it.
Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:
How do you populate your backgrounds?
Well, here’s the answer:
If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to
that environment.
The examples above are great because they show how to use the
software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of
their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their
environment.
How do you fix this?
Well, here’s the simplest solution:
This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and
comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and
it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that
polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background
and an environment.
Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine),
people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like
there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they
currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.
Your creations live in a unique world, and it is as much a character as
any other member of the cast. Make it as believable as they are.
Great comments and tutorials!
I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!
Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!
Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)
The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this – Manga Studio, Design Doll – but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.
By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!
Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.
We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!
Proper 3d modeling software is immensely powerful, and if you wanted to, you could model a complex environment that occurs regularly in your comic or illustration work (say, a castle interior, or an outdoor forest environment) and populate the scene with as many perspective-grounded characters as you need!
Sleep deprivation kills your sex drive. It can also ruin your memory, age your skin, put you at risk for depression, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, and can impair your judgement to the point where you believe you’re ok when you aren’t getting enough sleep. SourceSource 2
so in 2016, i managed to read 50 books. my original reading goal was 100, but i’m glad that i managed to make it to the halfway point! and in my reading selection was a mix of graphic novels, literary fiction, classics, and poetry chapbooks. this is actually the year i started to read chapbooks + graphic novels, and i’m honestly really surprised that i went a decade of my conscious life confined to, like, only fiction lmao when there are literally a million and 1 vehicles of self-expression w/ its own certain nuances that can more comprehensively explore a vast breadth??? of human experience??
i was going to hold off on making this list until january 2 but like i’m under no illusion of actually finishing any more books @ this point in the year lmao, so! i present to you my casual offhand list of! my! 5! favorite! books! that i have read! this! year!!!
5.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel
i’ve heard a lot of hype drummed up for this book Back In The Day except i didn’t pay much heed & wasn’t particularly planning on reading it this year until i saw it on sale for $1, so i obviously snapped it up – and the thing is, i understand the hype. fun home deserves adoration!!!!! it’s just that if i ever have to point to a book that’s like the very quiddity of 4 star quality it’s this! really really deft and meticulous, and i remember feeling my heart clench at certain moments. it gives an incredibly detailed documentation of not only bechdel’s father but also her own exploration into her identity and how much it parallels and / fuck / even contrasts w/ her own relative privilege in being able to out herself compared to her own father’s toxic repression, etc. and the emotional core of this work was delicately handled / i definitely liked it! wouldn’t say i particularly love it tho / really really strong work but also not the most memorable
4.
Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West
ARRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!! i cringed so much when reading this fucking BOOK!!! literally w/ every chapter i went through, i kept waiting! for something really really! horrible! to happen! this book’s hilarious in a OH GOD WHY sort of way, i guess? this is a book i’d give to people huge into irony. really well-written and tightly controlled. if i could punch someone in the face, it would be nathanael west lmao.
3.
The Beautiful Room Is Empty, by Edmund White
extremely exquisite. i’m a huge fan of This Guy. he takes us through his miserable, deadpan adolescence as a Gay White Art Boy & it was such a trip to experience between his scenes of utter clusterfuck and the luxurious language he uses to describe said scenes of utter clusterfuck and there were some parts when i just wished he would shut the fuck up then there were times when i absolutely fell in love w/ this beautiful man and overall i really, really enjoyed this book for its wit & beauty & ability to make me cringe / i wouldn’t highly recommend actually reading this book tbh instead i would moreso highly recommend looking up quotes from this book because honestly White is a writer w/ one of the most decadent, lush voices in contemp. literature and nobody should have to suffer through pages of repetitive developments in his life just to get to the few gems scattered throughout the novel
2. The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector
CLARICE. MY SECOND TOE-DIP INTO THE FASCINATING ABSURDIST HELL OF HER WORK.
honestly took me a while to get through hour of the star because the style was so gorgeous that i sort of felt like sitting in silence to fully consume her writing and the weird “oh whoops” vibe of the narration fucked w/ me so hard and several times the unreliability almost made me rage-quit and i had to work so hard to get through this but i am so glad that i pushed through / lispector is a fucking mage, and i honestly can’t believe i met one of my all-time favorite authors in 2016. macabea’s story is honestly something that will stick w/ me from how pathetic & esoteric it is, and i’m looking forward to chewing through her other works. if there is one book u definitely should read in yr lifetime, it should Be This. i only gave it a 3 stars on goodreads, because it didn’t seem to be lispector’s most fascinating work but 10/10 would still highly recommend.
1.
One Hundred Demons, by Lynda Barry
my first foray into barry’s work, and definitely won’t be the last. planning on buying out everything she creates, because barry is a fucking god. not even going to try and capture it in fucking weak english words because that’s just how hallowed be barry’s name. i’m not even sure if i’m worshipful of this individual work or just extremely lovestruck w/ barry. either ways, highly recc this. soft, compassionate, loving, wise, idk how many more platitudes that i actually rly rly mean that i can throw at this book but fuck my favorite book of the year, please if you have the chance fucking consume This.
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