Shoutout To Everyone Who Wants To Infodump But Cant String Together Coherent Thoughts To Form Sentences

“I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human” - David Bowie

i sometimes forget that this is everyone’s first time on earth too. like. this is my first time seeing a butterfly this color. but its that little girl’s first time seeing any butterfly, ever. and i accidentally left a bag of groceries at the store after paying and now i’m cursing under my breath and it’s like. there a thousand other people out there who did that today too. and a thousand more from yesterday. and. like. we’re not actually alone. and we’re not actually failing. at least not in a way that a few billion people haven’t before you

I’m all scratched up and I can still taste spray paint in my mouth and my husband almost fell out of a tree BUT THE GHOST SCULPTURES ARE FINISHED!

They’re finally finished and I’m so happy with them!!

Some progress shots:

babygirl you won't believe the amount of popular things i don't know

When I see people sharing so much of their kids' lives, I think about that one time my child told a joke, I shared that joke with ONE FRIEND in a private conversation, and my child said "can you please ask me next time, before you tell people something about me?"

And, yes, I absolutely should. So I apologized, and now I ask.

"I love that video of you, can I show it to a friend?"

"Can I tell a friend about how clever you were just now?"

"Can I share this in the family group chat?"

"Can I show your art to grandma and grandpa?"

And it's not like my kids don't like when I share their jokes and puns and fun moments. They love it! But they want to have control over what I share with people. Even without their faces or their names. Even people we know and trust.

And they deserve to have that control.

My children are small so the examples are small. They wanted me to ask, so I ask. Just like being told to kiss my grandma's cheek when I was a kid was far from traumatizing, but I don't do that with my kids because it's a way to practice consent and become aware of bodily autonomy.

It gets both me and them in the habit of asking for consent and drawing boundaries and seeing the lines between their life and my life, their stories and my stories.

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

One of the worst feelings in the world: when you are just desperate, like claw-your-own-skin-off desperate, to create, but the only thing that even vaguely appeals to you to work on is a nebulous half-feeling that might be dreamily related to some half-formed notion of a concept. I must! Make! No thing! Only make!