Art Block Is Hitting Hard So Have These Sketches Of The Lamb

Unironically one of my favorite artists

Still watching this youtube channel about what I can only describe as "Dark Classical art" and this one absolutely floored me because I was unaware of it and I want to share it because it changes my perspective on this artist completely.

You might be aware of Louis Wain. If not by name then by his art. He's the artist behind that series of cat drawings that slowly became more and more abstract and bizarre.

This series of paintings of cats are often labelled as a visual representation of Wain's deteriorating mental illness and schizophrenia. Even more so often labelled as "a tragic display of a painter's failing battle with schizophrenia."

The paintings look like this and were painted around the very early 1900s.

Ok got all that?

So here's the thing.

Although Wain did suffer from a mental illness that was strong enough for him to be institutionalized, his mental illness was never diagnosed with clear certainty. Although "Schizophrenia" is so heavily applied to him based purely on how his series of paintings LOOK, despite actual specialists widely disputing this. On top of this, although he did paint the kaleidoscope cat portraits during this time, it was not the only things he painted, and he was quite capable of painting "normal" pictures of cats.

The Kaleidoscope Cat portraits are more images of him experimenting with colour and shapes, something the Smithsonian themselves state on their website.

Wain had actually made his entire living painting whimsical images of cats, often for product adverts, before he was incarcerated and was actually a very beloved artist at the time. When his friends learned of his incarceration, they started a collection of donation money to help transfer Wain to the Bethlam Royal Hospital instead, one of the best mental health facilities of the time. Even the Prime Minster of the time donated, and they raised a large amount of money across England to help him.

4 years later, Wain drew this as his final image which he released publicly

I knew all about "the Schizophrenic cat Guy" but he had always been presented to me as some tragic case of an artist going mad and his skills and work unraveling as he went insane.

Which is why I wanted to share this information which was new to me. And because I think it's important.

🆂🆃🅰🆁🆅🅰🆃🅸🅾🅽 ⚰

From the heart of unimaginable suffering, I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported my family 🙏🏻

Right now, famine is hitting us harder than ever, my heart cries whenever I go to the market to buy any basic necessities! The prices are crazy, and most days my children survive on just bread Hunger and thirst are destroying us, and cooking on fire increases our suffering unbearably! Severe eye and chest sensitivity, in addition to constant stomach pain due to the type of food and the way it is cooked.

All this while we flee from one place to another in fear of bombing, bullets, and imminent danger! I cannot describe what I feel, but it is a feeling beyond exhaustion!

Despite the exhaustion, your support gives us strength and I hope you will not let us down

If you can donate, please do so, or at least help us by sharing, so we can reach those who can

Your kindness truly keeps us going

>> Our campaign is vetted by gazavetters list at Momen & his family

gofundme.com

Donate to Help my family rise from the ashes, organized by Tahir Awad

Hello Everyone, I am Nour Al Madhoun, 30 years old, a computer engineer from gaza, my h… Tahir Awad needs your support for Help my family r

Gaza is full of oppression #The worst is yet to come #Genocide #A resilient people

I feel like the live action can learn a couple things from the stage show, especially color/pattern wise.

These are the two best dragon designs in the whole stage show and the colors are so pretty. The proportions also feel better, they have so much character! I also think the live action needs to be a bit crisper with the animation. The dragons feel weirdly bloomed out and hiccup doesn't really feel part of the scene lighting wise..

I'm not saying this stage show DOESN'T have problems with the dragon designs, just my thoughts of what can be improved.

Also give Hookfang gharial eyes!! They gave the terrible terror chameleon eyes, come on!!

Have you seen the live action HTTYD designs? what do you think?

Honestly I think people are being a bit harsh on them. The big pitfalls I usually see with realistic reimaginings of animated/illustrated creatures is that they either just try to copy the design 1:1, seemingly without a lot of understanding of anatomy/style, or go the opposite direction and treat everything as cartoon exaggeration, toning down or removing features that exist in the real world for the sake of realism. most of these are basically fine on both counts, it looks like the character designers are actually trying to engage with what the original designs are communicating while also not forcing themselves to be 100% fidelic to them. Most of these are not bad designs to me. I will say I 1) don't like the zippleback; maybe it looks better in movement but off the first few images it seems like they just kind of ditched all the interesting (and genuinely reptilian) elements of the original, like it's alligator/lizard-like stance and the way it's spines look like a zipper, in favor of a pretty generic/less visually interesting design:

and 2) I mentioned before I'm really not big on the redesign toothless has throughout the animated movies; the sequels gave him an increasingly flatter, more humanish face with big "eyebrows" and I think it looks way less cute/less like a real animal. the live action design is very obviously referencing this later design and I think it looks pretty rough here too, honestly a bit uncanny valley:

side note: i always thought my harshness on this design choice was a kind of mean hot take but the other day i went into the httyd tumblr tag and man they are so much meaner than me. look at this

If anyone, at all, can match even a 10th of my donation, I'd consider it a massive christmas gift.

Please, help my friend Mohammed. His family is cold, and hungry.

It would mean a great deal to me.

You can find his fundraiser here,

And you can see that it's been vetted by 90-Ghost here.

Preview of Basilisk, my personal favorite of my risograph comics, and the project all my other recent medieval-inspired art descends from.

Styled after medieval illuminated manuscripts and printed using a custom color palette requiring 5 risograph inks (including metallic gold), Basilisk asks the question: what would drive a teenage girl to create a monster?

Physical copies available here (also digital here). To brag for a moment--this is my masterwork of riso printing and is even more impressive in person.

Too tired to add tags but I love this and would love to see more of their campaign

D&D night of the Old Faith

They say the only way to get a steady D&D group is by using your own siblings. That means having to deal with Edgy Narinder, Murderhobo Leshy, Charge Heket and the Bard™. Thank you to all the Anons who asked me about D&D for Shamura and their siblings! You inspired this little silly comic, I hope you see and like it!💙

I can't stop thinking of this interaction I saw in Webfishing.

Us if you even cared

girls night out