bestie are you lost? yeah bestie, in your eyes

In all my art classes, I was never taught HOW to use the various tools of art.

Like yes, form, and shape and space and color theory and figure drawing is important, but so is KNOWING what different tools do.

I’m 29 and I JUST learned this past month that India Ink is fucking waterproof when it dries. Why is this important? Because I can line something in India Ink and then go over it with watercolors. And that has CHANGED the ENTIRE way I art and the ease I can create with.

-Yo painters, use pencil if u must underdraw beneath an oil painting, the lead is archival but ideally you should be doing underdrawings in a muted earth tones (siennas, umbers, ochres or earth green) with some titanium white added to it. (The white nearly matches the canvas and earth tones naturally blend with all colors on top unless u do super thin glaze washes).

-Trying to make a natural looking warm black? Don’t use black straight from tube, Mix alizarin crimson and viridan. add raw umber to adjust for light depth.

-If your into mixed media ALWAYS use acrylic first and oil on top (the gesso on primed canvas is acrylic based and oil sits on top of it great). NEVER put acrylic paint on top of oil, the acrylic will crackle/decompose and fall apart/off the canvas.

-India ink is permanent and if your using ink from a jar it should say it’s permanence. professional art grade pens usually have there permanace listed either on the pen or the companies website.

-Red cinnabar is poisonous, DO NOT EAT IT, no matter how much like fruit loops it smells.

-Translucent and transparent are NOT the same. translucent is *shiny* and a cloudier color, ideal for mixing usually ordor making vibrant colors like for eyes, cars, etc. Transparent is matte and usually a 50% transparency from an opaque color.

-ALWAYS DO A TEST SWATCH OF ANY NEW MATERIAL.

-any paint made with “true alizarin crimson” “red lake” and “chrome yellow” pigment is a fugitive paint. Fugitive means the pigment fades dramatically and disappears over time, (usually 5 to 15 years) lots of van goghs paintings have this problem. be very careful with these pigments. Alizarin crimson especially smells extremely sweet and like fruit loops or fruit loops, don’t eat it.

-gauche is a mix of watercolor and ink, proceed with caution as this material can be an asshole.

-Watercolor can be made darker/thicker by letting it dry slightly in cake form or in liquid form and can be dry brushed if u get the timing down.

-Paint liquid rubber or lay down thin pieces of painters tape on edges in watercolor paintings to Prevent bleeding between lines if u need super sharp edges.

-always tape down the entire paper edges when u paint with watercolor to a board to prevent the paper from curling as it dries.

-add salt directly into wet watercolor paintings to absorb pigment and make shit look like space.

-Always paint in well ventilated areas and avoid getting lots of paint on your hands. lots of paint is made with heavy metals and can cause cancer.

-natural materials aren’t always safe, especially

-Ones u collect yourself, do your research before grinding, burning, sanding these things especially indoors.

-natural sable is good for watercolor if you can afford it, i have two smaller brushes i shelled out for to try it, and while i probably didn’t treat the finer point one right, the other one is a miracle i’ve had for nearly 20 years.

2. I spend a lot of time online, secretly, and am exposed–for the first time–to the fact that it’s weird that I share a room and bed with my dad and am not allowed anywhere else 

3. My dad brings me to a corn field and tells me obama is the anti-christ who’s been sent by god to end the world, as foretold by the bible. I believe this and cry when he’s elected because i don’t want to die 

4. I begin googling and discover that my situation is not great. I begin a careful attempt to ~distance~ myself from my father by sleeping anywhere else through any means possible. Eventually, I’m allowed to sleep in my own room

5. Now that I’ve been exposed to the real world and the fact that I’ve been groomed, I’m not ~obedient~ anymore and my dad Dips(™) to find a new kid. We lose our house and have to move to government housing in a new city 

6. Eventually my parents divorce because of this. My dad moves to a horse ranch. I visit him on the horse ranch, think it’s cool, and invite my friends over for a sleepover. I have my first gay kiss with a girl in a tent. The next day my father tries to ~kill~ me on the horse ranch(™) with a golf cart

7.My dad disappears from the face of the earth. He forgets his phone is connected to the family iMac. We know all about the crimes he is committing. He fakes a heart attack in a Wal-Mart at some point, idk

8. The FBI is onto his life of crime. He flees to Romania to escape them and lives with a millionaire Romanian woman. She’s suspicious of him after a while. She hires a private investigator and unearths his life of lies and crime. He flees to Alaska. He gets a roommate in Alaska. The roommate goes to federal prison. We never hear from my father again. He is, perhaps, dead.

it’s true you can’t draw one continuous line that would do the trick. but if the kitty and bunny set out by going through the doors they’re marked beside and each walked the certain way their colored arrows show at the same time their “collective path” as a team would go through each door only once. The moral of the story is actually about friendship , and cooperation, because in this world there are tasks you can’t do on your own.