DawnAllies Scrap Dump

Are you tired of feeling like your art just isn’t improving? Do you want to do a 30-day challenge that’s actually useful? Welcome to 30 Days of Improvement Hell. >:D

I made this because I’ve been feeling super ‘blah’ about my art these days, and I needed something to kick-start myself. Who wants to do this with me!? Start now or whenever you can (now you procrastinators!). Challenge yourself and have fun at the same time!

Tag your posts with #Improvement Hell so everyone can follow along and see each other’s awesome artwork. I may even create a blog and reblog them! :D

What are you waiting for? START!

Self-Portrait - Introduce yourself

Draw a figure using a reference - link to reference

Draw a figure that’s in action, using a reference - link to reference

Draw a part of the human anatomy you have trouble with. x20, with atleast 5 being skeletal/musculature studies.

Draw more figures. Quick gestures and silhouettes. x20, with atleast 10 different body shapes

Let’s have some fun. Design a character from either This or This character generator! Be creative and bring something to life!

Pick the weirdest object in your house/room. Draw it. Shadows and Highlights.

Find 2-3 objects, make a scene with them. Draw it. Bonus points for creativity. Double points for dramatic lighting.

Draw a landscape of a place you’ve never been or drawn.

Draw a BG with 1pt Perspective. Negative points if it’s a railroad or an empty street.

Draw a BG with 2pt Perspective.

Look out a window. Draw what you see. Bonus points for adding something interesting.

Draw an interior setting with the character you designed on Day #6 in it.

BG with either bird’s eye or worm’s eye view.

Halfway there! Draw three 'action’ scenes with different compositions in each. Quick sketches are fine, just make them interesting and understandable! Bonus points if it’s the same scene, but different composition.

Draw a single page comic with 5-7 panels (the story begins and ends on one page). 

Draw an animal you’ve never drawn before. x10  Link references.

Draw a car. Negative points for whining. Hint: Use a perspective grid.

Think of the thing you hate drawing the most. Guess what? Draw it! Negative points for lying to yourself.

Pick an object in your house/room. Now design a character from it, using the shapes, forms, textures, purpose and colors as inspiration. Also link/post the object you used. Negative points for using a humanoid action figure.

Draw a character/object/scene, and shade them using ONLY solid blacks and whites. Bonus points for good use of lights/shadows

Draw a different object/scene/character. Shade using hatching, crosshatcing, and/or pointillism. Bonus points for lights/shadows and textures.

Colors! Pick a color palette, and paint a scene/character/object using only those colors (some blending allowed). Bonus points for good use of lights/shadows.

Draw and color a scene/object/character - no lines allowed! (aka - lineless art). Don’t forget light and shadows!

Draw a scene/character in a style you’ve never drawn before. If emulating an artist, credit+link. Bonus for color style.

Draw a character. Draw 10 emotions/expressions. Bonus points for 'uncommon’ emotions. (i.e. anxiety, guilt, despair, loneliness etc.)

Draw three random shapes using your opposite hand (or your foot). Now design characters from those shapes.

Turn on the tv (or load your illegally downloaded movies). Pick an actor and draw them.

Almost done! Let’s have some fun. Draw some fanart. Bonus points if it’s super obscure and unknown. Make people guess what it’s from.

Last day! Find a drawing you did within the last year. Now draw it again using what you’ve learned! Link it for comparison!

 Look at all that amazing improvement! Congrats!

here, i’ll start 

I wasn't ready. I was like "oh, that's cute. She's gotta hobby. That's.... whoa. WAIT."

You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character - because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned - and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.

But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.

And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.

But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.

Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character - Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.

Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.

And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.

Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.

Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”

You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable. 

You tell him - this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow. 

But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo - enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.

And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.

It’s like the world clicking into place. 

At the end of each tourist season, we see at least one person who has taken on far more hermit crabs than they can handle because a vendor, shop, or carnival told them they were going to put the crabs in the trash or turn them loose. While that individual’s heart is in the right place, we (as a group) are being taken advantage of and overloading our adoption program.

LHCOS aims to end the wild capture of hermit crabs for the pet trade. Our approach has always been to educate the public so they don’t buy a hermit crab in the first place. Decades of imploring stores to change or improve their practices has proven fruitless, there is a demand and stores want the money from meeting that demand. However, if no one is buying hermit crabs, and they sit in the shop for months, the store will not order more. Stores don’t stock products that don’t sell well and stores don’t restock products that are still on the shelves. These stores see animals as a product just like food or bowls. When they can’t move a product any longer they stop carrying it. It doesn’t happen overnight but it does happen. They don’t care HOW the hermit crab leaves the store, only that it moves off the shelf and now there is room for more.

Boardwalk shops, vendors, and carnivals are now engaging in what I see as destructive and predatory behavior. When they encounter someone who clearly cares about hermit crabs they use that to their advantage. They know you are a kindhearted person and they tell you they are going to put their unsold crabs in the trash or set them free, knowing full well you won’t stand by and let this animal that you so clearly love die. Now they’ve solved their problem this year, you have taken on the burden for them. Next year will they order fewer crabs? Nope. Why would they? You happily took the unwanted crabs off their hands this year and you or someone else will do the same next year. Problem solved―for them anyway. They are using our caring natures against us, causing us to bear the burden of dealing with dozens of hermit crabs. Hermit crabs that were taken from the wild but cannot be returned there. Hermit crabs they will have forgotten all about when next summer arrives and it is time to order more crabs for the season.

If you are told by a seller that they plan to release or dump hermit crabs you should calmly gather some information. Their name, business name, contact information etc. If you can get video footage or audio of them threatening to dispose of the hermit crabs that would be helpful. Don’t engage them or tip them off to your intentions, simply feign interest and collect the information you would need to get back in touch with them.

Now, contact your local Game Warden or Dept of Natural Resources and report this vendor.

Putting live animals in the trash is illegal.

Releasing non native animals is illegal.

Releasing an animal in a habitat in which it can’t survive is illegal in many places.

Encourage them to please go and speak to the person about the fate of these hermit crabs. Your local police department may not want to deal with this but the Dept of Game and Fish or Natural Resources WILL care. A visit from the local authorities or local news will be far more effective than you taking home 40 hermit crabs. Now they will be under scrutiny. Now they may think twice about ordering so many hermit crabs next year if they are forced to ethically deal with dozens of leftovers from this year.

No one person in our community has the ability to rescue large numbers of hermit crabs year after year. Our adoption program is not equipped to process that many crabs, nor will we devote our time and resources to aiding distributors and wholesalers of wild-caught hermit crabs. I cannot tell you what YOU should or should not do, but if you bring home dozens of hermit crabs, please do not do so with the impression that our adoption program will take on the burden of rehoming them all. Our program exists to help hermit crab owners, not wholesalers and distributors.

We must stand fast and be resolute in our convictions and our mission. We must stay focused on the larger mission.

I know it is SO HARD. SO VERY HARD to say no, I will not ‘rescue’ these crabs to help you. I will not feed the cycle of abuse.

Hmmm

HMMMMMM