Let me drink your Voice

Some lesser seen rodents... & non-rodents

Striped grass mice (x3), lowland streaked tenrec, Luzon cloud rat, Paca, Eurasian hamster, European hedgehog

Worth reading if you're interesting the tradition of blind women becoming mediums -> (FULL ARTICLE HERE)

To summarize,

What you call this type of shaman varies across region.

It is treated as a trade, passed from master to apprentie. There is no attachment to any formal priesthood or religious institution.

The role of this shaman type is explicitly to commune with spirits, often the dead.

It is rare. In raw numbers, but also when compared to other Shaman types. It also become much rarer with time, all the Shamans interviewed were born between 1897-1939 when this study was done (1990's).

References are awesome and I love them so much. I honestly find this ask a little confusing because like... What do you mean take? Are there people who believe the only pure art is that which comes entirely from the images in your head? That's scary.

Anyway, here are my favorite reference resources:

Animal Photo Art Reference Search - One of my favorite tools. This is a really handy way to easily get reference photos of animals at very specific angles.

Pose Search - Created by the same developer as the animal ref search. This one allows you to search for photos of specific human anatomy in different poses, using a handy little skeleton doll.

Internet Archive's "Painting from Photographs" Category (+ other related categories) - Full of some really great reference books. I especially love using books because they're curated by another human and they often come with some helpful discussions to guide you.

STL Finder - Technically built for 3D printing, but I find it really helpful for finding high-quality 3D models to reference. Any time I'm drawing a difficult object (like a long gun or some armor helms), I find it helpful to just download one of these and pull it up in Blender to help me get some references at the exact angle I'm looking for.

Unsplash - My favorite free stock photo website. Unlike search engines like Google Images, every photo on this site has been uploaded by its photographer, so you can easily link back to them to credit them for any studies of their work. I also use this site a lot for creating textures for my overlays & backgrounds.

ArtFight Attacks #23 and #24! :3

Day 14, Blue-throated Hillstar

Critically endangered (80-110 mature individuals, decreasing)

This hummingbird wasn't discovered until 2018. It lives in a small area in the páramos of southwestern Ecuador, where its habitat is being burnt for agriculture and further degraded by cattle grazing

It's also vulnerable to climate change as the bushes it depends on have trouble re-growing during dry periods

Dragonblood Sorcerer

looking into an uncertain future