No Hats.

Anthropomorphic Tree

Bots - talking amongst themselves - via

for 15 minutes

waiting for the look on his face when he gets to the smallest one

15 minutes

of staring 

i trusted you

do you understand 

Best possible alt box art? Yes, best possible alt box art.

A mysterious 250-ft hole has appeared at the “end of the world”

The slightly-terrifying maw has emerged in the peninsula of Yamal, whose name roughly translates to “the end of the world” (yes, reality is stranger than fiction). According to the Siberian Times, an oil company’s helicopter crew discovered the hole in this gas-rich region. It’s located less than 20 miles from Russia’s largest gas field, Bovanenkovo, and seems like an entrance to a massive cavern.

And it’s got an all too familiar cause

I feel like TF2 really established great standard for character design and silhouette even though all the characters are super stylised they still look like real people, every detail feels unique even all their ears are different.

This kind of attention to detail seems pretty underappreciated outside of the fanbase in general.

Plus the amount of personality and expression that comes out of these characters is very self evident in all of the meet the shorts

my two favourites still being Meet the Demoman and Meet the Engineer

Like yeah…not only do they have unique noses, jaws, ears even…valve even took the extra step to give them each distinct teeth. 

My character design teacher has brought up TF2, and the concept art by Moby Francke, a few times in class. For one Moby Francke was highly inspired by the great artist J.C. Lyendecker.

And many of the key components in designing the character is gesture, shape and silhouette, and just getting in great key components that create story telling. 

*Climbs out of trashcan*

Peter Lely

Portrait of Elizabeth Murray

England (c. 1650)

Oil on canvas, 124 x 119 cm

ALL. THE. TIME.

Level 1: People of Color from Medieval, Renaissance, and other Early Modern European works were often literally painted over in later decades or centuries.

For example: In this painting, Giulia de’Medici (the child) was painted over in the 19th century:

Level 2: It was very fashionable in a lot of 17th and 18th century paintings to have a Black servant featured in portraits of very important historical figures from European History.

Honestly? They’re practically ubiquitous. A lot of the very famous paintings you’ve seen of European and American historical figures have a Black servant in them that have been cropped out or painted over.

Those silly stock photos from your American History Professor’s Powerpoint?

Your Professor’s PowerPoint for “George Washington”:

The actual painting:

Your professor’s Powerpoint on Jean Chardin:

The actual painting:

PowerPoint on Maria Henriette Stuart (with some commentary about the Habsburg jaw):

Actual Painting:

But, because of whitewashed history curricula, teachers and professors continue to use the cropped images because they don’t want their lecture to get “derailed” by a discussion about race.

These images are also more commonly seen on stock photo sites, including ones for academic use.

I honestly can’t find anyone really writing about this, or even any analysis on how often the cropped photos are used.

The reason they are so easy to crop out is because of the the artistic conventions which reflect the power hierarchy:

Oil paintings of aristocratic families from this period make the point clearly. Artists routinely positioned black people on the edges or at the rear of their canvasses, from where they gaze wonderingly at their masters and mistresses. In order to reveal a ‘hierarchy of power relationships’, they were often placed next to dogs and other domestic animals, with whom they shared, according to the art critic and novelist David Dabydeen, ‘more or less the same status’. Their humanity effaced, they exist in these pictures as solitary mutes, aesthetic foils to their owners’ economic fortunes.

This is drastically oversimplified, but at least it addresses it directly.

It’s also worth mentioning that part of why I focus on Europe-which is a subject of some valid criticism, considering how little time is usually spent on non-Western cultures in history related classes-is because what MUST be included in U.S. world history education by high schools and colleges is according to strict guidelines that are Eurocentric and/or Western-centric.

Educators  are often working under pretty strict conditions about what they HAVE to teach you. It’s my hope that by providing a lot of specific examples from eras and artists, professors and high school teachers will be able to make their powerpoints and handouts more representative of the people in the classroom and still stay within the dictates of their department or institution.