Hey friends, it’s Meg!

1. Do not keep them in pairs. Hamsters are loners - keeping them together often results in stress, fighting, injuries and death. They are very happy alone. 

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2. Minimum cage size

dwarf hamsters: 30 x 20 x 20 inches (80x50x50cm);

bigger hamsters: 40 x 20 x 20 inches (100x50x50cm)!

NOT like this: 

Living in cages like this for them is like a human living in an elevator - a lot too small and even dangerous! 

For them it feels like this:

Behavior like this is a signal for stress because the cage is too small or that they need more bedding:

Better:

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3. Your hamster (always!) needs a hamster wheel - and it must be a lot bigger than you might think! 

Hamster must be able to run with a completely straight back

on a closed surface

with a closed back wall! 

NOT like this: 

Results of those wheels are: spine problems, backache, stress, injuries! 

Minimum wheel size for dwarf hamsters: 9-10 inches. 

Minimum wheel size for bigger hamsters: 12 inches! 

Better: 

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4. Do not buy them plastic tubes (at all): 

Those tubes are not suitable at all: Hamsters get stuck or suffocate in them easily. 

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5. Your hamster needs enough bedding to dig and build tunnels.

NOT like this:  

Better: 

Your hamster will be extremely happy and dig around and build tunnels all day (night). 

A study also found out that (golden) hamsters need up to 12-36 inches of bedding, so just do your best do give them the highest amount of bedding possible. :)

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6. The less plastic the better! 

NOT like this:

Plastic gets swallowed, splinters, can injure or even kill your hamster. 

Better: 

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7. Hamsters ALWAYS need a sand bath.

Hamsters love rolling around in the sand, for them it’s like showering. How would you feel without a shower? 

You can use those little baths as toilets, but you still need a bigger sand bath!

Better:

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8. Hamsters need a house with at least 2 or more chambers to store food, sleep etc. Also make sure that your hamster does have enough hiding places like coconuts, small houses, toilet rolls! 

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9. Do use unperfumed toilet paper for nesting material, don’t use “hamster wool” -> it can tangle around a limb and seriously hurt and even kill your hamster! 

NOT like this: 

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10. Never ever ever put your hamster or any animal in a hamster ball. 

They can’t get out, might suffocate or panic, might run against furniture and seriously injure themselves. The ventilation is terrible, your hamster can’t see/smell/hear enough or use any of their senses properly.

In some countries they even discuss about banning those by law! 

Even if you think that “your hamster has fun in it” - please don’t use them! 

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Please reblog and spread this information.

Pet stores often are very misinformed and sell terrible cages and have little to no idea how to keep a happy hamster - please be careful when trusting them. In the end they often just want to make money - and the hamsters suffer. 

Please adopt, not buy hamsters - there are too many hamsters in this world that we need any more breeding. 

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MASTERPOST: Cheap Cages And Supplies For Hamsters - IKEA

~ more to come ~

(Sorry for the spelling errors - I made this post in a rush.)

Hi! No, not anymore; I switched over to MediBang Paint (cloudalpaca) a while ago, but they’re very similar since they’re made by the same people.

The main difference is the materials panel which is what lets me add patterns/textures/screentones and stuff like that:

the tiles are repeating, while the tones are single “sheets”. the program comes with a bunch of them (you get a lot more by making an account (free) which also has some other features) and you can upload your own into the program. transparent textures is a site I know has a lot of patterns and textures.

to add textures you just have to drag it onto the canvas, then you can move it around, rotate, zoom using the options it gives you, then push OK. if you only want to cover a certain area, just select w either the magic wand / lasso / select pen / etc, and drag inside there:

in terms of painterly feel.. um… i tend to merge things into single layers as I go along and work on top of those over and over so I dont have any past stuff I can use as examples but in terms of colouring, I dont generally do line art and use my sketches instead, and usually put more attention in the hair, then keep everything else kinda simple? (it’s a style derived from laziness…. ha… ;;;)

I like this sketch of minato’s head from earlier, so I’ll colour it as example:

sometimes they’re clean, sometimes they’re super messy, but in the end it doesnt make a huge difference (I consider this very clean)

i use square bitmap brushes to sketch/colour:

sometimes I might use the mapping pen to sketch on smaller canvases or for really exact details

(I use a lot of quick strokes, and for blending stuff like blushes a lot of quick tapping) (there are other types of brushes like watercolour though if that’s more your thing)

next, I colour in the base colours on a layer underneath. I try to keep inside the sketch, but i dont care if it’s messy inside nor is it a big deal if it bleeds the sketch. Some quick, blocky shading on the skin/clothes. if there are a lot of colours or I want to even it out a bit, I might add an overlay/screen/etc layer on top now, or wait until later to do so. 

after that, I make a new layer over the sketch and colour in the hair w the shade colour entirely, then I shade that with a darker colour. on a new layer, I colour with the base colour. then I merge these, the sketch, and the base and fix some of the shading and lines. I pick colours that show up when I added the base as lighter shading. Sometimes I add highlights, sometimes I dont. then I add some quick blocks of the base to hide the shading and make it, I guess, less shiny?

it looks like a lot of steps, but this is usually done pretty sketchily, with some attention really only being given in 4/5, maybe 6

everything else is just blending the shading with quick strokes, overlapping the base and shade, and cleaning up the sketch. usually done on one layer.

the sketchy/blocky -ness is probably what gives it a “painterly” feel? idk