Maxwell’s Cave

Photography has given me an unknown love for arthropods.

I grew up fearing wasps and hornets, then the fear stopped until it was triggered again by an horsefly bite (they hurt like hell). After years of being extremely afraid of wasps, the fear becoming lesser as I aged, I started photography and always wanted to take pictures of tiny wildlife.

In august 2023, I was curious enough to approach the wasps and hornets eating the rotting pears in the garden and cautiously took pictures. They're really calm critters when they're not harassing you for a bit of food.

The hornets (Vespa crabo) were focused on the sugary treats and didn't budge much when I when near them.

I feel a certain calm when I look at any animal living their life, it's just soothing to take the moment to sit and watch how they move and feed.

I was even a witness to a wasp on wasp crime !!!!

The black wasp is Isodontia mexicana and isn't native here. It likes the mint flowers but I guess a local wasp attacking it isn't that bad.

I love the diversity of wasps and how different they are from each other, it's very cool to see two different species interact.

No wasp was harmed however, a fly was.

It bit down so many times on its prey that it became pulp. I don't know which species of Vespula it was exactly, the wasp was quite small so I think... Vespula vulgaris ?

I'm glad I'm done with last year's july pictures. There were a lot of them, from the very beginning to the last day. Now I didn't deal with those until now because there was a lot I wanted to experiment on with them, mostly focus stacking and panoramas.

If you know about those, you get that it takes a lot of time to make one picture out of multiple. It takes time but at the end I'm glad I did them because they're interesting to look at.

I went to a cottage in the Vosges with a lot of other people from an association I am a part of (not sure I'll stay, I'll talk about it later) and brought my photography gear. Near that cottage was an enclosure full of cows and there were babies !!!

They're a cattle breed that's local to the area called Vosgienne, mostly used for milk production to make a smelly and delicious cheese called Munster.

I like it with potatoes and cold cuts since it's so melty. Some restaurants offer flammekueche (but only tourist say this, we say tarte flambée) with that cheese on it, it looks delicious but the recipes is mostly onions and I hate them.

ANYWAYS.

I really like looking at the way a cows back curves and how geometric they look. They're very aesthetic to me in a design way not in a cottage-core way.

Also, there were calves with angry eyebrows and it was very cute. Like... LOOK AT THEM !!!!

What made you SO MAD little one ??? I really like this picture, they look like two children. I imagine them in the 1920 with caps and selling newspapers but also hiding knives to defend themselves and convince people to give them a tip.

I think I decided to really become an artist in 2014. At the time, I was in high-school and the idea of trying to enter an art school came from seeing how little practice was in the art curriculum at a french university.

Not knowing anything better I submitted an embarrassing portfolio consisting of things I saw in the videos of people wanting to go in the

𝓒𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓪𝓷 𝓘𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓽𝓾𝓽𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓐𝓻𝓽𝓼

My portfolio neither had the quality to enter what I now know as an animation school and clearly wasn't focusing on concepts enough to go into the kind of school we have in France. I was motivated but my parents aren't artist, I didn't know any art student and my art professor pushed going to a university.

Instead I went into a preparation school that helped me understand what type of art school there are, what they wanted and how different from one another the teachings there can be. After that I tried 3 different schools and got 2 to accept me.

While I had nothing against the 3rd one at the time, knowing I fucked up during the entrance exam, learning how pretentious the professors were and how they treated not only my classmates but the students as well, pissed me of.

I wasn't mad they refused me because I already had the privilege of choice with the 2 schools I wanted. I was mad because despite not liking this particular classmate, they treated her condescendingly and mocked her in a very stressful situation.

She instead went to another school, less prestigious sure, but at least more adapted to what she did and wanted. I'm glad for her but that moment marked me and gave an idea of how little art school were concerned for the mental health of their students.

Nobody comes out, at least in France, of an art school intact, some people are traumatized, some left with severe burn out, some became the professor's black sheep (for good or bad reasons). I went there, excited to meet so many people, met the one person that was super manipulative, got social anxiety and never got any real friends.

Sure, I learned a lot of things about art, techniques, others and myself. However, I also learned that despite my best attempts at socializing, I felt unfulfilled, frustrated and developed a depression. I cried each birthday I had from my situation, had suicidal ideations, didn't quite understand what happened to me.

I felt like I never did enough for people and my professors made me feel like it. I got my diploma with the jury telling me I could have developed my ideas deeper and should step out of my comfort zone.

How do you step out of your comfort zone when it's the only thing making you survive and feel safer ?

You don't. You're mentally ill and you need something to cling unto while experiencing traumatic events.

I was isolated but each time I talked about it, people who told me they would make steps didn't or were too busy working on things of their own.

Trust me, I don't want to repel anyone from entering art school.

Be careful about who you meet and who's competitive mind is full of negative self-value. Inform yourself on where other students live and get near them, try to not be isolated or isolating yourself (if you can).

Your work might be amazing but if people only value you because of it, it's not right. You're a whole person, your feelings matter and friendships are VERY important to your art school experience.

I think what made me not quit, was mostly from the mindset I grew up with and the solidarity the class showed towards shitty things professors did to us. We legit scared the teachers because we would NOT shut up about how wrong and immature they could be.

I became aware of many things during these 3 years. Like my needs, gender identity, social issues... My experience was intense and honestly ? I don't recommend being me.

I don't speak for everyone there, I'm sure many got more positives than negatives but while I'm on friendly terms with my old classmates, I've never really been friends with them either.

ANYWAYS. Here's a picture of a scorpion-fly from this april :)

This week, I've been making steps towards prospecting again. Since I don't have a website available anymore (can't pay for now), I made my portfolios readable online. Now I have to send them to people. Thus, I made a Google Sheets document to organize and see when I contacted and when I need to recontact someone with the help of a friend.

So why am I talking about this if I have everything in my hand to promote my work via e-mails again ?

Well I don't.

Ever been stuck on a task because of fear and anxiety ? Panicked because you're tired of trying but still have to do it ? Yeah... That's me. My anxiety is related to the working world and my depression is triggered by my desperate attempts at surviving through this capitalistic nightmare.

What do you do when that happen ?

I honestly don't know. I don't like to force myself, my instincts tells me it's like running full speed at the danger. I guess I should fight this feeling and keep trying... It's not like I'm gonna die, I'm just gonna cry a lot, feel tight in my chest and sleep a lot for a few days...

I think writing about it here is better than nothing. At least some people can relate to it. I offer no solutions, sorry. After all, it is a blog I made for sharing stuff I did and yap about my life.

I'll update you people if I did it, for the moment, I'll keep searching for more people to contact, postpone an e-mailing attempt to tomorrow and share my Ko-fi.

If you want to help me make more pictures, you can send me a tip on my KO-FI.

Anyways, here's a few photos I took this year of the nearest white storks (Ciconia ciconia) nest.

Right now, the babies are grown enough to fly by themselves for the migration but during spring and summer, you could hear them clatter when a mate came back from foraging. I even took a video of them taking care of their babies.

I'm currently working on my portfolio and was thinking about what started my desire to work in art and when I started doing so. I guess other people approaching 30 y-o also think a lot about their past.

I believe my presence on the internet started in 2010, when I was 13 y-o. I created an account on Facebook because my favorite cousin moved there and wasn't on Skype anymore.

I was a naïve, sensitive, insecure, undiagnosed and bullied child. Friendships then weren't very good, I was constantly reprimanded for symptoms of my ADHD and probable autism.

However, I won't talk too in depth about it. I'm just giving context about how risky it was for me to have a presence online (less risky than nowadays though).

Back then, I hesitated between becoming an animal scientist or an artist. I think what made me chose the latter (apart from being bad at math) was the desire to share what I did. I used to show what I drew to my "friends" and my art teacher.

I wasn't confident, but I knew I had fun sketching and some pretty good skills. So I went ahead, created my online persona and started to display my art. I tried to gain more followers in the hope to find more people like me, who were passionate about drawing, make friends... I didn't go as far as 80 people until I went on Instagram, in 2016 (it was easy then, just had to post everyday and add the right tags).

I still don't have online ART friends, I wish I knew the steps to have mutuals become friends in a non-creepy way (I also know many minors are more active on social medias and I don't intend on befriending them, I'm 27, that's not appropriate). So most of my online friends are geeks (Wow ! Geeks on the internet ? Nobody would have guessed ! /s) but it's not the same as talking to people who know more about art.

Regardless of all that yapping, I'm still very much into sharing my sketches so here's a bunch of them.

I just sent out my document to ask for government aid. After years of postponing this, I did it.

I finally gathered the courage and energy I needed to complete the virtual paper !

Now I have to wait for up to 6 month for an answer, hope I'm handicapped enough for them to give me at least a little bit of money every month.

Being an independent artist is cool when you have enough contracts to live but having an handicap that makes you an incredibly low-energy anxious and distracted mess ? Less exciting.

I wish I could live by myself and draw a lot for other people, but as this blog shows it, I forget to update people about my life. Imagine having to update possible clients ???? /r

Anyway, here's a few pictures I took this april :)

Found this guy under a rotten log near where I live. It's a kind of millipede from the order julida, don't know what species it is, maybe Tachypodoiulus niger since it lives in the region ?

I think what I like on this website is that it's mostly focused on picture sharing and the tag system isn't as horrendous as Instagram or Twitter.

I like the ability of posting something without any description and just tags. I like that people here are ready to read your ramblings, the webdesign is a lot more calming.

I also much prefer typing and posting here than on other websites. Anyways, here's a few pictures for the day :)

Those green rose chafers (Cetonia aurata) were all over that hawthorn. They love the stuff, it's like they're drugged out of their mind. Chafers rubbing their faces inside the flowers and all.

The smell of hawthorns is really overpowering though, in a very oily, sticky and up your nose way. Guess that's how they get pollinated but the smell is so strong that it makes me tear up a bit. I don't know what species of hawthorn that was but I know it was one from the scent. Wish I went on INaturalist or Plantnet to check but it's too late.

Those pictures date back to this april. Now the bush has been destroyed along with the thistles, nettles and other wild plants. It was kinda sad for me because I wanted to show my friend how many beetles there was. Now I'm not as mad because the place is free for other plants to grow since the town left it free.

I like the pictures where they're reaching for the other flowers, those are pretty fun.

I also got a spicy picture.

Duh ! Gotta make sure to reproduce !

They walk over each other to reach other delicious flowers.

Can't believe it's been one year since I've created this.

Honestly, starting a Tumblr is like starting a sketchbook for me, I want it to be perfect so I can start it. Except unlike a physical object, I can't see it and forget it. (And that's on... ADHD)

I've done a few projects and took so many pictures. I also postponed a lot of photo "editing" (Learned that what I did wasn't really editing but developing digitally, but it feels weird to say this).

I have half a year's worth of pictures from 2023 and a year's worth for 2024. It's not even complicated but it can become really boring. I also have to do some focus stacking for some of them, so that takes time (gotta be precise you know).

My photo folder is filled with 825Go of pictures. I have more on my camera, I pretty much take a photo of any neat critter I locate in my garden (sometimes not with my camera thought).

Anyway, I'm back, not sure I wont forget about this blog AGAIN. I'll try to post a bit more around here, starting with this picture.

It has been a long while since I've created this account, not like a long long period but you get it, it's about time to post something here.

Since I'm a perfectionist, I like to restart my projects until everything feels right. I know it's not healthy and I'm trying to work on it. I want to create a sort of archive of my days and share it. It's like a newsletter minus the professionalism behind it.

IRL I'm an illustrator that's aching to have a lot more commissions and clients ; I aspire to a life free of financial worries.

On my free time, I like to hang out outside and observe the natural world. I take pictures of animals, plants and fungi. I'm currently dabbling into macrophotography.

I liked learning scientific facts about the natural world since childhood. It feels important to me to be able to know what surrounds you. What environnement you live in.

Anyway, I'll share drawings, pictures, text and more here. It's just a blog to help me put words of my mind. I always felt like a pretty journal is nice to share so here I am.

Have a good day,