Uncertain Imp

From

-is only a quarter of the way through this commute and it’s an hour later-

I made it to work at 8

I left work at 3:30

I am only halfway home and it is 5:45. Next bus doesn’t leave until 6:15 at the earliest.

CORRECTION: 6:45 at the earliest now!

Digital Art Commissions are OPEN

for text only info, and some additional stuff you can check out my Commission Info Page!

I'm not doing slots right now, commissions are on a first-come, first serve basis. Should demand be high enough, I may have to make a waitlist, but I'll announce that if it happens.

Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.

I've had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings "fat" and "obese," mostly along the lines of this:

"It's because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn't look like that!"

The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn't have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren't painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.

Supposedly. We'll see how well that holds up.

Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500's, Dürer tried to put together essentially a "how-to-draw" book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of "constructing" figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)

However, in his "constructed" drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.

I'm showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.

These are a couple of his more "average" women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.

Here's a "strong woman" and "A very strong, stout woman"

This is what he refers to as a "stout woman."

Here's where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a "peasant-type" woman

^That. That's what a "peasant" body type looks like.

He labeled this one "A peasant woman of 7 head lengths"

in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500's is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a "peasant woman" body type looks like!

He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they're not particularly emphasized over the "Strong" and "Stout" figures. Nor is there exactly a "default" figure. He's just...going over the range of variations that there are?

Here's another "stout woman," covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:

now that's too technical for me to make any sense of but

this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist's drawing advice

In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it's important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500's is telling you so, Die Mad About It

Don’t worry, Jonny-boy only stays incredibly oblivious and astoundingly wordy for...

Brochure about native fish: Remember to only fish for approved species at the appropriate time of year and only with a license and correct fishing gear. These rules exist to make sure we don’t damage local fish populations and these amazing animals can be around for future generations!

you remember that four year period when we desperately didn’t want Trump’s rampant stupidity, posturing, and disregard for…. so much to reflect the identity of the American people as a whole?

We need to offer the Russian people that same consideration. The people on the ground are Not Putin. Even the ones that have been snowed by propaganda.

and we CANNOT let these wildly ineffectual at best, damning at worst actions of Russophobia by major companies sway our opinion back into “all Russians are bad”. I’m not saying everyone is doing this, but a trap is being laid, and we cannot keep falling into it.

What Putin is doing is unconscionable. It’s incredibly wrong. But he is also an autocrat oligarch with an INCREDIBLE propaganda machine that reached as far as THE US ELECTIONS. We cannot let his bullshit represent The People anymore than Trump’s bullshit represented us.

Ways to support Ukraine 🇺🇦

More than 500,000 people have already left Ukraine due to the invasion by the Russian Federation. The European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management estimates that roughly 18 million Ukrainians will be affected by the conflict in humanitarian terms, with 7 million internally displaced and 4 million seeking refuge elsewhere. To help those still in Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian refugees, we’ve compiled this list of resources.

HelpUkraineWin.org has a collection of vetted and trusted resources, charities, and organizations to help Ukraine.

Some additional ways to donate:

Vostok SOS provides immediate evacuation support.

Malteser International provides essentials for Ukrainian refugees.

Ukraine Crisis Media Center provides fundraising links and a list of tips for sharing information.

Misinformation spreads fast on social media. It is more important than ever to share accurate, verifiable news and information. Here are some resources to learn how to identify misinformation:

This video from the nonprofit WITNESS shares tips for identifying authentic sources (available in English, Spanish, Ukranian, Russian, and Arabic).

These visual verification tips, also from WITNESS, provide information on verifying images and videos (available in English and Spanish).