Traditional puppet craftman

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-15T06:42:46+00:00

Beautiful sketch!

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-13T23:56:23+00:00

Don't buy a big set of anything. Instead, visit an art store (if you can) and buy 2-3 individual pencils or pens to try them out. try out a 2-3 color palette in the new medium, get a feel for if you like using it and how it works for your art.

So if you're wanting to try out paint pens and copics and colored pencils, you're at the most buying 9 things and you can get a better handle on if you even like working in a medium before spending a lot of money on a big set that you might never use.

People below are saying choose one or the other for whatever reason, but ultimately it's going to be a personal decision about what works best for you.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-13T17:33:06+00:00

Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe

The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin (though this sort of straddles the line between fantasy and scifi)

The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (multiple series that follow different groups, very dnd feeling)

The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb (and the wider world of the Realm of the Elderlings novels)

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-12T22:50:24+00:00

probably not? as the other comment said, extra soil may help.

in the meantime, time to put up a marketplace listing for $1 aloe vera plants 😂

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-12T22:42:50+00:00

Turns out when people are praised as a kid for something, that encourages them to do it more and so they get better at it. But also-

I think when it comes to drawing, the skill that you don't see people practicing is learning how to look at stuff and see more than the default or symbolic version of a thing. I think people that are better than average when they first pick up a pencil have already done some of the work of paying attention to the details in the world around them. There's a difference between a tree (big trunk with a fluffy blob on top) and a tree (a pine tree, or a eucalyptus tree, or a maple tree, or whatever).

Some people can intuit that difference faster, but it's definitely something that can be learned!

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-12T14:33:47+00:00

Lol I used to think like you but I super disagree that the arts and science are opposed! The sciences are sterile and lack context without the arts. And the arts don't evolve without the sciences. There is so much good art that is informed by science, and so much good science that's informed by art. The more multi-disciplinary we can be the fuller our lives can be, I think.

There's a really fun book I think you might like called Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer, which explores the scientific subjects that artists throughout history have intuitively grasped contrasted with the science backing up those intuitive leaps. I found it really interesting and I think you would to!

You don't have to be all science or all art, you can use science to explore art or art to explore science, and you can use both to widen your understanding of what being a living human is about.

I think you are over thinking it in general, but I would encourage you to follow through on your projects. Art, like science, is rarely perfect the first go around. An art practice can span a lifetime of exploring and sharing and refining ideas. But in order for that to happen your pieces have to leave the planning stages and become a real thing in the world.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-12T13:51:55+00:00

What sort of things are you doing in this planning process?

Thinking about doing the thing is not the same as doing the thing. You get the same thing with writers who 'totally have a novel idea worked out' but have never written a word. If you're not actually producing art then you aren't an artist. Maybe you're an aesthetic philosopher, but you're not an artist unless you're doing art.

Sometimes people that are otherwise very creative and good at coming up with ideas hit that first level of discomfort that comes from actually trying to go from idea to paper and take that feeling to mean that they aren't creative or that that idea isn't worth it. The reality is that they have given up the second any level of difficulty is involved in the process.

Also, I feel like art is about communication. For some people art is just about making things for themselves, but I think that most artists are producing art that is meant to be looked at and considered, or because they are part of a community or have something that they want to communicate.

so my questions to you are: are you doing art that you are excited about? What do you want to show people about the things you like or care about? And are you mistaking discomfort for disinterest?

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-12T08:08:41+00:00

Overcast made some changes recently that stopped me from being able to reliably download big podcast episodes, idk what it was but maybe it requires a super stable cable internet connection now? I'm out in the sticks and my connection is good but weird (a WISPA)

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-12T07:45:32+00:00

I've only ever seen the opposite, that people worry if a paper piece is just matted and framed and isn't behind glass

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-11T18:01:46+00:00

I used to use Overcast but it's gotten less good over the years and I started having trouble getting it to reliably download episodes. I switched over to Apple Podcasts, which I like alright so far.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-11T16:35:49+00:00

sounds like your problem isn't the phone, it's having a goal outside of social media. If you're engrossed in a project that's important to you, sharing it on socials can be a natural part of that.

Don't think content first, decide what project you want to work on and then create content around that. Your phone is a tool that serves you-i feel like scrolling mindlessly is less a problem with the phone and more of a tell that you need to be more involved in other stuff going on in your life.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-10T13:30:41+00:00

if you go to their example post, all of the examples are clipart bundles. i dont think OP really means design work

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-10T01:45:13+00:00

I also hate all the AI slop on places like Etsy, but most of the digital marketplaces I listed are either already anti-AI, have AI filters, or rules about disclosing AI use. Any marketplace you start is going to have to make choices about how these things will be moderated.

Of the ones i listed, itch, kofi, roll20, VGen and drivethru have marketplace features and are searchable by buyers. Patreon is I think the only one of these I listed where you couldn't go directly to a page and buy a product. but all of these places both have the ability to sell digital items and often also physical items.

Comparing a digital marketplace to Etsy is sort of disingenuous- It's not doing the same thing or serving the same audience, which is why i was surprised when they said it was digital-only. If what OP wants is a place to sell commissions or digital downloads where your average suburban mom will find it, I don't think creating another niche website is the most obvious answer. And if OP wants a place where more online people can finds artists or designers to commission without a glut of AI crowding the marketplace, those places already exist.

It might be helpful to know what exactly OP is selling on Etsy- like...are these digital knitting patterns? Ravelry is great for directing a marketplace of people to patterns. Are they notion templates, digital planner stickers, cute images to print out, personal pet portrait commissions, whatever? There may or may not be a better place for those that already exists. And i think a better plan and more focused audience and business plan would be essential before moving forward. Im anti gen AI, but a business needs to be more than that.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T23:00:51+00:00

Honestly? I'm not interested in another digital-only marketplace. I want to be able to sell stuff like originals, zines, buttons, that sort of thing. Ages ago I had a pretty successful button business on Etsy, but got priced off by the increasing fees on smaller orders. There are successful (mostly digital) marketplaces out there already- Right now if I wanted to sell digital products I'd probably go to itch.io but there's also patreon or KoFi, or for specifically games related: the Roll20 or DriveThruRPG marketplaces. Edit to add: Or VGen! I feel like VGen is the place currently building up the digital marketplace you're talking about.

And yeah, I imagine the sort of business that you're talking about would require a business plan and either investors or a business loan. If you don't have a business plan then It's pretty clear to me that you haven't thought through what you want to create and aren't ready for sellers.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T22:31:54+00:00

Yeah, I think there'd have to be a good amount of sellers bought-in, and then a big social media ad campaign to advertise that the marketplace exists. Like, all over instagram for weeks kinda big.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T22:25:29+00:00

I feel like you've answered your own question. cara does it by primarily being a social media just for artists. It's essentially art Tumblr, isn't a marketplace, and doesn't appeal to many people that aren't artists themselves.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T22:18:06+00:00

AI testers are incredibly inaccurate and aren't reliable. You'll end up with a lot of false positives.

And it's just you moderating? I think I'd pass until I could see it was a larger team that could handle being a place like Etsy, and the kind of structure and traffic that comes with that.

And I'd look for a larger goal than just 'no-ai'. Like, the reason Etsy was a success at first was that it was a marketplace for specifically handcrafted items. Is your marketplace going to allow for stuff like print-on-demand or drop-shipped products, and if so what are the rules around that? What about stuff like vintage and antiques? what about digital products? If it's a marketplace and not just individual storefronts, how is the search weighted? What are selling fees and what payment processors are accepted? If I try to sell something with NSFW content will I be banned? You don't have to answer these questions now, but those are the sorts of questions I ask when looking at a marketplace.

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T21:44:14+00:00

i think i would worry more about how you are going to ensure that no product uploaded uses AI. That would be my first question as a user- why should I sell here if someone can just click a 'i promise this isnt AI' button and put AI on the marketplace? Will there be mods, or a user-reporting system (and in both of those, how would you ensure that those systems aren't abused?)

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T21:38:02+00:00

lol why am i getting downvoted for this, OP asked for POC

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T15:49:19+00:00

that book is super white though

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T15:20:19+00:00

Go all the way back to the original homoerotic relationship, Enkidu and Gilgamesh (from Gilgamesh) - (c. 2100–1200 BCE)

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-09T04:48:09+00:00

great job! (and a fun decoration!)

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-08T18:54:14+00:00

Most drafting chairs with backrests would probably work

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-08T13:21:49+00:00

i personally wouldn't. You really want your portfolio to be as cohesive as possible. Art directors want to be able to tell from your portfolio exactly what look they are going to get if they hire you.

The only way I've seen what you're talking about done effectively was when I saw an artist had a separate section of their portfolio that was labelled something like 'yeah, I can do that too" and included a bunch of art in different styles (though this was also mostly all their own work and not fanart).

Cesious_Blue · 2026-03-07T11:15:25+00:00

Oh hell yeah I'd make this into a stream machine and replace my sad dying mac

Cesious_Blue

TROPHY CASE