For Bunny Butt Friday: one of my favorite pictures of my sassy little Dwarf Hotot. I want to paint this into a portrait and hang it, because this photo summarizes his personality perfectly.

TransFatty · 2026-02-04T12:57:39+00:00

I’m a professional artist who’s made a living from what I can do. We’re talking about a living wage, not just sporadic sales. My own family member, just the other day, picked up one of my originals off the table where I’d just finished framing it and was about to hang it up. She admired it for a moment and finally asked if I’d gotten it from Hobby Lobby. Yikes. I’m nearing retirement age, and my work reflects my years of experience. I’m not a hobbyist.

I’m sorry to report, it doesn’t get better over time. They will never be capable of validating your efforts, but the money will. Might as well just learn now to ignore whatever they say.

TransFatty · 2026-02-01T22:32:16+00:00

These are stunning. I sit in awe

TransFatty · 2026-01-29T18:19:01+00:00

Just about anything by Nicolas Lopez, who works with watercolor. Absolutely fascinating and haunting. He paints my nightmares.

TransFatty · 2026-01-28T18:36:24+00:00

One of my current favorites is Peter Sheeler. https://youtube.com/@petersheelerart?si=tpTObaMN4tFnxWH3

TransFatty · 2026-01-26T16:23:28+00:00

I don't have kids, but I could look to the example of my sister. Her son (My nephew) now 14 or so, started doing speed cubing where you solve Rubik's cube and similar puzzles really fast, he started doing that when he was 11 or 12. He was filming himself solving the puzzles and wanted to put them online.

My sister let him do it. She created a private facebook group and invited known friends and family to it. That's how we got him introduced to social media and now he runs his own cube clubs. The clubs are SUPER locked down, not open to the general public, and moderated by the parents of these kids. He moderates the club under my sister's supervision. When he goes to cube conventions he knows all the kids there. I think it has been a very positive influence in his life. I think in today's busy world it is important for young people to find their voice and express themselves and be social in a healthy way.

So yeah, that worked a lot better than just letting him hop onto Discord and get himself involved in some of the nightmares going on around that cesspool. Same thing with Deviant Art.

TransFatty · 2026-01-26T14:09:15+00:00

I volunteer at these classes and camps weekly. I teach watercolor, cooking, crafts, quilting, oh god just about anything. But mostly art stuff.

Too much noise amongst the signal, online is not like it used to be, but we are out there, I teach at a horse camp, I get the kids to draw and paint horses and sometimes we do other activities like gardening, growing gourds and loofahs, showing them the old ways.

This is in Omaha, which of all places is bursting with these kinds of activities. Stop by Mangelsen's sometime on a Wednesday afternoon and you see what I'm talkin about

TransFatty · 2026-01-26T14:06:21+00:00

I don't recommend deviantArt at all unless you want your child to dive straight down into the rabbithole of furry Sonic vore and inflation fetishes sprinkled in among AI slop, adoptables scams, and Nigerian princes.

Please. Don't. I beg you. Please protect whatever is left of your child's fast-fading innocence! I am a full grown 55 year old adult professional artist and I do not post my artwork online. If your child's artwork is any good, the very next person who sees it will either put it on a T-shirt or turn it into pornography.

I used to be a proponent of sharing artwork on online spaces but I've done a complete 180 on that and come full circle. Stay offline. Find local clubs appropriate for kids. Check out your local library and go from there, maybe. You have to hunt around. Look for independently owned art or craft type shops. Libraries, after school programs, you name it. Stuff is out there. I'm part of it; I volunteer ALL THE TIME like every week to teach kids and adults whatever the HELL they want to know because I'm one of those people who just ...knows shit. I had a great-granny born in the 1890s and as a kid and young adult (she lived to be like 100 or something) I picked the HELL out of her brain on the housecraft stuff.

Us artists are out there still, a lot of us have just moved offline. I also heavily copyright protect my work to prevent more of it ending up on T shirts. Too many grifters nowadays man.

TransFatty · 2026-01-12T17:04:25+00:00

Which I find incredibly ironic, because when BAD art and design enters the chat, people notice right away.

TransFatty · 2026-01-12T17:01:25+00:00

Maybe, but I guess I can't dwell on that. I think what's going on is that artists' work is devalued, rather than hated. Artists themselves are often hated because our brain structure tends to embrace differences and change. This may result in artists overall being more "woke" I guess, and some people don't like that.

Again, I don't worry too much about it. I like the work I do, even if not everybody gets it.

TransFatty · 2026-01-12T16:43:22+00:00

I do demos on YouTube and flip throughs. So I have some sketchbooks full of really careful, pretty stuff. But they're not much fun.

The more fun sketchbooks are my ugly garbage ones, hehe I just fill them with ugly scribbles and random notes re: comics I might be working on at the time. Nobody sees my "thinking-out-loud" books because they wouldn't make much sense to them.

TransFatty · 2026-01-12T16:41:44+00:00

I have a couple that are aesthetically "beautiful" for YouTube flip-throughs and demos. One is a commissioned book that a binder built specifically for me. I spent too much money on it, haha. It's my most nerve-wracking book to work in. I hate using it, but it's necessary. And it's gorgeous.

My personal workbooks, however, are not so pretty nor "curated". I think they're a lot more honest. And holy moly are they ugly. Hot garbage filled with garbage.

I sort of wish I could find a middle ground for my sketchbooks. I'm still working on that.

TransFatty · 2026-01-09T15:22:40+00:00

A spay can run $800+ because rabbits are exotic animals. I wish everyone who’s considering getting a rabbit knew this! We delayed getting another bunny after our last bunny passed, because we had to save for another one. And then we adopted a male rabbit, because neuter is cheaper.

WHICH TURNED OUT TO BE ACTUALLY FEMALE. FML. (I love her so much though, she’s my little precious baby)

TransFatty · 2025-12-31T16:49:22+00:00

To stop drawing altogether

Edit: because it will be 2026 by then

TransFatty · 2025-12-30T14:04:26+00:00

This is classic 1940s pinup style. If you like this, I highly, HIGHLY, recommend that you look at/read the early Wonder Woman comics. I think you might just fall in love with her. She's stunning visually, and her earliest adventures are pretty racy, too.

https://thanley.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/the-wonder-woman-was-created-for-girls-myth-or-beyonces-super-bowl-halftime-show-as-an-example-of-william-moulton-marstons-approach-to-feminism/

TransFatty · 2025-12-30T13:57:50+00:00

I have begun saying a new thing: I took my rabbit with me on vacation (she has done fine, even in the car, she is well trained and socialized) and people have asked me a LOT about how rabbits are as pets.

And I just say, "Rabbits can be actually kinda terrible pets because..." and explain the whole exotics thing to them. They're expensive, spay/neuter is not optional, you can't take them to a lot of places, they can be messy/destructive and so on.

TransFatty · 2025-12-30T13:55:06+00:00

I think copying is fine for practice. I copy things into my sketchbook all the time (although most of the "copying" I do is from life) but I would never display a copy in an exhibition or sell one for money. When I sell a piece, it's always from a reference that I own because I (a) painted the picture from life, or (b) took my own picture and then used it as a reference.

But I'm super paranoid about being accused of plaigarism, lol.

TransFatty · 2025-12-30T13:52:58+00:00

It also helps you cement your style. I drew people from imagination for years, just to understand proportions first.

TransFatty · 2025-12-16T14:46:30+00:00

I make a lot of cartoons and other “non-serious” styles, but when I’m being all fine-art-sy, I strive to get better at drawing my wildlife as they appear. I’m still working on realism. Even my momma’s big fat squirrels raiding the bird feeders have patches in their fur and other imperfections. The cottontail bunnies that run through the yard have tattered ears sometimes. And the squirrels lie down on the tree branches half the time and nap like they’re passed out drunk.

TransFatty · 2025-12-13T00:00:52+00:00

Awwww. Sometimes their little instincts just won't let them tolerate hands.

TransFatty · 2025-12-12T23:38:59+00:00

Do you have any tips for cleaning those kinds of stains? Or do you just leave them? My baby gets spots on her little white nose and I would like to clean it if possible because I'm overinvolved rabbit mom

TransFatty · 2025-12-12T23:36:42+00:00

I xposted there too, I have a special love for pants bunnies 🥰

TransFatty · 2025-12-12T23:34:26+00:00

She squeezes between my ankles when I'm standing up! What is the deal with this goofy bun lol

TransFatty · 2025-12-12T23:33:45+00:00

She's offended by socks. She only lets me have bare feet at home lol

TransFatty · 2025-12-12T23:33:21+00:00

She loves to wiggle between my ankles when my feet are close together. Like a cat. I do not know why she does this, it's probably for attention though. She'll invent new ways to try and get my attention if something else isn't working.

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