Halloween is pretty fun if you’re a kid who has no fears and no allergies. It can be tough for other kids.
American politics is a mixed bag just like Halloween. Please be aware and be extra kind to those people who are marginalized, threatened, or otherwise adversely affected by the results of the recent election. What sounds to some like complaining about an allergy is, in actuality, legitimate fearing for their lives. Please, please listen and be kind.
september is coming up so here’s your yearly reminder to leave billie joe armstrong the fuck alone
Well of course. We don’t wake him up until October 1st.
His dad is dead, just don’t.
In case anyone reading my blog is unaware, this is a reference to the Green Day song titled “Wake Me Up When September Ends” a song that Billie Joe Armstrong wrote following the death of his father in September of 1982 when Billie Joe was ten years old. The title of the song references his desire to sleep through September in an effort to get some emotional distance from the death of his father.
He’s since been open about the emotional difficulty of having written the song since many people now message him on October 1st to ‘wake him up’ despite the song being a memorial to his departed father.
It’s generally seen as respectful to not try to wake him up. Let him sleep and let him remember his father in peace.
reblogging again because the end of September is coming up. leave him alone.
Reblogging as a reminder to leave Billie Joe Armstrong the fuck alone on October 1st and any day after it if your message is going to contain anything to do with “waking” him up because September will be over.
Friendly reminder to all working artists or (especially) aspiring artists.
If a client says they can’t afford to pay you but you’ll get good exposure, one of two things is happening:
1. They are lying. They can afford to pay you, but they are choosing not to. They will pay the printer to print the books, they will pay the mail service to deliver them, and you’d better believe they’re going to pay themselves for sending you an email explaining that they can’t afford to pay you. They think you are a sucker, and if you take the job you’ll be telling them they are right.
2. They are not lying. They have zero budget, no audience and no real distribution system. They’ll still be paying the printer and mail service because people who work in those professions don’t work for free just because someone promises them a recommendation. But they aren’t paying themselves, they’re running on an incredibly small margin, and there’s a good chance they won’t exist as a corporate entity in a few years. Publishing your work with them will give you less exposure than putting it on tumblr or Instagram for free would. It will never lead to a paying job.
If a client starts ranting about the “short-sightedness” of artists, or otherwise complains about artists in general in their opening offer to you, run. Run as fast as you would run if a blind date spent the whole of dinner ranting about how horrible your entire gender is. Yes, there are doubtlessly clients who’ve been screwed over by artists in the past, but the ones who complain about artists in general will not respect you, they will not treat you well.
Working for free does not prove that you are passionate about something. It proves that you do not need to be paid for your work. How many doctors went into medicine because they are passionate about saving lives? Do you think any of them are asked to perform heart surgery for free?
No one will ever pay $50 for something if they can get something similar for $5. When you charge next to nothing for art that you’ve worked for hours on, art that required years of training to create, you are telling your client that it is worth next to nothing. They will remember that the next time they want to hire an artist.
People who are looking to exploit artists know that artists are hard on themselves. They know that most artists don’t think their work is good enough to charge top dollar. They know that artists have been told from the first day they started taking their art seriously as a career that they’ll never make any money off it, that it’s not a real job, that it has no value to society. They know how to push artists’ insecurities about their profession in order to convince them that that demanding fair compensation is unrealistic and uncooperative.
If you’re just desperate for a job in the arts, any job in the arts, give yourself a job. Start a webcomic, or give yourself illustration assignments that you post on social media regularly, create work for a gallery show even if you don’t have one yet, or make a book. Give yourself a job. If you’re going to work for free, you may as well be working for yourself, setting your own hours and following your own interests. Having original art with original characters and ideas in your portfolio, and making sure your art is visible online will get the attention of publishers who are actually looking to hire people for good jobs. Drawing a shitty comic for a defunct publisher based on someone else’s shitty ideas will not.
Protect yourself, because no one else will. Protect yourself, because no one else will. There are people lining up around the block to exploit you. Protect yourself because no one else will.
I always say ‘get a hobby’ on here but I’m not joking get a hobby it’s literally so good for you! Like you learn something new, get to reclaim passion and interest that you thought you lost forever to mental illness, it feels nice being decent at something, and it gives you something to talk about if you’re like me and have a hard time conversing with others. And basically anything can be a hobby? You daydream a lot well now your hobby’s worldbuilding! You like going for walks now your hobby’s local sightseeing. This is a pro-hobby blog 100%
don’t make other people’s decisions for them. apply for the job you don’t think you’ll get. let them decide if you have the skills they’re looking for. tell that person you like them even though you think they’re out of your league. let them decide if they like you. stop trying to predict and control everything. bring what you have to the table. let the rest go.
Confidence is not ‘they will like me’, it is ‘I’ll be fine, or even better off, if they don’t’.
Brooklyn nine nine is a great show with great representation but this definitely needed to be said. even the “woke” shows can be offensive and harmful. Everyone needs to keep learning and do better.
There’s a fine line between “pushing yourself out of your comfort zone” and “pushing yourself into a mental breakdown” and we need to fucking find it and stop encouraging people to do the second in an attempt at making them do the first.
A German pedagogue named Tom Senninger developed this model called the “Learning Zone Model.” Senninger talks about three zones: comfort, learning (or growth), and panic. I think that’s really important because some people do talk like anything “outside your comfort zone” is automatically good and brings growth.
But Senninger knows that you can only stretch so far before you’ve stretched too far. Both experience, personal work, and therapy can help expand the first two zones and shrink the third, but we’ll always have that place where panic and/or pain sets in, and our goal should be to recognize and respect that in ourselves and others, rather than force ourselves or someone else to “push through it.” There is no “through it.” The only thing on the other side of the panic zone is more panic.
Izzie’s tumblr archive 