tainted-sweet-meats:

nightingales:

Before we begin: being confident is not synonymous with turning into an ego driven delusional maniac, just as being humble is not synonymous with being self-deprecating and negative. Okay? Got it? Awesome.

Why should you care about being more confident? Ultimately you will feel better as an artist, you will feel better about your work, other people will feel better about you and your work, and you’ll attract other artists with the same attitude, which in turn will likely motivate you to be more positive about your own work and about the work of others. All good things!

As artists we all seem to think that an attitude of negativity is the one that is most acceptable when it comes to ourselves and our work. That is wrong. I’m here to (hopefully) encourage a more positive outlook on ourselves as artists and our work!

1. Accept compliments. When someone pays you a compliment, say ‘thank you’. Don’t say ‘thank you, but I don’t deserve it,’ ‘Thank you but there are better artists out there than me’. ACCEPT IT. Own it. Realise that someone liked your work enough to tell you! Don’t insult them by saying ‘your taste is bad’, because when you throw back a compliment, that’s what you’re saying. You’re also saying you’re not good enough, and you ARE good enough!
   
   
2. Don’t compliment other artists by undermining yourself. ‘I love your work’. There you go. YOU’VE DONE IT. YAY! You’ve paid a compliment to another artist without tearing yourself down! Don’t ever say ‘I love your art; I’ll never be as good as you.’ ‘Your art is so good, it makes me want to stop drawing forever.’ God, no one wants to hear that. No one wants to deal with that. ‘Your art is so wonderful, it really inspires me to keep working on my own’. THAT’S the real compliment you wanted to pay.
   
   
3. Speak positively about your work. If you don’t care about your work, if you don’t like your work, then why should anyone?
   
   Don’t send mixed signals where you post your work (ok, cool, so, you want us to care), then you say ‘this sucks, I’m terrible, another awful piece from me’ (??? what’s going on), then someone tentatively decides to battle through the confusion to tell you, ‘no, your artwork is great!’ and you respond ‘no, it sucks,’ (what do you want from me?!)
   
   It is TIRING being around artists who don’t like their work and who constantly need third-party feedback that they throw back anyway. Don’t be the kind of artist that hijacks someone else’s livestream to post their art all over the chat, only to say how much you hate it, and how you think the artist streaming is so much better, and everyone just sits there in awkward silence because 1. you’re so desperate for approval you’ve hijacked someone else’s audience 2. no one knows how to deal with you.
   
   It is DIFFICULT to talk to artists who hate their own work, who always speak negatively of the things they produce. No one wants to be around anyone who constantly moans about how their work just isn’t as good, who constantly acts like a little child threatening to give up an activity forever just because they’re not good at it. Maybe you’re not good at it because you think you’re not good at it and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Quit it. ‘I’m not where I want to be now, but I will work hard and I will get there.’ Better already.
   
   
4. Don’t speak about your work as if it is always in the shadow of someone else’s. This just breeds jealousy and discontent. There are so many confessions where artists state that they get so terribly jealous when a friend is perceived to be ‘better’ than them at art that they want to give up. WHAT. That is the saddest thing to know that the success of another artist is enough for some people to want to quit.
   
   You will never be as good as artist x or y because you are NOT artist x or y. You are all on your own unique journey, your art is unique, the things you make and what you learn as an artist, are unique, so they are not comparable. Think of your art as a unique, individual entity. The success of someone’s art has no effect on your own. YOU are the effect on your art.
   
   It’s like you and a neighbour decide to start renovating your houses. And after a while you look over the fence and you realise, oh my God, my neighbour’s house is so nice. And you get obsessed with it. And you get bitter about it. And it gets uncomfortable everytime your neighbour calls you over and tells you how proud they are of their house and you just sullenly say ‘it’s better than mine’. Awkward. And you wonder why everyone goes over your neighbour’s house all the time, why don’t they go over to YOUR house? Maybe it’s because you got so focused on your neighbour you stopped working on your house, and in the times you did, you didn’t enjoy it, you kept looking at your neighbour, and everybody can tell. Don’t be like that. It’s OK to admire other people’s houses but always work on your own, and don’t lose sight of it.
   
   
5. Bad art happens. Get over it. Not everything you turn out will be a masterpiece (and by this same rule, not everything you turn out is the rotting rat carcass fished up from the sewers that you seem so intent on making everyone believe it is). Don’t beat yourself up about it. Yawn. That’s boring. We all produce bad art, cry me more artist tears about it, I don’t care, no one cares. Bad art doesn’t last forever. One piece, two pieces, fifty pieces of bad art doesn’t mean you’re a bad artist. Bad art helps you learn. All art helps you learn. You don’t need to shout to the world about how disappointed you are with a piece. ‘God this is so bad …’, oh no here we go, we’ve heard this before, ‘because I know I can do better/I have done better. Because it didn’t turn out how I wanted, but I’m going to try again. But it was fun and I learned a lot from it. But it makes me laugh and I’m not actually that disappointed.’ Oh? What a plot twist. Bad art isn’t a sign of your failures, it’s a sign that you’re learning and growing. Embrace it.
   
   
6. You are worth it and your art is worth it. That’s really all you’ve got to remember! Repeat it in the mirror every day until you believe it. Own it and be the best artist you can be.  (´∀`)

um fucking thank you

<3

Everyone should read this. I have a bad habit of putting myself down by saying my art is just ‘okay’ and not ‘good,’ but I’m trying to break myself out of it slowly but surely.

(via artmender)

tydusis:

cisbender:

when an artist wants to show you their art

or a writer wants you to read what they’ve written

it’s quite often an expression of trust

because a poem or a story or a painting are often things that come from the heart

little pieces of the artists themselves

and if they’re willing to share it with you

you should appreciate it

last time I saw this I only liked it. now I am reblogging it.

I only let people who I really, really trust read Londinium. If I’ve let you read any part of it, you mean a TON to me.

nevver:

The Origins of 9 Great British Insults

1. WAZZOCK
   Wazzock was a particularly prevalent—and particularly loutish—insult in the 1990s. At the time, “lad culture” ran throughout British music and television, and wazzock, a North-England accented contraction of the sarcastic wiseacre (a know-it-all) became a powerful tool to shoot people down in an argument.
2. LUMMOX
   Though the etymology of lummox is heavily disputed, one thing is for certain: It came from East Anglia, the coastal outcrop of Britain above London. There, around 1825, someone threw out the word as an insult, and it stuck, becoming a typically British go-to term. Some linguists believe it comes from the verb lummock, which typified a lummox: it means a clumsy oaf.
3. SKIVER
   Skivers and shirkers are one and the same. Someone who manages to duck under any responsibility and loaf around, doing very little, is a skiver. The origins of this particular insult are contested: some think it’s from an Old Norse word—skifa—meaning “slice,” whereby the worker slices off as much work as possible.
4. MINGER
   Often hurled at the opposite sex, to call someone a minger is to say they are objectively unattractive. Though etymologists struggle to agree where the word came from, it seems likely that it stems from the Old Scots word meng, meaning “sh**.” We didn’t say it was pretty.
5. NINCOMPOOP
   For such a colloquial word, nincompoop actually has a very learned past. Samuel Johnson, the compiler of England’s first proper dictionary, claims the word comes from the Latin phrase non compos mentis (“not of right mind”), and was originally a legal term.
6. PILLOCK
   As words are used more regularly, the laziness of pronunciation can often warp them slightly. So it was with pillock. Originally pillicock (a Norwegian slang word for penis), the word has since been condensed to plain old pillock—though its meaning remains.
7. CLOD HOPPER
   According to the brilliant Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, dating back to 1811 and compiled by Captain Francis Grose, a clod hopper refers to a country farmer or ploughman—with the implication nowadays that you’re slow witted and bumbling.
8. DUNAKER
   Grose’s Dictionary of vulgarities is a rich seam of overlooked insults. In the 200 years since it was published, there have been several terms that have fallen out of favor. One of them is dunaker, a common thief of cows and calves.
9. GIT
   By calling someone a git, you’re invoking the old Scots word get, which means “bastard.” When it came down south of the border, it lost its harsh vowel sound and became something softer, albeit with the required spikiness in.

(via my-ear-trumpet)

tyriankarkat:

essay-storage:

fleaz:

can someone please make a tumblr for old essays and everyone can just upload their essays and others can steal them for free come on guys 

I’m here!

STOP

STOP

STOP

STOP

1. STOP

• STOP.

THIS IS CALLED PLAGIARISM. AND IT IS ILLEGAL.

A lot of teachers now use a website that actually checks for plagiarism called Turn It In. It’s a truly great site.

There is absolutely no excuse for passing off somebody else’s work as your own. It does the original creator a great disservice and just makes you look bad, especially since these days plagiarism is becoming very easy to catch.

And if I ever catch you plagiarizing, I will punch you.

(via oh-turpentine-erase-me-whole)

p0ndorica:

it really pisses me off how people who are good at maths/science/history/etc are seen as the intelligent ones and will go far in life but also seen as the “boring” ones, but writers and artistic/creative people are seen as the interesting and talented ones but also unintelligent and doomed to be unsuccessful like shit bro how the fuck do any of us win 

This exactly. I happened to be a very good writer and artist who excelled in history in school and whenever I told someone I wanted to write historic graphic novels to help get more people into history people looked at me funny. It was like they didn’t know what to make of someone who liked something so “boring” and wanted to write about it and draw it.

For the record, I’ve never met an unintelligent writer. Writers are extremely observant people, just like scientists are. There’s no such thing as an uninteresting person.

I’m starting to sound like the Doctor so I’ll stop now.

(via listentothistrackbitches)

livia-carica:

Reblog if you’re currently writing a novel, even if it’s only in your head or scribbled in the back of a notebook somewhere.

Think about how many books don’t exist yet.

This thing will happen eventually.

(via smerchfanatic)