How I Draw Skin Part 2: DON”T DRAW NATIVE PEOPLE WITH RED SKIN!!!! A Tutorial

By Fedor Titov

Gryphon! Name is Ares. Hope you like!

I read a post and decided to make a separate post about it but it was about the rebellious phase teenagers go through and how invalidating it is that parents write off the phase as the result of hormones and irrational teenage anger. And it got me thinking, because I never really had that “rebellious phase of irrational anger.” The more I think about it, the more I think it’s because my parents never treated me like they expected me to rebel.

This has less to do with abusive parents (which was the point of that post and also the reason I’m making a new one) and more to do with the way western society in particular fosters parental expectations when kids reach adolescence. Because even kids who had previously good relationships with their parents sometimes hit really tumultuous times in adolescence, and I don’t think it is all hormonal.

There’s this real self-fulfilling prophecy with the relationship between parents and teens. Parents are told by their peers and elders (esp. THEIR parents) to “expect hell” when their kids reach adolescence. I remember my mom telling me once, right around the time I turned 13, that someone at her office said to her “uh oh, buckle in, this is when things get rough!” in reference to my being a teenager. My mom kind of shrugged it off and told me “I’ve never understood people who want their kids to stay kids forever. You guys are more interesting every year older you get. You’re becoming your own people.”

And that was that. My parents didn’t TELL me I was about to get rebellious and nasty to them, because they didn’t expect it of me. They told me I was becoming an interesting young person with my own thoughts and ideas. And because they didn’t expect me to be suddenly rebellious, they treated me like what I was: an interesting young person with my own thoughts and ideas. Someone who maybe still needed help with a few things now and then but by and large, they set expectations and gave me reasonable explanations for them, and I followed those expectations because they made sense. 

My brother and I never had a curfew, for instance. Instead, my parents always just said, “let us know if you’re going to be out late so we don’t worry about you,” with the additional explanation that that’s something you should always do for the people who you share a house with, as a courtesy. They also modeled the behaviors themselves: we would leave a chair with a note in it by the front door if we were going out somewhere so anyone coming home while we were gone would know where we were–this was in the age before cell phones, you understand–and that meant my parents did it for us kids too. After all, if they wanted to know where we were so they wouldn’t worry about us, it was just as important that we know where they were so we wouldn’t worry about them. Our feelings were treated with the same courtesy as theirs. They respected us, so we respected them. 

When boundaries needed setting there were some rocky conversations, sure, and my mom and I are STILL on occasionally rocky ground when it comes to my weight/eating habits, but generally we came to reasonable conclusions. And I never “rebelled” because I didn’t have to. I wanted alcohol, my dad would’ve let me try his fancy beer (I never wanted it because it stank, and I still don’t, but I could’ve tried it if I’d wanted to). I had questions about sex, my mom explained things clinically and asked if I had any questions. I wanted to wear makeup, my mom’s only request was I save my allowance and buy my own instead of stealing hers. I wanted to dye my hair ridiculous colors? My mom hated it but always told me “It’s your hair,” (and I honestly think half the reason she hated it so much was I ruined a lot of her nice towels). 

My parents accorded me with the freedoms I was naturally seeking with the expectation that I would be responsible with those freedoms, and because they expected me to be responsible, I just…was.

I’m not saying that will work with everyone of course, but I think there’s something to be said for creating an atmosphere of expectation too. If parents begin tightening the reins in anticipation of rebellion (as they are told to do), they are paradoxically providing teenagers with something to rebel against.

Start treating your teenager like a prisoner, and they’ll start trying to escape prison.

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

what are the best wings you’ve seen on a bird

here are some of my favorites :)

sunbittern

lilac breasted roller

bluejay

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If you can’t reblog this, unfollow me now.

best way I have found to comfort people who are endlessly apologetic of things outside their control (often as a result of shitty relationships) is the jokingly hyperbolic accusation of [gasp] "so you're behind it all!"

like someone giving me directions who starts apologizing profusely when I miss a light as if it's their fault--[gasp] "it was you who petitioned city council to build this intersection in 1893!!" because it snaps them out of it and they laugh like. oh yeah. that's a ridiculous thing to blame someone for. I'm not that guy. you're not that guy. it works.

Ralph Thompson

collab with @riverkdraws on how to draw arabs!

as arabs, we see little to no representation in media and when there is, it's often offensive caricatures and stereotypes. we can't fix the world with one art tutorial, but educating more artists will hopefully make a difference.

most importantly: if you have a question about the arab world, or arabic culture, ask an arab!

arabs feel free to add onto this, nonarabs please reblog!