Eckhart Tolle

a quick grass tutorial

I’ve never really wrote a tutorial before so apologies if this is bad

1. okay first thing I do is pick three colors, a mid, dark, and light. I like to check the colors in greyscale to make sure there’s enough contrast between each one.

I then plop down a blob of whatever my middle tone color is.

2. next, I take my dark color and just sort of randomly place it around. I try to make sure there’s a good amount of both the mid and dark tones spread throughout. I personally like to keep it kinda messy. I also have pen pressure on for both brush size and opacity, so I can have some blending action going on.

3. for the next step I do the exact same thing as before, except with the light color.

4. aight this is where we start adding details. see how you just have a bunch of colors and edges where two colors meet? use the eyedropper and go to an area where two colors meet, eyedrop a color, and then use that color to draw in your grass blades. I do this at every point where colors meet. should note I personally like to use a square brush, but you can really just use anything.

5. you can technically stop at the last step if you’re going for a more simple look, but to add more details I go to the “empty” areas of solid color and just draw in random strokes using a color nearby. it’s just a way to fill up the empty space.

6. basically more of the same idea of eyedropping and drawing. for more variety so things look interesting, I like to add random plant shapes.

7. and so the grass doesn’t look too plain, I add random dots of color and pretend it’s flowers and stuff.

and there you have it, this is how I approach drawing grass.

“Am I a cat?”

Well, this is definitely the most fun I’ve had while making a post.

Inspired by this one from capnphaggit. Images & copyrights: Trifid Nebula (M20) by Marcus Davies, The Cat’s Eye Nebula and Star-forming region Sharpless 2-106 by NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Please don’t remove the credits.

Be an artist

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, ‘Eat in the kitchen,’ Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes, I, Too

[x]

(via scientificphilosopher)

“Solitude isn’t loneliness. Solitude is when the entire serene universe seems to surround and hold you quietly.”

—

Ni+Te versus Ti

It is easy to confuse Ni and Ti because they both share analytical properties.

Both Te/Ti are Thinking functions and use reason to evaluate data. They both look for cause-effect relationships. Te evaluates data for predictable rules and principles because it needs to take action effectively and efficiently, whereas Ti evaluates data for rules and principles that are internally consistent. Te does not care about the rules and principles in themselves as long as they work well for doing things effectively in the external world, whereas Ti cares about whether the rules and principles are consistent with other rules and principles, it is more systematic and wants to create a holistic and coherent theory regardless of whether or not that theory agrees with objective principles and, in order to do this, it needs to gather much more data than Te. Te sees a reliable cause-effect relationship and can move forward immediately, whereas Ti sees a cause-effect relationship and first wants to know what lies behind that relationship (the “why”) before it can move forward. Te utilizes easily observable formulas, whereas Ti utilizes elegant formulas it has created itself. Since they are both Thinking functions, they will sometimes agree about the truth of certain rules or principles but the path they take to reach agreement differs.

Ni gathers data from different abstract perspectives, trying to see something from many angles in order to accurately predict what might happen. This resembles Ti to some extent because it is also holistic in nature in terms of wanting to understand the bigger picture and it also wants to understand future effects. But Ni is a perceiving function so it is deeper and more sprawling and connects many different kinds of abstract relationships, not just cause-effect ones (e.g. metaphorical, symbolic, qualitative, logical, correlational, interpersonal, etc). Ti is a judging function so it connects concepts directly and efficiently by ruthlessly excising “irrelevant” information, whereas Ni takes in as much information as possible and links it to one’s knowledge in any way possible. Ni hoards all information, whereas Ti wants to take a knife to it once it is collected through the perceiving functions. Ti sees the world like a machine, with many different parts working together, but the parts are clearly separate and understood separately and then put back together into a closed system - anything unrelated to the “system” is cut away and dismissed. Ni sees the world like a network, but the parts are not clearly defined and not necessarily logically connected. So Ni needs a judging function to help it understand those connections more clearly. Ni needs Te to systematize itself.

INTJs use Te to make sense of Ni’s data in accordance with objective rules and principles, so Ni+Te can easily be mistaken for Ti. But Te has an outward focus and is action-oriented. Ni makes INTJs want to understand the world and Te makes them want to act on that knowledge either to realize potential or act in accordance with the future potential that they see. Ti is not as action-oriented. It focuses on discovering immediate effects rather than long range future potential unless it has another function like Ne or Ni to assist it, so Ti is much more limited and simplistic in what it can see compared to Ni+Te because Ni has a broader and deeper scope.

If INTJs get “stuck in their heads” and are too passive in life, they will start to feel uncomfortable because they have an underlying need to take action and achieve things because of Te. If they don’t listen to that need, they will feel restless, as though they are wasting their life. “Passive” INTJs who have not developed Te well enough are more likely to think they use Ti because their focus is too inwardly directed with Ni+Fi, meaning that they might confuse their lower Fi impulses as being Ti related (due to both being introverted judging functions and having the same structural framework). These INTJs just want to do what they feel comfortable doing according to their own understanding and ignore the call of Te/Se to take action to achieve goals and success, and this can eventually lead to existential boredom, unhappiness, or dissatisfaction or possibly an Ni-Fi loop.

more type comparisons

I love the moon

So I just learned something that pisses me off. Y’know quinoa? The ~magical~ health food that has become so popular in the US that a centuries-long tradition of local, sustainable, multi-crop farming is being uprooted to mass-produce it for the global market? Potentially affecting food stability and definitely effecting environmental stability across the region?

Ok, cool.

Y’know Lamb’s Quarter? A common weed throughout the continental US, tolerant of a wide variety of soil conditions including the nutrient-poor and compacted soils common in cities, to the point where it thrives in empty lots? These plants are close relatives, and produce extremely similar seeds. Lamb’s quarter could easily be grown across the US, in people’s backyard and community gardens, as a low-cost and local alternative to quinoa with no sketchy geopolitical impacts. You literally don’t have to nurture it at all, it’s a goddamn weed, it’ll be fine. Put it where your lawn was, it’ll probably grow better than the grass did. AND you can eat the leaves - they taste almost exactly like spinach. 

This just… drives home, again, that a huge part of the appeal of “superfoods” is the sense of the exotic. For whatever nutritional benefits quinoa does have, the marketing strategy is still driven by an undercurrent of orientalism. You too could eat this food, grown laboriously by farmers in the remote Andes mountains! You too could grow strong on the staple crop that has sustained them for centuries! And, y’know, destroy that stable food system in the process. Or you could eat this near-identical plant you found in your backyard. 

i was like “oh no! he’s gonna eat these poor pups” but nah