Tiara, 19th Century.

I can’t believe Kiku did that lol.

a really cool series, check it out!

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[About][FAQ]

Some times post the San Valentine strips…

Aka after Feli fixed the whole misunderstanding with Germany and had a good talk with Rod…

@currymuttonpizza is a wonderful Austria and I love doing weird stuff with them. My Feliciano is 200% supportive of Austria’s feelings for a certain german and really wants to help him out, insert weird shanenigans and headcanons. And someday I will write a proper essay on why I headcanon so strongly that Feliciano has huge commitment issues after the whole HRE fiasco. 

Just a lazy couple of old men ready to enjoy a nice show.

When you’re reading Fanfiction and you read something that is so perfectly detailed and written you gotta look away from your phone like

Gotta just take a breather ykno

Mellow and friendly but still spunky and frolicky. I am very even tempered unless someone threatens my friends, and then I am very aggressive and dangerously overprotective. I'm very affectionate with my close ones and usually end up being the conscience of the group despite my frequent side commentary and quips.

You remind me of Starfire from Teen Titans! She is friendly towards everyone she meets and cares an insane amount about the people she loves. But if someone dares to threaten them then you’d better watch out because she will come after you. Messing with her friends is basically suicide because she loves them so much and will not hesitate before attacking anyone who tries to hurt them. She is also very dedicated to doing what’s right and can always convince those around her to do the same. 

Can we talk 

About

How

Beautiful

Snails

Are?

Seriously

Just Look!!!

IT HAS A FLOWER

(Vyacheslav Mishchenko)

dad-and-son snapshot #3—(aka, additional Prohibition-era…incidents. this scene ended up going in a slightly different direction—but thank you so much for the inspiration @jessaverant lmao!)

New York City, 1924 redux

Alfred will admit that he had, as usual, mostly spaced out by the time he arrived at the British Consul-General’s residence on Fifth Avenue. Hey, he’d had had a shitty week and was only too happy to escape Washington D.C for a nice pad with a view of Central Park, alright? 

He sinks into an overstuffed floral chintz armchair, and takes in the large windows and expensive-looking furnishings. “Wow, Sir Gloster Armstrong is letting you have free run of this place? Damn.” 

“He’s on vacation and his name is Harry, you ridiculous lad. Gloster is his middle name.” Arthur retorts. Well, Alfred thought, that was still leagues better than Fly-from-Fornication.

Anyway, shit, these were really nice, Consul-General worthy digs. Even the floral chintz was kind of stylish with the rest of the well-appointed décor. In the dimming twilight of the encroaching night, the soft, warm lighting made the whole place exude cosiness. “Y’know, I could get used to living here, old man.” 

“You could also get used to cleaning your apartment,” his father remarks drily, getting out the decanter and several glasses. “Harry took pity on me upon hearing of my ordeal residing with you the last time around.” 

“What the fuck, man—I was an awesome host. You enjoyed getting smashed at those speakeasies I brought you to! The jazz was great too, you said so!”

Before Arthur can make his counterargument, they’re interrupted by the loud jangling of the telephone in the study. The older man clucks his tongue in annoyance and heads into the adjoining room to take the call. 

When Arthur doesn’t return within five minutes, Alfred glances around. Where the heck were the drinks? His father totally promised there would be great booze, and that nobody from the Consul-General to the house-staff cared. They too, being reasonable human beings, were unable to tolerate the barbarity of Prohibition, after all. Getting up, he spies a rather strange-looking bottle on the sideboard, positioned next to the other crystal decanters. There was no label, but it was obviously some sort of wine, packaged in a novelty, collectible bottle.

(Later, Alfred will blame it all on a combination of fatigue and the dim lighting inexcusably affecting his normally impeccable and flawless judgment.)

The seal of the bottle looks strange but is quickly dispatched by the bottle opener. The liquid sloshes into the glass easily—but it goes down hideously stale and viscous in his mouth. Fucking hell, it was disgusting—what kind of horrible wine was this? 

“You said there was good, finely-aged wine but this tastes like trash!” Alfred directs an accusing gaze at Arthur, who has just returned. 

But instead of launching into a long lecture about the art of wine-tasting and how Alfred lacked the requisite patience to appreciate fine wines older than his government or some other tedious bullshit—his father’s eyes only narrow in bewilderment as they fix onto the bottle Alfred has clutched in his hands. And then—much to Alfred’s annoyance—he bursts into wild laughter. 

“You absolute—absolute plonker, Alfred Bloody Fucking Jones—my word— the Curator will be furious but oh my, this is just too good—” His father is actually breathless. There are actually tears in the old fart’s eyes. 

“Care to get a hold of yourself and explain exactly what folly I have committed, old man?” He says sulkily, as he rinses his mouth out with water from a nearby jug of water. “Have I drunk toilet cleaner or liquid fertiliser or whatever it is that you Europeans routinely keep on your sideboards?” 

Arthur sniggers. He almost dissolves into another round of cackling, and only just manages to collect himself. 

“Oh, you drank finely-aged wine, alright. Just not the one I got for us—this one was found in the cellar of a Roman nobleman’s villa in Wiltshire. Somehow, it got mixed up and left behind instead of being packed away for delivery to your Met Museum—it’s on loan from us to the Roman gallery. Anyway—brilliant job, lad! It’s been mouldering away for some 1600 years!”

—

A Fantasy AU idea or something a friend and I came up with. Conceptual stuff for a possible askblog in the future maybe who knows not me thats who. ( I don’t really like these too much but heeyyyyy  ;;>//v//>)

I gotta do Frannie and Canada’s soooon. ;c; 

How Simon Mayo discovered a 19th-century inmate who staged UK’s first all-black Shakespeare

Simon Mayo talks to Nick Clark about his novel Mad Blood Stirring and a 19th-century inmate who staged UK’s first all-black Shakespeare

Richard Crafus, a giant of a man known as King Dick, was a notorious inmate who ruled a block in Dartmoor Prison in the early 19th century. Few in Britain have heard of him, and fewer still know of his extraordinary contribution to British theatre.

It is thanks to this American “gangster-turned-theatre impresario” – and his fellow inmates of Prison Four – that the first all-black productions of Shakespeare were staged in Britain in 1814, according to Simon Mayo, who has made one of those productions central to his novel Mad Blood Stirring.

I've always loved drawing people and especially portraits. Your art is so inspiring! Do you have any advice on drawing portraits with accurate proportion? What aspects are the most important in portraits, do you think? And what are good exercises? I'm sorry for bombarding you with so many questions! :3

Thank you! There’s one thing about drawing portraits that I don’t think I’ve ever touched on, and it’s the technique of constraining features.  Basically, it becomes easier and more intuitive to rotate the face in 3D space once your mind grasps exactly where the features are located and, furthermore, where they can’t be located.  

I use a weird double trapezoid shape that I’ve depicted below in red to keep track of facial feature placement every single time I draw a face.  It follows the top of the eyebrows, touches the corner of the eye, traces down to the corner of the lips, and finally ends at the bottom of the lips.  

The shape of the constraint will change depending on the person’s features, and it works for every angle of the head.  For me it really internalized where each part of the face was, as well as where it started and ended. It kinda helps moderate your drawings; i.e., you’ll stop drawing features that are wildly misplaced or off-sized.  I don’t literally draw this shape out every time I draw a face, but I see it in my mind’s eye 100% of the time.

If you’re still learning proportions, a good exercise is to grab pictures of people and trace this shape over them (either digitally or with a marker or something) to get an idea of what realistic constraints looks like.  Then go back to studying faces, and constantly check your drawing by tracing along the eyebrows and down to the bottom of the lips to make sure that things aren’t off (e.g., the constraint isn’t terribly asymmetric).  It takes a while to get used to, but it might help you get a good feel for portraiture.  

There’s one other unrelated thing I like to do with faces, and if you’ve seen a lot of my pics you’ve already picked up on it.  If you kinda add some shading to the area on the cheek just below the eye and down to the nose, I think it adds a decent amount of depth to a face.  Don’t go overboard of course but there’s another little tip that could be of use.