Heeeeeyyy, I love me a good fucking STUDY

for environments:

• shot deck is a massive database of film shots searchable by grading, tod, shot type, characters and content! Studying from films really helps improve your values and composition as the shots are usually very carefully constructed! It helps you find ways to maintain realism while still packing mood and narrative into your work!
• master paintings! I recommend the orientalists like Jean Leon Gerome in particular their environments had great compositions and throw around a ton of colour and light! I like the modern artists Craig Mullins and Richard Schmid also, as there is so much impressionist lost detail and simplicity yet the environments feel so real.
• The 1960s era disney background artists like eyvind earle are a masterclass in stylisation and simplification and make a wonderful choice for studies. (That being said modern disney visdev artists like Nathan Fowkes are just as fantastic to study for the same reason)
• architectural photography can be a great resource too- I love to look for work by urbEX people!
• thumbnailing and comp studies- trying to break down a photo into as few values as possible and still have it be readable- this really helps train your brain in the relationship between light exposure and local value.
• Im begging you if doing it in colour is too hard to start with just do it in black and white!!!!! Greyscale painting is an essential step in learning to paint and understand lighting scenarios!! Colour is hard!!!
• there is no substitute for going outside and doing some plein air painting- really looking first hand at how the light effects different materials and objects, how it bounces around, what edges your eye naturally loses in certain lighting scenarios. Just go outside and draw and try to notice stuff.

for characters:

• figure studies!!!! from life if you can but if you cant there are a ton of great resources out there- personally I love croquis cafe and posespace, but if you can afford it (and are interested in intense anatomy study) then scott eaton has a site called bodies in motion which is fantaaaastic. I think by now everyone knows nyx and senshistock, I also use a lot of grafit studio photorefs to study more complicated poses!!
• Master studies (again). I particularly like to study the work of John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, Edwin Austin Abbey, Alphonse Mucha (his le pater compositions are out of this world), any of the New Rochelle artists (e.g rockwell, tom lovell, those 1950s illustrators REALLY knew their shit).
• I literally have a resin skull on my desk that I've used to do quick studies with different lighting, just 10 mins a day back when I was doing it and it levelled up my skill a lot!.
• Material studies are essential to leveling up your character painting!!! Look at fur, look at metal, look at the way something embroidered reflects light vs tooled leather!!
• gesture studies! Look at a dynamic pose and see how you can exaggerate the motion in away that captures the sense of movement. This is tricky to start with but its really worthwhile especially when you combine it with other exercises. Mixamo is a cool library to look into for this kind of thing as you can pause and rotate the models in the middle of their actions!
• breakdown the work of artists you admire- it's ok to study other living artists (and try to reverse engineer how they are making their decisions) it's a very effective learning tool! Really figure out what it is about that persons workflow you like, and how you might incorporate that element into your own. Obviously, dont post studies of living artists work!

The most important thing is that when you do a study you go into it knowing what you want to learn. Dont try to do everything at once! It's ok to focus on the muscle structure and not give a damn about the gesture. It's ok to focus on the texture of the fur and completely ignore the characters face.

The best way to keep doing studies is to find refs you like- things you are interested in and that capture your imagination! Follow your curiosity and remember that just a tiny little bit a day makes a huge difference.

Gunna take a sec to recommend the tutorials of Devin Korwin. He talks about how to study and how to breakdown art fundamentals in a way that is at once both very advanced but also digestible. I highly recommend his pdfs!

Listen to me

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

- I'm serious on that last one I'll eat your fucking resume

you are not wasting time you are vibing. you are not being unproductive you are literally chilling. make a grill cheese with cheddar cheese and slather a piece of the bread with some honey and maybe you'll relax

Innes Keeper's Formula For Fantastic Grilled Cheeses
(for nearly no extra spoons!)

Are you hungry? Do you have a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches like, way more than a normal person maybe? Great news! I am about to give you the secret knowledge I stole, like Prometheus himself, from the Akashic Records—to bring back to Prudencia! And I’m even doing it without a ten hour long lecture about how the Akashic Records makes me think of idfk, 9/11, and how that relates to sandwiches.

I will, however, briefly say this: You gotta trust me when I say cooking grilled cheeses via this formula WILL grant you Bloodborne Insight. There is no fucking reason that making a grilled cheese this fucking delicious should be this fucking easy. I feel like I’m cheating God every time I do it because it takes (nearly) no extra spoons. And here’s where I show you why.

Scientifically Proven Perfect Extremely Easy Grilled Cheese

INGREDIENTS — SEASONINGS
-butter, i usually use 2 or 3 tablespoons per sandwich
-garlic cloves, I use 3 usually
-a source of heat, like red pepper flakes, or szechuan peppers
-a source of spice OR a source of sweetness, such as dijon mustard or honey. slather that motherfucker on a slice of your bread.
-a source of herbiness, such as oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc in any combination that goes well together or on its own. if someone tries to tell you that you need it fresh, they’re fucking lying, the 2$ crushed powdered sage is fucking great. experiment with other spices such as ground turmeric if you're spicy

INGREDIENTS - THE METAPHORICAL MEAT OF THE SANDWICH
-two slices of bread per sandwich. this is actually a massive influence on your sandwich taste and texture as a whole. a basic white or wheat will still be fucking delicious because like I said, I stole this from the Akashic Records cookbook section and found it under “fucking perfect grilled cheeses forever”. However, if you CAN—getting bread like brioche, texas toast, brown bread, rye, or sourdough will make a sandwich already being elevated super easily to “pay 23 dollars at a fancy restaurant” level of elevation.

-one to three types of cheese per sandwich. you can get away with one type but really try for two or three if you can swing it.
this is also one of those massive influences over the sandwich—listen, i know, that’s obvious, but stay with me—what matters
isn’t the SPECIES of cheese, it’s the TYPE of cheese. getting the deli at your local Safeway or Walmart or whatever and asking for the cheese they gotta cut (or just in general the fancier, better-quality cheeses) is literally the only major requirement that I ask of you. If you are on SNAP/EBT programs, me too, and I promise you: Please do this. Please trust me when I say do not get the cheap Kraft-type cheese because it’s less money. I know it’s a bit extra but it’s only a bit to get like 1/4 or 1/3lb and you have no idea how much I’m actually getting a little emotional about this, because the “rice with butter and beans or top ramen every single day” life is soulsucking and sickening and it is genuinely one of the greatest sources of suffering
to human beings I can imagine, I’m serious. Following this formula will genuinely change your life/mental health just a bit because you know that you have one meal that is super delicious, super filling, pretty damn cheap when it comes to how much you get, and super easy to make on days where the idea of doing more than just 15 minutes MAX is gonna make you wanna die.

super sorry for that paragraph btw i just really cannot overstate how this is a lifechanger especially when youre poor/low spoons/depressed. delicious food makes me not be as depressed. this is that.

METHOD

1. Take garlic cloves and crush them either with the meat of your palm or the flat of a knife or literally anything that would crush good. Take bread slices and put a source of spice or sweetness if you are using one. take a pan and put it on the stove on low-medium heat (aka a 2 out of 10).
2. Place the butter in the pan, as well as the garlic cloves, the source of heat, and the source of herbiness. Congratulations you have now literally done ALL the extra effort that you need to make a grilled cheese like this. That’s it. No extra dishes. No fussing with amounts or chopping or whatever. That’s it.
3. The butter will melt in the pan and soak up the delicious ingredients that you also put into the pan. Take each slice of bread and place it in the pan to butter it, OR just take one slice, place the cheese on it, and then put the other bread on. It’s really just a matter of extra effort.
4. When the bread is in the pan, turn it up to medium heat (5 out of 10) and just sorta let it sit for a bit. When you can see the cheese start to get visibly melty—or when you vibecheck it—flip it once and just do the same thing.
5. When you’ve grilled your cheese on both sides, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate (or just a paper towel to save on dish spoons. btw paper plates and plastic utensils are a fucking godsend if you hate dishes and/or can’t do them very easily/takes a lot of effort.)

That’s literally it. I really hope this helps.

outta my way gayboy im making this sandwich

oh. oh my god. holy fuck. what. how. why. this is delicious. i kinda burned my bread and my cheese didnt melt all the way but it's still the best thing ive ever tasted?????

oh my god. this is so fucking good. the butter melting and absorbing the spices and herbs already smelled amazing, but then i threw the bread on and it started smelling EVEN BETTER. then i took a bite. holy FUCK this is better than sex. i legitimately believe that Innes Keeper stole this shit from Prometheus, there's no other way to explain why this is so easy to make, yet so FUCKING good, other than cheating a god.

I didn't steal it from Prometheus he's my trophy husband!

ok me and my partner went back and made this. exact words upon eating were “we’ve cheated god” and “i feel like my world just got rocked” and then we were both energized to get back to drawing. proof:

please make innes keeper’s scientifically proven perfect extremely easy grilled cheese

I'M PUTTING THIS ON THE FRIDGE (WHERE I KEEP ALL MY CHEESE)

>:)c

May I present to you, nationalclothing.org?

It doesn't have everything, but it's still my first source when researching traditional clothing from other cultures.

There's also this resource on historical fashion: Claire’s Historical Fashion Reference & Resources

another addition as far as physical media goes there is the encyclopedia of national dress (that i still need to buy myself bc this kind of thing is super important to my sort of fantasy designing) but yes i do agree i wish there was EVEN MORE documentation on this

here are some resources for Indian clothing archives:

The Sari Series: a digital anthology documenting India's regional saree drapes though short films

Purushu Arie's blog; started when he was studying at NIFT, the blogger has gone on to become a leader in the neo-traditional fashion scene in India.

if anyone knows more please add links !