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If It's Love, You Can Get Past the 8-Year Age Difference
I'm a young gay male in quite the predicament.
I've always had an affinity for older men, I have to admit that, but normally it's just surface level. However, I've met this guy online that I met up recently and we connected on an unexpected level.
I will admit that I first just assumed it to be some form of casual hookup, and I'll admit we did do things, but it took a rather unexpected turn once we started actually...talking. It was riveting—his mind was beautiful. We talked about everything from religion, to Hemmingway, to the Harlem Renaissance, to classical composers. It was so stimulating.
He was incredibly intimate with me; his body was in sync with mine; it was a magical experience, almost addicting.
However, the problem arises from the fact that, though I do have quite strong feelings for him, he's twenty four, and I'm sixteen. I made sure that it was legal for us to engage in sexual acts where I'm from, made sure we used proper protection, but even though it's legal for us to be together, it's still difficult to come to terms with because he's still eight years older than I am.
Would you recommend that I pursue my feelings, or just dismiss them? I do feel like I could be happy with him, just the maturity gap between us, and the social stigma might be too much for either of us.
Sincerely,
Izzy
* * *
Dear Izzy,
It sounds like you are doing all the right things concerning the legality of what you have done, as well as using protection. Good for you!
Okay, there is an eight-year difference in your ages. This, of course, is a little bigger deal when one person in the relationship is still a teenager (would be even MORE significant if, say, you were 12 years old). But this isn’t an insurmountable difference. If you look ahead in years, such age gaps become less and less important. For example, my bear hubby Yogi is nine years older than I am, which is a year more than the two of you, and we certainly get along great. Another example: the other night I was watching a biography of George Takei (Sulu from the original “Star Trek”), who is married to Brad Altman, a man 17 years his junior. The intense love these two have for each other is beautiful and made me tear up a couple times.
Is an age gap a problem? It can be sometimes, especially if there are large cultural differences or health issues. The other thing that can be difficult is when family disapproves. I’m guessing that is what you are worried about. But it sounds like this is a very special guy, and if he is genuine (not deceiving you for sex, which I hope he isn’t) then it sounds like this could be the beginning of a beautiful romance. And by the time you are in your twenties, his being eight years older will hardly matter at all.
If you love him, go for it, and screw the “social stigma.”
Wishing you love!
Papabear
The Furry Future: Fred Patten’s book announcement for Further Confusion 2015
/r/Furry Weekly Social Thread #6!
Hello everybody! Welcome to the /r/Furry weekly social thread #6! Sorry I forgot last week, school was just getting back into the swing after the winter break and I kinda forgot. Sorry!! ^.^;
Any who, you probably know the drill, so just talk to people and have some fun! :D
submitted by ObsoletePixel[link] [55 comments]
are there furry conventions in australia?
Tips and Tricks to Drawing! Human, Animal, and our favorite mix of the two!
Hey guys, Sareii here! I saw a post asking for help drawing furries. I think there was another yesterday? ANYWAYS, I was typing a response until I saw how long of a post it was. I decided I'll make a full post so others can see it. Should this be posted to /r/furryartschool ? Maybe, but when this sub has 15k people compared to it's 1.5k base...yeah. HOWEVER, I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO POST IN FURRY ART SCHOOL IF YOU NEED HELP.
These are some tips and tricks I learned along the way of drawing. Am I in any way a professional? No, but I DO know some of these are completely overlooked by new artists, and veteran artists alike.
LONG TEXT POST. I went to school and had several life drawing classes while there. But it wasn't until recently I learned how to apply them. I'd love to share some tricks I learned. I'm going to split this up between human and animal, and note some really important things that are often forgotten about in drawing while also covering basics, because basics are incredibly important.
Got your pencils and paper ready? HERE WE GO!
-------BASICS---------
Before we get started, someone down in the comments mentioned the basics, like shape and proportion. YES, PLEASE LEARN THESE! I'll give you my shotcut to animal shapes, and then explain it:
I run by a square-circle-square pattern when sketching.
I drew that in about 90 seconds. I will start my disclaimer by saying I'm not a pro, I'm sure a number of artists will tell me I'm wrong, and I'm sure one day I'll hate this method. BUT RIGHT NOW, it's super easy and gets the rough forms on the paper very quickly for me.
Most creatures can be broken down into a roughly square-circle-square pattern. By square, I don't mean a perfect square, but it's more blocky than a circle.
Square - The shoulders. Especially on humans where collar bones are, this area is easy to draw as a square, and the ribs, as our ribs are a bit more solid. On animals, this would be the chest, sternum, and shoulders.
Circle - On animals, this is the rib cage, their movements cause the ribs to contract and expand quite a lot, and their ribs are very circular. On humans, this is the belly, which is a good portion of our torso.
Square - The hips on both. The muscles in this area give it a lot of round volume, but the base is very blocky.
Obviously it will differ when you get more into things, but when you're starting off it helps with shapes. Try looking at simple construction of animals, where things are broken down into shape and form.
After a while, these shapes might get lost under your lines, but do your best to make sure the circle remains clear. That circle adds a lot of needed form to the body, with a quick basic shading it'll be like magic.
Remember: Shapes are guidelines for shape AND form.
-----HUMANS--------
The first step is probably the least interesting. Humans are boring, animals are way cooler. I agree entirely, I spent most of college drawing animals rather than doing my life drawing homework. MISTAKE. Learn your HUMAN anatomy!
This is first because then you can a) grasp animal anatomy pretty easily, and b) decide how animalistic/humanlike you want to draw. Learning human anatomy is difficult, we are awkward creatures and we have trouble accepting things that aren't drawn like proper humans. That leads to very frustrating mistakes, or worse, flaws you think you see but aren't really there. It's that strange world of the uncanny valley, we're more critical of human art because we are in fact human.
BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT. MAKE MISTAKES. LEARN. TRAIN YOUR EYES TO NOT CARE. TAKE THAT EYES, IT'S TERRIBLE, BUT I'M GONNA BE A SUPER STAR SOON.
So lets break down how you should learn human anatomy:
FIRST. Learn the skeleton, which will help you SO much with proportions. We have the stupidest looking skeleton, aside from maybe parrots. We are a matchstick with a wad of aluminum foil around our chest. (fun fact, this is exactly the shape you start with when sculpting humans from clay!) We have dumb arms, a weird hip, and our feet look ridiculous. But IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO LEARN. You'll see why later in this post.
Next, learn muscles. This is the bulk of a human, makes us look human, and there are some very curious muscle shapes. WE ARE DA MUSCLE. Now, I'm not saying go make your anthros super buff, because that's a whole different world of learning. Body builders are both wonderful and terrible examples of muscle structure. You can see every muscle on a body builder, but you cannot see every muscle on a human. Did you know we technically have an 8 pack? If you didn't, it's because it's nearly impossible to work out the correct way to get all 8 visible.
IMPORTANT MUSCLE GROUPS TO KNOW: -The back, a triangle which runs from either shoulder down to the tailbone, will be very helpful in drawing distinct backs. This group is a group of several muscles. In the image I linked, you can see it's actually a few triangles. The trapezius is worth learning, it's a fun muscle and you will absolutely be drawing it on the top half at least, it defines that 7th vertebrae that sticks out on your neck. But for simplicity sake, don't fret about the bottom half of it, instead think more about merging its shape with the latissimus. See those small gaps on the sides known as obliques? Yeahhhh we're gonna get to those fun guys in a few paragraphs.
-The "under/over" of the shoulder connection to the torso. I call it under/over because when you learn how to draw this part, it's easily the equivalent of scratching that itch on your back, or getting that popcorn kernal out of your teeth. Or porn. Particularly when drawing raised arms, there are overlapping muscles. The pectorals go over the armpit, the arm connects under the pectoral, the back muscles connect over the other side of the arm. Make sure you look at this region closely, because we as furries LOVE our raised arms (hehehe). Note: Arms are directly connected to the pectorals, which are on women connected to boobs.
-The hip connection. A lot of people don't see the complex shapes of the hip and legs, they just see a round shape of the butt. This image here shows it, although a little difficult to see. The crest of the hip bone HAS NO MUSCLE ON IT. It acts as a connection to the others, but it is bare on top. It's that white line at the top of the image. This creates a very visible point on a person's body, and the leg below creates a curve. So rather than one solid curve, the hip is a combination of two curvexs (the belly and the thigh). Remember those obliques we were talking about earlier? Yeahhh those, those are very nice to draw a little pudgy because that's about roughly where the muffintop fat rests. And I'll be honest with you, unless you eat a stick of celery as your daily meal, you'll have a muffintop. That's just how we are. So don't be afraid to draw a bit of pudge right there.
The third thing you should learn, which is easily overlooked, is the fat clusters. Fat doesn't normally grow all over our body, there are very specific locations. Where fat grows depends entirely on the person's lifestyle, not just eating, but do they move? Do they sit? Because most people sit for a living, fat accumulates primarily on the belly, the hip, and the butt. This is important to learn because while muscle gives the bulk of human shape, fat will define much more and make a character seem more alive.
NOTE: Sorry guys, don't ask me about hands or feet. That's enough for an entire post on its own and lets face it. I CAN'T DRAW THEM. There are dozens of ways to go about drawing them so dig around and find some you like. I DO recommend for the feet, at least, breaking them into 3 pieces: Heel, bridge, and toes. They look like children's building blocks in their simplest forms.
--------ANIMALS--------
NOW you can move onto animals. YAY, RIGHT?
Most animals follow a pattern which we can use humans as a comparison. If you don't believe me, let me open your mind.
-For predator structure animals (paws), please see this for comparison.
-For prey structure animals (hooves), please see this image.
See it? SEE IT? It's exciting, right?! You should be excited because that means drawing anthros is INFINITELY EASIER. Animals have very similar muscles to us as well, but keep these differences in anatomy in mind: -We are one of the only animals with rotating scapulas. Our shoulderblades float on the back part of the rib cage, and when you move your arms, you can feel those magical triangular pieces of bone.
Try it, right now. Reach your right hand back and place it over your left shoulder blade. Now move your left arm backwards, like moving your chair back. It sticks out, doesn't it? When your arms come back, that scapula becomes VERY apparent. Like Godzilla's damn back spikes. NOW raise that arm to shoulder level, parallel to the ground, and swivel your left arm so you're pointing ahead of you. Did you feel your scapula slide forward? It almost disappeared under the muscles that time.
Now all those things you just did? FORGET THEM WHEN YOU DRAW FERALS.
Quadrupeds, in order to use their forelegs, have different scapulas. They are on rounded ribs (ours are flattened quite a bit), and here's the kicker: the reason why animals can't do more than move those front legs front-to-back, the reason they can't move them to the side, is because those scapula CANNOT slide up like ours.
Using a horse as our example, quadruped shoulders create a triangle shape which is very important when drawing anything on four legs. It's more distinct on horses because of their high muscle content. I can't stress how important that triangle shape is.
It's the difference between this, and this. The first image is credit to Keprion on deviant art. The second....lets just say never google "wolf drawing".
Learn through others' art. Study from life is one thing, but artists are trained and learned in finding this little keypoints that make drawing easier. They see these muscles, they drawn their overlaps, and it's a lot more distinct than looking through the fur of a real dog. Which artists should you look at for ideas? Welll......
Christina Yen aka SixthLeafClover
Obviously I could go on for hours, pages worth of people. The thing about art is you /need/ reference, and not just from real life. Yes, draw from life, draw from photos, go to the zoo, but sometimes you really need to see what other people are doing.
To end the animal section of this list, I cannot give you any shortcuts on heads. While their bodies are pretty easy in formula, each head is different. I do strongly suggest looking at skulls, even if only to understand what shapes cannot be broken, but let's face it. Artists break the world.
Take a look at other art, guys. See how people are drawing the heads of the animals you life, try it. If it doesn't feel right, try a different way. While you practice, also practice real heads, from photos and videos.
Remember guys: When in doubt, shrimp out.
(this is one of my favorite tutorials because it works well for people who don't have the greatest grasp on drawing. Tracing isn't helpful always, but sometimes it /does/ help in learning that one awkward shape of a certain paw, or that damn neck muscle you can't seem to understand.)
And that's it for now...when it comes to drawing anthros, the decision on how you draw them is up to you once you learn human and animal anatomy. Some people prefer REALLY cartoony, far from animal anatomy. And others like myself stray from human anatomy but not quite feral. IT IS ALL PREFERENCE.
I'm no teacher, and this isn't furry art school (seriously go look at the sub if you're needing help, but so many people come here to ask I felt I should post), but I do like seeing people get that urge to draw, I love seeing people get excited about drawing.
REDLINES. If you really REALLY need help, look up artist redlines, where artists help artists in correcting a drawing.
I'll probably do one on wings later in the week, cuz they are SO FUN. Fur maybe. Any suggestions are welcome.
So sit down and draw. And please don't get down when you're not satisfied. I have friends working at disney, dreamworks, name it, and they will all say the same:
You are always learning as an artist.
submitted by Sareii[link] [13 comments]
Dealing with bigger artists
I don't know if it's just bad luck, but I've dealt with only two artists so far and I get the impression that, although they are somewhat busy, they have communication issues. In both cases, they reply back to my initial inquiries, and then when I'm ready to move forward with a transaction, I get no response for days.
I mean, like I said, it's fine to be busy, but you could at least send a quick reply saying so. It goes a long way. I literally don't mind waiting for art, but I haven't even paid yet, and it's been two weeks!
I think I'll much prefer artists with moderate followings from now on. Is this just me?
submitted by ericleb010[link] [4 comments]
New to the furry community
Good day to all you other furries. I have been a furry for a little while, but I have not really interacted much with the community, (hence why I have come here), and I was curious if any of you all have any advice for me as someone who is new to the community and considering going to one of the furry cons?
submitted by Patricky5[link] [4 comments]
Furries descend on Silicon Valley, modeling eccentricity for a staid tech culture
Here is an article, dated January 16, in the Silicon Valley Business Journal:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/01/16/furries-descend-on-silicon-valley-modeling.html
It concerns this weekend's Further Confusion convention.
Furries, the lovably idiosyncratic, non-threatening folk who cavort in animal costumes and descend on San Jose annually to mingle, learn and dance, are back.
Further Confusion 2015, the convention themed this year as "London Fog: A Victorian Murder Mystery," kicked off Thursday. So far, about 2,100 people have preregistered for the event at the McEnery Convention Center downtown. By the time things wrap up Monday, organizers expect that number to top the 3,560 that attended last year.
I said it last year: These Furcon festivals might be Silicon Valley's last, best hope at weird. And it's true. The homogenous, suburban culture that evolved out of our tech companies is now an economic liability as employers cluster closer to the urban amenities of San Francisco.
So furries are serious business. Beyond its abstract importance, Further Confusion 2015 is expected to generate $3 million for San Jose merchants as furries occupy 3,200 hotel rooms, said Ben Roschke at Team San Jose, the nonprofit group that promotes the city as a destination and runs the convention center.
This year, people from 12 countries including Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Bermuda and Singapore have preregistered, event organizers said. The event is one of a few significant furry gatherings annually. Furfest in Chicago is a big draw and AnthroCon in Pittsburgh is the biggest event for fur enthusiasts each year.
In San Jose, the annual Fanime animation event draws more people each year, Roschke said. That one generates about $10 million in economic activity and fills about 10,000 hotel rooms.
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