Thank you very much for this small but very important, personal milestone that I reached in these days. I never thought to get this far in less than a year I am here on NG and consider that my activity increased a lot after I passed most of the exams I had to do this year (there are still a few, but the most part is done). The fact that 100 people decided to follow this silly profile in which I try to use, combine and experiment different styles and touch various artistic topics really motivates me to improve even more and work to see different realities.

I admit that what makes me really happy is not the number, views or faves per se a submission, that I make, can get but the recognition of my effort in what I do via cool comments I see. When I see people notice the effort and want to take time to express this, well this makes me truly happy because even a single comment that points out this repays me for the time, effort and money I spend to make art. So to those people who notice this, I thank you all from the deep of my heart! You truly make my day!

Of course people are not obliged to interact with me nor to comment or fave, I am not like a certain person I met on DA back in 2016 who constantly required her followers to comment on almost every single post or piece she posted. This really drained my mental energies but thankfully my friends and I cut ties with this person long ago.

Naturally I won't always be active since real life can keep me away from this site but for now I want to cherish the time with you guys, the community and the site itself because I can manage to balance offline and online time.

100 people are 100 different worlds, thoughts, emotions and feelings that decided to interact with me in a way or other, and I find this quite fascinating. Fans are not numbers but people who have hopes and dreams. The title of the journal echoes line 454 of Terence’s Phormio.

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Asides from this happy event, I am also happy that I managed to finish in time my works for the Brazilian contest despite I am dealing with some stress no one asked for caused by my father. I thank my friends, this site and art if I am coping in a constructive way this extremely annoying stress that I want to end on legal terms (I won't go into details but let's just say I am dealing with a bastard for a month and a half thanks to my father's irresponsible behaviour). Brazilian contest helped me to create many works in a few time and with different styles but this month also allowed me paint with MS Paint for the first time in a serious manner and some funny and cool forum threads made me have fun with silly draws like the "Draw a face on Gengar". I posted only this submission in the thread:

But I want to share here other faces I want to put on one of my favourite Ghost type Pokemon:

It was funny to be silly and try different faces XD

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I am also finishing a quick drawing as way to thank the person who gifted me the Support status, thank you! It was a nice surprise to be able to promote an artwork for the Tuesday Takeover and I can't wait for tomorrow to promote another artwork. Like I said I prefer to promote others rather than me but I don't mind if people want to promote themselves, they have the right to do if their work is done with effort and creativity. Here the sneak peek of the drawing:

This is a thing I always liked to do, even when I was on DA and someone gifted me a Premium membership. I like to thank those who make my day with a small drawing, it's a personal policy of mine when I am online.

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After the Brazilian contest I will take an artistic break from participating in other contests or collabs because I want to recharge energies with personal pieces and I want to finish works for collabs I am already in. The Great Homer collab is doing great, I see many awesome and creative pieces in the forum thread and I know what to draw for my 8th Homer. Sadly I am reaching the end of my Homers but it was fun as heck nonetheless. Soon I will continue the ugly cat collab and after I recharged myself enough I will continue the cool OCtober challenge made by Oddlem.

So that's all for now, again thank you 100 people who decided to follow me, you are amazing and keep rocking! See you next time!

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing fine. As for me it's been a nice day and it concluded with a cute addition for the art gallery I am making for the Brazilian Art Contest (I aim at showing different styles and techniques):

This is my very first work with MS Paint I ever made because since I got my first computer I never really tried it because I didn't like the results it gave me but this thread gave me the will to go out my comfort zone in terms of relying only to a single layer just like in traditional art (despite traditional art gives me more control over what I'm doing). And I was happy to have participated because I learned a lot about some aspects of digital painting that Krita didn't immediately gave me. I learned the importance of "sculpting" colours using the same hues and editing the value to work with different shades of the same colour and build a more realistic image.

I first started with the background and practiced with blending colours by switching between the pencil and ink tool 2 in order to achieve what I wanted, then I started sketching the rough shapes of the capybara (photo reference). After this I spent a bit of time painting, blending and working on both shades and highlights to obtain the final result. This is first time I learned to see the digital painting process under a different light that not even Krita or GIMP gave me because I was too focused on other process of digital creation. Thanks to MS Paint I learned that I can use hard brushes, like ink tool, as sketching tool for the blending phase and then the pencil can help building different hues by only working with colours I put on the canvas. Digital painting is really a form of sculpture with colours and hues made by them and this experience showed me this concept in all its power. I will try to apply what I learned on Krita. See you and have a nice day!

Hello everyone! I hope this month will be full of inspiration and fear >:D

I am very happy to be able to finish and post my recent work for a Halloween collab I took part so now I can continue with the Brazilian contest. In the meanwhile a quick sneak peek of the ugly cat collab hosted by Simoes1000

Yes a lil' angry Pico I doodled while I was adding the tabby pattern to my cat (he won't hurt the cat I promise). This is an interesting collab that allowed me to work on a design that drift away from the usual idea of "ugly" cat, basically Doritos, Gattomammone (loosely) and triangular shapes inspired me with the design. I originally intended to go for a more normal cat (a shaved Persian cat) but then I got this idea and I didn't want to scrap it. The deadline is far way so I can focus on other collabs but in the meantime I started with the cat, I will then add a background which will be a forest one.

I will leave you with a pic I took three years ago during Halloween period:

It inspired me to write a Shakespearean sonnet but I still struggle with the iambic pentameter. That's quite funny since English language relies on it for the most part. Many words are iambic pentameters. Oh well, Happy October Month! May the fear be with you.

I had so much fun experimenting with a completely different style like Madness style. First time I participate to it since my account is less than a year old, here the preview of the finished work. I will post it tomorrow in the afternoon:

The complete work will be rated M due to the gore I wanted to add. It's been 9 years since I drew something gorish, last time was during a Goretober challenge on DA. It was extremely cathartic drawing this Madness fanart because irl I am dealing with something, or better someone, extremely disturbing and annoying so subliming my anger and frustration through art helped me a lot these days. Now that I am done with this piece I will start with the entry for the Heritage Day Collab, the sketch at least because the Madness piece tired me a bit due to the layers I had to use to achieve effects I wanted.

Well, see you tomorrow for the Madness Day!

Hello guys, I hope you are doing fine. As I mentioned in a previous journal I plan to post photos and talk a bit about them since I am removing them from FA after discovering I feel much more at home here with its amazing community. I want to start with a set of historical photos taken during WWII when my great uncle fought during Operation Barbarossa in Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Union (he was one of the few who managed to survive but he partially lost toe mobility because of frost).

Let's start with something simple:

The fallen fighter

This is a LaGG-3 "White 4-50" (Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov LaGG-3) shot down in 02/05/1942 in Stalino. With the help of my cool friend Szynka and this website I was able to identify the model. Despite its flaws and poor production quality, it was one of the backbones of the Soviet Airforce and laid the groundwork for one of the great fighters of the Great Patriotic War.

This was a single engine Soviet fighter. It was developed in 1938 under the name I-301 to replace Polikarpov I-16 and because there was a shortage of light alloys and steel, it was designed to be predominantly made of wood (delta-drevesina, a special chemically improved plywood that was particularly rugged and fire-resistant. The prototype was the LaGG-1 and  took its maiden flight on March 1, 1940. It was underpowered and overweight — its Klimov M-105P engine could produce only 1050 hp at sea level, which was insufficient, and was also prone to oil leaks(1). Pilots reported that the plane generally had poor flying characteristics (it was prone to spin during steep turns, it would stall suddenly, and the landing gear were too fragile). Despite these flaws, it passed its trials and was ordered into production in November 1940(2).

By the time of the June 22, 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, 100 LaGG-3’s had been built. All units operating the new fighter were far from the front lines and escaped the initial onslaught. By the end of 1941, it was for a short period the most common fighter in the Soviet inventory, more numerous than either the Yak-1 or MiG-3(3). The main flaws of this plan were slow speed, heaviness and being underpowered but it has some good qualities too:

highly fire-resistant

very rugged

heavier armament than its German counterparts, the Messerschmitt Bf 109E and F

Another trait of this fighter is that it boasted one 20mm cannon firing through the propeller hub, two 7.62mm machine guns in the nose, and two 12.7mm machine guns in the wings — and all these guns were a significant contributing factor to the plane’s weight(4).

fun fact: in October 1941, a single LaGG-3 unit, the 21st Fighter Regiment more precisely, shot down 23 German aircraft while losing only seven of its own(5).

It became a a successful bomber interceptor, but despite this it couldn't compete with Bf 109, especially the F variant. It was easier to fly than the MiG-3 but it was quite unpopular among Soviet pilots who nicknamed it “Lakirovanny Garantirovanny Grob.” This was both a play on its abbreviated designation (LaGG) and a reference to its wooden construction that translated to “Guaranteed Varnished Coffin.”(6)

Other downfalls of this fighter were the fragile landing gear and quirky flight characteristics that made it have high accident rate and not recommended for inexperienced pilots. In comparison Yak-1 was more pilot-friendly. LaGG-3 production ended in 1944, but the Russians continued to fly the type for the duration of the war. It even saw action against Japanese forces in the Far East in the closing days of the war(7).

It's also interesting that the LaGG-3 was made into the superior La-5 by swapping out its water-cooled engine for a radial, when the Curtiss P-36 was developed into the superior P-40 by making the opposite swap^^

Another photo I want to share is this:

Soviet POWs

This photo taken on 30/06/1942. It comes from my grandfather's photo collection that was given to me as way to honour his memory but most of all I want to pay tribute to history. The photo was taken in Donetsk (at that time the city was called Stalino), et the start of World War II, the population of Stalino was 507,000. After the war, the population was 175,000. The invasion by Nazi Germany almost completely destroyed the city. It was occupied by German and Italian forces as part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine between 16 October 1941 and 5 September 1943. Hopefully it was mostly rebuilt on a large scale after the war. These people were Soviet POWs forced to work on a warehouse, I only hope they managed to escape and avoid the worst but I highly doubt. History shall never be forgotten.

And now I want to share two of the most dark history photos I have:

Stammlager 348

 What you are seeing is a line of Soviet POWs being sent in one of the camps of Dnipropetrovsk, the photo was taken on 06/10/1941. Dnipropetrovsk was under Nazi occupation from 26 August 1941 to 25 October 1943. The city was administered as part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Holocaust in Dnipropetrovsk reduced the city's remaining Jewish population, estimates for which range from 55,000 to 30,000, to just 702. As I said this is Stalag 348 where the occupiers are estimated to have killed upwards of 30,000 Soviet POWs. Rest in peace, everyone.

Here a list of all German stalag camps: https://www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/Stalag.htm

I wanted to share the history of another stalag 328 but sadly the website will be shut down the next year and I can't find the article anymore :(

Last but not least, the death march photo:

Todesmärsche in Woroschylowhrad

This photo shows a line of prisoners leaving a concentration camp in Woroschilowgrad or Voroshilovgrad, renamed on 5 November 1935 in honour of Soviet military commander and politician Kliment Voroshilov because the original name is Luhansk. The photo was taken on 25 July 1942 and I find this particularly interesting from a historical point of view since the city became a frontline city in World War II after the failure of Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa to capture major Soviet cities.

On July 17, 1942, Luhansk was captured by German invaders (Case Blue). At that time, an underground city committee of the party and a partisan unit were created in the city. I. M. Yakovenko, who previously worked as the second secretary of the Luhansk City Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, was approved as the secretary of the underground regional committee and city committee of the party and the commander of the partisan detachment. In the partisan detachment were the secretary of the underground regional committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party of Ukraine, N. Fesenko, and the secretary of the underground city Komsomol committee, H. Serikova. A wide network of temporary apartments is being created in Luhansk. More than 100 people were left for underground work and organizing sabotage in the city. In addition, on the instructions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the city committee of the party selected and sent 35 communists to other partisan units. 64 scouts were sent to the rear of the enemy.

From the first days of the occupation, underground party and Komsomol organizations began to actively operate in the city and adjacent areas. The partisan unit waged an armed struggle against the fascist occupiers in Luhansk, on the territory of Stanychno-Luhansk, Verkhnyoteplovsky, Oleksandrivsky, Novosvitlivskyi districts. Partisans made bold attacks on fascist troops, destroyed soldiers and officers, disabled enemy equipment, telephone lines, bridges, etc.

On September 15, 1942, German nazis discovered and surrounded a partisan detachment near the village of Pankivka. In an unequal battle, fighting to the last drop of blood, I.M. Yakovenko, squad leader P.P. Shevchenko, Komsomol member Yu. Oleksintsev and others died. But as a result of a fierce battle, the partisans managed to break through the enemy ring, and those who remained continued to fight against the occupiers, disrupting their measures, destroying enemy soldiers and officers, and equipment. A group of underground Komsomol members led by N. Fesenko was active in the city. This group included H. Serykova, H. Shvedkova, V. Tretyakevich, pioneer V. Pyatorkin and many others. They carried out the assignment of the underground city party committee, distributed leaflets and anti-fascist literature. On the task of the underground regional committee of the party, N. Fesenko and G. Serykov, through V. Tretyakevich, established a connection with the party-Komsomol underground of Krasnodon, with the "Young Guard" organization.

One of the forms of struggle of city workers against the occupiers was the sabotage of their military, economic and other activities. Workers evaded work in every possible way, hid their true specialties, and if they were forced to work, they damaged machines and prevented the start-up of industrial enterprises. The Nazis did not manage to restore the work of any city enterprise. On February 14 1943, Luhansk was liberated from the German invaders (Operation Gallop).

Nazis murdered 8,000 civilians, including women, children and the elderly. More than 10,000 Luhansk residents, mostly young people, were forcibly taken to hard labor in nazi Germany. So this photography depicts one of the hot spots moments of the conflicts where we see these poor people being forced to leave a concentration camp to be transferred to other locations since Soviet forces were likely to gain ground. May those soul rest in peace. Sorry for everything.

And now as last photo to conclude this first photographic journal an Iron Cross Class 2 I bought on E-Bay from a German seller:

Das Eisernes Kreuz ist ursprünglich eine preußische Kriegsauszeichnung und wurde am 10. März 1813 von König Friedrich Wilhelm III. für Auszeichnung im Befreiungskrieg gegen die Napoleonische Fremdherrschaft gestiftet. Ich habe das bei bei einem deutschen Verkäufer auf Ebay gekauft. Jedes Mal, wenn ich es ansehe, zolle ich der Person Tribut, die in einem blutrünstigen Krieg namens „Erster Weltkrieg“ gestorben ist.

(Yes, I am practicing a bit of German since I am studying it)

Ok, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this looooong reading and if the T rating is not enough due to the nature of the post, let me know in the comment and I will change to M. Bye and stay awesome!

References and footnotes:

(1) https://hangar47.com/lavochkin-gorbunov-gudkov-lagg-3/

(2) ibidem

(3) ibidem

(4) https://hangar47.com/lavochkin-gorbunov-gudkov-lagg-3/

(5) ibidem

(6) ibidem

(7) ibidem

Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War Volume One: Single-Engined Fighters - Yefim Gordon and Dmitri Khazanov - ISBN 1-85780-083-4

LaGG & Lavochkin Aces of World War 2 - George Mellinger - ISBN 1-84176-609-7

Hello people, how are you? I hope you are all fine. In these days, despite some rough stuff irl, I am feeling quite creative and motivated on the artistic side due to the many collabs I am participating. Right now I finished sending my works for the OC's by night collab and Alien collab + Contest, but I would like to share a small sneak peek for the Brazil Day Art Contest:

It has been ages since last time I drew a snake, it was back in 2016 when I still had DA and I started a series about snakes of Florida. You can see that I tend to start with the head, a quick circle to build it and then the line of the back as way to draw the rest of the body. I know scales are the most challenging part due to the geometric angles they tend to have from different perspectives. This won't be the only entry I will do for the contest because I want to explore many aspects of Brazil from the mythological, cultural and anthropological point of view. It will be a collection of different draws and this will give me occasion to draw people of different cultures. Brazil, as you know, is a melting pot of cultures, many elements of Brazilian mythology are shared by the traditions of other countries, especially its South American neighbors and Portugal. My work wants to focus (or aims at it) on this rather than adding fictional characters in a Brazilian context (I won't rule out I might add a work featuring at least one fictional or OC but I feel more motivated to work on the cultural aspects).

I have already started colouring the first draw of this collection and it will be my very first caricature posted online of an important historical figure of Brazilian history. But I also wanted to start sketching the second work and share it here with you. I won't tell you the context of this snake though, you will know more once the entire collection is finished. I still have a month to reach my goal and ofc I will continue the Homer collab (I love it but I also need to vary the drawing subjects in order to not feel overwhelmed by the same topic).

Ok I will leave you know, I'm back to drawing. Bye!

I usually don't celebrate the increase of people who decide to follow this silly account but I couldn't resist to make this to celebrate the sacred number:

Some of my OCs looking at the result with...different reactions XD

On a more serious note I want to thank you all people who decided to follow me and see what I make. Thank you! Today was a stressful day but this number and the discovery here of a dear friend I met on DA really made my day. In these days I will continue the collabs and contests I am in. I am also thinking about posting these journals photos I take of nature (mostly birds, insects and reptiles) in which I will provide some nerdy stuff about the subject depicted there. No personal info about the location though, I like to maintain a bit of privacy.

Another silly, non-sense journal about how YT can be quite non-sense/silly or plain stupid when recommending videos. I was watching some cool animations about Pico and BF and I saw this video among others:

This is basically what people think about Pico without knowing about him XD

I also read comments labeling him "oh, that videogame school shooter"

BRUH...

Oh well, this is why relying on algorithms is not always a best idea since for now A.I. lacks the ability to understand pragamtics (how context contributes to meaning) and many times YT removed comments of people who simply replied to others, they didn't contain any link or threats. Probably some set of words triggered the algorithm to cancel them and again another proof of A.I.'s inability to read the air.

In a long distant future I will finish this:

If you know Sardinian folklore you already know the creature depicted here but for now I won't say much. This will be the first of some posts about Italian folklore (I plan talking about other countries folklore too) inspired by the YT channel Paranormal Zone. I originally made these journals when I had my DA account but now that's gone I want to migrate them here.

Today I discovered Friday Night Funkin', I already love it but I suck at this types of games because I can't properly follow the music rhythm XD I love how catchy songs are, the fluid animation and characters design. Really cool game, but I didn't expect to see this once I lose against my rival:

Oh man XD I wonder why highlighting deez (I am pretty new to the lore of the game and its characters, hence my surprise). I laughed my ass off when I saw it.

On a side note Happy Robot Day to everyone, I didn't participate to the collab simply because robots are not my things in terms of art and for now I don't feel ready to experiment with them yet. Maybe in future, who knows but for now I have other artistic priorities and weaknesses to work on. I also love how they changed the colour of content rating during this day:

Despite this I still want to contribute to the Dragon Ball collab BUT not in terms of animation though because I know nothing about, I don't plan to work on animation. I will contribute with a fanart, still thinking about a parody though. I potentially have something in mind and this would be the second time I put one of my OCs in another fandom.

Sorry for the silly journal, have a serene and happy Robot Day. See you, bye!