Time-lapse: pareidolia as a tool for face drawing the video contains some flashing lights. Do not watch if you have epilepsy.This one is less about the art and more about the technique. This time-lapse is a demo of how I draw seemingly-convincing anatomy from scratch with no visual aid other than my own "instinctive" sense of pareidolia (i.e. whatever's going on in my own fusiform gyrus), so it may serve as a guide for those who draw faces.There are a lot of techniques for drawing anatomically-convincing faces. One involves plotting some geometrical shapes using compass and straightedge in order to have a visual reference for facial proportions.But, then, the human brain has this funny ability to see faces where ain't none. And the "uncanny valley" allows us to feel whenever a seemingly-human face isn't .This mechanism usually goes this way: we see a visual pattern that triggers our "it's a face" perception, then the more specialized facial recognition mechanism kicks in, only for it to perceive how this "face" have some unexpected details (e.g. glowing irises, sharper canine teeth, etc) and/or proportions (almond-shaped eyes larger than expected), so it gets uncanny.One can leverage it by going the reverse way: crafting an external visual pattern until it maximizes this perception, fine-tuning it for either uncanniness and/or accurateness, depending on the intended goal.This explains the main flow going on in my mind as I'm drawing a face fully from scratch (i.e. no rotoscoping). I often start by drawing a pair of circles (meant as either eyeballs or eye sockets) to trigger my initial notion of size, then (inspired by owls) I draw the eyebrow ridge going from the silhouette for the nose slightly below the median point, then the forehead, then the mouth cavity, then the cheeks (meant to have some blushing), and the zygomatic relief, and chin, and then... well, it'll depend on the how the drawing is triggering my fusiform girus. You can see me getting back quite often to previously-drawn details as I fix these to better adjust my current perception, sometimes redoing things from scratch. I try to draw the hair as soon as I can, because it's one of the main references for this specific face.The final shading ended up a bit "flatter" than I originally wanted to draw. I have a previously-drawn "mugshot art" where the shading ended up imbued with better 3d depth, but I didn't record a time-lapse for it, so I made another drawing.That's pretty much everything for this post, feel free to ask if you got any questions...Alt-text: a time-lapse disclosing the drawing of a feminine face (meant to depict , with large almond-shaped eyes, long red hair, expressive eyelashes, soft-yet-sharp chin, blushed cheeks and tender red lips with sharp fangs), seen in close mugshot. The drawing starts from a gray shape akin to a Venetian mask, then it gradually evolves into a feminine portrait.@artshare@lemmy.world

Time-lapse: the surreal encounter between two owls the video contains some flashing lights. Do not watch if you have epilepsy.In the New World West,with its prairies full with mounds,She governs the gates to the undergroundswhere She laid Her nest:as the Sun raises cluelessly,She raises majestically.In the Ancient Near East,where the Sun already fled and hid,She who rules over the Levantine arid,where even the pharaohs become Her feast:nothing escapes Her gripsas She raises to Her highest trips.A meeting of the two is unlikely to be seen:not just because of the ocean in-between,but also the desert and the greens:two thrones for two Owl-Queens.Took me 3 and a half hours for me to draw this artistic attempt at putting two overly-specific (and largely disparate) owls species (with which I've been hyper-fixated lately) together within the same, surreal scene: (burrowing-owl) and (Pharaoh eagle-owl).I guess it's so far the most complex art whose time-lapse I managed to record (luckily, my phone didn't crash during the drawing).Alt-text for the final art (to be posted as a reply):Artistic depiction of two owls unusually sitting at different simultaneous biomes while facing each other.The leftmost stands next to the entrance of a burrow. She is seen in profile, turned rightwards as she looks at the Pharaoh eagle-owl with a scheming and defiant expression.The rightmost is perched on a boulder roughly at the same distance from the viewer (so the disparate sizes is evident). She's also seen in profile, but turned leftwards, as she looks at the burrowing-owl with a purposefully ambiguous expression (open mouth as if screeching, body slightly leaned forwards with ruffled plumage, visibly hard grip onto the surface of the boulder, wide but half-closed eyes, traits that can be either a defense-attack, dominance pose; or simply the clumsy attempt from an innately strong owl to greet a smaller owl).The leftmost biome is dominated by grass and other vegetation alongside the burrow, all covered in shadows by dense trees at the horizon. The rightmost is an open, plain desert, with some scattered pebbles and rocks, alongside the boulder where the Pharaoh eagle-owl is perched. The biomes meet almost seamlessly, with a somewhat gradual transition between grass and sand.The dusk sky is dominated by a large, red crescent Moon, while the Sun is barely visible setting below the horizon.Alt-text for the time-lapse:A time-lapse disclosing the drawing processes behind the aforementioned art: from a black canvas to the initial landscape, with the multiplication of the layers containing the pebbles, then the Moon, then the approximated rotoscoping of two real photos of both owls, then a few final touches for texture and shading.@artshare@lemmy.world

Bubo ascalaphus and the wanderer man ""---Alt-text: a digital drawing depicting a bearded man, seen in profile, walking across an endless desert, while an owl (meant to be a Bubo ascalaphus, Pharaoh eagle-owl, a large-sized owl native to deserts, with deep orange eyes, prominent ear tufts and strong physiognomy) is perched on his neck. The man, wearing marine purple trousers and marine blue shirt, walks barefooted over the sand with some difficulty, seemingly weary, while he looks downward at his hands, which are extended next to his waistline with the palms facing up as if he were carrying something on his hands (but there's nothing being held). The owl, in contrast, is chillingly calm and simultaneously focused, asserting dominance over the man as she looks at his face with the same focused (and majestic) look that of when owls are watching a prey. Her head is slightly tilted leftwards (in relation to them; to us viewers, it's towards us), adding to an uncanny tenderness. Behind them, a deep red sky typical of late dusk blends with the sand at the horizon, while an enormous red crescent moon emits a deep red glow, a glow of which is the source of light for the entire scene (shadows are cast on the ground).--- Originally, my drawing involved a bit of blood (where the owl's claws meet the man's neck because, in fact, it's something quite expected if an eagle-owl were to perch onto someone's neck with all her mighty, as her claws seem very sharp, more so than other owl ) and the man only wore trousers (no nudity because there's not even a detailed chest, but the lack of a shirt may be seen/understood as so), so I made a more family-friendly version (no blood and he's wearing a proper shirt) in order to make it fully NSFW-free. The original version can be seen in my PixelFed gallery.Also, I wanted to have a time-lapse of my drawing, just like I recorded for the previous drawing (, burrowing owl) I posted here. However, drawings such as this one tend to be more complex (this drawing has 33 layers, some of which use composition modes such as "linear burn" and "glow", which uses a bit more GPU; in comparison, my drawing involved just 13 layers and no composition mode), making my phone more prone to hiccuping/hanging/crashing during my drawing sessions (and recording a time-lapse is, itself, additional GPU load alongside the load from the drawing app).@artshare@lemmy.world

Time-lapse: drawing of a burrowing owl ()I'm used to draw dark and occultism-related art, but my earlier attempts on sharing my artworks on Fediverse (which includes this community) ended up invisible/hidden, perhaps due to how I flagged these as "sensitive content" (so these ended up hidden even for myself because I don't use Lemmy as my Fediverse platform).Now, I've drawn something more "family friendly" (albeit still heavily symbolic, at least to me): it's meant to be a burrowing owl (). Partly because it's a species with with I'm quite fascinated, partly because I can't help but notice how human artistic often overlooks this specific species and of owls.Any image Web search and/or artistic depictions of "owl" mostly revolves around the "ideal owl", the kind of owl many people can visually think of, which often have heart-shaped faces (a trait from family, aka barn-owls) and/or horn-like ears/tufts (common for owls such as those from genus aka horned/eagle-owls)... however, none of these famous "owl traits" occur on genus.Nesting behavior and size is also among the trait differences: the , specifically, nest on burrows (either dug by themselves or dug by other animals), and the genus as a whole are pretty small compared to other , measuring 23cm on average (some other of small owls are , to which the elf owl belongs, and , to which the pygmy owl belongs).Niche and over-specific knowledge, indeed, but when art is a phenomenal window to the noumenal, the signified made signifier, knowing about the signifier is important, at least IMHO.Anyways, it's an(other) attempt of drawing this specific species from scratch. I used "PENUP" app to draw it, recording the time-lapse from within there. As I'm used to draw using Sketchbook, it may not have the same quality observed from my other drawings, because color palettes, brushes and features differ across both apps.(Trivia: as I sometimes do across my posts, there's a hidden message above, hence why the paragraphs may sound "odd"...)@artshare@lemmy.world

Today is Human's Day Today is Love's Day, and Friendship's Day, because it's Happiness Day and Peace Day. Also Humans's Day. And World's Day. It's Social Connection's Day, and Earning a Living's Day, also it's Job Market's Day, and HR's Day. Also, it's Self-care Enoughness's Day, "It'll Pass" Day, "I Feel You" Day, "You Life Matters" Day, "Keep Trying" Day and "You'll Find Someone" Day, because it's also Mental Health Professionals Day, and Mental Health Institutions Day. Oh, let's not forget, it's also Future's Day, and Hopefulness's Day. It's Narnia's Day, Oz's Day and Wonderland's Day. Last but not the least, it's Life's Day, because it's Existence's Day, Reality Day, which some are used to simplify beneath the umbrella of Demiurge's Day.I certainly forgot other holidays associated with this very day, because too many things belong to Fool's Day. Happy You's Day and Me's Day, because you're a lie and we're both fool!"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me cluelessly, shame on both, because we're both fools being puppeteered by the Demiurge, the master of fools."@justpost@lemmy.world

Does Internet still care looking onto steganographed/enciphered data?As far as I remember the old Web, riddles and puzzles were quite common, everywhere from old social media and bulletin boards to blogs and their webrings.Y'all may remember things such as Cicada 3301 and that 11b x 1371 cryptic YouTube video; of course, unless you're not a millennial or zennial as I am.How could these puzzles and riddles, useful for learning a plethora of things such as Math and ciphers and steganography, messages hiding in plain sight, are seemingly gone, nowhere to be found across the so-called modern Web of nowadays?You're currently facing one of those puzzles, except I'm just another dust in the wind so, to which extent it's still a thing nowadays?---Letting aside any attempt to fit a text into a steganography (it's not easy to decipher a hidden message, but it's definitely harder to craft one; yes, both the title and the previous text conceal hidden messages), what truly happened, what happening? It's been a while since I stopped seeing and spotting such puzzles and riddles online.I expected to find it the most across Fediverse and Geminispace, said to be places where humans are supposed to enjoy content with layers of depth and meaning... but, since I've been wandering around, even long-form content without hidden messages seems to be met with (seems like humans can't trust lengthy texts such as this one, believing it's AI-generated), as I observe my attempts on "being the change I crave for" being met with this... void... from the cold Web of nowadays.Given how Web is essentially defined by users (although Dead Internet has been a thing for some time), does this have something to do with the collective tiredness going on in the world, with humans too tired to try and focus on reading beyond the visible portion of a text they see online?Perhaps it's just the online analogous manifestation of "Dark Forest Hypothesis" (i.e. there are humans who'd engage with said content, but they're hidden and keeping absolute silence, afraid of the possibility I'd be one of the ones they're hiding from)?Perhaps I've been just an unemployed and pedantic guy in a world where humans are too busy with mundaneness so they can't afford the time to deal with all the effort required to read online content (textual or artistic) with all the depth it requires?Or is it just my neurodivergence being unable to find meaningful connection with this neurotypical world?Maybe the concept and practice of "hidden messages" are somehow associated with evil things or groups of people so humans refrain from dealing with something which would (in their minds) be potentially "dangerous" or "illegal"? (I once asked about the recent deactivation of the global live feed from mastodon.social and I got a reply explicitly conflating my interest in digitally-guided spiritual gnosis with "unsafe content", two things completely unrelated).@asklemmy@lemmy.world

Existence can't help but rely on itself to be provenAny proof of existence is, categorically, detached from any scientific rigor, questionable by its own.Beyond any ontological evidence, how could it be sustained, except through the ontology itself, ultimately speaking?Yeah, as far as scientific inquiry goes, all it's known somehow infers this supposed validity of existence, empiricism as certainty of existence.Skeptical by nature, of course Science must have some kind of skepticism about existence itself; this doubt can indeed be found, expressed as hypotheses such as the zero-energy universe.Such an idea, still a matter of disagreement, hypothesizes about how universe would actually add up to nothing: net-zero sum non-existent existence.---This was originally a stream-of-consciousness which I restructured as a more, purposefully cryptic and poetic text... speaking of which, you may want to tinker with the initial letters from each of the four individual clauses for each stanza of the text... (Sometimes the true message isn't what can be seen: it's the unseen)@justpost@lemmy.world

You're being watchedHow curious is it that the birdwatcher, the one who watches, is, in fact, the one being watched themselves? For whenever you watch the abyss, the abyss watches you back: she's watching, watching the one who watches her.Source: Bay Nature, photography by Martin Nicolaus.Alt-text: a photography of a burrowing owl () perched behind something out-of-focus, which is occluding her from being fully seen. Only the top of her head is visible, as well as her left eye (right side of the picture), directly gazing at the viewer with a scheming-like, half-opened side-eyed expression.@superbowl@lemmy.world

The summoning requirements were updatedThis is a drawing I just made in Sketchbook out of ongoing political anxieties, not sure whether it fits here, especially due to the implied subjects (ongoing politics and religious symbols). Please let me know if it doesn't fit here. Feedback is appreciated...Alt-text (in case Lemmy doesn't pull it from Calckey instance I'm hosted at): An absurdist, surreal drawing depicting an elder man (a Merlin-like wizard), full with gray hair and beard, dressed in purple robe, amidst the woods during night. He kneels before a pentacle circle drawn on the ground, which is surrounded by five black candles. Both the pentacle and the candles are glowing and lit, with the pentacle emitting a purple glow. Hovering above the pentacle, however, is a bureaucratic, quite legalese text glowing purple: "Age verification required! You must be 18 years old or older to do summonings. Follow the instructions to upload your biometrics and a valid government-issued ID. By proceeding, you agree with the terms and the collection of any required personal data. We and our 72 partners will validate your request in up to 72 hours. Charges may apply." The wizard gazes at the hovering text with an unamused expression.@justpost@lemmy.world

Smile for the selfie"Why so serious?"Source: "The Burrowing Owl’s Cozy Underground Home", website "The Kids Should See This", originally from photographer Mac Stone (couldn't confirm this specific authorship because the website links to some YouTube-hosted video and I don't use YouTube anymore; I found the photo through the mentioned website)Alt-text: Two (burrowing owl) amidst a seemingly endless leveled grassland during daylight. One of them is very close to the camera, as if she were taking a selfie, staring directly at the camera with a serious and quite menacing expression. Behind her, not too far, the second owl is gazing at the sky.@superbowl@lemmy.world

evil.social down for weeksThere's a Sharkey-like (Catodon) instance called evil.social. A few months ago, I created an alternate account there so I could have an alternative to calckey.world (another Sharkey-like instance) for situations where Calckey would be experiencing downtime (with Calckey itself having been an alternative for my earlier Friendica account, after Friendica began experiencing frequent downtime occurrences; eventually I ended up staying on Calckey permanently).At the time, their ActivityPub federation capabilities didn't seem to work properly, I couldn't fetch posts/comments from other instances as well as Calckey.world can. Nonetheless, I still kept the evil.social account as an alternative.Now, it's been a few weeks since evil.social began returning 502 (Bad Gateway).Anybody knows what's happening with said instance? Is it temporary downtime or the instance is likely gone forever? If the latter is the case, what alternatives to Calckey.world, other than Evil.social, should I be aware of, as someone who's used both to personal micro-blogging as well as interacting with posts and comments from threadiverse, and someone who's used to write lengthy texts (so max char length matters to me)?@fediverse@lemmy.world @fediverse@lemmy.ml

Mastodon Live Feed is goneThis is more of a rant (not sure if this comm is appropriate for it).I've been watching Lemmy's ongoing discussion regarding PieFed. It turns out Mastodon got similar problems, too.The largest Fediverse instance already shadowbanned people, e.g:This profile has been hidden by the moderators of mastodon.social.If you didn't find (and save) a profile before it poof'd, it'd be pretty much unreachable.It's been a while since I've been using the Web solely for consumption of public content (esp. long texts). I ceased posting altogether (with this post breaking 2mo of silence) for reasons beyond the current scope. My source of content are firehoses (e.g. Lemmy /all sorted by "New comments", Mastodon Live Feed), partly due to the chaotic nature (it pleases me as ND) alongside my beliefs (Chaos Magick, noise as gnosis), partly due to how it's the closest to a true discovery algorithm...Today, I opened Mastodon only to be faced with a missing Live feed:This feed has been disabled by your server administrators.Yes, public feeds are noisy, spammy, pornographic. But it should be up to the user to decide what they wanna see: muted +3k spam accounts by myself as I doomscrolled the "Live feed" daily.Then out of naiveté/maliciousness/both, some ppl love to parrot the classic ancap line:Just do your server!I mean, it's trivial, amirite? As if the source of the problem wouldn't be replaced by CloudFlare (2nd Biggest Internet Cancer, only losing the topmost rank to the Ruler of the Tumors, the Online Advertisement), AWS/GCP/DigitalOcean/etc, Mastohost, or regional ISPs if you use a PC (doing your ISP, too? Also do your own ICANN and IANA, do your own ASNs and BGPs, everyone knows how it's so easy-peasy /s).(As a sidenote, radio communication is truly lovely: no one's able to stop transceivers... well, except for ITU and their bureaus requiring operators "a loicense" for people to vibrate a quantum fabric of spacetime continuum that predates us hominids: after all, how'd the "Wise Ones" get to knock at ham operator's doors to seize "dangerous" Baofengs after suddenly becoming unlawful due to "Security"?)Yes, mastodon.social (nevermind the "social" TLD) could be simply ditched, problem is how it's home for most Fediverse accounts me and others would like to discover and read/watch; problem is how it's "model" for other instances, pretty much the Fediverse as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised if this "trend" went viral: imagine no Lemmy feed other than your following list (didn't know the random, SEO-lacking, lone profile out there, shouting at the void things you'd deem interesting to your tastes? Don't worry, you won't!)For me and unknown others who also lurk the global chatter, mastodon.social became indistinguishable from mainstream, lacking live global feeds. Meanwhile, people used to shout at the void will be pushed even further......But hey, we're safer now 😌 /s@justpost@lemmy.world