Proud anti-fascist & bird-person

  • 275 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Relevant quote:

    I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

    I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

    I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

    During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

    On War, by U.S General Smedley Butler (1933)


  • Have you ever taken a class or tried following a tutorial?

    But in my opinion the process is more important than the results. Learn to love the process and don’t focus so much on making something aestheticly pleasing at first. Just play around and see what you have fun with; you won’t progress technically until you get to where you can’t wait to do it every day.

    Take a look at why you do art and make some achievable goals to strive for. Ask yourself what you like about a piece and see if you can do something similar. A “bad” drawing is not a failure, but instead a chance to examine what worked and what didn’t. Try doing 10 or 20 very quick gesture drawings to get an idea of what you want a more polished drawing to look like before you commit to a longer piece.

    Above all: have fun with it.