On Referencing and Copyright

A good guide to referencing. But there are areas I wish it would address. What if the artist was doing traditional realism? The skill set needed there would kind of lean more towards being able to accurately depict something from real life rather than to come up with something of your own...unless you were doing an impressionistic or stylized version of the thing.

Art Supplies and some Watercolor Paintings

Purchased a set of Winsor Newton (W&N) Artists Watercolors a few weeks ago. Is it just me but a lot of these watercolor sets seem to have a similar packaging? This one looks exactly like the Sennelier set I was looking at prior to my purchase, and I swear I saw a Schminke set that looked similar in a rectangular black metal box. Anyway, I'm seriously loving the rich vibrancy of these colors. I love my Daler Rowney Artist box but the W&N are a lot richer. And they're a lot more transparent than my Holbeins.

Superhero comics, Voltron the Legendary Defender, Game of Thrones and other fandom related things...

• Jean Grey Changed Death in Comics: The thing is, Jean is the avatar for the Phoenix. The whole death and resurrection cycle is practically thematic with that cosmic force. I find it tiring myself- the way she constantly gets killed off only to be brought back together again. But it's to be expected because it fits the whole Phoenix design. Was anyone surprised when Fawkes the Phoenix lived again after getting burnt out in Harry Potter?

Voltron the Legendary Defender Season 3

Pros

•  I'm sort of on the fence now about the lion swap. On one hand, I've always wanted to see Allura become a paladin. I feel that female character representation matters just as much as anything and one of the joys of film and tv I get to witness these days is the increasing number of successful female action heroines. In a show as progressive as VLD, I was surprised that there was only one female paladin (Pidge) in a team of five. And I'm not even sure how to interpret Pidge in terms of gender because the show itself alluded to having to view her in more ambiguous terms. Originally, when she revealed that she was 'a girl' I took it to mean that she identified as female and just didn't fit the traditional feminine mold- kind of like Arya Stark from GoT. But after Space Mall aired (episode 7, season 2) I got the impression the show runners didn't want her linked to any gender. In any case, whether one sees her as a female or not- it's always better to have an additional female pilot. So having Allura as part of the team was a great thing.
  

Shipping, VLD and other fandom related things...

• I've always been a canon shipper. I don't mean that I ship all canon couples...only that, most of the time, the couples I do ship are usually canon or have some basis in the source material. I've tried shipping non canon couples before but when the stories came to a finish at the end of a show or a book, I'd often get disappointed and feel that I just wasted my time...so since I am exactly that kind of shipper, I figured I wouldn't do any couple fanart/fanfic unless they actually existed in the story. Again, that's how I choose to do things. Others are perfectly fine with non-canon stuff and that's ok, too.

That feeling when you see several trailers from comic con videos and you want so much to enjoy something, are looking forward to it...but can't enjoy all the anticipation as much as you want...because you're afraid it won't be as good as you imagined it would be or that the writers won't depict characters properly because they simply don't 'get what they're about.' :/

Fandom Explosion. I think it's normal for people to both love, be neutral about or even hate (yes, hate...because there will always be things we really don't like because we're human and all...) ships among other random fan-related things. This is acceptable for as long as no one is rude about it. I myself love a lot of ships. There are those I don't care for to the point that I roll my eyes every time I see them on my dash. And there are those I'm completely neutral about but for some reason only end up disliking because of the behavior of the fan base.