Reference photos of animals

23 Jul

Dear art friends, I would like to share with you an interesting site that I just came across, which will be used by those of you who are looking for an animal in a certain pose in a painting.

This is the website https://x6ud.github.io.
It allows you to filter the type of animal and pose on the left side of the screen, and on the right you will see photos to choose from, which is a great time saver compared to endless googling.

I did not find information about copyright on the site, so the photos should be taken rather as a source of inspiration.

It can be used for study purposes, or as part of a collage etc.

Of course, it’s best to get your own reference photos, but we don’t always have the opportunity to take a photo of a specific animal at a specific angle, and this site seems to be a useful help 🙂

My instagram was hacked

8 Jul

In this article, you will read how my Instagram account was hacked and how I managed to get it back.

It all started last month. It was morning, the weather was beautiful outside, in my mind I was already at the easel… when an elderly lady, according to her profile picture a retired painter, wrote to me via Instagram asking if I could vote for her in some art competition.

I asked for the link, and when she wrote that she could only send it via SMS, it seemed a little strange, but I was already elsewhere in my mind, so I gave her the number. Overall, she seemed to me to be not very technically proficient and I didn’t want to offend her, especially for older people, one has respect and doesn’t want to insult them.

I won’t hold you back with details (besides, I feel a little embarrassed that I ran into it :D).

After that, it went quickly, I started receiving emails from Instagram one after another.

Someone logged into my account (from South Africa), changed my password, turned on two-step verification.

Fortunately, I was on the phone and managed to change my password back and thus managed to get hacker out of my account.

He didn’t have time to change my email or phone number, he couldn’t get back, but neither could I – because of two-step verification.

I wrote him what she was doing and he wrote back that he did it by mistake and that I should give him more information and he will fix it 😀 😀 😀 so I blocked him (hacker was still pretending that is that old lady).

Panic followed (my account only has over 1000 followers, but it is still important to me because of my work, contacts, orders).

Then I calmed down a bit and started searching for articles and YouTube videos on this topic. And that’s why I’m writing this article, because I found the answer not on Instagram, but with other victims of hacker attacks who managed to regain control of their account.
Maybe I can help someone.

If you have photos in your profile

I found out it’s easiest to get account back if you have photos of yourself in your profile (which I don’t and will have to fix it).

Then this procedure works: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yu-PKBtcwT8&feature=share and it is possible to get the account back sometimes within a few hours.

This method involves uploading video selfies, which are then compared with the photos in your profile.

According to various articles, I found out that some people succeeded up to the 50th time (they were constantly rejected), but you don’t even need to make too many attempts in a row, because they will prevent you from sending further for 12-24 hours.

If the hacker changed your email, it is important to know that he will also receive a notification about the return of the account. Then you need to act quickly, change back your data and turn on your own two-step verification.

I read about the fights between users and hackers about who gets into the account first, about the fact that it happens repeatedly, and one lady even finally calculated based on the time zone when the hacker would be sleeping, and then sent a video selfie.

If you don’t have photos in your profile

However, if you don’t have photos in your profile, your situation is more complicated. When you get through all the steps of the form, you will receive an email with questions such as “what devices are you logging in with” and the like.

After a few days, I got a reply that my identity was verified and I could log in, but they didn’t remove the two-step verification, so I could just change my password (which I could anyway until then).

When I wrote him that I still have two-step verification on,
they did not respond.

But then I finally found a video that helped me.

It was about the fact that you need to contact the team in charge of advertising on Facebook (Instagram and Facebook have the same owner – Metu.).

If you are not an advertiser, you need to create a fb page, pay for advertising (5 euros is enough), wait a few days until the button for contacting support appears and then write and write until you find an “admin who has a heart” (like that’s what one of the hacked girls called it).

They will tell you that it is not possible, they may even tell you that you should not try again and you will not get the account back, they may tell you that it has been deleted. One admin even wrote to me that no one can turn off two-step verification, only me 😀 and when I asked how, if I can’t get there, she replied that the error is in the system and they can’t help me.

Don’t give up.

Say thank you, end the conversation and start another with another admin, be professional, matter-of-fact.

I referred to the fact that I am an artist and it is my business account that is important to me.

Instructions on how to access the chat can be found at the end of the article.

Above all, don’t lose hope

Already at the beginning, I promised myself that I would manage to get my account back, and in the end I did, it took 11 days.

I know that worse things happen, but even so, it was very unpleasant and one feels a lot of frustration and helplessness. In the end, however, it was possible and you will be able to do it too, just don’t give up 🙂

And why do the hackers do it?

Often these are people who take advantage of the trust that exists between you and your contacts and offer them fraudulent investments in bitcoins and the like, in short, they want to extract money from people under your name.

Then it is possible to abuse even a smaller account, it is enough for them to see that you have interactions under the posts.

So, learn from my mistake, and if you’re in a similar mess, don’t lose hope, you too can make it 🙂

Snake Altar

1 Jul

So far, my biggest art project was created as a semester work at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica in the studio of doc. Mgr. art. Ján Triaška, ArtD.

These are works created using a combined technique – acrylic, carbon, markers and white pastel on canvas, the total size of the altar is 280 x 200 cm.

We live in a country where is constitutionally guaranteed that we are not bound by any religion. At the same time, however, we are witnessing that the church intervenes more and more in both public and private matters.

With a set of six oil paintings, arranged in the shape of an altar, I wanted to critically point out the activities of this huge opinion-forming organization – which, in addition to the generally known positive effects on society, also has a negative effect.

I continued the creation from the previous semester, during which I created the central panel. The fight against gender equality, the sexual abuse of children within the church and the subsequent silence and inadequate or even absent punishments for the guilty, the attitude towards sexual minorities, domestic violence that the victim has to endure as a martyr, attitude towards divorces, constant attempts to completely ban abortions, manipulation through inducing fear, disrespecting scientific knowledge or exposing seniors to infection during the pandemic, these are just some of its harmful effects on society.

I tried to point out some of them in the pictures using symbols and contrasts. The transparent figures represent the victims whose suffering is overlooked, the contrast between the decorative drapery and the torn black and white figure expresses the seeming safety in the domestic environment of the outwardly perfect family, the fire symbolizes the flames of the Inquisition.

Snakes, which the church has been using for centuries as a symbol of evil, I used as a symbol of evil in the church.

I am aware that in any large group of people there are individuals with a whole spectrum of opinions and behavior – from modern day saints sacrificing their lives to help others to fanatical psychopaths, these works are not intended to condemn the church as a whole and in any case not believers for their faith. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. With the enormous influence that the church has, this is the only way we can become a tolerant and open society.