Plural of Anecdotes

Latest page up on Stone Above:

At this point, I'm not sure if I should be putting up some sort of "hide your children" rating. On the one hand, I've got violence and *gasp* nudity! On the other hand, well, "Beware! This comic has full frontal nudity and people being ripped apart like a bucket of fried chicken!" is kind of misguiding. "Animals dying like animals" is somehow not the same thing, even if the beasties are people themselves.

I'm still fighting with how the birds look. I know I want them to contrast as very alien, in this story, but for various reasons I want that to be somewhat stylistic and open to modification. It's easier in the flashback, where I can use effect I won't apply in standard mode, but still...they should look almost like paper cutouts here, I think, but I've put in way too many details. If/when I redo these pages, I think I may just *make* paper cutouts, and skip the details. This is supposed to be a very subjective story. I don't think I realized that when I started, certainly not soon enough to change my art. But hey! That's what practice is for.

In other news, this page took for-frickin-ever to do in Photoshop. So yeah, the birds gotta change.

New comic up over at Anecdata (www.anecdata.smackjeeves.com).

The moose is, as noted, filling in for a deer head.

The deer head was a souvenir of my husband's, from a hunting trip that occurred before I knew him (he still hunts, but we haven't kept any more mementos. Just snausage.). It hung on the living room wall, gazing at the world with taxidermied and somewhat crooked eyes. Eyes hidden as behind a pall, because they were covered with spider webs, because I am the person who fights entropy in this household, and I wasn't touching that creepy thing. I don't mind trophies, but this head was malevolently stupid.

My husband , of course, did not see my point. The deer was dead, and so was definitionally harmless. Nothing I could say would sway him.

Until the night when, all unprovoked, the thing fell on me, all ten points of it, as part of a chain reaction that required emergency redecorating and bandages.

Deer Head lives in the storage shed now, and I am a happier bug. But this Van Gogh's been lookin' at me....

I'm learning, through trial and error, about the cultures of different webcomic hosts.

( Long and potentially impolitic rambling )

The quick bits, for those who just want to look at pictures:

Skyfall
Art Challenge Stuff
Anecdata (journal comic)

Short reason: Old host bad, new host good. I think. Anyone who'd like to help me test this, please go hack away at the site's interactive bits. Leave snarky comments, lowball or highball ratings, look at it on an Amiga using a Netscape browser.

Somewhat on that note: This calvacade of computer based errors really has eaten my time, to the point where I haven't even kept up my correspondence. If you've emailed me or left a comment here and I haven't gotten back to you, that's why. But if you've left a comment on WCN? I NEVER SAW IT. Please go try it on the other site, or just email me here, and I apologize on behalf of the old site's spazziness.


( Now, for people who actually want to read me ranting )

Mehrn's using her hands like people use prayer beads, or an abacus. It's not magic, or even necessary, but it helps her focus. She closes her eyes for the same reason.

Yes, they have more or less two thumbs. So do koalas. It's not unheard of.

That all-teeth expression isn't a social smile, it's a hunting expression. Most grins in the world are predatory. Humans are weird: "I like you/am amused, let me illustrate my innate capacity for ripping your flesh!" Maybe it's because our teeth are so pansy. "I see you also are a soft-skinned clawless weakling! Let us expose our total lack of natural weaponry by baring our tiny rounded fangs!"

I wonder if that confused other animals, when humans started spreading out. "Geez, look at that hairless ground sloth, trying to scare me with its pitiful little nut biter teeth. Easy dinne--owowow why is there a sharp thing in my eye? Am I on fire? Screw this!"

And then fifty more grinning freaks dropped on the cave bear.

Maybe our smiles are hunting expressions after all, but with the human tendency for mental time travel added. "Hi! Remember when we wiped out the cave bears? That was great! Let's do it some more!"

Alternate versions of characters we've drawn before on the challenge, over here:
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/practice/series.php

I am late for the art challenge, so I do penance by doing three people in alternate interpretations, instead of one. The characters and their deals, in order:

Hosanna Cutting-Green:
Previously from Personal Space and Character Sheet challenge. She'll probably show up in a lot of art challenges until the year comes that I start drawing her comic, at which point the Osea will take over.You will notice she is always smiling, because she is always smiling. A bit mad, when she's not quite made.
Her society is sexist, though not necessarily either misogynist or misandrist. But absolutely combative, and men do the fighting. She's normally a doctor. Men do nurse work, but they don't doctor much. They're not considered calm enough. I had thought she might be a bit upset about the swap, but apparently her general mania is adequate to the challenge.

Kes/Kesamari Dabain

Previously from the Character Design challenge, and the currently defunct Staff comic. It's coming back, I swear, once I have a buffer on the ongoing. So probably summer.
Kes isn't human, and her species tends towards a gender imbalance. A really quite pronounced gender imbalance. Different cultures have different modes of dealing with it. Apparently hers favors putting healthy breeding age males in a kind of rent-to-own harem house.
This was not something I knew before I drew this picture. More than anyone else I draw, Kes has her own opinions and is the only conduit for info on her society. I do not blame her for being ticked off.

Mehrn and Chren
No challenge pictures yet, but from my ongoing Skyfall comic. Also, Mehrn had a walk on in Otter Soldiers, which everyone should read. It's linked on th sidebar, people, read it.
Their species lives in sort of perpetual preadolescence until a complicated set of factors kick starts them to sexual maturity, a short but busy life of breeding and child rearing, and an early death. Before then, they've got less gender dimorphism than nine year old humans, since even the males lack external genitalia and the hormones are totally different. Not being breeders, they are not concerned about this at all. But they are fun to draw.

Quick notes for those who like them, though it will all come out in the comic itself eventually:

The fuzzy longtails don't have a species name for themselves; but everyone else calls them Osea. No one pronounces it the same way, but my spellcheck don't care, and it's shorter than writing out "fuzzy things" every time I mention them. So Osea it is after this. They're trooping scavengers, and live in groups of one or more family. Families consist of one sexually mature couple and their offspring. Sexual maturity is another topic for another day, but it's not age based.

Osea are, to oversimplify a bit,mildly empathic, with other sentient beings as well as each other. It's not something that most of them notice most of the time, in the way that understanding symbols isn't something that most humans think about most of the time, even though you're doing it right now. It's just a thing they do, and it mostly doesn't amount to more than a general awareness that other troop members are about and more or less ok. It keeps groups calm and generally affectionate towards each other. But when somebody's really worked up, it can override their individual emotional states to some degree. Panic is pretty contagious.

Kehl aren't leaders,that falls to the breeding pair, especially the mother. They're sort of a cross between counselors and mind cops. They're sensitive enough to pick up more subtle and specific impressions, sometimes at a good distance. Anyone born with that level of sensitivity has to have Kehl training, or they pretty much lose their personal selves in the overload. Those who take to it learn to separate their personal feelings from everyone else's, usually by keeping their own emotions very very stable. They're the ones who generally deal with non-Osea in less isolated tribes, and with disturbed members of the group.

Those who are born hypersensitive, but can't learn that self control fast enough... are a different, and not happy, story.

Mehrn is young, and has pretty good self control, but she hasn't got a handle on the practical end of her duties yet. Taking a crazy guy back to the group's main lair is not smart. Nehn is trying to be nice about this.

Everything is fubar'd, over on the comics. Most of the comics and art are down, in fact. But I've got the current series working, and in order and everything. Also, new art up on Interludes, though it's only a picture.

But! When I get everything up and running again, my Skyfall comics will be reposted with legible font! Because my dear darling spouse has offered to do the lettering, thereby providing legibility for the first time ever. So it may take a while, but it will be readable in the end. Huzzah!

Top panel: These three pages have made me very happy. So sad I have to start making an actual story happen. Oh, well, the wordless pages and layout fun were nice while they lasted.

Also: Hi, Mehrn! I need to start putting names to my characters actually in the story. It's just that it feels incredibly forced, and takes up room, and argh. Names will be revealed eventually! I swear!

I am working on it.

Note that she grabs the bag with the food in it. These are ravenous little creatures, and leaving food behind Does Not Happen.

Last panel: Yes, Chren was the runt.Osea have those. It hasn't affected his current size, and none of the younger ones see him as having any problems. But Mehrn's from,essentially, the same litter, so she'll always think of him as the runt, the same way an older sibling might think of their little sister as "the baby" even though she's six feet tall and 35 years old. Family.

Also: New Old way of doing the text here. Opinions?

Though less mess than I had planned, actually.

Today I mucked around with plaster and papier mache and the mask bases I had and got about five masks ready for embellishing (thanks, Ruby!). And I discovered many of the sort of exciting things that only matter to people doing crafts, including:

Plaster is easier to cut than papier mache, so I won't cover the eyeholes with that again. Geezumcrow.

Papier mache on its own won't dry in the microwave for squat, but papier mache on plaster dries in about five minutes. As opposed to the three days it takes at room temperature. Much bonus!

Plaster wrap comes off aluminum without vaseline.

I'm gonna need more gold paint.

I am not at peace with the dust that comes out of my papier mache mix, and need to find something to do besides breath it in and pray to the gods of lung disease to pass me by.

Shaving cream removes plaster and papier mache, too! At least from skin. I swear, "How Clean is Your House" is the best show ever.

So what did you learn today?

Another story started. This time, I'm adding in annotations as I go. Because I like annotations.

Yes, this story is pretty much about a couple groups of Osea, and the things that live with them. I thought about making the whole thing a wordless short.It would have been easy and worked well, I think, and I may use them for it later. But I tend to like stories that just muck about in the dirt and tangle of a world, so this happened, instead.

Page 1:

I toyed with putting a title in that long top panel, but decided against it. I like the look of it as a skyscape. Maybe I'll post up a page with a title-treatment later. What do you think?

That's supposed to be a net bag, by the way. Osea don't wear much in the way of clothes, because: fur, but they do use belts and bags and such to carry things. It's always good for little climbing creatures to have their hands free.

The climber in these two pages is Chren. It's said on a sharp exhalation, all one sound. Their language has a lot of sounds that happen at the front of the mouth. I am overthinking this.

Page 2:
Aaah! Bird attack!

It may interest some to know that this entire story did *not* occur solely because I hate seagulls. Still, I do hate and loathe the nasty flying rats, and would like to take this time to thank them for providing inspiration for this scene.

And height looks bigger when you're falling it. It's worth noting that Chren had probably climbed halfway down the cliff before getting mobbed. It didn't occur to him that he would get mobbed; Chren's bright, but not thoughtful.

Not happy about the splash. Needs something. Advice?

ETA: The ad bar in the comments page has focused on the word "nest", it seems. So I am advertising a bird's nest soup supplier.

I cannot state enough that I DO NOT endorse this product, or any other spit-based cuisine. Indeed, any cuising based on glandular secretions is to be approached with caution, and yes I include dairy in this, given how many people are lactose intolerant.

But especially bird spit nests.

This is about this journal comic:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/anecdata/series.php

which may require a bit of explanation.

I make dolls, of various sorts. For a particular craft fair, I made sock dolls. Sock dolls, are, naturally, white, or other-sock-colored, but the cheapest socks to use are white.

And sock white is a boring color, and doesn't look good with any fabric I had for clothing, and also white is boring. And I was painting on the faces anyway. So I painted the rest of them, too. It looked pretty cool.

For the record, the colors I painted them were gold, copper, garnet brown, and sand. I've got another batch that're going to be in greens and blues. I will probably not do red, because red overwhelms other colors.

Anyway. Those were the colors I went with. Glittery, and on the brown/neutral side of things.

And while I was away, my Lovely Assistant had the conversation related in the comic.

The whole thing just boggles me, because: (a) how are non-white dolls racist? Are white people so insecure that seeing any other color on a doll frightens and confuses them, and I must be sensitive to that? Is it racist to acknowledge that other skin tones exist? Was it the metallic-colored paint combined with the stylized facial features (though, really, these are *sock dolls*. They have no fingers, thumbs, or ears. A person might expect they'll be a bit a cartoony.)? I don't get it...

Especially because, (b), how does my not being white make it all ok? Because non-whites can't be racist? Because non-whites are *allowed* to be racist? I...I'm so confused.

Also, (c) only a couple of white people had any such comment to make. The dolls were a big hit with the black and hispanic kids in town, and I am so making more, so I can sell them cheaper. I like seeing happy kids.

Accolades to any who can explain this weirdness for me.

Also! Anyone who can teach me to hyperlink, or point me towards a decent tutorial for such? Please do so in the comments. I think I'm the only person on the internet still linking with the actual URL.


*No, I'm not white. I'm what used to be known as a creole, before that came to be associated entirely with Louisiana, and is now commonly known as Heinz 57, or mongrel. Practically, it means I can spend a day in the sun without worrying over either sunblock or sunburn, and yet get seated at a Denny's without having to make a federal case.

I've got the latest art challenge picture up over at Target Practice:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/practice/series.php

Kaylee and Zoe from Firefly. Er, obviously, I should hope. Unless you've never seen the show. Also I-should-hope-obvious, I decided to go for more for caricature than realism.

Kaylee would have been a lot easier in realistic style. Dang white chicks all look alike :P.

Making this picture required me to watch Firefly, again, some more. How I suffer for my art.

Ok, I had to watch Inara, who I dislike more at every viewing. So that's sort of suffering. But hey, her clothes are pretty.

I could blather on about process, but I won't, because I want feedback unprejudiced by my own opinions. I mean it especially this time; this piece is weak, and I need feedback.

I will, however, note that this may be the only time a Photoshop filter served exactly the purpose I wanted.

Gunsmith Cats is essentially a big dumb action movie in manga form. Guns! Cars! Races! Of cars against guns! All as done by scantily clad girl-women with frankly impossible bodies! And one giant guy with an even more impossibly-er body!

All of which is cool by me. It's what Gunsmith Cats is about. It's what I read the book for. I don't expect character development, or respect for the laws of physics, or anything. GC exists so Kenichi Sonoda can draw all the cool cars and guns he lusts after. And also disturbingly prepubescent women with boobs, and I refuse to connect those two thoughts. I'm sure he's a very nice man. Anyway.

Reading along, totally behind people shrugging off bullet injuries (ha!) and magical internet research abilities and all the other standard action movie stuff, when all of a sudden the main character walks on panel from a strangely unshown shower scene.

In her bra and underwear.

Toweling off.

And my disbelief suspension, which is adequate to supporting elves, flying monkeys, and the innate decency of humanity, snaps like a cheap rubber band.

Because *nobody does that*. Oh, there might be some sort of towel fetishists who walk around that way, but as a matter of mundane routine, which it was clearly supposed to be, no. Women walk around naked toweling off, walk around in underwear toweling off, walk around *fully clothed* drying their hair, but not in underwear and a bra. This is not some weird cultural taboo; bras are uncomfortable, they take forever to dry if they get wet, and the body parts they cover are frankly prone to damp anyway. Any woman who needs a bra puts it on towards the end of dressing, which is several steps away from toweling off.

And don't try to say she was getting ready to relax. Bra + relax = fail.

It's a little thing, but it rankles, because it is little and it is mundane. And Sonoda, who presumably does not live in a hideous dystopia where women and men are separated by law and bred only in silence by their evil alien masters, could have frigging asked, or observed his wife if he happens to have one.

And that's the sort of thing that wads up SOD and throws it on the floor The big details can be ignored, or never known; the little details are intimate and familiar and really, really striking when ignored.

(True in art, too, of course. You can screw up and screw around with drawing unicorns and elves and flying cities built on clouds. Draw a twisted tree and even botanists aren't likely to complain. But get a human body the least little bit off, draw one eye slightly bigger than the other, and it will distract your audience to the point they don't even notice that your crooked main character is standing in a cubist nightmare of perspective failure. )

Do you remember getting chucked out of a story by some piddly little detail? What did it for you?

Started a new sketchblog for my art challenges, since I want to keep Anecdotes for journaling:

Target Practice
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/practice/series.php

This Week: I'm Dodging As Fast As I Can/Action Pose

This character was a perfect example of why you should never let the GM design your character. I wanted a minor vermin wizard, a Pied Piper of bugs and spiders and such. He locked on to "spiders" and I wound up with a blooddrinking shapeshifting spiderwoman. With an insane speed bonus and almost no combat skills.

This is pretty much what she did. For six months.:

Dodge! Parry! Thrus--aw crud! Dodge! Dodge! Dodgedodgedodge!

I regret that no one reading this ever played the game this character's from, because they'd be laughing, remembering the sheer aggressive lameness of it all. Sigh. Don't munchkin, kids.

This post is about this comic:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/anecdata/series.php.

Right, so obviously I didn't wake up married to a slime monster, and it's very insulting to my dear spouse to even imply such a thing.

But I did make the horrible awful mistake of taking a prescription drug and a chocolate cordial candy in the same night.

And I woke up in my own bed, hours later, with almost no memory of the intervening time. Or the fact that it was my own bed. A slime monster marriage would have been less disconcerting than playing "this is not my beautiful house" for fifteen minutes with a warm body right next to me in the suddenly foreign bed.

Also, I forgot I had feet. For about an hour. It didn't worry me, any more than my current lack of dorsal fins does; I just didn't know how I was supposed to get out of the Bizarro Bed.

To those who seek this effect from drug use on purpose: You're insane, and it was a Crown Royal cordial. The drug I'm sure you know yourselves.

Crossposted over at my livejournal.

Character interaction pic is up at http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/anecdata/series.php.

Drawn with pencil and various colors of pen. Flat bucketing coloring courtesy of Photoshop. I really wanted her clothes to be hospital-scrub green, but I'm not sure I got the color quite right. Or that anyone besides me would know if I did.

Winding to the end of Staff. Next week will probably see either a little intermission tale, or the next story proper starting.

Either way, it'll be linked up at my main series page:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/carapace/


And it should start right after the last page of this. So let me know if you can’t find it, hey?

It’s a common aphorism in any creative field that a person has to make X pages of dreck before they can start being any good. Hopefully, I’m now 12 pages closer to having some competent comics. Thanks to anyone who actually read it, and especial thanks to the people who actually commented. If I stink less next time, it is largely due to you.

For those who like commentary extras, or who’ve been waiting to comment until they know what the hell I was thinking,

Page 1:
I really love the little mini-panels of Kes figuring out how she’s going to get across. It was fun to make and is still fun to look at.

On paper, at any rate. It’s one of the things that suffers from online formatting.

Notice that I apparently had no idea what my pens were doing in the second talky panel.

Page 2:

Ooh, panel 3 got munged up.

“Ladder” is supposed to be an unsound effect, I thing I love in other comics. Not sure it worked, though.

Panel 8: This is probably going to be Kes’ character bio picture, when I get around to doing that stuff. Amused and slightly skeptical; that’s pretty much her.

Page 3:

Not much to say here, except that it turned out SO much better in the scan. Light shades of grey are loved by my computer, it seems.

Also, all the trees are the same kind, a sort of generic tree idea not found anywhere in this country. Only conscious manipulation results in these sort of monocultures, even without the instantaneous foresting.

Page 4:

This world exists in a debris belt. Very little starlight gets through, but there are a lot of satellite rocks reflecting sunlight at night (stone light?). In the day these rocks tend to look like…well, muck in the sky.

Also, I’m happy about the shadows on this page. Yay, something that came out vaguely like I wanted!

Page 5:

This page was massively modded on computer. The original had a very different final tier, which accomplished nothing. But I caught it before posting, and replaced it with what’s there now, which at least moves a little, So I think I’m learning something already, yay me.

I liked drawing rock veins way too much.

Page 6:

Even aside from the lack of any frelling dialogue, I’m happy about this page. I love drawing settings. And yet I get snappish about backgrounds. Eh.

Those are clay and wicker shelters around the base of the trees. They keep out a certain kind of burrowing pest that would otherwise have eaten all the dead trees years ago.


The kappa-thing isn’t paying Kes in money; this part of the world still works on barters. But there are such things as trade agreements, and some groups have tokens that symbolize that. Kes has a long string of these IOUs. They’re an economic evolutionary step, and much easier to carry than chickens.

Page 7:

I was trying to make these next few pages darker, because it’s supposed to be coming down sunset. Not sure if that worked.

The little raccoon-things are called Osea, as a species. They’re native to this continent, and are great fun to draw. Next story is probably going to be about them, at least in part.

Page 8:

I could not get the gloopy shape shifting stuff as gloopy as I wanted. I would really like some tips for drawing tarry gloop.

Page 9 and 10:

I don’t know what you’re talking about. There are no pages 9 and 10. Now over on page 11...

Oh, fine.

I hate these pages with a passion. I accept that I brought it on myself, but still.

These two pages were, originally, sort of the point of the story; a way of explaining something that will be important again later, without just whipping out the Encyclopedia Fictitia. But by the time the whole story was done, they didn’t really fit. It had shifted focus to being something simpler, and I couldn’t figure out how to make the necessary information still fit in. So things got messy.

And then I picked a weird font, and things got really messy, and I’m not even sure if the info I left in is legible at all.

Damn.

Also, I tried to give myself an alternate layout, and thereby made my hated dialogue ballooning even more time consuming. So, I swear vengeance on myself in the form of not being allowed to have nonstandard layouts for at least another ten pages.

And then WCN caught my hate, and refused to accept the jpgs of these pages, so I barely updated them on time.

A couple of notes about them, nonetheless.

2nd to last panel, page 9: Most things people think to ask for, when they're talking off the top of their heads, are pretty tangible. "I'd kill for a plate of barbecue" kind of stuff. Monitor the average person's conversation for a week, and the number of times they pray to find their keys will far outnumber the times they pray for world peace. Hence, a sword and a doll.


I like the first part of page 9, actually. Drawing Kes getting her face eaten by goop may have been the most fun I had in these pages.

Flashback/exposition time. Yes, that's a more-or-less moon in the landscape. And the people below are ones who don't exist anymore. The goops have been around for a long, long time.

Final panel of page 9/first panel of page 10:
That guy with the marks on his eyes is dead. And moving. Yes, the goops can do a sort of reanimate dead, though they don't really understand the concept. The results tend to be a bit of a well-meaning monkey's paw, which is possibly more upsetting than the other kind.


Page 10, panel 2
And then people figure out they really can get what they want, and it all gets abstract.
Ever try to draw abstract? Without relying on anything way too culture-specific? Yeah. Pain in the guts.
Anyway: good weather, love, and what's supposed to be the infinity symbol but with the shape of the word balloon came out looking like a cutesy skull. Seriously. I could put a bow on that thing and sell it at Hot Topic.

Also on this page: Flying Ships! I love the flying ships.
Kes is from a long, long way away, and prone to getting homesick. She doesn't mean it, though.

If I ever tweak this story, these pages will be radically altered, in the form of being replaced entirely.
Meantime, I’d be very interested to hear what people think is happening in these two pages.



Page 11:

Back to things that work.

This may be the most successful page in the whole story, artwise. I base this on showing it word free to two people who hadn’t seen the rest of the story, and were still able to tell me what was happening. So yay again.

But again, I’m not sure if the lighting I was going for worked. It’s supposed to be full sunset, at this point, and while that’s the sort of thing that is certainly easier to convey in color, it’s not impossible to show in grey. I point to things like Otter Soldiers, which has managed to portray winter light, city twilight, bright garish mall lighting and even cold-night atmosphere all in grey.

I am not that good, and am totally open to advice on the subject.

Page 12:

I love that long panel.

The seal-headed thing is from a species closely related to Kes’, in a wolf/coyote sort of closeness. Or, since Kes is a hybrid offspring herself, a wolf/dog way, I guess. He’s foreign here too. Eventually we’ll see where they both come from.

Storyboarding backstory: One of the things that seems most appealing about visual fiction-verses is the permanency of props. If a character has a distinguishing weapon/coat/pair of boots, it will always be with them, through decades and disasters. Such props rarely even need repair. That is of course nonsense; even a really good sword is prone to getting lost, battered and broken, and things like boots and walking sticks are lucky to last ten years. So this whole thing basically started as a way of explaining why, in fact, one of my characters has such a perma-prop.


That’s all for this one! Thanks to everyone who sent me comments, and to those who didn’t… say something, would you? If only to tell me how to do a journal cut. You’re creeping me out.

Lynn the artist is from China Mieville's work. I've had something like this picture in my head since she was described. Done with watercolor on vellum bristol board. The full piece is square,but making watercolor scans match up in Photoshop is Fail.

Since the two organizers of this here art party know full well I can draw off a written description, I decided I would risk completely screwing up and play with color, too.

Anyone who's pursued an art for long at all finds there's parts they're good at. I'm comfortable with body language and expressions, and pretty much at ease with basic storyboarding. Basic cartooning stuff. It's useful and flexible and kept me in solid with my art school.

But oh how I suck at light and color. I can't get worse without going to technical drafting.

So that's obviously what I need to work on. That I chose to work on it with transparent watercolors and surreal hues is clear proof of mental illness.

Still, I'm pretty happy with it. Especially happy that I was able to scrub-erase and repaint a couple of problem areas; that's a new technique for me. I also like the way color directs the focus of the piece around her hands, even with that big ol' beetle head. I usually rely on linework for my focus, and I'm trying to get away from that.

If I did it again, I'd probably stylize the body more; I've lengthened and thinned it out a little, but a bit more twisting might have made it more dynamic. Still not quite happy with the big beetle head itself. Aside from the lack of internet/reference failure I had when drafting the thing, the segments just aren't delineated well enough. Oddly, that looks better in the scan.

Shown with stages so commenters can point out exactly where I went wrong. Rip into it!

It was Celebrate Pie Day yesterday.

I made a buttermilk custard pie with actual fresh buttermilk from the local dairy coop. And lo, it was well worth celebrating.

Also, I managed to find a restaurant that makes real hot cocoa. One hour before closing. All they had left was the last bit of the pot, the stuff that's been stirring and bubbling so long that it has effectively turned into a melted chocolate bar. And oh, woe was them, they were going to have to throw it out if it didn't get used.

So I threw myself on that grenade, and got four mugs full of free high-octane hot chocolate in the middle of a sleeting cold night.

All that, and I got my internet back.

I *like* Celebrate Pie Day.