Knowing and yet forgetting is the worst part of playing at trivia.  I did succeed in getting one of these right for the team.  Another was half-right, and a third was written down correctly but scratched out because I thought of a logical reason why it would be wrong.  

What ethical theory prescribes actions that  maximize happiness in total for the people affected?

What kind of animal is Major General Sir Nils Olav III, the mascot of the Norwegian King's Guard?

What highly-viscous fluid is used in the "world's longest continuously running laboratory experiment", having released only 9 "drops" in over 90 years?

What movie earned Clark Gable's only Oscar, which he gave away to demonstrate that the trophy wasn't important?

correct-horse-battery-staple is the "12345678" password for a certain class of human.

I've been feeling... bleh for the last few days about art. It's not all that uncommon, and I know it will pass, and (perhaps more importantly) I know that the only way past it through. Insert reference to Stephen King and doing the damn work regardless, and blah blah blah.

Anyway. Started out doodling Dagger of Cloak and Dagger (in Marvel) and SQUIRRELed to drawing portraits over blorbs. Then SQUIRRELed from that to this. Digital painting sketch.

As always, it's been about 5 minutes, so I already can only see the flaws, but I like the direction it's headed anyway. I intentionally got rid of the lines so that I could focus on painting rather than lines. Challenging, but not impossible.

ETA: I did not get that illustration job I mentioned in a previous post. This is not really a surprise, just disappointing.

Our community college French class is reading an extremely abbreviated adaptation of the "Hunchback of Notre Dame" novel, and I started reading the preface to get an idea of how this particular adaptation was done.  Each of the first two sentences has 5 commas, and the second sentence is 57 words long.  As I was despairing of ever reaching the subject and verb of this sentence, I exclaimed:  "This author sounds just like Victor Hugo!"

Yes, dear reader.  That preface was written by Victor Hugo.

P.S.  "How long is Notre-Dame de Paris" yields "Notre-Dame de Paris is approximately 128 meters (420 feet) long."  The answer I was looking for is "940 pages, in 3 volumes".  We're working with 127 pages, many of which are comprehension exercises.

Who was the most recent person to win NFL MVP as a defensive player?

What island was part of the Ryūkyū Kingdom before annexation by Japan in 1879 and a WWII battle in 1945?

What state gave its name to the Great Compromise of 1787 assigning proportional representation to only one house of the U.S. legislature?

A multiple choice question is never a good choice for the final game-changing question, but this one was particularly bad:  Abscission is the name for A) plants losing their leaves, B) deer dropping their antlers, C) snakes shedding their skin, or D) crabs molting their exoskeletons?

I'm putting together a thing for folks to enjoy. It's a zine of sorts (PDF) with a collection of 'blorbs' (oddly shaped blobs) in very light grey. Print out the zine, and you have an instant collection of games for kids on a road trip, or with a collection of friends at the pub, or... whatever.

Now, I'm just trying to come up with different 'games' you can play. I've done plenty of 'draw faces with the blorbs as their silhouette' myself. Then, you can really insert whatever noun you want in place of 'faces'. Draw trees with the blorbs as silhouette. You get the idea.

But then, I thought - what if you made the page of blorbs into a fantasy map with each of the blorbs as a separate country?

Or, make each blorb into a full character defending their territory against the other blorbs.

Or... I dunno - what have you got? 

(Thanks to Jill "xtingu" Knapp for the term 'blorb'.)

So I decided that I would like a reference place for myself of all the kickstarters that I was involved with for 2025. With the idea that it might be of interest to some of you, I thought I would share that info here.

January

In January, and after our successful Kickstarter Gone Fishin', we decided to do monthly thematic one-shots for D&D.

So the first up was January's Gone Snowballin'. In short: a snowball battle for your D&D group.

February

For February, the obvious theme was romance, given Valentine's Day, so we built out a 'speed dating' one shot (Gone Speed Datin'), and I had a bit of fun with one of the NPCs who might wind up across the table from your character (above) while the cover art was a bit more... tame.

March

Gone Pub Crawlin' was inspired by Saint Patty's Day. We used some art I did a while back for the teaser. I really kinda love that little dwarf. Goes way back to an early post in my Patreon.

Here again, the final cover art was pretty solidly different, but I like these characters, and it feels like they're crawlin from pub to pub, so...

April

April was antiquing themed. I've no idea how / why April is associated with antiquing. 

Fun Fact: The character in the cover art for this one was originally something I started sketching up as another NPC for Gone Speed Datin'. I thought his open shirt, machismo laden body language, and cock eyed smirk made him perfect for lining up across from in a speed dating scenario. But when the guys saw it, they said we had to keep hold of him for Antiquin'. I still don't fully understand why, but was just happy he would find a home.

May

May was Gone Bee Keepin'. I went... a little different with this one. I really worked hard at using shapes to construct the image rather than lines. That's pretty solidly against my normal process and I found it challenging. While I'm not in love with the resulting image, I did learn a lot, and feel certain I could do something much better next time. I also did a bit of homework to figure out what sort of protective equipment medieval beekeepers wore and that's reflected in the final art. 

June

June was the first Wayward Pages bundle. Brad and I have been doing the Location Lexicon for some time now, and we decided to try bundling together  some of them and presenting them to the Kickstarter audience. They seemed to like it, though, in hindsight, we didn't do nearly enough promotional work to make it a real success. More learning as we go. Still, it was nice to see characters and art that I'd been working on for so long actually see the light of day.

It also worked out perfectly because the crew I normally work with on Kickstarter projects was taking the month off for personal reasons.

July

July was Gone Surfin'. I went a little nutty with the cover character's pose, but it was fun, and it seemed to play well with folks. As with most of these, I could tweak this endlessly.

September

September was a busy month Gone Foragin', with the regular crew, and then Matt (the writer / designer of these) did his own separate KS for Beyond the Mycelium.

For Gone Foragin', I again stuck to using shapes far more than lines, and I definitely like the results more than I did for Beekeepin'. Rapid artistic growth for the win!

For Mycelium, I did a whole painted cover, and really enjoyed the process - especially creating characters in a scene that are supposed to be mushrooms.

October

Obviously, October was Gone Scarin'.

Another fun one for me to create, and honestly, I was finally starting to feel like I had the process down for this one. It's a little... open? to me now, but it once again felt like a solid step in the right direction for me as an illustrator.

The large, blank banner eventually held the title of the book.

November

November was Gone Huntin' - with characters in competition to bring in the biggest / best game. Of course, there's a bit of a twist...

I had to hurry through the cover art for this one for 'life reasons', but overall I'm pretty happy with it, and once again I learned a bit that I will be able to use going forward.

December

December was Gone Sleighin' - a snowy race in sleighs pulled by various creatures.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this one was both fun and educational. It felt like my composition and layout game was on point, and I like our elf friend in the front. I made the forest of trees a bit 'generic' in order to make sure they didn't detract from the rest, but looking back, I wish I'd made them a little more unique.

...and that wraps up the Kickstarter work that I did in 2025. That wasn't all of the art that I did in 2025, but this seemed like it warranted it's own separate post / archive.

What's your favorite? What would you like me to have done that I didn't?

I put cheese on everything. (Well, not anything sweet cuz that's disgusting. And sacrilege). 

Mostly cuz any food that's not sweet (except cheese) is gross so adding cheese makes it less gross.

I found a piece of colby jack in my cardigan pocket today. It was partially dried out.

I thought perhaps I had a problem. Though in fairness, this is the first time this has occurred.

And I didn't eat it, so clearly I'm good. 

What is the name of the fictional language in the novel 1984 by George Orwell?

What Belgian artist painted The Son of Man in 1964?  [Not pictured:  nerdsholmferret with his face obscured by an Apple]

What is the name of the chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars that gives seared steaks and toasted marshmallows a distinct flavor?

What Norwegian explorer led the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911?

I hadn't realized it, but aside from the sketch I did the other night of the blacksmith, I haven't done much character art for some time. Since I made some headway with Caravan! last night, I gave myself the 'treat' of doing just that.

The game is pretty focused on some 'coming of age' themes, so characters will likely be young by default. This image will go in the 'heritage' section of character generation, which gives a sense of what equipment they start with. So our heroine here is using hand me downs which could maybe fit a bit better.

She'll get cropped a bit in the rulebook, but you lucky dogs get to see the whole image (which I did because I didn't like the idea of cropping her to start).