Okay, this is perhaps me being a little grumpy, but here's the thing: physics is a real thing.

When you are trying to get somewhere - especially a small somewhere like an elevator or the entryway to a restaurant - and you encounter an *ahem* non-petite individual like myself? Let us out before you try to squeeze your narrow ass in.

I've encountered this my entire life, and I find it absolutely maddening.

On more than one occasion, it has taken everything I had to not loudly proclaim "If you would let my fat ass out instead of cramming your way in, there will be more room for you inside!"

It seems SO obvious to me.

(For the record - yes, I realize people are caught up in their own worlds / issues and they clearly aren't thinking about the physical spaces around them. They're 'focused on something else'. I don't care. This makes me... angry. And you don't want non-petite people angry, I promise.)

So yesterday I posted about about the funny faces I was working on.

Last night I watched a video about digitally painting skin tones. I've seen the video before, but last night I used the heads I'd already sketched and inked and used them to follow along in the video.

And just like that, the bit flipped in my head. From 0 to 1. Suddenly, I get it.

Okay, I've still got a long way to go, but I feel the difference like a dark moonless night to a bright cloudless midday sky. It might not even be recognizable to other folks, but I feel so stupidly different. My digital painting game just took a monster leap forward.

I'm pretty stoked.

Okay, I just need to squee for a minute.

Yup. Me. Squee.

Not familiar with Richard Whitters' work? Allow me to illucidate:

And on top of all that? I've been following his Twitter account for some time now and he just seems like a genuinely nice guy.

So now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go draw until my brain leaks out of my fingertips.

I've long thought it would be a good idea to do my own version of the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs. It would, of course, feature the Wolf as the protagonist and the pigs as the villains. The text would be in line with the traditional version, but the images would show the pigs tormenting the wolf and wrecking their own homes through carelessness.

The lesson to be learned would be "Be careful what you assume when you're not sure who wrote the history books."

Anyway, I did a duckduckgo search for "3 little pigs" today just to see what versions of the tale were readily available online, and stumbled on this video from the Dry Bar with comedian John Branyan. The relevant portion starts at 2:45. Thought it was too good to not share.

Did a sketch of a drider since we're facing a bunch of them in Brad's campaign. This may make it all the way to finished illustration.

Or I may have a case of the ADHDs. Time will tell.

Heh. Now that I've stepped away from it for a few and I'm looking at it with fresh eyes - it looks like he has a bad toupee on.

More to come, but I'm kinda diggin this Hulk sketch I did sitting in the Omega Diner while waiting for the weather to clear a bit more.

Gotta say - I'm impressed with how well the Apple Pencil does for 'loose sketching'. I know I've been using it for many years, but I seldom do 'sketching for sketching's sake' with it.

Feels good.

Did some sketching in a physical sketchbook for the first time in a bajillion years. This one is of a fairly traditional halfling, hairfoot, or 'hobbit' (if you're not concerned with copyright). I did this one for comparison and as the 'default' for people to reference. 

Then, next, I did a rough concept sketch of a sub race that my buddy Brad and I are working on that we are tentatively calling 'dustlings'.

It took me wayyy too long to realize that I'd recreated a jacked version of Smeagol / Golum from the Hobbit / LOTR.

Back to the (literal) drawing board. 

There's some events unfolding in my regular D&D group which mean that my character may soon be 'kidnapped' (sorta) and removed from the story. I'm in cahoots with my DM and I'm helping to build a pretty intriquing storyline with him. My character is... a major element, and I'm all in.

So with my character being away, my DM said I could play a new character, or an old character - whatever I like. I elected to bring back the first character I played with my current game group (and really, the first character I've played in 5e).

He's a half orc barbarian berserker named Wulfric. The character type (right down to his half orc-ness) is nothing shy of a cliche and I'm fully okay with that. I chose him in order to 'simplify' things for my first time learning 5e.

But here's the thing - he kinda grew on me.

What's more, I kept encountering moments when I felt like I could play Wulfric to the hilt, and it felt goooood.

Moments like when our group was fighting a collection of enemies and one of them had an imp as a familiar. It kept vanishing, attacking us, and then vanishing again. Wulfric reached out and grabbed it by the leg when it appeared (I rolled a nat 20, if memory serves) and he proceeded to beat the Imp's master with his own familiar!

I'm reworking an image I did of Wulfric back when I was first playing him. I'll add it to this post when it's done, but in the meantime, here's the original version (up top).

The Big Picture

Okay, so I won't bore you with all the details, but one part of my plan to take over the world is through selling t-shirts on Amazon.

There's no money in this. Not really.

I still want to do it.

When you start out, you can only have a maximum of 10 designs at a time. You can swap them out, but no more than ten at once.

I have a TON of ideas that I would like to make, but there's a catch. You only get more 'slots' once you've sold something like 1 or more of each of those initial 10 designs.

My Idea

As far as I know, there's no rule against selling those initial designs at your cost. I'm okay not making any money on those.

So I thought I would offer this up to my friends and family: I'll design a shirt based on your specification, upload the design, and sell it to you and my cost (Amazon's 'base' price). The benefit to me is moving past that initial stage more quickly. The benefit to you is a t-shirt that you want at about as low a rate as you can get (I think it's something like $13.)

How You Take Part

Just comment below (or email me) with your idea and I'll get to work.

Guidelines:

1. Can't use licensed stuff. If I draw Mickey Mouse, Disney will sue me into oblivion.
2. Can't be foul (blatant bad language or graphic violence is not what I'm looking to do). Comic book violence or @&*#$! works as bad language.
3. Please don't suggest stuff if you're not interested in buying a single shirt (or more) at the cheapest rate I can give you. It will just eat up my time, and you're not going to benefit from it anyway.

Anyone interested?

So I have managed to get very behind on #Smaugust already. The normal process to sketch, ink, and color a single character (or dragon) takes me a pretty consistant 3 hours. I speed up in some ways, but then I get nitpicky and add complexity etc which slows me down. So the magic number these days seems to be that - 3 hours.

Doing that every day is... very tough. Especially on days when I'm working long hours for TomTom.

So to allow myself to catch up, I've dropped back to just simple sketches. I still plan to finish them later, but I want to stay current in ordetr to keep myself motivated.

I managed to get caught up last night with this new philosophy, and I thought I would share.

Above is the Quetzalcoatl - day 5. While not a dragon in the traditional sense, it was on the list, so I thought "Why not?" Also, while I feel pretty comfortable with my limited Spanish, and have always felt very comfortable with the names of obscure mythological creatures, this one just evades my brain. Every time I want to reference it, I wind up looking it up. That's just... unusual.

Day 6 - Spider Dragon. I had fun dreaming up the anatomy of this one. It uses it's spinnerets to weave 'wings' of web onto it's hind most legs. It does this to blow victims into its webs, trapping them. On the minus side, I didn't merge dragon and spider very well - it mostly just seems like a monsterous spider.

Day 7 - Crystal Dragon. Yeah, this one feels rushed even though it took me more time than some of the other 'catch up' dragons. Referenced a number of different crystals, and saw way more internet woo-woo than I would have prefered, but I feel like this is... something. Not my favorite of these drakes, that's for certain. Maybe color will improve my thoughts on it.

Day 8 - Elemental Dragon. I like this guy (gal?). I thought 'nothing thin will work with fire/lava, so everything must be blunt'. So I didn't add wings, and its face seems a bit... pug like to me. I kinda dig it. I suspect colors will really make this one significantly better.

Day 9 - Western Dragon. I sorta copped out on this one. I went with 'western' as opposed to 'eastern'. A stylistic / anatomy based theme rather than trying to do something to imply 'wild west'. The latter would have been harder, and arguably more fun, but getting caught up was my focus, and I have a bit of a plan for these later and a wild west theme wouldn't have worked as well for that.

That does it for catch up. Today's theme (Day 10) is 'Brutish'. I suspect this one will be fun to do.