I like the notion of Poison Ivy from Batman being a sort of vengeful Mother Earth. I sometimes wish Mother Earth would give us the smackdown. We deserve it.
PSA to not be a dick to retail workers this holiday season (and all seasons!). Working retail during the holidays was some of my shittiest experiences. People become coupon-waving, red-faced monsters that deserve nothing but a trip into Krampus’ sack.
Here are a few things to remember:
1: They have literally no authority. Honestly, the cashier would love nothing more than to accept a stack of expired coupons to get some cranky-ass customer indignantly insisting that “at this point YOU owe ME money!” through the line. But they can’t. And no amount of screaming will change that. Oh, and the manager is bunkered safely in the back refusing to come out and will only troubleshoot through walkie.
2: If you’re nice (like basic human decency) they are more inclined to help you as much as they are able. Being kind and patient costs nothing and might actually pay off. You might even be able to coax out a skiddish manager that *sometimes* has the magic touch to get things accomplished.
3: Corporate overlords. Managers can do a lot but in the end, the retail world is run from corporate overlords through the machine sentries AKA registers. Welcome to Black Mirror, people. If the machine rejects your request then back to the matrix with you.
Skip James is the man. I’ve been wanting to do something music related. I sketched this a year or two ago. It was fun to bring it into Procreate and add doodles, lettering, color and more elements like the guitar neck. I’m always looking for a way to combine my pencil with color and have it look like it really goes together. This one felt right.
A3 The fish (scale- and eyeless) swam into a motley selection of patterns filled into a scribble/string. Done with graphic pens and watercolour pencils blended with water.
What happens when Jimmy is reading Ezekiel in the morning then discovering @themarcuskingband and @billystrings and doodling on the same day? There is no logical reason to throw all this randomness together in one drawing. This stream of consciousness improv drawing can get weird at times. All I can say is if you were in my head 24/7 it would all make perfect sense. I have become comfortably weird.
For the last day of Inktober, I drew a pumpkin with black india ink on orange paper. I had never done an Inktober challenge before, and I really liked it! I'm definitely doing it next year, too. I got very good ideas for new projects, I played with different textures and colours, and I used a calligraphic pen to draw, which I had never done before and which I loved.
Congrats to anyone else who took part in inktober this year! I focused on combining witches inspired by different types of teas and I had so much fun! I’m conquering my irrational fear of side profiles and I think it’s working, I’ve been really liking side profiles lately and finding them easier to do. I experimented on this piece with adding freckles (they’re a feature in all of my inktober sketches but I haven’t liked how freckles have looked when I’ve dotted them in with a pen or brush) and uh, I guess it was kind of a success? Next time I’ll use my lighter shading colour for them, as I used the ink I use for my lines and it turned out really dark and concentrated, but I think they’re cute! (and I have ink sprays everywhere)