dhampyresa

One of my family members has been in and out the hospital for over a month now. As off several days ago, he's in a coma. I am having A Worry.

It is a pretty big Worry, ngl. I can't seem to focus on anything except weird online quizzes ("Which Plague of Egypt are you?" -- water turning to blood, apparently) and... No, weird online stuff is pretty much it.

Before my Worry became Le Big Worry, I did manage to draw and paint an oil painting of Natasha Romanoff (for kore. Pic under the cut.

( Cool folks don't look at explosions )

About a week ago, sovay posted about a dream. I was extremely stricken by the central image and drew it.

( An eldritch sea monster awaits )

I made two works for Trick or Treat! And I was very careful about not referring to them as fics, because one of them's only half fic.

The Revolution Will Be Illustrated (956 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Sabine Wren
Additional Tags: Mixed Media, Fanart, Fanfiction, Backstory, Character Study, Traditional Media, Digital Art
Summary: Sabine changes and her art changes with her.

According to the wishes of the artist, every piece is presented as it might have been at the time of its inception.

My assignment was shiningstar who requested both fic and art and ALL OF THE STAR WARS. I'm not sure which of the Star Wars we matched on, but it wasn't Rebels since I don't offer what I request.

Anyhow, my first thought was to write Sabine/Numa crackship femslash (although they have actually met and talked in canon so it's not that much of a crackship). I couldn't figure out how to make it work in the time that I had -- but now I know how to do it -- so I went with an idea I'd been vaguely thinking of before assignments went out.

Sabine is, canonically, an artist, so I wanted to do a character study through her art.

So I did! It's a combination of backstory (+ futurefic) and character study, with art. Sabine's an Imperial cadet turned bounty hunter turned Rebel by the time we meet her in canon. The fic is split in three parts: one at the Imperial Academy on Mandalore, another while she's a bounty hunter and one last one set after Return of the Jedi.

Fic-wise, I tried to reflect the dehumanising effect of the Empire by having names creep into the narrative as Sabine spends time away: first part has no names, second part has other people's names and last part has her name. You can see that in the in-story titling of the artwork too.

I mirrored that in the art by having colour creep into the pictures. First one's black and white (+ red), second one is blue monochrome (+ red) and the last one is in full colour. And now I'm going to talk more about said art.

( Art babble + 3 pictures )

The title of the work is a reference to Gil Scott-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

It was really, really hard for me to give someone art as a gift, even with fic associated with it. I kept having to talk myself into it -- "It's not good enough!" "Self, the writing part alone is three times the minimum requirement! POST THE THING."

(Also while I was fiddling with it I managed to accidentally default on my assignment. *facepalm* I PM'd the exchange mod who gave me back the assignment -- but didn't tell me, so if I hadn't noticed will posting Out of the Cold that my assignment count had gone back up, I might have stayed defaulted.)


Filling my assignment took up a lot of time and brainspace, so I only made one treat for the exchange.

the ruin of the soul (669 words) by sevenofspade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Haggar (Voltron)
Additional Tags: Mad Science, ToT: Monster Mash
Summary: A day in the life of Haggar, mad scientist of the Galra Empire.

The title comes from François Rabelais' Pantagruel: "Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul". And while "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme" is a MASSIVELY famous quote in France, it sadly not so in English and suddenly I sound really pretentious quoting 16th century French authors? So I figured "in for a pretentious penny, in for a pretentious pound" and didn't capitalise the title at all. (*dodges pitchforks from the title police*)

I hesitated to tag Shiro in this, but Haggar doesn't consider him a person I went with not tagging him.

This fic also features all of my Voltron headcanons, except the one about Pidge being a K-drama protagonist an adult woman who is both short and can pass as a boy. To wit, it features the following: ( spoilers, I guess ). While writing it I also gave myself the headcanon that Haggar gave Shiro the white lock in his hair deliberately.


Idk, apparently my theme this ToT was "artists and their art". Both fics were betaed by the ever excellent chiiyo86, who I can finally credit now that author reveals are here.

Swimming: 50 laps! Go me. Today: 50 * 25 = 1 250. Total before today: 1 600. Total today: 2 850 / 590 000.


I got to talking with bunn about pastels, so here's my current pastel project. I need to work on: realism, expressions, shadows, wavy hair and contrast. I picked a still from Revenge of the Sith, because I really hate copying, so if I'm going to copy a thing, I am going to copy something I am interested in, ie Star Wars (and the lighting on Mustaphar is amazing and super interesting to work with).

I picked pastels as a medium because I rarely do pastels on account of how it's hard to do fiddly details in pastels, but I am also trying to stop focusing on details so much so here I am PRACTICING EVERYTHING AT ONCE.

Fyi, would not reccoment anyone actually do this. It's the art equivalent of someone taking away your floaters, throwing you into a river and going "now you swim back to shore".

( Picture + reference )

The line-art's not detailed because I am hoping to be working solely with colour to make it work. We shall see.

Guess what, it's also in a colour scheme I don't use a lot.


I am quite tempted to sign-up for femmeremix . I enjoyed the remixing part of the Remix challenge I did last year -- but that was the only part I enjoyed. I hear this one is much better run!

I've managed to find a way to draw regularly again! I can't believe it took me months to combine "need to do something with hands will watching TV" with "need time to draw" to arrive at the conclusion of "draw while watching TV". I'm watching Elementary currently while drawing and I'm doing a little over a drawing an episode, on average. This is slower than I would like/I used to be, but at least I'm drawing again. I've missed it so much! I'm running out of things to draw, because I haven't gotten into the habit of coming up with art ideas again yet, which brings me to:

COMICS!

Who wants to make one with me? I'm thinking something short (5-10 pages), probably with colour. My palette's kind of limited right now, fyi, because all I've got is a set of 24 markers. Any fandom I know is good!

I realise that most of you probably haven't seen anything I've drawn yet, so have an Amora I drew recent-ish. I have more recent drawings, but they come out grey-ish, for some reason. I'm investigating.

That's about the sort of colouring you can expect. I might try doing fancy things with transparency or my markers might run out on the middle of things, but that's the general idea of things.

( One piece of art under the cut )