Khasubinox

Peggy
July 7, 2014

Back in the muck days, Peganthyrus had a cute little niece named Khasubinox, or Subi for short. I guess she’s not so little any more.

I felt like being ultra-precise with this one; a lot more of it is done with the pen tool than normal. I think I spent about three hours being super anal about a lot of the figure, which is why I didn’t bother with a background here – I’ve spent enough time on a drawing that exists solely to fulfill the urge to draw a dragon that is Not Me for a change.

I felt lazy and worked off of something from my ‘pornspiration’ directory; if you’re curious it’s here. I had that open on one desktop, with Illustrator on another, and flipped back and forth while working out the pose, so I got something that was kind of a caricature of the reference image instead of tracing it, slapping a dragon head and tail on it, and calling it a day.

Also yes it is completely intentional that her tailtip points right at her boob.

Also I have this brief desire to pay some of my artist friends to draw her doing various things of various ratings…

Camouflage

Peggy
July 6, 2014

I felt weird drawing my animal-person self for my birthday and not drawing my ex-with-benefits for his birthday, which is two days before mine.

He came over yesterday, and we went out to dinner at Liam’s, partially on my mom – she’d sent me some money and said “go have a nice dinner with Nick”. After that we sat around listening to music, falling into the visualizer, and generally Having Benefits with each other. It was a pretty damn good birthday.

43

Peggy
July 4, 2014

Self-portrait as dragon, on the occasion of turning forty-three tomorrow. About two hours of work.

The background is a bunch of ‘abstract techy-looking junk’ brushes, with varying amounts of blur applied. I like how it turned out; I may have to do more of that.

A REMINDER

Peggy
July 4, 2014

All the fireworks today are in celebration of the impending anniversary of MY ARRIVAL ON THIS PLANET. Plan accordingly.

Tomorrow you will have shared this planet with my Magnificence for FORTY THREE YEARS.

(Historically I have not celebrated my birthday, or made much noise about it, what with my present for my twelfth one being “a dead father”. But I’ve now lived longer than he did and let go of most of that pain. Maybe it’s time to consider actually doing something for it.)

emerging themes

Peggy
June 29, 2014

A recent comment of a page of Rita got me thinking about how that whole story has become a constant dance between telling enough of the story to make sense, while simultaneously fragmenting and disconnecting it to create just enough discombobulation in the reader to sympathize with the way Rita is constantly struggling to make sense of her broken reality.

And to be honest it also makes me realize that this is a constant theme in much of my work: Five Glasses of Absinthe has a (not well-telegraphed yet) metanarrative of being told by its self-aggrandizing title character. The main character of Drowning City suffers from blackouts, and the reader will not know for sure what happens during them until she remembers. I’m currently semi-obsessed with a few ideas for stories of a vampire who cheerfully reminds her interviewer that she is not to be trusted, because why on earth would an obligate predator of something as smart as humans want to expose all their secrets?^*

I’m beginning to wonder why the hell I find this fascinating. Is it merely that I like constructing puzzles for the sufficiently engaged reader? Or am I trying to tell myself something?

I mean, there’s a huge gap in my life called “the black hole of depression I fell into for many years after my father died”. And there’s a few strange fragments floating around that I really cannot remember how they were connected with anything else. Maybe I’m just trying to get people to understand a little bit of what it’s like to be me.

(I do have other ideas lying around that aren’t full of memory holes. Arguably I’m cherry-picking my output to support this thesis…)

^* which gives me the idea that possibly her motivation for telling these stories is to gauge the sophistication of her audience, and to keep her dissembling in shape – any audience who can see through her maze of lies ay well be too dangerous to live…

the dream of trafficking in dragons

Peggy
June 29, 2014

I dreamed I came into the possession of several very large crates full of unhappy, enslaved dragons. I had to keep up the pretense while trying to find a way to free them. I did not manage to do this before waking up.

(I don't know when, I just found this in the iPad blog client when I opened it up to do something else.)

Witchin’ Pole

Peggy
June 28, 2014

Witchin Pole

This is what happens when someone who occasionally thinks of herself as a witch takes pole dance.

About an hour of Illustratoring over a messy pen rough.

It Was Inevitable

Peggy
June 23, 2014

Really. It was.

For a contest on DA: draw yourself turning into a thing over three panels.

Click for the full image.

Dispatches from pole dance class

Peggy
June 22, 2014

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this on the blog, but I’ve been attending pole dance class pretty regularly for the past few months. I’m building strength and flexibility, as well as toughening up my skin – your body is not normally ready to support it’s entire weight by the friction of about thirty square inches of arm or leg flesh clenched around a slim metal pole!

Today my teacher praised the way I go at it: most people tend to stick to the moves they know, and avoid the ones they haven’t perfected yet. But I’m repeatedly making myself try the ones I can’t do yet, and asking for crit.

I suspect this is because I’ve learnt two things in my many years learning art: how to learn, and how to not wrap my ego up in my skills.

I mean, I have learnt from master cartoonists, I HAD to learn how to detach my ego from my drawing skills. I’ve assimilated the idea that “people who have done a thing longer than you can probably kick your ass at it without blinking”. Plus I know that while I may be a pole noob, I can draw rings around anyone in class; my ego can afford to suck here. And that probably helps a lot.

The other big thing: How to learn. I’m taking the same tack I tell kids on DA’s forums again and again. Keep doing the stuff you love to do, but also push yourself to the parts of the craft you hate. It’s perfectly okay to hate to draw a subject once you’ve mastered it enough to do an okay job when you have to, but saying “I hate drawing this” to cover up “I can’t draw this” is not okay when you claim to be An Artist. Turns out that this applies to anything. Know what parts of a craft you’re good at, and either push at the ones you’re not good at yet, or accept that you simply aren’t that interested in mastery right now. You don’t have to be great at everything you do – but know that you can be if you’re willing to dedicate the time to it. (Modulo things like “I want to be a great marathon runner but I am paralyzed”.)

Anyway. Now I think it’s time to learn what I’m going to dream about tonight. Going to pole dance class and walking home takes a lot of energy – though not as much as it did when I first started doing it.

note to self

Peggy
June 21, 2014

Last night Nick came over, and we watched another of the Asterix movies in the original French with no subtitles. It’s Asterix, you don’t need to know the details, you know? You’re just missing lots of terrible puns.

I said that sometime I really need to take out some of my Asterix albums and do some studies of Goscinny’s amazing drawings of craggy old guys that parade through the pages of those stories.

I have not done this yet but damn I really should soon.