Pedantia

Peggy
October 13, 2021

A couple of days ago, my friend Dana posted a picture of her ponysona.

“This is cute and I should draw this,” I thought to myself. So the next day, I did. She liked it and made a closeup of it her Twitter icon, so I’m happy.

It is unlikely I will draw Pedantia again any time soon but as always, I’m ready to do so quickly since I followed my usual habit of making a bunch of Graphic Styles with sensible names. This slightly sped up doing this drawing, and if I need to draw her again then I can just grab those styles out of this file and very quickly start making shapes.

I am especially happy with the “freckle” style. It’s a starfield scatter brush I made ages ago, with the parameters drastically altered to stay close to the path I draw, then some effects applied to make the perfect little circles into slightly-blotchy shapes that mimic both the look of “dots created by Dana tapping her stylus on her drawing tablet” and of “small irregular spots of increased melanin”.

Overall this took about an hour’s work in Illustrator.

Research (IV)

Peggy
October 1, 2021

Illustrator, 7h.

This started with just Kellyn perched atop the shelves (from me recalling how I kid me used to like to climb on top of the dresser in my room, or the shed in the back yard, and read), but ended up also including my SO’s character Alba in the couch. And a few of the cats who live under the house.

Today feels weird and flat and empty; I have nothing much else to say about this drawing. It feels like I may be done with the urge to draw these cozy library scenes for a while.

High res and AI source on Patreon.

Shirts/prints/etc on Redbubble.

Research (III)

Peggy
September 27, 2021

I am still into “my fursonas sitting around lavish libraries”. This one was started back in 2016, and left at a pretty rough stage because I just really did not feel like drawing all those books at that time; now I’ve got a pretty good workflow for this, so when I remembered it existed, I pulled it out and spent about six and a half hours finishing it.

The unicorn on the ceiling is Noelle and the dragon is November-4; the dragons on the bottom are Enmerkar (seated) and Peganthyrus (sleeping). Noelle and Enmerkar are my spouse’s; originally this was just a picture of Peggy visiting Enmerkar at his home in the Library of Babel, but the way I drew the books above the arches made me decide to make it clear that space is a bit broken in there, and put someone on the ceiling.

High res and AI source are on Patreon; prints are on Redbubble.

Research (II)

Peggy
September 24, 2021

It’s just been that kind of a month. I think I am probably still recovering from Hurricane Ida. And maybe from some old Katrina PTSD that Ida dredged up, as well. I feel like I have at least one more “my characters sitting in a big library reading” drawing in me. Possibly also because we got some new bookshelves this week, and I’ve been working on finally getting all my books out of boxes and onto shelves.

This one’s a bit of an experiment; I have a commission at the sketch stage that I think will be well-served by evoking a Japanese woodblock print feeling. Sometimes when I want to explore stuff like that I will make room in the price range for the commission to fuck up and redo from scratch; this time I felt like exploring it in some personal work.

I tried four different ways to get an outline happening:

my initial shitty rough

Astute’s Dynamic Sketch tool

just some simple, monoweight lines

trying to make Illustrator automatically add an extra, thick outline to everything

illustrator’s Blob Brush

The blob brush looked the best, but I kind of hate the blob brush because it feels like working in Flash. And it still felt kind of really sloppy no matter what I did. So I just did a slight variant of my usual methods: I drew some solid-filled shapes, and had an outline on them. I had to be a little more careful about certain aspects of how I overlapped the shapes to make sure the outlines looked good, but it was only slightly slower than my normal methods, and felt a lot less insane than trying to nail the whole thing down as a composition in the line stage, then decide how to best flood-fill everything. Probably by using Live Paint.

Which, yes, is a thing most artists do all the goddamn time, I know. I haven’t been working lines-first since about 2000 and it really just breaks a lot of my workflow to do that.

My original sketch had her kind of flopping coils onto the shelves, but it didn’t feel right. So I looked at some pictures of snakes climbing up sheer walls and ladders and trees, cloned the body layer, and drew something new on the original layer.I liked the results so I deleted the copy.

And then I had to fill some more bookshelves. I drew new book-spine brushes instead of using the ones from the previous picture, and thought a bit about ways to quickly shuffle around the brushes and colors on them. Astute’s Super Marquee is already a tool that’s found a place in my workflow, and its ability to select a randomized subset of the paths in the area it’s selecting was super useful here. I threw together the above image to share it this process on the Astute chat; I could maybe add some more details to how it’s done, but that’s for some other time.

Overall this took about seven hours to do. Which feels like a while for me for a single character drawing, but I spent a couple hours on things like “testing four different approaches to creating a fake ‘ink line’ look”, “making the pattern on her clothes via some tools that let me make symmetry groups that Illustrator’s native pattern tools can’t handle”, and “figuring out why the rug pattern that I generated with the source of a Twitter bot is coming in as black-on-black”.

Anyway. Patreon supporters can get the AI file over here if they want to pick it apart; if you have a blank space on your wall, in your cupboard, or on your body that you think this image would fill nicely, you can get it printed on a bunch of stuff over on Redbubble.

Research

Peggy
September 18, 2021

Earlier this week I woke up and felt like what I needed to be working on was a picture of Stella sitting in a library, reading. This may be a sign that I need to do some research before doing the next few pages of her grimoire; I’m feeling the kind of resistance to working on them that usually means “something needs to be nailed down more before I get into drawing”.

There’s a lot of stuff going on in these bookcases. Firstly, the books are just simple straight lines drawn in various colors with an assortment of art brushes I made:

They’re all drawn flat, then warped into goofy cartoon perspective with a distortion mesh. Which is the weird shape highlighted in red in the above screenshot.

You may also notice that a lot of the sets of books are just a couple of lines in the outline view above; that’s done with a blend between two lines. And a little randomness is added by putting the Transform effect on each of those two lines, with a small vertical transformation, and the Random box checked:

And finally, I use Astute’s Block Shadow effect (in the Stylism plugin) to give some depth to the books by extruding them:

Each shelf has different angles to create a vague sense of perspective. It’s kind of sloppy, but all the lighting effects hide that. If I wanted them to be clearer I’d spend some time thinking about a way to get the edge of a page block in there between the covers. Good enough for now, though. And it took a ton less time to give the books depth with the Block Shadow plugin than it would’ve taken to do it manually.

The whole thing took about five hours, spread out over three days. I shudder to imagine how long it would have taken if I’d had to individually draw every book by hand. I think it was like an hour and a half of work from “I have empty shelves placed where I want them in the composition” to “I have shelves full of books and a few knick-knacks”, thanks to thoughtful use of art brushes and the block shadow effect.

The AI2021 source file is available over on Patreon, if you wanna poke around. It may be weird if you don’t have the Astute plugins. And if you want this on a shirt or a laptop cover or a mug or something, you can get that over on Redbubble.

The Archangel Dragons Of The Directions: Preface

Peggy
July 23, 2021

In early 2021, I accepted a magical art commission.

There is a ritual that many modern magicians perform known as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, wherein they define a space that is both of this reality and outside of it. A space where Magic is easier to perform. Perhaps a space where the magician’s imperfections are carved away, little by little, every time they enter it.

A major part of this ritual involves visualizing four angels: RAPHAEL before you, GABRIEL behind you, MICHAEL on your right hand, and AURIEL on your left. The client wanted help doing this, and felt that they would find it easier if they were given the shape of dragons.

I was given a page of the text of the version of the rite they were working from. (There are a lot of different versions floating around; the original was cobbled together from diverse sources in the late 1800s by members of the Order of the Golden Dawn (no relation to the modern Greek neo-Nazi party), and ever since their secrets were made public, the variants have bloomed – both small tweaks within the same religious framework, and big tweaks like swapping out Arch-Angels with Hebrew names for members of pretty much any pantheon you might prefer.) This particular one was from the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn.

Beyond that, the only direction I was given was “flat colors rather than full shading” and “needs to fit on a letter-size page”. This could have been enough to start with. But I wanted more. So I broke out my copy of Skinner’s Complete Magician’s Reference Tables, dug through Israel Regardie’s The Middle Pillar, flipped through Damien Echols’ High Magick, pondered a few versions found online, and a half dozen other books. And I started taking notes, writing down ideas, and making sketches. In a little sketchbook with dragons embossed on its leather cover that my in-laws had given me this past Christmas – it felt like a book for a Project, and this was obviously the right one.

I pretty quickly settled on the idea of building each Archangel Dragon upon the skeleton of their sigil. I worked them out myself with the Golden Dawn’s Rose Cross sigil method. It took me a little longer to read the OSOGD’s version of the rite and pick up the repeated mention of colors “flashing” on the angel’s robes; this word is used in other places in Golden Dawn instruction to refer to very intensely-contrasting color pairings that tend to clash and vibrate in your eyes.

I set up an Illustrator file. With all those sigils. And a couple more, because the variant of the LBRP/LIRP I like the most adds in an additional angel above and below you. I hadn’t decided if I was going to do them yet but I figured I’d leave the option open.

I started doing the Ritual of the Pentagram regularly. The Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram in the morning, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram in the evening, as directed by my copy of the Golden Dawn material, rather than doing the LBRP twice daily as almost everyone tends to tell you to do it now. Some of those ideas on how to approach this project were sitting there in my mind as I woke up, ready to be written down in the dream journal I’ve kept by my bed for a few years now. If I’m going to make images designed to be used as magical tools, I feel it is part of my job to do my best to make them potent. And part of that involves inviting the subject into my life, maybe to pose for my third eye, or maybe to just spend a little time sitting behind me while I work and casually dropping ideas into my head.

Continue reading →

The Archangel Dragons Of The Directions: Uriel

Peggy
July 23, 2021

I have been commissioned to do a set of illustrations of the dragonsonas of the angels one calls upon during the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, if one is a neophyte in a magical system derived from the Golden Dawn documents. This is the fourth one. There may be more eventually but this is it for now.

Uriel (or Oriel, or Auriel; nobody can agree on which vowels to add into the consonants-only Ancient Hebrew name) is the patron of magicians, the Overseer of Tartarus, and is helpful in matters of divination, finances, and obtaining the treasures of the world.

They carry a shield, to remind you that this direction is associated with the suit of Pentacles.

Prints, posters, shirts, phone cases, etc, on Redbubble.

The Archangel Dragons Of The Directions: Michael

Peggy
July 22, 2021

Michael is chief among angels. He rules the Fire signs of the Zodiac, and is the angel of the orange sphere of Hod on the Tree of Life. He is helpful in matters of remaining chill during crisis, protection, success in business, and expressing your ideas well. He has very strong Cool Dad Energy.

He carries a sword, despite this direction being associated with the suit of Wands. Perhaps this is a clue.

I haven’t been able to see any other names on his nametag.

Unlike the other archangels, Michael gave me the distinct impression that his reaction to this project was that he already has a fursona, and that it is a lion, and if I am going to make him into some kind of dragon then it should be a seriously leonine dragon.

Prints, clothes, journals, and other whatnottery are available on Redbubble.

MA-X: Inner Library

Peggy
July 10, 2021

So a while back in early March I was cycling lazily through the park thinking about Magical Stuff when this lady popped into my head and said “Congratulations! You have found the Inner Library!” and requested an access code. None of my first guesses worked. Perhaps I will get it eventually.

I drew this pretty soon afterwards, then let it sit for a while because I knew there should be some kind of sigil above her head, and that my attempt at drawing what had popped into my mind was not right:

Last night I finally got my head into the right place to investigate this, and scribbled down a quick version of the one you see in the main image; today I put it into Illustrator and am posting this. Time Sink says this image took about two hours of actual work in AI, if you are curious; I’ve gotten really good at making it do this sort of visual vibration quickly!

I don’t know why this wants to be numbered as Major Arcana X (Fortune). It just did, so I went with it. There’s certainly some visual correspondence with the image I did for the Silicon Dawn, and some of the other Majgickqghal Correspondences link up to that card, too:

(that’s a screengrab of stuff hovering off the side of the canvas in a “notes” layer)

Want this on a print, a t-shirt, a magnet, a journal, etc? Go over by my Redbubble shop.

Attend To The Silver Cog!

Peggy
June 3, 2021

My old friend Dr. Pinkerton asked me to do a poster for his lab rock band’s upcoming gig. I sure did learn a few things about how to make Illustrator cope with complicated files while working on this one – it takes a surprisingly long time to render all these radiating pattern fills!

Here’s a couple of closeups, and an outline view.

If you’re in the New Orleans area I’ll probably be there.

Prints are available if this is a thing you would like to fill a space on your wall with.