Sketch Post

Most of what I do amounts to sketchy things like these. They're good enough in their own way.

Fox in Gimp Again

I still prefer MSPaint. Actually the only reason I ever installed Gimp was to make DDS files, which are picture files used by games like Oblivion. You probably already know this though. There's things I like about Gimp and things I don't, so let's leave it there.

Some Story I Read Yesterday

Picture unrelated.
   I read an old sci-fi short story yesterday called "Nightwings" by Robert Silverberg, published in 1968. You don't know this about me, but I'm a science-fiction lover. Larry Niven is one of my favorite authors but my absolute favorite would have to be John Varley, who in one story wrote about a sentient black hole and the two women who hunted it. The thing was, the black hole only spoke to one of the two women, and let her know that the other one was planning to kill her on their return to civilization. That's some good stuff right there!
  But back to "Nightwings", this story takes place in the so-called Third Cycle of Earth, in other words the third age. The First Cycle would be our present age, the second was a time of high technology and a bit of magic, and finally the Third Cycle, where civilization is in decline and Earth has become a popular tourist destination for aliens across the galaxy. In this age, everyone is a member of a guild, or else is one of the guildless who are at the bottom of the totem pole so to speak. The story is written from the point of view of a Watcher, whose guild carries a cart of instruments around with them to Watch for a long-prophesied invasion of Earth. Four times a day a Watcher watches, scanning the surrounding galaxy for a hint of approaching warships. The Watcher is an old man in the story, and after Watching for so long and finding nothing is naturally starting to doubt if there really is an invasion. The guild of Watchers isn't looked very highly upon, and many people deem Watchers unnecessary.
  The Watcher travels with two companions, a female Flier named Avluela and a Changeling called Gormon. Fliers are members of the Fliers guild, but Changelings are all guildless. The only group lower in society than the Changelings in the story are the neuters, so Gormon's proud attitude and his intelligence are unusual for his species. Changelings are basically tall, muscular humanoids with different colored skin and eyes, but some are more unusually shaped, hence the name. Fliers have wings and can fly, but only at night, so that's from where the title of the story comes. Now, the three travelers are heading to a city called Roum, which you will recognize from the opening line, "Roum is a city build on seven hills." Other cities mentioned in the story are Perris and Jorslem. I like these kind of things in futuristic stories, I can't help it.
  The story deals with the three travelers' adventure in that ancient city, and with the Watcher who finally detects something in his Watching, or at least he thinks he might have. I won't spoil anything, in case some nutbread decides to look the story up and read it themselves. It's only about 50 pages long and I give it my recommendation, or else I wouldn't have bothered to write this long, poorly-made post. I would call it more a fantasy story than science fiction anyway, if that helps make up anybody's mind.

Bad tomato

Our tomatoes are doing pretty good this year. However many of them are getting these blackish spots and flattening out on the bottom. Apparently it's "blossom end rot" or so I have been told. The cause it seems is a lack of calcium in the soil, so we gave the plants some water into which some lime and miracle-gro was dissolved. That concludes the tomato portion of the news.

Fox in Gimp

Drew and colored this in GIMP. The fox is a little off, especially the left arm which bothers me from the shoulder all the way down to her fingers. The right one looks good though! My favorite part of this pic is the leaves of the lovely little trees, which are composed of a mix of burlwood and coffee bean textures. Too keen! The grass looks like a shiny green carpet or something, btw the ice texture was used to make the grass. I almost used a wood grain texture for the fox's fur but stopped myself, thank god. I have to say I'm not in love with this picture but at the same time it's mine and therefore it's a part of me. You put a little bit of yourself in everything you do, well, I put my signature in the corner anyway, so that counts.

TL;DR --> This pic ain't that great but what the hell, it's content.

Capcom game girls

Cheesecake post.

Old Darkhawk Pics

Uploading some old stuff in order to stuff this place with content. Really, isn't that what everyone is looking for on the internet? Content! Just remember that even bad content is content.

Robots

I didn't realize what a mess this picture was until I scanned and attempted to color it. Actually this is one of the first times I tried to color a scanned pic. You can find some beautiful stuff that people have colored with their computers, but you won't find it here. As to the subjects, the robot in the back is one I came up with a while back, but this isn't a very good representation of her. I'll do a better one later. The happy guy in the foreground is actually from a little book called "How To Draw Rockets and Robots". That book must be about 25 years old by now. Jesus!  

Something Else

There are two types of art: No good and good enough. This is neither. Did that just blow your mind?
I almost added some lens flare because you know, lens flare. But I resisted. You're welcome!

More sloppy art for June.

It was 101 degrees outside here yesterday. Wow! Actually that's about the going rate for this time of year. But, who cares about that bluster. Here's some content.