[…] It Only Takes Two Facing Mirrors To Construct A Labyrinth.

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

The air of the room hung heavy with smoke from the doctor’s cigarette. The draught kept us from opening the windows. It would have been silent—but my mother had protested when I tried to smash the cuckoo clock on the wall. So now, it wasn’t silent.

Selma looked dead. If I was anyone else, I’d say that she looked beautiful, even with the sunken cheeks and the skin-wrapped bones that passed for her limbs.

The doctor took his eyes off of her, and searched for the ashtray, which he was pleased to find was sitting nearby. After tapping his cigarette on it, he resumed smoking, lighting up a tiny little orange-red circle at the end of the cigarette.

“If you just want to pay your respects, we could invite you at the funeral,” I said. It was not meant kindly. I’d learned how to say things like that from my mother—how you can take a word and wrap a handkerchief around it, so that you can stab with it less conspicuously.

The doctor tapped off some more ash and sniffled. “No, I can heal her,” he said at last. He seemed tired, but that should not be surprising. It was nearly 9 pm, and there was no telling how long he had been working all day.

“Do you want to?” I asked.

The doctor took a deep breath, which resulted in more of a wheeze, and and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “But I need the patient to co-operate with me.”

I looked at Selma, who looked dead, and I imagined her hand shaking. I imagined what her moan would sound like, as she came to. If she came to.

The doctor shook his head before I could say something mean to him.

“You called me here because you know me and what I do, right?” he asked. “Then you have to let me do my thing. Being impatient and passive aggressive won’t bring your wife back any faster.”

“What exactly is your thing?” I asked. “I only called you because I heard you were a doctor around these parts. We only moved in here last month.”

Now the doctor looked at me with eyes that looked at once endangered and curious. He loosed his tie a little. “Oh,” he said. “That explains a lot.”

After rubbing his eyes with two fingers, he sighed. “Look, I am in contact with your wife—telepathically. I can tune my mind into hers, and we’re trying to negotiate a healing. She isn’t co-operating, though, maybe because she’s not used to what I do. Now I understand why she’s being so resistant to her own treatment: your family is not from around here.”

I held up a hand. “What exactly do you do?” I asked. “What is the negotiation about? What are you talking about?”

The doctor chuckled, which shook his entire body. “Funny, you ask the same questions she does, and in the exact same way she does.” After composing himself some, he resumed. “I offer to heal your wife from his situation, and in exchange, she will pay me with some of her lifespan. That’s the best I can do.”

VOLTRON WOULDNT GIVE ME /AT LEAST/ ONE SEASON OF CLONE!SHIRO ANGST SO I GOTTA DO EVERYTHING MYSELF (electric boogaloo)

new life plans, nursing career path

Alright. So, I’m going back to school. I graduated highschool 6 years ago, and here I am, about to start TAFE. A Diploma of Nursing, to be specific, and most likely at Chisholm. But hey, free TAFE which is great.

One big thing though, is that I’ll absolutely have to stick with it, whatever I do.

Also man, I gotta budget for a laptop and other shit. To get my shit together.

This goes along with my last post as an exercise that can be one from observation. 

The steps explained briefly:

A. Draw in the big proportions with few lines. B. Draw in the basic shadow shapes, keeping the structure of the head in mind at all times. C. Establish big tonal relationships in the image. D. Bring in halftones to describe forms turning. E. Some extra information in the shadow. F. Modify edges throughout the picture.

A quick word on edges:

Edges and their variations are integral to creating a visual impression of the experience of seeing the world. The eye sees selectively and doesn’t observe everything around us with equal clarity. Edges in painting are not only the boundaries of one form, object or surface material to another, they occur on every side of every tonal shape. Like with tone, there is a range of edges to choose from, going from a total blur to razor sharp. Decisions must be made on the relative ‘softness’ or ‘hardness’ of these transitions to achieve a desired result. When working from observation, most of the answers can be found by observing and especially squinting at your subject. However in many cases it is appropriate to soften or harden an edge based on personal taste and compositional design choices.

I build fights like I build conversations and dialogue, if one person does something, how is the other going to react?

Yo, do you have any tips on writing fight/action scenes? Yours are really good so I thought I'd ask someone who seems like they know what they're doing lol

oh thankee!!

I’m not sure what to say exactly, I usually just use my instincts or research I’ve done previously. The best thing I can say is to know your character’s ability levels when it comes to fighting or combat. If a character is a good fighter, they might end a fight easily with a few movements. If they’re up against a fight that’s as good as them, then it might be longer.

Do some research into different types of fights, I took a class last year on self-defense, and as a result, I watched a bit of fight choreography, and did some myself. A gun fight is gonna end differently than say, a fist fight. Research is your best friend for this!

Describe the actions in detail, make sure to add both actions and reactions, if your character does something, say, throw a punch, (your action), then the person they’re fighting is going to do something, (reaction). I build fights like I build conversations and dialogue, if one person does something, how is the other going to react? This is where you can thread in skill level. If a character isn’t well versed in fighting, their action might be to throw a punch, but the punch might be weak, and therefore the reaction would be to either catch or block the punch. Other details that are important are the characters own reactions to the fight. If they throw a punch, are they prepared for their knuckles getting hurt? If they get hit, can they handle both the pain and the shock? Is their adrenaline pumping because they’re afraid or are they calm and cool? Research into how certain things feel, (like where you can get hit with a knife and not completely bleed out), can also be good.

Figure out how you want the fight to end before it begins. If you want your character getting out without a scratch, then they should reflect that in their fight. If they get hurt, show that too! 

hope this helps!

Máster Diseño Gráfico 2017-18. Diseño de folleto para bicicletas Stella (segunda parte). Proyecto de Esther Sepúlveda.

Any advice on artists who want to consider making comics? Or general advice on how you do expressions and canvas composition?

All of my advice is trash because I’m still SUPER inexperienced in the comics making department but general comic making tips:

• Read lots of comics. Watch lots of movies. Read lots of stories.

• Have an idea of where you’re going with your story before you get into the heavy duty work of making the comic. Trust me. You’ll be glad you had a direction to go in, instead of wasting your entire pilot episode like I did.

• TRY to keep the cast small and give good character introductions before adding new characters. (I didn’t do this. My story has suffered for it.)

• Make ref sheets for your characters. Bare minimum, if you don’t want to draw new sheets entirely, compile a collage of all the existing images you already use as ref for each character.

• Save your color palettes for each character.

• Draw your KEY panels first. Filler can be done last. Working linearly might cause your art to deteriorate as the page/episode progresses, so get those bigger impact panels done first, and smaller/less impactful panels done last.

Expressions?

• Mirror. Selfies. Etc. When idk how an open mouth looks from a certain angle, I’ll use my own face as reference. It’s fool proof.

• Use OBSCENE amounts of reference. YouTubers. Actors in movies. Etc.

• Appreciate the Art of Subtlety. Not every expression has to be big, dynamic, and bold. Practice working in both extremes. Soft, gentle expressions can be just as good storytellers as bold, extreme expressions.

Canvas composition?

• WOOF IDK IM STILL SUPER BAD AT THIS LOL

dad thoughts (repurposing twitter)