Scribbles and Bits

The winner of the fan poll, supported by fans like you on LiberaPay and Patreon!

Rogan: I love drawing handwraps, they're so aesthetically appealing, but it's also tricky to find good reference for them! Fortunately, the largest, HEAVIEST book I own is Howard Schatz's At the Fights, an ENORMOUS photobook of boxers. I regret the Brobdignagian size of the thing (and the WEIGHT, oof, that book must weight close to ten pounds) but I had fun pulling it out for reference sketches on this month's Patreon postcards...

( pic behind cut! )

Mori: There's a thing that some of us can do, with headmates we're on very close terms with, a sorta New Agey body scan where we can close our eyes and sorta see what's going on beneath each other's skins. Rogan can do it with Mac, Biff, Bob, and Grey--I expect he's better at it since he's blind in the first place and used to using other means of sensing. Rawlin's also good at it; she just closes her haws and sees things as glowing headspace threads.

I can do it with her. And where her chest scar is, I can feel abyssal water pumping away, taking over the functions her heart had.

It feels like good symmetry; she sacrificed her heart to revive and power the headspace, and now the abyssal water that makes UP headspace seems to power her. I would way rather her have the waters pumping away in her than the family god.

Anyway my girlfriend is cute and you should tell her she's cute.( Photographic evidence! )

I WARD MY CITY: a madgic perzine



( I scribbled this on the back of a failed print-out on the subway. Image ref credits in comments. )

Mori: I'm working on the Madgic omnibus again, which means I had to make a cover for it! Here's what I've got so far...

For funsies, we thought it might be neat to show contemporary art of our headmates over the years, showing not just how our art skills improved, but also how we aged and changed over time! This means we're focusing on art that at least mostly depicts stuff that nonfictionally happened. We're going to do M.D./Mori first, since she was the first and easily has the most art devoted to her, making her easy to chart.
( Fifteen years of Mori art; includes self-harm bandages and scars. )

More ask meme answers, these from wolffyluna! (The meme's still ongoing if you want to ask us shit.)

Show your favourite drawing from this year.

Mori: Rogan can't show his, because it's the climactic page from Coming In or Staying Out, but he says he's very proud of drawing ball-squishing and jizz convincingly.

Me, if we use "this year" as to mean "within the past twelve months" I'm real proud of the stuff I did for Madgic. Here's one from the upcoming Madgic #4, where Biff and Rawlin first meet:



I think I love it most because it sums up why I claimed Biff as my dudema. Realitybreaking giant runs you down like a dog in the street? Treat him like an out-of-towner who cut you off in traffic.

What inspires you?

Mori: I live in a world full of majesty and wonder and fucking cheeseburgers. How can I not be fucking inspired? Life is full of crazy weird shit! I am writing this on a plastic box that through science I don't understand can broadcast this text all over the globe. I am saying this as an imaginary friend who lives with a bunch of others in a headspace with a sentient ocean. On the table is a book of fragments of poems by Sappho, a poet who lived thousands of years ago and had no idea I would ever exist to read (parts of) her work! What's not to be inspired by???

How do you deal with artblock?

Rogan had this whole long poetic answer about how artblock is a bunch of different things with one name, but he ain't available right now, so my summary: we go do something else.

When we are lacking spoons for one thing, we look around for things we do have spoons for. (If we have zero spoons for ANYTHING at all, then we have bigger problems than our creative output.) For instance, some art requires pretty high creativity--like initial writing and penciling. Editing and inking require less creativity, but more focus. and attention to detail. Research requires very little creativity at all. Then there's what we call "donkey labor," which is a huge part of any job, artist included, but nobody much discusses it because it lacks pizzazz: digitizing old multi books. Checking citations and links. Bugsweeping our website. Donkey labor isn't fun to discuss at parties, but it rarely requires much in the way of creativity or smarts; you just gotta get it done. But it means there's usually SOMETHING we're able to do.

I feel like our job has forced us to learn how to swap between tasks as our ability and level of batshit waxes and wanes. Some people truly seem to want and be able to draw/write (the "fun" or "cool" stuff) all the time, eight hours a day, five days a week (or more). We cannot. But fortunately, there's a vast supply of donkey labor that always needs doing. And brain-blasted LB feels better knowing that the tedious work being done is work that Future LB will appreciate! (Always say thank you to the self that does the donkey labor.)

We also suspect that part of why our body is holding up surprisingly well despite years of this job is because we keep switching tasks and doing different things, allowing our body to move around and use different muscles.

Mori: I saw a drawing with this slogan and rough composition somewhere on the Internet earlier this year, but it seems to have disappeared and I haven't been able to find it again. In fact, searching got me THIS as a result:



No, Google, I did NOT mean that, but if the shoe fits, I might as well wear it, so I ended up drawing my own version. I also plan to make a "butches and trans women are sisters in arms" but until Poop Jail is done and Arisia is over, we have no spare drawing time.

Click to embiggen!

Rogan: Realized that I just... never uploaded some of the art Sneak and Mori cranked out for the Loony-Brain Primer, and assorted stuff that's been done for months, either because there was too much going on, or because the pandemic made . So here's some of it now.
( Headmate art and a botsona. )

Mori: Doing a bunch of scanning and post-production donkey labor for Madgic #3 and I think this is my favorite picture of Rogan I have ever drawn.
( Dignity and Grace )