Deaths- 2016

Death of culture and cultural icons

Wake Up

Feminism

I think it's kind of hilarious that one major aspect of feminist debate is how constant sexual harassment has impacted our lives and the common joke is that feminists just can't get a dick?

Flb (stylized portrait)

Trust and Herds

What if the Puppet Masters (or the Illuminati or what-have-you) are actually benevolent and working toward pro-social ends? Would we trust them?

 

Meditation Soal

Kaelen character concept

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I need practice on making text additions look better.

Digital Editing

I'll probably change this up more later (still doing everything with a trackpad and I can tell where it shows) but here's my first edit. Click for big.

Spirit River

Finally got a good photo of this painting. Click for big.

Plot Notes and Concept Art (Act One!)

Anna is a ten year old girl who wakes up in limbo with very few memories of her lived experiences. Limbo is represented as a Waiting Room for spirits. She is trapped in there for a few months.

 The Waiting Room is occasionally curated by groups of Demons bringing through other spirits and entities to the other side. She tries to get their attention, but the only person to ever respond is the demon Soal Storge.

Anna, astrologically Cancer, is guided by water and the moon. She is an Empath, meaning she uncontrollably feels what other people feel.   Soal, astrologically Aries, is guided by fire and Mars. These are also indicative of feminine and masculine qualities.  I have my qualms with astrology irl, but it makes for cool symbolism and studying it in terms of the project is fun. 

Soal reveals to Anna that she’s been trapped in the Waiting Room, unable to be sorted like the rest of the
spirits, because she never died. Something has happened to sever her spirit from her body. He suggests she has a body somewhere, and that he’ll help her find it if they make a blood contract. 

After they make the contract, he makes a Totem out of his spit, his blood, and both of their hair and uses magic to bind her spirit to the Totem. The Totem takes the shape of her human form.

They cross a river and come to a technology called a Teleportation Phaser.  Phasers are a common method of travel created by the premier engineering conglomerate Charles Corp. 

I like to think of Anna as the Calvin to Soal’s Hobbes. 

Soal leads them first to a small town to find his friend Marla and get Marla to go to his house and watch his pets. In this town Anna sees bounty posters detailing a villain called The Mechromancer, whose insignia is a sugar skull. 

She learns that The Mechromancer has been kidnapping children with a giant robot. 

They decide it’s a good lead to follow. They learn rumors place him far in the south, south of a community called Santa Rojo, and decide to travel to the next city where they use the Phaser.

They have to hike through a forest for a few days on their way to that town and they come across the monster Gemini- Maggie and Mayhem- a conjoined twin and old friends of Soal’s who have been hired to bring Anna back to the Waiting Room. 

We learn that magic can be cast using blood sacrifice, but truly creative people can just intend spells into reality- usually through some form of creative expression. Maggie is a spell caster where Mayhem is a warrior. Maggie casts a guilt hex on Anna, but they get away.

Soal changes course from Santa Rojo to the east, to San Ayong, where a healer named Lorna lives.




































 Soal knows she can lift Gemini’s hex. While they travel, the guilt manifests itself in weird, uncomfortable physical ways. Uncontrollable magic guilt mixed with uncontrollable empathy make for a strange and dangerous combination.  Along the way to San Ayong, being impacted by the hex, we learn Anna has immense feelings of guilt toward something that happened with her mother while she was alive.

When they finally get to San Ayong, Lorna cares for Anna in a very maternal and loving way. They make food together, clean together; Lorna gives Anna a bath etc. Lorna encourages Soal and Anna to take up meditation so as to keep the effects of the hex at bay. They are waiting for Lorna’s friend Kaelen, a cleric, to come and help perform the ritual to lift the hex. 

to be continued...

Children

We talk a lot about gun violence and mass shootings in this country, but I notice at least twice a week there are stories about parents here killing either their own children or their partner's child and that's been fairly consistent. I of course have my own complex sociological theories about why this going on- some of the root causes, which are many of the same root causes as gun violence. If gun violence is an epidemic in this country, than infanticide is as well.

(I don't know much about guns. I've heard both sides of the arguments on gun control and my opinion on gun regulation is that they should be at least as difficult to obtain/maintain as a car.)

Anna painting

I Really Do Love Scarlett Johansson, but

News articles call the quiet, indignant reluctance to see Ghost in the Shell with the casting a white actress as "outrage". We're just a little disappointed.

Wip 3

It's hard to get good photos of this piece due to its size

Scan dump

Doodles/ concept art for novel

Calavera Anna at the River

After escaping limbo, Anna and her demon travel over a spirit river to get to the physical realm

large painting wip 2

wip large painting

Anxiety Attack

 

Illustration from my writing workshop this week

Black America

Blaming Black America for Black-on-Black crime is like blaming the gladiators for gladiator-on-gladiator crime.

Doodles Feb 2016

Anna & Soal and the Mechromancers Insignia.

Patronus

The Mechromancer

"There's always something a little menacing about a Utopia," he says with an eerie smile.

Calvin and Hobbes homage

Roughdraft

Demon and Girl

My tablets not working so I tried to make a piece with my laptop trackpad to see if it'd come out okay lol

Dreaming of Bowie

Last night I had a dream where my father asked me if I wanted to say goodbye to David Bowie. He led me down to the basement at my childhood house, where Bowie was on a cot surrounded by all the insulation and junk we had in storage.Other people were shuffling out in crowds, having already paid their respects. We went to his side. My father put one arm around me and bowed his head solemnly. I teared up and examined Bowie. He was breathing haggardly and his eyes were half closed. There was a long stretch of time where I was watching him, his pained face and eyes going in and out of focus. I started quoting/humming Dance Magic Dance ("I saw my baby/ crying hard as babe could cry/what could I do" and then I switched to humming because my throat was closing with tears) and Bowie reached up and touched my face and then I woke up. It was a very vivid and surreal experience. If I could do it again, I'd say my goodbye through a better song choice.

Soal & Anna

Hollywood

Even though I am not at all successful as a writer I find myself worrying about really dumb stuff like how Hollywood is going to fuck up the movie of my book.