Hapo | she/they | Canada
I like to draw silly comics about geographical personifications and on odd occasions I even draw fan art of other stuff that aren't ocs! Happy to answer questions about my process. Open art challenges will be pinned.
About Requests | Commission Info | Ko-Fi | Redbubble
My other blogs:
Main | Battle of Alberta | Athens and Sparta Adventures
View this blog on desktop for more info!
Hi, I'm Hapo (she/they), Thanks for stopping by. Most of my art at the moment is geographical personification OCs or urban sketching with a dash of fan art here and there. I have an academic background in Classics so that comes up a bit too. You might also be here because I draw Star Wars and Star Trek on occasion!
If you like what you see, check out my about for more on commissions, merch, etc. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to know more about my process or have a suggestion for something I could try!
I kindly ask that if you want to just chat about blorbos and headcanons that you visit my main blog below, otherwise I tend to interpret asks as requests (stress!)
A Few of My Other Blogs
Main: @allbeendonebefore
Reblogs: @hyperboreanhapocanthosaurus
Alberta OCs: @battle-of-alberta
Ancient OCs: @athensandspartaadventures
Active Art Challenge: [ None ]
Accounts asking me to “dm for commissions” or similar will not only be blocked and reported with extreme prejudice but may be publicly harangued if it’s funny! ( and further, to strangers who simply dm me with ‘hey’ or something: I will not respond. Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested! )
another formulaic vent comic i drafted a couple weeks ago and forgot about because life happens. i am sorry if i haven't been on top of things or responding to messages (i do read and appreciate them!) but I've been taking time off to help and support friends. here is classic snarky ed and classic stampede brain cal for your soul.
those in my circles will tell you i have become weirdly obsessed with mayor farkas and how he said 'bullshit' four times in one reel without fear of the algorithm and then later clarified "no BS, just CS." I may be suspicious of his voting record (and his continued need to throw Edmonton property taxes around like some evil plot) but the enemy of my enemy and all that... anyway he won this one.
On a more serious note, the province has decided to go to war with disabled Albertans. Please read Cam Tait's column on how Smith is not just minimizing but straight up ignoring the very real threats to people's lives her government is making by stealing from those who are struggling the most and giving it to whoever has the patience to figure out the government's bullshit application for a pitiful rebate.
it's times like this i feel im doing stupid self-satisfied little drawings that are for no one and nothing but my own feelings but i know that voice in my head that's telling me to sit on the feelings and do nothing about them is not the one i should be listening to, so i draw the stupid self-satisfied little things and hope it brings someone out there a resigned sigh of relief that someone is noticing this stuff even if there isn't anything new to add.
A couple of urban sketching pieces from the past week including the Art Gallery of Alberta during the Street Performers Festival and a view of the Old Strathcona Farmers Market from the Woodrack Cafe
Got a question for Calvin and Caroline (along with anyone else who wants to chime in!). 2023 marks the ten year anniversary since the 2013 flooding in southern Alberta. With ten years to rebuild, plan, and create new flood mitigation projects, I was wondering how you felt in terms of the next big flood, whenever that is. And going back to the 2013 floods, what was that like?
[ Author's Note: I decided to frame this as the second half of the Glenmore Dam question, but each piece is stand alone and not required to understand the other! Please check the reblogs on this post for more notes and resources. I also want to note that I did not have firsthand experience of the 2013 floods - I hope that this comes across as informed and respectful as I intended it to for those of you who did. This is only a small piece of a larger story. ]
The 2013 Flood
---
RED: Cal said to look for it here...
RED: That must be it!
[ JUNE 19, 2023 ]
[ GLENMORE DAM, CALGARY]
RED: So, ten years on from one of the worst floods in Southern Alberta's history... How do you remember it starting?
CAL: It's still unbelievable. I was just walking around downtown and the water was almost up to my ankles by the time I realized what was happening.
CARO: The police showed up at my door to make sure I was ready to evacuate that night.
RED: How did it get so bad so fast?
CAL: Even though it was a clear day here, the rain on the melting snow in the mountains upstream was so heavy that everything came down fast. People genuinely thought the measurement instruments were broken.
CARO: It was the first time the city ever had to use the Municipal Emergency Plan. We did what we could to build temporary barriers and get people out, but you couldn't get downtown for days afterwards.
CAL: Luckily, we were able to meet up and visit some of the rec centres people were evacuated to. You hear stories about disasters hitting and violence erupting and people fending for themselves, but it wasn't like that at all.
CARO: People were coming by and dropping off so much food that it was difficult to figure out where to send it all!
CAL: Eventually we just started telling people "Come back tomorrow!" It wasn't a problem I'd have ever complained about.
CARO: We weren't always in a place that had power, so it took us a while before we saw the footage of the flooding in places like Bragg Creek and other parts of southern Alberta.
CAL: We lowered the water in the Glenmore Reservoir to try to keep up with the flood and keep a supply of safe drinking water for us and our neighbours, but the water was still flowing out of the dam about seven times faster than normal. Watching it spill over like that was awful...
CARO: Luckily the water quality was nowhere near as bad as it got during the 2005 flood, but I definitely saw a few people splashing and swimming around in it. You have no idea how much sewage was just floating around the streets, guys! Eugh!
CARO: It was lucky that we have such great neighbours looking after us!
RED: Aww, I'm gonna blush! It was the least I could do, luckily we did enough preparation after 2005 to avoid the worst of that flood.
ED: Jeez, "most expensive disaster in Canadian history,"* really?
CAL: You know me... always going all out...
CARO: Thanks for breakfast, it was nice to sleep on something other than a gym mat too!
RED: You betcha! We're nearly done loading the truck, so you guys can rest up.
[ *Until the Fort McMurray Fire in 2016 ]
---
CAL: Coming back, downtown was... different after that.
CARO: The clean up was not exactly fun, but you'd have to beat Calgarians looking for a way to help off with a stick.
CAL: [laughing] The police were annoyed that people kept getting in the way at the time, but I think just giving people something to do helped make things a lot better in the end.
CARO: We like to brag about our can-do attitude and volunteer spirit in good times, but it really makes you cry to see people help each other when we're all hurting like that.
CAL: That and it's way easier to deal with a carpet of mould with friends!
RED: So the flood happened, you clean up, sort through the insurance... then what?
CAL: I ended up moving into my current apartment after that. I couldn't stand the thought of not being able to see what was happening.
CARO: No thanks, I smelled downtown after the power went out and everyone's food rotted. You couldn't pay me to live in one of those high rises!
--
RED: And only two weeks to go before the greatest outdoor show on earth! Did you think of cancelling?
CARO: No way - we hadn't cancelled Stampede since the First World War! We were still selling tickets while the grounds were still wet!
CAL: I'm not entirely sure how we did it, although we did have a lot of help from some American friends - and Calgarians, of course! There were some cancellations and it was a little quieter, but opening Stampede meant the world to us.
CARO: We've done a lot to make things safer since the flood.
CAL: There's new steel gates on the dam that doubled the water capacity, which helps a lot.
CARO: Although we sometimes forget that when we are under water restrictions... shortages are still a big problem.
RED: I saw the barrier along Heritage Drive you told me to look out for earlier.
CARO: We hope that one will help keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles if another flood happens.
CAL: If you give me a lift downtown, I'll show you a couple of different things we've installed in Eau Clare...
CARO: I'll meet you there!
CAL: ...I hope you're taking the C-Train because otherwise something is deeply wrong with you.
CARO: Enjoy sitting in traffic!
CAL: Can you spot the flood barriers?
RED: Those tiered rocks?
CAL: That's one of them, but there's another part of Eau Clare Plaza ahead that's a little harder to spot.
RED: It looks pretty normal to me...
CAL: These benches are actually fitted over concrete barriers! We have a steel gate we can install between them before a flood hits.
RED: Whoa! Subtle, yet effective!
RED: Your place in Bowness was hit pretty badly too, wasn't it? Do you have anything like this, Caroline?
CARO: Ah, well, we definitely did some studies but... a lot of the areas affected involve cooperating with private property owners. They want to see how the province manages with building a new reservoir upstream before they commit to anything yet. Stuff like this is pretty pricey - it's already cost well over a billion dollars total to make some of these changes.
CAL: It's alright, we're still much more prepared even though we haven't built every project. We know what to pack for an evac, we both have water level alerts set up on our phones... and we've reduced the flood risk of the whole city by about 70% too.
RED: That's really impressive!
RED: You hadn't seen a flood like this since the 1890s. Are you worried about another "once in a century" flood any time soon?
CARO: The Bow and the Elbow have flooded for our entire lives, and it's not likely to stop anytime soon.
CAL: There's still a lot we have to do to improve our relationship with the river, but I think we've come a long way.
RED: Let's hope for the best, then!
CAL: We can do more than just hope! I'm thinking of building a rain garden...
CARO: ...you live almost 30 storeys in the air.
CAL: I didn't say its going to be for me!
CARO: You are not digging in my yard until you fix my pipes...
I saw this lovely lady as I (and the other riders on the Ride of the Fancy Women) pulled up alongside the benches by Lift Me Up on the Lake at the recently reopened Hawrelak Park! Much as I would have loved to sit and rest and do some more bird watching - and I probably should have, in retrospect - I ended up taking an extremely scenic route home... without stopping to fill up my water or retouch my sunscreen. Oops. I paid for it the day after.
Some fun facts from Birds of Alberta:
The males get some green plumage during breeding season and do some almost slapstick posturing, tilting their heads allllll the way back to their butts and screeching PEENT
Although they are mostly only in Alberta for breeding season, they will overwinter on large lakes. At the risk of freezing in place and becoming a tasty snack for passing eagles or ravens.
Nicknamed 'whistlers' because of the way the wind whistles through their feathers when they are in flight
I went down to Hawrelak Park for the first time since it reopened and immediately saw a curious goldeneye approaching some girls in our group for snacks (perhaps she wanted to join our fancy lady bike ride...?)
this is partly out of embarrassment that like 90% of the things in ed's tag in the past two years have been hockey related but also a reflection of the collective anxiety expressed in the sports segment of my daily morning radio about the status of our beloved hometown boy for the world cup ;~; get well soon alphonso
i'm posting this now even though it feels incomplete. I haven't decided whether to draw whoever she's talking to or to just fill in the space with little relevant doodles but i figured i'd post it rather than forget
you can find the joy in every agonizing moment of existence
on this planet
ok maybe a corb lund or ian tyson song would be more thematic but i was listening to honey lungs (which itself is about choosing deliberately to be kinder coming out of the pandemic in such a polarized and divisive world)
also embarrassingly i got the lyrics wrong it should be "showing sugar on my tongue"
I also learned today that the Water Not Coal petition (with less than 15 hours left to go til the deadline as I write this) reached its signature threshold! I was absolutely floored by the amount of canvassing I saw and the amount of support from all corners of the province, from so many different cultural/political backgrounds. I don't trust the province to play fair, but I trust Albertans to continue not taking their shit.
It's a rough time right now. Foreign influencers who have no personal stake in the problems figured out they can make a quick buck off of ai generated separation ragebait. We're an embarrassment nationally - even more than usual - because of our antagonistic authoritarian government that would rather gerrymander cities into obliteration, censor libraries and trans kids from public life, and drive us collectively off a cliff than acknowledge treaty rights or back out of a coal deal we have been fighting them on for over 6 years. Whenever I go online I feel like I'm seeing other Canadians punching us down without acknowledging all the fighting we've been doing - because that's what the province wants me to see.
But the wild roses are blooming again and I have to remember that they are more real and tangible and meaningful than Smith's tire fire political party that I voted against in 2012 and got stuck under anyway.
as long as the sun shines, as long as the grass grows, as long as the river flows.
aaaand appropriately we are "ending" (or at least pausing) this challenge to document all my Merlin app sightings this year so far with the titular merlin! (plus a bonus snack she was carrying... possibly a blue jay)
I'm still amazed that I got a photo of this moment clear enough to use for reference!
Some facts from Birds of Alberta
snatches small birds out of midair - mostly bohemian waxwings in winter and house sparrows in summer
at the time this book was published (i have the original 1998 edition), Edmonton had the most nesting pairs (approximately 60) of any other city. I didn't know this at the time of this sighting, but I'd say that still holds true nearly 3 decades later!
The scientific name "columbarius" is from the Latin for pigeon because merlins have a similar deep v shape of their wings while in flight
and there you have it! We've just about reached more or less the end of this little challenge until i go outside more and either see more birds or learn to figure out what my local gulls are.
I do have one great photo of a merlin I'd like to do a finished piece of, so I'm hoping to get that today. Then I'll have to find some other thing to warm up with before work each morning.
alrighty, previously my list had been organized by genus/species, but I've seen a couple more birds since I started this challenge so we're going back to water and shore birds for a moment.
I saw one of these guys when I took a spontaneous bike down to the river valley. I was painting a landscape when i saw a weird teeter-tottering motion out of the corner of my eye, and there it was! :)
