Here is my Secret Samol piece for 2025! For @fr0ghole who asked for Phrygian x Corrasion in a toxic situationship! Decided to move away from writing this year and do some tapestry and I had so much fun with it.
(Under the cut I've put some thoughts about why I did certain things, some close-ups, and some of the tapestry stuff for people who care about that part!)
First of all, some detail on decisions! As soon as I saw this prompt I was all in, and I definitely wanted something abstract, and the idea of Corrasion wearing down the mountains while Phyrigian desperately tried to keep them together wouldn't leave me alone. What's the point of showing a situationship between two abstract concepts without getting a little abstract with it yourself? I also wanted to show the way that the political ideologies between the two clash and intersect.
My intial idea had the water being far more dynamic and less stylised, but I didn't have a tapestry frame large enough, so I pared things back. The design/cartoon I ended up with was this, which is much more manageable with my equiptment and skill level:
I really wanted to give the idea that they were influencing each other though (for better or worse!) so I wanted to have their colours affecting the other. It was easy enough to decide to add some blue into the mountain colour mix at the base, but I couldn't figure out how to do trailing wires into the water - I didn't want them to be solid gold, and I didn't really have enough space to do them looping etc. I ended up using pick and pick with a blue and a blue-gold colour mix to give the impression of the wires being inside the water
The loops around the mountains were the one thing that stayed throughout the entire drafting process (I love the idea of Phyrigian being large and spread out!) but if I was re-doing this piece I'd make it easier on myself by doing larger loops and doing them line by line (I did the mountains first and it was hard to line everything up as I beat down)
The final part of this was the sky - I really wanted the colours to be reminicent of the Twilight Mirage, and so I ended up on a green-purple mix. My initial plan also had planets in the background, but I changed this as I wanted to evoke both partizan and the stellar combuster with the red sun.
The sun was the hardest and also the most fun part of it - more complex hatching and colour mixing than I've done, but I got far more confident in my skills as I went.
Tapestry talk: I did it in discrete sections, with three colours: red only, a red and sky mix, and the sky colour only. The first section was hatching between the sky and the red-sky mix. Then a section of just the mix. Then a section of hatching between the red and the red-sky mix, and then finally just the red.
I really wanted it to look like diffused light and I think it paid off!
To anyone who got this far thank you!! I had so much fun doing this, and I will definitely be doing a tapestry again next year, when hopefully I have a larger frame and better skills to get even more detailed!!
This was such a blast and I've loved Friends At The Table for a decade now. Happy Secret Samol!
F@tt pinup week day five: slumber party. I think there are some sleepovers that Pickman enjoys more than others, and they’re usually the ones that are less chaotic and more sedate. That doesn’t mean she isn’t still frowning the entire time.
F@tt pinup week day five: slumber party. I think there are some sleepovers that Pickman enjoys more than others, and they’re usually the ones that are less chaotic and more sedate. That doesn’t mean she isn’t still frowning the entire time.
belated FatT Pinup Week entry: Slumber Party (on the little snail)
here’s the original, which i still like best but assume is too dark for most folks:
beneath those blankets and bodies i did take the time to draw the mechanism for foldout beds btw. maybe that’s (thematically) why i only got to two finished entries this year….. RIP
F@tt pinup week day four: sick as shit. Half of this got drawn in various cafes before work since I didn’t want any of my coworkers to see me drawing equiaxed ass :’)
ID: A colored digital drawing of Clementine Kesh and Ver'million Blue as wrestlers. Millie pins Clem to the ground, hands on her shoulders to press her legs to her chest. End ID
@fatt-pinups day 7: au. would you look at that! stray dog's got panther pinned!
the move is, of course, rhea ripley's famous riptide pin.
thought i'd finish this out with a deeply indulgent wrestling au. discussed this in dms with actual wrestlers and i have more details but the important parts: millie is stray dog (face), rebrands to lacrimosa (face but cooler) when she leaves the rapid evening faction; clem goes by panther (heel) despite that being the name of a much more impressive wrestler from decades past, and eventually breaks with her mother's promotion and becomes witch (face, somehow). also the promotion is called consolidated kesh wrestling / ckw
F@tt pinup week day two: beach day. For every hot pinup of Adelaide and Hella at the Aubade beach, I think of an equally hot Adaire who is refusing to go near the sand or water
