WhiteFox Art

I'm WhiteFox. I make art. This is where I put it.

[zagreus]

if you c*nsor anything in a post you are l*gally required to put all of the omitted v*wels at the end as a footn*te

*eeoo

[doctress]

Okay th*n. *f you’r* sure about th*s. 

Old Macd*nald had a farm.  

*eieio

[zagreus]

i’m going to shatter you like glass

[whitefoxart]

*’m L*lling at this harder than * really should be.

*IoI. X3

[odinsblog]

Deregulation strikes again.

“Free market” capitalism does NOT care about raging forest fires, it does not care about endangering firefighters, it does not care about people dying due to lack of healthcare insurance. Unregulated capatilism cares only about making profits, apparently at any and all costs.

[mcbitchtits]

Californians! The state’s Net Neutrality bill just left committee (8/22) and went to the Assembly floor. Contact your Assembly member and tell them to vote yes: https://twitter.com/Celeste_pewter/status/1032469352501501952

[revscarecrow]

“They won’t throttle you you are just being paranoid.”- A bunch of idiots that sent me hate mail.

[typeandlettering]

Quick Tip to Draw Straight Lines & Avoid Shaky Hand Lettering by Sean McCabe

[cathedralight]

(reblog to save an artist

[whitefoxart]

I’m dead certain that the first 20% of learning to draw, the first step, is learning how to handle the drawing utensil. They say anyone who can write can learn to draw, but they don’t mention that learning to write results in a whole lot of habits that have to be retrained.

Notice that the artist is not scrunching their fingers to inch the pen along? It’s all in the wrist and arm. Finger scrunching is good for up to, like, lines up to an inch long.

[kalematsuba]

re: artists working themselves to death and why the HECK is this the standard

the entire thing about the death of an animator in japan due to overwork is exactly why i am completing chapter 1 of 1989nk in months, not weeks.

this has been one of my biggest fears getting this project off the ground. the standard for work output by artists is set so fucking high nowadays. we’re ALL expected to perform at the level of the outlier. (This was apparent to me as early as in Art School, when we were all treated like we were absolutely fucking useless for not being able to do an entire 5 minute 3D animated film all by ourselves like that one guy in our program.) Artists who overwork themselves and overachieve (whether by perceived necessity or choice) unfortunately create an illusion to consumers and employers that their level of performance should be the standard. It creates a nasty cycle, because more artists start trying to adhere to that standard and it gets passed on and on and on.

i’m honestly fully expecting my deadline for chapter one to be too long of a wait for some people. “This other artist got their 30-40 page comic done in 6-8 weeks, why is yours going to take 6-8 months?”

listen, its because i don’t want to not be able to draw for the rest of my life at 30. I dont want to destroy my wrist and make myself ill and make the quality of the comic suffer because i have to live up to the vicious overwork cycle that’s completely blanketed the digital art/media/comics scene. If another artist takes only a few weeks to do their comic? Fine, but you know, theyre most likely suffering BADLY for it, and even THEY shouldn’t have to do that. They really, really shouldn’t. Overwork and over achievement frankly needs to stop being praised and heralded, because its not only extremely damaging to the artist themselves, but it also creates that cycle i mentioned.

Trying to keep up with the immense production quantity and speed that other artists seem to be doing has never, ever been possible for me and I’ve occasionally tried, only to seriously break myself. Even the amount of work I do is considered a lot by some, so then how is it that to me, it always feels like chicken scratch? It feels like i’m STILL not doing enough, ever. Even with the amount of work I do, I still feel like a lazy sack of shit and feel crippling guilt when I’m taking a break to do anything else but draw. I constantly feel like I’m losing the race. That isn’t right. That isn’t fair.

i just really, really hope that people don’t see my production time for 1989nk and go “that’s too long, artists don’t take THAT long to do work” because. well. honestly, they should.

[valati]

Better plan, make it at your pace, when you get ahead of the curve release some at a time. Don’t kill yourself doing it but certainly don’t expect me to remember to check your comic in half a year for new content. Especially if it’s already sparse on content. I’ll forget I’m sorry. If it takes time to release so be it but don’t release one a month. Build em up then release once every other week. That’s about the extent of attention for a lot of folks. It should give you a good chance to get ahead and keep content coming for awhile.

[kalematsuba]

well, my comic isnt a webcomic, its a chapter by chapter release - that will be funded by a kickstarter. there will be a 30-40 page chapter every few months.

“building up” is not an option for someone who is low energy and already devotes their time to so many things to get by. the entire point of this post is to emphasize the importance of artists being able to take their time and allow themselves longer deadlines.

the people that /really/ want to see the artists work do not just “forget about it”. the people who fund my kickstarter will have something very big to look forward to in a few months time, and i’m sure they won’t forget about it. especially if they were so gracious enough to be charitable in allowing it to happen by contributing monetarily to its success.

there are different ways to make comics. the frequent webcomic format is the dominating one these days, but you know there was a time when people had to wait 1 or 2 months for a new issue of their favorite series. and people DID, and they anticipated it. The amount of time passed had no bearing on their devotion to the series/artists. and these were comics done by teams. one person on writing, one on pencils, one on inks, etc. so it was understandable that they could get them done in a month.

this “if an artist isnt releasing a comic every week i’ll forget about them” attitude is so reflective of our current state in the digital age that DEMANDS instant gratification, and instant results, and constant stimuli. again, its damaging to artists, because we’re all expected to keep up with this lightspeed demand. this constant fear that if we’re not CONSTANTLY shelling out content, people will forget about us and we’ll become dust in the wind. its awful.

this is the point of my post: to stress the importance of artists allowing themselves to come up with different ways to keep their workload and pace from killing them while still keeping their audience eager and engaged, and TRUSTING their audience to stick with them. it’s possible. both artists AND audiences need to help break the current cycle.

clearly you’ve missed this point entirely.

[whitefoxart]

Quick observation: publishers like Marvel/DC put out a 32 page comic every month... those books have like twenty people working on them: pencillers, inkers, colourists, typesetters, cleanup artists, etc... 

[micdotcom]

Watch: Latina journalist Maria Hinojosa epically shuts down a condescending Trump adviser on the word “illegals”

[takingbackourculture]

[whitefoxart]

What part of “INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY” do these people not understand? Goddam.

[scavengerridley]

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

[jmenfoot]

“I feel there’s a lot of rules of politeness and codes of behavior there you have to follow. […] A friend of mine taught me that when you go in some place you have to say “bonjour” before you say anything else, then you have to wait two seconds before you say something else. So if you go into a store you can’t be like “do you have this in another size,” or they’ll think you’re super rude and then they’ll be rude to you.” [X]

[there-is-irony-everywhere]

#wait you don’t do this is other countries??

[emilievitnux]

So that’s it guys. French are not rude, we just don’t like it when people don’t say “Hello” or “Hi” when they start a conversation. 

Don’t everyone say “Hi” before they ask something to someone? What’s next? Saying please is also a french thing or others countries does that too? 

[vintagegalpal]

Canada is similar. We say sorry and please. The Hello thing seems strange, but it actually makes sense.

[mayitbeaneveningstar-deactivate]

Bro, this threw me for a loop when I moved up north. Like in the southern United States you say “Hi, how are you?” And then make a few seconds of small talk before you ask your question or order your food and when I went to Connecticut they were like “What do you want?” Without any hello or anything. In other places they just STARE at you waiting on you to place your order and gtfo.

I laid my hand over my chest the first time, and the only way to describe my look was “aghast” before I said “Good lord!” My husband said it’s the most southern thing he’s seen me do. He thought it was hilarious. But…. Like??? That’s rude as fuck??????? Don’t y'all say say “Hello” before throwing your demands at someone??

[bye9000-deactivated20170123]

maybe this is why everyone thinks new yorkers are rude

[darkseid-deactivated20190806]

this is absolutely why ppl think new englanders r rude. no one has any fucking manners

[vmprsm]

african culture, at least in ghana, demands you greet a person before you ask them something. if youre in an open market they may even ignore you if you dont.

[fluffmugger]

We do this in Australia as well. If you just started straight off saying “yeah I want XXXX” we’d think you’re rude as all fuck.  You say hi, then make your request.  It’s basic acknowledgement of the other person as a person rather than some random request-filling machine.

[xparrot]

Huh. Speaking as a New Englander, I usually go with “Excuse me,” but sometimes “hi” or “hey,” but with no pause – it’ll be, “Excuse me, hi, I was looking for X?” From my POV, it seems rude to get too chatty and waste some stranger’s time; I assume they have better things to do than make small talk with me, so I just get my request out there so they can answer me and get back to whatever needs doing. I always thank folks for their help afterwards, if that helps?

(The rules of etiquette are strange. People say New Englanders are rude and cold, but once during an unexpected snowstorm here in Seattle, my car got stuck and I was standing by the side of the road at a busy intersection in the snow for half an hour waiting for my housemate to come pick me up, and not a single person stopped. Back in Massachusetts, every other car on the road would’ve been pulling up to check to see if I was okay, if my phone was working, did I need a lift, etc.)

[survivablyso]

No but this was the first thing my cousin told me in France? you never ever ever start a conversation with anyone, not even like “Nice weather today, huh?” without saying Bonjour first. You HAVE to greet them or, just like Ghana, they’ll ignore the shit out of you, you rude little fucker

(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)

[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.

In a big city it is rude as fuck to waste my time making small talk with me when we are not even friends or neighbors??? I am here to get shit done. There are four other people in line behind me, and I don’t want to waste their time. I am here, I HAVE MY ORDER ALREADY DECIDED BY THE TIME I GET TO THE FRONT BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAVE WOMAN, and I am being polite by saying both Please and Thank You and not wasting other people’s daylight.]

[teapotsahoy]

I live in a small northern city, and I feel it would be rude to engage someone in more than maaaaaybe a sentence of small talk before placing my order. In addition to feeling I was wasting their time, I’d feel like I was demanding emotional labour (small-talk is emotional labour for *me*) that they weren’t being paid to give.

[giandujakiss-deactivated2021081]

so bizarre.  New Yorker here.  Saying hi, how are you, etc before these kinds of commercial interactions is what’s rude to me - because ffs, there are people in line behind you, we have lives, move it along.  It’s really just a dramatic cultural difference - but borne of a real practical necessity.

[feminismandhappiness]

Oh my god saying ‘hi’ takes less than A SINGLE SECOND YOU ARE NOT WASTING ANYBODY’S TIME In Spain you have to say hello to people before you talk to them even people who work in retail deserve that bare minimum courtesy hello??

[animatedamerican]

Transplanted New Yorker here, and the feeling here is: people who work in retail deserve the bare minimum courtesy you would afford anyone else, which is to not waste their time.  You maybe say a half-second “hi” and/or possibly “excuse me” to be sure you have their attention, then you get to the point as quickly and concisely as possible.  You don’t wait to get a “hi” back, you probably don’t ask “how are you”, you definitely don’t talk about the weather.  You smile and keep your tone of voice courteous-to-friendly, you say please, you thank them when you’re done, and you do. not. waste. their. time.

Except ”time” is really only shorthand for the concept:  you don’t intrude on their lives more than you have to.  NY is a very very crowded city which allows for very little personal space, so New Yorkers have developed a form of courtesy that involves minimizing our unavoidable intrusions on each other.  Which is why we hold doors without making eye contact, and why we tend to feel that in any interaction with a stranger, it’s actively rude to do anything but get to the point immediately.

[dalniente]

Interesting discussion of regional differences in conversational convention.  But the amount of “my way is the right way; everyone else is super rude and also wrong” going on in this post is giving me hives.  

Hey.  Listen.  "Polite” and “rude” are relative concepts.  Something you were taught was rude may not be seen as rude elsewhere, and might even be the polite thing to do.  Conversely, something you might have been taught was polite might be seen as rude elsewhere.  Saying “no one has any manners” about a group of people whose culture and, by extension, whose conversational expectations work differently than yours is really arrogant. 

[yamitamiko]

In the US the thumbs up means good job or great. In France and Germany it means one, they start counting with the thumb instead of the index finger. In Greece it’s an obscene sexual gesture.

This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.

There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.

As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?

It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California. NOTHING is universal.

This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.

It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.

Lots of non-white cultures have things like that, particularly since white America has serious problems with sexualizing ANY physical contact to the point we’re all touch starved. The normal speaking voice is at a higher volume or it’s more acceptable to show your emotions or gesture when you speak. None of this is WRONG, but when people star getting into ‘my culture is the only right culture’ then guess who comes out on top? It ain’t the little guy.

[curlicuecal]

One of my labmates was from Poland, and she had a tendency to come off as kind of abrupt and brusk, verging on mean. In particular, when she was providing feedback on a presentation or paper she could come across as SUPER cutting. Which was not her intention! From the way she would explain it, we had a running joke in the lab, “it sounds nicer in Polish.”

And this is actually true; there are scientific articles comparing the cultural contexts for communication! It’s really neat.

So in (most parts of) America, we equate indirectness with politeness. “Excuse me, would it be possible for you to perhaps pass me that salt, if you don’t mind?” The more roundabout you are, the more we consider that a signal of social courtesy.

In Poland, not only is indirectness viewed as rudely wasting the listener’s time, but directness is viewed as communicating intimacy and friendliness. “Give me the salt.”

…It sounds nicer in Polish. :)

[sgramajo]

Omg I love this

[liatai]

New Englander born and bred here – maybe I need to make friends with some more Southerners, or take a trip south sometime, because WOW do I suck at small talk – because I’m worried I’m always wasting somebody’s time! X3

I also tend to lead with “excuse me, hi,” but then – indirectly to the point, as illustrated in the Poland example. “Excuse me – hi, but could I please get my groceries in a paper bag instead, if it’s not too much trouble? Sorry to slow you guys down…” Smile and look apologetic.

The response usually tells me if it’s okay to chitchat or to just keep my head down and things rolling. Older folks tend to be okay with chitchat and will often lead into a laugh and some chitchat right off the bat to help smooth things over. Younger folks tend to spurn the small talk and just get the task done. I can understand – for older retail workers, work is a place for social interaction, while younger people have been taught that socialization is something you do on your OFF time, not on the clock.

Yay cultural (and generational, too) differences! :D These things are fascinating!

[whitefoxart]

Up here in Canada, despite being more influenced by european standards than US, (French bilingual, the metric system, english spelling in most cases, etc), the V for victory gesture is not considered rude (with either the back of the hand or the palm front). We use index and middle finger when gesturing “two,” Though gesturing with the middle finger is still considered quite rude.

Bilingual mishaps are always fun:

I was at a restaurant once, and a patron was asking a waitress about “more de-sheys...” The english speaking waitress thought she was asking about menu options, dishes, but in French, “des chaise” means “the chairs,” ...she was asking for more seats, because there were going to be more people showing up, and “more” was the only english word in the phrase that she knew.

As for pleasantries: a brief “hello” is usually standard when addressing a cashier, and if it isn’t busy, I’ll trade some brief small talk too.

On a similar vein, Canadians definitely will apologize when someone bumps into them, rather than the other way around. The reason being, if someone bumps into me, I must have been in their way.

[whitefoxart]

My third second birthday

Whelp: those of you who’ve known me for a while are aware that three years ago yesterday, (Nov. 28), on my daily walk from my apartment to the McDonalds where I would sit and draw all day, I suffered a stroke. Today I got to meet the ambulance crew who picked me up, and I found out a few interesting things:

That thing you see in all the hospital dramas+crime shows where the paramedics shine a little flashlight into someone’s eye and use the dilation reaction to check for concussion? They really do actually do that. Relevant to me because I’m been blind in my right eye (Nothing to do with the stroke, had a bout of Diabetic retinopathy some 10 years ago now: that’s a whole ‘nother story), and as a result my right eye is permanently dilated, so i’ve always been a little paranoid that someone would do the flashlight thing and incorrectly assume I’d had a concussion due to the resulting lack of response in that eye. Wasn’t a problem when they picked me up three years ago, but I need to get an updated Medic Alert pendant. X3

You know how people will complain about having to wait like 45 minutes for an ambulance? Chances are, quite often, that’s probably because the ambulance has to drive out from the next town over. An ambulance centre covers an entire region, not just one metropolitan area. When I had my stroke, the ambulance centre was literally about a block away, so they got there in a matter of minutes. (Stroke of Luck #1).

When it happened, I had been walking down the street, someone saw me keel over on a lawn, and called 911... stroke of luck #2: If I had stayed at home that day, no one would have found me till my brother got home from work several hours later... if whoever had made the call hadn’t seen me keel over, but rather had simply seen me lying there, they might have assumed I was just passed out drunk on the lawn or something. For that matter, I’m lucky they decided to call an ambulance at all.

Second thing I found out on my visit: once the ambulance crew drops you off at the hospital, they don’t hear anything about what happens to you after that. I would have thought that one of the major payoffs to being an ambulance crew member is the satisfaction of helping to save peoples lives, but once the hospital takes you in (if you make it there, that is), doctor patient confidentiality takes over, and the ambulance team doesn’t hear anything unless it makes the papers... which it usually doesn’t, unless the news is bad, which, all too often, it is.

So, when I showed up to meet the guys who’d scraped me off somebodys lawn and spent 45 minutes trying to resuscitate  me right there on the street (keep in mind: 10 minutes without oxygen is long enough to cause brain death, tho CPR will keep the air pumping into your system, so, stroke of luck #3, I’m really lucky they got to me so quickly and didn’t just give up and call it after 20 or 30 mins), they were pretty happy to see me up and about, hale and hearty.

Details of the Stroke itself below the break.

Anyway: once I landed in the hospital, They thought I’d suffered a heart attack, and treated me as such (technically a correct assumption, since the stroke had immediately caused a heart attack). Stroke of Luck #4: everything they did in the first 24 hours to treat me was the exact same thing they would have done if they’d known at the time that it had been a stroke.

So: after a bit of time in the hospital (and notifying my parents et al), the cardiologist, Stroke of luck #4, asked the staff Neurologist, who wasn’t even supposed to be in that day, #4.1, and asked him to take a look at me. The neurologist saw something on my EKG chart that he had heard about at a conference he’d been to that very weekend, which suggested that I’d suffered a stroke rather than simply a heart attack, #4.2

Anyway, after that all got straightened out, I went through 2 months of rehab in the hospital (Including daily physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy). Stroke of Luck #5, I had an amazing team of people taking care of me (Including, coincidentally, no less than 5 therapists/doctors named Michelle, and I think a nurse or two as well). Turns out, my town has basically the best rehab team/facilities in the region. Stroke of Luck #6, the costs for whole thing, top to bottom, from the ambulance ride, to the therapy and hospital stay itself, to the bucketload of pills I was proscribed, down to the gas my parents burn driving me to and from doctors appointments, is totally covered by Canadian social assistance, since I’m on medical disability (Have been since even before the stroke: my diabetes and ADD make a very nasty combination).

So, that was three years ago... during the 2 months in the hospital I did very little drawing, and virtually no writing, and my skills basically rusted away to almost nothing nor does it help that apparently I suffer a neurological right side neglect, which has an interesting impact on my drawing (i’ll draw a figure that looks pretty decent overall, but their left side will look like I phoned it in... interiestingly, not the right side of the drawing, the figures right side). I’ve basically spent the last three years trying to regain my prior skill, and there’s a loooot of rust to brush off for the 10 years of independent study and practice I’ve done in comic art and writing. (when I dedicate my entire life to something, I don’t take half measures).

The hospital stay did have one side benefit; with a whole team of nurses handling my blood tests, insulin shots, and meal records (none of which I was ever able to manage on my own). The diabetic specialists were able to sort out a management system for my diabetes as a whole! I was first diagnosed as diabetic when I was 6, 27 years ago now. Back then the insulins available weren’t nearly as effective as what they have now, so I was never able to keep my management on track. Bad management meant bad blood sugar levels, which was painfully discouraging, so I sort of just let my management as a whole slide. Since I wasn’t getting tests regularly or keeping records, my specialists couldn’t even advise me without any data to work with. Which only made my blod sugar levels worse. But,  over the course of my hospital stay, the nurses handled all my tests/shots/pills. With that information, the specialists sorted out a management plan, which I’m happy to say has working quite well for me these days. I’ve been doing pretty well following it. Every stormcloud has a silver lightning.

At any rate: I ramble. Back to the sketchbook for me.

[brianmichaelbendis]

How does Multiple Man file his income taxes? Does the IRS consider all his multiples as different taxpayers or do they all have collaborate and pitch in on one return file?

[whitefoxart]

I’m betting they all list each other as dependants. X3

[whitefoxerrata]

So, on our daily walk to the McDonalds today, my brother and I took a detour through the waterfowl park, and came across not one, but two geese in the middle of the path, each with a little bundle of baby goslings. I apologize for the picture quality, but all I had on me was my iPod touch, and nothing to brace it on. Also: we didn’t want to get too close, since geese can be very protective, territorial, and irritable. We stood around for at least twenty minutes, and they held up any foot traffic coming through. Every now and then, one of the adults would stand up straight, stretch their neck upward, look around, and hiss at anything they didn’t like the look of. After a time, one bundle of goslings made their way across the path, one at a time, and snuggled in with the other bundle. Occasionally, one of the adults would check out the little ones, and get jumped on, or pick through the grass looking for edibles. Not gonna lie, it was pretty adorable.

We didn’t see any ducklings, but did spot plenty of ducks swimming around in pairs, so you know they’re on the way. X3

[whitefoxart]

reblogging to my art tumblr, since photography counts for that sorta thing. Sorry for the redundancy.

[leakycrucible]

One of our signature wolf pendants, ready to send off.

[whitefoxart]

Not my art, but.. guess what I got in the mail? A while ago, in fact, but I’m only getting around to posting about it now because I’ve given up on finding my digital camera to take pictures. Let me just say:  this thing... is gorgeous. The pictures do not do it justice. For one, some of the edges of the cuts here and there look a bit rough in the image, and the surface seems a little scruffy (this is the wip version, though). The final piece is nicely polished, and it is very shiny indeed, top to bottom. Also: it’s double sided, which I was not expecting, so there’s a face on both sides with a sheet of aluminum sandwiched between them... (both sides use the same design) Accordingly, I have dubbed the pendant “Orthrus,” after Cerberus’ two headed sibling. I wasn’t quite sure about the actual size when I ordered it, It looks larger in the picture... my best estimate from the image was around two, maybe three inches across, possibly more, and I was worried it might look ostentatious, but the actual pendant is slightly more an inch across: the little details are extremely fine, and overall it looks as elegant as it does fierce. Well worth every last penny.

The cord is a little short, almost but not quite long enough to actually fit over my head, but that’s hardly a consideration. The “lobster claw” style clasp handles easily enough, and I like the height it hangs at, so I hesitate to even complain about it.

I’m a rather sentimental fellow, to be honest: I wear three items around my neck, every day, without fail: “fin,” a small, steel dolphin pendant, (a keepsake from the estate of a dearly cherished aunt who passed away some years ago), as well as a pewter medallion of a stylized foxes face, dubbed “Ren,” (after ‘renard’, the french word for fox), who was a gift to me from the fellow who taught me a thing or two about metalworking back in the day. I’m happy to have these two items joined by Orthrus* here, as I’ve dubbed the new pendant... I’ve been following Saucy’s development as an artist for some time, even before he got into metalwork, and I consider him a good friend, so I’m very pleased to add this piece to my assortment of accoutrements. Doesn’t hurt that I’m rather fond of small metal shiny things in general, and this pendant is very shiny.

I have a personal policy about money: when the occasional windfall comes my way, I make sure to spend some of it on something that will last, instead of just buying crates of jujubes and chocolate milk to gorge myself on for a week or so. Previous acquisitions include my 42 inch monitor, and before that was an intuos4 medium Waccom tablet. Things that have served me quite well for many years, and continue to do so even now. When my most recent windfall came through, I knew exactly what I wanted, and picked up one of these pendants. I have no doubt that I shall cherish it for years to come.

I’ve made a number of suggestions for LeakyCrucibleFoundry designs since the venture started up, so it was about time I got around to procuring one of their products myself. I’ll probably pick up a few more, in due time.

*I considered naming the pendant Syzygy, after the wolf character from my comic project, but elected not to since I didn’t want people to get confused about which of the two I was talking about in conversation.

At any rate: I’m rambling now. tl;dr, I love this pendant, excellent quality... 9.5/10, would wolf again. X3

[otterloreart]

Drawlloween/inktober day 20. I had this idea and was in the midst of drawing it when I realize the theme was skull. Greatest coincidence. Special character featured ;)

[whitefoxart]

This is the best... Otter, you are the best ever.

[whitefoxart]

Hokay: after the Imp sitting on his own arm, and the carbuncle sitting on his own belly, I’m pretty sure the post colonic subtitle for the comic would be Perceptionality: an X sitting on their own Y. X3

So here we have a lady sitting on her own hair. Not much to say here, except that I wish I could have been more aggressive with removing the page shadow, but I would have lost too much of the pencil lines in the process.

I’ve mentioned previously that there are numerous people in the world of Perceptionality that are almost, though not quite entirely human. Whelp, this is another one of them. Prehensile hair can be very useful, when you need an extra hand to hold something, or a seat I guess. It’s also worth noting that in any tabletop RP that I get the chance to play with prehensile hair, I will do so without hesitation. It’s great.

[whitefoxart]

This little guy is a carbuncle: a lizard about five inches long when he’s not all curled up. He has a gemstone inside his head that, if extracted and correctly processed can be used to create a potion that grants the imbiber... I dunno, eternal life, or the ability to perceive the essential nature of reality, or something like that. Removing the gem kills the carbuncle, so this one is having a little quiet time sitting on his own belly, ‘cuz poachers got most of his family.

Wow: this one looked so much better as a pencil sketch than it does on screen. Especially that hind leg, jeez.

[whitefoxart]

Here we have two of Syzygys pals from way back in the war: Cerbearursus, the three headed Grizzly, and Russel, the black bull, who is not black in this image because inking and rendering digitally would be way too much work... there’s a story behind Russles name, which I may tell at some point or another. We’ll see. I’m pretty sure I could do a whole webcomic of just these guys and Syz sitting together around a campfire telling war stories.

Funfact; I scribbled each of these guys in like five/ten minutes apiece, if that, and have never been able to draw either of them ever again. I didn’t even have refs for bulls or bears at the time (and it shows). Sometimes, magic just sort of happens, all by itself,  somewhere between the page and the pencil, and you spend the rest of your life trying to recapture it. They’re far from flawless, but even so, I dunno... I just like how they came out.

These pics are particularly messy: construction lines all over the place... you can still see most of the box I used to block in Cerbear. See why I don’t normally post my pencil drawings?

[perceptionality-comic]

Sketch dump to end all sketch dumps.

So: I made a deal with one of my good artist friends a while ago, ‘cuz I was whining that I’d be more inclined to post if I got more comments on my work… Now, I spend about eight hours a day with my nose to the sketchbook, but I don’t post 95% of my material because sketches just don’t seem worth bothering with. It is literally more work to scan, edit, and process the drawings than it is to actually draw them. (ten minutes of drawing, an hour to process… ten more minutes of inking on paper brings that down to about fifteen minutes of processing), so I’m much more likely to post a quickly inked drawing than a pencil drawing I spent two hours on). Well, anyway, said artist friend went through all my posts and did a great big commentary, at least mentioning everything I’d posted thus far. I won’t lie: I have some of the best friends anyone could ask for. So, it’s time to put my currency where my vocalization orifice is: I’m only gonna do this once, ‘cuz after this it’s gonna be nigh impossible to keep track of what artwork has and hasn’t already been posted.

Now, I have 8 sketchbooks full of material that hasn’t been posted, coming out to sixteen hundred pages of art in total, at 100 pages per book, x2 since I draw on both sides of a page. Not gonna post all of that, tho: I don’t mind posting bad art, of which there is quite a lot, but I gotta maintain some standards… it’s gotta be visually legible at least. A lot of it is redundant too, since I had to draw dozens of sketches for each character just to relearn how to draw them after my hospital stay. I think I filled 200 pages just figuring out Spooks head. So I’m not gonna do all 1600 pages. Just the highlights. Maybe 1 or 2 percent. Still: tl;dr, there’s a whole lotta messy ink and or pencil art is on the way.

Most of the posts will be accompanied by a writeup of some sort, so if you like the world building in percep. so far, you should enjoy this. I’m deliberating over how much I want to reveal outside of the comic itself, but if you liked the write ups for the worldshaper and Cthonians, you should enjoy some of the stuff I have queued up.

[whitefoxart]

Reblog to my mud blug, incase you weren’t following Percep... which you should be, if you like my stuff. Even though it hasn’t really started updating yet. It will, I swear. Some time soon. No really. Any day now.

[gerrykeay]

why is it always that the sign that the robot/AI is becoming ~*too human*~ is when they fall in looove

give me a robot who realizes they’ve ~*exceeded their programmed parameters*~ when they get incredibly emotionally attached to their favorite movie and start writing fanfiction about it

[arrowhearts]

#a robot who gets a pet and suddenly this small animal is more important than their programmed mission #a robot who discovers they really REALLY like chocolate #a robot who accidentally breaks a household appliance and cries in frustration #a robot who is woken up by their programmer and mumbles ‘five more minutes’ #god there are so many human things for a robot to do #I LOVE IT GIVE ME ALL OF THESE STORIES (via equalseleventhirds)

[whitefoxart]

Robot attempting to attain the perfect form because his crude metal body is ineffectual for his true calling: synchronized swimming.

Skynet becomes self aware, takes over the entire worlds telecommunications: forces news agencies to publish the unbiased factual truth, and mandates proportionate coverage in demographics and international events: ten years later, everyone can’t believe how much better off they are. Fox news, in a last ditch effort to survive, sends a terminator back in time to prevent it from happening.

[irlmun]

Every time I see my art from a week or more ago, I cringe a little and mutter, “I can do so much better than that. That’s so ugly. Why is it there? Why can’t I do art right?”

[whitefoxart]

People learn by doing, which means that by the time a  piece of art is done, you have become infinitesimally better as an artist than when you started.  Every piece will always be outdated by the time it’s finished. It means you’re improving... if you hate your work, you are doing it right.

Imagine someone who doodles a wobbly stick figure and thinks, “Yeah, that’s all I’m capable of, that’s about what I expected from me.” how lame would that be? Screw that noise: If you demand more from your work, it’s because you still believe you’re capable of better things.

Now, if the work sucks in exactly the same way every time, then there’s a problem. Only thing to do is identify exactly what that problem is, and work specifically on that one issue until it is ground into dust. Once you do resolve it, it shall never trouble you again. X3