Grrl Power #1178 - Aftermarket alchemy (Patreon)

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Ingsol has known a lot of politicians. Well, mostly kings and such until fairly recently. They usually didn't have pander to the serfs, but depending on the kingdom, some had to play nice with the rest of the gentry. You behead some particularly obnoxious guy, but then you have to elevate his nephew to Vice-Viscount to appease the rest of his family, stuff like that. Politicians being mealy-mouthed hemm-hawwing panderers is probably a fairly new phenomenon? But maybe the Senators of ancient Rome were like "Rumors of people going crazy from lead poisoning is just liberal fear mongering. I fully support lead pipes in the aqueduct expansions." And then he pays for an extension to his house with all that sweet payola from Big Lead. Actually, that seems like a dead certainty. I take back what I said. Politicians who can't just behead anyone they like are all going to be just a little bit disingenuous at times. I bet Vlad the Impaler never had to pander to anyone.  

Ah! Flat colors! Hopefully this won't be for too many pages. I'm still sick, but I think I'm getting better? The doctor gave me some industrial grade cough suppressant, which covers my primary symptom, though I still have an entirely capricious need for random naps. I'm hoping I can get back to the usual look sooner rather than later. In the meantime I'm playing around with slightly different art for some of the characters. Scarlett there looks a little Disney princessish. Which I mostly like. The question is will she look anything like that the next time we see her?

My main problem as an artist is that I like way too many kinds of art. I think Joe Madureira is about the best American Comic style penciller, but chasing his art pulls me away from more cartoonish styles like anime, which I also really like. (Depending on the anime.) I also really like... I'm not really sure what to call it, but the best examples would be stuff like League of Legends and Blizzard style hero splash art. It's sort of halfway between Joe Madureira and Pixar. Of course, I can't turn every comic panel into an amazing painting. I know there are some very fast artists out there, but stuff like this takes like 30 or 40 hours of work. At least until AI replaces us. But that's why the comic pages tend to creep towards higher levels of shading as I "improve toward exemplars" I until I realize I need to pull back for my own sanity.

My computer setup is an ultrawide curved monitor on one desk (I have two corner desks pushed together, so I have like a half-circle desk arrangement) and my drawing monitor on the other. Then on a monitor arm, I have another monitor just above the drawing screen. If I'm not watching Rifftrax or old MST3K or binging some series on it, I usually have it displaying some picture from my vast "Good Art" reference folder, in order to continually torture myself with amazing pieces to aspire to. It's supposed to be inspirational, but sometimes I feel like I'm taunting myself just a little.