Digital Art Practice

 So every winter, my brain goes haywire trying to get relief from the awful cold.

I picked up a legit copy of Clip Studio Paint (I think it's like 55$) and it's been good for a couple of hours of experimentation, but I figure the way I'mma get better is with some practice and some idea theft.

I picked out a couple of my favorite B&W artists from my childhood and the comic/ttrpg field.

I got:

Russ Nicholson - probably the bloke responsible for my interest in this whole thing. His pictures in the Fiend Folio set my mind on craycray fire. My dad took me to the book store, and the hip dude recommended I get the PHB but I insisted after browsing through it that the Fiend Folio was my choice.

Jim Woodring

Arthur Gammell (from Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark)

Junji Ito

This guy whose identity I don't know, called Johnny Childish who did a bunch of strips in Thrasher comics in the late 80's

Obviously Crumb and the indie comics things. The Milk and Cheese guy. Concrete.

For color, and figures, Betty and Veronica. Barry Windsor Smith. Uhhhhhhh... so much art out there. I'm spitballing, here.

For watercolor stuff, probably Brian Froud and Arthur Rackham. Anyways I'll let you know how it goes. Right now I'm breaking from line work with the Wacom pen I have and then maybe some downstrokes and some stippling for tonight. The first project is going to be grotty brickwork surfaces WITHOUT the fancy tools that Clip Studio offers, and then a couple of dungeon pictures WITH the fancy tools it has.

We'll see. Wish me luck. My brain is awash in dungeons, tonight.

Here's the first night of practice: I only give it away as a measure of commitment to the project.

The original inspiration by Russ - just going for the bricks, tonight

Quick sketch plus a bunch of free gross brushes. The timelapse video is kinda fun

Dead Malls as Dungeons

I think it's important, in these trying times, to stay in touch with folks, and to be creative. Looks like Twitter is finally dead. FB is an existential nightmare, IG the same. I got rid of the TikToks, and now I can't get it back on the phone so I'm bummed about all the funny weejios but hey man, things are tough all over. SO: here I am back on the blog scene. Enjoy, I guess.

I was thinking about the general decline of Empires, as one does. And coincidentally, I've been reading 

 "Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet" by Will Hunt. It's quite a fun read: has bits of New York transit system, the Parisian Catacombs, cave systems in Europe, subterranean cities in the Middle East. Good imagination juice for D&D peeps. And it got me thinkin' about how the dead spaces of today and yesterday will be viewed. Real estate ain't cheap, these days. We have empty spaces in our downtown area of Frederick, Maryland where I work. There are tax incentives to letting properties go unused (which is a community disaster, but anyways) and rents are pretty high and so: empty buildings.

ABANDON MALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE

And what could be emptier, deader, less interesting than a former industrial/commercial/social space that Amazon has obliterated into obsolescence? Defunct shopping zones? Why Dead Malls, of course!

My own mythical underworld where our group often consensually hallucinates is a vast, sprawling, dimly lit nightmare of electrical conduits, leaky pipes, and obsolete technology. This is shoe-horned on top of mutants (a la Gamma World 1e) and space weirdos (from Star Frontiers and Star Wars). Technology exists from the ancients, but the fantasy-themed PCs don't often know how to use it unless they are familiar with it. Elfs, dwarfs, goblins coexist with robots and clones and laser rifles. I was looking at a map of the Parisian Catacombs - at least the ones that are readily accessible to tourists - and I grokked how regular they are in some places. Blocky, chunky, orderly. And sprawling and groping in other places. It reminded me of every Atari Adventure and C64 goldbox dungeon I played as a lad. Do you know Telengard? Of course, of course. But I digress.

And I was struck at how the Dead Malls of today can nicely accommodate dungeons! I think I saw this episode of The Last of Us the other night with my wife and the young protagonist and her friend are wandering around this dead mall that just so happens to have electricity and it's chock full of cool stuff to play with, and of course there's zombies.

So I'm going to put on the Great List of Unfinished Projects: squishing dungeons into the footprints of Dead Malls. We have the Francis Scott Key mall here in Frederick. But from my youth in Miami, Florida I can recall the Midway Mall, International Mall, Dade Mall. Probably all now gone. White Flint Mall was torn down a few years ago. A useful feature is that you can sort of stock some areas based on the store-key available in some maps? I guess?

Anyways, we'll see how it goes.

Here's a link to my dead malls Pinterest board that I've been nursing for like 15 years or so.