katabay

[katabay]

lacey! I introduced him here :) about halfway through drawing this, I realized I wanted to lean into older designs for the motorcycles so I decided to wrap it up as is, but I'll have to revisit this composition sometime lol

[katabay]

lacey! I introduced him here :) about halfway through drawing this, I realized I wanted to lean into older designs for the motorcycles so I decided to wrap it up as is, but I'll have to revisit this composition sometime lol

[katabay]

VELOCITY

goddddd every time I read this book it makes me feel like I'm whirling around in a blender. anyway, this is robert laing and anthony royal

High-Rise, J.G. Ballard

[katabay]

baseball, baby!

these are a little rougher than what I was previously doing, I've been tired this week due to events™ etc etc, but it was also good to take a step back and focus on shapes! love shapes.

also. there's no story attached to these studies because I'm just trying stuff out and having fun with it. however. I've drawn this long haired guy in the previous two entries which is enough for my brain to log him in as a 'regular', so while I was blocking in the shadows I started thinking: well what if I DID make a story with baseball players. and I guess I settled on exorcism via extreme violence lmao

*also ignore that i misspelled exorcist, lettering in procreate without a keyboard is a special kind of hell I'm trapped in until I can afford a new laptop 🙃

[katabay]

displays of devotion

okay! before I get into this scene, first some context for everyone who isn't fixated on spectacles and sports in the roman world:

We find it stated in the Annals, that when Felix, a charioteer of the Reds, was placed on the funeral pile, one of his admirers threw himself upon the pile; a very stupid way to behave. In case, however, that this event might not be attributed to the great excellence of the dead man in his art, and so add to his glory, the other parties all declared that he had been overpowered by the strength of the perfumes.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.54

onward! this scene is an echo of that incident from the 70s BCE transposed to a different setting, the early 500s CE, amidst the escalating tensions leading up to the Nika riots

I actually was thinking of setting this scene during my "lost century" of the byzantine empire (aka the fake byzantine empire story I sometimes post about) but the immediate sewing together of what Pliny is recounting and the Nika riots is compelling to me….it could make an interesting self contained/standalone comic someday……much to think about………

[katabay]

very loosely, a follow up to this jack comic from last year!

behold! the king. there's no room in his kingdom for heroes, miracles, terrors, or the other-worldly now, his reign is one of order--

--and then word of a giant killer called jack reaches his courts.

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and now for episode 3 of doing sports studies: helmets are my enemy actually

[katabay]

soooooooooooo that opening page for x-factor #21 is something I think about a normal amount

& also this moment from madrox #2

yeah! yeah :)

[katabay]

god. okay. hear me out--

so last week I was talking to a friend about the xmen, and after I thought it'd be fun to re read some comics. anyway. jamie madrox! he's my favorite guy :) sometimes I'll remember out of the blue that he died in scott's arms in death of x #1 and I feel unwell™

it's the 'cyclops help me,' that ruined me forever tbh!

[katabay]

let's go babyyyyy

following up last week's baseball exclusive collection with some football this time around

[katabay]

I love your arthuriana art!!!!! Have you ever read Mary Stewart's Merlin-centric retellings? If so, whaddaya think?

OH WOW this was from last year, belatedly to answer this: I haven't! I'm usually more interested in visual adaptions (shows, movies) of arthurian legend because I like "reading" the visual design decisions, but if it's Merlin centric I'll definitely be adding that to my reading list :)

[katabay]

i love your great gatsby piece, i'd love to get a print of it, i am a collector/historian of great gatsby and related items. thank you so much! i'd also love to hear your GG comic thoughts

aw, thank you so much!! I'd love to offer it as a print, unfortunately my society6 page got deleted during the purge and I don't really know what alternative sites are good....maybe someday!

[katabay]

late nights in the basement of the nascita

[katabay]

low key been making a more deliberate effort to try and emulate how I ink with analog art supplies into my digital art and it's. well. going badly because I keep thinking 'ah you'll never be my favorite inking brush,' to every digital brush I use BUT it's been fun seeing other things start to emerge along the way!

I think it might also be fun to post one of these sports studies once a week (saturdays) (not necessarily at night lol) especially since it's summer and summer is baseball ☀️☀️☀️⚾⚾⚾

[katabay]

hi katabay!! this is prob a wack question lowkey but i was just wondering how you read/know so much?? i love reading the descriptions on ur art bc they’re so interesting and i Wish i could do that LOL

tbh a lot of why I read so much is because growing up, money was tight and the library was free. and now I'm broke as an adult, but the library is still free & also I spend a lot of time on public transit which is also is "free" reading time

a large chunk of what I read for fun is actually non fiction- it reads like poetry to me, and I like seeing if I can apply stuff I read when I was going through public domain stuff from the lancet to. uh. borderlands or something. it's kinda fun for me!

usually the process is: I'll have A Question about something while I'm reading and after, I'll see if there's An Answer somewhere & there's no real limit to what I'll read until I satisfy the curiosity, I will chase that thread down until I've run out of thread and hit a wall lol (and ofc the time honored tradition of watching a cool movie/show/comic and then going to see if the writers/producers/artists have their own favorites and check all of those things out)

anyway, my thoughts jump around a lot so I keep track of things in a commonplace style notebook; while I'm reading I'll take some quick notes abt anything I thought was interesting or really banger turns of phrase I want to remember for inspiration and list any questions or themes I want to explore later in a dedicated margin. I'll come back later & either answer my own questions in a different color (so it's easier for me to find), make a book list of additional things to follow up on, or just circle back with additional thoughts I had since then (or comic scene ideas)

lmao you can tell I have trouble wrangling my thoughts in order, I forgot to say: tldr; if you'd like to give my approach to whatever this is a shot, I'd recommend getting a notebook you wont mind carrying around and just write down shit you think is cool when you come across it & why bc the 'why' is the fun part to explore

[katabay]

“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr. Utterson. “No, sir; I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.” “A very good rule, too,” said the lawyer. “But I have studied the place for myself,” continued Mr. Enfield. “It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure. There are three windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below; the windows are always shut but they’re clean. And then there is a chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must live there. And yet it’s not so sure; for the buildings are so packed together about the court, that it’s hard to say where one ends and another begins.” The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then “Enfield,” said Mr. Utterson, “that’s a good rule of yours.” “Yes, I think it is,” returned Enfield. “But for all that,” continued the lawyer, “there’s one point I want to ask. I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.”

so! a page! this was a revisiting (for me) of an old old old. OLD. page I drew over ten years ago immediately after seeing a local production of the musical. usually when I revisit and edit ancient drafts, I gut a lot of it in the process of re arranging the insides, but this was one where I was like: AH. I see your vision, past self, now I can articulate it and draw shoes.

someday I'm going to find the time to get the whole thing on paper (this was also a color palette test page! I still want a noir-ish influence, but I'm debating sticking to a classic black and white only or leaning into something like this. much to think about........) until then though! a confrontation inside a house goes wrong! takes place moments after this scene.

[katabay]

sometimes you want to draw some guys in situations and not think about it too much, but. unfortunately. my brain is hardwired to lose interest partway through drawing a comic if I don't have some kind of plot or world setting to place them in 🫠

it took...an amount of time I'm not gonna talk about to figure out a setting that could include all the things I needed for all the scenarios I wanted, then I threw in some debilitating economic anxiety and high risk sports to keep it interesting, and it all came together lmao

anyway, introducing: denver sayoto and eric 'lacey' layson! they're a couple of fucked up guys in a real fucked up world.