#i sketched this out with a marker that i thought was water based which turned out to be waterPROOF

[ramblos]

Ib from my tiny sketchbook

[emily-mooon]

Was drawing in my sketchbook while listening to New Order and made this cool sketch of Ramona

[codename-adler]

foxes + onesies (1/9)

based off of that one post i saw and don’t remember, where people once caught Allison wandering around Fox Tower in a giraffe onesie, and i absolutely melted for her. here is the Foxes’ journey to getting a onesie each!

Allison  

in the aftermath of the “mob war”, Allison still sees Betsy for counselling, mostly to cope with Seth’s death still, her ED and to process her childhood and teenage trauma

Betsy teaches her a lot about self-care (and not in Allison’s traditionnal definitions of self-care, which are: bottle it up, act out, burn through 500$ in clothes, repeat)

all in all, Allison has a lot to come to terms with by the end of the semester, and Betsy won’t be there as much in the summer, so she leaves her with a little list of self-care tips to look at when Ally feels overwhelmed

- pick a time to make yourself some tea, or try out some new ones and tell me about it next time

- try drawing with those wonderful pencils of yours, but in different art styles (because yes, Allison does have a fashion sketchbook. but silly doodles? abstract drawings? anatomy sketches? she never tried)

- watch movies by yourself, and for yourself, Allison

- since you love shopping and spending so much, find yourself a cozy thing, a soft thing that will only be for yourself, when you need to be reminded to love yourself and be gentle with yourself

those were the suggestions that stuck to Ally the most

so the next time she goes out to the mall with Dan and Renee, she doesn’t expect to find anything like Betsy suggested

she does look for some herbal tea at David’s Tea, and ends up getting some hibiscus + rose water green tea

but then they go to Walmart (she wants to gag)

fucking Walmart

the girls need some pads and tampons, and the gatorades are on sale (because all the Foxes, as a treat for winning the Championship and bc they all want to stay close after the hard year they endured, got to stay on campus for the whole summer (idc if it’s unrealistic, sue me, that’s how i roll))

for once, Allison follows Dan and Renee, without looking at anything, without touching anything (what if she catches it??)

then Renee wants to look for socks

that’s when Ally passes a rack of colorful onesies

one brushes the tip of her elbow, and wow it’s so soft

not at all the quality material she expected

she stops in her tracks, lets the girls go on to the underwear section, and really looks at the pajamas

there are lots of unicorns, and pandas, a few mouses, and two giraffes

bright yellow, light-spotted giraffes, with their little ears and antlers and all

the sewn-on eyes are closed and have cute little lashes details

Allison imagines herself wearing it and feels utterly stupid

but- she keeps running her fingers through the synthetic velvety material, mesmerized by its softness

she thinks back on Betsy’s list

the folks would absolutely loathe it. the high school bitches too. God, even Seth would say it’s fucking stupid. Nobody should ever be seen wearing that…

But I wouldn’t have to worry about my man-shoulders in it… or my stomach… or my thighs… I could even go braless, or wear just that cute little bralette I haven’t got the courage to wear yet… and I think Renee would agree it’s cute…

then she hears Betsy’s soothing voice in her head

But do you like it?

Yes. Yes I do.

and that’s how Allison takes down the onesie, cashes out and waits for the two other girls outside the Walmart entrance, feeling silly, and jitty, yet quite happy with herself

back at Fox Tower, she washes it immediately, only to stuff it back under her bed

it stays there for quite a few weeks, until it’s almost time for school to start again, her last year at PSU

the boys are out at the beach, Andrew and Neil are God-knows-where, Renee is meeting a friend, and Dan is out shopping with her Sisters

Ally is alone, and lonely

she’s craving something, something that feels close to how one of her nanny used to take care of her hair before bedtime, telling her stories of folklore around the world

guessing that nobody will be back before sundown, she reaches underneath her bed and takes out the giraffe onesie

she gets rid of her high-waisted skinny jeans, her silky cropped blouse and her high-heeled sandals in favor of Seth’s old Marvel boxer shorts, her baby blue bralette she still hasn’t worn, and the infamous onesie

and wow, it’s so baggy

as she buttons up the front, it almost feels like being wrapped up in a giant, fluffy pancake

she giggles to herself, like a little girl

until she goes to look at herself in the mirror, where she straight-up bursts out laughing

she feels so, so light

she puts on a pair of Renee’s fuzzy socks with the sticky soles and leaves her bedhair as it is

she spends the rest of the day on the couch, watching Barbie movies from the hidden collection she has in her closet while painting her real nails in rainbow colors

she makes herself a big cup of the tea she bought, and lights an ocean-breeze candle

between Barbie as the Island Princess and Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, she even goes so far as going at the end of the hallway to buy some sugar-free gummy bears from the vending machine, completely forgetting herself…

of course, this is when the boys, including Andrew and Neil, are coming back from their day outdoors

she stops dead in her tracks when she turns around and sees them, a *giraffe* caught in the headlights

the boys only notice her because she stops moving so abruptly

she’s speechless

the boys, not so much

Kevin: *oblivious to the onesie situation* So you’re the one hoarding the healthy gummies. Dude give back some.

Matt: Oh, hi Ally… *raises his pointer finger, opens and closes his mouth in awe, lowers his arm back down* Cute?

Andrew: *his face says he doesn’t give a shit, but he’ll let the image make its way to his heart eventually* *very sneakily snaps an adorable pic for the group chat*

Neil: *whispering to Andrew, genuinely confused*  I thought these were for babies? Do we qualify as babies? Why is Ally dressed like a baby, Andrew?

Nicky: BITCHHHHHH I shoulda made a bet on THAT!

Aaron: Well fuck. 60 points to Hufflepuff for cuteness.  Ugh. I can’t believe I said “cute”. Jesus, I wanna vomit. Eurk.

Allison slowly makes her way back to her dorm room without a word, her cheeks flushed and her eyes to the ground, clutching her bag of gummies

she hasn’t felt this vulnerable since Seth’s passing

an hour later, she’s still hiding under her blankets as Renee and Dan file in

of course, they saw the photo posted to their group chat, and they heard everything from Matt and Nicky

Renee gets under the covers with Ally, and Dan proceeds to show off the goods she got with a very silly runway walk

they don’t say anything, until Neil sends a new picture on the GC

it’s a printed version of Andrew’s picture, pinned to the locker room wall with all the other photos they’ve accumulated

and everybody in the chat is dying of cuteness overload

Ally’s got that look of a toddler caught red handed, so open and genuine and surprised; her mouth is slighlty opened in an “o” shape; her mismatched fuzzy socks are peeking from underneath the bunched up fabric at her ankles; the hood is pulled up and slouching over her head…

but nobody, nobody, is making fun of her

we’re talking about the Foxes here. they never pull their punches.

so this? unexpected. shocking. astounding.

and right at the bottom of the picture, in shaky black marker: Baby Ally

with a poorly drawn heart next to it

in Neil’s unmistakeable handwriting

she cries

and never again is she ashamed of wandering around in her giraffe onesie

and if from then on, many Foxes gifts are soft things for her, well, that is called character development

[artificialqueens]

Just Below the Surface (Taywhora) - Phryne

A/N: Hello all and welcome to the shark fic, an absolute labor of stupidity, a half-processed thought come to live in the middle of the night. This fic is inspired by @incorrectdruk’s post. Please comment and like if you’ve enjoyed; it means the world! Also a shout out to my wonderful girlfriend, @scarletenvy, who reviewed and supported me throughout this fic. All my love to you. 

Tayce tries to get Aurora out of a design funk by taking her to the aquarium for some inspiration. Aurora has never actually seen a tiger shark in real life—she gets a rude awakening about sharks, and imminent failure.

When her drab little apartment is getting her down, with its peeling pre-war paint and hard water stains; when the rain no longer feels soothing and mesmerizing and sleek; when Aurora finds herself tapping her pencil against her face instead of against her sketch pad, Tayce insists on a change of scenery, even when sheets of rain are splattering against their windows. 

She comes up behind Aurora, spreading her fingers over her shoulder. It’s a risk, knowing that Aurora might startle and throw her head back into Tayce’s nose, but she kisses the crown of her head anyway. “Not going good, is it?” 

Aurora groans, but nonetheless leans into the touch. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” She holds up her sketch pad with nothing more than the model on the page. 

“Reckon you can’t send nudity down the runway, love?” Tayce laughs, digging her thumbs into the base of Aurora’s neck. “Though I’d call off work to model that one for you.” 

Ignoring the quip, but for quirking a brow, Aurora shrugs out of the touch and continues. “I’ve got nothing. No inspiration. No real idea. No thoughts about structures or colors or fabric I’d like to work with.” She slams the pencil down. “I’ve started from every square one I can think of and I’ve still got nothing. I’m supposed to put more of myself into these designs but myself is giving me nothing useful.”

As much as Tayce understood the classic Aurora ‘I’m not amounting to anything, everything I do is dull and boring and meaningless, but, insert forced laugh here, if I give up now I can still be your sugar baby, right?’ speech was coming, and would typically be chased by a reminder that she was only a couple years younger, exceedingly talented, and a retail worker’s salary could never sustain both of their tastes, Tayce decides to cut off the monologue before it even starts. 

“Let’s go.” Tayce says, releasing Aurora’s shoulders and giving a hearty clap. “Grab your slicker, we’re going to the aquarium.” 

Aurora hums before letting the request fully sink in. “Why are we going to see a bunch of scum covered fish?” She pauses, pushes her hair out of her face and tries again. “It’s a lovely idea, but I don’t have much time for a date right now. I need sketches and fabric samples by Monday.” 

But Tayce ignores her, taking the pencil and pad from Aurora’s hands and stuffing them into her purse. She continues absently, “There’s a new tiger shark exhibit that I think—” 

“A fucking tiger shark?” Aurora turns around, resting her arms on the back of her chair, glancing up at Tayce and speaking through that Cheshire Cat smile of hers. “You’re telling me we’ve got a tiger shark now?” 

Tayce feels herself brighten along with her. “It looks rather interesting, world’s greatest predator and all—” 

“Of course it is, it’s a tiger shark. Like, just try to think of something more fierce than that.” Aurora punctuates every word as she hauls her purse into her lap and sweeps the contents of her desk inside, zipping the top even as her fuchsia and forest green pencils stick out from the corners, muttering on about the world’s greatest predator, how it’s an absolute destroyer. 

Tayce takes Aurora’s sudden disinterest in organizing her pencils into their case—by most to least used—as her cue to leave and slip on her boots, already wearing a pleased little smile. 

*

They settle into the tube, Aurora securing her umbrella before sitting down next to Tayce. It’s easy to find a seat, the car less crowded than usual, likely thanks to the weather. Aurora thinks she’d like to stay inside with the rest of London, put the kettle on, and work in the living room where she can see the damp landscape before her and Tayce on the couch beside her, but that wasn’t working before. So here she is, wet blonde hair plastered to her forehead, the thought of seeing the tiger shark still coursing through her, lighting her like neon. 

“Concept: a tiger shark suit,” Aurora poses, just as Tayce holds her hand out for Aurora’s purse. She obliges and continues. “A little shift on the color forecast. Instead of yellow and grey—so bloody industrial, I’m thinking orange and grey. Would need a poly to get that wet-look of vinyl though…” 

Aurora tends to work like this, rambling off her ideas in a whirlwind, usually tearing apart the flat for the nearest pad of paper to get it all down before the idea’s lost forever and she’s left pouting while Tayce is trying to work as well. She’s become used to the smattering of Post-It pads around the house, reminding Aurora to dig the pens out of her pockets before running the wash, cheeky grins as she pulls pencils out from Aurora’s frantically done bun before properly lying down for bed. It’s endearing though, the chaos Aurora works in, the way Tayce’s chaos stabilizes Aurora’s.

So Tayce digs around in the tote until she pulls out a little baggie with her croissant, and Aurora’s notebook, pleased at how she’s taken to the leather bound folio Tayce gifted her for their last anniversary. She hands it over before picking at the almonds atop her croissant, adding, “bitch to make though, isn’t it?” 

Aurora knows what Tayce is referencing and almost shudders at the thought of more vinyl after her Spring/Summer 19’ collection. She spent hours on end cursing the fabric, trying not to tear the tissue between, which she used to help the panels float smoothly under the presser foot as she sewed them. On an industrial machine, no less, which was a bitch to haul up into their flat. It was a disaster to get an invisible zipper into the gown, the damn thing ripping itself out with every try-on. And at the end of it all, she had to sew Tayce into the finale catsuit not fifteen minutes before the show, which meant she had to cut her right out of the garment at the end of the show, with her girlfriend’s reassurance that it was “bloody sexy” and “what’s a little bit of scissoring between two lesbians?” doing little to sage her qualms about ruining hours of work in a snip. 

“Maybe some treated leather.” Aurora nods solemnly and writes notes wildly, not sure she’ll even be able to read anything besides the “SS19” with an angry cross over it when she reviews them later. “Either way, I’m thinking it’s going to be fierce, especially if I can figure out the movement; move like the tiger shark, no? To get that floating through water feeling.” 

Aurora doesn’t expect an answer, seeing that Tayce is occupied with picking almonds off of the pastry. She holds her hand out for them, throwing them back in one shot before taking half the pastry as well. “Why get the one with almonds if you just got to pick them off?” 

“The taste, the flavor,” Tayce says through a bite. “And I know you prefer them, so…” 

Aurora gives her a light shove before pulling her back in by the crook of her arm. “You’re soft,” she taunts, capping her pen and sticking it in her hair. 

“We can’t all be tiger shark ladies, babe.” She gives her pastry a deep bite, raising her brows at Aurora as she does so, if for nothing but to catch a chuckle from her, from what was a miserable day. 

Aurora shakes her head, but nonetheless shifts closer, taking a bite and swallowing quickly. “Stupid, absolutely dense—” 

“—The idiocy, the dullness, dimwittedness, superficiality of it all,” Tayce continues, brushing the crumbs off of her black trench jacket, picking a couple tricky ones out of the red stitching with her nail. Head resting against Aurora’s still damp shoulder, she adds between a cheeky grin, “We gotta finish up; Waterloo’s in just a bit.”  

*

By the time Aurora gets her things gathered and finds the umbrella, Tayce is taking her hand and leading them to the exit. They schlep along to County Hall, Tayce holding the umbrella high above them, Aurora wrapped around Tayce’s arm, bundled up against her, pressing her bag flush against her side. She’s practically buzzing by the time they reach the aquarium, her childish enthusiasm endearing, and Tayce feels it bubble up in her as well. It’s contagious really, Aurora’s joy. It practically travels through the air, filling the room.   

“Here, let me,” Aurora says, fishing for her wallet as they approach the ticket counter. “Since I’m spending our date looking at a shark.”

“Tell me what you really think of me, why don’t you,” Tayce quips back, laying on as much annoyance as she can while still holding a grin, studying the exhibit poster in front of them. 

Aurora takes her card back, muttering as she stuffs it back into its slot. “It’s the world’s fiercest predator, babe. I don’t know what to tell you.” She hands Tayce her ticket before taking her hand, dragging her to the queue. “It’s me in animal form, though I wouldn’t typically pair black and orange, especially for spring.” 

Tayce breathes out a laugh. “Then what am I?”

“Dunno. Maybe a squid.” 

This time, Tayce fully cackles. “A squid?” she asks, and she feels the rest of the queue turn to look at them. She shakes her head playfully as Aurora eyes her long legs and arms before she shrugs, already moving on, focused on a poster next to the queue. 

“Or maybe an absolute hound.” Aurora pokes Tayce’s side before wrapping herself around Tayce’s arm, tugging them forward. 

“Shark fact,” Aurora continues, reading off the line-marker. “Tiger sharks have a near completely undiscerning palate. Some tiger sharks have eaten sting rays, birds, squids, old tires—even other sharks.”

“Sounds like you, A’Whora,” Tayce teases, pulling her in closer, draping an arm around her shoulder. 

Aurora rolls her eyes and pats Tayce’s forearm. “I obviously only go for the finest of squids,” she says, before glancing up and giving a pronounced chomp. 

“Babe, please don’t bite my pussy.” 

Aurora doesn’t get to respond, finding herself right in front of the ticket scanner, who’s shifting around a bit in his uniform, unable to look at the two women in front of him. Not that Tayce or Aurora particularly care about offending some greasy twenty year-old boy at an aquarium with the concept of pussy. He scans their tickets and gives them a nod, so they walk off toward the exhibit, breaking into laughter once they clear the lobby. 

The hallways are lined with fish, of all different colors and sizes, flitting in and out of coral and anemones and grasses. There’s a reception class gathered around a circular tank, trying to find the Nemo, but to no avail. Tayce knows that usually, Aurora would stop by the tank and help the kids out, wholeheartedly join this hunt for the orange and white fish. She’d remind the kids that the little clownfish might be taking a break in his anemone, just like he did in the movie, but that he’ll surely come out, especially if they’re kind and patient. And usually, Tayce would stand back a few feet and watch the scene play out, heart swelling in the process. 

Today, however, Tayce’s heart is going double-time as Aurora takes her hand and pulls her through the crowd. Aurora’s on a mission, weaving in between strollers and other couples, skirting behind tour guides as they explained how algae grows, following the signs pointing toward the tiger shark exhibit with a cutting precision Tayce hadn’t seen since last year’s Arlington sample sale. 

Aurora breaks free when she sees the tank, running up to it and practically smashing herself up against the glass, with no care for the second years or the family of four next to her. 

Tayce catches up. “Love, you don’t gotta press your tits up against the glass, he knows you got them,” she breathes out, wrapping an arm around Aurora’s waist, pulling her back in the process. 

“What the fuck,” Aurora whispers. The look of wonder she once carried is replaced with shock, her face fallen, a dangerous pout forming. “That’s not a tiger shark.” She trains her eyes to the tank and speaks quietly, pointedly, like she’s jabbing the shark with each syllable. “That’s just a shark.”

Tayce gives her a moment, her own lips pursed as she studies Aurora, then the shark, then Aurora again, searching for the disconnect but unable to find it. She was so excited to see it, but in a moment, something had gone exceptionally wrong. 

She gives up, drumming her fingers against Aurora’s waist, before pointing to the sign. “We went to the right place, babe. The sign says it’s Oliver the tiger shark and he���s 17 years old…today.” Tayce turns Aurora toward the sign, but her feet stay firmly planted, her eyes trained on the shark. Nonetheless, she continues. “It’s his birthday, love.”

“Fuck his birthday,” Aurora grumbles, head following the shark as it passes by them. “He doesn’t look like a bloody tiger shark to me. Why’s he gray? Where’s the stripes?”  

“Aww, he’s old. That’s why he doesn’t have any stripes.”

Aurora shakes her head like Tayce doesn’t get it, and frankly, she doesn’t. As far as Tayce sees, it’s a perfectly good shark, swimming about, living his life, being as inspirational as any shark can be. But Aurora’s miffed, her mood as clouded and dreary as the weather outside. 

She hikes her purse up her shoulder and leans forward again, her nose and two fists pressed right against the glass. “You’re a filthy liar, Oliver.” 

“Babe, it’s a shark—”

“I’ll still fight an old bastard like you. You’ll pay for your lies.” 

Tayce takes her by the shoulders and spins her around, marching them out of the exhibit. “Ok, you can’t fight a shark so it’s time to leave him alone. Time to find some other inspiration in the…” Tayce looks up at the next exhibit’s sign as they walk. “…sea spiders.” She shakes her head. “Christ.” 

As they walk away, Aurora softens, though she’s still dreary and listless. The spiders, of course, aren’t helping—they’re disgusting little heathens, what with their spindling legs and radioactive green backlight. Even Tayce has to admit that. But as she pulls Aurora in for pictures, she finds her limply pressed against her side, disinterested in the pursuit, even though in one of the pictures, it looks like the spider’s balanced on Aurora just so, like it’s woven itself into her waves, made a nest atop her head. Tayce quickly sets this as a new background; Aurora only gives a hum in response. 

They continue with the deep sea creatures, with their dark tanks and neon blue tint, stopping at the octopus and its inky purple light, all spread out against the wall of its tank, its orange tentacles sticking and peeling periodically. Tayce again insists on a picture, “for memory’s sake, even though he looks like a bollock, all pruned from the bath.” Reluctantly, Aurora lets out a breathy laugh and gives in. Tayce counts this as a win, even though her pouting resumes once they move on.

At the next tank, Tayce is amused by the little round fish that dips in and out of its hole, its mouth forming an “O” as they approach it. Aurora cracks a smile, but for a moment, when Tayce pulls her in by the shoulder and makes the same face, jaw slack and nude-painted lips rounded like the fish’s. Aurora claims she’s not going to kiss “fish lips over here,” and yet she does, giving Tayce a peck. Tayce snaps a picture of her now smiling girlfriend, the red light from deep within the fish’s hole haloing her. 

Aurora needs a bit less prodding in the stingray exhibit, sticking her hand in the open tank as soon as she’s given the go-ahead. “He’s a velvet pancake,” Aurora comments, petting the flat beast, its mouth flap opening and closing as it moves through the tank. Tayce reaches for Aurora’s folio prematurely. 

“Velvet is super 2018. I’m bored of it,” Aurora explains, drying her hands before taking Tayce’s. “Thank you though.” She says it quietly, but Tayce knows she’s appreciative from the way she tightens her grip, by the way her thumb lays on top of Tayce’s as they walk into the next exhibit.  

“Look at all these fucking sharks.” Tayce glances upward, dragging Aurora’s hand with her as she points, full of awe, glued to the shark gliding above her, cutting through the water seamlessly. “Look at them go. Absolute beasts they are.” 

Aurora sees it’s clearly Tayce’s turn to be struck with wonder, and at the sharks no less. So, she tries to wipe the pout off of her face, smooth out her furrow, and take in the moment. Take in Tayce, arms spread before her. How the blue light reflects off of her cheekbones. Her still rain-slick hair and jacket. And the sharks passing above her are beautiful, with their milky white bellies and steel body, their rounded faces and sharp fins. There has to be something inspiring about them, she’s sure. Maybe in the shapes, or the colors? She could play with the sharp and round structure, surely. Or work in grayscale. Imitate the leather-y touch of their skin. She rests against the wall, pulling out her folio, clicking her pen aimlessly. 

Tayce continues with the sharks, pointing at them one by one, asking each, “let’s be having you? And you? And you?” with a silly point. She takes pictures with a few.

But when Tayce returns, suggesting they head out and have lunch while the weather’s clear, Aurora finds her paper blank yet again, more and more sure that she has nothing left to give. 

*

The cafe Tayce picks out is splendid and quaint, though Aurora wouldn’t expect anything less. The server wipes down their seats and the metal table before they take a seat, hands over the menus, and gives them a moment to look them over. Aurora doesn’t even bother looking, knowing she’s too  upset to eat much at all, instead laying her head against the cool metal, trying to focus. Or, rather, pull her focus away from her imminent failure and toward Tayce’s new story in the saga about the lady who orders all these clothes online, and every single week, comes into the store, three shipping bags in hand, demanding that everything be returned. 

“They’re not even nice clothes.” Tayce adds, dipping a chip.  “We sell some nice shit, but she keeps buying garbage and complaining that it’s garbage.” 

Aurora hums, ripping at the bits of lettuce hanging out of her sandwich. 

“So she comes on in, throws her shipping bag onto the counter, whips out this polyester blouse, and sticks her hand through it and starts ranting on about how see-through the top is.” Tayce sticks her hand up, wiggling her fingers around. 

“She shouldn’t have bothered with a polyester Zara shirt to begin with.” 

“Shouldn’t have bothered buying a top labeled “sheer” to begin with,” Tayce threw back. “I thought she’d stop her nonsense after I took her around the store, pointing out everything that was good, would look good on her, would fit her enviable work-life-balance, but she still comes back, every Thursday with more shit.” Tayce takes the now ketchup-soggy chip out of the ramekin and sticks it in her mouth. “Even if we didn’t go to the aquarium, I would have called out today. Like I just couldn’t look at those shirts anymore without frying my mind.” 

“Couldn’t have that, could we?” Aurora tries at a laugh, finding it coming up faint. 

Tayce tilts her head, analyzing the situation in front of her. She opens her mouth, like she’s got something to say, before stealing one of Aurora’s chips. 

Pointing the chip at Aurora, she doesn’t ask if Aurora’s okay, or if she’s still disappointed by the aquarium, or if she’s still racking her brain for a sliver of a design idea. Instead, she asks “Well, Whora, what did you think a tiger shark was?” 

Tayce always cuts down to the bone, even when she’s not meaning to. 

Aurora throws her head into her hands, speaking through her fingers. “Fuck if I know, something fantastic and inspiring and shiny and fierce and—”

“Orange?” Tayce laughs before popping the chip into her mouth. 

“Fuck off,” Aurora mutters, raking her fingers through her hair. “I thought it’d all just hit me, babe, and now I’ve got no idea what to do.” 

Aurora looks up, blinking rapidly. Her nose starts feeling peppery, and she knows soon her face will become red, blotchy, and streaked with tears. 

But Tayce reaches over and takes her hand between both of hers. Aurora dares a glance at Tayce, before resting her gaze on their hands. 

“Look, I know you’re not going to tell yourself this, but you’re brilliant and talented, and your brain is, like,  dancing so fast, even when your feet aren’t moving.” She gives Aurora’s hand a squeeze. “You’ve got so many ideas up there, and I’m sure you’ll have the work to show for it soon. And those ideas are surely better than a tiger shark pantsuit, promise.” 

Wiping a stray tear, Aurora breaks into a chuckle. “It was like, my dumbest idea.” 

“Not your dumbest, no.” Tayce says. “But a dumb one.”

*

When they get home, Tayce all about shoves Aurora into her office, throws a can of Fanta in behind her, and tells her to look through the pictures from today, get inspired by nature, sort it out, and come back when she’s got a design. 

“Can I at least get a kiss for good luck?”  Aurora shouts through the door.

“How about one for good work?” Tayce quips. And before Aurora can fire back, she hears the faint sounds of the Mortal Kombat theme through the crack in the door, and thinks better of disturbing Tayce when she’s in the zone, getting out the stress of Polyester Blouse Lady on Johnny Cage. 

So, Aurora picks the Fanta off of the floor, sets it on her desk to rest, and settles into her chair. She moves around in her seat, trying at least a dozen positions before taking a deep breath, flipping to a fresh page. 

She pulls out her phone, scrolling through the pictures Tayce sent her today. There’s a few of the two of them on the tube, Tayce resting on Aurora’s shoulder. Anyone who didn’t know Tayce better would think she looked ready for a nap, with her closed eyes and relaxed lips, but Tayce wasn’t one to rest in the middle of an adventure. 

There’s another of Aurora, taken from behind, stood in line, bouncing on her heels, a neon wave floating above her head, as though she were under the water herself.  

There’s Aurora, plastered against the tiger shark tank, her face blue tinted by the water and the lights in the tank, her gaze steely as she watches that shark—who is an arsehole, she might add. 

And then the next series of pictures—the two of them again. Painted in neon green, a sea spider nesting in Aurora’s hair. Then in purple, shocking purple, the octopus behind them looking ready to strangle them both, it’s tentacles plinking off of the glass like pennies into a well. Then they’re kissing in front of the little fish that kept opening and shutting its mouth, forming a perfect “o,” bathing them in a bloody red tint. She’s not sure how, but Tayce managed to miss all of the miserable faces Aurora knew she had on throughout the aquarium. But when she thinks a bit deeper, she’s not sure when she’s ever looked truly miserable around Tayce. 

She nearly puts her phone down when she comes across the next picture. She couldn’t even remember the moment; Tayce must have asked someone else to take it. 

It’s Tayce, resting against the far wall of the shark exhibit—the tunnel-style tank, with the sharks swimming all around them—glancing off to the side with a lazy grin, eyes vigilant, wild. And the neon blue all around her, bouncing off the shine of her slicker, hitting her cheekbones and her collarbones just-so, filtering through her hair. 

Tayce cackles from the other room, the metallic clash of swords following. 

Absolutely radiant. Aurora chews at her pencil, studying the picture further, the way the light bounces off of the wet jacket…

And Aurora’s scribbling, the model she sketches nothing more than a handful of lines, led by memory, as she’s working desperately to draft the design. The pencil sweeps, once, twice, three times, as she sees the fabric floating. But it’s floating over something tight, sleek, but still soft and shiny. And there has to be a shimmering quality to it, or course. It’s not opaque either, no, much more sheer. She’s going to have to work with chiffon, damn it to bits, but it’ll give her the look she’s after, the wet shine she needs. And in a moment’s time, she’s flipped over to another page for another design, one that drapes lightly. She glances once more at the picture, before following the tempo of her pencil, this time switching it out for a light blue. 

In a blink, she’s filled four pages. 

So she grabs her folio and runs out into the living room, knowing from the sound of the TV that Tayce is still there, and still ripping Polyester Shirt Lady a new one, mentally. 

“I’m here for my kiss,” Aurora announces smuggly, throwing her folio into Tayce’s lap. 

She’s smart enough to pause the game right as Aurora makes her presence known, surely anticipating her dramatics after all this time. 

Tayce flips it open, staring Aurora down like she’s about to rip her designs apart, though she knows Tayce would never, or really, wouldn’t have the reason to do so. It’s that serious look Tayce has, though Aurora knows it only shows up because she’s serious about Aurora’s designs. “And I’m here for some good fashion, love.” 

Aurora falls beside her on the couch, pulling her legs up on the seat and curling in against Tayce. She’s warm. It’s comforting. 

“So I’ve got this one, like the octopus tank. And it’s got this iridescent purple that just flows off of the pantsuit, like it flows right off of it,” Aurora explains, leaning in further, pointing out the details. “I’m thinking Bim for this one.” 

“I can definitely see that. Definitely. With all that movement, ugh.” Tayce runs a finger over the design, outlining where the fabric would trail off steaming behind the model, like the wind’s carrying it, like it’s suspended in mid-air.

“Okay flip,” Aurora instructs, pressing her cheek against Tayce’s arm. Aurora continues, answering questions about fabric, structures underneath the garnments, styling. Tayce slips the pencil out of Aurora’s hand at some point, jotting down answers as she rambles on and on, far too excited to manage writing it on her own. So Tayce scribbles down her directive to add wirey jewelry around the wrists, heels with lacings up the calf, everything looking like it’s floating just below the surface. At some point, the Xbox powers off, until all that’s lighting the room is the standby logo. 

Tayce reaches over the couch, turning the lamp on. 

“So, which one are you thinking of for me?” Tayce pokes at Aurora’s side, her voice trailing into a whine. 

Aurora takes back her book, flipping through the pages aimlessly. “Oh, you know, the first one. From this morning…” 

“You didn’t even have—”

“…Absolute nudity.” Aurora curls in closer, a devious smile forming. “Or maybe full vinyl?”

“I thought no more after last time?” Tayce begins flipping through the book. “I guess I’ll just have to find it on my own, now won’t I?”

“Gimmie that,” Aurora takes it from her hands and flips to the page easily, holding the design close against her chest. “And you look good in the vinyl, is all I’m saying.” 

She plops it down in Tayce’s lap. “You’re obviously getting the finale gown, moron.”

Tayce scans over the page, over and over, tracing along the outline with her finger, as though she can feel the slip of the iridescent blue chifon layered over black organza, how it gathers at one hip, falling down in crashing waves, with the other side draped cleanly, softly. 

“It’s supposed to be murky, like you’re coming out of the depths of the ocean where all the weird spindly things live, that have, like five eyes and spikes and stuff.” Aurora bristles for a moment. “At least that’s what I was thinking. But really, you could wear any of them if you wanted, it’s all inspired by you,” she says, soft, feather-light, like she’s letting the words float on down from the surface. 

They continue on in silence, Aurora watching as Tayce scans over the design, mouth agape. Tayce swallows and mutters, “lil ol’ me, the finale?” She turns to Aurora. “It’s just gorgeous. So, absolutely gorgeous.” 

And Aurora smiles, closing her eyes, breathing in the moment, the relief, the momentum of the collection. She places the folio on the coffee table and sets her sights on Tayce. 

“So, did I earn my kiss?” 

Tayce rolls her eyes playfully. “If you insist,” she says, not leaving Aurora much time to think before pulling her in closer, thumb stroking along her cheek. Their lips meet comfortably, knowingly, in a way that would seem commonplace if not for love. 

They break apart, Aurora resting in the crook of Tayce’s neck. 

“You did an amazing job, love,” Tayce says, quietly this time, as though the moment deserves quiet. And the two hold the silence, open palmed, soaking in the golden, still light of the lamp.   

*

“Oi, you!” Aurora taps on the glass, sure she’s the subject of a few wandering eyes, and the reason why the aquarium security tests the receiver of their walkie a few times. But she doesn’t care. She has some unfinished business, business that’s been keeping her up at night, making her toss and turn right into Tayce’s spread-out, sleeping form, ever since she began production on her collection. 

So she’s returned to Oliver the tiger shark. This time, she’s bearing gifts. 

Aurora points at the shark as it passes, hoping in vain it’ll stop for her, just as she’s stopped for him. She tries again, snapping at him as he passes by once more, before giving up, feeling lucky Tayce wasn’t around to mock her attempts. Aurora continues on regardless. 

“We’ve had our differences, but I must thank you for the inspiration…” Aurora trails off, spotting the shark stopped on the other side of the tank. She scurries over, hoping she can get a good view of him, maybe take a reprieve from looking like a lunatic, talking to nothing. 

“But thank you, Oliver the shark,” she says to him, before he swims off again, practically to the spot Aurora was just standing. 

She huffs and hauls herself back to the other side of the tank. 

“You’re a right dick, you are.” Aurora breathes in deeply before digging into her bag, pulling out her phone, pressing it against the tank, as though he’ll look at the picture and have any idea who she is. “It was really her, my girlfriend here who did the heavy lifting, and she got more than a thank you for it all.” 

Aurora bites at her lip a bit, locking her phone, muttering, “sex, obviously, but you don’t get it, you’re a dumb, heterosexual shark, so…” into her purse as she plops her phone in. 

“But I figured giving you some thanks would earn me back some ocean karma points—” The shark swims to the back of the tank, facing entirely away from Aurora, and she has to remind herself not to stomp like a petulant child. 

She settles for muttering a “fucks sake” under her breath. 

“Anyway,” she hikes up her purse. “Have a good one, Oliver the tiger shark.” 

She gives a half-hearted wave before walking away, dividing to give that funny, little, perpetually surprised fish a visit, hoping he’ll appreciate her company more. 

[nalgenewhore]

Slipping Through My Fingers - Two

masterlist - ao3 - last chapter - next chapter 

warnings: none

an: this chapter’s a lil shorter than usual 

Elide woke up alone, sprawled across her bed.

Groaning softly into the skin of her upper arm, she stretched and rolled over, blinking her eyes at sunny skies behind her side-by-side windows, sixth paned with rounded tops. Her gaze travelled to the canopy-esque set up she had above her bed, a simple wooden-pole square that she hung a multitude of plants from. 

Lorcan was gone, and she was grateful for that. It was always awkward, waiting around for a hook-up to leave so she could get on with her day. 

But Lorcan was… great. Really, he was. The sex had been amazing and he was gorgeous, truly beautiful, but it wasn’t just that. They got along well, when they were just lying in her bed, when she was sitting on her kitchen table and they were eating cereal. It was easy to laugh with him, to talk and banter with him. Elide groaned again and rolled over onto her stomach. You do not have the time for this, she reminded herself. 

She huffed and got out of bed, feeling that old familiar ache between her legs and on the bruises sucked onto her skin as she shuffled into the bathroom and turned on her shower. 

As the water warmed up, Elide shrugged on her fluffy bathrobe and went out to check her phone, opening the message from Nehemia, one of her new teacher colleagues. After Elide had moved from Perranth to Orynth, her sister Aelin had introduced her to her closest friends. They had all hit it off almost instantaneously and it was like they’d known each other all their lives. 

She was a little less freaked out by her new job now that she knew she’d have at least one friend there. 

NY: still down for brunch with the girlies?

EL: you know it 

EL: 11?

NY: see you then! i’m going shopping for classroom stuff later, wanna join?

EL: gods yes - completely forgot about that whoops

Plans for the day made, Elide turned on her music and hopped in the shower, the warm stream washing away the last night and the feeling of disappointment that she couldn’t quite place. 

After her shower, Elide dried and curled her hair, throwing on the red wrap dress that Aelin had made for her - it was from her newest collection and all of her friends often got the throwaways, not that there was ever anything wrong with them. Elide paired it with simple white sneakers and dropped her wallet, phone, keys, and a reusable bag into a white cross-body purse before she left her apartment complex. 

It was beautiful outside, a perfect late-August day so she decided to walk the short-ish distance to the Faliq family bakery, where Nesryn worked as a pastry chef alongside her father. 

+*+*+*+*+*+*

Elide walked into the air conditioned bakery to find Nesryn precariously balancing trays of mouth-watering, decadent pastries. She quickly moved, saving a plate of mille feuilles with pastry cream and strawberries from crashing to the floor. “Hey, Nes.” 

Nesryn grinned, “El, thank the gods.” She blew a flyaway strand of hair that had escaped her half-up, half-down bun do. “Cute dress.” She herself was wearing a pair of flour covered overalls and a black crop top, a pair of slip-on sneakers on her feet. They walked out to the patio to their normal table, where their friends were already sitting. 

“Thanks, Ae gave it to me. I’m liking the overalls look,” Elide said, setting down the tray and taking her seat beside her sister. “Gods, these look fucking amazing, Nes.” Lysandra passed her a glass filled with ice coffee as Nesryn sat down next to her fiancée and blushed under the praise. 

They dug in, catching up on each other’s lives. Nesryn and Lysandra had just returned from a vacation in Eyllwe and Nehemia lamented about missing home, but Elide knew she would never actually go through with forgetting everything and moving back. The wedding band on her finger and the matching one on Fenrys’ told a different tale. Their eloping was the best decision either of them had ever made. 

Elide commented on how happy Aelin looked, despite being awake and coherent before noon and her sister shyly shared she’d been seeing someone, a man named Rowan. Nehemia smiled, it seemed as though Rowan was a good friend of Fenrys’ and Fenrys had actually introduced the two of them. Aelin looked absolutely smitten and they were all so happy for her. She deserved a happy love, after her parents, after Sam… 

When Elide reached for the jam, her wrap top shifted and exposed one of the dark marks on the curve of her breast. Aelin squawked and Elide flushed, sitting back down, a hand over her chest as she watched her sister splutter. “Yes, Aelin?” 

“Wha- what- what is that?” The blonde reached over and used the tip of her index finger to pull back the neckline of Elide’s dress, baring the mark and the countless others on her pale skin. Elide slapped her sister’s hand away, preferring that she didn’t expose her in public. “Elide!” 

Everyone else gasped, intrigued as Elide relented. “Fine! I may have met a man at Emrys’ and hooked up with him… in the alley.” 

Her friends’ eyes widened as Aelin’s jaw dropped and soon enough they were congratulating her, pestering her for extremely intimate details she refused to give until they finally dropped the subject and went back to eating. 

“But was he any damn good?”

Elide hummed and sipped from her cold drink, “He was pretty any damn good.”

An hour later, they helped Nesryn clear the table and carried everything into the kitchen, saying hello to her father and mother. Sayed, her father, refused to let them leave without bags or boxes, depending on the choice, of their personal favourites. He claimed they were just laying around and they played along, but they knew better. 

Elide climbed into Nehemia’s car and they were off to the nearest craft and office supplies store. There was a sale and they thanked the gods. The school paid for… not enough and if they wanted their classes to be adequately decorated, they would have to pay out of pocket for a lot of it. 

Nehemia taught seventh grade at their school, while Elide taught kindergarten, so her class was much more brightly coloured. 

Currently, she was comparing a pack of Mr. Sketch Markers and regular old Crayolas. Nehemia glanced over at the packs, “Mr. Sketch are way better. I swear, they’ve never bled and they smell good.” 

She laughed and dropped the Mr. Sketch into her cart, checking off markers on her list. “Alright… I just need some… sticker paper for desk labels.” 

Nehemia nodded, “Sounds good. I really hope my stuff is hip enough.” Elide laughed again and she insisted, “Do you know how scary seventh grade girls are? I can’t have them dissing my class!” 

“I think you’ll be fine, Mi,” she said dryly, shaking her head a bit. “If I had you as my seventh grade teacher, I would’ve been in love with you, 100%.” 

“Aw, really?” 

“Totally!” 

“That’s so sweet!” Nehemia dropped a packet of thumbtacks into her basket and sighed, “Alright, I think I’m done for now. What about you?” 

“Just the sticker paper and then I’ll be good to go.” 

They quickly located the paper and Elide got a few packs before they made their way to the registry. She looked up as she was bagging her things in the cotton bag she’d brought, eyes landing on a tall man with dark hair thrown up in a messy bun. 

She almost called out ‘Lorcan’, but he turned and she didn’t recognize him. A weird feeling sunk into the pit of her stomach. Maybe she did regret only knowing him for one night, but it’s not like she could do anything about it. 

Slightly deflated, she remained mostly silent as Nehemia dropped her off. “El, are you alright? You seem a little bit…” 

Elide waved her off, “No, yeah, ‘m fine. I think I’m just tired. Hot today.” 

Nehemia didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t press the subject as Elide kissed her cheek and hopped out, waving when she unlocked the door of her building and slipped inside. 

Sleeping with Lorcan wasn’t a mistake, she didn’t regret that, but now that she thought about it… she would’ve liked to have seen him sleeping beside her in the morning. Would’ve liked to know how he took his coffee and how he kissed her good-bye.  

Making a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, Elide unlocked the door to her studio apartment and leaned back against the door in the dark, just staring at the empty space. 

There was something rumpled on the floor and she dropped her bags, walking towards it. It was her dress, somehow not ripped even though they hadn’t exactly been patient when they got to her apartment. 

With another groan, Elide changed aggressively in an old hoodie and sweats, ruining her curls by throwing her hair into a sloppy bun and plopped down on her bed, using the remote to turn on the TV mounted on the opposite wall. 

Feeling peckish, Elide stood up from bed and walked over to the kitchen. She grabbed the box of pastries Sayed had given her, opening it up to find an Earl Grey and honey-flavoured St. Honoré, which was a layer of puff pastry that served as a base for the large cream puffs dipped in caramel, filled with Earl Grey and honey infused pastry cream, and topped with whipped cream. 

Her mood lifted slightly as she cut herself a slice and read the note that Nesryn had left, letting her know that she’d been tweaking with the recipe and asking Elide to let her know what she thought. 

Elide took herself and her pasty back to bed after turning on her kettle and putting a scoop of loose tea into her diffuser-ball and dropping it in a mug. 

She sighed as she navigated to Netflix and clicked on a movie, already calling Aelin. Aelin didn’t get a word in before Elide was saying: “Clueless?” 

Her sister agreed immediately, “Clueless.”

+*+*+*+*+*+*

@mythicaitt​​ @tinywolfofeyllwe​ @schmlip-scribble​ @the-regal-warrior​ @westofmoon​ @empire-of-wildfire​ @rhysands-highlady​ @city-of-fae​ @shyvioletcat​ @alifletcher2012​ @tangledraysofsunshine​ @ttakeitbacknoww​ @tswaney17​ @ourbooksuniverse​ @flora-and-fae​ @thesirenwashere​ @queenofxhearts​ @maastrash​ @mynewdreamwasyou​ @cursebreaker29​​ @superspiritfestival​ @empress-ofbloodshed​ @queen-of-glass​ @sleeping-and-books​ @beccasophia95​ @exersize-me-i-dare-u​ @thewayshedreamed​ @hizqueen4life​

[landeg]

31 Days of Apex: A Retrospection

I participated in the incredible #31DaysOfApex challenge hosted on Twitter, where fans created new content for every day of July based on a one-word prompt. I’ve signed up for/started lots of similar challenges in the past but always ended up having to drop out or trail off before the end... but this time, I managed to complete something for every day of the challenge!

My only goal was to make something by each day’s deadline, and it was a really interesting exercise both in technical skill and also in my management of not only my time, but my expectations and energy. Below, I go into more detail behind each piece.

To preface; the beginning of this challenge coincided with the beginning of a new personal time-management exercise where, for 5/7 days a week, I would only go on the computer at night. Combined with the deadline, this had an interesting effect on my time management and the quality of certain pieces.

Day 1 - Memory

From the start, I wanted to use the challenge as an opportunity to do more studies and to push myself wherever possible. This was the first piece I did and I had more time to work on it, so I used it as a digital painting study. I still think it’s a strong piece and it’s probably my favourite of the month. Symbolically, this character’s backstory doesn’t match up with her own memories, so the idea is she’s missing information she can’t quite place or remember, and this both scares and comforts her.

Day 2 - Blood

Another digital painting and lighting study that didn’t work out as well as the first, mostly due to time constraints meaning I couldn’t scrap it and start again. While I don’t like how it turned out, I did learn a lot. The character on the right is a field medic, and my intent was to show the calm after a successful rescue.

Day 3 - Mercy

Some days I relied more on the humour of a piece’s concept than the skill of its execution, though I also liked how this piece turned out artistically. After two days of intense studies, though, this was very quick and easy for me to turn out as it relied on existing skills.

Day 4 - Prize

This one thankfully came together very quickly, which I credit to the two previous painting studies making it much easier to achieve what I wanted. The character is searching for the disembodied head of the man who killed her parents, who is now acting as a robot, hence the vaguely half-machine-half-human silhouette in her hand.

Day 5 - Family

Another quick, simple illustration under a time crunch. The character framed by the nameless foreground figures has no memory of herself or her family.

Day 6 - Noise

For some pieces where I was under a time crunch, I experimented in an opposite direction; instead of studies, I played loosely with different techniques/brushes/etc to see what came out. This was a lineless style I ended up employing a lot when short on time. The piece pictured here was just one of four alternate colourways, presented in a pop-art style. The character is almost always depicted with thick coverings over her ears, so I thought she might be sensitive to auditory overload. This particular piece was retweeted by the character’s voice actress!

Day 7 - Mask

More relying on humour for lack of time/a better idea. A fun experiment in colour, though.

Day 8 - Healing

Another technically “easy” piece but with a stronger concept. It was actually pretty hard to get the reflection & condensation elements balanced right. The character pictured has a narrative thread relating to an old ex he has trouble moving on from.

Day 9 - Weapon

While obviously another joke, and made to be finished quickly, it was surprisingly difficult to get the duct tape and knife to read clearly without over-cluttering the lineless image. This little ‘bot is a drone used by one of the playable characters to hack areas of the map; it’s not NORMALLY an offensive weapon. This image was promo’d in a video stream by the character’s voice actor!

Day 10 - Truth

I only had less than an hour to finish this one by the deadline, but I still tried to experiment with silhouette and colour. It was surprisingly hard to get the interior silhouette to be legible. The outer silhouette is a playable character (not easily readible unless you’re familiar with his design) and the inner silhouette is his sister, whose disappearance he is trying to investigate.

Day 11 - Shield

A fun, self-indulgent one. Had a blast simplifying the game’s characters down into little caricatures. The character in the centre has abilities related to shields and protection, so many other people were drawing him for the prompt; I wanted to try and flip it, so I picked other characters he would be friendly with, and picked a non-lethal, lighthearted setting.

Day 12 - Ruins

Short on time so did a quick lighting study. A recent game plot has changed one of the areas of the map, submerging it in water and leaving it to “ruin”.

Day 13 - Hero

Another painting study. Really didn’t like how this one turned out, but had to turn in something, and I did learn a lot in the process. If I’d had more time I probably would’ve scrapped it and started again. This characters had recently been revealed to have been manipulated by another character who used gas-based offenses, whom she admired.

Day 14 - Rest

I was going to be away from mt computer until after the deadline, so I decided to make a traditional piece. I ended up enjoying it so much I tried to take the time to do a few more traditional pieces later. This piece was sort of a comedy of errors; I had to do it while I was out, and the pen I had brought with me to ink my sketch ran out, so I had to make do with a blue ballpoint pen, and I was missing several colours of coloured pencil. I think the finished piece reflects how rushed it was, and it did’t meet my concept, but I do still like it.

Day 15 - Skull

Another quick one but I wanted to experiment with a different line style. Wanted a sort of “graffiti” effect. One of this character’s skins includes a skull-shaped mask.

Day 16 - Growth

Extremely quick play on words because I didn’t have the time to work on anything meaningful and couldn’t think of anything better!

Day 17 - Home

Another traditional piece, this time by choice and with more time. Markers. It looks extremely like some janky art school homework on 2 point perspective because it extremely is. Perspective and backgrounds are very difficult for me - they just don’t “click” - but I had a lot of fun with this one. I kept my mistakes intact because I didn’t want to edit it too much. A lot about the technical perspective is wrong, but I think I achieved the “mood” I wanted. This location is a bar owned by one of the player characters where many of the other characters are shown to meet.

Day 18 - Sky

Very happy with how this one turned out, even though there are still lots of problems. Markers again. There’s a lot I would fix next time, and I think technically it’s lacking, but there are some specific areas I feel happy to have achieved, such as the almost brushed texture of the curved metal above his shoulder and the values of the shadow/reflections on the underside of the head piece. I’m also happy with how I was able to draw from my shoulder rather than my wrist when inking the curved lines, something I struggle with.

Day 19 - Target

An experiment in pushing the lineless style I’d already been playing with for a stronger likeness. The pose and expression in this could both be pushed more but I like the result. This character had just learned that one of the other players, whom she had trusted, was actually sharing her secrets with her enemy, and she didn’t know which one it was.

Day 20 - Friendship

I had this one concepted from when I first looked over the prompts. It was a fun challenge trying to simplify all the elements into the lineless, blocky style while being legible. This character has a strained relationship with one of his friends, and finally pushed her too far with his selfishness, and she now no longer responds to him.

Day 21 - Scar

Quick joke. This character was introduced briefly as a red herring for another character before being killed off. He was stabbed through the chest by another character’s hand, hence the scar pattern.

Day 22 - Dream

I wasn’t sure about this one while I was making it but I ended up liking how it turned out. I wanted to capture the character’s robotic legs bent at an unnaturally straight 90 degrees, like a Barbie doll. The flat background and lighting make it feel like an indoor stage. The little “electric sheep” are inspired by iDogs.

Day 23 - Meal

After a few days of not having time to really spend on any piece, it was fun to get to spend time on concepting and composing this. I always admired these kinds of watercolour-like food illustrations and this is the first time I’ve had any success in creating one myself. I concepted and sketched out the individual items traditionally before working out the composition within the box digitally. Each food item/utensil is inspired by the different characters’ design elements. Only two of the now-current characters are excluded due to plot reasons. In particular, I like how one of the character’s dome-shaped shields acts as the base and cover of the box.

Day 24 - Hobby

Wasn’t a fan of how this one turned out. I think the likeness is a bit off, and his facial anatomy is skewed. But I also like how the general composition, tone, and bee turned out. This character’s concept art originally imagined them as a beekeeper who would use smoke to fight.

Day 25 - Fear

An incredibly rushed piece that I intended to go back in and add more detail to, similar to day 4, but I actually took a step back and decided I liked the blocky, flat-colour version. This character is the youngest of four, all of whom are MIA or worse, along with his father, and his mother is losing her memory. He’s talking to her through a handheld holographic device. This piece gained more traction, most likely thanks to the subject matter since this is a popular character.

Day 26 - Holiday

I didn’t want to do a religious holiday like Christmas or Easter. A lot of other people also interpreted the prompt as a vacation, but I had already done a sort of “beach vacation” piece for day 11, so I instead went for a “public holiday” and chose NYE/NYD. This was fairly quick but the lighting was an interesting experiment. I knew this one wouldn’t be as popular because it wasn’t as “flattering” but I personally really like it. The girl on the left is kind of goofy and completely un-self-conscious and I think it’s captured here.

Day 27 - Music

Really didn’t like how this one turned out. I don’t think the likeness is good at all, the lighting is poor, and the gold detailing feels lazy. But I liked other elements, such as the pose and the clothing.

Day 28 - Treasure

This is my least favourite of the entire month, but I also had the least time available to work on it before the deadline so I had no opportunity to scrap it and start over, which I sorely wanted to do. The likeness is terrible, but more than that the base anatomy is off, the pose is stiff, and the lighting/colours are cheap. I wish I could’ve done better by this character; but, I am glad I had something finished at all.

Day 29 - Skin

This was probably my third attempt at this picture and I’m still not happy with it, but again, I had to finish something. I almost considered scrapping the concept entirely and choosing something easier but ended up seeing it through. The concept itself is actually recycled from an older piece of mine for an entirely different fandom, because I didn’t think I did it justice then, either. Would still like to revisit this concept with this character and take more time.

Day 30 - Trust

After a few days of feeling really dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the art I’d been making, I finally more time to dedicate to a piece, and I’m overall happy with how this one turned out. I decided to go for a different medium entirely with pixel art, which also gave me the opportunity to try and animate it. I started off confident and then started to get worried towards the end, but all the elements came together when I added the portal colour effects. This is an alternate reality version of one of the player characters, who appears through a portal and allows that character to escape the facility she’s being kept in, encouraging them to trust the “voices” she hears which are actually versions of herself trying to help her. This piece was retweeted by the official Apex Legends Twitter account!

Day 31 - Freestyle

I had this planned out early in the challenge and I’m really, really happy with how it turned out. It’s probably tied with my favourite along with the very first piece (how fitting). I was worried about how I was going to capture the movement without over-complicating the lineart, having so many people in one image, etc. before I realised the focus was entirely on gesture, and then everything clicked. I went for a thicker brush, which forced me to conserve my lines, and tried to simplify each character down to the bare minimum needed to recognise them. They’re also all wearing new non-canonical outfits so I used their familiar colour schemes for the same purpose. It’s not perfect, but I love it, and it’s everything I’d hoped I’d be able to end the challenge on.

I really, really enjoyed the entire month and the way it tied in with my new time management schedule. It gave me some achievable short-term goals which added up to this long-term achievement I can now look back on; I learned a lot both about balancing my energy and about technical skills, I found ways to stay motivated, and most importantly I learned to not get caught up on the individual slip-ups and pieces I didn’t like as much and to instead focus on the bigger picture. Thank you to everyone involved in organising and supporting this event! I found so many other incredible fanartists, writers, and content creators through this challenge and I can’t wait to see the bonus content released over August!

[mysticsparklewings]

Fire Flower

Note: I originally made this painting and typed most of the description towards the end of March. I meant to upload this sooner, but things happened it obviously got pushed way back. Oh gee, would you look at that. It has somehow been 8-9 months since I last made a full acrylic painting... But! I have a video for this one to make up for it! Link: youtu.be/8IgVvgTiZjM I promise I've been trying (and failing) to come up with ideas to do more with this medium. Acrylic paint just isn't my thing. I swear I said this somewhere before, but I have no idea where; It's just hard for me to commit to an acrylic painting when I know I can get the look I want usually much faster and much more easily with other supplies. Acrylic painting just takes so much more time, set up, and patience. This very painting I know I probably could've had done in half the time using primarily watercolor instead, for example. So why is this an acrylic painting instead of something quicker and easier? Because my dear Sparklers, I made this painting and filmed it as a bit of a blending demo for a friend. They tried their hand at an acrylic painting with a sky going from red to yellow...except they lost most of the yellow in the process, and even they weren't really sure how it happened. So since I'm in sort of an art teaching/mentoring position to them, I decided I'd pull out my paints and take a shot at a similar look. Now, to be fair, my end result is very different from their's intentionally. They painted a boat on the water during sunset, I wanted something different and more me, so after some browsing around on Pinterest, I settled on this flower silhouette. I made my own job harder because the reference image had a blue and orange background with lots of black, almost like a vignette, so once I got past the stage of putting the base background colors down, I had a lot more work cut out for myself in trying to replicate that. Speaking of which, you can see most of my process in the video, but a recap just in case: I started by picking out my paint colors, and to be fair I could've gotten away with less or slightly different colors, but I got extravagant and picked a total of nine colors from my Liquitex Basics set (also known as currently the only decent acrylic paints I have):

• Mars Black • Ivory Black • Titanium White • Cadmium Red Deep Hue • Cadmium Red Light Hue • Portrait Pink • Naples Yellow Hue • Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue • Primary Yellow Why the two blacks? Mars Black is a "denser" black so to speak, it's more opaque (less transparent/see-through). The Ivory Black is less opaque, and it's a bit warmer in color than the Mars black. I used the Mars black in areas where I wanted a total and complete black and the Ivory black where I wanted some of the colors from the background to leak through a bit. It's subtle, more of a "feeling" to the eye than something you can clearly see. Also, I used the Portrait Pink, which like the name implies is a very pink flesh tone, and the Naples Yellow Hue (think a shade similar to Yellow Ochre...or fancy Mustard if "yellow ochre" doesn't help you visualize) primarily for blending and not so much for the colors themselves. And the Cadmium Red Light Hue is much more of a reddish-orange in person than it is red, which is why I picked it. It's also pretty transparent (yellows and oranges often are in acrylic paints, especially more student grade ones like the Liquitex Basics) so it also got lost in the mix fairly easily and I had to build it up a lot. In the video, you can definitely see as I start that I do indeed do a lot of back and forth with the paints, blending and layering to my heart's content to try and get the right color balance while also getting a smooth transition. And this goes on for quite a while; the background was definitely the part that took the longest. Initially, I did sketch in a couple of lines as markers for roughly where I needed certain parts of the gradient to begin and end, and with the paints, I went in and got down the base of red and yellows so I could then start working on marrying the two together. And I have to admit, even I let my yellows get a bit lost/pushed down more so than I would've liked. It's a difficult balance to strike; red is already a strong color that easily overpowers yellow. It's even easier when the yellow and your transition colors are more transparent while the red is more opaque. And even more so when your painting has a vignette feel to it. But once I finally had something I was comfortable with and blocked in most of the black (which was a pain in the butt to blend out, by the way, as I'm sure is obvious by how much I go back and forth with it in the video, misusing a fluffy watercolor brush as a mop brush to blend), I then took my outline for the silhouette that I'd already prepared on another piece of paper and used a Faber Castell Gelato (first a gray, then later I'd use a black) on the back to be able to transfer it on the canvas by tracing it with a mechanical pencil with the point pushed in. Personally, I really do think the Gelatos are the best method I've tried for making faux-transfer paper. They're soft so they transfer the color without much fuss without making a powder smudge-y mess (like charcoal, chalk, or pastels might), and they're also water-soluble so they play nicely with the wetness of the acrylic paints, especially if you've thinned them with a bit of water. Then I got the lovely challenge of trying to paint and blend out a nice bright setting sun on top of the blackish mess I'd made.  (It actually wasn't that bad; the Titanium White is pretty opaque so once it mixed with the yellow and I got a couple of layers on it really didn't have any problem covering the darkness that it had to.) After that, I transferred again some of my lines I'd covered up and then got to work on the black silhouette parts. I did have to alter the look slightly because I wasn't quite as careful with lining up the placement of my "transfer paper" that second time and also because the brush had different ideas about how much black should be in some places than I did, but it wasn't too much of a hassle. And then, of course, the real challenge of blending the black up to meet the silhouettes without completely covering up my sun or messing up my other blending. Although, this also wasn't as tricky as I had thought it would be. Ironically, I think by the time I got this far I was finally starting to get a handle on the acrylics after having been away from them for so long.   Believe it or not, this tiny 4"x6"  painting took well over two hours to complete. I had at least two hours of footage that I trimmed down and sped up like four times, and that doesn't include the dry time in between two background layers, the background and the sun, and then the sun and the silhouette. I'd say it was probably closer to 3 and 1/2 hours total, although technically longer because I kept getting interrupted by things and I had to figure out how to set up the camera and everything before I actually started painting. Once I was done with the painting, I also had to actually edit the thing together, which took many more hours than I bothered to document or care to admit. (P.S. Whoever decided all free video editors that don't come pre-installed on a computer either must have stupidly low export limits and/or super obnoxious watermarks, I hate you.) Yeah, there's a reason it's been almost a year since I last posted an actual video of me making art... It just takes so long to edit everything together and I also have to make an extra effort to get stuff set up before and after for filming...Like, maybe it would be different if I had the space and resources to have an area where I could just leave everything and have a camera set up that doesn't move, but right now when my space is limited and my phone is my camera it's just so much easier to...well, to not. At any rate, here's one. One acrylic painting, and one video. A two-for-one special! Sort of! And I think both turned out pretty okay in the end, at least for someone that 1. Doesn't acrylic paint and 2. Doesn't make videos regularly. I call that a win, wouldn't you? Although, I have a few canvases stockpiled. I really should work on trying to squeeze more acrylic paintings into my art regimen somewhere to use those up, if nothing else... ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[theantoniomabs]

Today I am here writing on my laptop because I seem to have lost most motivation on working. Not just on my game but perhaps on everything. As a last dish resort that I swear will work, I will be essentially looking into my psyche, in hopes of finding the reason to why I do this and why I want to do it. The first thing I want to think about is Moai: An Interactive Experience. In a way this is very much for me to figure out my ideas a bit better, not necessarily to gain likes, views, or comments. More for me than for you, but I hope you get something out of this as an development blog.

   What is Moai: An interactive Experience?

First Ever SpriteSheet for Moai

Moai Prototype made in Flash CS3

Spritesheets put into use to build out the first concept levels.

Moai is a puzzle platforming game I have been developing for the better part of last year. About 7 months since I started the first devlog on youtube.

About 10 videos in so far, which feels good but at the same time a little bad. I started doing the devlogs in order to promote the game but understandably that hasn’t been working too well, or rather maybe not as well as I had hoped, but that’s ok. I do enjoy the process of editing my progress into bite sized pieces of milestone markers. So in a way that’s nice.

Level Art

Level 0 Sketch

On the other side of the marketing sphere is of course the actual creation of the game. The art is awesome! I love working on this kind of stuff, the ideas are always pouring out of me. For example this is the first sketch of the first level. Technically Level 0 because this is the intro of the game. Here we can see how Moai receives life by a buttefly laying on his head and causing a flower to come to life.

  Moai Level 0- Concept Art

Level Sketches

After I have completed the initial level I decided to continue working on the next levels. I know I want a couple of puzzles but all in all what I really want for this game is to make you feel like you are there. That sorts of stuff will really help you relax as you play, which in truth is the whole idea of the game. It’s a tool for you to disconnect from the world, and just relax in a beautiful serene world inhabited by beautiful animals and a stone giant.

The music should help you with that. I think that it would be a great wonderful idea to play the bell sound I have for the frequency of love segments. It gives space to the whole game so that’s wonderful. So it can play whenever Moai does his magic life touch. I also just though that perhaps it could be a good idea if Moai got slower the more he gets close to the end. That sounds pretty cool. That way he can start fast at the beginning, full of life but as he activates the points in the island he becomes weaker. Not sure if it’s visible in the art, but perhaps it should.

Character Sketches and Base Sprites

Moai Turn-Around Sketch

I like how Moai looks right now. He can have a bit more definition here and there but overall his animations are starting to look good. Once I do the revise on the art, I’m thinking I will animate it even further in Photoshop, make the necklace move, and add some motion on the the flower and the clothes. That secondary motion really brings live into the art.

Moai SpriteSheet Twee

Moai Pose Sketches

The character continues to evolve as I continue to create art and grow my artistic skills. Which is very good because my unique art style and techniques will play heavily on the feeling this game will give to the player. The stoic expression feels very good for a stone statue that can walk. I also like that it’s gender ambiguous, because I would love for everyone to be able to feel like they are the character, not just men and women, but pretty much everyone in the whole planet, same goes for his age. Moai could be 10 years old, or anywhere from 10,000 years old. Relaxation and positivity should know no exclusion.

Meaning behind the Stone Garden and the Growth Symbol

Stone Garden and Flower sketches Tiny Loading Screen guy

When I did my research on Eastern Island, I learned several things.

1- There are a lot of birds, fishes, and butterflies.

2- There are also several plants, tress and of course the stone statues.

3- People that live there make these very pretty stone structures used to basically encompass gardens.

I love that, and I decided to make it into an important mechanic in the game. The general game is a journey, however the journey is blocked off and segmented into several sections where the player must learn something new about themselves, their environements, or their personal story, in order to progress further into the island. Every time they find a point in which they have to progress, Moai must give a little bit of life force into in a sort of exchange of energy that activates certains parts of the island that will teach him or allow him to pass.

In some cases, Moai and in turn the player must give time to the game in order to accomplish something. Like waiting 5 minutes at the docks for a wooden boat to arrive and take you to a secret part of the island. Or sitting down and waiting at the top of a particularly beautiful hill that rewards you with a cinematic pan of the whole island as seen from the highest point, which is where you are sitting.

In the case of the Stone Garden however, Moai will literally give from his own life force to connect himself into the earth and help a small plant blossom. This blossoming results in a domino effect throughout the level that changes the scenery for better. Very reminiscent of the amazing and beautiful game, Okami. Whenever this happens a beautiful bell should sound in the background, as the plants grow around Moai and his path is revealed. In some cases, like in the magical forest. Moai will not be encumbered by simple gates, but rather by secret foliage that parts it’s way for Moai to continue his journey.

In the island as I mentioned earlier there is also a lot of wild life.

Real things like:

seagulls

fishes

crabs

iguanas

snakes

grasshoppers

fireflies

insects

bugs

frogs

deer

As well as fantastical animals like:

El bugalopo which is a sort of magical deer that appears randomly and has a bone mask covering his face.While in some cases the animal will act as art assets and not necesarilly interact with the player, for the case of the bugalopo, whenever he appears he will run away from the player, and will always be behind the woods. In the forest, you can see his yellow eyes appearing through the mist. In a way he simbolizes desires, and the attainability of wordly pleasantries. Because you want to catch him, but in truth you never can. He will always be away from you, ever running, he is not to divert you from your highest truth which is to bring postivity, love and growth into the island for as long as you live.

There is perhaps another fantastical animal, something like an oax or a boar. A big leathery animal that likes to eat the grass pastures. I’m not sure what they do yet, but I can see them in my mind’s eye for this game.

    Early Moai Sketch

This is a very important sketch for me, as it started the journey towards the ending of the game. I don’t want to spoil the big ending, but here we can see Moai sitting and pondering his life as he traversed through the island. This gave way to this sketch of the moutainside.

Last Level MountainSide Sketch

Which gave birth to this scene.

      Download the Moai Wallpaper when you Join the Email List

This scene helped me create all the base character assets and animations for the game, plus it serves as a wonderful promotional piece of content. With this in mind, I am thinking that the game, even though it’s starting to look like an actual game. With levels, movements, and controls. I feel like it still lacks life.

https://www.reddit.com/r/unity/comments/glt1r6/art_assets_art_in_the_game_moai_an_interactive/

This is why I think that besides just working on polishing out the engine and it’s bugs, I wilt working on some of the more aesthetically elements, like background and foreground animations, and the creatures I mentioned earlier that will interact and live in this world with Moai.

The next devblog will have to be about how I created:

animal art assets

new stone garden assets

and a burst of energy asset for when growth has been activated

Technical things like:

sound manager system

debugging

water reflections

the sitting and waiting mechanic

the boat mechanics

loading screen mechanics

polishing up the UI

dialog system (narrator/info boxes)

Environmental Effects like rain,mist, and the interactivity of the npc creatures

In a way this devblog will help me not only to stay focused and know what to keep top of mind, with myself and this game. I feel better overall now that I’ve written this. In the next work session for Moai I think I will be able to be productive and efficient, and continue aiding the process for Moais growth and materialization.

It will also help me divide what I want this game to be versus what I want PixelPeeps to be, which is a whole ‘nother blogpost on it’s own.

Here’s a question if you made it this far. What sort of cool mechanics would help you relax? What would you see implemented in the game that will perhaps better the world of Moai: Interactive as whole? Maybe snow, and not just rain and mist? What are your thoughts, and while we are at it, what’s your favorite animal?

Moai Devblog 1: Focus on Growth Today I am here writing on my laptop because I seem to have lost most motivation on working.

[clarketomylexa]

The Bucket List

Clexa Week 2018, Day 7, Free Day | read on ao3

Clarke grew up thinking she was fragile. She was too young to comprehend the look on her mother’s face when she had found the number, skewed and grey on Clarke’s ribs while scooping sudsy water over her in the bath. But she knew it wasn’t good because that night when she needed the potty her mommy had been crying in her daddy’s arms. She knew it was the same thing that had her teachers looking at her with that sweet, sad look when they read over her forms at school, the thing that had everyone careful around her.

Everyone but except Finn in the eighth grade whose number was seventeen and who she would have thought had a death wish if she didn’t know he was just living his to the fullest. It made her sad when he did these things, pulled these stunts like shimmying up the side of the gym or swimming out the deepest in the ocean on summer vacation. But it also made her like him. She was thirteen-years-old and love seemed like something for the adult Finn wouldn’t be, so she kissed him under the bleachers and held his hand when they went to the diner after school because he was nice and sweet, and he had something like a sad song in his eyes. He told Clarke he loved her in the summer between freshman and sophomore year, the day before he left to go to California and she cried.

They were a good couple, people told her in the months after. Good because their numbers were both young, Clarke knew. It was widely accepted that people with ill-fated destinies bonded the fastest, loved the hardest. Clarke hated the fact people pushed them together for the simple fact that it wouldn’t hurt for too long when one of them died. When Jake passed two years later, it was peaceful for everyone but Clarke. She told the school guidance counsellor to shove her condolences up her ass and didn't go for her remaining sessions.

She met Lexa in her second year of undergrad – majoring in art at the University of Maryland because Abby begged her not to go too far from home. The brunette with glasses on, standing in the corner of the pumping house party, engaged in a pragmatic discussion with her drunk foster sister. ‘No, Anya, you’re drunk, you’re not driving me home.’ ‘Take the stick outta your ass Lex, my numbers not up yet,’ she patted Lexa on the cheek lazily, ‘live a little.’ She slinked off into the crowd and Clarke saw her crowded against the upstairs bathroom door with Raven later when she went to attend to a throwing up Octavia but Lexa stayed rooted in her corner. She pulled out a dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's ‘Othello’ and sat on a keg in a way that made Clarke laugh out loud.

“Can I help you?”

Clarke snapped her mouth shut, teeth vibrating with the base of the music. “No ma’am,” she teased, tongue through her teeth. She sidled up to the girl and leant against the wall. “You have good taste in literature. Bad taste in glasses, though.”

Lexa took her glasses of an examined them, affronted. “They help me see, they’re not a fashion statement…” she left the statement open ended, clearly angling for introductions and Clarke shook herself to attention. “Clarke,” she hummed, “I’m Clarke.”

“Lexa,” Lexa replied. “You’re an English major?” She assumed.

“Art actually.”

“Ah,” Lexa nodded, “I see.”

“What do you see?”

Lexa smiled, “you have the look of a starving artist.”

“I’ll have you know I go back home every weekend. My mother feeds me up on home cooked meals, I’m far from starving.” But her smile, Clarke decided, despite the faux-degrading comment, was precious. It started slow, non-existent like a star during daylight when you knew it was there but lying unseen. Then, the left side of her lips quirked up and Clarke’s chest sung.

“But you are an artist?”

“Yes,” Clarke confirmed. She drew with whatever paper she could find and her notebooks – and Octavia’s notebooks – were covered in doodles. Kids payed her in middle school to draw ‘tattoos’ on their arms with permanent markers.

“Will you let me see your work?”

“Only if you let me see your…what do you major in?”

Lexa laughed, airy, like she didn't use it that much. “Poli-Sci,” she informed Clarke, closing ‘Othello’ into her lap with her thumb marking her page and waggling her eyebrows suggestively, “I can show you my notes on the American legal system?”

When Clarke made an unimpressed face, Lexa nodded in faux-sympathy. “I don’t blame you, it’s severely flawed.”

In a flash of boldness Clarke plucked a blunt pencil from the spilt mug of pens on the nearby surface and printed her number in neat writing on the back cover of Lexa’s book, thinking humorously that the dusty story could use some action. Lexa complained that the book was not hers, but a class copy from her English course and Clarke assured her that she could rub it off when it was in her phone.

Raven came by shortly after, pulling at Clarke because apparently Octavia had been roped into doing shots with Luna and needed to be given water and put into bed lest she down anymore alcohol and when Clarke looked back Lexa was giving her a small one-handed wave, holding the back cover of ‘Othello’ up in acknowledgement of the number, like a promise she would text. Which she did, three hours later when Clarke was in bed and sober, listening to Octavia stumble around the dorm room in search of water. She flipped the light on in the bathroom with little regard to Clarke and filled up a plastic water bottle at the bathroom faucet before returning to bed, uttering a sloppy, hushed ‘fuck’ as she stubbed her toe which Clarke laughed at.

[Text from: Unknown 02/07/18 2:24 AM] Do I still get to see your artwork?

Grinning into the fluorescent light of her phone turned low, Clarke saved the number under ‘Lexa’ and replied.

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:26 AM] If you want to

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:26 AM] You’d have to come over to my place of course

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:27 AM] Your place?

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:27 AM] My dorm

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:27 AM] University housing? You are a starving artist.

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:28 AM] Like you’re better Miss Residence-Hall-Across-From-Mine

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:28 AM] You’re not above stalking I see.

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:28 AM] I looked you up, I like to be thorough

[Text from: Lexa 02/07/18 2:29 AM] And have I met your expectations?

[Text to: Lexa 02/07/18 2:30 AM] To the letter

Lexa came over a week later when Octavia had left for class waggling her eyebrows and telling her to use protection and Clarke stood behind the brunette as she surveyed the quick sketches and hyper-realistic images pinned to her side of the room.

“Well?”

She watched Lexa, the way she sifted through the layers of drawings held fast with the same drawing pin, rough outlines of hands around coffee cups, a road leading to nowhere, a running watercolour on crinkling paper of the aurora borealis. “You’re a wonderful artist Clarke.” She tugged the watercolour gently so it slipped from its drawing pin and the paper next to it fell to the bed. Lexa studied the sketch – herself, with soft hair and round glasses, dog-eared ‘Othello’ in her lap. She grinned, smugly Clarke would say, laughter in her eyes. “What a likeness.”

Clarke snatched the sketch, hands covering her cheeks bashfully. “Shut up,” she scolded. “I like drawing you, okay,” she admitted, “you’re easy.”

“I’m easy?”

“You know what I mean.”

Lexa, Clarke found in the coming weeks, always knew. She saw things Clarke didn’t – even if she insisted the Clarke saw the world entirely in her own way, ‘artist eyes’ she said tracing fingers over collar bone on the sofa – and she quietly commented on them. The way the woman sitting behind them in the cafe off campus looked like she had a bad day, or suggesting they scratch their plans of a night out in favour of watching ‘Stranger Things’ because Clarke pulled an all-nighter the night before. She was everything that Clarke was and everything she wanted to be – soft where Clarke was soft and pragmatic where the blonde was violently emotional and together they would do things.

She was so sure of it – of them and their perfect cliché – when she was shucking the brunette’s university printed tee up her ribs a month later, breaths hot against kiss-chapped lips, that when her fingers raked over the skewed grey ‘23’ above the sharpest point of Lexa’s hip she wanted to cry. It was such a violent, sluggish feeling, like she was plummeting on a fairground ride but wading through glue. Revenant hands traced the mark, feeling it under the pads of her fingers like a sickening reassurance. “Lexa,” she whispered.

Lexa softened and curved, shoulders folding in semblance of defeat. She took the hem from Clarke and smoothed her tee down her body. “Clarke.”

They held each other's gaze, infinite conversations wrinkled into the atoms of their irises and Lexa reached out to bridge the space between them, stroking the pads of her fingers over Clarke’s collar bone like she did. “I wasn't sure,” she hummed and Clarke nodded. It was a tricky thing, your number; something so fragile yet the surest thing of your life and the blonde hated the way it was noted down on her documents like it was as unimportant as her city of birth. She swallowed Lexa’s words with a chaste kiss and took the brunette’s hand in hers, lacing paint stained fingers through Lexa’s to slip them under her shirt, dragging the hem up over her ribs. She pressed Lexa’s hand there, imploring her to understand and Lexa thumbed over the inch of skin with all of the sorrow in the world. “Twenty-two,” she recited. Twenty-two, Clarke remembered, two years left and half a life lived. Octavia was out, Clarke’s laptop was propped on her art history textbook and tilted to forty-five degrees where they could see it from her bed, their mindless evening watch forgotten when Clarke had professed her interest in other things and the blonde tucked herself into her girlfriend feeling fragile and resolute. The AC thrummed, she played with the frayed collar of Lexa’s tee. “It’s not fair.” Lexa hummed and Clarke felt it reverberate in her chest and Clarke’s fingers itched with the need to press themselves there and feel it. “I wish I didn’t know.”

“Isn’t it better to know, though?”

She looked up at Lexa, tracing the strong line of her jaw and her cheeks, her nose, her lips with her eyes.

“So that we can make our peace.”

“I don’t want to make my peace,” Clarke argued, she sat up, irritated and fussy, hot anger blooming like something toxic inside her. Lexa was the best kind of person, dutiful and kind, she religiously held the door for peers exiting their lectures and spotted the woman at the supermarket last week, who was short four dollars and calming her screaming two-year-old. She was realistic, pragmatic, she didn't take more than she needed and Clarke – what had Clarke done in her life that death had to be the equalizer? She thought of Finn, she thought of her father. In kindergarten, they taught her the meaning of fair. Sharing toys was fair, giving her peers turns on the swings was fair. Their numbers? They weren’t fair. “Fuck peace,” she decreed darkly, “fuck everything. I don’t want it.”

“Clarke –”

“Let’s leave.”  

“We can’t –”

“We can.”

They would. Abby had told her not to run from her problems when Finn left and she got angry, Jake died and she went hiding from the world, but god it was tempting. Aloof and untethered, it was the only thing she was sure of.  

“Two years, Lexa, do you want to spend it here? I can’t do it. I can’t get a degree I’ll never use. I can’t stare at the same ceiling every night and know,” she made an inarticulate noise, gesticulating wildly and refusing Lexa and her attempts to beckon her back into her arms. “I can’t, Lexa, please.”

Lexa relented it and they called it ‘The Bucket List’ – a sheet of paper pinned up on Clarke’s side of her dorm, permanent marker staining the wall beneath it from heavy handed additions. It took Clarke four days to get Lexa to reveal her personal must-do items but when she did she smiled, gingerly writing them down beneath Clarke’s ‘travel first class, ski in the alps, see the northern lights, bungee jump, visit Machu Picchu, go skinny dipping,’ in her neat, law-student print.

Their fall semester came and went in half-conscious actions and pressing close in their dorm room twin beds, scrolling through travel blogs and Lonely Planet suggestions, draining their savings, informing the university they wouldn’t be returning after winter break and telling Abby about their plans, their two-year bucket-list trip, destination unknown that they arguably couldn’t afford. Whoever suggested telling her over Thanksgiving dinner thought it was a good idea was stupid but Clarke was too hopped up on the anxiety of explaining why she had to do this to remember whether it was her or Lexa, especially since they were staying the night in Clarke’s twin bed before driving back to campus in the morning. She wouldn’t do it again, she vowed. But Abby smiled, hugging her daughter and she slipped a signed check into Lexa’s palm when they gathered on the porch the next morning, suitcases in the car, saying goodbye. It was enough to make Clarke burst into tears on the drive back to campus.

They went west in Lexa’s Jeep as per ‘take a road trip without a destination’ after the brunette took Clarke’s ‘enter work in an exhibit’ far too liberally, jimmying the front lock of an art gallery under the cover of darkness to hang the sketches that used to be pinned to the wall of Clarke’s dorm while the blonde sat in the car standing watch. It was the most rebellious thing she had done aside from punch Octavia’s big brother in the fourth grade because he was four years older and going through the stage where he thought he was god's gift to man and she was still laughing about it four days later in a crappy hotel off the highway in Albuquerque, tracing figure-eights into the taut skin of Lexa’s bare abdomen with the nail of her index finger.

“I can’t believe you did that.”  

“What?”

“Committed a felony.”

Lexa shrugged against the starch-white bed sheets, the curtains were stained and the mattress had curved in the middle like a sofa-bed but they had established the sheets were clean when they walked in even though the sink was clogged with strangers’ hair.

“It was on the list.”

“Is that going to be our thing from now on?” Clarke asked, hiding her smile in Lexa’s neck where things were soft and dull and smelt like something implacable, perfume and detergent. She feigned innocence and threw her hands up in a semblance of surrender, “‘the list made me do it!’”

“If you want it to be,” Lexa pressed lips to the crown of Clarke’s forehead and the blonde preened.

“I do.”

They made Joshua Tree National Park a day of straight driving later through limiting bathroom breaks and timing their stops at gas stations – Lexa filling the car while Clarke bought snacks with forty-five seconds to spare like something out of the John Green novel she read in high school. It wasn’t hot, but it was California and she helped Lexa strip down to her vintage tee, flinging her jacket into the backseat with her plaid shirt and their ill-packed suitcases, fed her girlfriend a sip of watery gas station milkshake and giggled through roadside landmarks. She felt light, like the wind. Lexa reprimanded her for spilling Cheeto dust in the foot well of the car and she stuck out her orange tinted tongue like the child she hadn’t felt like since Finn.

That in mind, they did Disneyland the next week. Clarke’s overt shock when Lexa wrote it on the list – which was thrice folded and stashed carefully in the glove box – was laughable but she was the perfect guide and when she slipped a pair of sequined encrusted black Minnie Mouse ears onto her head Lexa crowded her against the faux-brick facade of Disneyland City Hall and kissed her filthily.

“Have we found a new kink?” Clarke teased, fingering the collar of the vintage Mickey Mouse tee Clarke and swindled her into. It was tucked into the waist of her cut off jean shorts and if the five-year-old girl in a Cinderella dress wasn’t looking at them perplexed, she would have untucked it and raked her hands over Lexa’s stomach. Instead, she pressed her lips to the corner of Lexa’s quirked lips and pulled her in the direction of Space Mountain, paying a vendor for cotton candy and insisting throwing up was mandatory which Lexa frowned at.

Three days alternating parks and Clarke was suntanned – burnt – and giggly. She revelled in the way Lexa’s eyes lit when Minnie Mouse kissed her on the cheek, rode the Teacups until she was dizzy, did the Tower of Terror nine times and laughed at the ride picture when they passed the exit. They watched the fireworks from main street on their last night, the only place they could find a spot after waiting through the evening for the Indiana Jones ride Clarke insisted was worth it. It was, she maintained, but so were the fireworks. So was the way she stood clinched into Lexa’s chest, hands in the back pockets of her shorts, wearing her girlfriend’s plaid shirt so that the sleeves hung over her palms. So was the way Lexa was looking at her, like she was the happiest she had ever been and the happiest she ever would be.

Together they were a whirlwind. California taking them to Mexico on a first-class flight that they sipped sparkling wine through and made out in the larger than economy bathroom as per ‘travel first class’. They drunk cheap tequila and salt-rimmed margarita’s, and ate tacos from street carts. Lexa dip dyed her hair an outrageous pink, temporarily thank god, because it was a shoddy dye job that had her wearing a hat for a week before the dye brushed out but it earned another tick on the list which was becoming more and more travel battered with pen scribbles and stains. Clarke liked to look at it at night, morbid as it seemed. The paper, their plans, it gave her stability, grounded her to a place where is stray kind of existence her and Lexa were living felt purposeful – they were doing things. She ziplined yesterday and it was exhilarating.

A week later, central Mexico took them down to Tulum, where the water was the clearest thing Clarke had seen yet and Lexa showed so much skin in her bikini of choice Clarke nearly jumped her on site. She didn’t, but she did pull it off later that night when they skinny dipped in the resort’s white sand beach and left that morning before housekeeping could charge them for their pilfered towel robes.

South America found them at Machu Picchu, legs dangling over centuries worn stone and watching the fingers of cloud recede from the peaks of the Andes, Clarke’s playing with the belt loops on Lexa’s pants. She saw Lexa as something formidable, wind back centuries and the girl would be a warrior, swathed in battle garb and wielding spears, streaked with war paint. She could see it as plain as she ruins but here, and when the brunette went to pull lunch out of their bags, crossed legged on the verdant grass, Clarke drew it in scratchy lines of lead. Lexa blushed bashfully when she saw it but Clarke held the paper up next to her face, checking the likeness. She leant forward to press a kiss to her chin, her lips, her nose, her forehead.

“Am I a warrior now?” Lexa teased when she pulled back.

“The commander,” Clarke corrected. “You wouldn’t take orders.”

“I take them from you.”

“That’s different,” Clarke leaned into her. They were speaking in a low hum, something about the atmosphere up here that begged not to be touched, like if they remained here they would be immortalized in the mountains and strong stone. “I’m your girlfriend,” she ran a finger over Lexa’s hip over the material of her pants, “you’re contractually obliged.”

She told Lexa she loved her – wholly and irreversibly – in Kenya, where the greying clouds of a summer storm brew like a pressure headache above the savanna and the rain was hot. It drenched the gauzy white material of the linen dresses they had donned for the dinner of their luxury safari and while couples – finances and anniversary goers escaping children and life in the suburbs – fled to their tents around them with their swathes of mosquito nets and carved chess boards. Clarke inhaled the smell of dust and rain and wound her hands in the frizzing locks of Lexa’s hair as the brunette kissed her until she couldn’t breathe, until ‘be kissed in the rain’ in Africa turned to something else and Lexa kissed the skewed number on her bare ribs like it was a birthmark of little importance.

Europe, Clarke decided, was a realm unto its own. They acclimatised slowly, not straying from tiny towns inland in Germany, where Clarke took candid photos of Lexa smiling over bunches of wildflowers in cobblestoned provincial markets or village squares and they laid together in rented rooms in authentic Inn’s, eating local cuisine – strudel, Palatschinken and pretzels – as per Lexa’s ‘eat a dish from every culture’. They set their sights bigger eighteen days later, ‘go to the Musée d'Orsay’, ‘climb the Eiffel Tower’. The lock they fastened to the chain-link of the Pont de Arts was cheap, bought from around the corner, but Clarke traced their initials on with a steady artists hand and they scoured Rome and Prague and Milan in summer dresses and floppy hats in the days, sending thick stacks of postcards to Abby with tales of their adventures – of how Lexa left her passport in the safe in Italy and how Clarke couldn’t speak French to save herself despite four years of it through high school. And at night, Clarke would wait up on the hotel balconies, watching the outline of Lexa’s bare form in bed while Abby called, asking after Lexa – now her pseudo daughter – and reminding Clarke of how much she loved her.

They summered on the coast. On white sand beaches and illustrious lifestyles. No one knew them here. No one knew them in Mexico, or California, of Peru or Africa either, but this continent was the place they could life infinite lives through infinite lives and the anonymity made Clarke breathless. In Monaco, they were heiresses with hired couture and self-done makeup, escaping the suffocating grasp of their parents and high expectations for a summer of illicit fun. Lexa discovered an affinity for Blackjack in the casino tables and Clare rediscovered an affinity for Lexa.

In Santorini, they whispered to each other conspiratorially over the rims of expensive cocktails and lifting designer sunglasses onto their heads they watched the reactions of the other holiday goers, guessing whether the couple in the cabana thought they were wealthy divorcees, or celebrities escaping the paparazzi. Everywhere thought, they were in love with each other and it was beautiful.

August was in Tuscany, in a sprawling villa with property and vineyards, statues flanking the gravel drive – Lexa found a woman on the internet wanting house sitters for her month’s business trip to England and they crossed ‘rent house for the summer’ off the list – and they spent the month with the windows flung open in gauzy dresses or nothing at all, exploring each other in the most desperate and careless sense of the word. They didn’t linger on the numbers when they were naked at night and Clarke wasn’t anxious anymore. She didn’t want to rage, she wanted to live, like this, with Lexa, nowhere and everywhere because when they were like this, Lexa looked at her like she was the world.

Six days in, Lexa learnt to cook from the groundskeeper with crinkled paper skin and Clarke would sit on the kitchen counter and take pictures at inappropriate times to sketch later. She had a diary now, a leather bound, embossed one she bought in Rome that housed six months’ worth of sketches that she would tentatively show to Lexa when the girl was pink-cheeked and deep-breathing at night, when she would blush further at the drawings and tell Clarke she loved her.

Watching Lexa standing on the train tracks under the austere brick arch of Auschwitz-Birkenau in early November when the snow was light, was the most harrowing thing Clarke had experienced. She stood five paces back, tucking her hands into the thick coat she bought and swallowed, catching up to her girlfriend with brisk steps, distress winding itself into her spine. What had those people thought?

Lexa’s voice echoed in her head from that night back in Maryland, ‘isn’t it better to know, though?’ she had asked. Clarke shook her head. It couldn’t be. Peace couldn’t be made under duress.

She cried that night. She sobbed over the toilet in their hotel room until she made herself sick and when Lexa went to wipe the saliva from her chin she shoved her into the vanity and told her to go away and Lexa – sweet, stoic Lexa – did. It made her cry more. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and kicked the bathtub and wanted to know why the brunette was so okay with things but couldn’t find the answer. She would never understand the peace Lexa made with death.

A half-hour later she emerged into the room, pyjama clad and remorseful and burrowing so deep into Lexa’s arms – somehow religiously open even after what Clarke had done – she no longer felt like they were two people. They were one now, four legs, two bodies, one heart, and for the first time, she began to wonder how it would happen.

Clarke told Lexa she was scared in a glass igloo in Finland. Warmth seemed a luxury in a country seemingly made of snow, but there were feather down comforters curled around their bare bodies and light danced in Lexa’s eyes – great swathes of magic, verdant green morphing into pale pink and regal purple. It danced like candlelight, as fragile as too, like she could pull it into her hands but it would dissipate like Lexa’s breath on the arch of her cheek.

“Lexa.”

“Yes?”

She lay so they were reflections of each other and wanted to kiss the freckle on Lexa’s top lip. But the anxiety was back, the distress from Poland that didn’t belong there to taint something so beautiful. She was crying now, salty tears ruining the sanctity of their night with her head in Lexa’s chest and the covers drawn up tight so they might strangle her. Humming, Lexa hushed her with pretty words and soft hands until her chest wasn’t heavy so violently and her frame didn’t tremble. “It’s okay, Clarke,” she whispered, she repeated the words, breath hot in her ear, until finally it started to ring true.

She didn’t know when it happened. Somewhere between the white sands of Railay Beach, Thailand, and watching Lexa cradle a three-year-old orphan to her chest while the girl giggled and tugged on stray locks of her hair that frizzed under the heat of their week in Cambodia, she guessed. But early March brought with it skiing weather and Lexa coaxed her back to the alps, where snow held the Swiss mountains hostage and the altitude pinkened Clarke’s cheeks quicker than Lexa in a tailored snow-jacket did, and she woke up one morning dizzy and aching.

It was bound to happen. The country hopping, the climate changing meant getting sick was inevitable but the sun was softening the white glare of the snow and Lexa looked so gorgeous with bed hair and hands curling around the coffee mug the chalet provided that Clarke was petulant about it. She pouted and huffed, blocking Lexa out completely when the brunette put her on bed rest. ‘You’re not a doctor, what do you know?’ ‘You’re not a doctor either, Clarke, now drink some water, you’ll get dehydrated.’ Tongue out like a pre-schooler the blonde rolled over and took the comforter with her until Lexa let out a long-suffering groan and set her coffee on the side table, untucking Clarke from her cocoon to sift fingers up her torso dragging up her – Lexa’s – university tee to press kisses to the line at the waistband of her panties, up her stomach, her ribs, her chest, eyes placating. “Don’t start something you won’t finish, Woods,” Clarke warned darkly, she coughed and it rattled in her chest. Lexa grimaced. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she cooed, fingers soothing her skin and Clarke melted into the sensation, eyes fluttering. Something about the domesticity of their easy routine warmed her, the knowledge that whatever bed she found herself in, she could stretch her hand out and find her girlfriends lithe form next to her. It was the only grounding she needed now, their list lay dormant, fold-creased in the front pocket of her suitcase, more checklist than lifeline.

Lexa’s fingers stopped and Clarke whined. “Lex…”

“Clarke,” her voice was tilted with a hard edge the blonde didn’t like. She pulled at her. “Clarke sit up.”

“Ow,” Clarke huffed, but she did so at Lexa’s behest. “Pushy.” The headboard was hard and her head spun like a top. “What?”

Lexa smudged a hand over her ribs, harder than Clarke would have liked, like she was smudging off pen doodles or permanent marker. “Eighty-six.” She whispered.

“What?”

“Your number.”

“Huh?”

“It’s changed.”

Clarke scoffed. “Numbers don’t change Lexa.” People changed. Seasons changed. Feelings changed. Numbers didn’t change.

Lexa pressed her lips into a thin line, grim in ways Clarke didn’t want to comprehend, like the grey of a gravestone or a processional march. “It’s changed,” she insisted, holding up the hem of Clarke’s shirt for the blonde to see and the sight knocked the air out of her chest like a semi to the wall of her chest. “It,” she blinked – hard – twisted her fingers in the hem of her shirt so tightly they turned white, “it can’t.” She looked to Lexa, eyes wide. “Is – you?” her fingers went to the waistband of Lexa’s pants but the blonde caught them and pushed them back before deft fingers could slip below, eyes sombre. “No,” she whispered. If the human body had the capacity to implode that would be how Clarke described the searing, pulling agony on her chest.

The pink sands of Bahama beaches clinging to sun-kissed skin and Clarke wouldn’t release Lexa from her hands. Their sheets were cool, a starched white against the brown of Lexa’s skin, marred with white at the cut of her bikini line and dipping low over her backside. On better days Clarke would shimmy down her body and press kisses these, teasing and tripping, delving deliciously lower but today her hands were in the soft baby curls at the nape of the brunette’s neck and their lips were locked, an embrace that traversed lazy hours against cotton sheets while the sun stained the earth at its hottest time and children shrieked in their bare feet on the sand.

Clarke cradled the point of Lexa’s hip with reverent fingers, a thumb there always, brushing the skin like she could remove the mark but she couldn’t and her chest hurt with the knowledge – the knowledge she had lived with for the past eleven months, that their marks no longer matched and goodbye was real.

She felt utterly, disgustingly betrayed but she swallowed the curdled film on her tongue.

“It’s okay, Clarke,” Lexa hummed. The blonde had lost count how many times she had heard this from her girlfriend’s lips. The words felt acrid now, meaningless as cigarette smoke.

“You’re going to live,” Clarke stated, pulling back from tanned arms.

Lexa shook her head. “You don’t have to fight things Clarke, you need to let go.”

“Like hell I do,” Clarke sat up, mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you die. You’re young,” she prodded at a bicep, “you’re fit,” at the taut stomach of Lexa’s abdomen, “you’re healthy. You have no reason to.”

“Reason means nothing.”

“Reason means everything. Fate is bullshit,” Clarke decided, “I make my own destiny, you have to make yours.”

Later, on white sand beaches and over Maryland Thanksgivings, Lexa would tease that it was the nagging. Clarke, kissing the aching smugness that perpetuated the brunette’s lips, would insist it was superior motivational speaking skills, but both would agree it didn't matter. Not when they had blood in their veins and air in their lungs and the astounding capacity to live.

[makinguglychic]

MEDIA EXPERIMENTATION

I then looked into using different media applications for my designs, I firstly looked into chalk and charcoal. I found this worked really well with the idea of the gas mask head but overall I found it really difficult to create detail on the piece because the charcoal is very loose and doesn't set properly unless hairspray is used, but then its hard to layer it on top of the first layer.

Next, I worked on experimenting with water colour. I found that the project was based on beige fabric, so I thought on  I could really exaggerate the light and shading to make it more unique. This being, the shading I used cool colours like blues, purples and greens and for the light I used warm colours like yellows, oranges and reds. Overall, I really like how it has turned out because it makes it more effective than using minimal colour tones.

Moving on to pro markers, I find it hard to use these and make them work effectively as they go quite streaky when used on large surfaces. I took the same approach to this as I did the watercolour except I kept the colour scheme more neutral tones. I think this idea could potentially work better on a smaller scale or the idea of the way the colour are set out would work on a digital drawing.

I then thought that it would be good to experiment using acrylic paint and see if I could take a similar outlook from the watercolour design. I again used warm tones like yellow and orange to express the light and used hints of greens and blue to portray where creases and shadows would lay on the garment. Overall, I really like how this has turned out and I think using a larger surface with a dark background really helped make the texture and detail stand out on it. If I was to do my final design on a large scale I would definitely use acrylic paint, although I wold try add more tones into the shading like blacks and brown to really give more realistic detail.

Here I experimented seeing if the acrylic paint look would work well on a smaller scale, personally I don't think it looks as well as it does on a larger scale because its a lot harder to add shading and depth which would make the image look more realistic and easier to visually see as garment. Overall, I think the designs on a smaller scale would've looked a lot better in a different media application like shading pencils where it would be easier to create shadows an creases. The end product of this was messy and not to a satisfactory rate, I even tried to make a sketched outline look with pen but still was not impressed.

Here I did a simple sample of pro markers used with crayons and then a fine lined sketch to visually see the sihlouette of my garment, to see more of a clear perspective. This was probably my least favourite because of how simple it is, although it does help me clearly see the silhouette. I personally don't like the crayon work with this because I couldn't find the right texture and it was mostly grainy, I somewhat like how it works against the pro marker but wouldn't like to see it on itself. If I were to use this media application again I would make sure I practised more making the two work well together maybe on a larger scale giving more room to create shadows and depth in the work.

[jackal-of-hearts]

Red Blossoms

I wrote a story. It’s...1446 words or so? If you feel like reading, it’s below the cut. I am not responsible for whatever pasting it on here does to formatting!

A flower blossomed, rich and red. It was an odd sight, to be sure. A lone spot of color calling out from the sun-bleached scrub and grass that stretched out across the edge of the desert. Strange, but pleasant. It was the herald of journey’s end and the first of many markers which announced the yielding of barren sand to lush soil. She was almost home.

               Jezebel, the woman was called. A name which raised more than a few glances outside of her homeland. Superstitious, they were often called. In the modern age, who still believed in monsters and spirits? Each member of her village laid claim to three names. One was private and known only to its owner and perhaps a few treasured kin. A true name, which held power. One was used during formal occasions and often found placed as a surname. Something of substance but with only a mild link to the person that holds it. The last was often offensive and given out freely and without care as it was the least of their identities. By this standard, it was a fine name, as far as such things went.

               Vehicles could not make it out this far. Any that tried found a series of incidents, swiftly escalating, that barred progress beyond the middle of the desert where the last oasis rested. By land or air, the ill luck carried. With this restriction in mind, a small camp had sprung up around the cool waters. Mounts were available for sale, or rent with the proper identification, and it was upon the back of an Arabian bay stallion that the woman gained the borders of the town. It had no name and yet laid claim to all of them. When one spoke of this place, the listener knew if they were meant to.

               Quite out of habit, Jezebel reached for her phone before remembering that it was locked up in a protective box along with her laptop, tablet and anything else that she didn’t want to risk while crossing the barrier. There would be no service this far out anyway. A soft sigh slipped past her lips as she continued on. She hoped that her clients would be alright without her. Some of them needed far too much attention. But, the trip could not be put off any longer than it had.

               Jezebel had come home for the funeral.

                 She was challenged on the approach. Out of necessity, this was a brief offering of sign and countersign. Children are the taught the ritual before they can even walk more than a few steps. The second crossing was more elaborate but allowed her to move past the high, reinforced stone walls. It was always a bit jarring to return home after so long on the outside. It was much like being the protagonist of some silly time travel movie.

               So it came to pass that a woman dressed in canvas cargo pants, a tanktop and steel toed boots and wrap around sunglasses rode a horse through cobbled streets flanked by buildings that still required thatchers. The looks her arrival garnered were of hostility and distaste. Her attire was the least of the reasons. Though this was her home, she had very few friends. And there were matters of state to attend to.

               Children were clutched to mothers’ breasts. Women pointedly turned their backs. Men sketched out signs of warding. If some few cast quick and sympathetic glances her way, they were not acknowledged for the sake of their soft-hearted issuers. Despite the almost universal shunning, Jezebel rode easily with her head held high. Fear prevented anyone from acting against her and she knew that she would reach Hunter’s Hall without issue.

               A second wall separated the town from the city. The distinction one of pride more than anything else as both halves were arrayed in much the same pattern. While the outer buildings were of rude construction, the inner city was all stone and metal with only minimal glass adornment, soundly built and easily defended. Coming to a half just inside the open gates, the reigns of her horse were taken in hand by a guard dressed in leather armor with a sword belted at his hip. More brazen than the citizens of the outer city, his upturned face regarded her with a mixture of disdain and curiosity.

               “Twin-Blade.”

               The voice that spoke her deed name belonged to a severe man with short cropped, dark hair and broad shoulders. There was no warmth in his voice and the pale gaze that regarded her was even colder. So it began. Jezebel dismounted and shouldered her pack before crossing over to him and giving a short nod in response. Regardless of his personal feelings, she was still a member of rank and standing and so he gave a proper salute before turning to escort her deeper into the city. It was a long and silent walk.

 The rituals and processes that followed were old beyond remembering. There was a reception waiting which might have seemed grand to an outsider. They were an organization based on blood and violence. Strict protocols and behaviors assured that such attributes rarely touched the grounds inside the walls. It was almost comforting. A sort of reflexive haze settled over Jezebel and quieted her thoughts as she took part in the exchanges.

A bath and change of clothing followed next. Attendants were provided who saw to these details as well as to groom and adorn her hair in the traditional manner. Baubles and badges were braided into the locks to display her rank and accomplishments and pigments were mixed to mark her lineage and standing. So it was that Jezebel walked through the Hunter’s Assembly as if she headed for battle. But this battle’s outcome had already been decided.

Jezebel ascended the steps to stand before the Huntmaster. The man had aged considerably since last she had seen him but the steel in his gaze had not diminished. Dropped down to take a knee before him, her head remained raised. It was not their way to lower gazes meekly, but to offer respect through direct eye contact. A flicker of sorrow shadowed the stern man’s gaze for the briefest instant. Or perhaps she just wished it had.

“Jezebel Twin-Blade,” The Huntmaster intoned, “You have been convicted of violating our sacred trust.” His voice was clear and might even have been beautiful if it were not so deeply worn down by a long life of hard acts and cruel deeds in the defense of the world. An ignorant world that neither knew nor thanked them for their service in holding back the legions of supernatural entities that waited just beyond the veil.

“The sentence is death.”

There was no court of appeals. And, by the letter of their laws, she was certainly guilty. Pride was the sin of the order. For those that work in the shadows and often die on far away shores in a terrible manner, it must be. Few things can keep one going in those conditions. Righteous belief in the cause? Yes, that played a part as well. But it was the knowledge of a job well done and countless lives saved that carried most of the Chosen through their otherwise uncertain lives. The Chosen Hunters of Tapio, they were called. Named for the God of the Hunt who had founded their order in the distant past. It was said that his power was what kept them shielded and placed apart from the rest of the world.

If anyone expected repentance, they received none. Jezebel stared back at the Huntmaster and simply nodded her understanding. Pride was her sin as well and she would not beg or plead. She had aided a monster against a fellow Hunter. She was guilty. She had returned of her own free will. She would not be late for her own funeral. There was respect in the old man’s eyes. This time she was certain of what she had seen. She came to accept her punishment and did so with honor.

A heavy, two-handed broadsword rested against the Huntmaster’s back. It was a ceremonial blade and deeply engraved, decorated with a large jewel upon the pommel. He lifted it easily and secured his grip to deliver the sentence. Jezebel continued to stare into his eyes while the light of the room played along the length of the blade. The edge was honed keen and the etchings guided the light up to blaze upon the point as if with celestial light. Without another word, the blade fell with swift purpose.

A flower blossomed, rich and red.

[purpleskiesandpaperflowers]

Heres part of a page from my sketchbook , my drawing is a bit smudged and Joe's hair and tattoo could use a hell of a lot of work (as could my drawing skills in general lol) but theres something very important about this page of my sketchbook.

Heres some backstory:

I had my 3 monthly psychiatrist review last month. All I'm diagnosed with is OCD , Anxiety and depression as well as a tic disorder - Tourette syndrome which does effect my mental health more than someone would normally think. I was referred to this psychiatrist by the Child mental health service in my area upon turning 18 (I'm 20 now) I originally was referred to mental health services for self harming, panic attacks and my tic disorder which at the time was undiagnosed and my gp had no idea what to do about it , thought it was probably anxiety (that's a common theme every time I go to the doctors LOL)

I've been seeing some form of psychiatrist since I was about 12 in all that time I've only briefly mentioned my constant desire to daydream on a couple of occasions , and back when I did I refused to talk in detail mainly because I was ashamed and partly because I have great difficulty explaining things to people . Even my art therapist didnt manage to get a doodle of my daydreams out of me , although at the time I was just a kid , what did it matter , I'd grow out of it.

Or not. I've been conflicted about coming out about my MaDD as even though I know my relationship with daydreaming isn't the world's healthiest one, I have very little desire to stop daydreaming , my life feels so empty without it. After all , my paras have been my best freinds for so long. My inner world an amazing paradise, an escape from life built just for me.

However this appointment was different. I always take my mum to my appointments as a sort of advocate as I really struggle with the talking bit. I've gotten much better recently but still tend to keep quiet about things as I get too choked up to talk properly.

To this appointment I bought my sketchbook as I knew I wanted to talk about my constant urges to daydream , I didnt know how but I thought this crappy sketch of Joe , one of my first paras.

In the waiting room I showed my mum my sketchbook as shes one of the only people I can even think about starting to tell her these things. I still keep a lot of it a secret .

Once in the actual appointment I wasnt sure I was ready to say anything , once again it was a new psychiatrist, although probably one of the nicest I've met, I really hope he stays this time. He asked how I was doing and I didnt really say a lot , I think I spoke a bit about my mood and stuff , and a little about history and stuff. Mum eventually pushed me to show him my sketchbook. I was reluctant and very embarrassed for some reason , but I knew I couldn't turn back . I showed him this sketch of Joe , I mean theres not much in the sketchbook apart from an old character profile of Vlad , that could really use some tweaking and a self portrait and some other drawing exercises and some very messy alchohol and water based marker swatches.

I felt ridiculously embarrassed afterwards because Joe's profile underneath is pretty cringey. Although maybe it's not, maybe that's just what this horrible cringe culture we have on the modern internet has taught me. At the end of the day yes this dude is an androgynous disabled witch , an oc that a 14 year old with a slight interest in character diversity could make , But hes also got a very important role in my life.

Anyway , it felt so freeing to finally tell someone . Daydreaming makes up such a big portion of my life it's been lonely to not be able to share it with anyone. What I really want is someone who I can be comfortable enough to share this all with , every little bit , and for them not to judge me like I judge myself. I dont know if it's possible. But I guess starting this blog was my first step to being more open about the universe behind my eyes.

Since then I had a bit of a moment when I think I realised part of the reason for all this.

Besides the psychiatrist saying that this can be an uncommon manifestation of Obsessive compulsive disorder ( the compulsive desire to daydream , and daydreams that become almost intrusive to every day life) , I realised during my mum having her almost weekly " IM DONE WITH YOU, GET OUT " rant to my dad after he once again acted like an ungrateful peice of shit. That I feel as if theyve been fighting since I can remember . Yeah yeah I know mum , you're not arguing you're just talking, whatever you say .

I dont want to blame my parents for my life issues because that would make me an exact carbon copy of my dad. I mean I've had everything. I dont want to be ungrateful. But I guess the constant nagging at each other doesn't help things. I mean this stuff is probably more common than I think. I need to remember that you dont have to have been through the worlds worst trauma to have some mental health quirks. I guess I just compare myself a lot to other people who've had it worse than me.

Alas , comparing myself to others helps no one , and I'm sorry for being negative. I guess I just have to do what my dad will not do. Put the past behind him. And not dwell on it too much . It is what it is at the end of the day.

Overall , positive steps have been made, even if I still am struggling a little with anxiety at the moment , I'm still managing things . Mainly because of the daydreaming I must admit . It really does help me cope. Even if I am a little lost in it all sometimes.

[br-amblinghostcat]

Sketch utilizing part of my study sketches (just the blackberry really, rest was without reference). This is an idea I had in my head for a while. I talked to some friends and I guess it is similar to ones already out there? But I will still draw and post I think.

The idea is a sort of isekai. Everyone has an animal type inside, and a plant type, and they may be reborn into a new world where they are this, like in my sketch. They have minor shapeshifting ability, can be in full animal form(like shown), or in an anthropomorphic humanoid shape (not shown here). It is based on personality, so an extroverted, heirarchal and enduring personality would possibly be wolf - and them being extroverted means they may have a plant that reflects that (IE communal plants like aspen on mongroves, where whole forests are one organism and they rely on this), but since people are complex, there can be infinite combinations.

I imagined that the plants would grow from three locations, lightly connected to the spinal cord. First at the base of the head (cervical vertebrae), then between shoulder blades (thoracic vertebrae), between hips or base of tail (lumbar vertebrae). Would be different for any invertebrates (haven't thought that far). Vine-y ones can wrap around limbs, but tend not to impede the movement of their "host" so to speak. The host is immune to any toxins or defensive measures the plant gives off. The plant grows in step with the host. Flowering/sporulating/pollinating is around the time of sexual maturity, but may occur later for some. For many it is seen as a rite if adulthood. Fruiting is around middle age (when the "fruits" of one's labor starts to come to be), while autumn/decline is later years. The plant may spring back from the graves of those that have passed, making graveyards richly covered areas full of life. Many are heartened by this, reassured that their life continues through their plant after death, and this is a common belief, only rivaled by the idea of reincarnation.

The host can survive for a short time on their plant's photosynthesis, but it isn't recommended since it is a tax on the organism (plant gotta get its water and nutrients from somewhere, and if the host is not feeding themselves/the plant...) and can upset the delicate balance they hold, and can result in death. Speaking of, it is indeed a delicate balance. Care needs to be given to the plant. It takes some nutrients and water from its host, and in turn it can be consumed by its host. These plant can be susceptible to pests and disease like normal plants, but they tend to be hardier than normal due to their relationship with their host. With improving awareness and healthcare this can be avoided as well. Shaping and trimming can be done, to keep stress on both the plant and host low. Many, when trimming, will root the cuttings carefully in soil, feeding with careful compost, water, to help root. They are more susceptible to shock than normal plants, and take more care to do grafts and rootings. Some think blood helps them root. These plants that survive are usually seen as special, and the original host can still feel the plant's well being to some degree no matter where it is. These are sometimes used as territory or community markers, and rarely, gifts to loved ones, due to the significance of giving such a part of yourself that you can still feel. Some community's marriage practices involve a ritualized exchange of cuttings, and others will not allow a marriage until a lengthy engagement where they take care of the other's plant - the success of which determines compatibility.

Not caring for your self or your plant can have dire consequences, and the host may be consumed by the plant. Usually this is extremely rare, as parents/communities tend to teach their children proper care... But unexplained outbreaks have occured, causing much fear. For those that fear that fate, the plant can technically be removed utterly from the host, but it is dangerous and risky, considering how closely it associates with the spine in three locations, and often results in death for both. For the hosts that do not die, depression is common, which can be followed by psychosis and even suicide. The level of coexistence is such that the plant helps clear some toxins from the blood like a second liver, and the plant will produce many endogenous signalling compounds that the organism comes to rely on both neurologically and endocrinologically. The safest time to do so is as a child, but that is just a horrible thing to do. So even when a cult decides that it is unnatural or unholy to be one with plants, or dangerous due to the fact that poor care can result in the host being consumed, the level of mutilation and harm that comes from such beliefs usually result in it being unable to gain traction, and are completely shunned by normal communities.

That is all I got for now. It is a fun idea that I like to fall back on for daydreaming purposes.

[allydsgn]

Supply Recommendations for Graphic Design Students

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve posted something like this... so bear with me! It was requested by an anon that’s entering a university as a Graphic Design major, so here are some supplies I recommend and why! (I may do a spoken and visual extended version as a video, so let me know what you guys think!)

(disclaimer: this is my opinion and I haven’t tried everything in the world, so if you have your own recommendations definitely reblog and say so in your caption! I’d love to check out your favorite supplies!)

Categories include:

Day-to-day supplies

The Big One$

Projects

Some Fun and Fancy Stuff

DAY - TO - DAY SUPPLIES

Sharpie pens and markers

Cheap-ish

Reliable

You can find them basically anywhere

Great for black and white abstractions/sketches with different marker thicknesses

They also have pretty colors for note-taking!

X-Acto Knife

Cuts in a straight line

Replaceable blades

In most art and office stores and even in places like Walmart

If you cut something sticky and ruin your blade, just replace it!

Goes with a ruler to cut in a straight line

Masking Tape

Holds things down without ripping it

Keeps prints rolled up

Keep one with you or at home

USB Drive

Always have a USB drive ready for use!

Turn in files, take files to the printer, or even just taking files to a different machine to work on is always a possibility. 

If you make it a habit to keep it on you, then you won’t forget it on the days that really matter.

Noise canceling headphones (or at least ear buds)

Rowdy classmate ignorer

Helps blast music in your ears to help you focus

Marshmallow buds that go in your ears works best for this

A drink that makes you happy

That morning coffee before a 9AM studio 3-hour class, or that water bottle during an afternoon session can really help you out. 

Helps keep you going!

I know it sounds small, but your mood definitely affects your productivity!

A sketchbook (any kind will do!)

Literally, can by any paper quality, based on what you usually draw with or sketch with (like to use marker? Either have an extra page behind it or get marker paper)

Any price, any color, any size (try to aim for letter-size/A4)

Make sure it fits with what you usually carry around (backpacks can hold a 9″x12″, but purses would carry a Moleskine size or smaller)

Have 15 minutes before English starts and you thought of something? Take out that handy dandy sketchbook! Bored in said English class? Handy dandy sketchbook strikes again!

Notebook for notes

More than just for typical note taking!

Good for recording feedback

Track any last-minute changes to projects or deadlines

To-do lists will help understand what’s due next class and not get super anxious!

Metal cork-backed ruler

A great companion for that X-Acto knife!

Cork back helps not slide around

Metal means you can’t accidentally carve off the edge (like you would a plastic or wooden ruler)

Found in most art stores and can get pricey for bigger ones, but if you take care of it then it’ll last forever

Make sure to get at least two sizes (a longer one for trimming cover sheets for 16″x20″ mounts and a smaller one-foot ruler for trimming business cards and smaller things like that)

Post-it notes

Great for making notes on things that you don’t want to directly mark. 

Good for just keeping in mind anything you don’t want to forget (especially if you stick them to your laptop, they’ll be hard to miss).

Prisma Markers

These art markers are my personal favorite. 

You’ll hear all kinds of brands, preferences, and prices. 

Copics are nice and are very aesthetic, but they’re also about $7-$8 per marker. Concept markers from Jerry’s Artarama are very cheap at about $2 per marker, but the colors on their caps are sometimes misleading, and Prisma Markers are a happy medium at about $4 - $5 per marker. 

They’re at most art stores 

For me, they’re a happy medium price-wise and I like working with them. (Concept markers maybe I’d get the black because it’s cheaper)

Binder clips

Keep sketches and randomly sized and trimmed papers together

I prefer binder clips over paper clips because they can hold more and group things nicely

You can also hang things with these if you want on a thumbtack

Hair Ties

Keeps hair out of the way when creating mock-ups that include glue and X-acto knives

Rolls things up

Groups things up (markers and other utensils)

Cheap and effective!

Rubber bands are a little meaner, especially to hair or trying to get them off a long paper roll.

Circle Tool

Basically, something that makes perfect circles. 

This can either be a circle template, a compass, or some other device that you find that makes different sized circles. 

You can go cheap on these

The Toolbox

All these little things that I keep mentioning to bring with you need to be contained somewhere! 

I like putting what I’m using for a current project in a toolbox and bringing that to school.

I suggest going with something that’ll fit in a backpack or that you don’t mind carrying around.

Really only carry it if you think you’ll need it.

You can carry a smaller version of typical tools (pens, pencils, markers, scissors, x-acto, etc.) and leave the rest at home, too.

The Baggage

Not the emotional kind, but the one that carries all of these crazy supplies I’m recommending. 

In university, you don’t have all of your graphic design classes in one day (I would hope), so having a typical backpack works fine for the smaller supplies. 

If a project is due the next day and you’re planning to work at the school and you need to bring everything, then I highly suggest a rolling backpack!

Don’t kill your back!! Messenger bags only work if you’re not bringing much, otherwise, do a backpack (or a rolling one).

THE BIG ONE$

Laptop

Almost all graphic designers will tell you to use a Mac, but of course, not all graphic designers can afford one.

If you can afford a Mac, I’d recommend it.

If you can’t afford a Mac, go with a cheaper alternative, but not TOO cheap. It still needs to last 4 years and run all of your programs.

Wait until you actually need to buy one (that way you can get the latest models or earlier models at cheaper prices).

External Hard Drives (BACK EVERYTHING UP!)

I would even say have at least two (current semester and archive(s))

You never know when previously mentioned laptop may die, malfunction, or wipe everything.

Keep a back-up for sending to competitions, putting in portfolios, and just for safe keeping.

KEEP IT ORGANIZED. You need to know what you have and don’t have so you don’t “double save” something in two separate folders.

A decent phone with decent camera quality

Nowadays most people do have this phone already on them, but if you’re one of the low-budget phone holders, then I highly suggest to get a higher quality phone.

Picture taking for process photos can actually be done with a phone camera if it’s good enough, you can just fix things up in photoshop. 

Having a decent phone will let you also use helpful and productive apps such as camscanner, schedule makers, and Adobe apps

Raising your mood with a higher quality of life will help raise productivity!

If you can’t open snapchat without it force closing then you miss out on your friend’s lives or whenever they get an update on a project and you don’t. Social media can honestly be helpful sometimes as people post their process online!

Drawing tablet

Wacom works well enough for me!

You don’t have to go super expensive with all the bells and whistles for this... you just need something that draws.

These can get a little pricey (mine being at $90 and I got one step-up from the cheapest one at the time)

You don’t absolutely need a tablet, but it is very handy.

If you don’t do illustration often I would not recommend it.

You can also hold off on getting a tablet and just hand-draw something, scan it, and fix it in whatever program (or vectorize/image trace in illustrator and mess with it that way)

PROJECTS

Tracing paper

Helps trace things when abstracting

Covers mounted work with a protective sheet

I prefer the rolls, but they’re way more expensive than the 9″x12″ pad (maybe not per foot, but it’s initially more expensive)

Spray mount/Adhesive spray

One way to stick two things together

You need a lot of space and throw away paper under what you’re spraying

You’ll definitely get all of it everywhere (which is good if you want to make sure corners don’t stick up on a mounted piece, but it’s bad if your garage floor is suddenly sticky)

Liquid cement

Another way to stick things together and is a little more forgiving. 

Elmer’s brand is the one that I have, and basically, if you mess up or “over-glue” something, you can rub the excess off (like you would the typical white Elmer's glue).

When you’ve rubbed it off, it basically becomes those little gray things that erasers produce that you can just brush away. 

It comes with a designated brush attached to the lid on the inside (super convenient) and it’s easy to apply and store (smaller bottle than the adhesive spray can).

Portfolio case

For when you’re carrying larger pieces from one place to another (such as a mounted piece or a large editorial) like turning in your final presentation of your project.

You can get a big fancy one if you really want to, but at least get the bare minimum to carry something from one place to another without it getting folded or wet. (especially you commuters/bus-riders)

SOME FUN AND FANCY STUFF

The big paper cutter

Even I don’t have this one, but whenever I use the one at school or at FedEx it makes trimming things down so much easier! 

You line it up, you drag the blade across, and then you’ve got a perfectly straight line. 

Again, if you can afford the money and space for it I recommend it, but my school provides one for us.

It’s kind of one of those things that you don’t NEED if you have an X-acto knife, but it speeds things up a bit

High-quality camera

Similar to the phone concept... taking nice photos of your work is always a plus. 

The camera I would reserve for mock-up photos for submitting pieces or getting photography for an editorial work. 

Someone in your class ought to have one that you can borrow (and maybe even the program will offer one to borrow), but it’s always good to have your own things.

Also, being able to stage your own photos instead of photoshopping mock-up templates always feels more authentic and looks better in a portfolio. (you’re not the only one looking up Photoshop mock-up templates in the design world)

Light table

You can either buy one or make one (easier than you think)

Very helpful when you’re tracing! 

This is the most useful when you’re doing abstractions or you’re trying to refine hand-drawn ideas. 

You can make one with a shadow-box frame and some LED lights. 

Again, not necessary since programs might actually have some at school that you can borrow.

A second monitor

Web design!

Programs like Brackets do live-preview, so when you code the changes apply immediately to a chrome preview window, so seeing the changes as you code is helpful! 

Putting up inspiration or just other documents to keep in mind on the other screen makes things easier to work with.

Fancy keyboard with custom keys

This one was actually a recommendation from my boyfriend (who is a tech geek). 

Basically, there are keyboards that you can map shortcuts to specific keys on the keyboard. 

There are some shortcut keys that you’ll use a million times in a project and if you feel that a function key being assigned to it would be easier instead, and you have money to splurge, this is the keyboard to go with! 

This is totally unnecessary, but could be lots of fun and helpful!

iPad and Apple pen

Digitally drawing on a tablet with a stylus can be good for digital note taking or just drawing in general (as an alternative to the drawing tablet). 

My professor uses his for sketch notes (which is always fun) and sometimes I see people doing illustrations straight into the tablet or just concepts. 

Sketching concepts digitally allows you to put down ideas quickly, but also be able to save them without having to worry about scanning or taking pictures of the drawings. 

Another splurge option that obviously has other uses than this, but is completely unnecessary.

MORE Prisma Markers

Remember when I said Prisma Markers before?

You really only need a basic color set and maybe a gray set. Any more than that then you’re falling into a fun and fancy category for supplies. 

They’re not the cheapest things in the world, but using markers definitely brings your sketches up a level versus pencil or black and white sketches.

It’s also good for making preliminary color schemes and other illustrations. 

Have several blacks because those are usually the first marker to go dry.

That’s all I got! I hope that helped and I’m sorry it was so long, I tried to condense... but I’ll make a visual/audio version that might be easier to digest!

[kathleenseiber]

8 chemists toast the periodic table’s 150th birthday

2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the periodic table.

Chemical elements make up everything around us. Reading this on a cell phone? Your phone contains at least 30 different naturally-occurring elements, including lithium. Or maybe you’re drinking seltzer—a compound of two elements (carbon and oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide) dissolved in another two elements (hydrogen and oxygen in the form of water).

Developed by Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869 (with contributions from many other scientists before and after Mendeleev), the familiar poster on chemistry classroom walls started out as a novel way to sort and categorize the elements.

In Mendeleev’s periodic table, he organized the 63 elements known in 1869 by their atomic weight, grouping those with similar properties. He also had the foresight to leave open spots on the table to anticipate elements that had not yet been discovered.

Mendeleev was onto something. Over the ensuing century and a half, scientists have added many new elements into the table’s gaps, bringing us to 118 elements today. As the American Chemical Society noted earlier this year, “Changes to the periodic table continue to this day and will likely keep surprising us in the future. As recently as 2016, scientists officially filled the four final gaps in period 7—elements 113, 115, 117, and 118.” Like many elements, two of the newest are named after places where research to create the elements took place: moscovium and tennessine.

In honor of the period table’s 150th anniversary, a group of chemists name their favorite elements and explain why they love them. From lithium (#3) to gallium (#31), here are their picks:

Lithium

Alexej Jerschow, professor of chemistry:

“Lithium is by far my most favorite element these days. It is one of the lightest elements, and it has been incredibly transformative. All our cell phones and computers have lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year was awarded for the development of lithium-ion batteries.

“In my lab we are intimately familiar with the element, as we develop techniques that allow us to peek inside batteries to determine whether they are functioning well and to obtain clues for how to improve batteries, extend their lifetimes, and for keeping them safe.”

Carbon

Dirk Trauner, professor of chemistry:

“I like carbon because the rules with which carbon atoms connect are so simple, yet the structures that can be created with them (and a few lighter and heavier supporting actors) are so diverse. After one lecture, students can propose molecules that have never been made or even thought of before but are most likely stable. You can bet the farm (and your career) on carbon!”

Nitrogen

Ned Seeman, professor of chemistry:

“Nitrogen. It is the element that is inherent to the two semantophoretic molecules [which carry information] of biology, nucleic acids, and proteins. Without nitrogen, biology is largely just sugar and fat.”

Silicon

Keith Woerpel, professor of medicinal chemistry:

“Silicon. It’s in almost everything: rocks, sand, computers, those little packets you find inside shoes. It is the element most like carbon, but it is so unlike carbon that it leads to unexpected chemical behavior that can be really useful. And just for the record: no, I don’t think there could be life, as we know it, based on silicon instead of carbon.”

Calcium

Marc Walters, associate professor of chemistry:

“My current favorite element is calcium. It is the stuff of our geosphere as a component in limestone and gypsum minerals and our biosphere in the form of bones, teeth, seashells, and even egg shells. It gives us backbone and structure. But not just us… As a component of portland cement and clad gypsum (drywall), it serves to fashion shells and shelter for people, too.

“It is a component of chalk which, up until the advent of dry erase markers, has served to enhance the structure to our ideas and expression spoken or wordlessly sketched upon a blank slate.”

Iron

Andy Hamilton, professor of chemistry and president of NYU:

“It is usual for most organic chemists to say that their favorite element is carbon, due to its role as the fundamental building block of life. But for me, it is the element iron (Fe) that holds most fascination. Iron is an element that, even in a biological setting, can access multiple oxidation states to carry out a range of critical functions.

“In its Fe2+ state, it can be found (surrounded by my favorite molecule—the porphyrin ring) in hemoglobin. This remarkable combination of Fe2+ and porphyrin gives blood its bright red color and also the ability of the Fe2+ to bind to oxygen (O2) and transport it around the body. The dangerous effects of carbon monoxide (CO) come from its ability to bind even more tightly to the Fe2+ in hemoglobin and prevent access to the life-giving oxygen molecule.

“Iron cycles between its Fe2+ and Fe3+ states in the cytochrome proteins, one of whose critical roles in life is to transport electrons around the cell. The deadly poison cyanide (CN-) binds to the Fe2+ in cytochrome, just like the O2 or CO does in hemoglobin, blocking that cycle and completely destroying the pathways of energy management in living cells.

“Lastly, iron accesses Fe4+ and Fe5+ states in the oxidizing enzyme cytochrome P450. This protein functions in the liver as nature’s bleach, often cleaning up all the unwanted messes that find themselves inside living organisms, including us!”

Copper

James Canary, professor and chair of the chemistry department:

“I am a fan of the element copper. Not only is it pretty when shiny, but it also displays amazingly diverse chemistry. It was discovered 11,000 years ago and is named after Cyprus. The Copper Age (Chalcolithic) in the Middle East is one of my favorite periods in history. It is an essential element for all life on the Earth. In its natural, metallic form, it is highly conductive and malleable, making it an ideal material for wires.

“In our research, we have found that it can cause a molecule that has a handedness like a rubber glove to turn itself inside out, resulting in the opposite handedness. Just like when you turn your left hand rubber glove insight out and it then fits your right hand, so can we do that with molecules.

“If the element loses one electron, it takes on a single positive charge, forming copper(I). Colorless copper(I) is a key player in living organisms for capturing, storing, and transporting oxygen in the cell. In human blood, iron plays this role, but copper(I) is very common in such a role among many organisms. Copper(I) is also used in organic chemistry for some reactions that are amazing in terms of what they do and their efficiency.

“If copper metal loses two electrons, it is left with two positive charges for each copper atom, copper(II). Compounds of copper(II) are typically blue in color. It loves to be dissolved in water and reactions involving attachment/dissociation to/from copper(II) can be very fast. Copper(III) is also known, but it is very reactive and not easy to observe.

“One of the amazing things to me is that copper(0), copper(I), and copper(II) are so different from one another that they seem like different elements. Everything about them is different—their appearance, their stability, and their reactivity.”

Gallium

Mike Ward, professor of chemistry:

“My favorite element has to be gallium—an atomic number of 31, a prime, surrounded by aluminum, germanium, indium, and zinc in the periodic table, and more rare than gold. It was predicted in 1871 by none other than Dmitri Mendeleev, who named it “eka-aluminium.” It was then discovered in 1875 by Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it after “gallia,” Latin for Gaul, otherwise known as France, his native country.

“Why is gallium so interesting? It melts near 30°C (86°F), slightly above room temperature. This property was key to a cheap parlor trick, wherein gallium forged into spoons for tea service would surprise by melting when used! Hence its appearance on the cover of the book The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (Little Brown, 2010) by Sam Kean. Yet gallium is not simply a playful object—it is superior in many ways to silicon when used in electronics applications.”

Source: NYU

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[mysticsparklewings]

Ziggy Crossing

Still not quite sure I'm 100% back into the swing of things (posting regularly and being more present) yet, but time will tell. For now I'm testing the waters. Anyway. In the time I've been away, I ended up talking to some friends about (to the surprise of absolutely no one) Animal Crossing, and in that conversation, the idea of drawing my cat, Ziggy, as an Animal Crossing villager came up. I'd toyed with it before after seeing some other people draw their pets as villagers, and that conversation more or less sealed the deal for me to at least try it, even if my attempt didn't pan out and see the light of day. Obviously, things went pretty well because here I am posting this. The first step, as it is 90% of the time for me, was to come up with a sketch and go from there. I primarily used Olivia and Lolly [pre-existing Animal Crossing cat villagers] as my references--Olivia for the pose and eyes, Lolly for the stripes and some details regarding the ears and face--but I also checked certain things across the various cat villager models so that details could be consistent where they needed to be. I think if I missed the mark anywhere, it's probably in the proportions. Namely the size of the head and length of the body. But I think it's close enough that unless you compare it directly to Olivia's model that I referenced for the pose, the proportions aren't so off that it's distracting or off-putting. I did originally have trouble figuring out what pattern to put on her shirt though because the real Ziggy doesn't really have anything I could pull a pattern from. These days she does wear a white and silver collar, but that's not a whole lot to work with. So I left that alone while I pondered how I wanted to go about coloring the whole thing. My plan at the beginning was to use this sketch as a test piece for some acrylic paint markers I recently acquired (which you will be seeing me talk about in the future), but once the sketch was finished and I went back to check the colors I had (you know me; gotta have a swatch chart for everything), it was pretty obvious that if I want this to be my dear Ziggy and not just a random tabby cat, I needed to figure out a different coloring method. I could have just done regular acrylic paint, but that sounded like a chore and thus I was not interested. Same with gouache. Colored pencils were on the table, but the main problem I have with those is that they can be pretty slow and personally I think their texture really lends them better to replicating the 3DS/Animal Crossing: New Leaf style, as opposed to the look of New Horizons, and that's not what I was going for here. That left me with two main options: Watercolor, which was a hard pass for this kind of art (at least for Ziggy herself), and alcohol markers, which I did use quite a bit on the last Animal Crossing artwork I made, and they had worked out fairly well. Alcohol markers it was! Of course, even after that decision was made, there was the issue of how to handle the lines of the drawing. When I was planning on using the paint pens/acrylic markers/whatever, that seemed a lot simpler because, in theory, I could just use the same pen I wanted to color with to do the outlines and then fill them in. And because that would be using mostly opaque paint, if I needed to I could just cover up any overlap with relative ease. Alcohol markers don't play by the same rules though, so I had to re-think all that. In the end, I pulled out a pale warm gray Polychromos pencil close to the main color of alcohol marker that I had picked out that I figured would also be light enough to blend in everywhere else. That way I could have the defining lines that I needed without having to worry too much about them being visible in the final product. [For clarification: I picked a Polychromos because once sharpened they tend to hold a point longer and better than the other colored pencils at my disposal and I really needed to keep a sharp point as long as possible to do the lines here.] In retrospect, I do think it might have been to my benefit to pick out a pink for doing the inner ear lines, but the end result there isn't so awful that it single-handedly (paw-ed-ly?) ruins the drawing for me. It's just something to take note of for next time if there is a "next time." Once I had my lines (including doing the eyelashes and mouth with one of my usual black fineliners), the next challenge was the actual coloring. Mostly because I had to be very careful around the edges so that the marker ink didn't feather out too far (as alcohol markers do on any paper that isn't marketed as "bleed proof" because that's what bleed proof in paper actually means--not that it won't bleed through to the other side, though that is less common with that kind of paper, but that it won't "bleed" across the page), and I also had to be a little careful and choosy about how I did any blending or shading. Again, my blending and shading plan was going to be different had I used the acrylic markers. The main thing I ended up doing here was trying to find areas that needed to be layered so that the one-color shading could act as a line/barrier between sections. Best example: Where the ears meet the head, I shaded the bottom portion of the ears. You can also see this a little bit where Ziggy's tail meets her body and where the legs intersect at a few different points. By no means did this turn out perfectly, considering that I really wanted to stick to use as few colors as possible (which means pretty much all the shading is just layers of one color to darken it) which means there isn't as much distinction or variation as there could be. And I feel it necessary to note here that I was worried when I first finished the lines that the eyes looked wonky, but after coloring pretty much everything else in that concern dissolved because 1. It's harder to tell and 2. Even if they aren't exactly the same, it makes visual sense because it looks like her head is slightly turned, meaning the eyes wouldn't be identical anyway. Never underestimate the power of coloring your work in! Speaking of which, you might be wondering about her shirt by now. Well, after toying around with some ideas I got it in my head that a good way to tackle that problem might be with washi tape, as I've used it in this manner before and worked out pretty nicely. Even though it wasn't a lot to work with, I did like the idea of the base color for her top being white like the real Ziggy's collar, and that narrowed down my tape options considerably. Of the options I had that I thought would be suitable, I ended up having a choice between one with small rainbow-colored polka dots and the decidedly less vibrant small triangles that you see here. The polka dots seemed a little too peppy for Ziggy, so I went with the triangles. And this, I must say, is one of those artistic decisions that I feel even better about the longer that I see the end product.   The main issue I have with using washi tape, and thus why I don't use it in this way that often, is because cutting the washi tape to fit a specific shape is a process that doesn't get much easier even with practice.  And even if it did, that wouldn't eliminate the very real possibility of cutting or indenting the paper underneath while you're cutting the tape. Of which, I have not yet figured out how to totally avoid short of forming the washi tape on a separate piece of paper, cutting it there, and then moving it to the final piece. But that method comes with its own problems too, so... Still, I made the decision to go through with it here and just accept the rough edges/lack of precision and all that. Before I put the tape down though, I did do a little shading with some light gray markers that I was counting on showing through the tape to give it a little more dimension. Seeing it now, I do think I could've stood to go a little darker, but again this isn't something that totally ruins the end result for me. Just something worth noting. After all of the above, I was left with one lingering problem: The background. Which I've noticed seems to normally be a "problem" area for me in that I don't always have a solid idea for what to do with it. I did consider what exactly I wanted to do earlier on in the process, before I started on Ziggy on the final paper, even. Briefly, I thought I might cut her out and put her on a separate background as is sort of a go-to background method for me. Something just didn't feel right about doing that here though and it feels like I've done that a lot lately (you know, when I've not been drowning in mandalas for NaPoWriMo...). So it was at this early stage that I locked in the idea of adding in the background in later, probably doing something kind of loose to give a general idea that hopefully wouldn't take too much time or effort. We've already established that I wasn't super keen on the idea of using acrylic paints or gouache for this drawing, and that remained true for the background too. Although, I don't really like using alcohol markers for backgrounds either because it can be tricky to keep things smooth and consistent. That left me with colored pencils and watercolor. Colored pencils are usually hard pass for backgrounds for me for a number of reasons. So! Watercolor, hmm... I drew Ziggy here on my darling Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper because I love how it handles markers and it has enough weight and texture to it that it handles a lot of my other go-to options with little fuss. Watercolor is really the only thing I have trouble using on it, the main problem being that sometimes (not always) the paint doesn't like to blend out super smoothly and certain watercolor techniques don't work the same on it. This doesn't mean it's useless for watercolor (at least not for me), that just means I have to be more careful about how I choose to work with watercolor on it. In this case, the blending issues lined up with the idea I had of letting the background have more texture since Ziggy came out a lot smoother by the very nature of alcohol markers. Somewhere in all this, the idea struck me to use my Gelatos to leave behind some crayon-like texture. That idea seemed fitting to me since Animal Crossing is a fairly light-hearted and child-friendly game, themes that crayons go along with. The gelatos are water-soluble but not every color dissolves completely when activated with water. This should be pretty evident here because I didn't try to hide it. I wanted quick and easy, and without a doubt just letting the texture do whatever it wants is the quick n' easiest method to use with the gelatos. Once I'd done a bit of back and forth with two greens and two blues to give me the solid suggestions of a sky and ground, it still felt like it was missing something. Ultimately, it seemed like a good idea to me to try and mimic the triangle pattern/texture that New Horizons features. (In past games you could get squares or circles for a grass pattern at random.) And while I as per usual I had to think on how to go about this, in the end, the best solution I could come up with turned out to be drawing the triangles in with alcohol markers. Truly, I'm surprised to be reporting this because I fully expected the creamy nature of the gelatos to make using alcohol markers on top feel disguising and unproductive. But not so! At least not with the limited gelato use here. The creamier areas do soften the color of the marker, but I think that worked to my advantage. Although, I did end up using a little bit of my yellow Moonlight gel pen because I felt like I needed some yellow triangles for balance and I knew transparent yellow markers wouldn't do what I wanted. But that brings us to the final product. I'm happy with it. And I do really like how the grass ties in with Ziggy's green eyes. It's just a nice little touch of visual cohesion in my book. As I always say, I'm sure it's not perfect and there are some missteps here and there or things that could be improved. Nevertheless, it was a fun experiment and serves as good encouragement for me to continue playing with the lineless look, among other things. I do have to note though that it feels super weird to just leave the eyes like this with no indication of shine on them! I made the choice not to since it's not a common trait with the official character models (at least not for eyes in this same style) but part of me still feels like it's incomplete. As I've said before recently and I'll probably say again, I can't promise I'll be getting back to a regular upload schedule now, but it's on my mind. I want to get to that point soon. I do have the acrylic markers I mentioned to talk about and another supply in the mail, and some other art in my backlog. So if you can be patient with me a while longer, there will be more from me to look forward to. In the meantime, please be kind to yourself and others. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram