I started this drawing in 2024. The characters are vaguely representative of the human and dragon couple in a short story published online years ago.

The reference model for the guy on the left was a Barbie(TM) doll. That was uncomfortably noticeable last year.

Today, I realized the ear, eye, and hair made a difference in feeling plastic versus organic.

This version is better.

I was given a gift card. Amazing. When I tried to use it to buy novels from a major chain store, I couldn't. Not until I changed the location from Florida could I even view my books in the "cart".

Why? Apparently, because the store listed the books as adult-rated.

Among all the other censorship pushed onto Floridians (and the rest of the country who's had the misfortune of dealing with the dick state's anti-knowledge movements) are now restrictions on online book sales?

More than before, I distrust Floridian who make excuses for the "Don't Say Gay" governor and his conservative goons.

My books already arrived. I changed my locations in the system. It's still infuriating, especially after I was kicked off a video site for being a suspected Floridian. That was another level of messed up....

How long until Newgrounders in that state—or in Utah, or in South Carolina— can't access this site without going full on with infosec?

I regularly read how-to books for the mental composting only, skipping over the exercises. But when someone here on Newgrounds recommended Marc Brunet's "How to Draw in 30 Days!" video, I for whatever reason felt like following along, more or less in my own way.

I've so far done the first twelve days. The instructions were to draw:

1. Sphere cut in half.
2. Overlapping spheres.
3. Row of spheres in perspective.
4. Sphere with light and shadow.
5. Cylinders.
6. Complex Shape(s).
7. Floating cubes.
8. Eyeballs.
9. Pyramid of cylinders and cubes.
10. Full to half volumes.
11. Two rows of spheres to a vanishing point.
12. Bent or wiggling cylinders.

These exercises can be boring to look over. So I want to show off this filter from my image editing app.

My cheap scanner doesn't copy all the graphite, which is even harder to see when correcting for uneven lighting. This negative filter helps brings out more of the lines and shading from the scan. Isn't it neat? This view seems useful in identifying areas that don't come across as well as they could.

https://falsfiction.itch.io/earthy-products-pixel-art-tiles (Rating: E for everyone but the stories on the account aren't.)

Free download. If you really want to pay something, there's Ko-fi.

A note about references for my own conscience: I missed a couple in the included About file.

For "Lover's Stones", a photograph downloaded for older project (from a site that afterward leaned into AI crap) helped me loosen up. The book 101 Textures in Colored Pencil by Denise J. Howard was my primary reference for the rusted steel.

What if Mario (or Luigi) from a remake of Super Mario Bros. and later media had to find the captured prince?

These designs aren't perfect, but they get the point across.

Edited to add context: I drew both of these in the same night after getting fired up from someone for calling LGBTQ characters unnecessarily "distracting" and using "gay Mario" rescuing his "gay platonic friend".

If this is you I'm quoting— thanks for the inspiration.

(large in BBS)

I wish I could more often get real food to people who are hungrier than me.

draft

The project is a small collection of merdudes who don't get enough representation within this theme.

There's a seahorseman, blobfishman, eelman, and this classic style of fish.

I'm angling to finish them by June 1st.

Edit: Done early. So I guess I can focus on how bad the political situation with civil rights, humanitarian aid, environmental conversation and recovery, food safety, drug (medicine) availability, public health in general,....

When I published my work in progress in my gallery (because computer glitches were making me nervous), I said the page could have been in a blog post. Here's that post with my drafts. This time, I added two photo I'd referenced for the setting.

Timeline: The pictures above are from last week, Sunday the 18th, and Tuesday the 20th. When I uploaded that last one here, my goal was still to finish the background, clean up the water, then animate the whole drawing.

That last goal has been dropped indefinitely. Animating is too much for what else I need to focus on for the last week of May. No surprise.

My references included photos from an old beach trip. Yeah, the real beach was prettier. I didn't want to distract from Lady. (The finished version is in my gallery.)

Some Newgrounders weren't alive yet when I took the photographs. Back then, I used actual film that was developed at camera shops. (Do you remember one-hour labs?) I took a quick photo of them with my phone, and because I didn't feel like taking them out of the plastic of their photo album, they look even older than they are.

Aaand there's another artist who has decided to self-censor art uploaded to Newgrounds after noticing the homophobia here.

I appreciate the artists who continue to post any affectionately gay or queer characters and comics on this site. We don't have many places online, especially for adult-/restricted-rated pieces, and it's sad that most everyone else is either full of AI-generated images (aka CRAP) or plagiarized writing (SHIT).

Despite what I've quietly said before, I'm planning on staying for several more months, so it's sad watching the trend of "Everything by everbody {within the rules} means me and mine!" to trying to fit in to the culture here.

For now, I'm going on a voting spree to recognize the good stuff that was downvoted with blam ratings for shitty reasons.

A thread by @SourCherryJack inspired this sketch. Because it's not supposed to go there, it's going here.

Sorry the scene doesn't make sense as it is in this depiction. The characters are flirting while practicing a trick of transferring spiritual energy.

The painting app is very simple. It doesn't have layers, it has only type of paint / paintbrush, and I used only a few tools. With no fill option that works, I should have either chosen a larger canvas to make space for better definition or used colors or restricted the color palette to focus more on shapes.

I'd start over if there was any reason to work further on the scene.