Coloring Book Page – Jen Stark 3

 Another Jen Stark design. This time I stuck with a single hue, decreasing brightness within the shapes and saturation from top to bottom. The result creates an interesting illusion of depth.

Coloring Book Page – Jen Stark 2

 

This is my first use of Fresco’s new reference layer feature. It sets up the line art as a reference for the fill tool. Unlike using the “multiply” option, this works directly with fills, eliminating the annoying little blank spots at the edges of lines.

This color scheme worked with the same hues as the previous Jen Stark, only this time it decreased saturation rather than brightness. And by using the fill tool rather than the pen tool, I finished it in minutes rather than days.

Coloring Book Page – Werewolves

 

Though I’ve been having great fun with the Berni Wrightson coloring book, the zombie and the mummy seemed somewhat unseasonal. These snowy lycanthropes are more in keeping with the holiday spirit.

Coloring Book Page – Mummy

Back to the Berni Wrightson coloring book. It was something of a relief to work with a limited color palette after the complicated color study. I finished this one in comparatively short order.

Coloring Book Page – Jen Stark 1

 

This one took awhile. It started as a page from the Jen Stark coloring book and kinda took on a life of its own.

The main idea here was to produce a color study that blends adjacent hues on the color wheel, decreasing in brightness from 100% in the middle to 45% on the edges. Though the result is more math than freestyle art, I liked how it turned out.

The reason it took awhile was that I opted to color it using a blake pen tool in Fresco. The coverage is uneven, which gives it a hand drawn appearance up close.

Coloring Book Page – Zombie

Back in the 70s Berni Wrightson created a coloring book that has been out of print since then. The artist’s Facebook page has been posting pictures from it, and I kicked in to the Kickstarter so I could color the pictures without feeling like I was stealing them.

This is my first effort. I started with the same green I used for the corpses in the Vlad the Impaler Christmas picture, and just went from there.

Earworm – Cold Tea

 

Photo plus Photoshop. I had some fun making the edges of the tea bag ever so slightly transparent to show the lettering layer underneath.

Answer in the comments.

Festive Holiday Decor

Inspired by a meme about Vlad the Impaler’s holiday lawn decorations (and a friend’s response to the meme), I added some holiday cheer to a famous woodcut.

For the full effect, imagine Mannheim Steamroller’s version of “Carol of the Bells” blaring at top volume.

The Fins – Finis

After taking a couple of days away from the project, I’ve decided to leave it where it is rather than start something new just to push past 50,000 words. The novel and the short story – which at more than 23,000 words isn’t really all that short – are enough. I accomplished what I set out to do.

I’m going to switch to some other creative endeavors for awhile, but I’ll return to post some outlines and final thoughts for The Fins sometime in the weeks to come.

The Fins – Day 24

At long last, VIB is done.

It was a profoundly mixed experience. Some of it – particularly the Juliana Y subplot – is some of the best writing I’ve done in awhile. Other parts were like pulling teeth, and I’m not at all convinced that they won’t be as tough to read as they were to write.

So like wine, I’m going to let this one age for awhile and see what I think of it once I have the benefit of some distance.

As things stand now, I'm a little more than 8000 words shy of the 50k for a Novel Rhino win. I may take up one of the other sections of Sunday Night School. Or I may concede that I’ve met my goal even if I haven’t finished the word quota.

The Fins – Day 23

The slog continues. Which is exactly what it feels like at this point. Other than yesterday, I haven’t managed a single decent day of writing since I finished the novel. I fear I may be learning a hard lesson about my psychology as a writer.

The Fins – Day 22

For some time now I’ve been dreading writing the Margaret Kelly subplot. Try as I might, I can’t muster much feeling about her one way or another. She’s such a caricature of a character, and I’m not sure what exactly to do about her.

However, I knew it would be a bad idea to write the last part of the story and then try to backtrack to Kelly’s bit. So I dug in, and with good sessions in the morning and after dinner I managed to write her demise from start to finish.

Anyone checking the outline may note that originally her passing was supposed to be more sexual than it turned out to be. I confess I’m not fond of writing sex scenes, especially not if they involve violence as well. Like bad things befalling animals or children, I prefer not to see that kind of thing in movies or read it in books. So why would I write it myself?

Frankly, I think it turned out scarier without the sex stuff.

When I completed her story, I noted that I was almost all the way to 40,000 words for the month. So I finished the evening with the beginning of Steven Raleigh’s descent into madness. If I can get another good writing session in tomorrow, I may be able to wrap up “VIB.”

Where to from there, only time will tell.

The Fins – Day 21

Juliana has met her end. Though I recognize that this is a story with nothing but bad people, she’s the first time I’ve written a villain with multiple dimensions and a sympathetic backstory. When one writes mostly Lovecraftiana, most of the bad guys are nonhuman entities out to obliterate the universe.

The trouble with finishing the last 900 or so words of a section like that is that it didn’t exactly leave me inspired to move on to anything else. Hence another low word count for the day.

The Fins – Day 20

The Lonesome Death of Juliana Y continues apace. Another slow writing day full of distractions. My current plan is to spend some time doing housework tomorrow to see if that inspires a fresh perspective on productivity.

FFR: The proagonist is currently cowering under her desk.

The Fins – Day 19

And off we go to “VIB.”

The transition wasn’t seamless. My morning was unusually busy for a Friday. And once I got home, I spent most of the afternoon on non-Novel-Rhino activities. Even when I sat myself down at the computer, I had trouble getting myself on task. I re-read some of the parts of the story I’d already written, which made sense when I was bringing myself back up to speed on The Lonesome Death of Julianna Y, but I also blew a bunch of time on parts I’d completely finished.

As usual, I got into a writing groove around 9 p.m., and that allowed me to at least get the story up and running. Fingers crossed, I hope to make more (and more consistent) progress now that Thanksgiving break is officially underway.

FFR: Juliana has shut the spider out of her kitchen and is now considering her options.

The Fins – Day 18

 

And The Legrasse Estate is complete.

I wrote a little later into the night than I usually do, but after I finished Chapter Ten it seemed like such a small thing to keep typing long enough to complete the whole thing. This way I can make a clean end to the first part of The Fins and start fresh with the second part tomorrow.

Of the four Novel Rhino novels I’ve written, this is longer than the first but shorter than the other two. That’s actually slightly inaccurate, because this one’s shorter than the overall word count for Deadly Light but longer than the part of DL that I wrote during NaNoWriMo in 2017.

It feels strange to be done with the novel and yet have more than 15,000 words to go for the goal.

The Fins – Day 17

Back on track at least a little. I’ve made it quite a ways into the last substantive chapter, approximately halfway through the big showdown.

The Fins – Day 16

Another not great day. I was sick in the morning and somehow never managed to get a writing streak going. I managed 600 words or so, but it was piecemeal work at best.

At least Chapter Ten is underway.

The Fins – Day 15

I spent a chunk of time between work duties this morning figuring out all the small details for the outline of Chapter Ten. Everything is mapped out now, so all that remains is to write it. I planned to dig right into it this afternoon just a soon as I got home from taking care of a car title transfer at the Wyandotte County Treasurer’s Division of Motor Vehicles.

And that last part should tell you everything you need to know about why I didn’t end up writing a single word today.

The Fins – Day 14

Not a feast as epic as yesterday, but not exactly a famine either.

I finished Chapter Nine just as my evening writing time was coming to an end. Exposition and backstory are now completely done, so from here on out it’s all dialogue and action. In the past, writing that sort of stuff has gone faster for me. So we’ll see what the next few days bring.

The Fins – Day 13

Feast or famine. So at least it was a feast today. I wrote for most of the afternoon and then got some more done after dinner. My word count for the day topped 3800, which isn’t an all-time best but is definitely the best so far this year.

Chapter Eight is now in the rear view. If I can put in another strong showing tomorrow, I’ll finish Chapter Nine and move on to at least the beginning of the final showdown.

FFR: Emily is now in the middle of what I imagine will be the novel’s final dose of back story.

The Fins – Day 12

My first time this month with two bad days in a row. I faced some work demands early on and somehow failed to settle into a writing groove until after 10 p.m.

I think I’m procrastinating, because I actually made some progress on some other creative projects. If this was any month other than November, I would have considered this a productive day.

However, words began to flow more smoothly late in the evening. With luck I’ll be able to pick up the plot tomorrow and run with it.

FFR: Sam’s home but hasn’t yet gone inside.

The Fins – Day 11

Not a good one today. Lots of distractions. At least I managed to finish the fight and move on to Sam’s sit-down with Luci.

The Fins – Day Ten

Then today I bounced back nicely. A long stretch of writing in the afternoon allowed me to almost completely recover the ground I lost yesterday.

FFR: when I stopped this evening, Sam and her husband were right in the middle of their big fight.

The Fins – Day Nine

Today was the day I guess I knew was coming. My streak of 2000+ days is over. I didn’t even make it to the NaNoWriMo 1667 word daily pace. Farewell, perfect streak badge.

In a way it’s kind of a relief. Now that the streak is broken, it takes a chunk of the pressure off. I’m still confident that I will finish the challenge, probably well before the end of the month.

And in happier news, I figured out to bridge the gap I mentioned yesterday: by not bridging it. When I went back and re-read the first part of the book, I found that the first conversation between Sam and her mom established enough groundwork for them to move straight to the more momentous talk they’re getting ready to have.

The Fins – Day Eight

I’ve hit a gap in my notes. Chapter Seven is done except for whatever plot development is going to segue into the start of Chapter Eight. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to build a bridge over the hole. Literally everything I’ve come up with is either too contrived, too boring or both.

Fortunately I squeaked by with just over 2000 words before I hit the wall. So now I have until tomorrow to figure out a fix.

I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

The Fins – Day Seven

This was the day I hoped to have yesterday.

Knowing that I planned to watch a movie in the evening, I wanted to make quota in the afternoon so I wouldn’t have to worry about doing a lot of writing late in the evening. As it turned out, I made quota and then some. And I was also able to round things out a little after the movie. So I finished the day at 3,124 words. That brought my Novel Rhino total to just over 16,000 words, and The Legrasse Estate to just over 34,000.

I estimate that the novel is roughly 2/3 done. I could conceivably finish it (or at the very least come close) by the end of next weekend.

FFR: Sam’s had her encounter in Remy’s art studio, and now she’s opened the door for a guest.

The Fins – Day Six

One of the odd things about writing a novel I began more than a year ago is that I keep hitting different milestones almost every day. If there’s no NaNoWriMo 2021 goal to be met immediately, I nonetheless clear some significant point in the overall progress of The Legrasse Estate.

For example, today’s writing wasn’t anything noteworthy for Novel Rhino. But I passed 30,000 words in the novel. 

Today was also notable as an exceptionally uneven writing experience. I overslept, which went a long way toward disrupting my plans to produce more than an average day’s word count. 

I also got caught up trying to fix some problems that have emerged over the last few days. One of the problems with putting a project down for a year and then picking it back up again is that it can be tricky trying to remember what’s already been established and what remains to be written. In particular, I noticed that Chapter Three already contained a lot of the back story I recently included in Chapter Five. Even worse, a lot of it by rights belonged in Chapter Six (which is where I am now). So even if I’d dragged my butt out of bed on schedule, I would still have faced the loss of valuable writing time to making fixes that would otherwise have nagged at me and made fresh writing impossible.

However, I managed to maintain what has – for better or worse – become a standard practice this November: stumble through as much as I can before dinner, and make up for lost ground by writing like crazy between 9 and 11 p.m.

FFR: Sam’s meeting with Abigail Marsh is now complete, though she hasn’t yet returned to her hotel.

The Fins – Day Five

 
Though this wasn’t the most spectacular writing day, I still managed to clear the 2k mark. I’m over 10,000 words for the month now.

At this point I have seven writing badges on the NaNoWriMo profile. I should pick up another one on Sunday for writing seven days in a row. After that it will be another week or so before I reach another badge-worthy milestone.

FFR: Sam and Luci have finished their field trip to Arkham, and they’ve just gotten back to their hotel room in Boston.

The Fins – Day Four

Today was full of a considerable number of non-Rhino-related activities. I genuinely feared that this would be my first sub-par day. And though this was indeed less than I’d hoped to accomplish, a productivity spurt late in the game brought me comfortably if not dramatically over the 2k mark.

The overall total for the novel is now over 25,000 words. It’s weird to be past what I’m guessing will prove to be the book’s halfway point after only four days of writing.

I also noticed that there’s a passage in Chapter Three that gives away too much too early in the game. When I find a day with more available breathing room, I will need to go back and re-read. I don’t think I’ll end up deleting anything, but some of it may need to be moved to another place in the story.

For future readers: at long last I made it to the end of Chapter Five.

The Fins – Day Three

 

Today I got a good writing session in late in the afternoon, and then after dinner I managed another productive hour or two after I got done taking pictures of some glassware.

The big news is that my daily total put me over 200,000 lifetime NaNoWriMo words. Even though I’ve only finished three Rhino novels, my partial completions in April and November 2020 were enough to get me to 200k a little early. Well, that and my three wins were all a little over the exact 50,000 finish line.

For future readers: today’s efforts finally got Sam out of the cemetery and on her way back home.

The Fins – Day Two

Knock wood, writing seems to be a much smoother process this time around than it was amid the chaos of last November. I topped yesterday’s daily word count total, which was particularly fortunate because I hit a rut early in the evening and didn’t really build up steam until after dinner.

And even better, part of what I wrote today was actually scary. It came as a shock to me, because I’m working on a section that I expected to be mostly back story, introducing some of the plot points from Lovecraft’s tale. Moments like that always make for a more enjoyable writing experience.

I left off just as Sam learns of her family ties to Inspector Legrasse and Alan advises her to leave town.

The Fins – Day One

I got off to something of a sideways start today.

In past Novel Rhino years I’ve made a custom of staying up until midnight on Nov. 1 and getting the new season underway with an hour or so of writing before going to bed. This time, however, I was too tired to stay up that late. So I turned in before midnight, vowing to work all the harder the next day (which now of course is today).

As if the spirit of Novel Rhino took offense at my disregard for tradition, I woke up at around 3 a.m. and found myself completely unable to get back to sleep. So I shuffled off to my desk, sat down and got to work.

I don’t know exactly how far that got me, but with that opening push plus a late afternoon writing session and another after dinner, I managed to clear the 2000 word mark.

For the record, I opted to begin with The Legrasse Estate. I’m going to try to finish it in as close to proper NaNoWriMo form as I can and then switch to VIB to round out my 50k word count.

For any future readers of the novel, I resumed work where I left off: the Point Poulpe sheriff’s station. And I made it as far as the altercation in the cemetery before calling it a day.

Coloring Book Page – Mucha

Starting with a line drawing from Pinterest inspired by Alphonse Mucha, I added color by using a stock photo of a piece of cloth from Rawpixel. The original was red, but I duplicated it into different layers and made hue, saturation and brightness adjustments to get the other colors. It took a combination of mobile and desktop Photoshop, but I was pleased with the results.

Coloring Book Page – Godzilla

I downloaded this drawing by Nathan Pride from Everfreecoloring. It proved to be low resolution and not highly detailed, so coloring it was the work of an afternoon even with the light effect layers.

Coloring Book Page – Art Deco Metallic

For this one I decided to mask rather than color between the lines.

Starting with art from Everfreecoloring, I backed it with matching gold and silver metallic layers from Rawpixel. Then I masked off parts of the gold layer to show the silver underneath. The final step was to add tones by coloring in with black at varying levels of opacity.

Overall I’m pleased with the effect, though I think it works better in the darker areas than it does in the highlighted stripe toward the right.

It Takes Every Word – The Rocking-Horse Winner

Today’s addition to It Takes Every Word is “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence. I’ve been having some trouble coming up with a story that fits with the Writing Club’s theme for its final meeting later this semester: Triumph. To be sure, this story features a Pyrrhic victory rather than a legitimate win. But it’s the best I’ve been able to do so far.

Here’s the link to the story.

The horse’s head is a detail from “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” by Jacques-Louis David. Apparently the artist painted five different versions of the same subject. This detail was taken from the Malmaison version.

Though the horse seems distressed, I’m sure Napoleon himself had an easier time with the St. Bernard Pass through the alps than he did when he went to Mount Olive.

Popeye kicked his ass, which was the funniest joke I’d ever heard when I was 12. So feel free to share it with your favorite 12 year old.

Coloring Book Page – Old One

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials. I was endlessly fascinated by Wayne Douglas Barlowe’s paintings of alien species from science fiction novels, novellas and short stories.

Though I know most of them only through their pictures, I’ve read some of the source stories. Obviously that includes the Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. In tribute to my childhood fave – now grown somewhat loose-paged through age and use – I used Barlowe’s illustration as a color reference for this page from the Call of Cthulhu Coloring Book.

Short Story – The Tulpamancer

 Working with a prompt from It Takes Every Word, I spent some time this morning writing a short story. Actually I came up with the idea for this story a long time ago. But it was a good fit for the theme we’re exploring at the next meeting of the KCKCC Writing Club. So that seemed like a good excuse to type it up.

The story itself is short enough to include here in its entirety.

________________________________________________________

 

The Tulpamancer

“Don’t believe a word of it,” Sharon said to me. “She doesn’t even have a boyfriend.”

At this point I’d been at InfoTech Solutions for only three weeks. Still learning my way around and trying to figure out who was who. Sharon was officially the head of the HR department and unofficially the company’s gossip clearinghouse. So if anyone in the office would know whether or not Martina Green had a boyfriend – other than Martina herself – Sharon would be the definitive source.

Still, I felt I had to ask.

“Are you sure? Because she says she does. Claims his name is Barry and that he works for a different IT company. She even has his picture in a frame next to her computer.”

“Let me tell you about that picture,” she replied with a smirk. “One time when she was away from her desk, I stepped into her cubicle and snapped a quick photo of her supposed boyfriend’s portrait. Then I ran an image search, and do you know what I found?”

I let her savor her I-know-something-you-don’t-know moment, and then I prompted her to continue.

“What?”

“That’s actually a head shot of some male model she found on the internet. His real name is Dusan or something like that, and he’s a fashion model from Eastern Europe. So not Barry from another IT shop five blocks away from here.”

“I don’t understand. Why would she pretend to have a boyfriend if she doesn’t have one?”

Sharon gave me an indulgently exasperated look.

“Some women feel like they aren’t really a person unless they’re in a relationship with a man. So even an imaginary boyfriend is better than no boyfriend at all.”

 

A few days later I passed Martina’s desk on my way to the break room, and I noticed a large bouquet of roses in a vase next to Barry-slash-Dusan’s picture.

“Looks like someone has a secret admirer,” I said to her.

“Oh, Barry’s no secret,” she replied with a reflective smile.

“He must have done something really bad if he had to make up to you with that many flowers.”

“Heavens no!” she exclaimed with indignation, mock or true I couldn’t tell. “Barry never has to send me make up gifts because he never does anything bad.”

Definitely imaginary, I thought as I nodded and resumed my coffee break journey.

 

The next day the company owner made a rare appearance at the office.

“Can I have everyone’s attention for a moment, please?” he said in his most managerial tone. Immediately all eyes were on him and his two companions: Sharon from HR and a new guy who seemed somehow strangely familiar.

“Everybody, let me introduce Barry Newman. He will be our new SQL database administrator. He joins us from ZipData, our cross-town rivals. To welcome Barry to the team, there’s cake in the break room.”

From across the room I tried to read Sharon’s reaction to the new arrival, but she held her face still and expressionless.

 

They made no secret of their great love. The boss gave the new hire the cube right next to Martina. I was too busy with my own job to spend much time monitoring them. But every time I did happen to glance their way, they seemed to be locked in some private conversation across their mutual wall rather than doing anything productive.

“You two need to get back to work,” Sharon loudly snapped at them one Friday afternoon.

Exchanging one of those intimate smiles shared by couples who know something nobody else knows, they more-or-less did what they were told.

 

After work that evening, several of us went for drinks at a nearby bar. Normally Martina and Barry kept to themselves, but this time they decided to join their fellow employees.

It was a surprisingly good experience. Barry was witty and charming. And even mousy little Martina came out of her shell a little. Indeed, we had so much fun sharing stories and telling jokes that when the happy couple announced that they had to get going, a little light went out of the place.

I found myself sharing a table and a pitcher of beer with the ever-popular Sharon and Chuck from accounting. We made an odd trio, with the HR manager’s conservative mien and Chuck’s more laid-back attire and vague scent of marijuana.

By then I was five or six drinks in, and maybe that made me not quite worried enough about provoking the woman who held dominion over my paycheck.

“Guess you were wrong about Barry,” I observed.

“Yes,” she replied, her lips pursed. “I guess I was.”

“About what?” Chuck asked, not in on it.

I explained the theory about Dusan the fashion model.

At the end Sharon added, “Everyone has a doppelganger somewhere.”

“He isn’t a doppelganger,” Chuck replied. “He’s a tulpa.”

“A what?” the other two of us asked in unison.

“A tulpa,” he repeated. “A being conjured into reality by sheer force of will. The Theosophists came up with the concept based on a Tibetan Buddhist myth. The idea is that if you believe enough in an imaginary person, he can become real He’ll even have his own independent personality, thoughts and actions.”

“What a lot of …” Sharon started.

“Awhile back a group of fanboys on Reddit tried using group meditation to create completely real, living versions of characters from My Little Pony.”

“Did they succeed?” I asked.

“Depends on how you define success,” he replied.

Sharon shot him a wordless glare clearly expressing wonderment that such an obvious stoner ever got a job in accounting.

 

Slowly and by degrees, joy fled InfoTech Solutions. Our jobs all remained the same, neither more nor less engaging than they’d ever been. But a gradual sense of pointlessness set in, as if there was less and less purpose to spending my days writing code. Though nobody talked about it, I could tell that everyone else had the same feelings.

Everyone, that is, except for one particular spot. Between the Martina and Barry cubicles, warmth and light still glowed like the corner of the Selfish Giant’s garden. They chatted and laughed and sent each other memes and fed take-out food to each other over their wall and listened to songs with their headphone ear buds shared between them. Unlike the rest of us, they appeared to be doing no work at all now. And yet they were the most happy.

Eventually Sharon could stand it no longer.

“Alright you two, that’s enough,” she barked at them. “I’m putting you on report with a strong recommendation that one of you be moved to a different cubicle.”

Martina took a brief break from staring into her boyfriend’s eyes.

“Y’know, Sharon, I’m getting tired of you,” she said with a slight melancholy in her tone. “I think it’s time to let you go.”

 

The next day Sharon didn’t show up for work. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. Nor did the company show any sign that it had hired a new HR manager or was even attempting to replace her. It seemed as if whatever purpose she served simply no longer existed. Sharon was, and then Sharon wasn’t.

She still existed in the “Meet Our People” page on the InfoTech web site. Out of some strange, sourceless curiosity, I downloaded her photo from the site and uploaded it to an image search.

Her picture was an exact match for a real estate agent in Arkansas. Not close. Exact. There Sharon sat next to a stranger’s name and the assurance that she was the number one closer in the greater Fayetteville area.

 

I got out my phone and took a selfie.

I ran an image search.

Novel Rhino 2021 – The Fins

 No, I’m not actually writing a novel called “The Fins.” Instead, I’m going to cheat on the National Novel Writing Month parameters a little.

“Into the Mist” fans have probably already noted that last November I started The Legrasse Estate, but after a couple of days I quit blogging about it. I actually managed to keep writing for awhile after that, but in the end all the turmoil that followed the election killed the project. I don’t want to come across as a sensitive artist who can only work under ideal conditions, but the stress and trauma Trump caused were simply too much.

So my main focus this time around will be to finish the novel I started last year. It was around 18,000 words long when I bailed. My guess is that it will finish somewhere in the 50,000 word neighborhood, but that means I’ll only have to write 32,000 words this year to wrap it up.

To get the rest of the way to the 50k quota for the month, I’m going to finish “VIB,” one of the short stories in the Sunday Night School collection. I began this project during Camp NaNoWriMo in April 2020 but finished only one of the five stories I hope to include.

As I will be finishing two works in progress rather than starting a new novel, I’ve dubbed this project “The Fins.”

Coloring Book Page – Cultist

This one combines watercolor layers with standard coloring layers. I’m getting better working with watercolors, so overall I’m pleased with the results.

Coloring Book Page – Hunting Horror

I had a lot of fun with this one. The monster here is a Hunting Horror, a creature that dissolves when hit with bright light.

The colors on the car are based on a photo of a Rolls Royce Phantom 1, but the rest of the colors in the picture are original. In addition to the coloring, I added the stars in the sky using a couple of spatter brushes, and I drew some green lines to supplement the black lines in the headlight beam.

With two gradient fills and some masking, I moved back and forth a bit between Fresco and Photoshop (the mobile version). This involved an annoying lag between saving the file in one app and being able to open the updated version in the other. Otherwise the combo worked reasonably well.

This was the first time I went back at the end and added a black layer behind the drawing. The extra step patched some of the inevitable gaps between the colors, improving the overall look.

Coloring Book Page – Cthulhu

 

I’d been looking forward to working on this page from the Call of Cthulhu coloring book for two reasons.

First, one of my upcoming NaNoWriMo projects revolves around this small statue of Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu.” So spending some time looking at it helped me start to get into the writing mindset.

Second, it gave me the chance to experiment around with some of Fresco’s tool set. This started as two copies of the same line drawing. The coloring on the left is traditional, comic book style stuff. The one on the right was my first foray into Fresco’s watercolor simulation abilities. Clearly I still have a lot to learn about how it works, but at least I started experimenting.

Coloring Book Page – Flying Pig

This is my first page from The Public Domain Review’s coloring book. As the original isn’t copyrighted, I can share the “before” as well:

 The world map is also a public domain image. I also created color palettes from photos of a grassy field, gold bars, a village in Italy and a pig. Actually I used two pig photos, because the first one was too pink and I decided I wanted more of a furry, speckled pig look.

Fresco doesn’t do gradient fills at all, and its masking features aren’t super strong either. So I moved to the Photoshop mobile app to work on the sky and clouds.

Coloring Book Page – Deep One

Recently Merge Dragons and I reached the point where our common journey came to an end. Which sounds like an HR guy dumping his girlfriend. I reached a plateau in the game and realized that I didn’t want to keep playing anymore.

In pursuit of something else to occupy the downtime in my daily routine, I browsed the app store looking for a new game. Finding nothing that wasn’t obviously unsuitable for one reason or another, I opted to seek elsewhere.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I downloaded some coloring books thinking that they’d be a great help in coping with isolation and stress. Somehow the practice never took hold. I finished part of the Deep One picture from the Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu coloring book, but then I set it down and didn’t pick it back up again.

Until now. I’ve used Adobe Fresco for several projects and have gotten used to how it simulates actual artists’ materials such as watercolors and oils. So I thought I’d try it on a coloring book project. Discarding my previous project, I began the Deep One anew.

One of the first things I learned was that setting the line drawing layer’s blend mode to “multiply” made everything but the black lines disappear. Previously I tried color selecting and masking, which kinda worked but left a lot of white halos around the lines. Using the new blend mode made it look and feel like a coloring book.

I used Adobe Capture to create a five-color palette from a photo of an iguana. The rest was straightforward, soothing, and more emotionally satisfying than Merge Dragons.

The Photographer’s Sketchbook – Depth of Field

 

The darkroom exercises certainly weren’t alone on the list of subjects typically addressed in the classroom. This Behance-generated drawing is the cover for the dreaded Teletubbies lesson about selective focus.

The Photographer’s Sketchbook – Printing

 

And last but not least, the cover for the printing lesson is a Behanced picture of the bottles of chemicals we use in the printing process.

The Photographer’s Sketchbook – Enlarging

 

Appropriately enough, for the lesson on enlarging, the cover is a close-up of one of our enlargers (watercolor-ized in Photoshop).

The Photographer’s Sketchbook – Developing Film

 

Here’s the cover for the lesson on developing film: the college’s darkroom transformed into a watercolor by Behance.

The Photographer’s Sketchbook – Film Photography

 

Circumstances compel me to rethink my approach to The Photographer’s Sketchbook. As noted last year, my original intent was to create an 8.5 x 11 PDF that could be printed or read online. However, I need to get the class ready for online-only delivery in the fall (thank you, COVID). So I’m switching to Spark.

Spark pages are easy to create and of course easy for students to access from within the course management system. That’s particularly important for the lessons about how to shoot, develop and make prints from film. Even in the old blended format, we did all of our film work together on campus. Now the lessons have to be taught online, with a test replacing hands-on darkroom work.

With that in mind, I’m putting together lessons on film photography, developing film, enlarging and printing. This is the cover image for the first of the four, done with the watercolor simulator in Photoshop.