Productively Procrastinating On Writing A Difficult Piece Of Chapter By Practicing With Alcohol Markers,

I'm back to playing through KotOR 2. This is based on a conversation between @for-the-love-of-starwars and I, where she suggested I draw Kreia with a mug saying "#1 bad space mom." I ended up shortening it to "No. 1 Worst Mom."

I see Kreia's relationship with Revan as something of an emotionally abusive parental figure who also can't understand why her successful, adult child wants nothing to do with her.

—

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Now Playing: II-XV, Preparatory

In which Ahsoka makes a decision, Rex is too trusting, Luke and Leia get up to mischief, and Padmé and Vader argue politics over Zoom, er, holo. Again.

More art: Rebel graffiti!

It's also a sneak peek for Fortune's Rule p-III, ch-II! (Or possibly ch-III, depending on how stuff works out.)

So, I love it when SW fanart/comics include aurebesh. I really enjoy decoding the secret messages and seeing if there's anything interesting hidden in them! Naturally, then, I needed an excuse to write a bunch of aurebesh in my own art, and what better reason than anti-Imperial graffiti? Plus, it makes such a cool little snapshot of the political situation on... ahem, whatever world this is. (You'll probably know which world it is if you read the graffiti/translations.)

It was a lot of fun to do all the aurebesh lettering! At first, I was really intimidated by the idea of doing aurebesh in different font styles, like how the heck do you do that, where do you even start? But, unsurprisingly, turns out that it's not a whole lot different from writing Latin letters in different fonts.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how the whole thing turned out, especially given that the graffiti was added in a somewhat haphazard manner.

Aurebesh translations included at the bottom of the post!

This piece took two evenings, hand drawing in pencil and then going over that in Pigma Micron pen, and finally erasing the pencil. First night's progress:

I dunno what was up with that shoulder at first. Suffice it to say, things went much better after I remembered that reference photos do exist and are a really good idea.

And second night's progress:

Goodness gracious, that Anakin poster gave me grief. The CW reference pic I used had really dramatic lighting that must have tricked my brain somehow, because even though it showed him straight-on, I ended up drawing his face angled a bit toward the side, the first time? And then after that, he kind of looked a bit anime-style, which was interesting as I've never drawn in that style before in my life and didn't know it was a thing you could stumble into, but also inconvenient.

Final note—whoever was in charge of Imperial PR quite frankly sucked at their job. Because. The Imperial crest. It's insanely difficult to draw freehand. The Republic crest? Pretty easy. But the Imperial one, sheesh. Nobody's gonna be drawing that on their faces to show their support at sporting games.

Click below for aurebesh translations!

Aurebesh translations! Proceeding in order from top left of the drawing, based on location of the first letter of each sentence.

[NA]BOO WEEPS (partially cut off)

FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE---ENLIST! (stormtrooper poster)

FOR APAILANA

FIGHT BACK QUEEN K!

KARKIN' TARKIN

LON[G] LIVE [THE] REPUBLIC (partially cut off)

TO THE DEATH, SHEEV

THE HERO WILL RETURN---HAVE NO FEA[R] (partially cut off)

INACHU MOCO, POODOO LORDA (Huttese: eat maggots, sh*t boss)

KRIFF THE IMPS

FOR [THE REPUB]LIC (mostly cut off, Clone Wars poster)

[MAY THE] F[ORCE] BE WI[TH] US A[LL] (mostly cut off)

VICTORY AND JUSTICE

HER SPIRIT LIVES ON

TRAITOR

QUASH! QUARSH!

DOWN WITH PALPATINE!

DOWN WITH VADER!

Noticing something funny about my fanart

So, a few weeks ago, I did a drawing for one of the chapters in Fortune's Rule—a little digital sketch of Padmé and Luke. And then I'm looking at this drawing, and wondering why the heck does something about this picture look familiar, and then I realise:

It's Star Wars meets Mary Cassatt.

My sketch:

A couple of Mary Cassatt paintings:

Young Mother Sewing

Mère et enfant (Reine Lefebre and Margot before a Window)

And then, last week, I did another drawing, to use as a sort of banner-thing for the story. And I'm looking at it. And looking. And getting this creeping, yucky feeling that a certain painting style always inspires in me. And asking myself why I've just created Star Wars meets Hudson River School, because something about the lighting and the semi-desolation of the landscape is very reminiscent of that style.

My drawing:

Hudson River School paintings:

A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning, by Thomas Cole

Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway, by John Frederick Kensett

Seriously, why does this keep happening? Have these things have just been lurking in the brain since middle school, waiting for an excuse to escape? And what the heck is going to be next?

Now playing: III-VI, The New Way of Things

In which Obi-Wan and Padmé contemplate, Shili seeks to join the Rebellion, Piett decides to befriend a homicidal child, and Vader faces his Master after the disaster that was Wrea.

332nd team building exercises on Scariff, playing some space!football. (Fives succeeds, palpatine dies, everyone else lives AU)

Another top gun x Star Wars piece. :) (see top gun maverick)

this took me many many hours and felt like it would never end, so please see the details

Hear me out.

Kyberpunk.

Like steampunk, only it's a Star Wars AU or whatever where they've somehow learned to farm kyber crystals, and have all sorts of kyber-dependent inventions. Like, kyber-augmented hyperdrives that dramatically cut travel times. Kyber is used in podracer engines, OH GEEZ what a horrible idea.

And what if there's a difference between typical farmed kyber and "natural" kyber, like from Ilum. The Ilum kyber is purer, or more powerful, or more efficient, or whatever, so of course there are people who aren't satisfied with farmed kyber and try to raid Ilum. The Jedi are pissed.

And every so often, a Jedi doesn't find their crystal in Ilum, because it's Force-only-knows-where, growing happily away in a farmer's kyber beds. And then there's a wild goose chase all over the galaxy with a gaggle of initiates and their chaperone or a master and padawan hunting down every single kyber farm until they find one with an unusually powerful farmed crystal. Once it's found, they have to convince the farmer that they shouldn't have to pay for it, because it's meant for the baby Jedi. Nice farmers will cooperate. But some are unscrupulous and decide to jack the price.

And don't even get me started on the counterfeiting issues. You can find people selling anything that vaguely resembles crystal as kyber. It's a major problem. And everybody thinks the Jedi should be the ones to take care of it, because kyber is "their thing." The Jedi are not only pissed, but also very tired. One particularly desperate individual even tried grinding up some [farmed] kyber in case it might make a good headache remedy. [It didn't. But some padawan got a holo of it, and now ground kyber is the latest holonet sensation of the year, a la Tide pods and Nyquil chicken. The Temple healers are livid, by the way.]

(This idea is free to a good home, because I will probably never write it. If anyone adopts it, though, I'd love to see what you do with it!)

Art: Mother and Daughter

Padmé and Jobal Naberrie.

Sketched in pencil on watercolor paper, outlined in pen, and then used paintbrushes to fill in with pigment from Derwent Inktense blocks. I've barely touched the Inktense blocks since receiving them about ten years ago, so it was really cool to actually, finally use them for a finished piece, rather than just messing around! They worked super well for both intense and subtle coloring, too.

The scene is based on the image from the Wookieepedia Legends page for Padmé's mausoleum.

Something funky's going on with Padmé and Jobal's arms, and the angle of the stone under the stained glass ended up a little off somehow, but on the whole, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out! (Especially Padmé's cloak; I don't quite know how that happened, but glad it did!) The stained glass worked out much better than expected, and Inktense was a really nice medium for getting the tonal variations. Could just be me, but it seemed easier to move around on the page than watercolor, which made it more forgiving if an area ever became too light or too dark.

hamilton quote in 2023 again? yeah

now animated

the more i think about it, I don't think Star Wars should be considered scifi. I know it already probably isn't by some, but i think that it should instead be thought of a space fantasy.