Thoroughly haunted, indeed

Well, I've reached a halfway point and subsequent stand-still on this one so I figured I'd update here and see if that didn't jar my sloth.  The book I'm putting these in is 36 pages long, and I intend on filling the whole thing.  From this point onward I want there to be some reoccurring themes so as to better stitch together some semblance of narrative through them.  But for the past three or four days I've been sick.  Personal business is in shambles, and this is probably the last you'll see of me for awhile.


I like this one.  If I go the naturalist route in the text which follows, I'd like to describe some of the heathen tribes lurking in the wood.


Here I tried something new with ink I'd previously relied on watercolor for.  It turned out a lot better than I expected.  Aside from some personally galling errors in lines and positioning it turned out well.  Part of the tribal system in the wood might revolve around animal totems of some kind.  Trouble being animal totems aren't that funny.


Here I just wanted to see more stones and guard dogs.  I found that I have little choice but reverting to line art doing these stones when they are near each other.  Otherwise it just ends up looking like a mess.


I consider this one a concrete failure in regards to my original idea.  I tried using ink and water to replicate the bark of an oak tree, but it's nearly impossible to tell that is what is going on.  But fire breathing bears are nothing to scoff at.  I enjoy those.


With my previous attempt a failure I did one staying on steadier ground.  Plus, who doesn't like smilodon?  I figure any forest populated by barbarous tribes of ax wielding brutalists has got to have some saber-tooth cats to balance things out.


This one was my attempt to turn my failed oak tree method into a successful masonry method.  That worked out.  It was also my first attempt to do something specific to a possible future narrative, in which I'd like to discuss the failed attempts by normal folks at habitation of the haunted wood.  An environment like that is definitely going to turn your entire family into anthrophage maniacs, if not full blown mutants.


And this one failed too.  Such is the nature of experimentation, I suppose.  The end result isn't bad to look at, but my intention was far different than the outcome.  But as always, I learned how not to do something, so that's a plus.


And so again I stuck to familiar ground.  More narrative stuff here, something is starting to cement itself in my mind.  There'll be a lot more graffiti in future.  I have to take steps to prevent this turning into a Conrad ripoff, with the ideas I've been having, but I am sure the end result will be funnier than Heart of Darkness in any case.

There you have it.  Half.  I've got three more in the works, and ideas for many more besides.  It's just a matter now of motivating myself.  That's hard.  I've been getting a non-stop stream of shitty news lately, people who never want to see me again, people who want to forget that I exist.  Fair enough, I suppose, because I do often forget about the world at large.  If I could hammer a screwdriver into the portion of my brain that made me miss those few people that I do, I would.  People are an army of bastards.