Commissioned art!

I celebrated completing the draft of Deadwater back in January by commissioning art from Adam Barker (Satans_Masque; Adam Barker on Artstation; adambarkerart)

Click here for a larger version

If it's too dark to see much, your monitor isn't calibrated correctly. :) I do empathize: my work monitors are cheap and cannot be calibrated properly so it's a bit muddy, but the image is GLORIOUS on my home monitor which is very much not cheap because I do art there. If you're stuck with a terrible monitor, I used Photoshop to crank the brightness up so you can see the details, at the expense of pretty much everything else in the image. XD

Anyway! If you care about the process of commissioning and what I asked for, and what he suggested, read on!

With a bit of discussion between us, we settled on illustrating a scene from Deadfall, where Calli and Burn sit in an inn. The actual scene is the final paragraph, but the rest sets it up.( cut for passage )

I blathered at him about Caravaggio, chiarascuro, and my favorite genre of "Dramatically Lit People Sitting Around Tables in Early Modern Europe," and dumped a giant list of reference links on him, which he took in stride. I'd mentioned drawing the viewer into the picture by setting it up as if you were the one talking to them, and he took that idea and, inspired by the first-person drawings of Kim Jung Gi (kimjunggius), took it a step farther and incorporated the hands of the local that Calli and Burn are talking to.

He kept me appraised of the various steps, and would show me concept sketches, character designs and color studies, having me pick from various options, and we ended up with what you see. :)

I am thrilled with the end result, and would recommend Adam Barker for any commission work you want done. :)

Today's adventure

myrialux picked me up for lunch today, and dropped me off at the loading dock, where I usually go in. Today I was not the only creature in the inside dock...



A small finch (female house finch, I think) had gotten trapped there. After attempting to call two different people, neither of whom were at their desks, I realized the answer was simple: the controls for the big garage door of the dock (there's a small, human-sized door we go in and out of) were right there. So I opened the door, then spent some time trying to find the bird, who'd hidden around the side of the big walk-in refrigerator unit that Dining Services installed in the dock to store drinks for the library Bistro.

The bird had found the window, and was trying desperately to exit through it, and I blocked its path away from the window (I expect), but I poked around, found a garbage bag full of party decorations, and used a fake branch with autumn leaves on it to gently harry the bird away from the window. It flew around the refrigerator unit and vanished, presumably out the open door.

I'm just glad it didn't get into the ceiling, as there were several missing tiles.