the portable city

by definition, not static

construction is continuing / old posts are being rebuilt / new archives are being built

RSS

longer reads

bigger ideas and more to look at

read all the big posts
  • Levon Biss’s Phasmid Egg Photography

    Levon Biss’s Phasmid Egg Photography

    I came across detail shots of these on tumblr and had to go questing for more, and while it seems likely I’ve seen Levon Biss‘s work before, it’s been amazing rediscovering it after dipping my own toes into amateur macro photography. Sometimes these days when I watch movies or play games that use speculative designs, […]

    (read it)

    in

Concept Art

professional vis dev work

see more

Comics

comics of many kinds

see more
  • Wizard Puberty Zine

    Wizard Puberty Zine

    I started thumbnailing out my wizard puberty zine! I think there’s another edit pass on the text ahead of me though; I’m gonna do the first ten or twelve pages, maybe all the way to…

    in

photography

digital camera snaps and thoughts

see more

Pocket Dungeons

system agnostic ttrpg modules that come in a cute pouch

see more
  • The Corruption of Pelursk – Pocket Dungeon Pack

    The Corruption of Pelursk – Pocket Dungeon Pack

    The Corruption of Pelursk is a system-agnostic tabletop RPG hexcrawl/dungeon, written by Shel Kahn. The Isle of Pelursk holds a glowing, steaming, mist-shrouded secret at its heart, and once you’ve entered its clutches it does not want to let you leave. Designed to fit easily as a sidequest into an ongoing campaign or stand confidently…

  • Keep on the Shining Isle – Pocket Pack

    Keep on the Shining Isle – Pocket Pack

    Keep on the Shining Isle is a system-agnostic dungeon featuring a haunted ruin, a mystery cult and some very tempting apples. Pick this up to send your home campaign on a memorable sidequest, or try out your favourite new system with this 1-2 session scenario. Written and published by Shel Kahn as the first of many…

Teaching

professional vis dev work

see more

Art

paintings and drawings and more

see more
  • Bus Stop Crystal Island

    Bus Stop Crystal Island

    More neocolor II crayons on hot press watercolour paper! Learning these is taking some time; unfortunately much of the content on youtube about them is people trying them for the first time, and that’s really…

    in ,

Archive by Date:

Category Cloud:

art (139) comics (9) concept art (22) crystal islands (54) fiction (1) game dev (10) life (16) links (2) media (4) music (1) news (4) photo (24) pocket dungeons (3) projects (1) reccommendations (3) tabletop rpgs (8) teaching (8) tech life (5)

Tag Cloud:

adventure (6) Aga Khan Museum RPG Camp (6) architecture (5) bear (4) black and white (4) bronze age (4) building block (99) challenge (5) character design (10) concept art (9) crystal island (18) crystals (7) digital art (10) digital painting (48) digital photography (22) disability (18) dnd (6) dogs (4) dragon (7) drawing (4) environment design (6) fantasy (15) forest (5) game art (5) gouache (44) heavy metal (6) horror (8) house (4) image (63) inktober (5) island (7) landscape (10) landscape art (5) low poly (4) map (6) museums (5) nerve shit (13) oil pastel (18) one year recovery (10) painting (29) pencil crayon (11) plein air (6) portrait (5) procreate (4) rpg (5) scifi (11) sketchbook (10) solarpunk (5) space (4) spaceship (4) strange (4) structure (155) study (14) tabletop rpg (4) tabletop rpgs (6) teaching (4) urban photography (5) videogame art (5) vis dev (6) visdev (5) watercolour (38) wip (5) wizard (4) yellow king rpg (5)

Latest Comments:

  4. thank you for sharing this! this was my first shot at one, but i definitely plan to do more: https://candiedreptile.club/picture.php?/3443/category/5

Website Details:

This site is built to be a conversation and archive and digital garden.

Links to Enjoy:

  • Artist! Chris Hüth

    chrishuth.com

  • Artist! Mary Verhoeven

    sob-comix.com

news

what’s up at the portable city

  • LongStory 2!
    LongStory 2!

    So my day job at Bloom Digital has kept a lot of my life under NDA, and it’s a real treat to get to tell you about LongStory 2 and all the hard work we’ve been doing to make this game a reality! LongStory was originally created in 2014 as an alternative to shallow “insert…

read all the news

personal blog

the shel news

read all the updates

short snippets

pinned thoughts and quick snapshots

  • Wizard Puberty Zine
    Wizard Puberty Zine

    I started thumbnailing out my wizard puberty zine! I think there’s another edit pass on the text ahead of me though; I’m gonna do the first ten or twelve pages, maybe all the way to finish, so I know sort of what my visual language IS, and then go back to the text one more…

  • Gouache Spaceship Sketch
    Gouache Spaceship Sketch

    Berkey-inspired, done in one of muji’s very cheap and much-nicer-than-expected sketchbooks.

  • Dragon WIP Gouache Painting
    Dragon WIP Gouache Painting

    I loved the sketch for this and the painting isn’t quite capturing it, so I’m wondering if, at this WIP stage, it might make sense to go in next with pencil crayons and see if i can’t capture more of what I’m looking for gesturally.

  • remember to unclench your jaw
    remember to unclench your jaw

    watercolour, including some amazing shimmery blues gifted to me by a friend, white gouache, metallic gelly roll pens, white pencil crayons, and tense neck muscles.

  • Sketchbook Wizards on Crystal Islands
    Sketchbook Wizards on Crystal Islands

    I’ve got a few iterations I’m exploring here and I’m thinking these might be worth doing full paintings of at some point.

  • Toronto scene in Gouache
    Toronto scene in Gouache

    A lovely array of flowers i used to walk by every day after work.

  • New Gouache Paint – Cascade Green
    New Gouache Paint – Cascade Green

    got a new tube of gouache paint! Winsor & Newton’s Cascade Green. You can see the tube colour pure in the top left swatch – the rest are mixes. Teals are wonderfully fun pigments to work with because of this incredible breadth of mixes possible. Functionally, Cascade Green is working like a very highly saturated…

  • gouache portrait study of a singer
    gouache portrait study of a singer

    heck, i love gouache, I’ve missed gouache

  • Lee Pace in The Fall – gouache study
    Lee Pace in The Fall – gouache study

    Process shots: Honestly, I love the tiled effect I had going before the tighter rendering and, while the drawing wasn’t solved yet at that stage, I am curious if that isn’t a more appealing style for a potential finish for me on future studies. Something to explore.

  • little crystal island with a little wizard
    little crystal island with a little wizard

    watercolour and fountain pen, in my sketchbook. I’ve been drawing modern wizards for my wizard puberty zine and what if they hung out on crystals islands.

  • oil pastel mini portrait study
    oil pastel mini portrait study

    Browsed through Earth’s World for some great natural light portraits to practice with. This was made in a new little 5 x 7ish sketchbook I picked up that’s filled with recycled cotton rag paper. I’d been noticing that rag papers have taken my softest oil pastels the best – you can see one pushed to…

  • while i am gardening this website i realize the weeding process is maybe invisible

    As I edit posts for spelling and grammar and tagging and layout and all these little invisible things I do to try and learn how to wrangle my website and all its content, I realize that a) this seems to kick them back into RSS “unread” status, which must be annoying..? and b) most folks…

read all the little posts