longer reads
bigger ideas and more to look at
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my portrait-painting-in-gouache history
So back in 2016 I decided to learn how to use gouache. For context, I finished my second round of art school in 2013, and that included a lot of drawing training and anatomy study, which I still use every day as an artist. I also already had some classical Russian academy style portrait painting […]
in art
Concept Art
professional vis dev work
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Across the Old Battlegrounds – Environment Concept
Herders and their stagmoose, dramatic geology, and a landscape strewn with the remains of history. Loose sketch concept.
in concept art
Comics
comics of many kinds
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Hourly Comics Day 2024
very proud of these sketchy pencil crayon autobio comics! and an arm update for y’all as well:
in comics
photography
digital camera snaps and thoughts
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Inspiring photographer: Em Sharnoff
With the death of cohost, I have tried to make sure to catch my favourite cohost photography folks’ new rss feeds as best I can! And seems worthwhile to share these links with you –…
in photo -
Your Cellphone Camera’s Digital Processing Settings and You
I am mad about cellphone cameras hiding the processing they do to my photos, and I am glad about software I found that lets me control it and opt in and out.
in photo -
What Format You Might Want To Save Digital Photos In
What format do you recommend I save photographs in? Like raw or jpeg? I don’t know the difference.
in photo -
how i am doing accidental exposure therapy for my fear of bugs
So I’ve been taking photos of bugs, now that I can trust my phone to not chew up any macro or zoom photography I take, and sharing them onto iNaturalist. it scratches my look I…
in photo
Pocket Dungeons
system agnostic ttrpg modules that come in a cute pouch
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The Ghost Houses of Phylinecra – Pocket Dungeon Zine & Pocket Pack
The Ghost Houses of Phylinecra is a system-agnostic, story-heavy dungeon crawl about a community recovering after disaster, and how a goddess might try to understand mortal grief. The village of Phylinecra was a tight-knit community of artists and creatives, until it suffered a devastating flood. In the aftermath, as the survivors try to salvage their […]
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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…
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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
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Teaching Comics, Zine-making and Visual Literacy at OSF
In autumn 2017, I taught a four week comics course at the Oasis Skateboard Factory, an alternative highschool within the Toronto District Schoolboard. OSF has a project-focused curriculum, so our comic project was multifaceted, to…
in teaching
Art
paintings and drawings and more
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my portrait-painting-in-gouache history
So back in 2016 I decided to learn how to use gouache. For context, I finished my second round of art school in 2013, and that included a lot of drawing training and anatomy study,…
in art
news
what’s up at the portable city
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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…
personal blog
the shel news
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one year of arm stuff – part 9 – accessibility is a thing though! what about adaptive devices?
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one year of arm stuff – part 8 – okay but ARM recovery—
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one year of arm stuff – part 7 – no, really, what has recovery been like?
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one year of arm stuff – part 6 – recovery
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one year of arm stuff – part 5 – wait, I have wrist pain/finger weakness/tingling in my hands too! what if…?
short snippets
pinned thoughts and quick snapshots
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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…
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gouache portrait study of a singer
heck, i love gouache, I’ve missed gouache
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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…
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Gouache hawk study
got the gouache out again for the first time in months; arm recovery really took the fun out of it for me for a while there! but I’m feeling more myself when it comes to holding the brush again, and it was lovely to sit and do a study of the hawk I watched kill…
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Oil pastel robin
I’ve been doing studies in the Robert Bateman brand sketchbooks, which are a pretty smooth vellum surface; the oil pastel slides around wildly on them but gosh it’s fun! This drawing is maybe 7 x 7″ or so in size. Reffed my own photo. Again I did an underdrawing with the cray-pas expressionist oil pastels…
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alleyway afternoon
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the don river in early fall