I am my own bane

So, I spent today doing a rather large version of the 'doctor and bear' from last post. I don't think AndreZero even has a place for 'elevated' bears in the current Mr. Twilight story, and he hasn't expressed any thoughts either way as to if he'd want them. But, darn it, it was a challenge to draw, so I had to do it.

Since I am a detail-oriented (obsessed) person, I've done many sketches of the possible anatomy of an elevated bear. The legs would stay a bit short for stability, the hips would have to change to facilitate a stable upright stance, the muzzle would have to be shorter, teeth smaller and jaw and tongue muscles changed to allow speech, and elimination of the Ursus Arctus 'hump' because nothing gets a 7' humanoid bear riled up like Igor jokes. Oh, and thumbs. Can't forget thumbs. I also thought about clothing or lack of it. This is why the bear wears that harness (which AndreZero likened to the classic St. Bernard's barrel). They wouldn't need clothing (in fact it would be uncomfortable and annoying), but the would need something sort of pocket-y. I had originally drawn a cool commando-looking vest with pockets and D-rings and such, but since this takes place in the 30's when things were a little bit clunkier, I clunked it up a bit.

The drawing went pretty well. My new year's resolution is to use more black and a little less line. I find that I am deathly afraid of black for some reason. I think it is because of its ease of addition, but pain of subtraction. What was fun and hard was the fur. Doing fakey fur is easy: it's just a bunch of lines fading from black to white. Real fur is all thick and bunchy like this. I'll need to try again. As soon as I posted this, I realized that it was not good at all. While the doctor was pretty good, the overall pose was too stiff. The fact that I chose such boring lighting for a face-on shot of the bear only adds to its boringness.



So, today at lunch, I did another sketch that I'm going to expand. This is a much more interesting vignette. Easier and more fun to light as well. I'm posting this in-progress because when I work, I really, really like my roughs. Then I go and muck them up. Here you go.



In RL news, Sweet Enemy, AndreZero and his mad scientist gf and I went sliding on Sunday (that's how we say 'sledding' in Vermont. For some reason) on Casey's Hill. This is a cool local feature that was going to be turned into mushroom houses, but was saved. It was a fun sliding day, but theres a very slippery and steep five foot downhill to get to the hill. Filled with energy at the prospect of sliding, I caromed down it and promptly fell on my butt on the rock-hard grass and dirt. My coccyx still aches I comfort myself in that it was something that would have hurt as much at 18 as it does now. The highlight of the day was a 7 year old girl who, with a slight push from her dad, went down one of the less steep sections. She went pretty fast for a little kid and when she finally came to a stop, she looked up at her dad and yelled "that was HORRIBLE!". The funny part was, we couldn't tell if she was complaining that it was too fast and steep, or not fast and steep enough.

Listening to while posting "Big Time Sensuality (The Fluke Minimix)" by Bjork