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  Happy New Year! Also, buy my painting :PDec 31, 2015 9:45 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:This is the absolute last time I'll flog this week's auction of a new, large A* painting, currently up for bid right here on eBay...the last time this year, at least! : P Here's a photo with a standard-size pencil and a foot-long ruler, to show scale—the painting is 18" x 24", which gives it four times the surface area of the daily A* pages:
 
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And it isn't quite there in my time zone, but probably will be in yours, at least by the time you read this, so....HAPPY NEW YEAR!! *\o/* : D
 
 
 
 
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  Really phoning this one inDec 30, 2015 6:03 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Well this is a little tricky since I'm posting this from my cell phone because my internet connection is down, but I couldn't miss the opportunity to keep posting about the big new A* painting I'm auctioning this week right here on eBay. Here's a close-up of the top part of it:
 
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Whew! Now hopefully this posts! Go phone!
 
UPDATE: Of course the internet came back right after I finished posting extremely slowly via cell phone. Oh well, at least now I know I have a plan B if necessary : o
 
 
 
 
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  Art by the square inchDec 29, 2015 9:03 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Yesterday I linked to the big new 18" x 24" A* watercolor painting I have up for auction on eBay this week. For those lovely people among you who have bought original A* pages from me in the past, I thought I would illustrate how this new painting compares in size to the daily pages, so you can find the perfect spot for it on your wall ^_^; here it is alongside the original art for yesterday's comic page:
 
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So it's pretty big! In fact, I don't think I planned it this way when I first did one this size some time ago, but in terms of surface area, it is *exactly* four times the size of the daily pages (18 * 24 = 16 * 6.75 * 4). How about that!
 
 
 
 
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  Big new A* painting!Dec 29, 2015 12:26 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:It's been quite some time, but I've finally managed to make another large-scale A* watercolor painting! I call it "Prospect," it is now up for auction on eBay, and I hope you'll check it out! It's 18" x 24", pretty much poster-sized I guess! It took a lot of watercolor paint but it was pretty fun to make—it's nice to have all that room to let the watercolors run and do their thing. The painting looks something like this (I only have photos and not a scan because it's way too big to fit in my scanner : p):
 
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Kind of goes back to the type of desert setting I had a lot of fun with in episode 22. : ) I hope you enjoy it too, and do think about putting in a bid; again, it is up for auction right now on eBay, but only for a week!
 
 
 
 
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  Merry Twitchmas...and Christmas!Dec 24, 2015 10:54 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:It's tomorrow somewhere in the world, so if you're into it...Merry Christmas! ^_^
 
I'm taking tomorrow off to join in festivities, so there won't be a fifth A* page this week, but if all goes according to plan I'll be streaming a little sketching tomorrow and maybe even some larger-scale painting on Saturday, on my Twitch stream. Also I'll be continuing to post little daily brush pen ink doodles on Post-It! Notes on on my Instagram over the weekend, too.
 
 
 
 
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  Things Got WeirdDec 23, 2015 11:40 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I generally don't draw out the shading in the pencil phase of these watercolor pages. I probably should, but its much more fun to whack in shadows with a brush, rather than just following lines you've already drawn.
 
So often, as in today's page, I don't draw the shadow behind the bridge of the nose in pencil. This leaves the eyes and nose floating independently, which is a little dangerous because it's hard to tell if one is slightly out of position, which turned out to be the case today.
 
What then do you do if you've already got a page almost fully painted (you'd thought) and only then discover that a major organ, say, is out of position? Watercolor doesn't really allow you to repaint it neatly. In tandem with white ink, you can sort of nudge the edges over a bit, but that usually doesn't solve the problem fully, and gets a bit messy anyhow. In some recent pages I've felt like I left something in there that I knew was slightly off, but couldn't correct neatly—and whenever I do that, whatever it is that I left always ends up bugging me.
 
So I decided to go big and just tear into it—better to have a weird mess than a tidy bad drawing. Obliterate the eye, broadly and sludgily repaint the bridge of the nose several times between layers of white ink, knock the lips around; whatever seems out of place, just hit it and see what happens.
 
For the final messy touch, I found that it's a lot easier to create a spray effect with watercolor than I had thought. With white ink, to create spatter for stars I have to spring-launch the thick, gummy ink by flicking an ink-laden flexible metal nib and a flexible plastic card against each other. Watercolor's a lot thinner, though, so (I've seen hints of this before, most recently on someone's Instagram video, exactly where I forget now) you can just hold a brush or pencil out, right over the painting, take your watercolor-laden brush, and smack it into the stationary brush/pencil/whatever, kind of like you used to do in pencil fights in grade school; the impact is sufficient to spatter the watercolor off of the moving brush and onto the painting below.
 
 
 
 
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  SpaceX lands rocket; CO2 digs Mars gullies?Dec 22, 2015 11:22 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Space news from the BBC!
 
SpaceX rocket in historic upright landing - SpaceX just launched a rocket booster that carried a payload into orbit, then came back to Earth and made a controlled pad landing! This is a big deal for making space flight more affordable, because it means the boosters can be reused or recycled, instead of having to make a new one from scratch for each rocket launch. Quite a coup for a private aerospace company, especially considering that SpaceX has recently had to endure some costly crashes. Way to go, SpaceX! Their rocket has little landing legs that fold out to help it steady itself upon landing, but it's still strange seeing this big tall, skinny rocket thing coming down and landing daintily upright (in the video in the article).
 
Trapped CO2 gas may form Martian gullies - Scientists have a new theory to explain how gullies can form on Mars in the absence of liquid water: it could be that gaseous CO2 bubbles up and gets trapped beneath a surface layer of frozen CO2 (aka "dry ice"), at which point the building pressure of the gas pushes the Martian soil beneath it downhill, digging gullies that otherwise look like the type of thing that would need flowing water to dig it out here on Earth. So far this is just a theory, mind you.
 
 
 
 
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  Another exciting post office reportDec 21, 2015 10:31 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Well I saw various media outlets saying last Monday was supposed to be the biggest shipping day of the year, but maybe the availability of overnight shipping services is changing the calculation or something—enabling more last-minute Christmas shopping?—because at any rate my local post office was busier *this* Monday when I waded in there—the line for the clerks might have been slightly shorter, but there were lots more people going to and fro in the lobby and trying to pack things. Sweet Christmas!
 
 
 
 
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  Down a rabbit hole with ball lightningDec 19, 2015 1:10 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:In the middle of a little pep walk I took in between drawing and watercoloring this page, I got soaked pretty good by a rain/hail storm from nearly out of the blue. Coincidentally, I had been reading up on lightning earlier in the afternoon (it featured in a "Golden Age" public domain Captain Marvel Jr. comic I was reading : P), particularly unusual phenomena like ball lightning (existence still disputed since scientific observations have been minimal to nonexistent!), and "bolts from the blue."
 
Bolts from the blue, lightning that strikes out of a seemingly clear or lightning-free sky, form differently from regular cloud-to-ground lightning. They have a *positive* charge, shoot out of the top of the cloud before traveling along for miles perpendicular to the ground, and tend to be something like ten times as powerful as regular (negatively charged) lightning. : o
 
I do have to stop falling down these little internet rabbit holes, though; I managed to get myself up regularly at 7:00 am (or even earlier >_<) this week, so pages were a little more on time than usual, but there were some rough patches, and increasing internet curiosity as the week went on didn't help smooth them over. >>_<< Discipline, discipline...
 
 
 
 
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  The Vickers effectDec 17, 2015 11:22 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I saw a little bit of the film Prometheus on TV at the gym today, and I guess I'm glad I never saw the whole thing because man does it have a lot of icky special effects! :oo Anyway I think a little of Charlize Theron's character Meredith Vickers was subconsciously bleeding in while I was trying to draw Selenis in this scene today. :P
 
 
 
 
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  Places to goDec 16, 2015 10:01 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Just about keeping up with a regular daily schedule, sans blogging—but will I be able to keep it up tomorrow, when I also have to...go to the grocery store?? BUH BUH BUMMMM
 
If you're following me on Instagram you caught not one but two versions of today's pencils—because there's nothing like seeing your work pop up in a different arena, in front of tons of people, to make you think you just screwed it up. ^_^ It did help force me to work out a little of the cartooniness though so that's probably good.
 
 
 
 
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  Almost awake this time!Dec 15, 2015 9:49 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Not sure if I'll get much blogging in for a little while here, I'm trying to force myself to stick to a regular daytime schedule and that's making things pretty tight on time. Hopefully I'll get better at it! But I really do need to get my schedule sorted out, for instance I just realized that I was so out of it on Friday that I forgot to draw the commander's little helmet crest in page 86! @_+
 
 
 
 
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  Saved by the post office robotDec 14, 2015 9:17 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Survived the "biggest mailing day of the year" (it actually wasn't so bad, my post office finally had their automated shipping kiosk working again ^_^) to ship off some original A* art, and now it's straight to bed for me, whew!
 
 
 
 
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  Doorway lurking and sketchingDec 12, 2015 1:51 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I mailed off to a reader as their monthly reward for supporting the comic through the A* Patreon campaign:
 
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Every buck or two readers send me through Patreon each month is a big help, thanks everyone for your support!
 
 
 
 
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  Ceres: ice and ammoniaDec 10, 2015 10:12 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:A new BBC article reveals that scientists think they have an explanation for Ceres' mystery bright spots spotted by the Dawn probe in the bottoms of craters on the dwarf planet: "they are places where impacts have excavated a briny layer of water-ice under the dwarf planet's surface."
 
Also, clay materials with an ammonia component are thought to have been spotted across the Ceres' surface; because ammonia boils away to a gas "above about 100 kelvin (-173C)"—a temperature that is met in Ceres' current orbit—these "ammoniated phyllosilicates" would not normally have been able to form so close to the Sun, suggesting that Ceres may have come from a much colder area, farther out in the Solar System.
 
 
 
 
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  Early page! : oDec 09, 2015 3:56 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I'm posting this earlier than usual, so make sure you've seen the previous page too (the one where the water spills out)—I wouldn't want to go and skip a page on anyone!
 
 
 
 
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  Sketchin' for supporters!Dec 08, 2015 9:32 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I sent to a reader a while back as their monthly reward for supporting the comic through the A* Patreon campaign:
 
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Every buck or two people send me through Patreon each month is a big help! : )
 
 
 
 
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  Sharper pictures, smoother textDec 07, 2015 10:09 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Turns out Photoshop 4 *does* have a "Batch" menu item—it just isn't in the main "File" menu like it is in later versions of Photoshop and even most other image-editing software packages that make use of macros. No, in PS 4, "Batch" is tucked midway down a very long and otherwise almost entirely redundant pop-up menu that opens up a tiny little button in the corner of the "Actions" panel. I was pretty happy to find it! So using that I got all the pages going back to episode 22, page 92—which is when I stopped cranking the contrast between light and dark areas way up after scanning—sharpened up to the current sometimes uncomfortably sharp but definitely not blurry in any way standard; while I was at it, I also *decreased* the sharpening on the captions, smoothing them out a bit so they should be a little easier to read. (You may have to clear your browser's cache to see the new versions!)
 
 
 
 
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  Sharpest-yet images of Pluto...and A*!Dec 05, 2015 8:58 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:NASA has just released the sharpest images yet of the surface of Pluto, taken by the New Horizons probe in its recent flyby of the dwarf planet: you can see a swath that ranges from cratered ice field (with multiple crust layers clearly visible in the impacted surface) to mountainous badlands (the mountains possibly being large blocks of ice that were "jostled and tumbled" into position) to glacial plain.
 
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The Supermassive Holiday Sale is going on! That means half off all original A* art—$25 each, in most cases! (Oh! And I just remembered that the pencil-only art done for most pages in episodes 19 and 20 is normally $25 already, so you can now get those for just $12.50 during the sale.) Look for the gold "original art" link at the lower left corner as you browse through the comic. Here are a few watercolor paintings right from the pages of the latest story that have recently joined the sale—click these thumbnails to go to their art item pages:
 
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Speaking of sharp images, this weekend I'll be going through and sharpening up the pages earlier in this episode to be as sharp as these last few pages—unless I get scared of the sharp edges and bail on it, like I did when this last came up, several episodes ago. : o But I'll also definitely be emailing out e-book download links to those folks supporting the comic through the A* Patreon campaign at the e-book level, and I got three more new reward pencil sketches done today, so I'll be mailing those off to some of the folks at the pencil sketch reward level; even though it's just sealing envelopes and trying not to mangle addresses with my bad handwriting, I always get a great deal of satisfaction out of putting those in the outgoing mail box. = )
 
 
 
 
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  A moon painting for a supporter!Dec 04, 2015 5:01 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a painting I made for a reader as their monthly reward for supporting the comic through A*'s Patreon campaign:
 
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Thank you very much for your support!! : D
 
 
 
 
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  More room, more SharpeningDec 03, 2015 2:35 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I hadn't really realized it had been this long, but the last time we saw this room—rather central to Selenis' plans—was way back in episode 12! Now it's in color!
 
I spent way too long today fretting over sharpness settings, but you may notice that the last three pages now (I stealth updated 'em today) are sharper than earlier pages. I'll start going through and sharpening up the other watercolor pages—all the way back to episode 22, page 92, which is when I first started outputting them at natural values, rather than cranking the contrast way up in Photoshop first—this weekend.
 
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(Obsessive technical notes! : p I'm using Photoshop's "Sharpen More" now—with Fade 88% to take the severe edge off—whereas before I was using plain Sharpen. The ancient Photoshop 4 I have doesn't do batch processes; I imported my comic image exporting macros into Photoshop CS2 (ancient in its own right now, but much less so than Photoshop 4!) in the hopes of using it to batch the re-sharpening process so I wouldn't have to do it all manually, but darned if the results I get out of CS2 aren't 10% larger in jpg file size, with no benefit to image fidelity—and the usually trusty IrfanView image utility is even worse when it comes to saving jpgs! So I guess I'll be doing it image-by-image myself. : P
 
I don't have fond memories of the last time I did that, two episodes ago, and I see from my notes then that I had started using Sharpen More + Fade 80%, but then decided that was "too hard on the eyes," and resolved to use plain Sharpen (I had been using an even weaker 50% Unsharp Mask up to that point) and just paint in more contrasty paints instead. Well, apparently I haven't managed that. :p Since going to heavy watercolor I've been paranoid about the rough-ish texture of the paper muddling up the scanned images, which I think it a big part of why I've held off on strong sharpening up to now, since sharpening brings out the texture, but that part of it doesn't seem to bother me anymore; guess I've gotten used to it. Heck, some all-digitally made comics go to some efforts to inject simulated textures into their colors, so maybe I might as well make the most of my natural textures. : o)
 
 
 
 
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  A* art will be even more valuable!! >_>Dec 01, 2015 11:00 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Mondays (and sometimes Thursdays!) are my day to ship off art to people who buy these A* paintings I do every day. This Monday saw a pretty good haul go out
 
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with one A* page even winging its way overseas! Art sales are a big help to me in keeping this comic going, so thanks to everyone who likes my stuff enough to give it a home!
 
While I'm on the subject I suppose I may as well mention that at some point in the intermediate future—maybe in that depressing time after the holidays are over—I'll have to nudge the starting price of my new pages on eBay up a tad from their current $9.99 starting bid, because thanks to the cost of my primary art supplies—heavy watercolor paper and watercolor paints—going up by not insignificant amounts since I started this thing, I'm no longer really covering my own costs at that price. So the eBay auctions will probably start starting at $12.99 or so. And I'll just have to try that much harder to make them nice paintings that you won't be able to resist! ^_^
 
 
 
 
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