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| I stump for this bird painting I'm auctioning | Dec 31, 2016 10:01 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:I've put one of my two remaining made-on-Christmas, 8"x8" little watercolor birdie paintings up for auction on eBay—at that link you can check out its auction listing in all its glory and even bid to win it for your very self! Here's a preview of it (there's a much higher resolution scan in the auction listing):
Like the two paintings I showed in the blog at the beginning of the week—those that I had given as gifts to family members—the subject of this scene is a Pacific wren, an unusually tiny and cute little bird I sometimes see looking for tasty bugs on the bush outside my studio window. The one in this painting thinks there are some succulent insects to be found on that stump, probably!
The auction runs for a week! Thanks for checking it out—and see you for more A* next year! : ))
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| Seeker found me for Christmas : o | Dec 29, 2016 11:11 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Apparently someone—or maybe more likely a rogue auto-linking "related articles" script—at Discovery Communications, the company behind the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, The Oprah Winfrey Network, and at least 10 other channel, likes A*, because this little ol' webcomic is the top related link in a science article about Sgr A*—the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy—that their "Seeker" science and adventure site posted on Christmas Eve. So I don't know if I owe thanks to the article's author, Ian O'Neill, or some egg-nog-crazed office intern, or what, but anyway, thanks for the link there, Seeker. ^_^
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| 3rd time lucky for this original A* art?!? :o | Dec 28, 2016 10:18 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:It's time to raid the A* art archives once again to bring you a piece of original A* watercolor art at auction for the tasty low starting bid price of $12.99! : D And this week we have...a repeat! Because I put this one up for auction before, and it was bid on and won, but the seller ended up being unable to pay for it in time to suit eBay, who insists auctions be paid for with 30 days. So if you missed it before, you've got a second or uh actually third chance! Up for auction again right here and now, it's the original watercolor painting that dramatic, sword-dragging, castle-crumbling, dragon-thrashing, fire-raging page 79 from episode 29:
Yay! It's gotta work this time! ^_^;
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| A birdie on a branch | Dec 27, 2016 11:01 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here's the other little birdie painting—of a Pacific wren—that I made over the weekend for family members for Christmas:
You can see the other one in yesterday's post, and the other two I made will be going up for auction on eBay, starting at the end of this week!
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| A Pacific Wren in a Snow Field | Dec 26, 2016 8:59 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Welcome back! Here's a little 8" x 8" watercolor painting that I made and gave to some family members for Christmas : D :
The bird there is somewhat loosely based on a Pacific wren, a tiny little bird I sometimes see around my apartment here in Seattle, and they are just the cutest little birdies oh my gosh. They like to eat bugs, sing loud songs, and stick their tails straight up in the air!
In case you're wondering why I'm showing this to you since I no longer have the original to put up for auction or something (although you can pick up prints of it through its entry in the episode 30 gallery — the galleries can always be reached through the "episodes & e-books" link in this site's top menu), it's because I actually painted *four* of these little birdie paintings this weekend, and I will be putting two of them up for auction, probably with the first one going up around the time of my blog entry at the end of this week—Friday or Saturday. I hope people will like them! : D
The other one was another Christmas gift for family members, and I'll show you that one tomorrow. ^_^
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| Yo Ho Ho! | Dec 24, 2016 2:31 AM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Last page before Christmas! Thanks everyone for reading! Happy Holidays! ^_^
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| Dig mah sketch! : D | Dec 22, 2016 10:00 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:It's a sketch I sent to a reader for helping out through my Patreon campaign ^_^ :
Thanks to everyone who's helping me keep A* going! : D
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| A* art archive auction for Xmas! | Dec 21, 2016 10:31 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Okay! It's Wednesday, which means it's time once again for me to pull one of my favorite pieces of original A* artwork—the ones behind the daily comics you see on this web site—out of its nice cozy shelf in my archive, and put it up on eBay at the super sale starting price of just $12.99! This week we have the 16" x 6.75" watercolor painting behind episode 29, page 60, now up for auction right here, in which we see Selenis looking up in some surprise as she finds herself being swooped upon (by a rather large robo-dragon):
Kind of Christmas-colored almost, even! : ) Thanks to everyone who's been bidding on my artwork lately ^_^, and if *you* would like to follow these little original art sales of mine, you can keep track of 'em by following my eBay profile. Thanks for checking out my A* art sales! : D
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| I'll just lurk back here | Dec 20, 2016 10:34 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Sketch I mailed to a lovely reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : ) :
Thank you very much! I can use all the help I can get to keep making this comic, and yours is very much appreciated! ^_^
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| My YouTube channels could be the best | Dec 19, 2016 9:58 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:If you want to see me very badly playing mostly crusty old video games occasionally, then you might like my videogame-related YouTube channel! Oh, it's also got my weird Matrix voiceover parody on it.
That channel is separate from my A* art and animation channel, of course, where I have the animated versions of A* episodes 1-7, and then time-lapse videos of me drawing and painting the artwork for each day's new A* page—except that I haven't been able to do those for the past two weeks because Google apparently disabled some of their editing tools for videos longer than 1 hour. Soooo hopefully they'll get that working again soon and I can catch up with dozens of new painting videos : PP
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| V-neck sweater makes scowl more piercing | Dec 17, 2016 5:14 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I mailed to a reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : ) :
The support I get through Patreon is a big part of what keeps A* going; thanks everyone for helping me out! : D
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| Can a magnetic cable save us from space junk? | Dec 15, 2016 10:04 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:"Japan tests innovative magnetic tether for slowing space junk" says the BBC, and they go on to describe the test, where a robot cargo ship heading to the International Space Station towed a half-mile long cable in a bid to find a solution to the estimated 100 million pieces of man-made junk now threatening ships in orbit: "the lubricated, electro-dynamic tether will generate enough energy to change an object's orbit, pushing it towards the atmosphere where it will burn up." But experts "caution that the Japanese scheme will only work for bigger pieces of junk"; other schemes being suggested include "harpooning, sweeping, lassoing and dragging debris into the atmosphere for burning."
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| Get stuck on this A* original art painting :D | Dec 14, 2016 10:34 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:This week's special archive art sale of the original watercolor painting behind an A* comic page goes back to that time in episode 29—page 31 of that episode, to be precise—when our anti-heroine, in full adventure mode, was picking her way through a nasty, sticky robo-forest; my 16"x6.75" painting of that scene is now up for auction on eBay starting at the low, low price of just $12.99, and looks something like this:
I don't know when we'll have another sticky forest scene in A*, so you may want to get this one before its gone! And if you want to stay up on these little A* art sales of mine, you can follow my eBay profile. Another super-massive thanks to everyone who's been bidding on my artwork lately! ^_^
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| Supermassive black hole killed ASASSN star? | Dec 13, 2016 8:48 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Black hole news! Last year, a light source, dubbed "ASASSN-15lh" ("All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae"), was attributed to "the brightest supernova ever seen" (this would have qualified as a hypernova) by American scientists who studied it. But a new BBC article says that British scientists who've been studying the burst of light since then say it was most likely emitted by a star being apart by a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy: falling in too close to the black hole, the star "spaghettified and some of the material was converted into huge amounts of radiated light." The black hole would have been spinning rapidly, and the star fairly small. This type of "tidal disruption" event by a black hole on a star—if that's indeed what it was—has only been observed on about 10 occasions by science.
The scientists also mention Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, although not by name; somewhat curiously, they give its mass as "one million times the mass of the Sun," rather than the usually stated ~4 million.
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| Another old photo that came in handy | Dec 12, 2016 10:41 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Whew, page done. So how was your commute today? (Imagine driving on an ~8-10 lane downtown street without marked traffic lanes! : o But that was how they rolled in 1920s Chicago, apparently.)
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| Doing the funky robot | Dec 10, 2016 12:09 AM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I got to send to a reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : D :
Thanks to everyone who's helping me keep this comic going! I couldn't do it without you! : ))
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| This would be fine except for driving : P | Dec 09, 2016 1:23 AM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:It's snowing outside : ooo
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| A little birdy told me to sell some art : D | Dec 08, 2016 12:57 AM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:This week I dug a bit of a wildlife scene out of the archives to put up for auction starting at the bargain price of just $12.99, right here on eBay, and that is the original, 16" x 6.75" watercolor painting I made for episode 29, page 54:
I called it "The Thrush" at the time, and yes that *is* a shameless Tolkien reference : P, ostensibly because of the little boidy—er, birdy—tucked away in the upper right corner there
: D So I hope someone gives 'em a nice home, and remember, if you want to stay up on these little sale auctions, or indeed the artwork for each new A* page that I put up for auction every day, you can follow my eBay profile. Thanks for checking out the auction, and thanks to everyone who's been buying my artwork! : D
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| Cassini out with a bang next year | Dec 06, 2016 11:24 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:NASA's highly successful Cassini probe, which has been studying Saturn's rings and moons for the past twelve years, is running low on fuel, and will be sent on a death plunge into Saturn on September 15th, 2017, according to the BBC. Dang! But leading up to that, it will do some pretty cool stuff. Currently it is engaged in a series of 20 orbits that take it over Saturn's north pole, then out to the outer boundary of its main ring system, just past the F ring; during these trips, it will have the chance to sample F ring particles. Then, beginning on April 22nd, it will conduct a series of dives "between the inner edge of the rings and the planet’s atmosphere," so close that "it could pass less than 2,000km above Saturn’s cloud tops." This should "permit close-up investigation of Saturn’s interior"; for instance, there is some hope that it will help us learn the length of a day on the cloud-shrouded giant, whose current day length is only known as vaguely as "10.7 hours plus or minus 0.2 hours."
So that should be pretty spectacular, but I'll still be a little sad to see Cassini go—even just on a visual level, its photos of Saturn and its moons—ice geysers on Enceladus!!—have been spellbinding, and its discoveries—methane seas on Titan!—really have opened up whole new worlds to us. If you want to see some of those amazing photos, and learn more about what Cassini has been up to around Saturn, head on over to NASA JPL's lavishly illustrated Cassini: Mission to Saturn web site.
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| So good to be Bad! | Dec 05, 2016 10:55 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Thanks to a member of the Bad Webcomics Wiki Forum for linking to A* from their forum. : o : D
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| Looks like someone lost a bet : o | Dec 03, 2016 8:19 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here's another sketch I got to send to a reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : D :
Thank you very, very much! ^_^ Your support really does keep this comic going!!
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| Next episode: vs a polar bear in a blizzard | Dec 01, 2016 11:57 PM PST | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:I seem to go easier on myself when painting a face that's in shadow rather than brightly lit. Maybe it's trying to figure out cast shadows on an illuminated face that gives me fits. Also we see here more of my subconscious preference for putting cool colors in the foreground and warm colors in the background, which is pretty much the opposite of what they usually teach in art class (warm colors draw the eye, they would say, so you'd want to use them on your main subject(s)).
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