Aicaya ⚧ @Aicaya@octodon.social

I like the witches_town theme the most out of the themes here (yay, purple), but I really wish it didn't change the follower count display to 666. Unless there's an option to turn that off so I can see the actual follower count and I just happened to miss it.

...I'll return to posting pics soon, I promise. :V

Is there a term to describe the "humor" style most common from Newground-based Flash animators that turns the cynicism dial up to eleven, makes fun of everything and beats down anything with the tiniest inkling of a heart to a pulp?

'Cause I hate it. I hate it so much.

Alright, messed with it enough. Figured out what I needed to do to get cleaner lineart scans:

1. Greyscale scan at 600 dpi (because scanner doesn't support 1200), save as .tiff
2. Mess with Levels setting until paper grain is gone (because I use rough paper)
3. Threshold, then index (1-bit)

Yay, learning by experimentation.

...Huh. Didn't think the lineart option on Xsane would look decent but the output so far is actually pretty alright. Gonna have to mess with it a bit more.

Finally obtained a scanner (albeit a tiny one that doesn't seem to scan at 1200 dpi despite being advertised as supporting it but hey, it was a freebie someone else threw out).

Main thing I learned from scanning stuff: Much as I love inking in rough paper, the 1-bit indexed scans for those are **ugly**. The bristol stuff scans beautifully, though, but I hate sketching on that.

So... sketch on rough paper, ink on bristol with light box, then?

Note to self: Draw stuff for Mermay. Then use the hashtag.

Slowly learning how to modify the .vimrc file to suit my needs rather than getting settings off the web. So far the Markdown stuff is working alright, which will help once I get working on a Pelican blog (someday, once I have a scanner so I can make the artwork for the site).

So far, the only proper gallery I have is the Ko-fi page, and that one only has two pics. The rest of my output is solely on this Mastodon instance.

I should probably work on changing that, now that the power's back.

...Great, the roaches came back from their vacation. Took them so long I almost thought we were finally rid of 'em, but nope: two in the bathroom and they were eager to climb on my leg.

Gonna need to stock up on more bug spray (as if my budget needed more damage).

Today I found out that the fridge is busted on account of that last blackout. Bottom part refuses to cool, top part refuses to freeze (had to transfer milk and perishables there, so it is now an elevated minifridge).

...And thus ends another all-day blackout.

For heaven's sake.

A dip in hot water, a dip in ice-cold and my hand/wrist feels like new, holy shit. Should've done that ages ago.

I like my OC designs a bit more when I reduce the head/height ratio a tad (from 8-9 to around 7-7.5), but I always fear that it'll make more obvious the fact that one of my bigger inspirations art-wise is Templar Arizona.

I mean, granted, that webcomic's been offline for so many years that I don't know a single person who remembers it and the influences show more in the sketches than in the inking style, but still.

On the one hand, I probably should've taken advantage of the power coming back to buy more Switch games instead of games on Linux. Blackouts are still frequent enough to warrant portable entertainment.

On the other hand, I don't regret these purchases. Iconoclasts is awesome and I'm having fun with Factorio.

Old sketches from last week, where I realized why erasing my pencils was suddenly more difficult after getting different pencils. (cw: nudity)

Now that I have electricity, though, it shouldn't be an issue. Do initial sketches, use light table to clean up with mechanical pencil on another paper, ink on a third. Because digital art doesn't have a monopoly on layers.

Over half a year since the hurricane and the lights are back on.

The last nearby genetator has been turned off.

I had almost forgotten what silence sounded like. I missed it so much.

Brigades are starting work on my neighborhood. We might have power back in a couple weeks.

For the people just following: We haven't had electricity since hurricane Maria. That's well over half a year ago.

Never come to Puerto Rico.

"There's hindsight, and then there's 'You really should've known better'."

Crow quill and acrylic ink (which suuuucks, I want my India ink back).

#art #mastoart

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/aicaya

I am going to slap whoever in this neighborhood spread the message that as far as repairs go, houses with broken power poles in their backyards are gonna be left for May/June while the rest of the neighborhood gets electricity back this month.

It's been half a fucking year. Don't tell me I have to stay in the dark another quarter.