First off: apologies for being away so long.  My computer monitor died, I ordered a new monitor and computer, then the monitor came but needs an adaptor, then my iPad died, and now I’m on a library computer still waiting for the adaptor and the body of the new computer to arrive.  Needless to say, I’ve been a bit out of reach.

I have gotten a lot of reading done, though!

Also, my visitors came and went, and some art was achieved, so I figured it was time to give an accounting of our progress.

Previously on ‘D. D. Phillips Somehow Manages Not to Kill Me’:

I decided that when the picture was shrunk down, the slight-smile didn’t look so great.  So we went back to a version of the frown that had previously made me screech like an evil chicken:

Frowny-face is more appropriate to Cob anyway, don’t you think?

From there, we decided we were done with the face.  DONE.  Except for some definition around his eyes (which I think looks like bronze eye-shadow, but I’m not gonna judge him):

Now we could finally move on to other things.  Working on the antlers, roughing out the body, nitpicking the rose….

This terrible version is obviously mine, and emblematic of me going ‘NO I WANT IT BIGGER AND KINDA BLOBBY LIKE IT’S SQUEEZING OUT OF THE FLOWER.’

‘…like this?’

‘OKAY I GUESS THAT WORKS KINDA IF YOU TUCK IT IN AT THE EDGE.’

Alas, since we were working together while she was at my house, I don’t have a lot of the intermediate steps between this roughed-in body with just the hint of hands and the stuff that comes next.  We dickered for a while over the details I have in the book about the Guardian’s appearance — antlers, fur, striated obsidian flesh, bark, scales, all sorts of possibilities.  For a while, we were working with a very dark obsidian body, which I thought, alas, was starting to look like a puffy sweatsuit.

So she made some notes on fixing it up:

I also nixed the third set of antlers for the moment.  A lot of the digital work she’s done is being mirrored between the sides, and I thought having the antlers mirrored to that degree was a little much.

I wanted more ‘armor’ though, so she added these fronds:

Which I thought were cool, but not at that angle.  So she tweaked them a bit to this:

At the moment, this is what we’re on.  Background, vines and other details still need to be done.  The rose is basically finished.  The bark gauntlets (which I love) are also basically finished, I think.  Pinecone-and-frond pauldrons need some shading, I believe she said.  More antlers might be forthcoming just because it’s thematic to have a third set…  She has the full rack on another layer in her art program so we can sub those in from the previous pic if we decide we want them back.

Also, will need to get the picture complete before we decide how to crop it — since like the book 1 cover, this image is intended to be on a playing card, not to take up the full cover.  Though that might be negotiable.

I still think he looks a bit too young, a bit too pretty, but I’m not an art person.  I don’t know how to change that.  And we have long since decided to stop finnicking with the face, lest we drive ourselves and each other crazy.

So.  There we go: a nice picture-riffic update.

Oh!

While we were trying to figure out how to do the Guardian armor, D.D. did sketch up this:

There are boobs because the base form of the Guardian is female.

And then I said ‘THAT POSE MAKES HER LOOK LIKE SHE’S SAILOR MOON.’

So of course this happened:

The end.