In an unusual move, I’m cross-posting a few posts from my Tumblr blog, because the project they describe was real and good: my first real sketches in a good long while, of my beloved D&D rogue character (who, while not as dear as my bard-guy, is still a strong second). It went a bit like this:
5/30/25: “Sketchy Swashbucklers and Other Wasteful Works in Progress.” Frustrated by the ongoing moral panic about “AI art” I decided to prove that, despite previous (and eventually curtailed) experiments with Midjourney I could, in fact, “grab a fucking pencil” and be “a real artist” whenever I damned well pleased.
6/14/25: “A Sketchy Swashbuckler, Pt. 2” and 7/2/25: “A Sketchy Swashbuckler, Pt. 3.” Quick updates on the progress I made, which was slow but sure.
8/16/25: “She Couldn’t Make Me Worse, Because I Was Already Bad.” Extended project wrap post (or so I thought) re-iterating my points from the original May post as well as my years-old arguments about how much work actually went into editing the sketch’s photoshoppy-jalopy reference image.
9/2/25: A sort of project post-mortem post from earlier today, when I tinkered with a few more details which I probably won’t keep.
I probably won’t do this sort of cross-posting very much—my tabletop/video game interests aren’t really relevant to my professional cartography site or even much of this personal blog—but the more important ones that showcase my creativity are definitely worth shouting about. Thanks for the indulgence.
