Towards You

"Lil… can you pull me to the grass? The ground is burning my back."

-Tony

Anyway, I came up with another fake album cover, almost by accident.

Well they went past a stop like 1 or 2 kilometers ago and half of that would be downhill from here. So it's not a terrible situation. Just still kind of sucky.

Originally this wasn't going to be an "album cover" the original composition was different, but I completely changed my mind when I realized, almost by accident that, inside a square, it turned in an almost perfect reply to an earlier piece of mine.

Like, we're talking yin and yang leves of contrasts here folks. Good times at midnight, band ones at noon. They're all together in one, and sparse in the other one. The van is even going left in one and right on the other.

One of the few things that breaks the sense of cohesion between these two is the perspective. In the first one the perspective is more of a natural one, while the newest one is flat.

That's a technique I don't use that often as of late but I copied from manga artist Koji Kumeta. It turns a scene into a sort of iconic (in a semiotic sense) reading of itself. Almost hieroglyphic-like.

So I managed to squeeze this one between commissions. Since then I've had the idea of the band having to deal with a broken van and I actually have made one or two pictures around the idea. But here's another one. And it may not be the last one.

From this piece we learn some things about the band, like their physical conditions. Tony might be the lowest here as you can see. I actually had an idea for a silly one panel comic with him lying in the ground like here, RJ asking "what happened?" And Davo said "He did 20 squats".

And he might be only over Lil there as she's very tiny but also let's be honest, those cigarettes are not helping.

Actually, fun fact, I get a lot of people concerned with her health and telling me she should stop smoking. And in theory and principle I agree, but on the other hand, a cute cat that smokes was the core Idea I had in mind when coming up with her. I like the conceptual contradiction of a very cute character having such an ugly habit. So I'm keeping her like that for the moment, but in the future who knows, I have some ideas for that.

In between Diana and Davo with the appropriate stamina.

And then on the other side of the picture there's RJ who is cheating by being a bear but he is the strongest of the group, but it also makes sense, as the roadie has to carry around instruments and speakers all the time so he does lift. And the truth is that he's doing most of the job.

And then there's Zara in the van controlling the steering wheel looking at RJ showing strength and let's just say she's liking what she's seeing.

So this was the original intent of the picture but I realized there's two ways of reading the picture. This one where the Van just stopped out of the blue. And one where it was someone's fault.

And in this reading Diana and Davo's expressions become more relevant as here they'd not be frowning at the physical effort but now they're mad at someone.

And the main suspects would obviously be the two guys who actually can drive.

So there's one scenario where Zara broke the van and now she's sitting there alone almost as if the band had put her in a time-out. And now she feels abashed and guilty for all the work the rest of the gang has to do because of her. Especially RJ who's clearly doing most of it.

Then there's the other one where RJ was the one who screwed up, and now he feels really bad for what he did and he's doing most of the job pulling the van trying to compensate for it. And now Zara looks while worrying about how he's feeling.

There's even a secret third option where Zara screwed up while everyone was sleeping and RJ decided to take the blame for her. The point here is that no matter what happens I'll apparently find a way to make this picture a vehicle for my ship because I'm cringe and I've come to terms with it.

Lol.

See, last week while I was sketching this out between commissions it actually coincided with a chat I had with one of you, my patrons, who told me they had noticed that there's not a lot of conflict between my characters. Which got me thinking, first, that it's true. And second, how the piece I was currently working in could actually lean into that with just a little edit.

Yet, I like the ambiguity between the 2.5 possible readings for this piece so there's two versions of it and each of those two has Tree versions where I change the outfits because I like to do that sometimes. I like to post them around my different platforms and see if someone notices. My guess is they do but don't mention it. Also the album cover versions because it's fun. Have you noticed I'm insane?

All of these are oficial. Let's call it a Schödinger engine failure.