Giglamps rambles

Starting as I mean to go on with more seals! This time they're brandishing a globe, as if they're plotting world domination. I, for one, welcome our new fluffy overlords. Sod's law, I got 4 days off work in a row and landed an atrocious cold just in time for it. Whether it's an old-fashioned bit of nonsense or there's legitimate science to it, not entirely sure, but I subscribe to the theory of "Starve a fever, feed a cold" so to that end, I've been taking it easy and enjoying shortbread with strong coffee and a not-very-wee dram of Scotch for good measure. Whether or not it's legitimately helping remains to be seen, but it is thoroughly enjoyable, and this cold does seem to be shifting pretty sharpish. Anyway, for today, it's time to gather together some recent(ish) encounters from draft posts that never wound up being finished. 3rd-7th of April It's been some time since there was last a beer tasting on this blog, mainly because I'...

It's that time again, finally facing down the terrible demon of legend that is Rose Fossil's dreaded "Sort and back up later" folder. There are a great many things that comprise the body of this haunting gestalt entity; some of the less threatening things are files with recognisable names, that can easily be classified and sent in peace to their intended destination... others are more vague and ominous, though. Strings of letters and numbers; dates; zip folders of fonts I couldn't be arsed to install; fucking WEBP images!!! ; file formats that Windows 11 will randomly decide it doesn't want to work with anymore (RIP.rtf) - the horrors! However, it's in among one of these vaguely named files, that I found treasure... And that treasure is a mid-'90s TV film adaptation of Roald Dahl's tongue-in-cheek version of Little Red Riding Hood, from Revolting Rhymes (a classic, I loved that book when I was a kid.) This film passed me by, though; I didn't se...

Some concept art for today and possibly a treat for the old guard, a mostly step-by-step process post, complete with excessive annotations! Going to keep this brief as I have to make some lunch (important), then get ready and head off to work, so here's the finished effort to start with... And now, the work in progress efforts... The initial rough sketch Started on the lineart, then switched the canvas colour to black, so I could see the lines for the clouds and waves more clearly. Lineart done, image cropped... Returning to the usual canvas colour (working on these nice sandy-coloured backgrounds gives the colours a bit more warmth, which I find very pleasing.)  Starting to paint a stormy sky!  A little bit of extra colour overlay for the waves, which wound up looking like some trendy bathroom decor from the mid-2010s. After that, I put an extra layer underneath here, slightly turned down the opacity on the watercolour brushes, cranked the water setting and built up a moody w...