Ground rule.
Just another reminder, the hiatus guest strip submission deadline is now December 15.
This page is cheating art-wise, but a part of me kind of likes the condensing-down of dialogue to be honest.
Ground rule.
Just another reminder, the hiatus guest strip submission deadline is now December 15.
Dave how do you color the backgrounds ? I’ve noticed on more than one occasion such this one and the previous update that they look like water colors. Are they?
You’re partially correct about them being watercolors, actually. The emotive panels and “auras” like these, as well as the texturing in general, are all done with a custom Photoshop brush of my own design that uses watercolors as a base.
I created it by making greyscale washes on a piece of watercolor paper, then scanning it in and selecting a portion that I liked as a Custom Brush. I tweaked the settings to randomize the orientation as it draws to keep the patterns from looking too homogenous. From there, I draw out the light area and the dark area with that brush then use color selections from the middle areas to smooth out the transition, then use lighter and darker tones for contrast.
For general texturing I spatter around the chosen area with this brush in an appropriate shadow color (usually a dark red with the layer set to Multiply) and set the opacity down to between 25-30%
I can’t read Todd’s expression right now. Is he glaring at her like she is at him? She looks like an animal that’s tensed up just after a fight. Clearly she’s still not thrilled with Todd, but I can’t figure out what Todd is feeling at all.
On a side note, I think Amanda is going to be very pretty when she’s older. I mean, she’s pretty now, but I’ve noticed how similar she is to her parents and I keep thinking what she’s going to look like as an adult.
I figure it’s just a serious eye to eye kind of expression
Ohhh yeah. Like squinting sorta. I didn’t wanna saw he was glaring, because it didn’t quite look like a glare… but anyways.
I agree, it does look very intense, and even a bit angry, and definitely firm, but not *quite* glaring at her. I think he’s trying to impress on her how serious it is.
Like Ayana said below, I really like that he’s getting down on her level to look her in the eye, and she does look steaming mad/scared and defensive enough about her Mom to possibly hit him.
I feel wistful reading this.
I’m thirty, and after a recent encounter, I find some family elders can still scatter my thoughts and reduce me to a cringing wreck just by raising their voices.
It’s a humiliating experience.
My worst moments growing up weren’t with raised voices — heck, my mom (who is great and not abusive) once got mad enough at us kids that she threw a chair so hard it left a permanent hole in her door, and that barely left any impact on me — but those points when my mom was holding back something she really thought we ought to be doing, and not actually telling us, but being mad that we hadn’t figured it out, and she was instead doing it herself.
She still does this. Maybe not as often, but I still react to it as an adult. “My mom is clearly mad at something, I don’t know if she’s mad at me, she’s not saying anything, just there’s this definite slow burn vibe about her and I wish instead of just taking it and being mad she’d point out right then what was going on so I could understand it and be able to do something, because in this kind of situation I cannot be comfortable or secure.”
I have a kind of deficit in picking up on certain social cues to begin with, and that one is one of the most uncomfortable: “I know something’s off, I just don’t know what, and she won’t actually communicate it verbally.”
This is what makes me have zero sympathy for that stereotypical girlfriend who gets mad at the boyfriend and doesn’t tell him why. How in the world is he supposed to deal with that? It’s not doing her any good and it’s not doing the relationship any good and it’s uncomfortable for anyone who’s not oblivious to the nonverbal cues, and “If you don’t know I won’t tell me” is the kind of line I take to be the death-knell of the relationship, to be honest. (Also manipulative.)
The “if you don’t know, I’m not telling you” does sometimes have its roots in a different kind of dysfunction. (As opposed to the “True Love Reads Minds” delusion or a hint/guess culture person impacting with an Ask Culture person.) In that case, you tell the person what’s wrong, and they apologize and swear they’ll never do it again, yadda yadda, and… then they do it again. And you call them on it. And they swear they’ll never do it again, and…
Lather, rinse, repeat.
After a while of that, you can kind of figure that if they’re so oblivious to your feelings, you’re going to stop cluing them in to why you’re mad, and make THEM figure out what they did wrong instead of handing them the “answer” on a plate for them to forget like you’d slipped them the answer on a test they didn’t study for. Or at least you want to know they care enough to ASK why you’re mad, so you can give them some hints and make them use their brain-cells, and then maybe they’ll actually remember and stop doing the thing.
Or, in my case with my sire, you’d think that “tried to kill my mom” would be something he might figure out he needed to apologize for if he ever wanted the chance to talk to me again. I mean, some things, y’know? (Plus I’d told him about stuff a score of times, including writing him an angry letter, and… nope! It didn’t impact on him one little bit! So between that and the various “oh, I’ll change, I’ll change, I’m so sorry, I’ll change!” times that never resulted in change, I felt pretty justified in the “if you can’t figure it out, then don’t bother asking me” treatment.)
I’m pretty sure the rules about acceptable interactions change once there’s actual abuse involved. Like, one of the things we got drummed into us as kids was that just because in general you need to tell the truth and answer grown-ups when they ask questions and such, doesn’t mean those apply to strangers (if they ask you weird questions, say on the phone or in the street) and if anyone is doing things to your body that you feel uncomfortable with, you have the right to say no, the right to lie and say you won’t tell anyone (and then tell people anyway), etc.
If you’re not comfortable speaking with, or interacting with, someone who abused you, you’re not obliged out of politeness to do those things. Or you shouldn’t be. That’s a principle I upheld with my niece (mid teens at the time) when she didn’t want to interact with her estranged father. Basically, once you’ve harmed the people you’re supposed to be loving and protecting, your regular social rights get suspended, possibly permanently.
And the wild promising of never doing things again? As a pattern, that’s a big red flag. (I’ve seen that when my brother and his wife were separated over a domestic dispute, and she was breaking court orders trying to contact him through phoning me in the wee hours of the morning, crying up a storm, trying to get back together. Way too soon. It happens that they did get back together, and their situation has smoothed out a bit, but there is something seriously wrong with a person who can’t accept a short separation for what it is, even when there are LAWS involved.) How many times can you do the same thing and still promise it’s over, it’s done, you’ve totally changed?
At any rate, your comment is making me wonder if Mom has gotten into such a defeatist attitude. But I remember this behavior from way back when, when we were kids, and it doesn’t seem like enough time to develop it back then….
The last time I spoke to my mother was while we were clearing out my grandmother/her mother’s house after she passed away. We had not spoken, really spoken for years before that.
So I thought l’d try to broach the subject of why she and my stepfather threw me out when I was fifteen. Grammy, the one who had just passed away, took me in.
In ten minutes she verbally flayed me to the point where I was going into clinical shock. Dizzy, cold, nauseated, the works.
I haven’t spoken to her since, and I’m glad of that.
I love that Todd went down to her level, to talk to her about it. On that note, it looks like she wants to pop him.
Ugh. I hadn’t thought of that, but if Todd’s in her “bubble” right now, she just might. Especially if he tries to touch her. 🙁
Since Todd was in that same place as a kid, I think he knows not to touch her. I can imagine him offering her a hand, but not trying to force the contact on her.
What I especially like about this strip is that Todd validates Amanda’s feelings while still drawing boundaries for discipline.
She’s allowed to feel angry or sad or hurt, but her feeling certain emotions doesn’t have to lead to hurting herself or others.
Exactly, she is allowed to be angry even if said anger is unreasonable, but she needs to learn to express her anger in a healty and appropiate way.
I would like to see Andi give her a hobby to get out all that latent anger. Maybe sculpture, a big block of clay she can beat to her hearts content and after a while, form into something she can be proud of.
With her mom being an artist, she might feel more of a connection and maybe feel she’s this artistic badass and boost her confidence in ways where she isn’t torturing the other kids.
Baking. Specifically, breadmaking. All that punching dough can be extraordinarily therapeutic, and then it’s delicious.
I do a lot of baking and cooking. I can confirm that making bread dough is just fun. You have a point about the beating as well. I always beat bread dough for the hell of it and have cast iron for stress relief. You can smack it around and it doesn’t even scratch.
with Amanda’s anger management issues, Andi better be prepared to change her career from “Artist” to “Bakery Shop Owner” from all that bread dough she’ll be punching around
Maybe weight loss instructor to help everyone after eating all that bread. She’ll make a killing.
If I remember correctly they did have her starting to do creative writing and drawing to help with her feelings
This is a great to see Todd laying down these boundaries, but it takes a bit of time to teach even a healthy kid (at least younger ones)—let alone an intense kid like Amanda. She will need to be shown and given other outlets to express her anger, because simply telling her she has to stop is the equivalent of asking her to start doing advanced calculus.
The emotion panels this time look like bruises to me. Todd’s is healing, starting to turn yellow but with some spots that are still purple. Amanda’s looks like it is so fresh it’s more red than purple, like it just happened recently.
That is a great way to describe it actually. Todd is overall over the bruises in his psyche, though as we’ve seen, old wounds run deep. While Amanda’s are still fresh and just beginning, though it will take awhile before we see results.
Well Todd that might be easy for you. But it might take Amanda some effort.
At one point it wasn’t easy for him, though, and he remembers clearly what that was like. That’s why he got himself under control and went down to look her in the eye.
If he had started with “I understand”, she would’ve immediately rejected it and closed herself off from the rest. Instead, he’s showing as well as telling her that he takes her pain seriously.
It will definitely take her some effort to reconcile with him and manage her anger. To some degree, those issues will be with her all her life. But the adults in her family are *showing* as well as telling her that they support her. It’s a start.
Once again.. not really the appropriate thing to critique her on at this exact moment
under the circumstances I think her outburst was appropriate (for once). at this rate she’s going to start suppressing all her emotions
Amanda already suppresses most of her emotions. She doesn’t often show fear or sadness unless she’s alone or with someone she deeply trusts. She really needs people to just sit down with her and tell her they love her, that she matters to them, that she will always have someone there for her and that the things that happened to her were not right.
That and that her anger from being ignored, shoved to the side like her problems were less important than Selkie’s at the time, is completely justified anger. Now she shouldn’t be directing that anger at Selkie, but she’s not wrong in being mad at the adults who just brushed her under the rug to be dealt with at a later time.
Let her know they UNDERSTAND why she blames Selkie. That she lashed out at someone on her level versus the adults whom had already proven themselves abusive or neglectful of her. BUT teach her, talk with her and explain to her that Selkie did not set out to hurt her.
Also, Todd is absolutely not saying she can’t be mad. He’s not saying she can’t express her anger. He’s saying she can’t throw a screaming temper tantrum because she’s mad – and neither can Selkie, or Andi, or Todd. And I actually think this is the right time to talk about it. He’s not berating her, he’s talking.
He’s totally correct in telling that. But it’s very important to show a child (especially one who’s only seen negative examples of anger management) other ways to manage his/her anger, because telling them to just “stop it” really just creates a child who bottles their emotions to the point they harm others and even themselves. I hope we get to see a little glimpse of one of the parents helping Amanda find these other outlets to express her anger.
Yeah, I agree. He needs to follow up with showing her other, more acceptable/healthy ways of expressing anger.
Perfectly fine with the single panel art, as you know, Dave:) And I am looking forward to when Amanda is told the truth of why they didn’t know she was in the orphanage…
I love panels like this, when the coloration reflects the mood of the characters. It’s really beautiful and such a good way to represent the emotion. It really speaks to me (that probably sounds silly, but it’s true).
those backgrounds are really good. they allow emotional nuance or clarification without a wall of words. visually, they reallly remind me of turner paintings.