Greetings.

Thx to Picrew, I just made a Leslie’s avatar icon! Look at his cutie pie.❤️ (credits on the picture!)

congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!

Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.

"Pushing Your Luck"

painted with acrylic gouache and every shade of green paint marker i got lying around :^) painted on the mat frame too and it came out better than i thought!

the fans: but what if there was no sexual abuse

I've made these self-references as I am having (a bit TOO ambitious) plan to doodle all of these characters!

Demon's Souls:

I still can't believe they had John Soulsborne's look gendered in this game xd Pokemon games MC moment lol

Dark Souls 1:

I might eventually retract the idea of drawing the two specific Pisacas that weep in the corner and each drop Gwynevere's miracles because by this logic drawing the line is very hard, however I did doodle two concepts for their outfits for maybe something else! Hellkite got confirmed only retroactively by DS3 as they specified Drakes are gender dymorphic species distinct visually by horns shape!

I am considering including Gwyndolin as a bonus doodle that would not be a part of the main canvas since at this rate I am very sold on them being genderfluid rather than strictly trans man so there are times they'd be included (at least this is how I feel, as someone genderfluid myself). I would like to stick to this plan, honestly!

This is also the one most worked-through, I've designed everyone that needed it and sketched their art, it is only a matter of digitalising and coloring everything.... *laughs in unmedicated ADHD and depression*

Dark Souls 2:

Dark Souls 2 is THE game with the casting of glup shittos to end all glup shittos lol. I've designed almost everyone here!

This is about where I am completely failing to be consistent with my own rules. For example, I do believe Lost Sinner is just Queen of Venn and so I didn't separate the characters in the list. But at the same time, Hanleth and Nehma are probably just Drangleic names of Gwynevere and Fina but I am making them distinct characters for the sake of designing and fleshing out Gwynevere's "many children" lore more. I believe in Big Boss supremacy (if you know then you know XD)

As for Gutter Denizen, they use 'male' model but wear Zullie's dress so I took it as an invitation to interpret this as trans woman character! I remind you DS2 is the game with Lost Sinner, a female character with the beard and built like Gwyn, with 'trans coffin' and with MC being originally male but able to return as anyone else back from Hollowing. DS2 team liked making cast more diverse in general!

Bloodborne:

(yes I know I've accidentially messed the numbering up don't ping me fdsghfdsfsd) I titled some of these with my headcanons as it is SELF-reference, but to clarify: that old lady = Cainhurst portrait, Arianna's mother = pretty woman from Cainhurst portraits in the silver variant of the noble dress, twins' mother = another pretty woman from Cainhurst portraits in bellringing woman's outfit aka mother of Iosefka and Fauxsefka!

We also only fight two Witches of Hemwick but the statue in Hemwick Mansion suggests there were three of them! We find Caryll's tool here on a corpse of a random imprisoned hunter and statues behind Memory Altar has forehead scar same as those on foreheads of all Hemwick's women so this tracks for me. Dores' gender was never specified in Japanese original, but also Bloodborne by far is the only Soulsborne game missing 'big cleaver scary woman living in a swamp' archetype so the joke is that Dores should be that x)

Carla is unused Keeper of the Old Lords summon. In my mind I've combined her into one character with a female Cainhurst Knight! It is just that the name bothers me a lot. It doesn't sound like the name of an ancient Pthumerian at all to me, but it indeed sounds like a German name ie something Cainhurst would have. xd So maybe she just left Cainhurst and joined Pthumerians instead in defending the dungeons (that Cainhurst also graverobbed, it weren't JUST Gehrman's hunters or Healing Church!). However, unlike with Caryll = Third Witch and Lost Sinner = Queen of Venn, there is nothing to suggest the characters are the same at all so I feel like separating. But in my mind I'd be drawing the same character twice?

Dark Souls 3:

You guys are better off not knowing how much I've been stunlocked on whether Yuria and Liliane actually have white hair or it is decoration. xD But after analysing how Bloodborne treated the situation ( x ) and pairing it with how Darkness commonly makes your hair white in DS setting I am sure it is the case! Dark Souls is, too, an anime. Also Londor Sisters are, too, Hemwick Witches. xD

Ocelotte is keeping me questioning as their gender is not confirmed: unspecified in Japanese, male in English adaptation, female in Italian adaptation (and maybe some other languages)? I'd like to know how well communicated it was because considering so far all dragon crossbreeds except for Gwyndolin were women it could be some meta and they're like Gwyndolin? It hinges on whether non-English localisations also got instructions by From or took full liberties!

Unused female knight was going to be instead of Vilhelm, even having different armor and different weapons (dual swords specifically)! Here ( x ) is more information but I think with how different she is from Vilhelm she could be imagined as separate character that existed and died somewhere behind the scenes?

Elden Ring:

This is THE one that will kill everyone who tries. Almost 100 characters?! However do I appreciate that Elden Ring returned the tradition of random glup shittos fshfdsh

Hilde kept me questioning for some time because both English and Japanese original never specify gender, but I've asked around and in gendered languages localisations she is always a woman! Elden Ring's localisation was the most well revieved so far so I believe it is deliberate? Dolores though is a fringe case because for all we know "a woman fashioning herself as a man" could be a flowery way to say "we wanted to write a trans man in but our publishers don't want extra attention :/"? At the same time they've already had three cases of masculine-presenting female archers before so maybe Dolores is just that trope? I am only including them for the sake of completion but. we just don't know hahah

Nightreign:

This would be the easiest to draw due to such a small cast, though I dunno if I want to draw Painter in her original Reedlander armor (that I did design) or in her Maiden's disguise!

'Young girl' refers to that girl from Tree-Cloning Tribe who was entombed to hold Sacrificial Twigs as Erdtree's sapplings through the Night. According to the lore though, there were several, but I am just including since we lowkey only find one of them via Cord's End! As for Village Girl, her story is similar to Marika's, but it is just not her! Marika's fellow Shamans were taken by the Potentates who are executors of religious leads of Hornsent and then whipped alive in the shack, whereas girl's village was attacked by simple bandits and all her fellows were just killed! Separate characters!

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