Jitterz Art

tall ships caught in a squall in Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey, 2026

The heat’s been brutal this summer but we still gotta eat! If you’re like me, heat might suppress your appetite, and the last thing any of us want is to sweat over a hot stove and oven when it’s already boiling outside. Here are some of my favorite hot-weather recipes to keep hydrated and fed with when the weather is unbearable! (All recipes should be un-paywalled).

NYT’s best gazpacho (lives up to its name!!)

Persian cold cucumber soup (if you like tzatziki you will like this!)

Eric Kim’s cold noodles with tomato (infinitely riffable Korean flavor profile — for a creamier and less brothy take, try these cold sesame noodles too)

Vietnamese chicken and herb salad (this is an excellent time to get a rotisserie chicken so you don’t have to turn the oven on)

Radish sandwiches with butter and salt (and in a similar vein, if you dig this flavor combo you should try this Polish cottage cheese dip on some good rye bread or even crackers)

It’s still a little early in the season, but you can never go wrong with a BLT (or, if you don’t eat bacon, try this tomato furikake sandwich in its place)

Infinite iterations of pasta salad! You can use anything you got but here is a template I like.

Assorted dense bean salads. This back pocket canned salad is a weird combo of jarred ingredients but it slaps, this hoagie-inspired one is super satisfying, and cowboy caviar is a classic for a reason.

Poke bowls! Canned tuna mixed with some kewpie mayo and sriracha is a budget-friendly riff on the usual ahi and makes everything taste like a spicy tuna roll, but use whatever proteins you like, this is more of a loose template.

I've been struggling through a lot of things and having a really rough time making any art, but I am clawing my way back to being a functional human being

I decided I would tackle ArtFight again this year on the hopes that it will help me get back into the groove of doing art. Creating two new sets of character references has already helped! Yunni and Rerk from AstralSounds will be joining the party this year

Hi there ! thank you ! :) I would say, you need to work/draw/practive with intentions. You need to know what specific skill you are trying to improve each time you start a drawing session. For Layout and background painting, you need many different skills so it's good to have a list :

Perspective Composition Color theory Light theory Shape design Architecture design Line work/brushwork

when you do a piece of art ask yourself : what am I working on today ? you can do multiple at once of course ! And when you feel that you are not achieving what you want, try to pinpoint which skill is lacking, and look for ressources about that specific one ! Always surround yourself with REFERENCES, you can't draw everything from imagination, you absolutely need to study the world !! and don't limit to pinterest and google images, find books and go outside !

You need VARIETY in order to get better, there is nothing worth than a creative brain getting bored because you are doing the same exercizes over and over.

Studies, life drawings, plein air, are good when you don't have inspirations and you want a base to build from. Personnal illustration help you develop a personnal style, a langage, explore with your skill, have fun, be an artist.

Failures are OK and normal, just keep drawing, the more you draw the less you will care about doing something less good. Every drawing, every sketch, every painting, is a lesson. You may not feel it while you do it, but in the long run you will !!

Thank you so much! I suppose I have always been really into ancient fauna, and the paleontological museum located nearby only fuelled the fire. Also, my father is a historian by second generation, and he focuses very heavily on the history of pre-colonial America and the medieval Middle East. You could say I soaked it up from him. And then, I suppose, Hayao Miyazaki's films, his original works? But I feel they simply cannot fail to inspire anyone.

What I particularly enjoyed was studying historical civilisations, because their worldview and daily life are shaped by the environments in which they exist. There are so many interconnected little details that depend on geography, climate… For example, the large amount of brick in Indian architecture is due to the fact that they had a great many trees for firing kilns, and so on. This is something you cannot invent from scratch, at least not for me.

Tis I! La Creatura! Member of the Agender Agenda! Voted Most Likely To Eat All Your Coasters Like Some Kind of Delicious Biscuit! Kisser of Monsters, and all round goofy bitch!

It's Widdershins Wednesday! Consulting, with regards detectives.

Seven pages to go!

---

New to Widdershins? Read from the start of the comic!