#It took two days to draw this :3

[floydsteeth]

To celebrate finishing Gils route Saturday!!!

>:3

[mipexch]

comic about v2 and the goal they'll never fully reach alongside a dissatisfying conclusion. intimate rivalry and all (alternative ending comic. V1 dies instead of V2 during 4-4. V2 is narrating. V1 is dead.)

[thebabemobile]

Hello, (with the intention of softlaunching my newest blorbo from a piece of media that's old enough to be my father)

[happistar]

How many invisible things do you think this man has lost?

(Lodgetember Day 2 - Griffin)

[achillean-knight]

Summer of 87'

[cloudinal]

Day 4 - By Your Side

[slavhew]

28/01/2024

stars don't twinkle moon doesn't shine

big thanks to @nahrgles for finishing this for me after i hit a wall with colors bg and effects- chromatic aberration blew my fkn mind

pre edit transparent version under cut because i spent too much time cleaning it loll

[reds-skull]

Reaper concepts from my Revenant AU! The first one is Reaper of the Pull (Gaz and Konchar's Reaper), second is Lumity as it looked by the end of part 1, and the third...

Is one I'll leave unnamed for now (:<

[jawd]

nerve damage be damned bitch!!!! I drew!! theres no room on my current desk to use my drawing tablet so I used my dads old ipad. please welcome to the world the new oc whos been cooking inside my brain for months: MAX

[sexygaywizard]

Was looking at old art and thought to myself, “Why don’t I draw like that any more? That art style was so cute!” so I tried to draw something in that art style again— anyways, I remembered why. This art style is SOOOO much work lol. But anyways here’s Pestilence

[luckyashes-art]

Decided to actually take some time on a piece, to try and actually make it look better-- and I'd say it went pretty well :D

[seaofreverie]

Sparkstember Day 19: Lil' Beethoven (Ride 'Em Cowboy)

First of all, let this very important fact be known: the love I have for all three albums in the Lil' Beethoven trilogy cannot be overstated. I think I can safely call them my favourite pieces of art ever made. You know, when you look forward to something and it not only lives up to all your expectations but it's also just SO SO much more? Something about this neoclassical / dada / deconstruction of pop music / whatever-you-should-even-call-it approach is absolutely PERFECTLY suited for my tastes, and I didn't even know I was looking for something EXACTLY like this until I found it.

I think the circumstances of my first hearing of this album are pretty funny and something I got pretty lucky with actually (I often think about this with Sparks in general, as much as I wish I've known about them sooner I also do feel like they appeared in my life when I needed that the most. But anyway.) I was very eagerly looking forward to hearing it and finally seeing for myself what the genius of this album is all about. But I insisted that I can only do it through a physical format because yesss, let's make it even more *special*! The moment I've been waiting for! So yeah let's gooo, I need to wait until my CD arrives in the mail (that was one of the longest weeks of my life). And then I started to wonder, well, maybe I actually won't like it that much. To hype myself up to this extent and then be severly dissapointed - would have sucked!

Well, I was NOT dissapointed. Instead I was perplexed, confused, but also very intrigued and quite, ok not just quite, *completely* amazed already. That was the initial reaction and I think it's a rare but very beautiful moment when this happens - no need to *fully* grasp it right away, but enough to be all like "oh that was SOMETHING. I need more." As I said after that first listen (and I actually have my whole LIVE reaction to hearing LB written down lmao, that's how much of a big deal this was for me), I felt like it actually has to grow on me a bit still, gradually but surely with each next listen, rather than the 1st listen being THE prime listening experience. And that was very true! But it wasn't even gradual, it was very fast, seriously. And something very important that stood out to me right away too were the melodies - something about them, and that continues into HYL and ECOTD too. It's this classic feeling of: this always existed, or at least it feels like I've known it for years already. And as I listen more and become more familiar with them the magic still grows.

It's of course no coincidence to me that an album that relies so much on extreme levels of repetition is so addicting, even hypnotising. And once upon a time I thought that I couldn't like something that's too repetitive and therefore could be considered monotonous or "predictable". But nothing is predictable about LB actually. (Besides... ok, I'll get to that one bit later). But yeah, it's good for the brain. And it's been said before by others but this music definitely has this certain neurodivergent appeal thanks to all this, and, well, I love that aspect of it so much and I definitely relate to it on some level that goes even deeper than just song topics and instrumentation choices. It's in the structure and the fundaments of it all too.

I legally can't finish this without a dedicated paragraph to the 2004 Live In Stockholm performance because HOLY SHIT. Feeling so lucky again that all three of these albums got this treatment and we have recordings of these half-concert-half-performance-art pieces that we can now marvel at. I will say that like, a pretty big part of the sum of the appeal that LB has as an album is stored in this show and its visual and narrative elaboration on its themes. And also it's just so fun to watch! Sometimes I thought about how this might be an even better introduction to LB / this era of Sparks / Sparks in general than the actual album but well, never had a chance to test that and you know. Maybe shouldn't recommend Sparks with one of the most leftfield things there is to be found from them. Either way, very good, very important, felt like experiencing the power of LB for the first time all over again.

So now, please hear my exact reasonings for why I so deeply love (almost) every single one of these songs......

The Rhythm Thief

NO song made such a big impression on me the first time I heard it as this. I might have gotten more used to it after all this time but man, The Rhythm Thief, you will always be the realest one to me. This is what made me look forward to the whole album so much and convinced me that it would be like nothing else I've heard before. And that turned out to be so very beautifully true!

How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall?

I could listen to this one a hundred times in a row over and over and not get sick of it one bit. That's it, idk what else to add, beautiful and ethereal in every way

What Are All These Bands So Angry About?

Mostly I just want to direct everyone's attention to the bridge section, at the 2:26-2:52 time mark, which as far as I can say is the most heavenly piece of music ever made. Feeling like that Winnie The Pooh soul leaving his body gif each time I hear this

I Married Myself

Aromantic anthem, to me. Not that much to say actually but it's just, a very sweet and pretty song even when it might be taken as just this sort of ironic piece, I think it's this situation where a song can be taken more or less literally and it doesn't lose anything, rather the sincerity takes on a new sort of meaning? Because yes, maybe this hyperbolic situation (marrying yourself) COULD be the solution to the heartbreak of failed relationships. Ever thought about that??? Ok, stopping right here and leaving my I Married Myself analysis for another day

Ride 'Em Cowboy

My mind is blank on this one suddenly. But it's so good believe me. I love it a lot. It just has this LB spirit that makes it very addicting to listen to

My Baby's Taking Me Home

This was sort of the first Sparks song I've ever heard, or maybe that I quote-unquote purposefully listened to, and I think that's pretty important considering that it was the moment that ultimately lead to... all this. This song has always been incredibly beautiful and powerful to me, but lately it just makes me emotional to an extent that makes it hard to listen to most of the time. I WOULD sell all my material possessions for even one chance to experience this song live by the way

Your Call Is Very Important To Us. Please Hold

Earns soooo much as a live version, but even without that I think it's genius in the same way as The Rhythm Thief, and maybe the most disquieting piece here overall... If we ignore the next one maybe

Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls

Sitting there hearing the intro of this song all like "huh, this is so chill and calm... too calm..." and then being hit with, well, everything that's going on in this song afterwards was truly THE MOMENT back in the day (and re: the predictability thing. idk though, it's not like, really an issue). Later on I decided that this sort of narrative nature of the song makes it have less replayability value than the rest (???) but I abandoned that opinion soon enough, thank god. I love it how long it took me to realize that this song and the ending of MBTMH are the only times when drums appear on this entire album (I mean no, I'm not very proud of that fact actually, as the self-proclaimed biggest LB fan in my area. And The Rhythm Thief literally saying "say goodbye to the beat"... come on man). So yes, sometimes less is more! I adore this song now it's such a treat I would gladly terrorize my neighbours with it

Suburban Homeboy

Ok, I'm sorry Suburban Homeboy fans but this is the only song here that I'm not a HUGE fan of. I still think it's brilliant and an incredibly fitting ending for the whole thing - the mood whiplash is amazing as this is the only "vaguely happy sounding" song on here, per my words from months back. And what's better than yelling WE ARE THE SUBURBAN HOMEBOYS! (I'm actually awaiting today's Sparks karaoke rating reveal very impatiently lol the reveal happened before I posted this and I'm very happy about it)

One more actually, a quick word on Wunderbar because it gave us two things that we might have not been able to do without: 1) this whole album actually (the fact that LB exists because of Wunderbar giving the Maels the idea to continue meddling with this style. Up there as one of my fav pieces of Sparks trivia) 2) anddddd the 21×21 performance of it of course

[puppyeared]

XIN YA MOMENT

[skitskatdacat63]

"Non paeniteo potitus."

+ details & process

And, process !!

The jump btwn the second to last and last always surprise me whenever I make one of these because I always forget to take snapshots after I start painting. It's always like: oh yeah heres the lineart with some colors- BOOM fully finished✨️

What he's holding are the Austrian imperial scepter and orb, seen below:

I was going to draw the crown too but decided I don't hate myself that much(maybe some other day), and gave him a golden laurel crown, bcs I'm obsessed with that as a motif, and also its very remincient of the boy king statue that started this whole thing!

There's some symbolism of this, both intentionally but also just historically. I love that the orb represents that the monarch is holding the world in their hand, basically every old monarchy has one of those, and I think it's very cool for symbolism. But also bcs of that, I was forced to basically draw catholic fanart so, you win some you lose some. The star halo above him head is both to reference those religious statues with star crowns(I saw them a lot in Europe and they imprinted onto my brain), as well as: his four championships of course!

[laurzvahll]

that godforsaken drawing on the right was so hard and took me so long I might never color it so here you go

[art--harridan]

[Image description: A digital painting based on the film The Deadly Spawn. It depicts a large spawn creature - which is a mix between a slug and an earthworm, with a mouth like a leech - looming over a three storey blue house. The house is sat in a field next to a rocky hill, which the spawn rises out of, more than double its size. Its bottom teeth blend into the hillside. There's an empty road near the hill, which is visually blocked by shadow. Near its end, there's a telephone pole, which is linked by many wires to a more prominent one by the house. All of the house's windows are lit up in warm light. The night sky is light, though stars can be seen. A few clouds litter the sky. The leaves of large trees frame both sides of the pieces. The piece is mostly yellow and green tones, with a few reds for the spawn. The other main colour is blue, which is used mainly for the sky and house.]

Inktober - Day 29 (Massive)

Film - The Deadly Spawn (Douglas McKeown, 1983)