#Rosanna P Brost

[copperbora]

Concept Writing - Kit at the Vet

Heyo, beautifuls! I thought I’d share this piece, which is a concept for a maybe future story. Note that there’s certain elements which I’m not happy with - wolves are so overdone in shape shifting genre - but it’s still a great start and I hope that you enjoy it. 

Kit at the Vet By Rosanna P. Brost October 26th 2017

A kind, animal loving woman is sobbing. She has brown eyes, curly black hair and her husband is as bald as a baseball, with a voluminous moustache capable of winning best in show in any facial hair competition. He sits with one arm around her, consoling her and using his other hand to pet the strawberry blonde and grey dog laying at their feet. Despite the blood matted in the dog’s fur on one hind leg, it appears to be mildly annoyed, as does the receptionist who is sitting at the clinic’s counter. The waiting room is painted a soothing green, the floor is honeyed wood and the dog is really wishing that she could do something about the leash in the lady’s hand, which is so inconveniently attached to her neck, which the man won’t stop touching.

The dog is me and I am not a dog at all but a wolf but I’m also not that either, because I am actually Aurora Peters, Homo sapiens. These schmucks who have brought me in to Pleasant Hill Veterinary Practice are just two more in an annoyingly long line of idiots who apparently can’t read the ‘if found injured, please admit to hospital, not vet’ tag on my collar, or my name, or my mom’s phone number or even my home address. Instead, they’ve all taken me to the vet and it’s only stupid luck that there is only one veterinary practice in town for them to come to. Everyone here knows me, right down to the Russian Blue greeter cat, who has just come to say hi, but Jacob Hars, my well-meaning benefactor, rudely shoos her away. Luna gives a dissatisfied brrrt and wanders off, tail waving in the air, passing Doctor Hank Johnson as he steps out with a clip board. I meet his eyes and we share a moment of shared disgruntlement, then he greets my benefactors, the Hars, who tearily declare the usual.

“Doctor, we think she was hit by a car -”

“Her owners should know better than to let her roam!”

“There’s no name on her collar at all -”

“Doctor, if her people don’t want her, we’ll take her! She’s a beautiful animal!”

“I am truly grateful for your concern for this animal, Mister and Missus Hars,” says Hank charitably, “but I assure you, Kit has a good home and we have her on record. She’s just got a nasty little habit of jumping fences, that’s all.”

The Hars gasp and complain a bit more, but eventually Hank chivvies them out, the receptionist Tanja assuring them that they really do know me, then Hank pulls me into the back room with one of the clinic’s leashes. The moment that we’re through the door and out of sight of the waiting room he unclips the leash from my collar and glares at me. Despite the fact that he’s one tall dude, colour me uninspired - after all, there’s rainbow tabby cats all over his scrubs and he wears a bowtie decorated with paw prints. Plus, he’s like family to me, almost a second father; we even celebrate Christmas together every year and I gave him a birthday present just last week. (An obnoxiously lurid set of new scrubs, of course.)

“Kitsune, you gotta stop getting yourself into so much trouble,” says Hank crossly. “What’d you even do to yourself, girl?”

With some effort, because doing so opposes my current cute ‘n fluffy form, I speak, “I got caught in a barbed wire fence. It was rather against letting me continue on my merry way.”

He rolls his eyes. “You know, there are safer ways of practicing your bloody shape shifting! Couldn’t you have waited for shutzhund tomorrow?”

Ahh, shutzhund. Some girls have volleyball, some girls have jogging and then there’s freaks like me who compete in the lovely German dog sport of mauling guys in heavily padded protective suits - as a dog. My team mate is even a real dog, Hank’s champion Russian bred German Shepherd Vlad, (who, if you’re wondering, does indeed kick my ass at Shutzhund.) Hank got me into it because he figured that since I insist on moving around on all fours and pretending more or less to be canine, I needed to learn how to defend myself that way. Thus far, it has helped me learn how to bark convincingly, which has proven incredibly entertaining.

“Work was so boring, I needed to go out for a run,” I say, extending my hind leg and wincing at the shallow gash in it. “Good thing I’ve had my tetanus shot, eh?”

“Aurora Peters, what season is it?” demands Hank, crossing his arms.

“Fall…?” I say, cocking my head to signal my what-are-you-getting-at because honestly I have no idea why he is asking this dumb question.

“Yes, it’s Fall - hunting season, Aurora! The time of year when a bunch of idiots with guns who don’t know a deer from a shadow are running around our fields and forests looking for wildlife to put bullets in! And what are you, currently, woman?” he snarks. 

I glance at myself, then bare my teeth in a smirk which I have been perfecting in front of my mirror. “Gorgeous.”

Hank looks heavenward, as if asking God for help with bettering my youthful lack of brain cells. “A wolf! And if they don’t mistake you for a wolf, which lots of idiots hate, they’ll mistake you for a bloody flaming coyote, which people hate even more! Do you want a bullet in your brain, woman? ‘cus I can’t fix that!”

He likes calling me ‘woman’ - it’s as if he’s trying to remind me that I am actually a human, a fact which I am quite painfully aware of, thank you. 

“Not particularly,” I say, “but I wasn’t really in a field -”

“It don’t matter!” snaps Hank. “Kitsune, you gotta stay in town right now! And wear a bloody reflective vest, you ninny - emulate dog instead of arrooo.”

I sniff, “I wear it when I am hiking, but I need someone to put it on for me and I was alone, so -”

“Couldn’t you have stopped by here? Or gotten Rick, anybody to put it on for you?”

I look at him blankly, silently admitting: this would have been smart.

“But I’m alone tonight, so how the heck would I get it off afterwards?” I ask shrewdly.

Cue another eye roll. “You come by here and I’d take it off for you, you know I’m here for another hour. Kit, why can’t you have a weekday hobby? Why do you have to spend every spare minute you have running naked around town?”

He’s right, actually; if I were to transform right now, I would be naked, a fact which many townspeople have witnessed, thanks to the first time that I was hit by a bicycle (bikes are my nemesis) and the good Samaritan cyclist tried to help me. When I spoke up to say that I had just been stunned and was fine, the cyclist had fainted. Me, being kind of an idiot, had transformed back to perform CPR if needed, thinking they were in cardiac arrest - and at that moment, a long line of kindergartners had walked past the park where we were with their teacher on the way to the pool, the kids discovering quite abruptly what boobs look like. I had been unable to concentrate enough to change back, so I had ran streaking for home, only for my embarrassment to become truly complete by the police officer who had stopped by to write me a ticket for public indecency that evening. It had not ended there - for weeks I had had the parents of the kindergartners being terribly rude to me and that was about the time when I opted to spend the rest of my secondary education at home. 

“Well, since you were dumb and forgot to bring by another set of clothes for circumstances like this from the last time that you swore you wouldn’t show up here like this, you can spend the rest of my shift hanging out with Vlad until I can drive you home,” determined Hank and he herded me into his office, where Vlad was quite happy to slobber all over my face. Tail clamped between my hindquarters to thwart Vlad’s mundane yet cherished canine hobby of butt sniffing, I turned back to the door, just as Hank was about to shut it. His eyebrows shunted low over his dark eyes and I nervously laid back my ears.

“Y’know, Kit, someday this shape shifting nonsense is going to get you into some real trouble, and I might not be there to help,” said Hank and with these forbidding words, he walks off, cheerfully calling a greeting to his next, real patient.

Unfortunately, he repeats this warning in some format every time I end up at his clinic on four legs - after all, that’s how we first met - so I don’t really listen to him. Instead, I proceed to horse around with Vlad.

Like an idiot.

[copperbora]

My Introduction to Thru-hiking

For one glorious week of my life this past April, I had exactly one amazing job: hiking. 

Me at the top of the bizarrely dreaded Devil’s Staircase, between Glencoe and Kinlochleven. Taken by my awesome English buddy who hiked with me for a couple of days.

Every day I got up, ate a Cliff Bar or two while writing in my leather bound journal, checked my water, packed up camp, and set off hiking along the West Highland Way, Scotland’s oldest and first long distance trail, a 154.5 kilometre/96 mile stretch which links Milngavie (pronounced ‘Mulguy,’) with Fort William. With aspirations of someday hiking the far longer Pacific Crest Trail (4,265 km/2,650 miles,) but with a travel itch which needed scratching, I set out to hike the longest trail which I had ever encountered. The fact that I did the majority of it solo is unremarkable - most thru-hikers hike by themselves, after all - but for me personally it was remarkable just because it was my first time hiking that kind of distance. In the end, I would prove that I am fully capable of doing it, albeit with proper gear and layers - of which, despite my months of planning and theorizing, I didn’t quite have. (I’m glad for this though, because now I know better on a lot of things.)

A small loch I encountered on my first day. Note the rain.

So, what was it like? You’re probably imagining that it was some sublime experience for me, and in many ways, it absolutely was, and I will say here that the thru-hiking bug has bitten me hard, but much of it wasn’t so sweet. In fact, I spent a lot of my hike feeling either bitter or angsty - the amount of swearwords in my journal attest to this. The problem is, I came to this hike from months of intensely social retail work, and as an introvert, I needed a break, time to be by myself, but on the busy West Highland way, solitary, I was not - which was actually okay, but a lot of the interactions I had with other hikers really got my goat. For example, random fellow hikers had a very frustrating habit of asking whether or not I was okay - this, to me, got very tiring. Quote my journal: “...unless I am visibly bleeding out, limping, or my leg is obviously broken, I am okay!” 

I think people tended to ask this due to my tendency to double over to shift my incorrectly fitting (stupidly) heavy pack up off of my shoulders to give my skeleton a break every few minutes (especially if I was hiking uphill. I was like a runaway freight train going downhill.) It also aggravated me when people expressed amazement at my hiking by myself, or, gasp, hiking by myself as a female - heaven forbid! (Seriously, stop. There is nothing amazing about being a solo female hiker. Nothing.) I should also note that I am socially inept, to the point where I am confused when people express care for me. I am gratefully baffled for all the people who asked if I was alright, even if their concern bewildered me completely. From the bottom of my socially obtuse heart, thank you.

My trail name is Wolf (a name which I received last year backpacking in Garibaldi,) - and I’m Canadian - so these patches adorned my pack to tell my fellow hikers who I was.

So, I was a bit of an angry hiker. Due to various issues, I entertained a few hours over the course of the trail (primarily after Tyndrum and the dreaded layering mishap,) of thinking of quitting too, but I bullied myself out of that bullshit pretty fast. I was determined to hike the trail, and I knew that I’d never forgive myself if I failed. This might sound extreme, but consider that the West Highland Way is only 154.5 kilometres/96 miles long - that’s small change compared to longer hikes out there like the vast Appalachian Trail. I wouldn’t have felt like I had accomplished anything if I had bailed on the Way, and I certainly wouldn’t have felt worthy of my hiking boots. Had I bailed after several hundred kilometres of, say, the Pacific Crest Trail, I would have been cool with it - after all, that would have been several hundred more kilometres than I had ever hiked before - but the Way is tiny in comparison.

I couldn’t give up, so I didn’t.

Physically, I didn’t care that I was filthy, that I probably stunk (I have an exceptionally poor sense of smell, which is a benefit when living with one’s own hiker stink,) or even really that my feet were a mess. (Okay, I cared about that a lot - but there was little that I could do about it except try thru-hiker tricks which I’d read about. I did my best, and my feet survived the trail just fine. Good job, feet. I did take a grim pride in lancing my blisters, I will admit.) 

My glorious noble feet, which I recently learned thanks to my experience on the Way are allergic to their own sweat. I feel special. (Also some mud.)

I didn’t care that I didn’t take a shower for the whole trail - I could care less about those normally anyway. The idea of showering then putting back on my filthy hiking gear utterly repulsed me, so I was far happier remaining a grungy wild thing. Really, the only thing which actually repulsed me were ticks - so I never did check behind my ears for them; the little bastards were probably there, but there was nothing that I could do about them, so I preferred just not knowing about their existence on my body unless they were somewhere I could see/reach. Of midges, I never encountered them until I was in Fort William, after my time on the trail was over.

It was only alongside the magnificent Caledonian Canal in Corpach near Fort William that I ever encountered the dreaded Scottish midges, and there were only a few of them.

Walking the Way and visiting Scotland is one of the best things that I have ever done, but it wasn’t enough. I need more adventure, more wilderness, and more solitude. While at this time I’m not sure whether I would hike the Pacific Crest Trail thanks to my time on the Way, I still dream of the experience, and I dream of tackling another thru-hike, albeit with proper gear and a lighter pack. I made several dumb mistakes with my pack - using one which didn’t fit right (not that I entirely knew this going in,) carrying too much food, carrying too much water and carrying too many layers of clothing. I learned a lot about my gear over the seven days I took to hike the trail, knowledge which I will apply to my next great adventure. Someday I’ll get my pack right, the way that I want it, but for now, I’m just grateful to have what I have learned from this trip. 

Even though I was a (albeit silent,) grumpypants I’m intensely grateful for the wonderful people who I met, and the landscapes I saw, and the animals - even those damned ticks. They made my adventure richer, even if I was afraid of them and absolutely detested ripping them out of my skin (along with parts of said flesh. I became very handy with my tweezers.) I learned so much in Scotland, and I can’t wait to go again someday - although next time, I do think that I’ll perhaps just be a regular tourist/day hiker. There’s a lot of stuff which I didn’t get to see because the Way took up the majority of my two week vacation, so next time I’ll indulge in that.

Me conquering Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh was probably one of my favourite sightseeing stops in Scotland. Holyrood Park itself is probably my favourite urban park in the entire world - Stanley Park in Vancouver, eat your heart out!

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: thank you, Scotland.

[copperbora]

Finally scanned this! I finished this December 29th 2017 - feels really good to finally have it up. I rather wish that I hadn’t attempted to give this any kind of background, as what I did kind of ruined it (or so, I feel. I still really like it, I just went too far on this one.) 

This was basically a concept of what an albino falcolf might look like. I realized after the fact that on Earth animals with faint markings like this are actually more siding towards leucistic, but considering falcolfs are not Gaian and they have biological properties in their coats (which isn’t fur, but ‘feather-fur,’ known more accurately on Rimer as plumavellus,) which Gaian animals do not possess... this is a maybe?

In any case, I’m really happy with how his claws, nose and eyes turned out. 

[copperbora]

This is to wish you all a fantastically happy holiday and a fabulous new year! Thank you so much for your support! Two muttskies playing together in the snow, a shepherd cross hoarding a coveted red ball from a pup! My snow came out looking a bit like water, but ehh, it was a pretty good attempt at snow with what colours I have, so I'm okay with it. This was 2017's holiday card design, done in Copic Sketch markers of course! ______________

Three more copic works coming atcha soon! 

[copperbora]

Ever so slowly I spam you with drawings.

Ki (the biped,) looks huge, and at the time I was apparently incapable of drawing him running from a front angled perspective, so I have no idea what he’s doing with his feet.

On the plus side, Eqaetz looks great.

[copperbora]

Sketch of the Day (December 13th 2017) - coloured some ink from my sketchbook.

[copperbora]

Page 1 of Cold Chase complete! Cold Chase is a thirteen page scene which I originally storyboarded back in highschool (like a bazillion years ago now,) which I’ve turning into this for fun. I made a previous attempt to make it into a comic several years back but that kinda failed, but this one won’t, ‘cus all the pages are drawn, they just need colour and my cintiq is here to help me out, woo! I’ll be posting finished pages as often as I have them, blargh.

This features what is probably Kayoss’ best line ever.

[copperbora]

Sketch of the Day (January 29th 2018) - concepts for two future characters, Jason (last name subject to change,) and Yakin. They’re two best friends who escaped tyranny and now live on a more forwards thinking, biologically diverse planet. They bonded through the hell they went through, and the peril they survived together while deserting their former situation. As far as friends go, these two have transcended simple alliance into full out bromance; Yakin’s family has basically adopted Jason. (Along with a couple of other oddlings because Yakin’s dad Garore has a pretty big heart. Of his three kids, only Yakin is actually related to him, or even the same species.)

Notes:

Jason is the only human (as far as he or any of his friends know) on his planet, so he does his best to dress as obnoxiously human as possible. (It’s not like he can hide what he is anyway... not that most people where he is know what the heck a human is!) Thus the awesomely loud shirt and wonderful hair.

Yakin’s a vanpeerk and they have blue blood, so I was experimenting with trying to make his blush, mouth and ears show that. I might’ve overdid the saturation of the blush on him but I’m having trouble telling because my cintiq and my laptop are showing me two different things right now.

Because Jason’s weird (okay he has reasons I haven’t figured out yet,) he still wears his dogtags. Yakin probably threw his away at the first convenient opportunity, possibly even before they had even finished escaping.

The thing around Yakin’s neck lets him speak languages other than his own. He finds it incredibly annoying, but it’s a fact of life for his kind outside of their home planet, so he deals. Qalkin the falcolf also wears one.

I’d like to find a more unique surname for Jason, this one just kind of popped into my head. It is nice and classy though, so it might stay.

[copperbora]

Sketch of the day (January 26th 2018) - this is probably a very typical expression for Kayoss.

[copperbora]

Sketch of the day (January 24th 2018) - Westwind! I needed to draw a new full body reference for her since I only showed her head on the last page; her mate Northwind looks pretty much the same, just a bit darker in pigmentation, gold eyed instead of green and obviously different spots and facial markings.

Anatomy and marking inspirations:

Snow leopards, which share the same habitat as these guys.

Blue merle dogs. (I have a ‘no rosettes’ policy on Rimarian animals... stripes are fine because stripes are freakin’ everywhere in the animal kingdom, but rosettes are pretty exclusively a cat thing. Plus I feel like it would be super dumb to make an alien canid looking creature have leopard rosettes.) Merle-like patterns are seen on seals as well as herding dogs.

Maine coon cats - dat tail bush and the dark pigmentation comes from grey tabby maine coons, which have some very impressive tail floof.

Mountain people would actually be extremely huggable... if they let you hug them without deciding to make you their dinner. (Just kidding, they are more likely to talk to you than eat you, although if they are around you probably won’t see them at all since they usually avoid other sentient species, unless they are starfers.)

On that note, starfers don’t eat these guys; there’s a weird truce between the two predatory species even though they share habitat and technically hunt the same things. Starfers and mountain people often pause to share news and there’s stories of them protecting each other from other less friendly predators. Mountain people tracks have been documented around starfer kills and vice versa. In opposition to this alliance, while mountain people seem to also coexist peacefully with falcolfs, starfers (being logically very leery of death from above,) usually can’t stand them. (Kazik is a freak.)

[copperbora]

Roger - today I at last scanned stuff!* Here’s the first Copic piece for your perusal; Roger the dracoraptor with an Escavian Forest Derse which he would like to nom upon, providing that that damned falcolf doesn’t show up to interrupt his hard won feast!

*Only took me like eight months to do, whoops.

[copperbora]

Sketch of the Day (October 23rd 2017) - I had plans for a wildly different sketch today, but then I felt tired and my fallback artistically for when I am tired is wolves, then I thought of a story which I have lingering in my head (which may never see the light of day) and smilodon guy was added, so this became, well, this.

That’s the face I’d make if I met a freaking smilodon!

[copperbora]

Sketch of the Day (December 15th 2017) - it seems like I never draw positive personal art and today I made a really good animal analogy about my social life, so I decided to illustrate it. I chose copics, because I feel like a white animal will be a nice challenge in them and the special effect of mud, because wolves (as well as dogs) look sort of horribly endearing to me when they are filthy. I also wanted more real animals in my artistic copic portfolio, because I feel that I might be able to sell prints of wildlife, so here’s a start. Very importantly, I drew this without photo reference (which I often use for illustrations of real animals,) because I have found in the past that when I draw from reference my work ends up pretty stiff, so it’s better for me (at least in the case of this arctic wolf,) to draw straight from my head, practicing anatomy from reference only in rough sketches which I have no intention of finishing. I’m very pleased with how this girl turned out sketch and ink-wise, so hopefully she turns out well once I put copics to her.

[copperbora]

Fletch Horse - these guys are a completely different species, unrelated to Gaian Horses, the horses which we know. A little bit more about that here. I’m planning to expand on the subject of Rimarian horses (tath and not-horses,) in the future with more art. 

It kind of agonized me only giving this guy three socks - he’s clearly a tobiano pattern, and one of the hallmarks of tobianos is them always having four white feet. But, that’s a Earth horse genetics rule - the same rules would not apply to Rimarian horses, them being different animals (parallel evolution! Yass!) so thus this ‘mistake’ (as some may see it at a first glance,) is entirely intentional. 

[copperbora]

Sketch of the Day (November 26th 2017) - preview! This is done, but gah, I still don't have quite the selection of brown/tawny Copics yet that I need. Somedaaay.

[copperbora]

Sketch of the Day (November 25th 2017) - WIP of a Copic piece (pre-copics.)