Past, Present (which is actually slightly in the past, but not enough for anything of any real significance to happen within the timeframe) and Future (hopefully.)

   They call the things I did the past, and the things I am doing the present. They call the past the past because it's passed, though they don't call the present the present because it's a present: rather, they call the present the present because it's pre-sent, or before the future (it involves, like, Latin past participles, which is something up into which we shall not get. Or at least not here.) Likewise, they don't call the things I will have done the future perfect tense for nothing. They call it that because you get the future by combining the present (where we are) with the past (where we have been) and, like, extrapolating them. Thus, the future perfect is a combination of the present and the past, or, in other words, the future perfect is the presast. That is why they say the thing which they say, they thing which they say being "presast makes perfect."

   I once was unskilled, but now am slightly better, and I hope to improve even more. It's not enough to be good, is it? You have to be great, or even the best. At whatever. And at whatever, I practice when I can find time and materials. I do not know the future, but I am an optimist, or at least a realist in a world that's going to rock (see post The Good New Days.)

PAST:

   Since 100% of the art I ever did was done here in the past, it was kind of hard to choose an example. I settled on this pic of a serving wench I drew for Cap'n Patches and the Pieces of Eight, a pirate adventure taking place in a world where dogs and cats sail the high seas:

Ahhh! Kill it! Kill it!

   Alright, I wasn't very proud of that one when I first drew it, (and now I'm putting it on the internet- great) but I feel it's pretty typical of that era (that era being Sophomore to Junior year of high school.) You can see my earlier abortive attempt at drawing digitigrade feet on the top there, then my slightly better version on the bottom. The tail is also slightly better on the bottom one, as on the top it's just sort of pants. The skirt is far too tight to allow any degree of movement whatever on the top; slightly better on the bottom, with, if you'll notice, some curvature on the hemming as it goes away behind the leg from the viewer, giving illusion of a three dimensional space, so that's not bad.

   On the top, it's not that the head is too small; I think the problem here is with the neck. Plus, the face looks like a dude's, which I tried to work out to the right. The forehead slopes too much, and neither thick eyebrows nor thick whiskers are very feminine. Also, I wasn't sure where to place the ears at first, making her look more like a bat or something. This is why nowadays I like doing a pencil under-sketch before doing the inking on top. Not only does it allow for underlying anatomy to be worked out, but it also allows for sort of a quick and dirty preview before the final inking is applied. Which brings us to

PRESENT:

   Just, a drawing I just did right now specifically for this post. That's as close to the present as you can get, making it a pretty good example of where I am right now. Revisiting the world of Cap'n Patches feels good.

   Note, like I said above, how I pencil before I ink. I like the posing of the figures here. I'm actually impressed by my own talents on this one (low expectations, I guess), though there's still a lot left to be desired. It's nothing yet like

FUTURE:

   What I hope to be able to do one day.

Behold the majesty.

   Thomas Novotny over at Ohnitsch Cartoons is one of the more incredible toon artists out there. I guess there's hope for me yet, as he has been getting better ever since he first started posting, though even some of his really sloppy early ones aren't as blinding as some of my own worse ones.

Eh, I guess that's better.