Where the Wild Things Are

Daniel Smith Watercolors
Prisma Colored Pencils
Arches 140lb Cold Press Paper

Her name is Skittlez, she's from my webcomic, Toilet Genie.

On tumblr there are:
finished pencil lineart
two different roughs from this image

If you click the download button, this is also a wallpaper! There is a zip pack with three different designs, one of the full image, one of the lineart, and one of the changing ravens. X3

And if you'd like to see a bigger version of this painting, I added that to the download just now. It was such a big painting, filled with detail, it's really shrunk down and sad on deviantart.

Hey Merry Christmas (and assorted other holidays!) Thank you to everyone who has followed my work over the years, be that pony art, pokemon art, or my original characters and comics. Thank you especially to the people who continue to hoard TG pages and read my comic every now and then! I know it doesn't update regularly, but I hope every update is worth waiting for. That is always my endeavor.

The title isn't arbitrary, but obviously this isn't from Maurice Sindak's book, either.

haha, I've really tried to write an author comment about this image, but I might not be capable. I'll try again anyway.

In September, I moved from a painfully rural place to a really dense inner city. I thought a city was what I wanted - and right now it is, I don't regret what I did. This concept I'm trying to understand was also in "The Last Unicorn". The unicorn removed herself from the forest, but the forest remained behind her eyes until the event of humanity changed her permanently. She then confronted forgetting everything in exchange for something new, but instead of that, she learned regret. In "Where the Wild Things Are" a child invents a wild land where he can be king and live out all of his questionable childhood fantasies until his fantasy tries to eat him and he runs home to his mum, who fixes him hot soup and doesn't question the change in her child. There's a third story I'm thinking of, too. Eowyn was a pretty great character. The basis of her problem was a life filled with purpose and responsibility, two things that can instill value, but instead acted as a cage. When she left the cage, she did accomplish great things, but those accomplishments permanently changed her in good and bad ways.

For a long time after leaving home, a city sound would spur a rural memory. It was very odd. I was sitting at a desk, working, I was alone and everything was quiet. Outside, there was a noise. The noise was at a perfect pitch. For a moment, I couldn't even register what the noise was, I was mentally not even at my desk. The opening note of the noise was identical to an elk singing and all I could think of was that perfect shade of autumn twilight, bars of red light falling through black pines, sparse golden grass, and dry air heavy with sage and dust.

It was such a perfect and complete memory, it was jarring and even painful to realize the noise was in fact a screeching tire.

I have a permanent home in a place that inspires dreams that can only take me away from this home. My home is a cage that keeps me from meeting anyone or learning foreign things, but when I leave, that home pulls at me like a missing piece. Staying would strangle every dream, but I'm not sure I even *can* leave. Does it count as leaving if a part of me will always live in this place, even when the rest of me lives several thousand miles away?

The Little Mermaid left her beautiful sea to chase her love, even when walking on land felt like walking on upturned knives.

Maybe this is a sensation of division that I wouldn't want anyone else to have to experience, but maybe also, being torn forward is the only way to be alive.