MerMay 2023

For this year's MerMay challenge I chose Bubbles (#bubblesDTIYS challenge), a #mermay2023 mascot created by @lb.illustrates.

MerMay was created by @tombancroft1 and as usual, the challenge is to draw a mermaid every day during May. Once again I didn't have time for that, so I'm participating only in this #DTIYS part.

And of course, the pose for this drawing is by @theposearchives.

My socials: https://linktr.ee/grdi

#digitalart #drawing #fanart #drawingchallenge #mermaid #mermay #drawmermay2023 @mermayhq #grdilicious #grdi

School... so far

It's my dad's birthday today and although it would be a perfect opportunity to post something nice, I decided to look back at these years without him and try to imagine what he would have thought about my achievements. 

I know I don't owe anyone anything and I should create my own world, but he was so proud of me getting a degree and becoming a teacher and when I was about to start that journey, he suddenly passed away. So, what's the situation today? Is there anything he would still be proud of?

My weakness is the combination of my dedication to work and my sense of justice. I'm aware the rules change as soon as you leave college and start working in a system you aren't really prepared for, but so much injustice hurts me to the point that I've become worried about my health.

No matter how proud my dad was of my success, there's something that keeps resonating with me - his words "I'm just afraid you'll go crazy working in a school". It's been 17 years since he died, but I keep witnessing and experiencing so many things that could eventually lead to his premonition, such as disrespect, mobbing, sexual harassment, local politics, corruption, hurtful blind ambition... At this point we should be happy that the kids are mostly OK while the adults are fighting bizarre endless wars, but it hurts me to see how the focus has shifted from our students' problems to our petty disagreements.

And to all those saying that teacher's work is easy because of oh sooo much free time, just shut up and try walking a week in my shoes. So much unnecessary pressure, unpaid overtime hours and made-up obligations to feed someone else's ego - believe me, it's the same everywhere you work, no matter if it's for the government or in a private sector. Our educational system is no exception.

So, dad, happy birthday, although it's not the birthday card you'd expect or deserve. And you don't have to be proud of my occupation, I just hope you're proud of the person I've become.

Odd Yuckly #61

 

Artificial yes, intelligence no. 🤖

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Main IG: @grdi.main

#comic #comicstrip #webcomic #oddyuckly #ai #artificialintelligence #grdi #grdilicious #grdicomics

Let 3 (Eurovision 2023)

Good luck to Croatia and Let3 in tonight's Eurovision semi-finals!

My socials: https://linktr.ee/grdi

#digitalart #drawing #fanart #let3 #croatia #eurovision2023 #eurosong2023 #grdilicious #grdi

ToonMe 2023

It's gonna... gonna... gonna... gonna... It's gonna be May! 🎶

Now that these "famous lyrics" by N'Sync opened this topic, let me celebrate my birthday month with another drawing challenge. Here's my new ToonMe drawing, but with a little twist - as usual, one half is the actual photo, the other half is the illustration - and this time there's a plain wall on the realistic side and my imagination on the cartoon side.

I didn't want to overcrowd the drawing, so I chose a few characters or items from this and last year that represent most of my interests you can usually find in my artwork: Marvel, DC, Star Trek, Star Wars, anime, pop culture trends, art challenges etc. There are 12 clues, some are easy, some are not so obvious, so how many can you guess?

My socials: https://linktr.ee/grdi

#digitalart #drawing #drawingchallenge #toonme #toonmechallenge #grdilicious #grdi

National Honesty Day 2023

 Happy Honesty Day, here we go:

- I'm an introvert who imitates extrovert behaviour and many people mistake me for a fun guy. I often agree to things in order not to hurt someone or not to feel left out, even when it's something I don't feel like doing.

- I don't like surprises and sudden decisions. OK, sometimes I'm not opposed to a plan, but my first reaction puts people off. All I need from them is to give me more time to reconsider, but it's often too late.

- I suck at confrontations, I bruise easily and never fully recover. I can forgive, but never forget and I often play countless scenarios in my head, but then I go back among people and act like everything's OK.

- I lost passion for my current job, there's just too much nonsense and we're expected to pretend everything's fine, but in reality it's just a glorified circus.

- I don't feel good about changes (including travelling) and my anxiety turns into a physical illness.

- For some unexplainable reason I've been "collecting" more or less benign but unpleasant long-life illnesses like they're freaking Pokémon and they're most likely caused by enormous stress I've been failing to cope with on a daily basis. The most damaging is trigeminal neuralgia or so-called suicide disease (because of excruciating pain), but it's been about 30 years now and I've somehow managed to live with it.

- Football has a special place on my "ewww, sports" list, mostly because of all that financial and aggressive patriotic nonsense that goes with it.

- Sci-fi movies and electronic music will always come first, but I'm also very familiar with other genres and pop references and have a quote, fact or lyrics for almost every situation.

- I'll always regret not pursuing my artistic interests, although I managed to turn them into a hobby and they've eventually become a kind of therapy.

- I'm done fishing for likes on IG by creating pointless reels, I'm letting the algorithm win. Not all of us are expert videographers nor do we want another TikTok knockoff.

- My motto is: if you can't explain something, confuse them.

Are you ready to share at least one honest fact about yourself? 😉

#honesty #honestyday2023

National Superhero Day 2023

Happy National Superhero Day, April 28! It's been celebrated since 1995, but it's evolved during that time from honouring comic book heroes to acknowledging real life heroes too.

I'm no hero, but I've had my favourite superhero persona since the Spidersona challenge (inspired by the release of the first Spider-Verse movie). Here you can see a few versions and how they evolved. The colour scheme didn't change much. I wasn't sure what to do with the mask, but when I decided that I want to keep most of my facial features and found way to do it, I think I established my style. As I wrote a few months ago, my glasses became some kind of goggles with ear protectors, inspired by Impulse (DC) and Hawks (My Hero Academia), the idea of a hoodie came from Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen and a face shield from Silk (Marvel). When it comes to his name, I'm still sticking to that weird portmanteau Davorachnid, but I think I'll keep looking for a better solution.

And of course, a big shout-out to real heroes in our lives. Mine are my parents, they set a high bar I'll never be able to reach.

My socials: https://linktr.ee/grdi

#digitalart #drawing #superhero #superheroday #nationalsuperheroday #grdilicious #grdi