Vote over at TWC and you can see a finished panel from tomorrow's page :D. Time for some quality "talking to your boss outside of work" conversation! I felt that one, I needed to address Charlene leaving the house so she doesn't just disappear out of nowhere, and two, that these two do have some rapport and that Elliot is coming to terms with her being a witch still. (I maintain that 90% of Vincent's awkwardness comes from his dad, though his dad is more upbeat about it.) Charlene is good at managing conversation with awkward weirdos, though. This page unexpectedly kicked my ass. Being a carpenter's daughter really helps with drawing backgrounds, I've found. Or maybe having and renovating an old house makes me all too aware of how things are put together. Either way. The answer is that everything needs more trim, regardless of what background you're drawing. Just...keep adding trim. If I had more time, I'd be working that Disney method and filling this porch to the brim with cutesy porch crap for "interest", buuuut I don't have time. And I'm all for visual interest, but I'm still a minimalist at heart. I like the look when other people do it, though. Please note, I drew the trees in the bottom panel first, then the panel above it, and somewhere between the two, I figured out how to draw trees. ARGH. Whatever, technical growth is technical growth...even if it happens conspicuously on the same page. The trees facing towards the front of the house are just...totally different trees, is all. NBD. In life news, I attended the Women's March in Chicago on Saturday and it was pretty bad ass! And kind of scary. I'm only 4'11", and crowds are not my jam. Something about being surrounded by a solid wall of people who are taller than you just makes you very aware of your own mortality. Being surrounded by a big, angry (but peaceful!) group of diverse women coming out to stand up for their rights was super awesome. Officially, the march never happened, because by the time everyone arrived...they took up the whole marching route. Can't really march if you've got nowhere else to go. We'll see what comes of the momentum from this. The first action item from the march organizers is to send a postcard to your Congresspeople to let them know what's important to you, so I gotta go find a postcard. They have a template to print them, but I'm too busy for that. I'll just get some from the gas station! I've also joined various groups in my hometown, and now I'm going to be a precinct committeeperson for my county's democrats! I don't know what that really means, but they told me there will be training sessions to help us all figure out what we're doing. I'm going to keep shoving myself into every stupid meeting I can go to. My part of Indiana is solidly left-leaning, due to the steelworkers' unions and the proximity to Chicago, but the rest of Indiana already thinks we're nuts. Eh, that's cool. 90% of the rest of the state is just corn, anyway. So much corn. And soybeans! And more corn. I'm also finally over my cold! I'm not over my winter malaise, but at least I can be depressed in good physical health. This is at least the third straight year where winter isn't delivering. I can't say I don't like the warmer weather (the women's march was so warm, I took off my coat...in January), but I miss snow! I live here for a reason! I hate winter, I hate cold, but I like a beautiful blanket of white snow to make everything look fresh and clean. I cleaned out my garage last week because it was above freezing and I can't sit still any longer, and when my neighbor walked by, I mentioned that it felt like we were living in a slum town. There is no making your yard look nice in January without snow. Instead, you end up with random patches of wet leaves that missed the Fall raking bonanza, and then just dead bushes and trees everywhere. There's such a thing as planting your garden to give it some "winter color", but with our normally brutal winters, nothing that would have "winter color" can survive this far north. Or looks good enough to bother with the rest of the year. Like, my lilacs and forsythia are going to have some bad ass colors in the Spring, so I wouldn't sacrifice more impressive plants just to plant a bunch of crappy evergreens so my winter yard doesn't look post-apocalyptic. Anyway, I want some damn snow. This shit weather is extra depressing, and if Spring isn't here soon, I'll just keep buying more stupid crap on the internet to fill up the hole in my soul. You'll be able to track when Spring starts emerging, because the general mood of these posts is going to shoot straight up into almost stupid positivity. I live my whole life for Spring.