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actually I’m now just amazed that Joe created a recognisable figure
*wonders if it’s possible to channel the “Donald Duck” that came up in our one work party game that somehow barely even resembled a living creature, much less a duck*
True, those pecs are massive. Just read about the 80’s movie Barbarians for some reason, with the bodybuilding Barbarian Brothers. Massive, massive everything in tiny loincloths oh my. A cult favorite.
I looked back to check whether it’s actually been mentioned if they recognize her or not. From what Joyce says it sounds like she doesn’t know her. Joe has not indicated one way or the other if he knows her or not.
Or simply found it gauche to bring up. Especially where she might hear and find it embarrassing or otherwise troubling (did he come here just because he knew I would be naked?) Less believable for early Joe but he’s maturing.
I love these dorks. This interaction is so wonderful. I’m happy with them just spending a bunch of time together, growing up together, and being friends with sexual tension.
Congrats Joe, you might not call yourself an artist but you’re already doing better than Mary, who does, in a fraction of one class by virtue of it looking like you’re trying to capture facial features specific to the model (even if you aren’t trying to capture boobs specific to her).
I’m wondering if his reasoning is that he’s specifically trying to avoid staring at her chest and is instead just filling in the blanks. Using his gross head.
Would be cool if drawing together just became a ‘thing’ for these two.
given that the poses were 15 seconds each i’m surprised he’d have time to really focus on that anyways versus drawing which ever parts he usually would (i guess most artists would start at the head but given that there’s diff posing other than stick figures, i can imagine some drawing just floating/unattached limbs lol)
To be fair it’s not uncommon for people to draw things how they think they look even with a live model. And thinking of boobs as spheres is common as well. Considering he isn’t an artist or shown any interest in drawing I can let this slide. When actual artists draw implausible breasts I’m more critical.
I can’t draw to save my life, so the fact that Joe still has made a decent sketch is amazing to me. I know I had a daily art class in the k-5 grades but I remember nothing from it.
That being said, I can occasionally draw a barely-cool looking, and probably completely impractical, sword. Or an axe, a polearm, a lance, etc.
I’m finding Joe really charming in this one. Probably his optimistic smile while he earnestly tries something new, when he knows he won’t be “good” at it! And even when he had such an opportunity to make jokes about the naked model and her boobies, he’s not saying/doing anything gross at all, he’s just curious about Joyce’s feedback, and witty. It’s cool, they’re cool, I like it! This is fun, I’m on board.
Don’t worry about accidentally flagging comments. It takes something like five flags, each from different devices, before the comment gets moderated. Even then, all that happens is the comment goes into a moderation queue for Willis to review. If he re-approves it, it goes back where it was on the page and it can’t get flagged again.
Willis has said they can’t change the layout. They only added the flag button recently because there were issues with people using the comments as a place to traumadump over and over again and it was pulling conversation wildly off-topic every day.
I think, as long as it isn’t something like THAT, even if the comment goes into moderation it’ll pop back up pretty fast.
…about why he’s drawing the model’s breasts the same in all the poses, that he’s drawing them as he imagines breasts, not as they are in front of him. It’s probably a subconscious thing on his part, he’s not trying to draw porn or anything, it’s just what’s coming out.
The ‘gross head’ wasn’t even all that childish. The stabbing threat was, but only because Joe’s comment was pretty childish too, so it fits :D.
“Gross head” wasn’t that childish… In a vacuum. She’s been passive aggressively sniping at him like that this entire time (see also, the Patreon bonus strip).
At this point, she might as well call him “you filthy man whore” and get it over with.
“Man whore” he may be, but he’s never hid it, nor lied to any of his partners like the sitcom lothario Joyce clearly visualizes him as. Yeah, Joe has his own emotional issues, but Joyce A) doesn’t know that, B) wasn’t talk about those anyway, only “You have lots of sex and it’s kicky.”
If Joe doesn’t call her on it by the end of this arc, I will be massively disappointed.
Joyce absolutely 100% knows that Joe has his own emotional issues for which his general outward demeanor is a defense mechanism. They have discussed it.
He’d be within his rights to be upset. He’s also within his rights to not be upset. He knows Joyce is fluxuating between panic attack, ornery pain, and rational right now, he can cut her some slack if he has the energy.
Plus with Joe’s reaction to Joyce’s potential autism diagnosis and it being so recent, I could see him giving her more slack on social interactions generally now. He said his mom also went after a diagnosis so I think he’d be understanding.
This is honestly one of my favorite Joe strips to date. That expression in panel 1 is just… it’s a very nice relaxed smile that I don’t think I ever really see on him. He’s not doing great but he knows it and he’s enjoying himself anyways and it’s nice to see. The guy is so hard on himself all the time that it makes me very happy for him.
I’m starting to think Joe should get into art as well as Joyce. Starting to actually conceptualize women’s forms individually would probably be a good move forward for him.
In this case, though, it’s not having it both ways. The first sentence was before the class actually started and when she was freaking out about ~nakkidness~. Now that the class has actually started and she sees how unsexy everything actually is, she’s loosened up.
No, don’t you know that no one is ever allowed to change their opinions about anything or relax after being anxious about a new situation after decades of indoctrination that looking at nudity was the same as literally murdering someone?
As much as we all i want this romance to happen I can’t help but think that Joyce doesn’t really even have a crush on Joe {yet?}. She finds him hot, but is only just getting comfortable with him as a friend as he’s becoming better at it himself. Maybe that’s even helpful to her–for her to relax around him and not get all weird about the romance aspect when she’s got so much else on her mind. It’s sweet to see them connect this way, but maybe friendship is a good place for it.
Based on this I’m guessing we still have years of JoJo slow burn before this ship either sails or crashes into an iceberg and sinks fantastically.
Define “really” and “even”. I think she has one, she’s just not quite aware of it yet. There was that moment when she suddenly ended up holding his hand, for example.
Plenty of people are comfortable with sexuality without wanting to have sex (non-sex-repulsed ace people for one thing), and plenty of others are very uncomfortable with sexuality but have sex often (e.g. certain very religious people with ten kids and shame about being horny)
Recalling my own college classes, what Joyce is getting at here is actually something that can be really hard for people to grasp even if it’s very basic. You draw what’s actually in front of you, not what’s in your head.
Joe’s drawing may not be the best, or even good, but I’m willing to bet there are some people on the Internet who would pay a stupid amount of money for a drawing like his.
Joyce knows what is wrong and tell it with great confidence, maybe this is a sign that she could become a drawing teacher in an university herself, as well as a cartoonist. Joe is a friend and she can be strict with him. I like how Joe is so interested in improving his drawings, I hope more and more that they will continue to draw together. Now it is time for Joyce to show her drawings.
I was just thinking that! I know she was only majoring in education because her parents/upbringing told her to find a husband and use college to learn how to homeschool, but art seems what *she* wants to do, so I hope she changes majors
When I was a teen I wanted to be an artist, and was talked out of it. Spent my whole working life doing whatever to pay the bills. Now retired (and broke) and learning to draw. Loving every minute of it.
One would assume Joyce has taught herself to draw previously, even without a formal art class. There are plenty of online tutorials, there are printed books that are manuals, possibly artist acquaintances in the church group, etc.
Also, Joyce has an entirely different perspective on breasts. Not that her’s is 100% correct and accurate, but it’s still going to be different from Joe’s viewpoint and more accurate as well, since she rather frequently sees them in non-erotic situations (…as in her own).
Flip the situation, make it a male model, and I wager their drawings would differ similarly.
for one, Joyce has already shown observational acumen in depicting penises. and we’ve all had, say, dogs or chairs in our fields of vision a whole bunch for all our lives (depending if you’re a dog person or a chair person) (the two genders) yet ask people to draw either of these off-the-cuff, they’ll suck in pretty obvious ways. translating volume to lines on paper takes a lot more than being merely accustomed to their meatspace physicality.
Also, Joe doesn’t really care about drawing, probably. He’s just escorting Joyce.
I mean she wasn’t drawing a model’s penis in all sorts of different positions and stuff. For all we know she would also symbol draw the penis, especially since she drew a lot of them divorced from the rest of the body.
true true. i guess my deeper instinct is just that Joyce (being the stand in we know she is) has a taste for that sort of observation. Like, for sure drawing her own anatomy as a real organ rather than a symbolic shorthand makes sense, but i feel like this is more than that? Joe just doesn’t really think about this stuff (i mean, he does think of boobs obviously. But not about how boobs look depending on where gravity is relative to them)
Fun Fact: The concept Joyce is criticizing right here is “Symbol drawing” which is an artist’s habit to not draw what they’re seeing, but rather drawing from their head. The IDEA of what’s in front of them rather than what they’re actually seeing. She’s just being kinda rude about it.
Yes! Joyce really reminded me of Malaya here. But she was, even if slightly, nicer about it than Malaya. Which is not a huge surprise, granted, but still. They have very similar and astute criticisms, and I enjoy getting to see into the inner workings of both characters like this. It’s not personal neuroses, necessarily, but it’s not trivial stuff, and it gives us a much fuller picture of how they look at and navigate the world, both literally and otherwise.
Interesting. We have the same thing in theatre — ‘indicating’ is using conventional gesture/vocalization to communicate (conventional) emotion/demand instead of actually acting.
interesting, yeah i think drawing even realistically is a work of balancing what you’re accurately observing with these symbolic representations. Starting with the fundamental convention that a line can represents a diversity of optical phenomena.
As a for instance, I realized recently (while trying to learn to draw recognizable and good looking faces) that in line-art you can’t really draw zygomatic muscles/crow’s feet unless you want the face to look old. It’s either shading, colouring, or the merest suggestion of lines at the base of the nostrils and corners of the lips, even though on most people with reasonable lighting, when you smile, the cheek muscles appear as very defined dark lines. but there it is, our brains seem to be convinced that marking these means the subject is deeply wrinkled.
so that symbolic repertoire is still important to know.
In that case it’s also context sensitive. How many other characters have lines on their faces? What is the reference point.how strong are the lines? Are you implying those likes with shading? Do you do that for everyone? Is the art style more simplistic or realistic? Honestly art is so finicky I can’t normally tel what I’m doing to make it look a certain way.
Just the other day I drew one of my characters screaming. For whatever reason the yell I drew her doing looked much scarier and more visceral than I intended so I erased it and drew the exact same expression but with a wider mouth and suddenly it looked a lot less intense. And i still don’t know why that small change made such a large difference in how the character came across.
i see what you mean. for sure the surrounding clues in terms of how different visual information is represented will influence how that sort of facial detail will be read…
yeah, faces are just such an interesting and complex body part to represent =) It’s where a strong artist really shines even when they’re affecting a naive or underdetailed style.
I first learned about this from the novel Black Hearts in Battersea, where Simon, who’s apprenticed to a Great Artist, is trying to draw a cat and failing. until he finally just gives up and scribbles down a stick figure. And the master says something like “Draw what you see, don’t worry about whether or not it looks like a cat.”
hey there kittens! i saw you two mention me a couple sections ago <3 that's sweet. Good job on the new and improved graph Amos, much more usable!
i do usually skim the sections most days, though i'm generally too busy with life and work to comment myself, also on a bit of a hiatus from commenting hereabouts because i'm feeling like my own special interests are not shared much while i'm out of the loop in many of the conversations (anime, video games, hollywood franchises to name a few)… i think y'all are a lovely bunch but we don't have that much in common mostly?? maybe it's fine? maybe i'll be back on a more regular capacity eventually?
i will say that i've been drawing quite a bit lately which is connected with this story line =) even tried doing some reciprocal nude drawing with my girlfriend (who’s an actual artist). very cool! i’d never done model classes, so this is new basically. I’m also making origami from youtube tutorials in my chill time these days (gf’s 6-yo daughter loves them, so it’s become a thing where i hide origami animals in their flat =)
generally, i guess i’m a bit more.. of the world lately? i think my pattern tends to be, the less i’m seen around here the better i’m doing probably. =) still loving the comic and this space though, even when purely lurking. stay sexy fellow freaks <3
Hey @milu ^^ Hope it’s not too weird to say this seeing as I don’t think we’ve ever interacted before, and I don’t know if you go back and read previous day’s conversations, but just thought I’d mention as someone who mostly lurks here and is chronically a week to a month behind I always keep an eye out for your comments, I find them insightful and I enjoy your sense of humour That’s not to try to convince you to keep commenting lots or anything (that would both be really selfish and really hypocritical of me!), and I’m super glad to hear that things are going well in your life. More just because from your second paragraph it sounded like you might have been feeling a bit out of place here or unappreciated and I wanted to say that there’s at least one more person out there who appreciates your comments and thinks you seem like a cool person. (Btw, totally valid to not be feeling the vibe if that is the case! This comment section does seem to tend towards a lot of references and I probably don’t get at least 60% of them, and I do enjoy some of those interests, just I guess in different niches to some of the people here.)
Willis has pointed out the primary lesson of a Life Drawing class. There is no drawing class I have ever taken which better teaches the fundamental principle of “draw what you see, not what you think you see”. This is one of the biggest hurdles that beginning artists (and even many professionals) deal with. Willis has just made it funny, and I like Joyce’s terminology for the phenomenon. Good strip.
In one of my drawing classes, our teacher had us pick a classic painting to copy, but turned upside down. It tricks people into no longer trying to draw the version inside their head and makes them rely on observational drawing skills. It was a real lightbulb moment for me as a young’un.
I wonder if un-learning symbolic drawing (shout-out to Yotomoe) also pays off in approaching other problems with fewer preconceptions. The way learning classical music is supposed to be a neurological analogue to mathematics.
So glad Joe responded to Joyce’s rude take with good humor. Now for pizza!
There have been a bunch of studies that proport to show some part of the brain that does music also does math, and learning music helps with math education. Often called the “Mozart effect” though I imagine that’s a cultural bias for dead Europeans. I am in no way qualified to say if it’s true or not, and the studies were far from conclusive. But a lot of complex music is stuffed with patterns.
Modular Game Design. Elegance of MGD is the amount of actions each Module of a System can do. When every module of a system in in play with every other module of a system, well, look at a game of GO. 16×16 Grid, right? How many combinations? As many as the amount of particles in the Universe, right? Now, a Skill in your Brain is one Square. Even worse, it is 16x16x16(x,y,z). The world inside your head is at least one Magnitude larger than the Physical Universe.
i know a lot about music theory generally, not classical music, and sure there are endless ways of dreaming up fun intersections between math and music. i’ve been hanging out in microtonal music spaces lately, and omg the level of math-nerdery going on in there is intense. it’s kind of adorable, honestly. like, i was enjoying music just fine without microtonal brainfuckery, but i’ve been enjoying that particular rabbit hole immensely.
it’s all in the ultimate service of making interesting music though, and i haven’t heard anyone make the point that being good at math and good at music are somehow comparable. math is just a set of tools to describe or produce music (such as the generation of various tunings or polyrhythms). Best i can see, this is just a specific nerd subculture where math and music intersect. (and even then, a very small subset of math which i understand is a very, very vast and diverse field)
so, i’m curious about this sort of thing, but skeptical also. as you say Vulcanodon, maybe it’s just people being obsessed with a certain era of erudite european music and especially JS Bach and the likes who think math and music somehow involve similar brain functions. This feels very counter-intuitive to me, because these are two very broad um… things? some music, and some of the cognitive processes involved in creating or listening to it, i strongly suspect have extremely little to do with math. and vice-versa, probably?
i think the psycho/neurological studies linking musical ability to language are a lot more solid though but that’s a different topic
Writing harmony and counterpoint in classical music can feel weirdly like drawing using geometric shapes, only the two dimensions are “time” and “pitch”.
so… that sounds like you’re linking music to a certain visual aspect of geometry?
maybe i’m just tired but i don’t see what your and ButWhyASpoon’s points are. it’s fun to draw comparisons and analogies between two different things, but it might turn out not to tell us anything very deep?
Wasn’t sure if I should bore everyone in a webcomics comment thread about all the elements in classical music that behave like geometric structures – it’s a lot, anyway, starting with both scales and chords! It feels most obvious when working on classical stuff – not in just hardcore Bach fugues and such, but also in the slushiest of Romantic pieces, there are so many situations where you elaborate material by translating, stretching or recombining it in 2D “pitch-time”. Even writing songs on guitar it’s very handy to visualise the music this way if I need to transpose into a more convenient key.
One of my favorite webcomics is Girl Genius. While they’ve been going strong for over a decade and I overall love the art, man does the artist have a bad case of globe boob.
Omg I can’t believe Joyce just legitimately and in all seriousness threatened Joe’s life. What a real and credible threat that has true intent behind it and will definitely cause him genuine lasting harm. He is in true danger from this violent violent woman, truly.
Huh. Funny you should say “violent woman”. While I was researching DoA strips for game ideas, I came upon this strip reminding me of Jennifer’s true nature:
Somehow first-panel Joe is the most genuine facial expression he’s ever made. Seems like he’s actually not hiding behind his “i’m sexy and i know it“ facade.
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actually I’m now just amazed that Joe created a recognisable figure
*wonders if it’s possible to channel the “Donald Duck” that came up in our one work party game that somehow barely even resembled a living creature, much less a duck*
“Jackal!”
To be fair, Donald Duck doesn’t really look that much like a duck…
I don’t expect he looks much like an amoeba with a triangle-spiky cell wall a slightly longer triangle on one side and a scarecrow body tho
She’s been caught more often staring at your butt
Ironically, Joyce always draws the same butt.
It’s the first stage of Butts Disease.
How long does she have Doctor?
Until the crack of dawn.
So let’s hope the model isn’t named Dawn.
I know Yoto’s gonna be all over this one…
I can’t believe Yoto hasn’t said anything yet. Maybe they are working on it right now, or maybe they are asleep. Who knows?
I fell asleep, yes.
Joe: secretly the biggest chest of the DoA cast.
I don’t know if it’s really a secret
Plus Jacob is probably competitive
True, those pecs are massive. Just read about the 80’s movie Barbarians for some reason, with the bodybuilding Barbarian Brothers. Massive, massive everything in tiny loincloths oh my. A cult favorite.
Like Luka from Nijisanji-EN. But his isn’t a secret.
Ꙭ
Nice!
A *ahem* massive improvement over the numeric screen 5318008!
Surprisingly trenchant critical analysis.
-insert topical joke about how joe basically drew breasts the same way some old school superhero comic book authors do-
I wonder if he drew her feet, or created am obstruction to put them behind.
You dare expose the secret and sacred rites here in a public forum?
Bikini armor battle damage is great On the subject.
So they are covered in pouches?
Busted!
D’oh…
Joe’s going for a tit-for-tat approach i see.
He learned that approach at the school of hard knockers.
he does seem quite perky though.
Time to play ‘is that an existing character?’ based on how Joe drew her face.
Well neither Joe or Joyce recognized her which cuts down the potential options quite a bit.
I’d have said Connie, but I’m guessing both of them would definitely have recognized her.
Also IIRC Connie’s sixteen, and I’m not sure sixteen year olds are legally allowed to do nude modeling.
I looked back to check whether it’s actually been mentioned if they recognize her or not. From what Joyce says it sounds like she doesn’t know her. Joe has not indicated one way or the other if he knows her or not.
Joe may have seen, but not paid attention to, her face. It’s a “my eyes are up here” situation.
Or simply found it gauche to bring up. Especially where she might hear and find it embarrassing or otherwise troubling (did he come here just because he knew I would be naked?) Less believable for early Joe but he’s maturing.
I’ve had enough cider and malort to let my guard down and this is my favorite ship and I will go down with it
Oh hey Chicago. I’m here too!
Ah, Malort, the drink you give to people when you want to unfriend them in real life.
I’m actually in Texas and have invented a Texas version of the Chicago Handshake (it’s just Shiner instead of Old Style)
I love these dorks. This interaction is so wonderful. I’m happy with them just spending a bunch of time together, growing up together, and being friends with sexual tension.
Congrats Joe, you might not call yourself an artist but you’re already doing better than Mary, who does, in a fraction of one class by virtue of it looking like you’re trying to capture facial features specific to the model (even if you aren’t trying to capture boobs specific to her).
I’m wondering if his reasoning is that he’s specifically trying to avoid staring at her chest and is instead just filling in the blanks. Using his gross head.
Would be cool if drawing together just became a ‘thing’ for these two.
given that the poses were 15 seconds each i’m surprised he’d have time to really focus on that anyways versus drawing which ever parts he usually would (i guess most artists would start at the head but given that there’s diff posing other than stick figures, i can imagine some drawing just floating/unattached limbs lol)
We might be further into class than the 15 second gestures, at this point? But for 15 second ones definitely yeah.
To be fair it’s not uncommon for people to draw things how they think they look even with a live model. And thinking of boobs as spheres is common as well. Considering he isn’t an artist or shown any interest in drawing I can let this slide. When actual artists draw implausible breasts I’m more critical.
I can’t draw to save my life, so the fact that Joe still has made a decent sketch is amazing to me. I know I had a daily art class in the k-5 grades but I remember nothing from it.
That being said, I can occasionally draw a barely-cool looking, and probably completely impractical, sword. Or an axe, a polearm, a lance, etc.
Do it Joyce! Embrace the stabbing!
What a throwback
Oh God this is so cute. Why do they work so well.
Because enemies-to-lovers is a really good trope
I’m finding Joe really charming in this one. Probably his optimistic smile while he earnestly tries something new, when he knows he won’t be “good” at it! And even when he had such an opportunity to make jokes about the naked model and her boobies, he’s not saying/doing anything gross at all, he’s just curious about Joyce’s feedback, and witty. It’s cool, they’re cool, I like it! This is fun, I’m on board.
Yes! All of this!
He doesn’t even care about the model and her current state of undress, he just wants Joyce to approve of his efforts.
I bet he’s going to stick that drawing up on the wall in his dorm.
Yup!
And sorry for the accidental flag, this layout really needs to change )=
Don’t worry about accidentally flagging comments. It takes something like five flags, each from different devices, before the comment gets moderated. Even then, all that happens is the comment goes into a moderation queue for Willis to review. If he re-approves it, it goes back where it was on the page and it can’t get flagged again.
Willis has said they can’t change the layout. They only added the flag button recently because there were issues with people using the comments as a place to traumadump over and over again and it was pulling conversation wildly off-topic every day.
I think, as long as it isn’t something like THAT, even if the comment goes into moderation it’ll pop back up pretty fast.
Doodle for book 13.
Take this comment in lieu of an upvote.
The constant swipes at Joe have gone beyond childish at this point.
And the fact that he hasn’t risen to the bait (up to now) says more about Joe than I bet either one of them is even willing to consider.
(Especially given their mutual freakout over just holding hands)
I’d say she’s right, honestly.
…about why he’s drawing the model’s breasts the same in all the poses, that he’s drawing them as he imagines breasts, not as they are in front of him. It’s probably a subconscious thing on his part, he’s not trying to draw porn or anything, it’s just what’s coming out.
The ‘gross head’ wasn’t even all that childish. The stabbing threat was, but only because Joe’s comment was pretty childish too, so it fits :D.
“Gross head” wasn’t that childish… In a vacuum. She’s been passive aggressively sniping at him like that this entire time (see also, the Patreon bonus strip).
At this point, she might as well call him “you filthy man whore” and get it over with.
“Man whore” he may be, but he’s never hid it, nor lied to any of his partners like the sitcom lothario Joyce clearly visualizes him as. Yeah, Joe has his own emotional issues, but Joyce A) doesn’t know that, B) wasn’t talk about those anyway, only “You have lots of sex and it’s kicky.”
If Joe doesn’t call her on it by the end of this arc, I will be massively disappointed.
Joyce absolutely 100% knows that Joe has his own emotional issues for which his general outward demeanor is a defense mechanism. They have discussed it.
They’ve also discussed the damage his casual objectifying approach does to women around him. Especially victims of sexual assault. Like her.
This goes far beyond “you have lots of sex and it’s icky.”
He just drew tits badly.
Unforgivable.
He’d be within his rights to be upset. He’s also within his rights to not be upset. He knows Joyce is fluxuating between panic attack, ornery pain, and rational right now, he can cut her some slack if he has the energy.
Plus with Joe’s reaction to Joyce’s potential autism diagnosis and it being so recent, I could see him giving her more slack on social interactions generally now. He said his mom also went after a diagnosis so I think he’d be understanding.
I’m leaning towards him not wanting to look at them in front of joyce
Some artist would be proud of his work.
Not necessarily a great artist, just an artist.
Now let’s see
Paul’sJoyce’sOkay now I want Mary to parody American Psycho. Preferably over Joyce’s drawings.
This is honestly one of my favorite Joe strips to date. That expression in panel 1 is just… it’s a very nice relaxed smile that I don’t think I ever really see on him. He’s not doing great but he knows it and he’s enjoying himself anyways and it’s nice to see. The guy is so hard on himself all the time that it makes me very happy for him.
I’m starting to think Joe should get into art as well as Joyce. Starting to actually conceptualize women’s forms individually would probably be a good move forward for him.
That’s a really good retort.
Joyce: You’ll keep your eyes on your own sheet of paper, thank you very much! And you will avert your eyes if the naked person is a lady!
Also Joyce: *panel 5*
You can’t have it both ways, Joyce. :/
In this case, though, it’s not having it both ways. The first sentence was before the class actually started and when she was freaking out about ~nakkidness~. Now that the class has actually started and she sees how unsexy everything actually is, she’s loosened up.
No, don’t you know that no one is ever allowed to change their opinions about anything or relax after being anxious about a new situation after decades of indoctrination that looking at nudity was the same as literally murdering someone?
“I have a pencil, and I know how to use it!”
As much as
we alli want this romance to happen I can’t help but think that Joyce doesn’t really even have a crush on Joe {yet?}. She finds him hot, but is only just getting comfortable with him as a friend as he’s becoming better at it himself. Maybe that’s even helpful to her–for her to relax around him and not get all weird about the romance aspect when she’s got so much else on her mind. It’s sweet to see them connect this way, but maybe friendship is a good place for it.Based on this I’m guessing we still have years of JoJo slow burn before this ship either sails or crashes into an iceberg and sinks fantastically.
Define “really” and “even”. I think she has one, she’s just not quite aware of it yet. There was that moment when she suddenly ended up holding his hand, for example.
If Joyce were more comfortable with sexuality in general, she could either shut him out completely or just bang him and get him out of her system.
Having sex =/= comfortable with sexuality.
Plenty of people are comfortable with sexuality without wanting to have sex (non-sex-repulsed ace people for one thing), and plenty of others are very uncomfortable with sexuality but have sex often (e.g. certain very religious people with ten kids and shame about being horny)
yeah, like how becky had some shame mixed in the ‘afterglow’ when she and dina got together
The face Joe drew looks like all those “whimsical” sun lawn decorations.
(Still better than anything I can scribble up, but still.)
hah, nice comeback, Joe
Recalling my own college classes, what Joyce is getting at here is actually something that can be really hard for people to grasp even if it’s very basic. You draw what’s actually in front of you, not what’s in your head.
lol that face, makes me wonder what the model will look like if she gets shown
Joe’s drawing may not be the best, or even good, but I’m willing to bet there are some people on the Internet who would pay a stupid amount of money for a drawing like his.
ha ha we all know what NFTs are
Joyce knows what is wrong and tell it with great confidence, maybe this is a sign that she could become a drawing teacher in an university herself, as well as a cartoonist. Joe is a friend and she can be strict with him. I like how Joe is so interested in improving his drawings, I hope more and more that they will continue to draw together. Now it is time for Joyce to show her drawings.
I was just thinking that! I know she was only majoring in education because her parents/upbringing told her to find a husband and use college to learn how to homeschool, but art seems what *she* wants to do, so I hope she changes majors
When I was a teen I wanted to be an artist, and was talked out of it. Spent my whole working life doing whatever to pay the bills. Now retired (and broke) and learning to draw. Loving every minute of it.
Very harshly said but very astute for someone who’s only attended half of an art class. Good on you for picking it up so fast, Joyce.
One would assume Joyce has taught herself to draw previously, even without a formal art class. There are plenty of online tutorials, there are printed books that are manuals, possibly artist acquaintances in the church group, etc.
Also, Joyce has an entirely different perspective on breasts. Not that her’s is 100% correct and accurate, but it’s still going to be different from Joe’s viewpoint and more accurate as well, since she rather frequently sees them in non-erotic situations (…as in her own).
Flip the situation, make it a male model, and I wager their drawings would differ similarly.
i doubt that.
for one, Joyce has already shown observational acumen in depicting penises. and we’ve all had, say, dogs or chairs in our fields of vision a whole bunch for all our lives (depending if you’re a dog person or a chair person) (the two genders) yet ask people to draw either of these off-the-cuff, they’ll suck in pretty obvious ways. translating volume to lines on paper takes a lot more than being merely accustomed to their meatspace physicality.
Also, Joe doesn’t really care about drawing, probably. He’s just escorting Joyce.
I mean she wasn’t drawing a model’s penis in all sorts of different positions and stuff. For all we know she would also symbol draw the penis, especially since she drew a lot of them divorced from the rest of the body.
true true. i guess my deeper instinct is just that Joyce (being the stand in we know she is) has a taste for that sort of observation. Like, for sure drawing her own anatomy as a real organ rather than a symbolic shorthand makes sense, but i feel like this is more than that? Joe just doesn’t really think about this stuff (i mean, he does think of boobs obviously. But not about how boobs look depending on where gravity is relative to them)
Yep. I mean, her comic isn’t bad.
Joyce just embed a cruel statement about Joe’s lack of art skill with a fucking burn about his filthy worthless life.
Savage.
“his filthy worthless life” wow yikes.
Fun Fact: The concept Joyce is criticizing right here is “Symbol drawing” which is an artist’s habit to not draw what they’re seeing, but rather drawing from their head. The IDEA of what’s in front of them rather than what they’re actually seeing. She’s just being kinda rude about it.
We’ve also seen it before with Malaya and Mary.
Yes! Joyce really reminded me of Malaya here. But she was, even if slightly, nicer about it than Malaya. Which is not a huge surprise, granted, but still. They have very similar and astute criticisms, and I enjoy getting to see into the inner workings of both characters like this. It’s not personal neuroses, necessarily, but it’s not trivial stuff, and it gives us a much fuller picture of how they look at and navigate the world, both literally and otherwise.
Interesting. We have the same thing in theatre — ‘indicating’ is using conventional gesture/vocalization to communicate (conventional) emotion/demand instead of actually acting.
interesting, yeah i think drawing even realistically is a work of balancing what you’re accurately observing with these symbolic representations. Starting with the fundamental convention that a line can represents a diversity of optical phenomena.
As a for instance, I realized recently (while trying to learn to draw recognizable and good looking faces) that in line-art you can’t really draw zygomatic muscles/crow’s feet unless you want the face to look old. It’s either shading, colouring, or the merest suggestion of lines at the base of the nostrils and corners of the lips, even though on most people with reasonable lighting, when you smile, the cheek muscles appear as very defined dark lines. but there it is, our brains seem to be convinced that marking these means the subject is deeply wrinkled.
so that symbolic repertoire is still important to know.
In that case it’s also context sensitive. How many other characters have lines on their faces? What is the reference point.how strong are the lines? Are you implying those likes with shading? Do you do that for everyone? Is the art style more simplistic or realistic? Honestly art is so finicky I can’t normally tel what I’m doing to make it look a certain way.
Just the other day I drew one of my characters screaming. For whatever reason the yell I drew her doing looked much scarier and more visceral than I intended so I erased it and drew the exact same expression but with a wider mouth and suddenly it looked a lot less intense. And i still don’t know why that small change made such a large difference in how the character came across.
i see what you mean. for sure the surrounding clues in terms of how different visual information is represented will influence how that sort of facial detail will be read…
yeah, faces are just such an interesting and complex body part to represent =) It’s where a strong artist really shines even when they’re affecting a naive or underdetailed style.
I first learned about this from the novel Black Hearts in Battersea, where Simon, who’s apprenticed to a Great Artist, is trying to draw a cat and failing. until he finally just gives up and scribbles down a stick figure. And the master says something like “Draw what you see, don’t worry about whether or not it looks like a cat.”
These two have unmatched chemistry.
@Amos & @Wellerman
hey there kittens! i saw you two mention me a couple sections ago <3 that's sweet. Good job on the new and improved graph Amos, much more usable!
i do usually skim the sections most days, though i'm generally too busy with life and work to comment myself, also on a bit of a hiatus from commenting hereabouts because i'm feeling like my own special interests are not shared much while i'm out of the loop in many of the conversations (anime, video games, hollywood franchises to name a few)… i think y'all are a lovely bunch but we don't have that much in common mostly?? maybe it's fine? maybe i'll be back on a more regular capacity eventually?
i will say that i've been drawing quite a bit lately which is connected with this story line =) even tried doing some reciprocal nude drawing with my girlfriend (who’s an actual artist). very cool! i’d never done model classes, so this is new basically. I’m also making origami from youtube tutorials in my chill time these days (gf’s 6-yo daughter loves them, so it’s become a thing where i hide origami animals in their flat =)
generally, i guess i’m a bit more.. of the world lately? i think my pattern tends to be, the less i’m seen around here the better i’m doing probably. =) still loving the comic and this space though, even when purely lurking. stay sexy fellow freaks <3
Hi, Milu, it’s aways nice to see you again!
I’ll make more improvement in the graph, as my schedule let me.
Hey @milu ^^ Hope it’s not too weird to say this seeing as I don’t think we’ve ever interacted before, and I don’t know if you go back and read previous day’s conversations, but just thought I’d mention as someone who mostly lurks here and is chronically a week to a month behind I always keep an eye out for your comments, I find them insightful and I enjoy your sense of humour
That’s not to try to convince you to keep commenting lots or anything (that would both be really selfish and really hypocritical of me!), and I’m super glad to hear that things are going well in your life. More just because from your second paragraph it sounded like you might have been feeling a bit out of place here or unappreciated and I wanted to say that there’s at least one more person out there who appreciates your comments and thinks you seem like a cool person. (Btw, totally valid to not be feeling the vibe if that is the case! This comment section does seem to tend towards a lot of references and I probably don’t get at least 60% of them, and I do enjoy some of those interests, just I guess in different niches to some of the people here.)
Willis has pointed out the primary lesson of a Life Drawing class. There is no drawing class I have ever taken which better teaches the fundamental principle of “draw what you see, not what you think you see”. This is one of the biggest hurdles that beginning artists (and even many professionals) deal with. Willis has just made it funny, and I like Joyce’s terminology for the phenomenon. Good strip.
In one of my drawing classes, our teacher had us pick a classic painting to copy, but turned upside down. It tricks people into no longer trying to draw the version inside their head and makes them rely on observational drawing skills. It was a real lightbulb moment for me as a young’un.
I wonder if un-learning symbolic drawing (shout-out to Yotomoe) also pays off in approaching other problems with fewer preconceptions. The way learning classical music is supposed to be a neurological analogue to mathematics.
So glad Joe responded to Joyce’s rude take with good humor. Now for pizza!
you wanna expand on that classical music/math analogy? i have only passing knowledge of both, and never studied either, so i’m curious!
There have been a bunch of studies that proport to show some part of the brain that does music also does math, and learning music helps with math education. Often called the “Mozart effect” though I imagine that’s a cultural bias for dead Europeans. I am in no way qualified to say if it’s true or not, and the studies were far from conclusive. But a lot of complex music is stuffed with patterns.
Modular Game Design. Elegance of MGD is the amount of actions each Module of a System can do. When every module of a system in in play with every other module of a system, well, look at a game of GO. 16×16 Grid, right? How many combinations? As many as the amount of particles in the Universe, right? Now, a Skill in your Brain is one Square. Even worse, it is 16x16x16(x,y,z). The world inside your head is at least one Magnitude larger than the Physical Universe.
i know a lot about music theory generally, not classical music, and sure there are endless ways of dreaming up fun intersections between math and music. i’ve been hanging out in microtonal music spaces lately, and omg the level of math-nerdery going on in there is intense. it’s kind of adorable, honestly. like, i was enjoying music just fine without microtonal brainfuckery, but i’ve been enjoying that particular rabbit hole immensely.
it’s all in the ultimate service of making interesting music though, and i haven’t heard anyone make the point that being good at math and good at music are somehow comparable. math is just a set of tools to describe or produce music (such as the generation of various tunings or polyrhythms). Best i can see, this is just a specific nerd subculture where math and music intersect. (and even then, a very small subset of math which i understand is a very, very vast and diverse field)
so, i’m curious about this sort of thing, but skeptical also. as you say Vulcanodon, maybe it’s just people being obsessed with a certain era of erudite european music and especially JS Bach and the likes who think math and music somehow involve similar brain functions. This feels very counter-intuitive to me, because these are two very broad um… things? some music, and some of the cognitive processes involved in creating or listening to it, i strongly suspect have extremely little to do with math. and vice-versa, probably?
i think the psycho/neurological studies linking musical ability to language are a lot more solid though but that’s a different topic
Writing harmony and counterpoint in classical music can feel weirdly like drawing using geometric shapes, only the two dimensions are “time” and “pitch”.
so… that sounds like you’re linking music to a certain visual aspect of geometry?
maybe i’m just tired but i don’t see what your and ButWhyASpoon’s points are. it’s fun to draw comparisons and analogies between two different things, but it might turn out not to tell us anything very deep?
Wasn’t sure if I should bore everyone in a webcomics comment thread about all the elements in classical music that behave like geometric structures – it’s a lot, anyway, starting with both scales and chords! It feels most obvious when working on classical stuff – not in just hardcore Bach fugues and such, but also in the slushiest of Romantic pieces, there are so many situations where you elaborate material by translating, stretching or recombining it in 2D “pitch-time”. Even writing songs on guitar it’s very handy to visualise the music this way if I need to transpose into a more convenient key.
One of my favorite webcomics is Girl Genius. While they’ve been going strong for over a decade and I overall love the art, man does the artist have a bad case of globe boob.
Two of my favorite things in this strip: art theory and Joe genuinely flirting with Joyce.
I like how they are talking while everyone else can hear in a quiet room lol
This is not a threat. Just a friendly reminder.
That’s true, but also a little mean.
Omg I can’t believe Joyce just legitimately and in all seriousness threatened Joe’s life. What a real and credible threat that has true intent behind it and will definitely cause him genuine lasting harm. He is in true danger from this violent violent woman, truly.
Huh. Funny you should say “violent woman”. While I was researching DoA strips for game ideas, I came upon this strip reminding me of Jennifer’s true nature:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/freshmen/
Somehow first-panel Joe is the most genuine facial expression he’s ever made. Seems like he’s actually not hiding behind his “i’m sexy and i know it“ facade.