Eliciting Emotion and Emotive Conjugation

Here is a trend that I personally find concerning.

By now it it generally recommended that writing should elicit emotion. In fictional writing, this is great; in factual reporting, this should not be done.

One method widely used in reporting is Emotive Conjugation. The same behavior is written differently to portray a person positively or negatively depending on the writer's intention. For example:

• I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.
• I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.
• I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.

You can read a longer explanation on Wikipedia.

Emotive conjugation is divisive. As readers, we should be aware of it use in media and keep ourselves neutral. We should extract ideas from content we consume, reflect on these ideas, and form our own conclusions.

This is not easy to do in the age of social media. We consume so much content that we hardly have time to reflect and to form our own conclusions. However, this is why this is important to highlight this (and the reason I am writing this post).

What are your thoughts on this topic? Feel free to chime in in the comments.

Amanita Red Mushroom in the Rain

 

Final image

I started with the idea of capturing rainy season because it has been raining frequently in October.

Thumbnails

The first thumbnail, as always, was straightforward. Three friends under an umbrella in the rain.

I experimented with a short comic sequence in thumbnail #2. The ending was not great, so I didn't use these.

In the third thumbnail, I thought of Little Star shining a beam of light in a rain might look cool. This idea went wild with Lise dressing up as a detective, catching the legendary thief Nils.

As I was sketching these thumbnails, an image of amanita red mushroom caught my eye. I did not expect that such a cartoon look can exist in nature! I decided to add it to the image.

Thumbnails with mushroom

I like the first thumbnail; so I just tried out different compositions in thumbnails 2a, 2b, and 2c. On hindsight, this was a red flag. I was happy with a composition too soon. I should have drawn more thumbnails to get a stronger composition. The final drawing has a rather weak composition.

Pencil of the final image

I experimented with using a brush pen to ink the mushrooms. I like the process but do not like the result. I will need to practice using brushpen more before using it for inking.

Inked final image

I struggled with color scheme for this one. I ended up simply adding object colors without a color palette as a guide. I attempted to remedy this by controlling the saturation. Red mushrooms got the most saturation and the strongest color, red. The rest of the image was tinted blue. The result is acceptable. I enjoyed painting the wet highlights most.

Little Star in Gentleman Costume

Happy Halloween!

I started this piece mid September with Halloween theme in mind.

Thumbnail of initial ideas

The first idea (see 1) was a witch who hid behind a bush and stole candies from a child—the main character—with some kind of levitating spell while the child was lured by the witch's cat. I quickly realized this was overly complicated.

To simplify, I focused on candies. I wanted to play with scale, so what about cute characters eating giant candies? 2, 2a, and 2b are explorations of this idea. I was happy with these, but I wanted to try out other ideas...

Second round thumbnails

What if the candies are sentient and looking at the Little Star characters? I drew a first with only Nils, the tiny character. b added Little Star and Lise, the girl, turned to see the viewer. I really liked how Little Star and Lise looked here.

Third round of thumbnails

Finally, I explored focusing on costumes instead of candies. What about Little Star dressing up the first time for his first Halloween? 1A and 1B are experiments with character placement. 2 is an outline of important elements. I decided this would be the image to draw.

The pencil of the final image is below. I changed Lise's pose because I like this one better than the one in thumbnail 2. I added Halloween decorations on the corners: spider web, bats, and pumpkin. I also added clothes and thread rolls to suggest that Lise had just finished making the costumes for Little Star and tiny Nils.

Pencil of the final image

Looking at the thumbnail of the pencil, I found the spider web got too much detail. I decided to simplify it into lines when inking.

Inked final image

While painting, I tested positive for Covid. I rest in bed for 4 days and forgot my original idea of the colors. I do not fully comprehend what happened—I thought I kept the idea in mind; but I could not recall it after I recovered. I reverted to my comfortable painting method of picking color based on what I think a material should look. I was not happy with the final color palette, but the lighting contrast is hopefully strong enough to support the final image.