u/TrueEclective

I've only ever worked with black and white and I haven't really drawn anything since high school. Back then, I just got way too buried in the details. My high school project was a massive 18 x 24 mountain biker that was pen and ink with stipple. I spent months on it, never even finished it.

Watercolor has been great to just jump in and throw some paint down. As you can see, shading and lighting finally starting to come back to me on #3. I'm trying to keep it simple and just work on getting him looking a lot more polished. I also got a good lesson in value when I finally watered my paint way down - it looked a lot better that way.

140# cold press but I also have hot press that I'm trying next because I like the hard ring
Cheap amazon watercolors but I have a set of Da Vinci on the way
Water color pencil as light sketch underneath, and then outlines done with a Pigma
White acrylic pen for the catchlights

I've got some beginner round brushes and detail brushes

Thanks for any tips / critique.

I did 4 years of art all through high school, but I never did anything in color. It was always pen and ink, and I'd spend months on stipple drawings. I started with some alcohol marker art 2 weeks ago, and decided to try some watercolor for the first time. Just now getting back into art over the last few months and it feels great.

My winter project might be custom designing a modular holder that groups the colors together better and also has room for a paper swatch on each row. We’ll see how ambitious I get. First, I’d better actually learn to color with these things.

Back when I was a senior in HS and playing MTG, I bought a bunch of Star Wars cards hoping they’d be worth something someday. Now I’m almost 50 and today was the first day I have ever looked these things up. These are all mint. Straight from the packs and into a sleeve. They’ve been sitting in this cedar box for … sheesh… 30 years?

Yep, that’s smoke alright. But I needed to get the board out real quick for a test before a big paddle we have coming up. I’ve never been on a narrower expedition board, but it was time for an upgrade and I took a chance after a little research. I got the new 4” thick model (Thurso) and wow is this thing fun. I was surprised at how much different it felt than the all-arounder I’ve been on for the past 4 years. Definitely happy with this one.

I shared a post last week about breeding meteorain down to Chillet and had quite a few questions. I thought I'd go through my process on how I increase my success rate of getting all of the passives I want on a pal along with an attack like meteorain or double blizzard spike.

Warning: This is the most complicated type of breeding you can do in the game. It's pretty involved and advanced and will seem pretty intimidating if you're completely new to breeding. Most breeding is a lot more straightforward than this. You've got to start somewhere. Don't let the complexity of this throw you off. Your first foray into breeding will be really simple once you do it.

1. Stay organized

I use my 3 locks the following way:

1. Combat
2. Base Pals (including raid)
3. Breeder pals with traits I want to pass to other pals

2. Isolate your active skill (attack) first

Double Blizzard Spike gets passed down from Frostallion. The problem with this, is that when you capture a level 60 Frostallion, it will have 12 or more attacks, and you only want one. If you breed that Frostallion into your other pal with all of the rainbow passives you want, the chances of also passing down Double Blizzard Spike are very low (1 in 12, or worse).

Instead, you want to capture 2 Frostallions and breed them until you get one level 1 Frostallion with Double Blizzard Spike, and in this case we also want that pal to have Legend. As soon as you get your Frostallion you want to breed with, be sure to keep them in the palbox. You don't want them to level up and gain more attacks. Keep them out of your party and at level 1 their entire life.

3. Chain breed to your target Pal

There are chain breeders out there that let you select your current Pal and desired Pal. So in my case, I want to get Demon God, Diamond Skin, and Lunker on to something that will breed to a Bastigor. In this case, that's pretty easy and it can be done in one step according to this chain breeding calculator. I need all 3 of those diamond passives on an Anubis, which when bred with a Frostallion, will get me my Bastigor.

So now I need to get all 3 rainbow passives on to the same Anubis. To do that, I need to take them from 3 different pals. In my case, pals that I fished up because that's the easiest way to get rainbow passives. I have a Dumond Gild with Diamond Skin, a Surfent Terra with Lunker, and a Kelpsea with Demon God.

Sometimes I can luck out and breed one rainbow down to a certain female pal and another rainbow down to a different male pale, breed those 2 together, and get my two rainbows into one. But in this case, the shortest route is to breed each of the 3 rainbow passives into a separate Anubis. So I'll use my chain breeding calculator to plan my breeding for 3 separate Anubis, each with those corresponding diamond passives

4. Isolate your Passives if you can

Similar to my Double Blizzard Spike, I want to increase the chance of passing on each of these rainbow passives instead of random garbage passives. If I can keep my parent as specific as possible, it greatly increases my odds of doing that.

So right now, my target is getting a single Anubis with Diamond Skin, Demon God, Lunker. It will take me a while to get there.

I'll start by breeding my 2 Anubis who each have one of the traits, until I get an Anubis with both of them. So, I'll breed a Diamond Skin Anubis with a Demon God Anubis. I'm watching for two things. If I get an Anubis with only a single rainbow, but nothing else - I call that a clean breeder. So maybe my original Anubis has Demon God and Slacker, and I ended up getting an Anubis with only Demon God. I mark him a #3 lock and swap him for the other Anubis, assuming he's the same gender.

Then I keep going until I get an Anubis that has both Demon God and Diamond Skin. Hopefully without a garbage trait, but not a big deal.

Once I get my double-diamond Anubis, I then breed him to my Anubis with Lunker. I'm still watching for any combination of clean diamond traits - an Anubis that has Lunker and Demon God and nothing else, or just Lunker and nothing else, etc. And any time I get one of those, I'm locking that pal as a #3. Chances are, as I work towards my target pal, I'll end up creating a few more "clean breeders" along the way. As I get those, I'm locking them as #3s and swapping them into the breeding pens so that my odds of getting all of my rainbows just keep increasing slightly.

Eventually, I'll end up with an Anubis that has all 3 of those desired diamond traits, and hopefully nothing else.

5. Breed your quad-diamond Pal

Now I want to breed my triple-diamond Anubis with my level 1 Frostallion who has Double Blizzard Spike and Legend. Frostallion is bound to have a garbage trait instead of having only Legend as a skill, but if I won the lottery and have a level 1 Frostallion with Double Blizzard Spike and only Legend, AND an Anubis with only those 3 diamond passives - so both my breeders are clean - then I'd breed them that way. Otherwise, what I'm going to do is add philanthropist in my 4th slot to Anubis, and also add it to my Frostallion. That way they'll breed much faster and I'll get my target pal much faster.

So, same thing here. I'm watching for a Bastigor that comes out with some of the traits I want, and tagging him as a lock #3. In this case, getting a clean diamond passive with Double Blizzard Spike is my priority. So if I get a Bastigor with Double Blizzard Spike and Legend, no other passives, I lock him as a #3 and keep on moving.

Eventually, I'll end up with a Bastigor with Double Blizzard Spike, Diamond Skin, Legend. Another Bastigor with Double Blizzard Spike, Demon God, Lunker - or some combination of 2 Bastigors with all 4 diamond traits between them.

Next, I breed those 2 Bastigors together. Now I have greatly increased my chances of producing a Bastigor that's going to have Double Blizzard Spike and all 4 diamond passives. I just keep tagging the "almost" Bastigors, and then once I get another good breeding pair, I throw them in another love shack. Eventually, I'll have 4-6 pairs of Bastigors in Breeding Farms, cranking out tons of Bastigors until I get my quad-diamond Double Blizzard Spike.

6. Breed for combat

Now for the final step. Eventually I'll have several quad-diamond, Double Blizzard Spike Bastigors. Now it's time to breed until I get one that has good stats. I need to wear my ability glasses if I'm not already, and now I'm just breeding my quad-diamonds together with each other. I'll still get a mess of other pals, but now I'm averaging about 1-2 quad-diamond Bastigors per batch of 10 hatches. I'm looking for the ones who have Double Blizzard Spike, and high potential stats. This step takes a while and just at this phase, you'll usually breed enough Bastigors to be able to dump into your final pal and get him fully condensed.

If you end up filling your palbox, don't worry - you've locked all of the important Bastigors to keep them separate from the junk. Just pick a random Bastigor, lock him as a #2, and fully condense him. Then keep cranking out those baby Bastigors. Once you finally get your quad-diamond, Double Blizzard Spike, with high potential stats, just unluck your #2 "holder" Bastigor, and condense him into your target keeper.

All done! I hope that was helpful. That's the most complex breeding in the game as far as I know. It takes a ton of time, a ton of cake, but for me it's been one of the most fun things to do in the game.

I decided to start a new world for 1.0, but to bring some fun pals with me. I'll probably have to turn XP and damage down so it's not too OP. Chillet with meteorain was just too tempting.

I’ve got a new basil plant from a cutting that has grown really fast. I’ve got it in a 10-5-14 solution. I would like it to put on buds lower in the stem. Did it just grow too fast? Should I have less nutrients in my next attempt so that it buds lower down? Remove light? Not sure how to slow it down and increase budding.

I have been propagating cuttings from a single $5 Home Depot special I bought about a month ago and these things take off fast.

I used to root in plain water but now I go straight from cutting to a 3” net cup that fits a wide mouth jar. Once I see roots pop through the net cup, it’s time to move the plant to an opaque container.

As for the containers, I hit up Ross, Goodwill, and find a nice container without holes in it.

I designed a 3d print file in Fusion that I just input a few custom parameters in to print a lid for the container that will adapt a 3” net pot. Next up, find some larger 1/2 and 1 gallon containers for “the mother.”

I had a set of lights come with these nice hanger studs that screw into the clip hangers, but I can’t find more on Amazon. I see plenty of T8 clip hangers, but can’t seem to find the stud. I’ve searched for “Chicago screw” and “d ring stud” and can’t seem to find anything specifically for these brackets.