I’m curious if there are certain tropes you look for when picking up a grimdark book:

Character designs or arcs
Plot devices
Time periods or settings
Violence

Is there something you hope to read or experience from the book?

I ask because I have not been able to distinguish some dark fantasy from Grimdark and they don’t really stand out to me.

This can is a pull tab Budweiser which they stopped making in the 1970s.

It’s been ignored and left on the beach for 50 years. It’s a testament to the fact that trash just doesn’t go away on its own.

Among other things, I also found this nifty knife blade up in the sand.

Please pick up your trash.

I’d say 80% of trash out on the beach is just from not paying attention and not necessarily being malicious. So please keep an eye on your trash.

I planted a lot of these in March/April.

The oregano has completely died, but was doing really well for a while.

I’m OK letting the parsley go to seed so I can replant it.

The lavender is turning crispy.

The thyme is really struggling.

The rosemary is the only one that seems to be doing OK.

These are kept under a long porch. They don’t get much direct sunlight except for at the very end of the day.

It can get pretty hot under the porch. I water pretty much every morning unless the soil is still damp.

It’s just standard potting soil.

Is my herb pot just destined to die every summer?

All of my plants died last year too, so I tried planting sooner this year. But we look well on our way to losing them all again.

EDIT: I’m in Page. So not quite the same heat as the Phoenix area, but it does get really hot here.

I’ve had this guy for seven years and he has never been good at hunting. Like he is *really* bad at finding food. He was hit by a weed whacker when he was maybe a few weeks old and I only planned to keep him until his tail healed, but he was so bad at hunting that I was like “dude you will never survive in the world.” And have kept him ever since.

Anyway, this is him “capturing” some silversides.

EDIT: I just cleaned his cage so the heat lamp was OFF.

I don’t normally feed him outside of the cage but he was feeling adventurous. His “attack” is equally effective inside as outside.

I'm looking for an artist that has this style of artwork.

I want to create cover designs for my fantasy book series. Ideally, the artist can also do sketches for interior pages but right now only focused on cover work.

Open to negotiation for price range and recurrent work. I have dozens of concepts I would want created as promos for the series for when I eventually publish.

If interested, please share a link to your portfolio. I will not reply to direct messages. Thank you!

EDIT: Thanks for sharing everyone. I’ll be taking some time to review each artist and will reach out if I want to move forward! Thank you!

These are initial concepts mocked up in Canva.
I want to have real artists create another version so that I can ensure that it’s fully trademark-able.

I wanted to have the book names have similar formatting as far as the title concept. Personally, I really like simple book covers. I’m very likely gonna go to self publishing route.

My question is:
Does this design call you?
Does it feel like a cohesive series?
What do you think about the titles?

The icon in the bottom right corner is designed for the series and is intended to change for each book.
The blue book represents the final version of it.
An evolution of sorts.

Hey everybody,

I’m planning on adding some life to this yard next year. I’ve already started to amend the “soil”. (It’s just sand.)

The side of the yard is full sun all day and runs east west. It’s very hot as well.

We had a lot of desert daisies that bloomed but are dead, dried, and gone now.

I really want to do mostly wildflowers and maybe a few bushes. I have some seeds for dwarf pomegranates that I was thinking of planting along the house.

What would everyone suggest for a very dry, very hot yard? I’d like local plants or at least desert-oriented plants that require minimal water.

I’d also love to have flowers bloom at different parts of the season. Or anything that supports the butterflies and hummingbirds.

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

By the way, I’m in Page. Still gets extremely hot but also gets cold.

My 7 year old umbrella plant just started mass dropping leaves a few days ago. It’s lost 3 branches. The leaves are a faint brown.

The loss all appears to be one side. I don’t see any signs of mites or bugs.

I just fertilized it with standard fertilizer a few days ago. Could I have accidentally used too high of a concentration?

I haven’t repotted it in a few years.

It’s kept near a kitchen window that gets diluted light all day. No direct sun.

I live in AZ and water when the soil is dry. Fertilize infrequently (my bad) but do try to at least 1x per month.

I’ve lived here for about a year and a half so it’s pretty used to the environment and haven’t moved it from its place the entire time.

EDIT: the leaf featured is the only one with dry browning on the end.

This is a real photo I just took but when I zoom in, the text on the gas truck looks garbled like AI - even though it’s perfectly readable from where I’m sitting. Is my iPhone trying to amend the low resolution with AI filler?

I want to write a kid’s book about weird animals I like including this little guy here. I did not set out to paint this, but didn’t like the colored pencil shading and wound up just diluting acrylic paint for a somewhat watercolor effect.

I thought I’d look into watercolor paper, but it seems like there’s a lot of varieties?

This is just plain sketch paper. Obviously, it’s a bit warped now.

For those who do illustrations for books, what kind of paper do you use for watercolor?