LA Noire is a selfish little bastard of a game. It invites you over to its home and suggests that you play cops and robbers. For a while things are great and everyone is having fun but then wouldn’t you know it, LA Noire doesn’t like your ideas or the choices you make so it ignores them and suddenly you’re just a player in a very elaborate overwritten play. But man does it start out like the goddamn second coming (editor’s note: of Police Quest.)

Investigator Maya is on the case!

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I recently made a card for my boss Al’s birthday in which I drew a poor man’s Bugs Bunny. I had such a good time doing it that I figured I would explore the realms of bunny art further. Perhaps mine its depths of bunny treasure and leave a slurry of badly drawn rabbits in my wake. The result is this lyrics card for Cocco’s Raining. I decided to illustrate the part of the song where she sings, “with my hair gone, next I tried cutting my arms. I cut until I couldn’t cut any more. Feeling the warmth, I danced with bloodied arms.”

I started with a pen drawing (Bic!) I scanned it into the computer and opened it in Photoshop.

Next I began painting it using a graphics tab and wet media brushes of varying opacity. 40% was my go to number.

Following that I did the shading and detail, by using the same color and adding a second layer of paint.

Then I added blood. At first I had a lot of it swirling all around her but it was indelicate and took away from the prettiness so I settled for one wide arc. Perhaps if I had the patience for more fine lines I might consider the original idea.

Finally, I added the lyrics with anything blood related in red and I did a kind of paper sliding door thing with the background. Almost as if our bunny girl is dancing away from the bright sun in that moment and into the darkness.

I have been derelict in my duties to tell you how awesome being a fucking dad is. Well, now I have. Here are some pictures of our happy fucking family. This is pretty much the best year of my entire life. I got the bump up to Producer/Director at work (finally getting paid for what I’ve been doing all along,) and I got my Maya. Happiness abounds.

And here’s us sleeping in bed with her. I elbow dropped her this morning accidentally but I’m calling it homage to the recently deceased Macho Man Randy Savage.. so it’s OK.

Allow me to sum up my feelings upon beholding my new born daughter, Maya Ariel, in the hospital.

Bioillogical Wonder

It was biological
And yet, bioillogical.
Enough mountain dew to fill a pool
And blindness tempted three times daily
Should have killed any chance I had
To behold her eyes
And within them, that infinite Milky Way.
What a curious thing she was and is, and am
All yawning, skinny and small.
Covered in hair, still a chimpanzee
On the wrong side of evolution
But in the cradle an angel,
And in my arms my saving grace
When she raises that voice
And severs my ties to a life gone by
I let it fall away into the pages
To be pressed, preserved and savored
On holidays and birthdays
Because one day, when my heart skips out on the beat
Hers will play lead, and everyone will dance
To the biorhythm,
To the biohymn.

By: Brian Stewart, June 2011