The wormadillos marched with an urgency that bordered on frenzy. They were single minded. If one faltered, the others would walk on top of it and only its armor saved it from being trampled to death. Then it would roll over and hustle to catch up. They seemed to prefer to travel in groups.

I would not want to be in that position. That’s why we went off the trail whenever they approached.

As we explored deeper and the woods gave way to forest, the trails also deepened into trenches that went up to our shoulders. I could see where their bodies had carved ruts in the sides and exposed tree roots and stones. This was where we chose to stop and install our trail cameras. The high roots made good mounts for the cameras. This was as far in as we would go.

The groups got smaller the farther we went. The trails converged like tributaries into a river flowing outward. At least navigating out would be easy - they never split. If a group passed through and it was only two or three, it should have been safe to press against the side wall and let them pass. Still, I can’t blame my crewmates for choosing to yield.

Along with the normal holidays, the Odyssey I crew celebrated milestones like Halfway, when they would switch from acceleration to deceleration and spend the week reconfiguring the interior for the new thrust gravity orientation. They also celebrated milestones of mission elapsed time. A separate clock ran on Earth to account for time dilation, called ground elapsed time, a term repurposed from the early days of spaceflight.

The wormadillos were indifferent to our plight. The best I could do was wave sticks at them so they wouldn’t plough through us. Yielding was not always a safe option. Now that I knew what to look for, I was shocked to find that so many of the spots we had taken refuge in were overrun with devil’s archer. I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never fully understand why it attacked when it did and not earlier.

decontamination

lunch break bear sketching

It had been twenty years. She had moved twice and married once. The marriage didn’t survive the first move, but somehow she still had all the hiking gear I had left at her apartment.
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Eurycleia and Odysseus from The Toils and Travels of Odysseus

Live sketching from the bear cams

The sci fi project I’ve been working on and off for fifteen years involves a few missions into outer space and with that comes the opportunity to design mission patches. In real life, they look like this:

They can be quite complex and usually list the names of crew, but patches can also be made for unmanned missions and Earth-based operations.

I’m under no illusion that I’m any good at graphic design so the patches I create are nowhere near this elaborate. When I started, I made them with simple digital vector shapes with textures applied via layer effects. This is my favorite from that era.

I didn’t find the process very fun however as I had little experience with vector art and never felt completely in control. This process works really well for creating reproduceable products like stickers and actual patches but I’m not making those, for the most part (I do have a Helen sticker on my keyboard). I’m making illustrations.

In 2020 I made this patch just for fun, unrelated to the project (obviously) and instead of mucking around with the shapes tool I worked with paper, pen, and watercolor. Instead of trying to make perfectly clean edges with physical media, I imitated the texture of embroidery.

This was way more fun than the old way and how I have done it from then on. Below the cut, I will show how I do it step by step.

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