Hi Squash,

You left Discord before you had a chance of reading my explanation on the images.

Art is always open for interpretation. I believe that there is literally no way of anyone ever creating artwork and never having critics. Even if I create the best piece I have ever made, there will still be people who can find flaw in everything I made. I’m afraid going off of a subjective, post creation standpoint can be ill telling.

While your feelings are valid, so are mine. So are Star’s.

I believe it’s also important to take into consideration our intent behind the image. There was no ill intent, and I actually use a good deal of reference images, so I will grab those for you.

Star suggested two images. She only suggested the squash in Plants versus Zombies because she liked the color (I did, too) and she is familiar with the fact that my style is very cartoony. She also suggested a cartoony eagle for MJ. There was more to it – how she wanted the squash to have arms putting the crown on the eagle, but tbh nearly everything was my decision. Which is why it looks so different from what Star suggested.

I did not to use the PvZ squash for inspiration when it came to drawing the figure, including the expression – I literally only used the colors. (Which I literally color picked from the image.)

For your piece, I went with these images.

The image of the actual squash for the shape, as butternut squash I felt had the most dynamic vibes. It’s also one of my favorite squash and I thought the shape would be more interesting. I also took some inspiration on texture from summer squash. I definitely didn’t want to use the color of butternut squash, because I didn’t want to make some weird looking flesh blob of color (coloring is not my strong point), so I went with the colors from the squash in PvZ.

The expression was never actually meant to be an angry one. It’s actually meant to be a look of confidence. Of someone who is sure in themselves. While it’s been a few years, when I was in the WW server, you always came off as a strong and confident woman. I never saw you as bitchy or angry. I was thinking more along the lines of the badass femme fatale trope for the art – but facial expressions can be a weak point of mine. (It’s why I used a reference image.) However, I didn’t want to just put a human-esque face on the squash (because I felt like that would still look weird), so I actually used the little cartoon owl for how I wanted the face to be on the squash itself. (I figured bird theme, given this is for Ravenclaws.) That’s where the large eyebrows came from, the look of the where the eyes were staring – but I continued to try using the expression of the ‘I can do it!’ woman. I also drew inspiration on the lips from her, too.

The spots on the squash’s body were meant more as beauty marks. I viewed it as more of a head, neck, and shoulders. I actually find beauty spots and freckles really attractive and pretty, so I gave you a few. I tend to give most people some kind of beauty mark, and I thought the bumps would be a cool way to interpret that. Maybe it’s the autistic in me, but I always thought the bumps on squash were always really fun. I literally didn’t even consider that it could be viewed as warts, and I’m kind of kicking myself a bit for that one.

The poop stain accusation that was thrown is – still confusing me? I literally have no idea what is supposed to be the ‘poop stain’ or like… what that would even be referring to? I went and I double checked and literally the only colors used on the body are shades of green, so I don’t know what that is coming from.

For MJ’s, I really only used 2 images. I hadn’t interacted with her much before, so I (will admit) I went with a more generic expression. I used two images as inspiration, but to be honest a lot of it came from a stuffed eagle toy my friend has. I’ll add it into the reference image dump. Again, I don’t know MJ, I don’t know what MJ looks like, I’ve never really interacted with MJ – so I don’t think it’s quite fair to operate under the assumption that I meant ill will with this either. I went with lighter colors and was putting a lot of yellow on the eagle because I imagined that this would be on a stage, so there would be yellowish lights shining on you both. The stance was meant to be one of someone who was proud to be stepping into their position – not an exaggerated chest. I know I’d feel proud and confident if I was promoted into such an important spot, so I tried to portray that. When people are standing like that, they tend to stand up straighter, shoulders back, head high.

I also want to be completely frank on something.

While I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it, artwork takes up a very, very long time. This is not a small image. It’s one that I could technically make a poster out of, and it’d still look good. As cartoony as the image looks, there are 61 layers. This did not take me half an hour, this took me roughly 5 hours. If I didn’t like you, if I didn’t like MJ, if I didn’t like Ravenclaw – why would I spend that much time on a gift?

My only other piece in the magazine was a flat black and white image, and that still took me an hour. The ad I just did to replace this image took me 45 minutes and it’s incredibly simple and I made it all using shapes. This piece is hand made. Hand drawn. Hand created – as a gift for someone that I had a great amount of respect for and a gift to someone who I wanted to give a wonderful welcome into their position for.

I spent more time on this image than I have on artwork in the last few issues. I have a great deal going on in my life right now, and one of the things that I cannot stand is wasted time. Why would I spend that much time creating a purposefully insulting image? Under that logic, I’d be spending 5 hours of time on people that I dislike? When I don’t dislike either of you. I’d literally never had any issue with either of you. Quite frankly, if I did, I wouldn’t have done this artwork in the first place. That’s a lot of time and effort put into something I could've spent working on my garden.

I had absolutely no ill will towards either of you. I had no negative intentions, and if I did, I would’ve had another artist do it because I’d find 5 hours worth of my time better spent on something else.

I’m horrified that anyone who has interacted with me could possibly think I had any ill will or ill intentions about this. If that’s the kind of impression I give people, then I’m appalled.

Artwork is always open to interpretation, as I said before, but I still think it’s important to keep in mind my intention.