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flowerbloom-arts · 3 years

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A rather unneeded apology, don't you think?

Progress shots and thought process below the cut (warning, it gets heavy on pshycological analytical nonsense and spoilers for Exploits of Moominpappa/'s Memoirs, and it's really long):

Ah yes, Muddler angst, something that should be one too many yet you can't quite get enough of it-

So it all started with this little metaphor from this post I made a while back and I thought "Hmm... I should really make a follow-up for that!" so I did, and here it is.

This was originally gonna be a lineless painting but then when I started to do that I thought about how much of a drag it would be and scrapped that for my regular style but with cooler shading and coloring. I'm happy with it, it's been a while since I've done a full illustration and I'm proud that I managed to make this in like... (Checks timer on my drawing app) 2 hours and 25 minutes? Huh.

Anyway, this whole illustration is more or less just a metaphor going on in Muddler's head when he's cracked under stress, it's the "boat floating on your own personal ocean" metaphor like the post I linked above, it is indeed a constantly raging sea of stress and change and mental/lifestyle instability that's going on in Muddler's head and he's on a houseboat floating on it trying to balance and protect itself from the tides. It's always rocking back and forth but it's been doing that all the time for so long that it barely registers for him anymore, so he's living in this unnerving calm where the calm is not serenity perse but a lack of terror, yet, sometimes that raging sea manages to break through a window or two and flood the place as a good reminder that he isn't immune, he can and will drown for as long as things are like this.

The sea isn't a place of good memories for Muddler in either version of the book, like, the sea is so big that it's general emptiness on the horizon tickles his eyes. Before that he painted the boat red and got it all over himself and then painted his tin with the leftover paint, needless to say he had a rather traumatic night where the paint never dried and it got all over his food and bed and whiskers which drove him insane (or plume crazy I should say). He also had a rough time in his tin while packing for the riverboat and being swept away by the flood caused by Edward the Booble, he said his nerves (and his button collection) were all unsorted after the rest of the crew managed to get the tin on board. Then other stuff happens- an awful Hemulen Aunt boarding the ship (he literally wished death upon her, a rather extreme gesture especially for Muddler), the Hemulen Aunt being taken away by the Niblings (and the ensuing guilt he felt when he felt that it was his fault since he wished for her to be eaten), a rough and sticky night, being the first to realise the boat was setting off to sea unintentionally in the middle of the night, having to sit through a gale in which he got very sick- and that's just stuff that happened on the boat! He also had to suffer the likes of the revenge of the forgotten bones! The Ghost painted Muddler's tin and he cried about it, thinking it's a warning sign that he'll never marry! And he's the only one who was legitimately terrified of the Ghost, imagine being one of like, a 4 person friend group and being the only one scared of a real scary thing that directly affected you in one of the worst ways possible- vandalism of your own home. And don't even get me started on the fact that he lost his parents during spring cleaning and still believes they're alive.

With that being said, I believe we all understand that Muddler has been through alot, he had a revelation that adventures cause nothing but trouble for the poor guy in the middle of the book. And seeing how he cried at the idea of never getting married, we can presume he just wants a normal life after that. Thankfully, Fuzzy provided that through marriage and kids, even though they lost one of them by accident.

Now with this in mind, I have implemented a few elements from the book into the illustration. I've also followed some color-coding rules I've made up for myself;

Blue=Safety and comfort (Hodgkins is his uncle and is canonically blue-colored for the most part, not to mention that his Maxwell House Coffee tin is blue aswell, both are sources of safety for Muddler)

Green=Protection (Joxter is usually depicted in a green dress/hat, he stood up for Muddler atleast twice in the book and we can presume these weren't the only times he does it. Joxter is rather confident in his abilities despite being lazy and Muddler would rather admire that)

Yellow=Achievement/accomplishment (nothing much here, just uhh... Gold is yellow-ish and gold usually means you've accomplished something)

Red=Stress/general negativity (This is mostly coming from the red paint incident)

I've also added some small references and details. I've avoided using the ruler tool on my lineart to give it less solid feel to the backround and everything, showing how it's not supposed to be a full representation of reality, the pictures being faceless also adds to that. I drew an interpretation of the Muddler and Fuzzy wedding photo found in the moomin theme park, the gold medal on Hodgkins' portrait says "you helped" and it's supposed to be the medal that Hodgkins said Muddler deserved for helping him figure out the propeller (accidentally) in the Exploits version and I like to think he has that thought always in the back of his mind as one of the few times he's felt genuinely useful since he got so happy from it. Oh! And the picture almost completely hidden by the curtains is a portrait of his father and that's Joxter at the bottom looking like he's peeking over the curtain when really he's not. The curtains are green because they protect him from the red outside world, the suit and yellow dead flowers being darkly colored are supposed to represent a sense of meaninglessness or general distain, the red liquid is supposed to be red paint, not blood aaaaaaand the window is a slight shade of blue with a screen overlay.

"Apologies for being weak-minded" is supposed to be a rather insincere but tired quote from Muddler, he doesn't really want to apologise for cracking under pressure and having a literal breakdown but he feels like he has to because I think he just feels like a nuisance alot of the time and being so negatively emotional just makes things worse, so he has to come up with an apology rather than tell the person he's talking to the reason why he broke down, and belittling his own feelings by calling himself weak-minded. He knows himself to be "too" sensitive.

Anyway, that was too long a ramble. Just know that I'm not trying to take myself too seriously here, it's a silly amount of thought put into this but eh, I enjoyed it, and I thought you might want to read about it and if you made this far; thank you.

#moomins #moominvalley #art #moomin muddler #muddler #the muddler #illustration #trust me the stuff under the cut is really long #I wish I could put more tags here but I guess these are all of them that matter

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