Becky Hawkins

An Abbott Elementary AU and end-of-summer postcards

Added 2024-11-13 17:00:16 +0000 UTC

This post comprises of watercolors that I started weeks or months ago, but I always had something more pressing to work on. I finally made the time to finish them during a cafe-session at Refuge with Barry. Yay!

The page above is a scene from Surface Protocol, a story by @katiehoughton in which Melissa and Barbara from Abbott Elementary are Cold War navy wives who fall in love on a base in Hawaii. (AU=Alternate Universe, in case anyone's unfamiliar with the term.) The whole story is well-written, but this was the moment that grabbed me like THIS IS A COMIC PAGE AND YOU MUST DRAW IT. My Tumblr-friend @branzinos had posted some gifs of young Sheryl Lee Ralph and Lisa Ann Walter in '90s TV appearances, so I had age-appropriate references for their facial expressions. I asked a friend to take photos of me in a vintagey dress for some of Melissa's poses.

This happened on a walk with Barry and his housemate Charles:

A postcard from Pittsburgh:

Pumpkin Pie Concrete is vanilla custard mixed with "pumpkin crème" and pie-crust crumble and I regret nothing. The extra punchline is that Rita's Italian Ice added the word "custard" to their name at some point since they opened in my parents' neighborhood 20+ years ago, but I didn't update it in my head. Life-long Pittsburghers are known for giving directions based on where various landmarks and businesses used to be--"turn right at the old Poli's"--and this feels like an extension of that.

Lastly, a true story from a summer walk: