5. Seeking Solace

Your mom full views.

so. Here's another "Inner Mechanisms" piece!
for the 100 theme's challenge, "seeking solace"

so I hate hate HATE explaining ideas like this because I know they're stupid ideas that even I wouldn't care about if I hadn't come up with them, but I want this picture to make sense, so I'm going to make an attempt to explain this...the only background knowledge you should have is that this is set in the future, and technology has advanced so far that robots have become strkingly lifelike. Every now and then, one is found exhibiting symptoms of free-will and is sent back to the manufacturer to be destroyed. Some manage to escape and begin new lives under the pretence of being human. This one lives with an elderly man who makes a point to fix the "malfunctioning" bots:

If you were a robot, a creature that the majority of the population does not understand, and therefore is terrified of, would you like what you are? Or would you desperately try to make yourself seem normal? Would you pretend to take pleasure human indulgences like drinking and smoking to cover up what you yourself can never enjoy? Would you do your best to cover every trace of what you truly are, even to those like you?

This is Veronica, a rather old robot. She lost her hand when she ran away from her owner nearly forty years ago, and one of her eyes has stopped working. Her skin is old and dingy. Repair parts are limited, being that all the still-working pieces are either recycled by the manufacturers, or on still-functioning robots. It’s becoming harder and harder to hide from the rest of humanity what she really is.
Normally she is eclectic and loud, outgoing and a knowledgeable resource for the few others in her position, but every now and then she goes off on her own, seeking solace.

If you could live for a very long time without aging while humans you met would fade and die, how would you feel?

So the smoke-people are both people that she longs to be like, and people that she's been friends with that have died.
except for the closer one leaning on the pillar who is her current best friend, though she knows will one day leave her as well.

done in marker! Though I did use a tiny bit of digital manipulation to make the colors darker.

I defy you, straight lines and circles! hey, Keziah, remember when I was all in awe of your circle-drawing abilities at the con? It was because I had inked the circles in here the day before and failed epicaly xD

Hey Courtney. Guess what she's sitting on.....


I pressed the "request critique" button...I'm not sure what it does. This should be an interesting experience.