Original DA Upload Date: September 9, 2021
A dance a day keeps the spiders away.
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You know what? Gilda + Nicole is an awesome pairing. Probably will be considered the most underrated pairing outside of the Tetrad. I’ve long said that Gilda’s closest friend within the Tetrad is Wendy, who she shares intellect and popular music fandom with. But with Nicole, Gilda shares both of these things, as well as a nerdy personality, a homely physical appearance (they both have freckles, a big nose, and Scorsese eyebrows), and being on the autism spectrum! Not gonna lie, Gilda inviting Nicole to her birthday party to fill Margo’s absence was kind of meant to be a one-off. I don’t know if this is an experience that varies from person-to-person, but in my experience, kids, especially in elementary and middle school, usually only have friends their own age. They know who’s in the grade above and the grade below in their own school and may talk with them, but that’s about it. It’s not until around age 16 when they start more openly hanging out and being friends with the kids in the grades directly above and below them. And even then, that’s mostly because they sometimes end up in their classes. Gilda is 11 years old and Nicole is 13. Normally, the only reason a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old from two different families would speak to each other, let alone be friendly to one another, would be if one had a sibling the other’s age.
Which is the case with Gilda and Nicole’s friendship. Nicole’s 11-year-old sister Wendy, is Gilda’s friend. Which is how they got to know each other. And wouldn’t you know it, Gilda and Nicole get along very well! They both like video games, they both like going to the mall, and they like taking part in the other’s interests. Gilda has taken an interest in baseball from Nicole; she likes watching her play on her team, watching baseball games on TV with her, and has even invested in various baseball games for retro systems from the third to sixth generations. She mostly keeps the games at home because the Wylers don’t have anything more retro than a PS2, but when invited over to one of the Wylers’ households (Donovan/Don-hoon and Judy’s, the Voronovs’, and the twins’) Gilda often likes to bring over one of the PS1 or PS2 games she has, so she and Nicole can play together. As for Nicole, she’s taken a liking to a centuries-old part of Gilda’s Istallion ancestry… the tarantella dance.
Now to the artwork!
Because I imagine Gilda having the same voice actress as Ronnie Anne Santiago (Izabella Alvarez), this artwork began with the idea of drawing Gilda in a baile folklorico dress. However, because Gilda is Italian/Istallion and not Hispanic/Horspanic, I thought it would be a bad look. Especially in this post-George Floyd world where anything that can be taken as racist, is frowned upon. Hell, even The Casagrandes has taken several measures to make sure the show is as culturally sensitive as possible, down to the point of recasting many of the voice actors to be the ethnicties of the characters they voice. Although, they still have the major elephant in the room of Maria Santiago, a major character in this Hispanic-led show, being voiced by the Thai- and Filipina-American Sumalee Montano instead of a Hispanic or Latina voice actress. Furthermore, Maria wore a baile folklorico dress! I know the character is still Hispanic, but still, it isn’t a very good look for the show if it wants culturally sensitive casting, and yet has a character voiced by an Asian woman as a baile folklorico dancer.
Anyhoo, since I figured Gilda as a baile folklorico dancer was a bad idea, I decided to look up cultural dances of Italy to see what I could do for Gilda. Which was when I learned of the ‘tarantella’, a folk dance dating back to around the 14th or 15th century, that originated as a cure for tarantism, a form of dance mania that was believed to be caused by the bite of a tarantula wolf spider. The tarantula is named after the Italian province of Taranto, where I have now decided Gilda’s Italian/Istallion ancestry comes from. With this new establishment of Gilda’s character, I have also decided that tarantella dancing is one of Gilda’s hobbies, alongside taking in pop culture, shopping, and baking.
While doing research on the tarantella, I learned that, unlike the baile folklorico, dresses for the tarantella are generally all the same. There are occasional variations, but how you see I’ve drawn them here is almost always how they look. It’s considered bad luck in modern times to dance the tarantella alone. Neither Margo, Wendy, nor April would be interested in the tarantella. Especially not Margo, because it involves wearing a dress. But Nicole, though I do describe her as a tomboy, her streak is not as strong as Margo’s. And because Gilda was willing to pick up some of her hobbies, as well as sharing many traits with her, Nicole would love to dance the tarantella! It’ll help her learn about the cultures of others, as well, beyond just the French, Korean, and Jewish cultures she already knows, from being all those things.
As for the technical aspects of the artwork, the roses were originally drawn as a bunch of red smudges, stacked layer-upon-layer atop one another, and with interior shadows applied. Most of the roses were made out of three layers; the petals at the front, the big petal in the center, and the petals in the back. Then the stems were drawn on a separate layer from those, and then layer with the red roses, unmerged with the stems, were turned white. From there, the red and white rose petals were copied until I felt they pulled off a convincing illusion of kilometers of depth, and then a blur was applied to make the roses far off in the distance appear as if they were out of focus. Oh, and there is also a layer of distorted and wavy greens, to give the illusion of several rose stems and leaves. The prominent greens, whites, and reds, are a reference to the flag of Italy, fitting for the theme of this artwork.
The tree-filled mountains in the background are Mount Hatcher; the waterfall feeds Proboscis Creek (also known by its former name ‘Fly Kill’ and popularly referred to as the ‘Fly Kill River’), which itself feeds the Hudson. Its former name is a reference to Vly Creek and Normans Kill, two real-life creeks in upstate New York which run through Albany county. Growing up in upstate New York, I always thought those creeks had weird names. And now in my adulthood, I thought naming a body of water that runs through Grunvale and Hatcherwood after them, would be a fun little touch. And ‘Fly Kill’/’Fly Kill River’ is the name I thought up for it, combining both names and also turning the result into an animal pun. Of course, due to its name, it would be very contronversial in-universe, due to the dipterous population taking offense to it decades before the events of OTOG. Hence the official rename to ‘Proboscis Creek’.
And that’ll be all for this artwork. Until next time, take care, and stay tuned for more Gilda + Nicole art, as they’re quickly becoming one of my favorite non-Tetrad pairings to draw. So much so that I now consider Nicole to be an honorary Tetrad member alongside Auggie Lowry.
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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 
