Posts (page 2)
Even my doodles suck right now.
The worst part is that it's not that I don't want to draw, it's that I want to but can't draw anything. Like I've forgotten how to draw. I hate that. I know what I want to draw but I can't even put down some rough lines for thumbnails.
It's been a rough... um, year. Some of you already know about the breakup; that's basically the icing on the cake in addition to my health troubles and work issues. I'm pretty fucking devastated, because I had no signs at all that this was coming.
I should probably take the pressure off myself and just doodle tonight. Either that or start rearranging my furniture again. I can't afford to move out now so I've got to make do with the space I have. I've already redone one quadrant of my cottage, but that was because it was the least scary and quickest to do. Going to be much uglier to figure out how the desks and craft tables need to fit together.
Told N. that I won't be doing jewelry for a while. She's okay with that.
Something I won't be announcing anywhere else yet: I'm considering resigning from my admin duties at the board I've been shepherding for the better part of a decade. In fact, we were talking about the possibility of shutting it down entirely. I feel kind of bad about that, but I think we can probably reach some kind of agreement with the community and help them find a new home. Everything we'd ever dreamed in building the JB community has happened and then some, and it's been a wild ride, but life is hectic and ever-changing and we feel like it's time for us to move on.
So now I have to draft an open letter to the masses and ask them what they want to do. Yeeeah, not going to get around to that tonight. Crap, my email is piling up too...
Still doing the flat style. This time, in *gasp* MS Paint! Sometimes it's better not to have a lot of tweaking power at your hands, it's distracting. Trying out different hair treatments and playing with how to depict semi-transparent material. Not so pleased with the hands here. I used to draw hands really small, and now I'm erring on the side of making them too big; I had to redraw them twice.
I hope the grays didn't turn out too crazy. I really need to calibrate my monitor the proper way. I know the grays aren't showing up for me the way they do for everyone else, and this is going to look totally different when I view it on someone else's monitor.
I should start packing my lunches for the rest of the week and freezing them...
I am still drawing, though not as much as I'd like to be this weekend. I'm feeling drawn to flat coloring lately, although this is more in my developing cartoon style so I feel more pleased with it than the last round. Not enough foreshortening on the right eye, methinks. She looks a little cross-eyed. I do however like that I managed not to completely mangle her hand. I have fallen completely out of practice on hands and my Jack Hamm book is somewhere under a pile of stuff. I really need to clean this weekend...
In other news, I made a huge pot of lentil stew, I'm not looking forward to scrubbing it out. Thinking of making cornbread to go with it. I'll eat like it's winter for a week, rawk.
Debating whether I want to still do the Chiron Beta Prime mug gag, yea or nay? I think I've sat on it too long.
Need to mail N. and tell her I just don't think I can start doing pieces until I get this whole health thing sorted. It makes me a sad pandaaaa... I was so looking forward to it. But my energy just isn't where it needs to be right now. Between surgery and family obligations and moving I'm screwed for the next three months. I'm going to delegate the bulk of apartment-hunting responsibility to Fox and C. since they're the ones with more stringent requirements. I really don't care where we live so long as I can get to work in less than an hour from there and it's not infested with rats and the neighbors aren't drug dealers.
Ben Barnes is a pretty man. Studded leather is a good look for him. Anyhow, I love Weta. LOVE LOVE LOVE Weta. They make the bestest movie props ever and I adore them for their intense attention to detail. The armor! Oh gods the armor. It makes me want to get back to doing chains and maille again. I don't even much like C.S. Lewis but whatever, this movie is pretty and has awesome battle scenes.
Somewhat less than fantastic, and still doing science.
I tried for something flatter and more poster-like than my usual style. Actually, I hate it. I ended up trying too hard to replicate the actors' faces from the FOTR movie still and the result is less expressive than I would have liked. There are some days when my right brain is just NOT doing it for me, and I guess this is one of those days. I can't stand how it seems like my drawing-self has a split personality. There are days I can really draw, and days I can't. Oh well.
As per the book, I have drawn Aragorn sans beard.
Done in Photoshop. Eru melda did I ever miss Photoshop.
I'm doing a shameless plug here for one of my favorite online bead stores, RocknRocks. I've bought stuff from them for several years now, always had excellent service, and I'm impressed with their efforts to ensure that their beads are not produced in a sweatshop environment. They're in a bit of a financial pickle and I'd really rather not see them close shop--if you are a bead fiend or you know someone who is, take a gander at their site.
Well, I tasted my log o' cheese the other day and it's very definitely not brie. It's super-sharp and still crumbly. I think it's not faring so well in the fridge and I may take it out to age at room temperature now that it's firmed up and all...
I've made myself some kefir too. I had some milk that was approaching its expiration date and I didn't want to drink it all because plain milk is kind of gross (I usually only use it for cooking these days). So I poured it into my two-thirds-empty kefir bottle, shook it up, and left it out on the counter for two days, shaking it and venting the gas from the bottle whenever I could remember to. Popped it back in the fridge for a few days, and I have a new batch of kefir again. I know that whole leaving milk out on the counter thing might sound gross, but you gotta remember that the reason kefir and yogurt were invented in the first place was to preserve milk back in the days before refrigeration. So long as you use all-natural kefir with live culture in it, you can totally do this, and in theory never actually need to buy bottled kefir again, only milk. I'll probably forget to replenish the bottle with milk sometime down the road and have to get a new one, but whatever.
Meanwhile in kombucha-land, I'm getting a good, floaty mat on two out of my four bottles. I have to clean out my old tea leaf jars and transfer everything into there so I can have one nice big mother culture. That will be tomorrow, I hope. Sometime this weekend anyhow.
Woo, I'm tired. I left work early today since my boss took a day off, hiked about 6 miles mostly along the shore, wrote down some good ideas for my script, and bought some ice cream on my way home. I've really got to do that more often. Now I'm going to go lie the heck down because my feet are tired.
=Awesome. There's a very solid steampunk contingent now, a trend capped off by an appearance by Jake von Slatt (which I missed because the schedule on the website was wrong and we arrived too late). Also, if you know the guy featured on YouTube who did the TGI Friday's comedy routine--he was there too, wandering about taking pictures. Is he local to me? Now I can't help but wonder if he goes to the same TGI Friday's I do. :p
The faire has grown exponentially since last year. Events go all the way to 10 PM tonight and they use the entire convention center grounds this time. There's just so much to see, it's overwhelming. And refreshing and inspiring. I'm going to look into Ponoko, for one. Their shtick is offering fabrication services for whatever you design. It sounds like it is totally awesome for people who know what they're doing but don't have the means or time to make all of it. But it also sounds like it's a PITA for people who don't know what they're doing, and really, the DIY mindset is great only up to a point. I would not trust myself for making, say, a dining table, since I have no experience in industrial design or engineering. I like the idea of using them to make custom jigsaw puzzles, and if I'm feeling really ambitious, I might use it to make myself a custom portfolio rack, since I have several large hand-me-down portfolios that are always awkward to store.
Tomorrow Adam Savage will be there to talk about his sculpture and movie replicas, but I don't think I'll be going back--a decision made reluctantly. It took a lot out of me and I was in pain before I finally decided to call it quits after the life-sized Mousetrap replica. And I guess I should get going on making my own stuff. Seafood dumplings comes to mind, as do some long-overdue earrings. I'm a little sad that Adam Savage is going to be only a mile away from me and I can't go meet him, but I've got to take it easy this weekend.
I've been a little distracted lately. Work has sucked hard this week and I'd been unable to go to my mail drop until today. There were loads of packages waiting for me; I've been ordering stuff off eBay for my various and sundry projects and also Boca Java had sent me another dubiously welcome crate of chai mix. Does anyone want some goddamn chai? I have too much now.
Anyhow, I get home and put my feet up when I get a call from my doctor. Last week's drama of using my vacation time to shuttle back and forth between diagnostic tests has finally ended, they found a cyst and a polyp, they'll have to be watched, blah blah further look into the polyp... oh and then my doc drops the bomb--she's retiring, effective IMMEDIATELY. As in, on Monday I have to find someone else to take me and my medical baggage on and discuss treatment options. My monkey is not pleased.
Anyhow so I spend the rest of the evening angsting and don't even bother to open my packages until right now. I got through my jewelry stuff and realized I ordered the wrong damn size for one set of stones and it's too late to return it because it's been sitting in my mailbox too long. Rargh! The last package is a large one, which I thought would be the sets of sapphire beads I ordered from that new vendor and I had literally ripped open one side of the box before I noticed that the return address said "Coulton".
Kind of amazing. :) I am greatly cheered. Thank you thankyouthankyou JoCo!
