Monday Sketchsplosion

IIIII'm Back! Whoo!

Sorry to be so long on this-especially as I've really wanted everyone's advice! But as I explained in my last post, sometimes it's unavoidable. You still love me, right, internet?

Being flattened by my own brainpan does tend to decrease my productivity-- but I still finished the most requested sketch from the last sketchplosion! Unfortunately, she sort of turned into this very military chic lass along the way, and, well...

Fonts happened. I really like the idea of her being part of a recruitment poster- but now (a) I'm fighting the urge to make a whole series of God Brigades and (b)I am probably going to be mucking with the fonts for approximately eleventy billion years. They are a weakness of mine.

But I think I can keep wordage out of this week's sketchity choices! A couple are a little more complicated compositionally, but nothing I can't handle. Have a look:

And tell me what I should spend my head-fixed time on!

Sunday Comic: Amazing Blow Up Hedz

Sometimes I disappear, regardless of weather. When I do, I'm very sorry, folks, but this is the reason why:

It takes just forever to sweep up the headbits, get my neck to stop smoking, and get back to work.

Also, the experience of having seizures while holding a 1200 dollar piece of equipment is much to be avoided.

So what's keeping you from getting everything done? Kids? Pets? Marching bears with shark planes?

Weekly Hooray: Banded Goddess

Well, February continues grey and weird and unpleasant. In the calendar family, February is totally the grey damp sheep of the family. Blech.

But there are still color-worthy things happening, at least to me, and since this is my blog, I expect everyone to be celebratory along with me. So all together now: Yaaaay!

Why? Well, this week, it's this:

That's Terry Spier-Kalmar's Banded Goddess necklace, given to me out of the crazy awesome generosity of her heart and the wild blogride that was One World One Heart this year.


I'm sure you can see just looking how lovely that is-- but what amazes me is that  this is a necklace I would commission if I were able to commission a necklace right now! Wow! Look! Fluorite, my favorite rock(It phosphoresces! It serves as an energy shield! It is used in cookware enamel!Best gemstone ever!) ! A wonderful smooth-nubbly glass goddess for my twitchy fingers to hold when I'm thinking! A magnetic clasp so my same stupid fingers can actually get the piece on and off! And it sits right at the point where I like my pendants. I am, in short, never takin' this thing off.  Sorry to anyone else here through OWOH who might have wanted it themselves, but clearly, this Goddess was made for me.

But I bet you can find something just perfect for you at Terry's site, http://www.magicalbeadstalk.com-- she's got all sorts of pretty rocks up for ogling!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Happy Necklace Dance to get back to.  Strike up the band!

Friday! I don't have a theme for Friday!

Well, not yet. I have joined Illustration Fridays, so soon I shall inspiration delivered unto me on a weekly basis, but this week it was "sweater" and I am not thinking about that even a little. Farewell, winter! May the door break yer backside on the way out! I am frolicking even now in my thinnest yoga pants! Frolicking, I tell you!

Still wearing my corset though, because a woman's got to have standards.

Anyway.

I may not have a theme, but Life is offering me one, in the form of Ladybug Army. Seriously. The lovelies are swarming my laptop screen, crawling on my glasses, getting under the stylus when I try to draw on my tablet. I'm thinking I need to invent a goddess of Ladybugs, so I can appeal to her to make them lay off, 'cause this wench does not do collaborative art very well.

Back later today, I hope! And if not...well, thereby shall hang a tale!

Technically, Difficulties: In Which I Rant A Lot

For those who don't know: My part of Texas got slammed with a major coldfront over the last couple of weeks. I know those of you who live in Lands of Ice And Snow are laughing, thinking "Oho, that silly Texan, I bet she's talking about like 50F" and that's justified, because I will in fact bawl like a toffler who's dropped her ice cream when it hits 50, but: no. I'm talking about 20, 15, 12F.

TWELVE! That is unacceptable, folks.

In a forty year old trailer with no coldproofing. Because, seriously, we're in South Central Texas! Who needs coldproofing! HEAT, that's the problem! Yes! We are so ready for that! Cold? Feh.

...Until all the pipes explode and my paints freeze in their tubes. My paints! Froze right up! Ungroovy, friends. Not that it matters too much, since I probably shouldn't indulge my watercolor lust until we have running water again.

I also froze right up- apparently, being desperately cold is hard on the human body! Who knew, right? So while I've managed to avoid actually getting ill (Living isolated in the woods does wonders for vector elimination) my chronic...well, everything, swung back into high gear. I've spent most of the last couple of weeks half blind and twitchy, which does not allow for great art. But does make for some hilarious housekeeping! Did you know you can boil chopsticks to softness? Well now you do! And so do I!*

Point being, I'm gonna be a leeetle behind on my blog duties for this week, as I fight to compensate for Weather Happening. But then I'll have sketches! And stories! And maybe..uh..other kinds of sketches and stories! It's a blog, I'm sort of limited. But I hope you'll be there!

*Chopstick Drop Soup: Not that good. It has a nice solid flavor, but the wood is full of splinters, fancy that.

Monday Sketchplosion 2: The Projecting Continues!

Hurrah huzzah, I'm back! Back in the world of the warm and the living! ...And the burst pipes and a waterless house and a few other minor inconveniences. But what does that matter when I've got an internet connection and a quiet house to keep me company, right? Right!

Still, last week's technical troubles did interfere with my artness--but not prevent it! Behold, the Flying Fish!

What do you all think? Especially those of you who voted for the Fish?

I would have liked to spend a little more time with it, but as agreed in the solemn confines of my own skull, it's been a week, however hectic, and the fish, it is done!

This week's selections may seem less varied than last- but that's why I need the advice of my blogworld! When I get two or three basic ideas for a piece, I'll usually get hung up choosing between them-- somehow I feel making both would be cheating as though I could plagiarize myself-- and the end result is that I make neither. It's in these close confines that an outside nudge is really liberating! So, once again, tell me which of these pieces I should focus on this week:

And, by the way-- if anyone's got a decent name for this weekly project, I'd love to hear it!

Deep Freeze Radio Silence

For those who don't follow my Twitter, or the news-- Texas has been experiencing rolling blackouts the last couple days, as our power system tries unsuccessfully to cope with the horrible terrifying unexpected development of the weather being cold in winter.
Joking aside, and it's hard not to laugh at our extremophile cultural adaption,* this is bad news. There are Canadian cities warmer than us right now. I think it's a sign of the Apocalypse, or at least Ragnarok.

So the rolling blackouts are bad, but you know what's worse? Having no power at all for 12 hours on the coldest day of the eternity! Woooo!And that's what happened to me yesterday, thanks to- no, not cold-- a FIRE at my local power station. The elements have my number.

Anyway. Twelve hours of blanket- wrapped huddling and a pipe-bursted house combined with erratic internet have rather impeded my ability to deliver the hefty blog and shop updates I was hoping for this week. I'll be putting out..er...floods for a few days to come, I suspect. But I'll be back next week, hopefully in warmer weather and with a full power supply at my back!



*As Joel Watson at Hijinks Ensue pointed out, our power grid apparently has no trouble cooling the entire state for five months of 100F + heat, but cries and breaks down like a five year old meeting Santa after ONE DAY of real cold.

Tyrsday: I Am Not Left Handed

No, it's true! Yes, I draw and write left-handed. But that's not my default state! I was born ambidextrous, and trained away from it by years of school teachers and parental types insisting I just choose one, already, and stop changing hands in the middle of the page all the time.

That I chose to focus on the hand that would guarantee tool failure 90 percent of the time illustrates why even smart children should not be allowed to make life altering decisions. But I digress.

I never did narrow my handedness down on anything besides school-related work, and given my various health issues that's saved my bacon more than once. But even if I didn't regularly have body parts drop out of commicsion,  it seems a horrible waste to have one hand that never gets to do fine work- and also it seems like begging fate to come along and disarm me so that I have to spend my remaining days lamenting my lost dexterity (sinisterity?). So this year my resolution is to get my right hand back up to snuff! I've been writing longhand, and if the handwriting isn't perfect yet I can't say it's really worse than my usual lefty doctor-prescription scrawl. But the art, now....

That's gonna take a while.
So come around Tuesdays to share the hilarity of my attempt at self improvement, won't you?


(Tyr, of course, was a Norse God of Getting His Hand Bitten Off By A Giant Wolf Who Was Also Sort of His Stepbrother. And you think your family reunions are awkward.)