The Next Two Weeks

Artsy updates have halted because...

In just over 12 hours (yikes) we'll be on our way to JAX (airport) in Florida to be off to CA for a whopping 15 days. Except only 14, since one night will be spent in Las Vegas.

General plan:

17 Tuesday- Fly, arrive at LAX around 10pm.
18 Wednesday- Drive with 'rents to Vegas; see Blue Man Group peform.
19 Thursday- Drive home from Vegas.
20 Friday- Nothing special, Draco arrives late for...
21 Saturday- Magic Mountain! :D:D Stopping on the way home to pick up a book or something. >_>
22 Sunday- Family BBQ, hang out with friends
23 Monday- Nothing special. Bake cookies? Finish reading? Sleep lots?
24 Tuesday- Catch up with Shoomlah and posse.
25 Wednesday- Ride down to San Diego for SDCC Preview Night! Too many people to list.
26 Thursday- ComicCon madness by day, cooking dinner for friends by night
27 Friday- More total craziness. I'm looking forward to having no official obligations at a convention for a change.
28 Saturday- See above. Possibly do something unusual and attend panels.
29 Sunday- More of the above, ending up in North County to visit Reagan's family.
30 Monday- Not really sure. Reagan's in charge of figuring things out while we're with his people.
31 Tuesday- Finally, finally, finally fly home. Arrive 11 pm east coast time.
01 Wednesday- Sleep! Lots!

I've never put all the days in a row like that before. Wow. This may be my longest vacation ever. And the parking for our car's going to be an arm and a leg.

I'm taking my camera, I'm taking my phone, I'm taking my writing notebook, I'm taking a sketchbook or three. So hopefully there will be scans and photos galore when I return.

I'm not taking my laptop, but we're going to be in houses with electricity at least once each day, so I'll be checking my email and occasionally LJ.

The past days have been spent stressing, cleaning, binge watching West Wing, and making sketchbooks of Reagan's art. Buy it if you're going to be at SDCC! We just got back from buying traveling food and now I've got to go fold laundry. :P

For all of these reasons, I probably won't be posting much for quite a while, unless something spectacular happens that I can't keep to myself. Small updates might happen at my livejournal, but big updates will be here come August.

consecutive days... on trust

Today I did art. I did digital art, even. But it's a secret fan project, so I'm not going to post it.

Today was a really weird day during which I didn't get a ton of stuff done. I am, however, enjoying the speed of my new RAM. It makes drawing on my PC not at all awful!

Oh, what the hell. You tricked me into it. Quick, digital mbear. :)



There's about zero chance of me finishing my sketchbook before vacation. I gave it my best shot. Most days.

Consecutive days: 3, take II, part B

i forgot the text I had planned for here.

Another composite from earlier today. I am in great need of rest. ._.



I have only one day of rest and one day of working one hour before I have the rest of the month off!

Consecutive days: 3, take II, part A

I did a page of graphite today and told reagan, "Scan this before I screw it up!"

I know as soon as I turn the page, it's going to be a big goofy smear.



More after work. :)

Consecutive days: 2, take II

Shockingly long day.



But productive, no?



I'm very excited that I have one more day of work (and one during which I'll have plenty to do for a change), then I have the rest of the month off for travels. Travels which now include plans for an overnight in Vegas to see Blue Man Group. =-o

Consecutive days: 1, take II

Yesterday was action packed.

Today is still new, but I've been poking away at outlining. Going to go grab my sketchbook back now and see if I can catch up on pages in the next 12 hours.

Reagan and I talked a lot about our future while we were out of the house yesterday, and I thought about things I would like to do to take my art study more seriously. Right now I'm thinking about giving myself "courses" on a monthly basis of new things to do and try, technique-wise. For example, I want to do have out-of-house drawing time at least four times a week in August, and experiment with monochromatic washes/shading in September, and maybe watercolor in October, and then try digital coloring in November. Ideas like that.

We'll see!

Falling off the wagon

Yes, its been a few days. I was hit with massive fatigue and headache-ing monday and early tuesday, so little drawing got done.

Really threw my rhythm off. :(

Besides acknowledging that I fell off the horse, this is notification that I'm back on it, although not feeling "caught up" page-wise (a power outage forced me out of the house in prime drawing hours). But I am feeling good quality-wise. Today's art will go up after I get some sleep. It's pointless to try to tie my work to one calendar day or another. We've all just got to accept that things happen when they do. Trust me. ;)

I would like to brag that I knocked out my first very rough outline for my epic fantasy project. It was mostly to get approval from my husband on the progression of major events, but still very exciting to see this taking shape. :)

I'm cryptic!

And I apologize for the copious use of smilie emoticons in this post.

Consecutive days: 5

Success! And a success I'm incredibly proud of.

These are scans of drawings I did in the first 12 hours of my day. I've got another 6 hours in me, but the sketchbook might not see any more action; the twinges in my drawing arm are telling me to back off.

I added another ingredient to the mix of italian film, mbear, west wing, and a couple random non-referenced people. Near the end of today's tenure at the drawing pad, I grabbed Vol. 1 of Lone Wolf and Cub from my pile of books and referenced random panels. See if you can figure which page it was without reading the text. ;P



Note also color I compulsively tried to add with old crayola pencils. Needs work, but I'm excited to tackle it at some point, maybe sooner, maybe later.





It's been a fun day of playing and working with my husband. I had a few moments that had the potential to escalate into crisis... if I wasn't such a level headed dame.

I know a lot of artists and spend my days working to join their numbers. Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that I've got about four years of artistic germination to progress through before I'll "come of age". This doesn't mean I'm going to hold myself back or believe a magical bell will ring at that time to announce my arrival at Platform Artist, I'm just trying to set a vague projection or deadline on myself. On that magical date in 2011, I'll give myself permission to be more commercially ambitious and start worrying about marketing myself again.

Right now I'm attending the self-school of creative pursuit, and while I'll never stop taking courses, I do want to graduate at some point, and leave the shelter of "just practicing" to work on telling the stories I've got in my head, begging to be sequentially illustrated and shared with people.

I don't believe everything I say here (so no holding me to it over a hot an poky fire), but I have to say the ideas out loud and hold them up to the light to figure out what's diamond, what's coal, and what's just dirt.

And several pairs of eyes connected to their respective brains are better than just one set.

ps (for my own reference): 6.3 pages done today, leaving me with 33.7 to go and 9 days. I can do it!

Consecutive days: 4

I'm so proud, yes I am. Part of me expected that I wouldn't get to posting today.

Today's sketches are even less censored than usual. I also have this new practice (that may not last tomorrow) of making comments in my sketchbook on each doodle as I finish it. Some of them are visible.



Pretty even mix of unreferenced, Italian Film, and a couple quick ones from the West Wing epsidoes I watched. It's been at least a year since I've watched episodes, so I'm starting at the beginning, and am happy to see I still love the characters and stories as much.



I did a pretty good job predicting when this would be posted, eh? Less rambling, as scans were waiting for me instead of the other way around, but I'll add a couple highlights from the past 12 hours.

Dinner Zucchini stuffed with ricotta and minced salami & roasted. It looked like sushi, with the pink and white inside, the band of near-white, and a ring of dark green on the outside. The zucchini innards were mixed with basil, tomato, onion, balsamic vinegar, and a tiny bit of oil. This was on top of the zucchinis for roasting and on top of noodles for the eating.

Leather I needed a notebook for taking notes on my epic fantasy awesomeness, and Reagan let me splurge on a refillable travel journal. Soft, and very good-smelling. I look forward to marking it up on my day off "tomorrow".

Consecutive days: 3

These is a scan composite from yesterday. I'm getting close to the point where more of my days do not align with those the rest of this coast experiences. It's 6pm (wow), and I'm still in "starting my day" mode. "Today"'s scans will likely be posted in about 12 hours.

Reagan is so clever. The subject line for the email containing this latest round of drawings was "scannies". :D



For good measure, here are a couple snaps of the Eggplant Lasagnettes I made for dinner last night.



I'm no food photographer, but the the way it looked coming out of the oven was so close to my vision (minus that the mozzarella got ripped off in a couple places from baking to the foil) that I wept with joy and grabbed my camera.

The only other news I've got is that I had an Epic Fantasy breakthrough while at work. If this keeps happening, I just might keep going. The project needs a working title, a code name. An identifier of some kind. But I'm at a loss!

Unusual struggle...

Oy, 9pm and I've yet to pick up my sketchbook. I'll call it a period of rest for my poor appendage.

Earlier this week I said with conviction that I'm settling down with drawing, and not planning to spend too much effort on game design or heavy duty writing any time soon.

Today I spent an hour at work jotting down notes for a multi-book fantasy epic that I'm totally jazzed about. After I got home, I spent another while talking with Reagan about those ideas and hashing out some finer points of the fantasy's cosmology.

So now I'm stuck. Do I take time away from my drawing to put effort into the writing project? Or do I just keep a spiral of notes about this fantasy, let characters grow and play in my head, and wait till I reach some landmark with my art before setting it aside to write?

This isn't just a post it idea I can stick on my wall and let rest in darkness until I'm bored enough to work on it. I've got four distinct eras of world history to work with. I've got four strong characters with motivations and struggles, and a story arc for each. I've got a handful of minor characters with their own ideas about how things work. I've got a number of smaller archetypes that emerge from the situation this wold of mine is in. I've got a cosmology that is a unique expression of my philosophies and does not feel expressly derivative of anything I've read. These things excite me and churn in my brain.

I have a feeling that even if I do press on with my drawing, these characters I met in my head today, and the world that surrounds them, will creep from my hands and remind me that they are in my brain and in my heart.

Oh. and it all started from six words I read on the back of the Carnivale season 2 box set.

Consecutive days: 2

I spent too much of the morning being internet and too much of the evening in pain for today to be terribly productive on drawing. There are no less than six sore muscles in my right arm and shoulder, so I should try to take it easy.

Drawing is the epic love story that I will live. The past 4 years are enough to prove how on-again, off-again it can be. I hope that my relationship with that part of myself always remains more fraught with peril, frustration, and uneasiness than my marriage. Today I made a note in my sketchbook that in the epic tale of my art, the days when I am into it, and have the time, but cannot partake for soreness in my drawing muscles... these days are the painful throes of a long-distance relationship. There's the facsimile of sketching with my left, but it's just not the same.

The more satisfying creative experience today was cooking dinner. It wasn't anything super special that I spent a lot of time on, but that didn't stop us from eating every bite. Our stable of flavors doesn't vary too much. I think it's cheaper to simply use our standard ingredients in different ways, but don't quote me on that.

Reagan and I have our little rituals surrounding dinner. When I cook, he likes a little bit of notice so he can wrap up his projects and "set the table". I try to give warnings a dozen minutes out, but at the very least he gets a heads up when I'm at the "plating" stage. Yes, every day I cook dinner I place food on plates and try to make it look good. A few nights a week I'm even so proud of the visual aspect of dinner that I'll ask R to turn on the overhead lights so he can see the marvelous creation he's been smelling for the past hour.

Very rarely is he allowed to be in the kitchen while I cook, and on the occasions he is, the Husband is closely watched so he doesn't peek at the ingredients I have laid out, or the dishes that are being cooked.

Scans are in!



I somewhat liked this session of waiting time. Knowing I'm going to post and waiting for the files to be scanned puts me at my computer with a blank screen in front of me and a day of life behind me. Some psychology might say that the compulsion to fill a void is not exactly a good thing.

Fourty-six pages to go in this sketchbook. Not the number I wanted to be announcing at the end of today, but it's less than the number I said yesterday.

Consecutive days: 1

Click the sketchbook pages to enlarge.

Reagan claims it's a good thing to have a familiar default character, something to fall back on when I don't want to draw anything else in particular. He mentions a couple other reasons, but you'll have to talk to him about those. The thing I fall back on these days is mbear. Mbear is the default character that I draw to try out something new or attempt a new pose.

Head of a bear and tail of a monkey, mbear is more avatar than ego. The body is neither here nor there, and not specifically intended to be human, but human is the most useful and comfortable form to draw. He's not the most developed character in my head, but an old favorite, combining my affection for bears (and interest in their ancient cultural importance) with a story I read long ago about how Fox (I think) tricked Bear out of his tail. This bear, however, was smart enough to keep his tail.

Mbear, usually the quiet and solitary type, doesn't usually have a mouth. I haven't figured out how to work the jaw. On an earlier page, for some reason, mbear needed to say something, so I put a mouth on the side of his muzzle. That led to the exchange seen at the top of the first page.



Save for drunken stick figures above, and some jackal-doodles below, and the scattering of mbears, only a few of the other sketches are fully unreferenced.



The bulk of humans with their faces in these pages are from the oh-so familiar Great Italian Films.

I've got 48.5 pages of sketchbook to go, and 12 days to fill them.

Realizing

I've written a full post's worth of thoughts about my past few days in subject lines alone... in my head. Unfortunately, these happen in fleeting splinters at fleeting moments when the idea isn't quite worth seeking out the means to write it down.

The site got small updates. On the front page I added two note, but only one link. The other change, noted on the front page, is the title of this blog, which I've changed to "progress, uncensored". It's a title that doesn't override the original purpose of the blog: to note changes on my site, but is a more encompassing descriptor. The main new point I want to encompass is the fact that I'm going to post pages from my sketchbook more. Hopefully every day, but more like every time Reagan has the chance to scan doodles from said sketchbook.

As long as a year ago, I was struggling with my focus in life. There were several things I wanted to be, and I wanted to be all of them very well and very soon. I love my game design brain, i love my crafty brain, I love my writing brain, and I love my drawing brain. Four things I wanted to pursue. But going after all of them at the same time stressed me out, and the stress combined with lack of focus made progress grind to a halt

The past few weeks, even more notably the past few days, I've dropped myself out of the normal hustle of trying to accomplish so very much. Some parts were intentional, some were unintentional, and some were motivated by my wonderful husband, but what matters is that in the "end" (so far as the journey to the point where you are currently at is over, even if the traveling has just begun) I've come to a sweet spot.

Life right now resounds well as my time is focused on cooking, house-making, and drawing. Plus a little bit of yoga. Oh, and a few hours of stiff-job working here and there. I've finally become serious about being an artist.

All my ideas are still captured and stored, like fireflies in jars, in a place where they are useful for lighting my way, and writing happens from time to time, but I'm happiest bowing my head to sketchbook, and forging into that wilderness.

Posting here will happen more often as I build momentum and (hopefully) skill, and while I can't expect accolades and comments each time I post, especially because I'm not doing anything impressive yet, even the smallest bits of encouragement and constructive criticism go a long way. Plus, when I am doing big things, you'll be able to say you knew me when. ;D