In chronological order...

Tragedy Number 1:
Reagan made it to the final four, but didn't get the job he was hoping for. Final Four only counts in basketball. This means we'll have to move back to CA. Now.

Tragedy Number 2:
Our car needs Expensive Repairs. Not so much repairs as breaks, which are routine maintenance, but one that came sooner and more costly than expected. If we tow it behind a u-haul to CA we won't need to get them repaired right away, but the condition is too unstable to drive 500 miles, which leads us to...

Tragedy Number 3:
No seeing Kenna in concert. Kenna is an artist I've been with since his first album, and I don't associate him with any other people in my life or past. Also, I love his music, and it's incredibly special to me. All this means that when we bought tickets to see him in concert Monday in Atlanta, it became the music event I've looked forward to the most in my life, even more than the time the Supertones played a gig at my church when I was in middle school.

At the height of grieving Tragedy Number 3 (in part precipitated by Tragedies One and Two) I had a nice crying fit. Crying fit beget Time With Reagan, Time With Reagan beget going to the beach.

The beach was wonderfully overcast, rainy, and empty. I took the camera, we had a nice long walk, and captured that hour of afternoon in a little gray box. Which brings me to...

Tragedy Number Four:
The trip to the beach was Saturday. I tried that night for hours and tried today for long minutes to upload the really cool pictures and tell people what's been going on with me, and what's projected to be going on with me in the next few weeks. Blogger is being terribly stubborn with uploading these pictures.

Through the course of writing this post it's progressed to the last pair to upload, but seems to be slowing down. *frustration*

Okay, while it works on that, I'll move to the Blessings.

Blessing Number One:
Reagan and I will be in California for Carol's birthday, Thanksgiving, my mom's birthday, Christmas, my brother's birthday, New Year's, and all events and activities associated with those holidays. We will be able to spend time with other friends and family as well, and get to know our baby niece (who still scares me).

Blessing Number Two:
We're out of the limbo that's been holding us up in the air for the past three months. While moving home is not incredibly Savory, we have cleared a path a short way into the dense underbrush of life. Pack up, move home, Do Projects. While our current trajectory wasn't ideal, we have a clear read on what it is now, and it's better than uncertainty.

Blessing Number Three:
Even though I didn't make it to the concert, I'm still totally enthralled by Kenna's new CD (which he is promoting with the current tour). For an example of how inspired I am by his music, in the few hours I thought we would be going to the concert, I sketched out a gift-art comic to give Kenna. Even if I don't finish it, the little exercise helped me build more confidence in my artistic abilities.

Blessing 3a:
Reagan got me into reading the Otherland series by Tad Williams. I like to think it was to console me over loss of meeting Kenna, but I believe he pushed the book into my hands before that. Good book in a good bubble bath is a sure thing for calming me down. Or making me happy when I'm already calm.

Blessing Number Four:
Carol offered to get me prints of a couple of the beach pictures with her spare SnapFish credits. And Blogger finally pulled through with uploading photos.

In the end, when you really think about it, things aren't really that bad. Family, friends, health, creativity... so what if my surroundings are in chaos for a few weeks? I've got the things that matter. :)

The metaphysical disease... and healing

Tybee Beach is what I might miss most about Savannah. We've only been twice, but the coast here is different than in California. I'm fiercly proud of the Pacific, but there's someting tamer about the Atlantic here, something smaller. And on the days I've been to the beach (both were lightly rainy) the overcast skies, grim waters, and grassy dunes scratched an itch for experience that can't quite be reached in SoCal.



Tumultuous happenings, like the one that led us to the beach Friday, have happened with more frequency as of late. Even though I've mentioned it a couple times, I don't think it has anything to do with Mercury being in retrograde.



The changes, chaos, and general craziness have caused me to slip from my hypothetical commitment to update this blog. I'm not really bothered by it. It's much more important for me to be a good wife right now than a good netizen.



I gush, I gush. But Reagan is very tolerant and patient with me, and his support and encouragment keep me going.



Unfortunately as we get into gear to make the trek back to the land of our births, my "keeping going" has been less with drawing or writing than in the previous weeks. I'm avoiding Firefox on my laptop due to 100 tabs with reference photos that are meant to be sketching practice. Never enoug time, never enough time.



As massively powerful as scientists say our human brains are, it's difficult to keep track of everything. I wish I could always hold in the front of my brain the memories of Friday. No matter what else I think about, I want to keep close to my thought process and understandingn the thoughts I think when I look at these pictures. So big, so small. Everything we live is a beautful paradox, and the shining facets of each moment of life refract and compound the universe in more ways than I can bare to think about.



That might be a bit much. Here's some pure happiness







Read between the pictures and imagine the dash down the hard packed sand as I ran from where I left my jacket, socks, and shoes, racing the 30 yards to the water's edge. It's not in pictures. The truth and reality are precious, remembered, and completely mine.

This is taken from the swing where Reagan and I sat and talked for a long time while I dried my feet, trying to resist dragging them in the ultra fine sand. We talked about logistics, and we talked about ideas. Details and concepts, and all the things moving back to California would mean.



I left Tybee hungry, as I always do, but the time spent was several times more than worth it.

more zoo-ocity

Here's a nice segue form yesterday: a page with mor leopard on it! Leopard and rhinos, you see. Their thick and compact natures were more my style.




This pair of white rhinos got very close to the raised walkway the spectators watched from. Neat!



Not much drawing got done in the reptile house. It was dark and people crowding around flat windows. And reptiles are hard to draw. I sketched this bloke, ...




and Reagan tried his hand at a python. this one:



but got confused after a few lines. :) (I would've, too)

This pair of vultures were in an enclosure near the reptile house. Well, the one drawn and the one pictured are the same vulture. But there were two of them, both right by the mesh fence, both pancaked on the ground and hardly moving. As you can see, a mass of feathers with a head, looking much wider than it has any physical right to be.




Last of all, Elephants. (with one more leopard doodle in the corner)
The elephant exhibit was... okay. There were large section of the enclosure that could not be seen from the viewing area, and I would've been happier with a place to sit where I could also see the massive beasts. The elephant on the lower left looked way better before I tried to add legs.



This is what an elephant looks like:


And a couple special Halloween photos. Even zoos celebrate! I don't usually like animals in costume, but this was tastefully done.

I was at the zoo!

See?

Reagan was there, too, oddly enough. In this photo he is getting snacks.

This multi-part report won't be in order because I prefer to go in order of file names instead of chronology. And it's too late to rename files to fit chronology.

Everything was drawn from live references, there are just some pictures that were taken at the same time from the same angle of the same animal. :)

We saw leopards. Very fluffy and difficult to draw.




The lemurs were far away across a moat (of water!), and many of them were in un-sketchable postures or were far away/obscured...



...like so...


... or so.

Thank zoom for that one.


The silverback gorilla was more to our tastes than the bonobos. And it moved more slowly. A plus for my method and pace of analog capture.




This is a cool gorilla, too.




The lion was pretty neat. We got to hear it coughing a bunch of times, like mini roars. It's an amazing sound. Near the end of our stay we heard it from an exhibit or two away and ran to see if we could watch it hack up a hairball or something. We were able to watch it "roar", but no luck on a hairball sighting.





Last of all (for today), the giraffes! They're the animal I probably had the hardest time drawing. Reagan did well, though. I don't do well with long lines, and giraffes are, well, all long lines. Reagan did much better. Let's see if he'll post his sketches from the zoo. :)





Not many photos of the giraffes either, ah well.

Tomorrow is another (better!) day!

This is not a trip recap

Oh... my. I really didn't know that it's been two weeks since I made a substantial post. Time goes a little too fast when you're not paying attention to it. I have a feeling this is going to get more pronounced as my life progresses.

Random drawings, mostly referenced.


More of what goes in my sketchbook these days are the warm-up exercises that I do before getting into thumbnailing. Birds are one of my favorite subjects. I think I learn more from humans, but birds are fun, too.

oh, umm...

The internet and I had a slight parting of ways lately. I was busy getting my stride for p08, then spent a couple nights in Jacksonville. Now I'm home and hoping to resume posting as usual.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by and left kind words. I'm doing much better in body and mind!

Sketches from a long day

All I know is that I'm awake then I'm asleep, then I'm awake again.

Blood and bone

I've been feeling lousy for a few days... How bad? Well, bad enough to mention it. The list of identified ailments doesn't match anything I can recognize, and since I can't say, "I'm suffering from X" I refuse to concede that there's anything really wrong with me, so I try to act as normal and berate myself for sleeping too much and working too little.

I wish stores sold some kind of detox kit with 2 days of really healthy food, and if you're still feeling lousy when you're done with the food, you can rule out diet as the cause of said lousy feeling.




Bleh.

Cat nappin'

Unexpectedly long "nap" yesterday resulted in no posting... Two sketchbook pages plus a bonus bunny today to make up for it.





*whew*. Goodnight!

beginning of an era

Just one today. Dear old 20k. I should really buy that movie. Below is something cross-posted from LJ. Something about PROGRESS.



Today brought a number of breakthroughs for me, artistically. I'm going to update that 2008 manifesto I posted here almost a month ago.

In 2008, I will create my first graphic novel.
In 2008 I will create the first act of my first graphic novel format epic.

The project is called Pieces of Eight, abbreviated as PO8, which is also code for Project 2008. Funny how things work out.

It has nothing to do with pirates or gold or buried treasure.

I'm not doing it for fame. I'm not doing it for love. I'm not doing it for money, or a publishing deal or for Art.
But if any of those things happen, I will not complain.

I'm doing it to get my feet wet. I'm doing it to get my hands dirty. I'm doing it to learn. I'm doing it to grow. I'm doing it to accomplish it.
None of this has changed.

Over the next four months I will plot and script and thumbnail. In the next four months I will draft a schedule for posting pages during the coming year. And I will stick to that schedule.
One of those months has passed. I thought I'd be done with plotting and scripting. I'm not. I'm almost done with act/book one. It's longer than I expected. Over the next day or so I will finish scripting this section, then will do double duty as I write/script act two (and beyond!) and thumbnail act one. After I move, I'll start producing pages. Thumbnails will tell me how long book one will be, but I'm guessing it'll work out to two-to-three pages per week.

At the end of 2008 I will pump my fist in the air, proclaim "I have done it!", and, in the light of my accomplishment and confidence, a world of possibilities will open up before me.
I'll do that, then buckle down to continue the story. I might re-evaluate the production pace and I might re-evaluate the methods of distribution. Who knows!

At the end of 2008 I will know I can tell a story. In 2009 I will work on telling good stories.
If my husband is to be trusted, I can already tell a good story. At least the beginning of one.

I really wish there was some way to share my writing progress and get feedback before hand about the things that would be easy fixes, or difficult fixes that absolutely MUST be done. But it's a tall order for me to type it all up with no promise of any return.

As promised

Restless progress

I am nearing the point at which the number of scans posted will exceed the number of posts made. Awesome, no? Actually, it may have happened already and I just don't know about it because scans were posted before they were named "scannies".

I am totally stymied by blogger's refusal to properly upload images.

One thing that I know for sure outnumbers the number of posts made (which is 89 with this post, for the curious) is the total number of pages written for my 08 project. I really need to name it.

...

Ugh. I've lost all tech ability. I have become dependent upon the automation of blogger when it comes to posting pictures when I'm very tired.

I'm going to go to bed soon, and when I wake up I will post the last three pages of sketchbook number three that need to be posted. After that (meaning the next time I prepare to go to sleep) you will be treated to scans from sketchbook number four. Which I am a measly ten pages into.

Sign of our times

It's around nine and I'm getting tired. Looking outside, "oh, yeah, it's getting dark"

No, it's 9am, and I've just been up a long time and it's rainy out.

Really bad hiccups, too. Too daffy to write or draw, so I'd better go to sleep for a bit.