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!

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.