I don't have bad habits...

...I have idiosyncratic character traits.


During this past month, I've gone through the archive of posts and done something I've been planning to do for a while, but had never gotten around to:

Yup, it took a while.

Some stuff is still there, like when I did a series of nerdy posts last summer as kind of a 'this is how/why I write first-drafts the way I do', and I left all the flash fiction and (the long extinct) Six Sentence Sunday stuff since that particular story (Project #2/aka Simon's Oath) will be heavily rewritten when I get around to it.

One of the small reasons this took me so long to do was my arm was so bad there was no way I could hold a pen/pencil, and I wanted to post a fun little image as a consolation prize, like the Dead Monkey Day pic, and a few others I've posted.

As part of my re-hab/physio, I'm now at the stage where I'm 'allowed' to either write (with a pen) or draw for 1/2 hour every day to re-strengthen the muscles and get the blood flowing since my nerves are no longer as restricted.

...and since even I can't read my own handwriting, it makes a lot more sense for me to draw silly cartoons instead of scrawling out pages of unreadably scratchy sentences. They'll probably appear sporadically on Bailiwick in the future, and they won't involve more than 10 minutes of cleaning up/throwing colour on in Photoshop. These are very basic sketches. More for practice at controlling my hand than anything.


As a fun little fact, though it's nearly impossible to read, the text in the image is from a fairy-tale I wrote, which was part of the mythology of Project #1 (the 'near-pemanently-retired' trilogy that was so incredibly dark I found it suffocating to work on).

And yup, my hair is getting pretty long, actually it's nearly touching my shoulders. It was only an inch long at the back when I donated it back in November, and was about nose-level at the front. Since it's past chin level now, I guess it's grown about 5+ inches?

Bailiwick

For the few of you interested in my non-writing projects, after mulling over the different photo-sharing options, I decided it was better to simply start a new/separate blog for that kind of stuff.

It's bare-bones at the moment, and maybe of no interest to most of you, but here's the link just in case.

Honestly I don't know what the scope of that site will be, but for now, it's going to mostly include painting stuff, especially as the 2014 Canadian porcelain convention is coming up soon...

Over the next few days, I'm going to post about the piggy banks I painted for those two friend, and the process involved.

Hope you're having a good weekend, I am: The Seahawks are up 16-8 in the 4th against the Saints.

EDIT:

WOO-HOO, a Seahawks win!

And for some reason the 'About' page on my new blog isn't showing up... and I did have an explanation for the strange name:

Bailiwick - one's sphere of operations or particular area of interest

Optics - of or relating to vision or the eye

The odd thing about being pinched for time

I got home less than 10 minutes ago, and I'm heading out again as soon as I post this...

When deadlines are hanging over my head, I tend to commit to more things than I need to, as if I'm trying to pack something into every single moment.

Like, the sudden impulse to check out the SIWC, today it's been something else... well, since last night actually.

I've been absolutely consumed with the desire to draw and/or paint.

Luckily (for my own sanity), all my painting supplies are packed up/stored, but my pencils, light table, and animation supplies are all here, easily accessible.

I wonder why I have this impulse to take on even more commitments when I'm tight on time...

Perhaps it's because drawing is a stress-outlet...

Perhaps because drawing is an acceptable form of procrastination/escape...

Perhaps I'm just a complete masochist at heart...

Perhaps it's because a writing buddy recently send me a couple of links to artist sites...

Or perhaps, in the chaotic state of mid-move-mid-divorce-mid-separation-agreement-limbo, I'm seeking stability, a familiar place to rest.


...whatever it is, tomorrow when I start to actually pack boxes, my art supplies are going in first to remove any temptation ;)


How about you guys? What are you like with deadlines/stress/etc? Do you settle in and attack systematically, problem by problem, or do you spin around until you're so wound up, you're nearly insane?

Okay, got to scoot out for walkies with Eva now... then I've got more errands to run.

White room syndrome: Where the hell am I?

THANKS to the 'Like a Virgin' contestants & judges for giving feedback on my entry, and I'm happy to say, I made it to the second round! Updated entries go live on July 23rd, and winners are announced July 26th.

Okay, now back to the nerdy post...

When I read, or write, I like to see where everyone is, and keep an eye on what’s going on around the characters.

Nothing gets on my nerves faster than ‘white room syndrome’, when there is almost no description of anything. I get... turned around, confused, irritated. The thing is though, you don't need huge info-dumps of description, you just need carefully inserted tidbits.

So, another look at the scene from last time, yes, I’m sure this feels repetitive, but we really only focused on body language last time, and now I want to open this up to the wider notion of ‘description’, or observation... but first, a reminder from an earlier post:

The thing about choosing strong words, is that it overlaps with voice and description. How a character views the world is going to impact the words he/she uses, and the importance he/she puts on things.

Jay, who is an artist, is very quick to notice visual information, but is less quick to pick up on other sensory information. His frame of reference is going to gravitate towards art-related terminology, anatomy, light/shadow, etc. He is also arrogant, and entitled, so his focus is self-centered, and his actions self-serving. He can be very manipulative when it comes to getting what he wants.

I also mentioned that you should keep in mind things like emotional/physical/psychological state, how the character views the other people in the room, what his/her goals/desires are, etc.

(Small aside, since I don’t want to write another post: everything I’ve said also holds true for writing dialogue, and ensuring each character’s voice sounds unique)

So now, here’s the scene again:

Kell pauses at the doorway, one hand lingering on the frame. Only her eyes move, sharp, careful, absorbing everything.

Finally, she steps across the threshold. “You weren’t kidding.”

“No.” The word doesn’t come out as firm as I wanted it to. Maybe because I was holding my breath.

She glides through the mess, the stacks of oil pallets, the boxes full of smaller boxes, full of unmixed paint, oil, plaster, and turpentine. She doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t shy away from the precariously balanced piles, she turns and moves with confidence, like in the couple seconds she looked over the room, she memorized the placement of every bolt of fallen canvas and protruding frame.

It’s not logical, but she does it. I pull the door closed, gently.

“Where do I sit?”

I fumble forward, bang my knee, stub a toe, but I get to the canvas. I heft the green three-legged stool over my head so I can maneuver it over to the window without knocking anything over. The afternoon light is still good, enough to sketch by, anyway.

She runs once finger over the seat. “Retro.”

My face gets hot. “It’s... it was my grandmother’s piano stool.”

“Ah, that’s why it’s so short.”

She doesn’t sit, she doesn’t flop, she alights. That’s it. That’s the movement I want to capture. That effortless grace she can’t hide with ripped Ed Hardy shirts and faded pink dreadlocks. But I’m not Pollock, I don’t capture movement, I want light. Her light.

I pull the canvas from my easel and prop a large two-foot-by-three-foot newsprint sketchbook in its place. The old mug with charcoal is on my left, and I grab a piece without my eyes leaving Kell. I don’t want to waste a moment of looking at her.

She sits still, but awkwardly. Her hands squished between her knees, palms pressed together inside the sleeves of her butterfly print hoodie, shoulders drawn inward. Her chin is up, eyes bright and defiant, an odd juxtaposition with her closed-up body language. She’s not looking at me, but at the door. She’s motionless, but you can almost see the desire to move slowly building up inside.

The light on her skin is deep amber, the same color as the flecks in her green irises, and the shadowed areas rich coffee with cream. The lines of her eyes are exotic, almond shaped, though it might be the heavy black makeup that’s making a connection to Egyptian kole. 

Almond, maybe that’s actually the color of the flecks in her eyes, not amber. More red in the mix than yellow. No, too much red. Hard to tell in this light. Later, next time, I’ll get closer.

Her roots are espresso dark, the hot-pink pink faded to the flush ripeness of a peony. There are no highlights or shadows. Light gets tangled in her dreadlocks, Escher-maze knots of intertwining color and light. A Japanese woodblock print of a tatami mat, Van Gogh’s haystacks, an entire season of fields in Carl Schaefer’s ‘Ontario Farmhouse’. Repetition of pattern, but not uniform. Not consistent. How to bring out the texture with minimal detail, to not lose the blurred light?

Hoodie, always in a damn hoodie, or long sleeved layered shirts. 

Hard to see, can’t get the shape of her body lines. Subtle curves, no straight lines. Breasts? There, small. Fits with the lithe muscle and low BMI.

Ten, no, maybe twelve pages already. Hands work fast, breath shallow. The familiar ache of desperation to sketch quickly, to capture everything before she moves.

A memory flits through my head, sketching robins on the grass. Pause, hop, then the whip-quick dive of their beak into the lawn to snatch a worm. Pause, wings flip out, legs bend, and an instant later, in flight.

One second to note and render the pose, maybe two. Fast, work faster to catch it before it’s gone.

Then there’s a double-fisted bang at my door. 

I jump.

I breathe.

I wasn’t breathing until now. Not enough. I’m lightheaded. Blink, breathe. Eyes are dry. Hands, still moving?

“Jay, X-Box!”

Damn it. It’s Donovan.

Most of the description I used should make sense, right? He’s an artist, he’s going to break her down into anatomy, what he can see, colors he knows, lines, shapes, shadow and light. The deeper his concentration, the less ‘person’ he sees, merely the sum of parts he’s reproducing in every stroke of charcoal on paper. 

I also wanted to ‘paint’ an image of his workroom in as few words as possible, rather than have thick paragraphs detailing everything in there, and how it was set up.

The robin wasn’t only a vehicle to highlight Jay’s fear, and give me a way to describe Kell’s body language without being too repetitive, the robin also gives history (he’s been sketching/drawing for a long time, and in much more informal settings, possibly for fun, rather that for ‘art/work’), it also introduces the idea of how difficult it is to capture/reproduce a moving target/model.

In life drawing classes, it’s normal to do 2, 5, 10, 20 minute poses, where it’s expected the artist will include a fair amount of detail, but it’s also normal to do 30 second, 10 second, and even 2 second poses to train the eye, hand, etc. to move faster, to be more accurate, to break down/replicate from a glance, rather than a prolonged study.

Like flash fiction forces you to use words efficiently.

From experience, I can also tell you that, when doing 2 second poses, you pretty much stop breathing you’re concentrating so hard. Everything falls away, you go into a trance. After a five+ minute stretch of 2 second poses, when we’d break, I’d be lightheaded, I’d see spots, or be unable to focus. Often I’d need to walk, or shut my eyes for a minute.

Every speck of your energy goes into focusing, and you get disoriented when jolted out of it.

You, as the reader, tell me. Was I able to convey that in the scene through the description?

So, what about your characters? What are they passionate about, what are they obsessive about? How does that change their perception, what they notice, and what flies by, unobserved? If your character is into music, he/she would probably notice/think in sound, rather than visually, so what would their ‘memory’ of the robin on the grass be? What aspects of that same scene would lock into their head for 5, 10, 20 years?

See how a single image, a robin, can serve multiple purposes? 40 words about a robin. That’s a lot to pack into very few words. I’m making use of many techniques to push subtext, and by using so few words, it’s actually stronger because you can return to it, again and again, without it feeling like an info-dump.

To spin a basketball on your finger, you only need to touch it a couple times to keep it there, to keep it moving. The better you are, the more it looks completely effortless.

You can get a lot of impact out of a few words, if you choose them carefully, and specifically because they suit your characters.

Words which reveal

I'm both proud of my words, and horribly embarrassed.

While I can happily spend hours upon hours analyzing my own words (or those of others) with the members of my writing group and online CP's, I balk at talking about writing to anyone else.

If someone else brings it up, I'll change the subject, flip it off with a joke or a sarcastic comment.

I can count on one hand the number of people (in real life, not online) who know I write.

It's not something I'm comfortable discussing.

And that's 'cause I'm both proud, and embarrassed by my own words.

Oddly enough, the two are inseparable. It's because I'm proud that I'm embarrassed. Because I'm embarrassed, I work harder so I can be proud.

It's a vicious cycle :)

A while back, someone asked me in the comments why I write YA and whether I thought it was limiting my prospects and, I admit, I've been thinking about the question ever since.

One reason I want to write YA is because it's harder.

...which is why my cycle of pride/embarrassment is relevant.

Let me take this from another angle. In animation, or even just in figure drawing, the difficulty level is night-and-day different between drawing male and female characters. Males are super easy 'cause they're made up of hard geometrical shapes and straight lines. Drawing females is murder. They have so many soft curves/round shapes that they're incredibly difficult. Even harder is animating them and keeping them *on-model* because, literally, a deviation of a line's breadth can make a female character look overweight or anorexic.

...you get three guesses as to which gender of characters I primarily focused on while in animation school.

So why is YA harder? Well, for one, that's like comparing a 10 second commercial to a full length film. In a commercial, you have an extremely limited timeframe to sell an idea whereas in a full length film, you've got 90 minutes.

Writing YA is like shooting a commercial. The audience won't put up with filler, obvious preaching/lesson-teaching, over-written descriptions/etc. Older readers will give you the benefit of the doubt/patience and read work that younger readers will not. YA has to be clean, sleek, and efficient as possible and teens can smell BS from three miles away.

So that's one reason I write YA.

Another reason is because I like the themes of YA, specifically the struggle for self-identity.

Again, because I struggled so much with my learning disability growing up, and still do even today, self-identity/confidence is very much still relevant to my own life, and I think to almost every person out there who isn't a sociopath. I also think that (some) YA is so popular with adults is because it reminds them of their weaker self who was struggling to figure out who they are and where they belong.

In a way, I think it's an important theme that bridges the gap between age-groups.

Lastly, and most importantly, I just write what I what to write, and oddly enough, that just happens to be YA. Again, I think it's because of the themes that interest me... things like trust/betrayal/confidence/responsibility/etc, many of these just work better, and is more relevant, with younger characters, and appeals to younger readers as they are stepping out from under their parents' protection and gaining awareness of the larger world around them.

The themes, the age group of the characters, and the voice all dictate how a book is positioned in regards to categorization/audience.

Personally, I don't think a lot about categorization. I just write the book I want to write and figure it out from there.

As for the notion of limiting my prospects... well, that doesn't bother me. I've never had much of an interest in competing with other people because I spent so much time competing with myself. If I can write something I'm happy with, and others like it as well, I'd be 100% content.

I hope that answered your question, icyHighs :) If it hasn't, feel free to ask in the comment box, and if anyone else wants to chime in, you are perfectly welcome to do so :)

I'd love to hear about why you all write in the genres you do.

Procrastination? Just a little...

While resting my poor, weary brain from the overly-complex-'Brake Fluid'-timeline, I found this:

An author who writes about Ancient Egypt! Go check out her contest (and my hideous attempt at poetry about Pliny the elder...)

...and, since I'm an incredible nerd in some ways, I've got... probably more books on ancient Egypt than is healthy...

So here's another demonstration of my nerdishness:

In one university class, as a small, fun project, we had to research/translate just our first name (phonetically) into hieroglyphs.

...and y'know, since I'm a tiny bit of an overachiever... and I'll use any excuse to draw cartoons...

...this is what I turned in:

(click for full size)

...which, as you can see, my over-achieving-ways ensured I didn't get to actually finish it. I really wanted to fully decorate the walls with more hieroglyphs and stack more dead-goods in the room, but yeah, I ran out of time :)

Curious what it says?

The first mummy says:

"Who then is it?"

The second mummy says:

"It is the sarcophagus of Thoth's scribe <myname>"

The coffin says (with correct female designations, in the traditional style of what was put on coffins):

"<myname>, the scribe of Thoth said: I am the keeper of the book of that which is, and of that which shall be."*

Above the door are two phrases from the Egyptian Book of the Dead**:

"Give thou to me my mouth [that] I may speak with it"

"May I follow my heart at its season of fire and night."

*Technically, the sentence says: "Saith Thoth, scribe <myname>: I am the keeper of the book of that which is, and of that which shall be." I used four different sentences from different books, took them apart and mashed them together again, always trying to keep the original/correct syntax/composition/etc.


**Yes I own this book 'cause I'm strange. What's stranger is I bought it when I was about 13 or 14. About the same time I was buying books like, 'In Search of Schrodinger's Cat', by John Gribbon, and 'Fermat's Enigma', by Simon Singh

Hint + extras?

Well, since I did a bit of work Wednesday on my new *secret* project, I thought I'd post a couple pictures:

Here are some of my work tools:

(click for full size)

 A clear ruler is a must. Also, the pencil (lowest cylindrical item on the right side -> blue & silver) is awesome. It's an architect's pencil, which is sort of like a mechanical pencil, except they work a little differently and these leads are about 1/8" thick and can be purchased in all different kinds of hardness (from B to B6, but I normally use B 'cause it's harder so you can get clear, sharp lines). You have to buy a special sharpener for them, which you can kind of see the top of (black thing against the water glass). I also work in a sketchbook (that's what's open), but when I want to create a clean image, I use the blade (centre, black handle, small triangular blade) with the ruler to slice pages directly from the book, then put them under a clean piece of animation paper on my light-table and re-draw the image. Those are black Micron pens at the very top. I use .005, .02 & .08 for different line thicknesses. I have calligraphy pens as well (that you dip in a pot of black India ink), but I don't use them for stuff like this. The narrow blue cylinders (there are 2 in this photo) hold the extra lead for my pencil. Oh yeah, and the incredibly dirty eraser on the sketchbook. It's just a normal white eraser, but I also have one that's kind of like sticky-tack. I use it on nearly-final drawings 'cause you just press it onto the lines and it removes the top layer without disturbing the other lines.

I tend to storyboard in my sketchbook instead of on separate paper. The left page of the open sketchbook is actually two storyboard panels. I have a strange habit of working backwards, so the top image is #1, the bottom image is #2, then if you flip the page backwards (or forwards, if you're Japanese), you'd see the next two panels. There's also a simplified breakdown of the scooter on the right page. So far, I've got about eight storyboard panels done, some initial concept art for four characters, but only a true character sheet breakdown for the main character (the hippo). Ah, that means all the details are measured/decided/set, sort of like how I broke down/simplified the scooter with everything labeled.

Essentially, the better you can take it apart, the better you can draw it from all different angles. So it's worth doing the work ahead of time and creating reference images.

(click for full size)

 Here's a top shot of my light-table. Animation paper is a non-standard size, instead of 8 1/2" x 11", it's 10 1/2" x 14 1/2". It also has 3 holes in it, a circular one in the middle and two long ones on either side for the pegs, which are about 1/2" high. This way, you can swivel the light table disc upside-down and the paper will never fall off. This is a shot of 2 layers of paper without the light on. Notice how you really can't see the background.

The light table is pretty big. It sits on a normal table and stands 14" tall at the tallest point and the drawing surface is 24" x 24". The opaque disc is about 19" in diameter.

The scooter is going to be light blue with white flowers. I haven't decided the colours for the character's body/clothes yet. I love her fat little arms, legs and feet. The lines just flowed really nice/naturally, so I feel good about them. Ah, I love her long ears, too. So far my favourite character (not shown here) is an orange tabby cat named Solomon Cat. He's freaking adorable :)

(click for full size)

Same two layers, but with the light on. Notice how you can clearly see the background? Yup, you really can layer up to a dozen sheets of paper and see all the drawings. Oh yeah, I spent like 5 seconds on the background. Simply a matter of deciding on a vanishing point, then using a ruler to draw the road, then I free-handed a sketchy tree and a horizon. Oh, that hole at the bottom is where you stick your finger to rotate the opaque plastic disc. It's about an inch in diameter, maybe a little bigger.

Ah, I really missed this... I just love drawing/animating so much.

I so wish there were classical animation jobs still available in North America... sigh. Nowadays, they're all farmed out to South Korea. Funny thing is, even the Japanese Anime stuff is farmed out to Korea!

I swear, I was born 10 years too late :(

Ah well, as long as I'm having fun, right?

A new project

Since my brain is currently befuddled, I will not be working on any of my stories in the near future...

BUT, that doesn't mean I'm dead to the world.

Today I'm giddy with excitement because I'm setting up my light-table for the first time in ages so I can work on a new project.

Light-table? Yup, it's the thing animators use to draw on.

It's a hinged tabletop where you can adjust the angle. Instead of a flat surface, there is a opaque plastic disc, which can be swivelled, again to get better angles. The second purpose of the disc is because light shines through it. In the table there is a mounted light, and when you turn it on, it shines through the disc and through the drawings.

Essentially, you layer paper one on top on another and you can see up to (around) 10 drawings at the same time. A (traditional/classical) animator can't really work without a light-table.

Light-tables are awesome :)

So what is my new secret project?

Well, here's a hint. I'm doing 1/2 of the work, my technologically-savvy husband is doing the other 1/2.

...not enough of a hint?

Okay, fine :)

Second hint: it involves a hippo with a straw hat ;)

A week of painting

Okay, it was really only three days and it was more information/technical details and separating/cleaning/sorting a box with about 300 brushes* than it was actual painting.

But I promised you guys some pictures...

So, what did I learn?

How to use my kiln. Well, how to use it for simple things. Apparently you can use it for way more than I thought you could.

I also got a lesson in grinding paint and mixing it. There are, like, about a dozen different kinds of oil you can use... it boggles my brain. And even a way to combine it with a water-base material instead of oil so it's less toxic.

A lesson in mixing raised paste and enamel. A lesson in painting with gold, the different kinds of gold and which need to be burnished afterwards.

A lesson on lustres.

A lesson in how to use a pen to write/draw with gold or paint.

...and an ongoing reminder of the highly toxic nature of this particular kind of art. Apparently arsenic is the medium mixed with gold (when you paint with it in this state, it looks like a dark greenish-black -> the darker it is, the higher quality of gold). You burnish it with a fibreglass brush (so don't breath, don't touch it with your bare hands, don't let the dust get anywhere or go down the sink). Some of the other ingredients are tin oxide, turpentine, alcohol, there is lead in some paints, so you can only use those paints on decorative objects (not plates/cups/etc), and you can use hydrochloric acid to remove paint that has been fired on.

Also, when the kiln is on, you need really good airflow and an air purifier because all those toxic things (and the oils) get burned off.

And a lesson in cost. One tiny 1/2 oz container of ruby lustre is about $65. A container of gold about the same size is around $500. Brushes can cost up to a couple hundred dollars each (depending what kind).

After all that, are you surprised I actually had time to paint anything?

I did a pair of mugs. First thing I did was wash them good with hot water and soap, then rubbed them down with alcohol. After that, I used a .01 Micron pen to draw a basic design. With a tiny paintbrush, I then filled in the shapes (to mask them) with an interesting glue-y product called red resist. When that dried, I dripped tiny drops of honey-thick lustre (blue, green & amber) onto the mugs, and with an eye-dropper, put turpentine on and rubbed with my finger to mix them. Then I held/turned the mugs and let the lustre run every which way to create interesting patterns.

When the lustre was dry, I peeled off the red resist and fired them.

So, here's one mug with the first layer of lustres fired on (green, blue and amber). You can see the white bird shape from where I masked the porcelain with red resist.

 After the mugs were cool enough to touch, I re-masked the birds with red resist and then masked other parts of the mugs where I wanted to keep the original soft lustre colours. The lustres come out with a sheen like gasoline, so it's a little difficult to see all the funky patterns in these photos. Like, on the left mug, what looks like an inverted 'Y' is actually just a reflection of light. I also got a practical lesson on using hydrochloric acid at this point because a bit of lustre got inside both mugs and was accidentally fired on. So, with a Q-tip, I carefully cleaned it off before the second firing.

 Here's a shot of the backs after the second layer of lustres were fired on. See how much richer/deeper the colours get? On the right mug, you can also see the lighter bamboo-shapes, which are parts that I masked off (see previous picture, right mug). This time I also used a darker green instead of the lighter green to give that added dimension.

 Here's a bird/bamboo I painted on using the water-base mixture technique instead of oil. I fought with the oil-mixed paint, open-medium (meaning it won't dry, ever) for about four solid hours and was getting frustrated because it was my last day there and I wanted to fire these before leaving. That was when my teacher said, "Oh! You can also mix it with a water-base ingredient!" The problem was, I only had time for one fire (about 3 hours total, 'cause the kiln just had a couple pieces in it) and the oil-mixed paint wasn't giving me the strong colours I wanted (normally you paint several layers, firing between each layer), nor was it allowing for the free-style brush strokes that I like to use. I like to see the texture within the brush strokes. The water-base mix worked very well for that, and the paint dried (you still can't touch it directly though, or it'll leave fingerprints) but it made it easier to work with. I ended up painting all four birds, and the bamboo they're sitting on, in about an hour and a half -> and that includes me wiping them off completely and re-starting at least a dozen times.

You can see after it has been fired (for the third time), the paint is darker in colour and is now shiny, but you can still see the texture. I have always loved Chinese ink-brush painting (or Japanese Sumi-e painting) because of the strong, confident strokes (there is no room for error) and I thought something like that might go well with the freeness of the lustres.

It's been so long since I've painted on porcelain and it's such an alien medium (especially trying to paint on a rounded surface), so I am happy with this first attempt, but honestly, I'm not sure if I like or hate the end result. I think if I had stuck with the lighter-coloured lustres (and not used dark green on the second round), I would have been a bit happier.

 Here's one last shot of the two together. If your eyes are sharp, you'll see that the mug on the right has not actually been fired a third time 'cause the paint (birds) looks matte. I might add touches of gold to both, like around the rim, and fire them, but that one on the right definitely needs to be fired to set the paint. If I let it sit out too long, hair and dust will attach to the paint and wreck the final product when it's fired.

Here's the picture I used as inspiration for the birds/poses on the first mug, then I just kind of switched everything up with different poses but kept the same colour scheme so they're a matched set.

And that's my artist signature on the bottom :) My three initials, actually. I've been using that for almost 9 years. Before that, I used a Egyptian hieroglyph to mark all my stuff. See, in school, everyone had a near-identical set of tools, so everyone marked theirs with masking tape and their name or initials. Since there were four other people with my initials, I started using symbols instead, but quickly got tired of the hieroglyph since it was complicated. I like this one 'cause it s my actual initials, but it's super quick/fast to do, easily recognizable, and you can make it with nearly any kind of brush, pen, pencil or tool. I even created two slightly different stamps for when I was making my own pottery.

If I ever got published, I'd probably sign books that way too. I'm lazy that way ;) Well actually my handwriting is unreadable (even to me) so my actual signature just looks like an ugly scribble. It's not even consistent.

Ah, I just noticed. On the bottom of the mug, you can also see I didn't clean off all the lustre properly. I'll probably take care of that with hydrochloric acid, but because the bottom rim is unglazed, I'm not sure how well it'll take it off.

A small job for another day :)

...and that's what I did last week. How about you guys? What were you up to?



* Because my grandmother has had a long and varied artistic history, there were everything from watercolour brushes, ones for acrylic painting, oil painting, porcelain dolls, chinese brushes, etc. all mixed in with the brushes for porcelain painting. I ended up throwing out more than half the brushes and 'donating' a large handful of watercolour brushes to my teacher for her grandkids to use since she generously put up with me for three straight days :)

GREAT book...

Habibi, by Craig Thompson.

If you like graphic novels that is...

...and if you don't mind seeing some pretty harsh realities like an arabic girl married off at age nine, sold into slavery and later becoming a prostitute to survive. If you love the tales from 1001 Nights, you will probably love this book. It is... amazing. Both the art and the story. And, it's huge! 665 pages with a gorgeous hard-cover and a small index in the back.

Here's a review on it. You can see some of the amazing pages here.

I opened it up last night and couldn't stop until I reached the last page.

Something a little different 3

Okay, this last post is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge, and by the time it goes up, I should be home from my little vacation.

By the way, if you double-click any of these (or the previous posted ones) you can see them full size. If you do that, you can totally tell which ones I kept the original pencil lines and which ones I re-drew in Photoshop (if you're interested in that kind of nerdy thing).

Since I use the black cat as my profile picture , here's a *visual interpretation* of what I look like. My hair is naturally blonde and every two-three years I get it hacked off until it's only about an inch long at the back. I do this 'cause I donate my hair to the Wigs for Kids program, and they need a minimum of 10-12" to make a wig. Right now it's nearly long enough to cut. I'll probably do it in the fall sometime before the static-y winter weather causes my hair to devour my head.

 To graduate from the Classical Animation Masters Program, each student had to complete a 1.5 minute short animation. These are some sketches from when I was working out the main character in my short. The final product looked a little different, but these are from when I was getting close. Instead of telling a story, I animated the siamese kitten playing with a catnip mouse, and the whole thing was timed to the *diva* song from The Fifth Element.

 One of the many assignments... this was from a Character Design class where we had to design a villain. Now, I'm not much for the evil-dark-lord wanting to take over the universe, so mine was a computer nerd named Kraig who would use his evil knowledge of technology to try to take over the school. I had fun. I still love his buggy fish eyes and his weird jowls. And the fact that when he stands, it looks like he's got a stick up his butt. Oh, his nemesis was a skater-chick who had similarly strange hair. I did a short animation (like, 10 seconds long) of her snowboarding, not for an assignment, just 'cause I wanted to.

Another class assignment, this time for the Digital Animation Program. This is a ship I built in SoftImage XSI, then exported it into Maya 3d to texture/animate. When you work with 3d models, you usually keep the poly count down while working on it (which is why it looks sharp/boxy) otherwise it uses too much RAM and the program can crash. You increase the poly-count just before you render, which essentially smoothes/rounds everything out. Probably this isn't a big deal now-a-days, but back when I made this, it was a major problem. My favourite part is the crazy multi-level wings.

Now this is something I made quite recently... like, last year sometime. Y'know how some books have images at each chapter break? Well, this is the chapter break image I created for Project #1.

It's based on a ribbon eel. Google it. They are awesome. And don't ever ask me about salt water fish or koi, 'cause I'll keep talking 'till your ears bleed.

'cause I'm
O.B.S.E.S.S.I.V.E.
(seriously)

This is also one of the few things I've done where I love every line, every shape, every speck of negative space. Okay, there's one thing I would change... the spot where the back leg touches the body/wing is slightly too pointy.

One benefit from classical animation training is you get used to drawing the same thing over and over and over and over again, 'cause you're drawing an image for every frame, and there's 24 or 30 frames per second. Then add on all the extra layers for background/foreground, other characters, things the characters interact with... and so on, and so forth...

...see why I have no problem working hard on edits/re-writes? I know some people can't stand the refining process, but I think my favourite part of drawing is also my favourite part of writing... cleaning up the lines.

sorry, that was a bad joke ;)

Something a little different 2

So, last time I showed my fall-back drawing style for fast, fun pictures. I've also done logos for people, usually friends who want to start a company or a band that never quite got off the ground... in fact, my profile picture of the black cat is part of a band logo where the members broke up before I finished it. Basically, the logo was a repeat of the same cat but done in different colours, black, red, green and blue. I use the red cat picture on another site with another moniker (not 1000th.monkey).

I won't post anything from my marketing days, nor will I post the only independent logo that *made it* out into the wide world, because it's actually on the letterhead of a local university's Student Business Association... which I made for free as a favour to someone, and never got credit for. Also, I was like 17 when I made it, it was the first logo-type art I had done, and in retrospect, I think it's kind of crappy.

Anyways, here's a few of those that ended up as unfinished/abandoned products. You might notice I'm kind of obsessed with shapes and how they fit together, whether complimenting or contrasting.

This was for someone who wanted to start a skateboard/snowboard clothing company.

I think this was for someone looking into franchising one of those water gas stations they have in California, or something like that. Water energy? I don't know, this so old I really can't remember.

This says MASEO (they wanted this kind of mirror-look) for some kind of non-profit company that never got off the ground.

This one's pretty self explanatory. I think it's my favourite out of these, I love how the 'oga' turned out... I really spent time on that, but was never happy with the shape of the 'y'.

By the way, for all of these, I started out with a pencil sketch, scanned it into Photoshop, then worked from there. I was only using a mouse, not a tablet. Also, I design them completely in black and white (so I'm only looking at shape) before I think about colours.

Something a little different 1

Since I'm on holidays, I wanted to do something a little different. Usually I talk about writing, or something that somehow relates back to writing.

Last week I posted about reading, so this week, I'm going to talk about drawing.

I've mentioned in the past the reason I got interested in animation. When I quit university and joined a technical school for animation, I did a classical animation program (this means everything is hand-drawn) and a digital animation program (everything is created in the computer with models). I truly only loved doing classical animation, but due to the scarcity of jobs, I took the second program. I didn't love it. Well, I loved creating the models and animating them, but I hated texturing and lighting.

While I was unpacking stuff at the witch's hut, I found a hard-drive with all my old animation files. Maybe at some point I'll throw a couple of the short animations online and post links, but not today :)

In the last few years, I regret that I have not drawn as much as I would like. Writing has taken over as my major outlet, but that doesn't mean I've completely stopped. I've done a ton of quick sketches that I give a 10-minute clean-up/colour job in Photoshop (one really crappy one I posted for Dead Monkey Day). I don't spend a whole lot of time on them, so there are always lines I hate, shapes that just a little *off*, but they're just for fun, so I don't stress over it. Most of them look something like this:

Roan from Project #1 getting advice from a character in a CP's story. I was playing with softer shadows/shading, but I didn't like the final result. I prefer the sharp/strong contrasting shadows of the following ones:

Someone wanted a cute picture for their MSN profile. My favourite part is the two antenna. The hands are pretty cute too.

someone I know online posted a picture of themselves with an evil, plotting smirk... 

...and I just had to draw it... though I was scolded 'cause I originally coloured the eyes wrong, so I had to go back and change them from blue to green.

All this kind of stuff is my fast, fall-back drawing style, well, the oval shaped noses, the simple eyes, the hard shadows and exaggerated proportion of head to body. I think I spent the most time on the middle one, making the planet-pillow look cool.