Hit the snooze button

Oooh, I made a biiiig mistake last night. I forgot to set my alarm. Decompression sleep ensued, complete with just about every anxiety dream one could have! Damn you, subconscious! Why must you hate me so? Anyway, oversleeping limited the amount of work I could do (not to mention motivation) and I never go around to making a nice sketch to share. Whoops.

I did however do lots of work! My webdesign binge has continued, with a FAQ demo now up. I also played around with reworking the archive page, but nothing great came of that. Website aside, I sketched out the remaining strips for this week, with inking hopefully to come later tonight.

What I didn't do was all the writing. That requires a clear and snappy mind, which I did not possess today. Fingers are crossed that I can get a chunk of it done tomorrow. Some of that stuff is time sensitive, as in "should have been done MONTHS AGO" - bah!

In the end, I may not have a scribble to show for it, but I turned what could have been a crappy day into something somewhat productive. Take the victories when you can!

Violets Unmatched

Oh yeah, I went there. That's the official title of the piece. If you don't like it, cram it.

Thanks to the magic powers of OBAMA, I managed to pull this violet painting out in the end. Just a few hours ago this seemed hopeless. Now, I am fully satisfied with the piece.

It's 2am now, and I have three paintings that are unfinished. All of them are CLOSE ENOUGH to pass for finished in portfolio form, but none of the three are signature-worthy. What do I do? Let me explain further: Tomorrow morning, someone with a larger trunk than mine will arrive and take my paintings away. Tonight is the last chance I have!


So, uh, Dana, FUCK YOU! I am *so* close to wrapping this baby up, but it looks like I'll fall *just* short. This is going to be a fun one to finish up at home, as it's so massive my easel may buckle under the pressure. At least take solace in how the painting is shaping up to be really damn good! (The picture doesn't do it justice.) One extra coat of sage green and several waves of touch ups still must be done, but it's at a confidence-instilling place. Yay.

If I do work on another painting, it will be the leafy arrangement, where I'll finally tackle the vase thingy. I may not even get to that, as it's 2am and I've hit the wall.

In conclusion: The Mill should love me, Dana should have mixed feelings and I am a corner-cutting asshole.

...and every day the rats eat a little more of my foot!

This is what I get for living in a basement.

Tonight has been the full brunt of the subterranean lifestyle. First, I was forced to bail water from the stairway leading to the basement because it was raining biblically hard (and the roof was dumping directly onto the stairway) that the drain couldn't handle everything. I managed to clear enough debris to get the drain working properly and prevent flooding.

THEN came the the real joy of living in squalor! As the weather gets cold, nature tends to sneak into the warm confines of the house. Naturally, my vermin peers ended up in the basement as well. Tonight, they got BOLD!

Early on I heard rustling. Uh oh. Later came the visual confirmation... as a mouse bounced around my bed! I saw it scurry off towards the TV... so it's a Battlestar Galactica fan, I guess. Or maybe not, since it chose to double back and CRAWL ON MY FOOT! My kicking only seemed to embolden it, as I caught it later wandering around behind me. I cornered it under the dehumidifier.

IT IS ADORABLE! Not as cute as the one I caught in the bathroom a while back. That one was black and the cutest mouse ever. This one was gray and only adorable. But she is my bedmate, so I should be thankful for any bedroom action no matter the definition. (Now I will call it a "she" because somehow it seems less gross. I don't know why.)

She got away (not that I was prepared to catch her) when I shifted my weight to get a better look. That was hardly enough to intimidate her, as she's been happily scurrying about as I type this post. I just gave her a scare by taking a flying leap onto my bed. This is called coping with one's environment. (She's already running about again! This is going to be adorable right up until my face is eaten in my sleep.)

Anyway, instead of just making mouse jokes alone, I figured I'd try to draw a cute cartoon mouse girl. It's my first ever, so be forgiving. I have zero intention of drawing anything but doggies and kitties, so moving beyond species is weird for me.

Edit: So it's 4am now and I've seen this mouse bouncing around this room without a care in the world. Oh, and I do mean bouncing. She's like a rubber ball, that mouse. SO CUTE! It's amazing what the creatures do during the hours humans should be asleep. (I didn't take my sleep meds today, 'natch. 4am + bottle of wine = not remotely tired. I flunk at life math.) I just had her walk right up next to me. I could have reached out and grabbed her if I wanted. Instead, I leaned over and asked, "What are you doing?" Off she went!

Oh, I even braved the night to wander out to the mailbox. Since today was marked by the cataracts of heaven, no one got the mail. Surprise: NEW NETFLIX DVD! Battlestar Galactica is seriously awesome. Lucy Lawless as #3 is proving to be a massively compelling character. Rock on, Xena!

Continuing my corner cutting campaign

Throwing ambition out the window, I turn to the Precocious script to evaluate my characters' costume changes... to see how I can avoid them! For instance, here is a future strip as scripted:

(Bud is going through his supplies in the Et's backyard.)
Bud: Gotta hurry. Gotta hurry.
Bud: This is very delicate plan and everything must go as planned.
(Bud puts on his combat gear.)
Bud: It is time to enter the fray.
Sky (walking in): You look adorable, Bud!
Bud (fastening his helmet): I KNOW!

I love this strip, but drawing Bud in combat gear fills me with horror. So screw the outfit - the hat is enough! And, hey, if Bud's helmet *accidentally* flies off as he scurries around soon afterward... OH WELL!

Keeping the Full Metal Jacket helmet is vital. It gives me a fun reference, it makes the strip above work and it puts Bud in a hat! Bud having a hat for all occasions is a visual theme I'd like to use as the strip evolves. His Scottish fold ears make him the one character who can actually handle head gear - at least to the point where accepted cartoon wardrobe logic allows the reader to overlook that even Bud's ears couldn't fit in such chapeaus.

There is precedent for my cranial cop-out already: Tiffany's beret shows up for a few gags, then gets left behind. That decision wasn't as deliberate - I merely forgot to draw it on her for one strip, and covered it up by drawing it in her hands after the fact. Eh, the less work the better!

Autumn's costume change can easily be simplified. She'll switch to a t-shirt and pants, making her combat outfit EASIER to draw. Yay!



Edit: Here she is! The poorly-rendered thing she is wearing is a backpack. I've discovered tonight that I can't draw backpacks at all. The thing she's holding is a water balloon with her name on it, which is also poorly-rendered. Damn details.

Dionne originally showed up to fight in a girly outfit, but I can switch that to her standard outfit without the story losing anything. As long as she's still carrying a cumbersome purse, it works!

I haven't planned costume changes for Jacob or Suzette. Maybe I should. White white beaters and plain slacks for all! Fuck it, ALL MY CHARACTERS SHALL BECOME STICK FIGURES! XKCD was right all along!

Anyway, if I am going to make my new "I suck" deadline, I need to be averaging two strips a day. All this doodling is nice, but hardly what I need to do for productivity - especially since I'll be losing a day or two to finish my paintings this week.

In my defense: It's really hard to do anything with the whole root canal thing. My tooth had been acting up big time over the past few days - and it's going to be doubly sore considering my EPIC root canal today. While a glass of wine can help with inking of strips, being wonked out on vicodin is no good for anyone. My life is sabotaging itself!

The time has come to paint some chicks

Among my many thousands of deadlines in the next two weeks is one for submissions to the Art at the Mill show. It's a no-cred, small venue local art show that raises fun for a historic mill. Most of the art displayed there is painfully conservative and traditional. (To paraphrase someone... It's a show where many of the paintings are of the mill itself.) Rural landscapes, wild horses, bridges, flowers... all of those are typical mill works. Buuuut, they also let real artists participate! If they think it will sell, they will accept it. It helps the resume and can potentially result in quick cash for an artist.

If I was the uppity sort, I'd reject the whole thing as too commercial. But, uh, I am ALL FOR being commercial! Well, actually, I want to find that spot where I can do what I please and still make money. The task is to work in several forms of art, but keep my recognizable style. By having so many comfort zones, I can choose the type of art I produce to fit the venue.

The mill show is a challenge for me: How can I make my style of work desirable to a crowd that is happy to buy paintings of barns? My first attempt was a complete disaster. I send off photos of my best work... and got one pity acceptance. The piece (Floodgates) was placed among nature paintings and looked revoltingly out of place. It didn't sell. So I changed things for the next show. This time I was going to paint nature scenes - but in MY style! The result was The Hiking Trip.

I had three paintings finished when it was time to submit, so I tossed in two others (five can be submitted, if you suck at math) from my On Beauty series Both beauties got accepted. One hiking painting (which my graduate class hated because it was "too commercial") was also accepted. The rest were put on reserve, to be hung when other paintings sold. For the artist's reception, all five of my paintings were on display. Which meant they had not sold. Shit!

When I went to pick up my work, I did get some good news. Some couple, having gotten the week of the show wrong, had arrived on the last day art could be picked up. They were allowed to look around and, lo and behold, they had chose to purchase one of my paintings! (BEST OF THE REST, BABY!) Oh course, it was the one painting I thought had no chance of selling: Eye Candy 1!

So my one success came from my stable of beautiful women. FINE, I'LL DO THAT! The first week of August will be devoted to some last-minute heroics to create some new chicks for show. (Yes, Dana, this means I'm putting your box first! It'll be ready!)

While the plan wasn't to start any painting yet, I've had such an inspiring summer I was not going to let inspiration pass me by. Last night I was watching the movie Notes on a Scandal, and something about it made me get out the paint. The result: A sinister and seductive women with the face of Cate Blanchett.

The painting is still in "sketch" stage, but I'm reasonably pleased with the progress so far. There's no telling how the final will end up looking, but it's a nice start. I'm just happy to see I can still paint!