In General

It's been a good year for us ladies in terms of cinematic generals.  And most recently I've added General Okoye, leader of the Dora Milaje, to that militaristic list of bad-ass-women-to-be-when-I-grow-up (although actress Danai Gurira is only three years older than me, sooo... maybe I'd better hurry up with the growing up?).

YAS GENERAL

I'm pretty freaking obsessed with every last world-building aspect of Black Panther, so naturally when I drew Okoye I also took the time to pull up some movie stills and get some details in on her costume.  Never have I so badly wished for some gold paint, I tell you what.  All the little intricate details (and sadly I had to leave some out) were just super fun to put in there, and reminded me how much I love doing that sort of thing.

Anyhoo, the main challenge for me on this (after attempting to find even one frigging photo of her head tattoo) was working with Gurira's very dark skin tone.  Although I've tried my hand at a variety of skin tones through the years, the truth of the matter is that I have a lot more experience with the pale end of the Caucasian spectrum, which makes it easier for me to noodle in.  I want to fix that- I want to be comfortable noodling in any and every skin tone, so you know what that mean...

...more practice is needed!

Also I may go back in with some hatching.  I dunno'.  Probably not, if I'm being honest.  It could use it, but... I've already put four days into this one, and it's time to move forward.

A Long Winter's Nap

Yesterday's project was informative but tedious, so today I wanted to do something more fun, and to me "more fun" means "involving figurative art of some sort".  But I also wanted to put to practice some of the skills I've been learning over the past week, so I decided on structured fun.  We'll get to process in a moment, but first things first, I wanted to show off the finished project, because I'm actually quite pleased with it:

"A Long Winter's Nap", indeed.

The main thing that would make it better would be stronger,  more dynamic line-work, but since the point of this piece was working on my newly-learned color technique, I'm content to let it remain basic.

It took me a few tries to figure out what I wanted to do.  I knew I wanted to use a gradient wash in the background, and I felt like I needed a wintery theme, so I was leaning towards blue and gray.  I thought I  might do a tree of some sort, but with the small size of my sketch book, I ended up doing a pretty lady bust:

I did a light under drawing in pencil!  So fancy!

I'd still been thinking vaguely tree-related, as though I might turn hair into branches and her heart/chest into roots, but then I just sort of... went a different direction:

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

And then on to the wash!  Thanks to yesterday's glaze chart, I knew that to get the colors I wanted, I'd need to lay down the gray first:

Go gravity, go!

And then came the blue!  Or, rather, turquoise:

Ooo, gradient!

I got kind of frustrated because I accidentally flicked a drop of water onto the page (upper left side).  I tried to fix it, but as you can see in the next photo, it bloomed horribly and ruined the gradient.  Oh well it's still pretty.

Then it was time for a little wet-on-wet technique, which I figured would be excellent for the storm cloud:

I was SUPER correct about this, although as you can see in the next photo, it didn't stay this contained.

After that bit of triumph, I moved on to a flat wash:

Look at that big dumb splotch.  Grrr.  But I like the highlights on the cloud!

And then started glazing my brains out!

Colors, colors, everywhere.

Then there was more glazing, and some wet-on-dry, and I finished it off with some china white for the snow.  And like I said, I am quite pleased with the results.

"But Jenny O," you might wonder, "how did you find the patience for all those billions of layers?  That looks like two hours of work right there!" to which I would reply, "Very perceptive, Gentle Reader, it was about two hours of work!"  And then I would explain that I found the patience by literally walking away from my desk in between each layer, and reading my new, Christmas-gift-to-myself book.  It was a highly effective technique, and I plan to use it in the future, as well (although I will need new books...)

I think the best thing about today's piece is that finally, finally I'm starting to see how I might actually achieve the luminous-effect of watercolor that drew me to it in the first place.

The Rewrites Begin

I have not, in the past, been a super big fan of rewrites.  Generally by the time I get around to them, I'm already starting to weary of the world I'm playing in.  I remember, back before I'd written my first long-format story (oh alright, novel, although I feel like a fraud saying that) wondering how an author could possibly make such basic mistakes as giving a character's birthday at one point in the series and then contradicting it later.  And then I wrote something longer than a short story, and came to realize that eventually it all just starts to overwhelm you, and you have trouble remembering what's on the page and what's only in your head.  And, moreover, eventually after all the re-reading and re-writing and editing-in-general, you begin to get very, very sick of the story, and just done with the damn thing, already.

Of course, in the past I've had a bad habit of editing-while-I-go, which means that by the time I get around to "re-writing", I've already read the thing more times than I can remember.  And I really shouldn't call it a bad habit, because for some people that works quite well.  For me, apparently, it leads to burning out on stories.

Which is why it's so interesting for me to begin the rewrites on Oathbreaker- I haven't read it over and over again: I just spewed it out onto the screen and moved on.  Occasionally I'd have to review a bit of what I'd written the night before, to remind myself where I was at in the story, but for the most part everything is still pleasantly fresh.  "Oh, I'd forgotten I wrote that!  That was clever."  (or, more often, "Oh shit that totally contradicts something I know I wrote later: better fix it.")

All this to say, I'm about 2500 words in to the re-writes, and am still feeling pretty excited about it.  Which is good, since I still have another 29 days of blogging left in this year's 366 project, and I might be able to utilize the one for the other.  Wheee!

The Oathbreaker (The Second Draft)

 I had an idea for a story.  I started to write it.  Then I started to re-write it.  What follows is from that second pass.  I've since started re-writing it yet again, so you'll see the result of that in a few days (or more).

***

My mother was a wise woman, who taught me many things before she died.  First and foremost, she taught me those skills necessary to the running of a household, including the all-important art of spinning.  It was her favorite chore: not even a chore, to her mind, and after she was gone I spent many hours with the spindle that had once been hers, finding comfort in the familiar twist and drop.  It was these skills that ensured her daughter would grow to be a respectable woman of the village.

But because she was a wise woman, my mother also taught me the names of things.  The plants in the fields and woods, the stars in the sky, the secret emotions that ruled the men and women around us.  "To know the name of a thing, my daughter, is to have some measure of control over it," she would tell me.  "Never have truck with a thing who will not reveal its name, for surely only suffering will follow."

My father was a miller, and knew nothing of the secrets of the natural world, but his own set of skills ensured that we lived better than many of the families in our little corner of the kingdom.  Certainly we always had enough to pay the tax collector, and even have enough left over to let me keep and care for my own tiny flock of goats.  Their names, for I have just told you the important of names, were Hazel, Rowan, and Yew, and I loved them dearly.

Although I prized them more for their companionship than their wool, their wool was in fact quite lovely, and it was their wool that saved us when the mill-stone cracked.  Saved us, and cursed me.

With no millstone, my father was reduced to milling small amounts by hand until a new millstone could be delivered.  Milling by hand was a job anyone could do, however, and so few people felt the need to pay my father to do it.  And my father, while a very good miller, had no other wage-earning skills.  Purchasing our new stone took all of our silver reserves and more; the stone itself could not be delivered before the spring, but we were in danger of starving before that time.

Except.

Except that I went around the village, collecting straw, which people could not eat but my goats could and did.  And I kept them fat, and sang to them, and coaxed them by their names, and all that winter I brushed and brushed their gleaming coats, and the yarn I got from that wool was the finest I'd ever produced.  I sold it, for far more than my father would have earned milling, and we did not starve.

When the new millstone was delivered, my father, so proud and relieved that he could not bear it, made the mistake of taking one drink too many at the tavern.  And he said to a group of his friends, men whose wives had given me straw in our time of need, but not meat, "Yes, indeed, my daughter spun that straw right into gold!"

A stranger down the bar cocked his head at this.  "Excuse me dear man, did I hear you correctly?  Your daughter spun gold... from straw?"

The tavern erupted into laughter.

"That she did!" bellowed my father, those around him cheering in support.  "How else do you suppose a humble miller like myself could afford buy a drink for every one of his friends?"  Said friends cheered even more loudly at this, and the stranger was forgotten in the revelry.

But he did not forget my father.  And he did not forget me.

Slow Swinging Sea

Made a little more progress- added just a hint of color to the background, and laid down the basic seal shape:

lurvely

Weary Wee Flipperling

I've been slowly but surely making my way through Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book with Neeps, and the other night we finally finished up "The White Seal" (we're in "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" now, and it is such fun to read aloud!)  I had never actually read "The White Seal" before (although of course I loved the cartoon as a child) which strikes me as strange, because I had read some of the other stories, but who knows how these things happen.  At any rate, the best thing about reading "The White Seal" was the lovely little poem that Kipling prefaced it with:

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us

And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

The moon o'er the combers, looks downward to find us

At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;

Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!

The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

I've started reading it each night in an attempt to commit it to memory, and Neeps definitely gets called "Weary Wee Flipperling" as a result (he also gets called "My Mowgli" because sometimes he is a little naked frog).  Tonight I started dreaming of ways to turn the poem into another piece of art for his walls, in no small part because my patronus is totally a seal:

Pen in moleskine, naturally

I've wanted to do another watercolor/ink/embroidery piece, and I believe this will be the one.  Now I just have to find the time...

The Draft Behind the Curtain

I've always been up-front about the fact that this blog is a mix of Real Life and Fiction. Usually it's pretty easy to spot the difference between the two (dragons and unicorns are generally a good tell).  Sure, there's often some Real Life in my Fiction (ex-lovers beware), but sometimes a bit of Fiction creeps into the Real Life, as well, because Real Life is almost never as polished a narrative as we'd like it to be.  Or, as my grandmother used to say, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

Yesterday was an example of that.

What follows is the actual interaction that inspired yesterday's blog, very lightly edited for clarity and the protection of innocents.  I hope you enjoy seeing how I try to keep the truth of something intact, even while altering the hell out of it.

(and for the record, I didn't hesitate at all before I answered his initial question.)

***

Him: has it been a hard transition?

Me: honestly?  not really.  I think managing my expectations has been key 

Me: and frankly being a lucky son-of-a-bitch is coming in SUPER handy for me at the moment (and always, really) 

Me: Neeps is such a happy, easy-temperament baby that it makes life a shit-ton easier than it might be 

Him: that's perfect 

Me: It's like... yes, it's hard, but hard in the way that anything awesome can be hard.  Climbing a new route or hiking up a steep incline or coming up with the perfect backstory for a character- all of these things have a difficulty that varies from day to day as our bodies and minds go through the shit they go through, but all of them are also really rewarding and you feel fiercely proud and happy when you get through to the other side 

Me: If anything I've been a little surprised that I've taken to it as easily and naturally as I have- it hasn't been as hard as I was braced for.  And I think a lot of that is, as already mentioned, pure dumb luck.  BUT I WILL TAKE IT AND BE GRATEFUL. 

Me: it also helps to have a good partner, for reals 

Me: like last night when i went to shake salt on the green beans and instead dumped out about half the container, and yelled "Son of a BITCH" and Nathan came in and saw what I'd done, he said, "I'll take care of it.  You go sit." which is a GREAT way to not get overwhelmed by shit.  Just having someone come in and say, "I'll take care of it," when you're nearing a breaking point

The End of the Beginning

I've been noodling around on a baby-wearing, art-nouveau-style tattoo design for my sister-in-law for probably close to a year now, and today I finally (finally!) nailed the pose (and got approval):

Like a Boss

I'm suuuuuuper excited to get to work on this piece: there is a lot of symbolism I want to work into the background, and chances are I'm going to have to finish it, and then produce a simplified version for the actual tattoo, but oh well when the mood strikes it strikes.

Stay tuned for more...

Valentine/BabyMine

Today was my first Valentine's Day as a parent, and I started the day out right by having a good cry over my father.  I have new insight into just how sad, angry, and scared he must have been about leaving his children as such a young age- and that insight hurts.  But!  I am here now, and my son is here now, and I will live in the Now, not in the What-Ifs.

My Here and Now

On to happier subjects!

Nathan and I of course did our traditional home-made card exchange, and (as is also traditional) I'm sharing some process here on the blog:

Pencils!

Inks!

Two colors!

Nearing completion!

Final product!

Words!

I wasn't going to bother making one for Neeps, since he's so little he doesn't care, but then I had enough wine last night to throw pragmatism to the wind, because I care, and busted something out on the quick:

(no process, just results)

BOOM.

Happy Days, ya'll.

Paper Hearts

It's almost time for my second-favorite holiday!  And you know what that means:

Hand-Made valentines for all ELEVEN of the niblings!

Time sort of got away from me this year, until I looked at a calendar last night and let out a squeak because holy stars Valentine's Day is this weekend!  And I hadn't even started my cards!  So today I buckled down and churned 'em out.  They're not as fancy as they've been in years past, since I was constantly being interrupted by the fellow who is cousin to those eleven niblings of mine, but I think they'll make people plenty happy as is.

Now, of course, I need to turn my attention to Nathan's valentine.  As of this moment, I'm more or less stumped.  But surely the panic will kick in soon enough, and I'll come up with something brilliant.  I generally do.

My Savage Valentine

Hey hey hey!  It's my Second Favorite Holiday!  And, as we do every year, Nathan and I exchanged hand-made Valentines.  Of course, Nathan promptly took the one he made for me back, so he could continue to noodle on it, but I really liked what I saw (hopefully I'll get it back sometime today, and then get to share it with you guys, too.)

Anyway, here's some process on the one I made from him, which took it's inspiration from the fact that he tends to call me a Savage for my various uncivilized habits:

Some pencils and the beginning of ink.  I wish I'd taken one of just the rough pencils.  OH WELL!

Inks more-or-less finished, although I did go back after I colored and smoothed a few places out.

Originally I thought I was only going to do the red for the blood.  Sometimes I think silly things.

Ta da!  Final colors and inks....

...and the inside!

All told it probably took me somewhere between two and three hours, from concept sketch to finished product.  It was a really enjoyable indulgence, because I feel like I haven't been drawing nearly enough, lately.  Too many interests, not enough time...

And now?  Now Nathan and I are going to get on with the rest of our holiday, which is going to include some backpacking and photography and maybe even checking out the new whiskey bar in town (all part of warming up for Scotland, naturally).

Happy Valentine's Day, you guys!  I hope it is awesome.

Approaching the End

And not just of the special gluten-free cookies, mind you...

::sniffle::

Yep, there are less than ten days in this 365 project- although thanks to the Koopa's little drama-fit, it's technically only going to be a 351 project.  I think.  My math may be a little fuzzy on that, but I think we can all agree that it doesn't really matter.

Anyway, I've been trying to think about how I want to handle that- if I want to do an additional two weeks in the New Year, or just an extra 14 photos whenever I feel like it, or what.  I'm not sure yet- frankly I'm so relieved to be drawing close to the end that it's hard to care about technicalities like that.

Also I want more cookies.

Cast a Long Shadow

Here we are, in the final month of my 365 project.  Woo!

pretty

One thing I've learned to do is be a lot more aware of my surroundings, particularly what's on the ground, because I've so often found good images that way.  I expect I'll keep looking around, even when I'm no longer "committed" to getting a photo every day... and hopefully my life will be the richer for it.

Remembering

Tonight I did something that I have not done in a long, long time: ten years, minimum.

oh hello nudity

Yep, I attended a life drawing session (as an artist, not a model- although it's been at least seven years since the latter, come to think of it).  And it was fabulous.

I felt nervous as I walked up to the studio- honestly I felt a little bit like a poser (pun entirely unintended).  My only comfort was my drawing board twisting in my hand as it flapped about in the evening wind- old smears of paint proved that I had some experience, at least.  But I was afraid I'd have lost it all.  I don't do much in the way of drawing-from-life these days, for multiple reasons.  For example, it's harder to get people to get naked for you once you're married- and my husband isn't much interested in posing for me.  Which leaves me with inanimate objects and just pfffffft to that.

(Seriously, why draw fruit when there are people in the world?)

But tonight's adventure was all about remedying that little problem.

The model walked in and for a moment I felt a blink of surprise- I'd spent all day envisioning a woman, and yet what was in front of me was a tall, lanky male model.  And then I laughed at myself because oh yeah duh, dudes hire out as models, too, not just long-haired females.

Fortunately for me and my tremulous return to life-drawing, this guy was fantastic.  His warm-up poses were so dynamic and beautiful.  He was just beautiful, all the long, clean lines of his body.  I could have spent hours drawing the sharp edges of his ribcage and hip bones.  I guess I did, technically...  I kept finding myself shivering with the raw pleasure of the experience, of looking at a nude body and moving my pen across paper and having a figure appear.  I'd forgotten how viscerally satisfying it is, the sweep and flow of the human form when viewed as art.

It took a while, but it did come back to me.  I lost myself to that special meditative state that psychologists call "flow", and my body remembered the things my brain was afraid it had forgotten.  I was pleased enough with my final 35 minute drawing (the pencil).  Pleased enough that I was irritated that I wasn't going to get a chance to finish it.

Guess I'll have to go back.  Maybe with charcoal, next time, or conte crayon...

Blank Canvas

This evening I went over to a friend's house, with the express purpose of drinking wine and painting shoes:

These shoes, specifically.

We did in fact drink wine (along with dinner), and I did in fact paint one shoe, although the other remains blank.  We'll still count it as Mission Accomplished, however.  I need to paint the other one, obviously, and then go over both of them with permanent marker to lay in line-work and shading.  I'll probably do a process blog once they're both finished.

It was really nice to sit in a shared creative space and get my (slightly inebriated) art on.  It took me back to a good place, a college-type place.  Makes me want to do it more often.

Good Things Come in Threes

Usually when I say to Nathan, "Which of these do you think I should use?", the one he chooses is the one I was leaning towards, anyway.  Other times... well... let's just say that sometimes he attempts to keep me in check, but it just goes against my nature.  Tonight, for instance.  He felt that this was the best-processed photo of the group:

Classic.

He refused to even consider that maybe one of these totally awesome space event versions might be superior:

NEBULA!

UNDERWATER SPACE FROG!

He even accused me of getting a little "filter happy".  Scandalous!

But I am the boss of me, so I posted all of them.

Words and Gods

I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories.  This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold.

                                -Sacrament, Clive Barker

I disagree; I feel certain all animals must tell stories- because we know animals dream, and we know animals communicate, and what are stories but communicated dreams?  It's just that ours is the species who writes them down.  Perhaps, then, the Gods' magic resides not so much in the Words themselves, but in the letters used to Shape them...

Firebird

Sometimes I just start stitching because I want to, and I don't really know where it's going to take me.  The last time that happened (in February, actually), it went a little like this:

"Hmm, I want to stitch, but I'm done Valentine's Day is over.  What else could I stitch now?  It might be fun to do one of my angels with the illuminated wings... hmm, illuminated wings... I'll bet it would be nice to stitch a firebird!"

And so I drew a little firebird on a piece of card stock, and started to stitch:

Burn.

Simple simple line-work, in the beginning, lots of long graceful lines to follow.  For the colors I decided that I wanted to work in shades of flame (obviously), but that I would treat the bird's body as the hottest part of the flame, and therefore white (twined with pale yellow) and then get darker the further out I went.

A lovely effect.

Such a nice gradient!  I got the subtle color changes by using three threads and slowly substituting one shade after another.  You can see it most obviously in the third feather from the left- I used a pale orange, a salmon, and a scarlet for that one.  Anyway once the main line work was done, I needed to go back in to the feathers and do the details...

Which I did.

That shot also shows you where I started adding extra flourishes, and how I draw the lines in pencil and then punch holes in the card stock using the needle.  But still more flourishes were needed!

Traces of gray, for smoke.

So I added those flourishes, and filled in the world "burn" while I was at it, but I knew that still more flourishes were needed!

More!  We need more!

In the end it turned out like this:

An Official Portrait, by Nathan.

And the back looked like this:

Awesomely ordered chaos.

And if you would like get a better sense of the scale of this thing:

Too much red!  Blowing out my phone's sensors!

And here are two more Nathan photos for more detail work:

Can you see the barest touch of blue I used in her eye?

Ha hah, who forgot to erase pencil lines before letting Nathan take photos?  THISGIRL.

So that's what I occasionally do with my time- freehand something onto a piece of card stock, and then stitch the hell out of it.  Wheee!  All in all it took me... three days, I think?  But they were highly satisfying days.

The Making of a Bib

Or, rather, not the making of the bib, per se, but the embellishing of it.

Tricks of the Trade

Last week I promised you a Process Blog, and this week I make good on that promise.  As I've mentioned before, I make bibs for people when they have babies.  And since my brother's firstborn is due in less than a month, I figured I'd better get started on the bib for my newest nephew.

It starts, as these things do, with an idea (Yes, I've been planning this since August.  Sometimes I am slow.)  Once I know what illustration I want to use, I freehand it onto the bib using an air-erase marker:

There is a reason for the patch.  A darkly humorous reason.

And then I pick out my colors, and begin to stitch.  In this instance I decided I wanted a gray and cream bunny (the colors of my childhood stuffed animal), with dark blue script (since my brother is Air Force).

Here is an idea of how long the actual stitching takes me:

80 minutes in

160 minutes in

240 minutes in (yes, that's four hours, and not consecutive because I'd go blind.)

Now at this point I knew I wanted a vegetable next to the bunny.  Originally I'd sketched in a carrot (you can just barely make it out in the 80 minutes in shot), but it seemed to me that you don't have to be particularly brave to try a carrot.  A radish, on the other hand...

Notice there is no trace of the carrot I'd drawn the day before.  Air eraseable marker, you are THE AWESOMEST.

The first few times I embroidered something, I made iron-on transfers out of my drawings, but now I find it much easier and faster just to draw directly on the fabric- and since I make a habit of doing my doodles in pen, I'm comfortable working that way, and generally end up with pretty clean lines (see above).

This is how much thread I used to do those two little green leaves.  It is also how much thread it ended up taking me to do the last, large leaf.

All in all, it took me six hours (360 minutes) to finish, which isn't so bad.

The compass star is to guide brave little bunnies home again.

The backside.  Not the messiest I've ever done, but I'm sure I could be cleaner, given more time and practice.

My handsome modeling cat.

It was good to be stitching again- it had been almost a year since the last time I did something, and it's really put me in the mood to do more.  It may be that I do stitched valentines this year... hmmm...