Daily Scratchings

flutterby

2008-08-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

Look, stirrings of life!

I'm not back, but I can promise some irregular updates now and again.

Here's a little bit of something from my garden - a yellow swallowtail stopped by for a snack on its travels. I was enchanted enough to grab the good camera and try my hand at a photo or two.

Taken with Sony Cybershot DSC-H7, retouched in Adobe Photoshop

Many Apo-Logies for the Continued Hiatus

2007-07-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

I thought I was all settled in, ready to get back to this, but things have gone haywire for me in ways I am not comfortable discussing here. Other than that, moving is hell, and redesigning a usable workspace is a nightmare.

So, I'm probably going to continue hiating (is that even a word?), until such time as I can take some time out from other things and at least scan some older works to post.Expect weekly updates for now, and then I'll get back on schedule.

Thank you,
the overworked management

Day 72: Red Road

2007-07-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

Red Road (2007) Digital photograph, digitally retouched, cropped.

Another incredible image taken on our trip, this one of a red dirt road in the Texas Panhandle.

Day 71: Hiatus over

2007-07-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

I return with a striking image of the sky from our trip. Cropped, uncorrected.

PSA: Hiatus

2007-05-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

We'll be offline for at least 2 weeks, possibly more. Expected date of return is June 18th.

I may post a few images in the meantime, but no promises or guarantees are made.

Day 70: logo design process

2007-05-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a montage of my process in figuring out a nice signable logo/sigil. I got married to my husband 3 years ago and hadn't stopped signing my work with my maiden name or plain print initials. It struck me a kind of stupid, since my work isn't well known enough for me to cling to a name I've always found awkward to sign.

So I started doodling. I went through more literal letterforms with accent strokes, realized it felt too fluffy to do that, I wanted something easier, more efficient than what I'd been working with before. I didn't want clunky, forced and stylized, I wanted clean and simple. I played with combining letter forms into a little picture, and the five-stroke owl emerged.

I can even have him "stand" on the date, if I choose. And, it was a simple jump from the pen-stroke owl to a more formal version I can use for vector graphics if I want to sign those.

So, there's my owl.

Days 67, 98, 69: Sketchbook Catchup

2007-05-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

Untitled (2007)
postcard sunset view, doodled in my sketchbook for fun and played with in Paint Shop Pro.

Feet (2007) Pencil sketch

Study of my son (2007) Pencil sketch

There, we're all caught up. it's all quickie art, sketch book harvesting, but I wanted to get caught up, even if nobody reads this. Personal commitment and all that.

If you are trying to figure out your style, or where your style is going, draw. Draw what you see. Cartoon it, or draw from life. The first one up there is a cartoon sunset. the feet and the boy are drawn from life, but the boy is still a little stylized, a little not-true, just enough to be real at first glance.

That's my blather for the day.

Day 66: Night (late)

2007-05-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Night (1997?) Digital, used remixed and custom PSP tubes. Windows wallpaper.

I got sick of the Windows(tm) clouds-and-blue-sky wallpaper. I wanted something for me, so I made this.

Day 65: Lightning

2007-05-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

Lightning (1995 or 1996) Technical pen and sharpie over pencil on paper. Cut out and collaged onto black bristol.

This is really more of a draft than anything. I never really finished it, because my heart really wasn't in it.

There are clear problems with the anatomy, especially in her feet and legs. I was concentrating on the head and arms, so the legs were just kind of afterthoughts. I'm looking at reworking her, too.

I was working on this, or some other random sketch around the same time, during slow patches while waiting for customers to come to the register at the comc shop I worked in. A guy I recognized form conventions came to the register, I rang him up, and he noticed my work.

"That's really good. Do you take commissions? I'll pay you ten bucks for drawing."
"Depends. What of?"
"Joan of Arc."
"In battle? Or on trial?" I know where the drama is in the story, so I figure those are the two most likely requested vignettes.
"At the stake." Okay, ew, but that's dramatic, too.
"Uh, okay, come back tomorrow and I show you a rough. Something like that I can't work on at work. Rory's not paying me to draw for you."

I work up compositions on the bus home, do a real rough with recognizable people in it at home, and bring it in to work the next day. She's standing at the stake, defiant, brave, etc. Some scumbag is leaning in to light the fire, there's nebulous crowd at the back, clouds in the sky. It's still mostly just blocked in, though.

Guy comes back, looks at the sketch, and says "That's not what I want. Can you change it?"
I don't even want to ask, but ten bucks would have bought me two meals back then.
"Okay, how do you want it changed?"
Smiling, he says, "Can the fire be lit?" EW! But, yeah, MORE dramatic...
"Okay, come back later. Like I said I can't work on this here."

I change it. There's flames, scumbag has moved back away from the heat, I've drawn in outlines of smoke. She's still defiant.

He comes back, a day or two later, asks to see it. I show it to him while ringing him up.
He says, "Uh, can you change it again?" Inwardly I am beginning to have alarms go off.
"How?" ...
"Oh, can you make her naked, like the dress had burned off and on fire and dying and (pauses) liking it? Like she's ... giving in? Enjoying it? Oh, and make the ropes more obvious, like across her front." My lizard brian is running in circles of disgust and anger (ewewGRRRewewewGRRRewewew...), but I just give him a blank stare. Someone gets in line behind him.
"NO. Keep your ten bucks. I don't do snuff pictures. You'll have to find someone else to do it. Maybe at a con? NEXT!"
"Please? I really wnat it, I know you can do it."
"No. There's a line. I'm working here." And, fortunately, someone came over and asked him to move so I could do my job.

That whole experience really creeped me out in a deep, deep way.

In light of recent turns in the industry, I'm creeped out even more. This is apparently the new target audience for comics. And he wanted me to, essentially, take this and make it into this. And they've given him, and everyone like him, what he wanted.

PSA: Epiphanies

2007-05-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote earlier today, when submitting a link to today's art:

I struggled with posting it. I had to get angry enough over something to even put that picture out there. I have to say that I'm afraid of the backlash, that I might never get a creative job again, etc.

But, if it puts another voice on the side of the WTF? Maybe it's worth it.

And, reading that, when the reply came back to me, I had a chilling realization.

I've become afraid of my own darkness. My own sense of humor, which I thoroughly enjoy, my old attitude of "fuck 'em if they can't take my opinion," all of that has become a source of ... shame. Of fear. That's not right. What happened?

I think it speaks a lot to the state of our culture that, in order to become socially okay, to not have our kids taken away, to not be discriminated against, or be threatened in other ways, women (and minorities, and queer people) have to allow our independent spirits, our very souls to be crushed. In the name of adaptability, acceptability, peace. We compromised ourselves into corners. Well, I know I did. I'm certainly not alone.

That, right there, is what's wrong with the whole objectification of women in comics problem. It plays right into that. It helps create that atmosphere that causes the give-in-or-give-up mentality. Why do we have to be the ones who compromise?

I'm done with that. I quit. Things are going to get a little darker around here, maybe a little grittier. My style won't be different, really, but you'll see more of those pieces I've been sitting on.

Because I was afraid to show them.

I'll mark them as mature or offensive, but I won't hide them.

Not anymore.

day63: Angry Girl (objectionable content)

2007-05-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Angry Girl (1995) Sharpie over pencil on paper. Some digital cleanup because the scan was bad and I can't find the original right now.

I did this as the flier art for an Accustomed To Nothing gig, in 1995 or so when I worked with the band's manager at Comic Relief in Berkeley CA. Brian asked, I drew stuff all the time, so I did it, and I got to go to the gig too. The flier had a big chunk of text over the middle finger so people wouldn't yank them from where they got posted, but this is the original art, no censorship.

I struggled with posting it. I had to get angry enough over something to even put that picture out there. I have to say that I'm afraid of the backlash, that I might never get a creative job again, etc.

But, if it puts another voice on the side of the WTF? Maybe it's worth it.

I'm posting this particular piece today because things are getting weirder than usual with regard to how women are presented in comics. Like, hentai-weird, in non-brown-wrapper packages. Super girls have always been treated like the cheerleaders of the super world before now, but lately it's become ridiculous, and they are being treated, routinely, like softcore porn actresses in bad victimization storylines. It wasn't this bad in the 1940's.

Women of the comic world are getting more vocal than they had been, and it's not like the women who write, draw and edit comics have been exactly silent on the subject. The ire has always been there, but now it's getting more organized. I don't really count myself in with this, since I never wrote a comic, or got beyond storyboarding one, and working up character designs, but I've always been a reader. Since I can remember. I used to read comics at recess in the fourth grade. I loved MAD, I read Xmen and Batman and Sgt Rock. I didn't like the girly comics. I'm such a tomboy that some of my male friends would forget there was a girl around.

Hey guys? I like the gritty, real-life tone that a lot of comics have taken. I love satire, the worse, the better. HOWEVER - this is a big however - gritty does not equal violently porny. Ever. If you can't wrap your head around that, the gesture above is for you.

Thanks.

Visceral reaction on my part follows:

Strong women can be strong without the necessity of their getting spanked by some bad guy in spandex, honest. It won't make your dick shrink to read about it. Grow the balls to buy some hentai books and stop trying to make regular comics into porn. I swear nobody will laugh at you if you by a copy of Legend of the Overfiend.

day 62: Design interlude

2007-05-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

Splash image from 2000 incarnation of my personal web page.

Digital collage. Originally presented as a series of animations, beginning with a sealed envelope.

PSA: It's not about me, it's about all of us.

2007-05-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you know who Tom Artis was, but he died recently after a long illness. His family is destitute. He was part of several comic books I read and enjoyed.

There's a fund to help his family. However many people read this, please send a little bit.

Days 61 and 62: Clipangels

2007-05-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

Both untitled (2001)

Victorian scraps, scanned and recolored digitally.

I made these for my christmas cards in the year 2001. This is more design than art, in my view, but they are pretty cool.

Day 60: Net

2007-05-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

Net (2000?) Digital illustration, done in Fireworks. Incorporates text of a poem as a design element.

Days 57 and 58

2007-05-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Urgent personal business interferes with art. I was busy, and away from the computer all day.

Day 59: Creative Hands

2007-05-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

Creative Hands (1999) Digital collage.

This was my favorite portion of an attempt to communicate the feeling of the creative process though symbols.

Day 56: IF: Citrus

2007-05-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

Limonade (2007) Digital. Mouse-drawn in Illustrator.

Another late-ish entry into Illustration Friday. Intended as a spot illo, to the theme "Citrus."

Day 55: hiatus

2007-05-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

Busy with non-computer things today. Art tomorrow.

day 54: Sky

2007-05-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

Sky (2007) Digital photograph, retouched and manipulated in Photoshop

PSA: day 51

2007-05-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

There was no day 51 post. I plead hot, humid, awful weather that made my computer shut down, followed by a trip to the ER for my kid.

I was pretty uncomfortable, too, but I did manage several more sketches. I've been working on some copyleft illos for Wikipedia, and that's been kind of draining. But I'll try to get more art up.

I think I might even be able to pull something out for IF this week. We'll see.

days 52 and 53: Foodie Glamour Shots

2007-05-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

(1999) Digital photographs, retouched and digitally manipulated.

Two glamour shots I did for the cookbook project I mentioned on day 9.

One's vegan, and one isn't. I can't recall now which is which.

Day 50: Fashion

2007-05-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

Fashion (1999) Quickie digital painting

Desktop background, done in a half hour or so in fireworks for fun. Liked it enough to keep around for 8 years.

Day 49: Doubletake versions

2007-05-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

Doubletake (original drawing) (1987)Gouache over technical pen over pencil on bristol. Pencils erased prior to coloring. Coloring done about 1990.

Double-negative (1995?) Xerox of uncolored original, cut out with an xacto and glued down to a black background.

I've always liked this image, so I've played with it a few times over the years. I colored the original inked drawing a few years after I made it, and had made xeroxes before that, in case I wanted to play with the image. The negative version is one of those playful versions.

days 47 and 48: Sketchbook

2007-05-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

Ink study of baby (2007) ink on sketch paper, no pencils.

Girl's face (2007) inked and colored sketch of a girl's face

Two small drawings from my sketchbook.

PSA: weekends I think I'll be posting both days at once, so I can spend time away from the computer.

day 46: studies

2007-05-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

(2007) colored pencil on paper.

Two small figure studies of my younger son.

Day 45: Salamander

2007-05-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Salamander (2007) Colored character study. Pen, colored pencil. Scanned, cleaned and filtered for a watercolor effect.

This is a character study for the illustrations I'm doing for a children's story I'm writing. I'm still deciding on the format - graphic novel, picture book, or novel with incidental illos. I suppose it depnds on how much of the story I want to paint, and how much to write.

Day 44: Green Fairy

2007-05-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

Green Fairy (2001) Digital painting.

A simple little digital painting inspired by the shape of a peice of clipart.

PSA: This Is Not a Spam Blog

2007-05-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

Why am I posting this? Because, apparently, someone has flagged my blog as "objectionable". Just this one. Which begs the question: Why? I'm a real person, all the art posted here is my own (though I blog under a pseudonym to protect my family's privacy). None of it is obscene. I post once a day, maximum.

Seriously, if you have an issue with me, leave a comment. I'm fairly upset by this.

day 43: Wallflowers

2007-05-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

Wallflowers (1999) Digital photograph.

Two of the dolls from the ragdoll project (CafeGirl and PonyTart), posed.

Day 42: Wintermoon

2007-04-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

Wintermoon (1996 or 1997) Digital collage using altered Paintshop Pro "tubes" (clipart brushes).

Intended as a desktop background. Done for fun, and I ended up being really happy with it, except for the black rim around the moon, which is from a "moon phases" tube I made without thinking what I'd really like to use it for. Not all night skies are black.

Plans to re-do in the future. Maybe.

Days 40 and 41: Portrait and Nimbus

2007-04-29T19:07:00.000-07:00

Portrait (1989) Pencil on paper.

If you were a young woman during the mid-1980's, you may well guess who this young man is. If not, well, the hair is pretty typical of pop musicians of the time. It's one of my best pencil portraits. Still.

Nimbus (2007) Work in progress - current state is a digital painting, incorporating some source photographic elements. Worked in Adobe Photoshop over a scan of the pen and ink study.

An angel, or a djinn, or some other winged, supernatural being.

For the hell of it.

IllustrationFriday: Day 39: Milo?

2007-04-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

Milo? (2007) Digital. Family snapshot, cropped, re-edged and digitally edited in Photoshop, with added text.

The Illustration Friday theme this week is "Remember." This piece, which I have been working on variations of for a couple of years, is the perfect thing. There were two previous versions (in 2002, I think), but this time I started from the original snapshot and reworked towards the real feel I wanted, which was something evocative of the golden cast of good childhood memories.

There really was a puppy named Milo, but I don't know if this was him. He (and his other dog family members) beloged to my aunt and uncle, who were forever fixing up this enormous old house of theirs. We lived nearby and my uncle was pretty close to his sisters (my mom and aunts), and he was really a great influence to have in my life, since my mom was a single parent at the time. The snapshot was taken in early or mid 1975, I would have been about 4, before I went into kindergarten in the fall. Most of the dogs, my aunt, my cousins and the house, were still around into my teens. My uncle wasn't - he died on my sister's birthday the year after this was taken.

I don't know if he took this picture or if my aunt took it. I don't really care which dog it was. It's a little bit of a lost time, and that's why I keep it.

Day 38: colorplay

2007-04-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Untitled (colorplay) (1997) dilute gouache on bristol.

Another quickie, just for fun with color. Kind of looks to mee like a parrot in motion.

Day 37: Snow Fairy

2007-04-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

Sonw Fairy (2002?) Gouache over pencil on marker paper (don't do this). Some retouching to fix paper rippling that didn't scan well.

I had to do some serious retouching of this quickie, because I chose to use dilute gouache on marker paper, and, of course, the paper rippled badly.

It's another anime/manga influenced piece, and I did it super-fast to fill a frame when decorating a new apartment a few years back.

Day 36?

2007-04-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

Day 36 was called on account of thunderstorms and my taking too damn long to finish the piece I wanted to post. That one will be up in a week or two. My muse bit me on the ear, and I have to do Much More Work on that one.

Many appo-logies for the incon-weeeniences.

Day 35: Nikon Eyes

2007-04-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

The Girl With the Nikon Eyes (1997?, 2007) Original: pen and ink with later coloring using gouaches on bristol board. Digital version: Scanned, filtered for increased focal impact. Not retouched otherwise.

This may actually be an older work - I didn't date it, it may be as old as 1991 or 1992, in pen and ink form. I know I colored it around 1996 or 7. In any case, I was reading quite a bit of cyberpunk of some stripe or other at the time, and was particularly taken with the idea of camera-implants in place of eyes. I was also fond of anime. Still am.

The original image was okay, but not focused on the subject enough, and I was never able to really make it work, even when I gave in and colored it. The coloring helped, but not enough. The digital editing finally did the trick, though it took several iterations and layering of focalized blur and lighting effects to make it pop the way it's always been supposed to.

Days 33 and 34: tablet sketches

2007-04-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

So, I spent the weekend digging around in boxes at Mom's and finally located my stylus. It was cunningly hidden in the bookshelf box for my copy of Adobe Illustrator. I'm so happy to have it back, but it's been so long I may have to relearn using it. A stylus is a thing between mousedrawing and using a pencil on paper, a bit of both and a little disconcerting to get used to. These are what I came up with today that was worth saving:

Wry Girl (2007) wacom tablet and Adobe Illustrator, stock brushes.
She's really very Lynda Barry. I didn't figure that out until I was done, but there she is. Maybe I was channeling or something... This is my first sketch with my tablet since getting it unpacked after a year.

Hope (2007) Adobe Illustrator, stock brushes, sketch from photograph with my good old Wacom ArtZII.

This is a quickie, illustration version of the IF subject theme for last week. My photographic version, really the first part of the process, is day 31. I thought I'd go ahead and finish what I started, even if the week is over, so here's what was in my head to begin with.

day 32: Irreconcilable Differences

2007-04-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Irreconcilable Differences (2007) Digital, mouse drawn in Adobe Illustrator.

My entry for Illustration Friday this week. The theme is Polar, and I got this strong feeling of "polar opposites" in human relationships and this is the quick result. Two people, so different in personality and views that they cannot even face each other. They are shown with simple lines, and backs turned, color and line expressing their essential difference.

Day 31: Gifts of Fortune

2007-04-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

Gifts of Fortune (2007) Digital photograph, no manipulation. No flash, black and white.

This was meant to be my Illustration Friday entry for last week, but it took me all week to get just the right image. I wanted to do it using traditional photography techniques, or as close as I might be able to come with a digital camera. The theme last week was Fortune, and my feeling about it was to do with the power of family being a profound demonstration of fortune in my life. My second child took four tries, and I consider him a gift - even though both children are treasures, it was much more difficult to achieve that gift the second time, and I had given up trying when we finally got him.

He's my good fortune.

Also, you will note that this is a day late. I took about 4 dozen images last night and only got it posted today. My apologies, today's will be up shortly.

Day 30: Birth Announcement

2007-04-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

Birth Announcement (2003) Gouache and inks on bristol board over pencil. 11x14.

Celtic knotwork and calligraphy panel, meant to mark the brith of my first child.

day 29: Wings

2007-04-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

Wings (1999) Pen and ink

Design for articulated angel wings, anchored and supported by a set of 18th century stays.

I designed and built a set of wings for a freind for Halloween 1999, and this one of the design drawings.

Day 27 and 28: Red and Blame

2007-04-16T14:51:00.000-07:00

Red (1999) Digital revision of Blue.

A pretty simple color-change revision, but fairly interesting on its own.

Blame (1999) Final digital version of Blue.

Some filtering, cutting through to a layer underneath that contained Red, and text, which was copied from a core dump message.

Day 26: Recipes for Disaster

2007-04-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Recipes For Disaster cover (2000) "cover" art for webzine, digital, collage.

Cover art for splash page of a goth-themed cooking webzine I maintained from 2000 to 2002.

Composed of scans of some funeral-themed dessert plates and the elements from the chapter heading plate I posted earlier. The web project actually grew out of the print project, and they ended around the same time.

Day 25: Penny

2007-04-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

Penny (2007) Digital, Adobe Illustrator.

First - the inspiration is a ferret we live with (it's impossible to own something that habitually escapes). They are very calligraphic creatures, they almost seem to have been designed with brushes in mind. Odd, as their hair would certainly make a good artist's brush.

In any case, as I have spent a good bit of my time doing both pen and brush calligraphy, I have wanted to try and capture that essential mustelid line, which is so liquid, moreso even than Steinlen's cats. This would be my first attempt, consider it a figure study. It's all done with vector lines in Illustrator, mouse guided, as the stylus is still in parts unknown (I ought to just order a replacement).

If I ever get my sumi-e brushes unpacked, I'll try a real brushwork portrait of her. I'd be ashamed if I did not. Pixel pushing is a skill that still feels like cheating to me, no matter how hard it is and no matter that my hand still guides the tools. Maybe it's the "undo" feature that makes it feel that way.

Day 24: James, Sleeping

2007-04-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

James, Sleeping (2007) Sketch, 7x11. Pencil on drawing paper, finger smudged/erased shadows and highlights.

This is a simple sketch of my sleeping infant. I can't tell you how weird it is to draw someone who is sleeping in your lap without disturbing them. I think I did well, for a quick, rough sketch.

I'm going to be doing more life-drawing exercises, and some of them will be good enough to post here.

Illustration Friday: Spring

2007-04-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

Spring (2007) Digital painting, incorporating collage elements from original reference photographs. Photoshop 5, mouse, and digital camera.

I'm leaping into Illustration Friday wholeheartedly, if a little late this week. The theme is green - and I think I captured what I think of when I think of green.

The seedling is a basil seedling in my kitchen garden. I was going for a feeling of deep, bourgeoning greenness and life, as we usually have here in late April or May. I'm thinking I might have got it, though the skies are all early April.

I did all the masking/drawing/painting with my mouse, as my tablet stylus is AWOL (I love moving). I only used a few filters - fresco, high pass, and gaussian blur. All else is done with the basic photo retouching tools, and a couple of brushes. The tree is real, but doesn't look anything like that, the leaves are parsley, made into brushes, and the statice on the ground is the pink-frosted top of my redbud tree, or at least it started that way. The clouds were photographed today -4 photos-, and layered and cloned and smudged around until they were right.

Day 23: August Hunt

2007-04-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

August Hunt (2004) Pencils, ink and gouache on bristol board.

Final composition of this piece, most of the comments are the same for the structure. However, the colorwork presented its own problems and challenges.

I had to match the two different blues in the arc of sky, and the gilding of the figures had to be done after the underpainting, so I referenced the pencil composition and the original work (which I was intentionally imitating) at every brushstroke. I had some difficulty with the lake and the stream, and I'm still not completely pleased with them. The rest of the landscape was fairly straightforward to color, as I've done many landscapes in gouache and watercolor, some of which I even like.

While the horses may seem clumsy, when compared to the original manuscript illustration, they are stylistically identical, and seemed, in the original, to have been created from templates. A typical technique involved pouncing powdered pigment through a pinpricked template to create a stylistically standard underdrawing. This enabled the master to concentrate on the fine colorwork, and his apprentices to do the bulk of the layout work without constant supervision, and without affecting the continuity of the piece.

I did not use pouncing to transfer the pencils to the final board, I used pressure transfer and overdrawing of the penciled design, as I did not wish to destroy the pencilled sheet.

The horses were colored from photographs of real horses belonging to the owner of the piece and her closest friend. The dogs are drawn from life - one is a breed standard pug, and the other is a pug mix, with a long snout. The owner does, indeed, possess brilliant red har.

Day 22: Herod and Salome

2007-04-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Herod and Salome (2003) 8x10 pen and ink Illustration, some digital cleanup. Intended for print.

This is one of a set of several pen and ink illustrations made from photographs of 12th century stone carvings, which were done for a small-press publication on the clothing of the era. I used about 10 different photographs of the particular piece as the source documentation, and I'm not even sure I consider it art - this feels more like a technical illustration of an extant artefact than my own art.

Day 21 (late): Starfield

2007-04-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Starfield (1997) Digital painting, seamless tiling design.

An early version of this was made for my site, then later I tweaked and improved it to this, for a site design suite I put together for my sister. It's one of two I made that I'm still quite happy with. Both are essentially textile designs that were generated for web use.

PSA: Days off

2007-04-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

I took Saturday and Sunday off for the holiday. Unintentionally. I thought I would have time, but I didn't.

Today's art will be up later.

Day 18: Untitled

2007-04-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

Untitled (2002) Digital photograph, some retouching.

Here's another clear winter day photograph. It's very much a non-religious Chrsitmas card sort of image, but it works. That was a good photography day.

Day 17: Doubletake

2007-04-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

Doubletake (1987) Study for serigraph. 9x12. Gouache and pencil on paper.

I may still have one of the serigraphs around here. This was the study for a series of 50 three-color, poster-sized serigraphs I did as my final project in my favorite design course in college, and my prof got the progressive set. The stencil film was hand cut, and I had to resize and manually do color seperations (black, red, silver) from my study. I did it the old-fashioned way, using a grid and a photocopy of the 9x12 design. I wish I still had the butcher paper I drew the seperations on, for cutting the films, but I cut through them to cut the films more accurately.

I'd love to do it again - and I mean the whole old-fashioned, hand-cut stencils, messy, dirty, unrefined silkscreening technique. I did another run of a different size with photo-sensitive stencil medium and I don't like it as much, it feels like cheating. If I'm going to do that, I might as well just print the things out on a printer, or send it off to a printing service. Serigraphy, for me,is about the process and getting my hands dirty.

It's now the oldest one here. It's twenty years old.

Note: yes, this one is late. I spent all of yesterday making tortillas and prepping dinner. I think I'm happiest when I'm getting my hands dirty. I'll do today's in a few minutes.

Day 16: Infant Figure Study

2007-04-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Figure Study of My Son (2003) Pencil on paper.

Pretty straightforward - my contstantly moving infant son had passed out on the floor, I picked up a pencil and my sketchpad and whipped out a sketch. It came out well enough to make me happy, and I really ought to do that for the second baby, Real Soon Now.

One of my most prized things in my family's collection of photos and keepsakes is a polychrome crayon (as in crayola-64-colors) sketch of me done by my mom's friend Nadia when I was about 6. Photos only tell what you looked like, but portraits and sketches tell how others saw you. Which is more valuable?

Day 15: Erishkegal

2007-04-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Erishkegal (2000) Digital painting, incorporating collaged photographic elements and text.

I was reading a lot of paleohistory and books about Sumerian religous texts. I felt, all along, that Erishkegal (the goddess of the underworld and gaurdian of the dead) kind of got the short end of the stick during the world's creation. She certainly isn't happy in the Songs of Innana, she obviously feels cheated, and is envious of the real life that the love/fertility goddess gets to have.

I wanted to make a portrait of her as the bride of the underworld. This is it.

day 14: Girl

2007-04-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

Girl (1996) (three stages) Pen over pencil underdrawing, dark areas filled with black marker, with red marker to add color, then the image was photocopied and strategically erased.

I saw a similar pose in a magazine and wanted to try drawing it. The final image turned out wiht an entirely differenct fell (not surprisingly) than the inspiration image. I played with techniques, since the drawing itself is not technically challenging, and I wanted to do more with it. I inked the sketch, filling large areas with magic marker, then I photocopied the inked image and made it as dark as I could, deciding to use the surplus toner as a sort of scratchboard, except that I used a pink eraser instead of a stylus.

It came out pretty well, for a piece of "office supply art."

Textual interlude: Toy design

2007-04-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, where's day 13? There is no day 13. Look! My April fool joke was a lack of posting.

I'm thinking making a few plush Gregors. Okay, stuffed Gregors, as I suspect a plush cockroach wouldn't really work. Maybe an edition of 5. Or so. With accessories... Anyone interested? They'd auction for a starting price of about 30 dollars.

I'm also considering some more dolls. Still percolating, though.

More Later.

Day 12: Mousecat

2007-03-31T22:40:00.000-07:00

MouseCat, 2006 Posed digital photograph of a needle-felted scuplture of a cat. Minor digital cleanup/tweaking.

I made this for my mother and psoed and photographed it on her desk, which is made of a long-ago-gutted pianola. It's a charming little bit of fluff, but some of the photos I took were downright surreal.

Day 11: Kiss:Heart

2007-03-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

Kiss:Heart, 1999. Digitally manipulated and retouched photobooth picture. Originally intended to be a study for a painting.

I feel a little squicked about this one. On the one hand, it's really an iconic, almost perfect image. On the other, that's me and my ex in the original. It's very hard to be objective about its artistic value when all I see is a bad breakup (even if I was very much in love with the guy at one time). It's not as if you can tell who those people are in the picture, anyway.

Don't make good art with relationship overtones, unless you want to feel faintly dirty about it for the rest of your life. I may do the painting, just to work out the feelings I have about this piece. It's a good piece, even if I wouldn't hang it in my house.

Day 10: Gofer Service Awards

2007-03-29T17:56:00.000-07:00

Gofer Service Awards, 1995. Pencil, colored pen and gel pen on 8.5 x 11 copier paper.

Wow, this one's the oldest so far. Very much created on the fly. We had so many apparently suicidally helpful gofers at Anime America 1995 that I felt that we needed to give them something. My sister had a small laminator, so they were photocopied and laminated, and given out to the volunteers.

I think we gave out 16 of them. I'm not sure.

The mere fact that I still possess this flimsy scrap of copypaper is amazing.

Day 9 bonus: Scary silverware

2007-03-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

Scary Silverware (1999) Chapter heading illustration for privately published cookbook. Pencil, ink, colored pen, scanned and digitally cleaned, then finished in Photoshop. About half digital and half traditional, and one of my earlier tablet pieces (not much was done with the stylus though - it really isn't that difficult to draw a glob with a mouse...).

I did several illustrations for this cookbook project, including two page layouts and two old-style cookbook glamour food shots.

ETA: oops! I thought this was posted today, but it wasn't, so there'll be another up in a few.

Day nine: Shonagon

2007-03-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Shonagon (2000) Digital illustration, incorporating lines of a poem.

I wrote a poem some years back about the famous Heian era journalista Sei Shonagon, and her Pillow Book. I wanted to incorporate it into an illustration, so both could be presented together. This is the result of that first attempt.

In future, I'd like to re-work this concept, using more references to her world in the illustrative piece, such as some of the complex and beautiful color and symbol language that was used, and possibly use a more Heian drawing style. Just not too Genji-like...I think I might be capable of doing this, as I am very Asian-influenced, and I like doing linework. We'll see.

Day Eight: Study for August Hunt

2007-03-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

Study for August Hunt (2004) 11 by 14 inches. Pencil on paper. Same-size plan for an illumination in the style of the Tres Riches Heurs.

I planned this as a gift for a friend, whose birthday is in August. The background is planned to be similar to the background in the August month illumination in the Tres Riches Heurs, except later in the same day or week - the grain is stacked, the reapers are gone. The foreground is a portrait of the owner of the finished piece and her horse, with her dogs running beside.

Day seven: Winter Solstice

2007-03-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Winter Solstice (2002) Digital photograph. Taken with an older Canon digital, most of the framing was done while shooting. Cropped, and slightly altered digitally (saturation and contrast were adjusted).

Sometimes landscape photography is just good. I'm no Ansel Adams, but pictures like this make me significantly less embarrassed to hold a camera in the name of art.

It was a gorgeous winter day at my mom's place, so I took the camera outside and tried to capture some of that magic.

Day 6: Androgynous Boy#2

2007-03-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

Androgynous Boy#2 (2001) Scan of a three dimensional object, a jointed, poseable doll.

Amazing depth of field effects can be got from scanning 3-d objects. I was photographing this doll before sending him to the person I made him for, and on a whim, posed him several times on my flatbed scanner and this was one of the two most pleasing results. No further digital maniputlation of the image was necessary.

He is a doll with a jointed, poseable skeleton, with padding sewn in place and a cotton knit "skin" laid on top and carefully sewn in place. He's a model, a needle sculpture, and an articulated doll in one. Practically speaking, he has yarn hair, faux leather trousers, silk shirt and waistcoat. His face is needle-sculpted and drawn in with art pen. His limbs and torso are intentionally longer than would be proportional, to make him appear tall and fey.

Day five: Untitled

2007-03-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

Untitled (1999) sharpie over pencil on bristol board, large areas filled with india ink. Some digital cleanup.

A study I did for a white-on-black leather jacket painting some years ago. Not much thought went into it, beyond rough subject matter - pretty girl, check, cemetery, check, rose, check...I never titled it beyond "that jacket thing," and never did the jacket, either. I think it's really more appropriate to some goth club flier, anyway, and I was really outgrowing the scene at the time.

Day Four: Blue

2007-03-23T22:04:00.000-07:00

Blue (1997) dilute gouache on bristol board.

This is really a quick, one off, color study kind of thing. Yet, I loved it. And I still love it. It formed the basis for a digital piece I did a few years later, but it stands as a good piece in its own right.

Day three: Poppets, Bouquet

2007-03-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

Poppets (1999) Digitally manipulated photograph of four posed, armless, faceless, rag dolls. Dolls are cotton and polyfil.

Bouquet (1999) Digitally manipulated photograph of detached, stuffed cotton doll legs, gathered in a box. Legs are cotton and polyfil.

This is something that grew out of my taking documentary photographs of a craft project. I was making a series of character rag dolls from a pattern I designed for the project. While photographing the various steps, I posed the dolls and their parts in various ways, and took photographs that had little to do with the steps involved in making the dolls themselves. There are about 10 photographs in this series, and perhaps 30 of the documentary, instructional series.

Day 2: Kafka

2007-03-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

Try a Cup of Kafka (1996, 1998)

Sharpie over pencil on some thin, white board. This is the digital version, circa 1998. Original is currently AWOL, but not gone.

A cartoon advert done for an ... unofficial ... workplace newsletter. There's another one that I'm leery of posting, because it was a political cartoon about the warehouse being cold. The Kafka/coffee thing was an everyday joke, and I thought it might be fun to make a fake ad for our fake newsletter.

I ended up being very fond of my Gregor. He seems fairly content, here, and nothing like his namesake of the story.

Day One: Secret Book

2007-03-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Secret Book 1999

This is really two works.

The book is a journal, made of paper, board, cloth, thread, wire, glue and ribbons. After making the journal, I photographed it and digitally altered the photograph. The journal is approximately 5x7 inches, closed, and I think about 60 pages. It is in a private collection, and was intended for use.

The creative process of the book was very intuitive, involving as much "let's see if this will work" as traditional bookbinding techniques. The paper was sewn into signatures, which were then sewn together, and glued to the fabic-covered boards. I chose the spiralled wire decorations for the outer binding, as I enjoy working with wire and I loved the way the stretched spirals evoke Asian depictions of clouds. The ribbons tied along the spine serve the function of the spine of a traditionally bound book, taking some strain off the signature stitching when the book is in use. The third ribbon functions as a latch.

The book is so evocative of dreams, clouds, night, and older votive books that it suggested a certain arcane, occult feeling in the photographs I took, originally to document the physical work. I decided to explore digital manipulations of the photographs to further express that feeling.

This piece is the result.

Just what the Intarweb needs, another Art Blog.

2007-03-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

I used to be an artist, hey, sometimes I still am, though that gets shoved to the back burner most days. A new-years resolution this year for me was to create a blog, just for my art. I'll be posting a piece a day.

What is really going on here is that I have decided to try to explore my creative process and perhaps return to using it regularly, by posting, documenting, and writing about each piece, once a day.

My other blogs may suffer from occasional (or is that frequent?) lapses of content, but I assure you, and myself, that this one should have enough content for at least a year.

If this works, there will easily be more.
M.