oh yes, I suppose I forgot to mention...

sand colored sea crab
nervous eyes perched on long stalks
small legs scuttling

salt coating lips, face-
hair dries into crunchy spikes
spit out the brine taste


In other words, last week we moved to the beach.

And now I spend every day sitting on a towel by the ocean.

I have named our new house... okay, I dunno yet. I'll decide after I've unpacked.

alpha beta gamma delta etc etc

I took a Greek alphabet class for about an hour and a half over the internet tonight. It was fascinating. I was fascinated.

Not so much by the wonders of the Greek alphabet, which was admittedly fairly cool, but more just by the wonders of technology that made it totally doable for 50 different kids from around the world sit around in their rooms or whatever taking a class from the same teacher and still being able to ask and answer questions.

Yeah, it was fascinating.

Also the Greek alphabet is hard to write. Why did they have to make all their letters weird, complicated squiggly lines and going all over the place?

Anyways, technology and foreign languages are just pretty much beyond me.

(Bye the way, I'm typing this all on my newly fixed laptop. The one that was sitting under my bed for over two years because I just cannot control machines and I decided I hated it.)

adventures in graphic noveling

For those of you who maybe didn't hear, this New Years I resolved to write and illustrate an entire graphic novel/webcomic type thing.

It has been a crazy lot amount of fun so far. I've only done one page all the way, although I've almost finished page 2, sketched pages 3-5, have the paneling planned up to page 10, and have everything up to the third chapter scripted, and have almost the entire plot finished.

I do still have an awful lot of kinks to work out. For example, how to speech bubbles work? what about font? And drawing with a mouse is a bit stressful.

oh, a comment!

Zoe said...

Your comparisons are so cool - the ones where you compare the same drawing from different years. I just love to see how your style has changed. And the expressions, too! They keep getting more and more defined! 

First off, thanks, Zoe! Second of all, those comparisons are the most fun things to do, ever. I knew that one day it'd be handy to have all of my old drawing lying around my room. :D

YAY

I surpassed my 27,000 April word goal with a grand total of 27,032  (admittedly not very skillfully written) words and went on to ecstatically print out my finished 115-page-long first draft yesterday morning.

In other words, HALLELUJAH. I can get onto phase two now!

(and begin planning my November novel, ha.)
 

Also I drew this clothing reference for one of my characters in an online art group-- I have continued my drawing and procrastinating since April began. I really had honestly forgotten how wonderful I am at procrastinating when I'm supposed to be doing something else. I've managed to get myself hooked on a new TV show, doodled constantly, and learned to cook.

(Speaking of learning to cook, I'm still very bad at it, but that's okay. Maybe I'll post some of the things I've learned up someday-- I figured out how to make baking powder, sautee stuff, even get the onions so they don't make you cry. Hint: don't watch Doctor Who while chopping those things.)

Also, I think that's it.

I can't wait to begin editing my truly atrocious novel! No, really. I' going to give it a few days to sit, but then I'm taking a red pen to it. Hahahaha.
I can't wait.

and bye the way

Since I desperately need to write my NaNoWriMo novel this month, all my drawing (read: procrastinating) skills came back with a vengeance. Le sigh.

NaNoWriMo... again

So there's this thing called Camp NaNoWriMo... which is basically NaNoWriMo, only during April and July.

And of course I'm doing it.

 So far I'm on track! (Sort of? not meeting my personal word goals, but at least not officially behind.)I'm finishing my November novel, which I didn't finish as far as plot goes.

Motivational sketch. Read the "write you fool" part in Gandalf's voice.

Oh, speaking of sketching--I just got my arting abilities back! I can hold a pencil again! Hallelujah.just in time to help me procrastinate.

...don't mind me, I'm giving my fish a new pond. (see side bar, heh.)

Random interesting words:

"waveson" --goods floating on the sea after a shipwreck
"whangam" --an imaginary animal
"woodshedding" --spontaneous barbershop singing

When I figure out how to use these in an actual sentence, I'll let you know. 

still trying to kill my art block

I have now graduated myself to quick scetchy paintshop-painting pieces. Basically: I'm bored so I color sketches super fast and don't really care how it looks.

Most of the time while drawing these (I've got a few more about halfway colored) I just hum Dory's "just keep swimming!" song from Finding Nemo. yep, I've gone pretty wonky.

Also, spell check doesn't believe that "Nemo" is a real word and wants me to change it to "anemone". Random fact.

OH LOOK, I DREW STUFF

My latest attempt at vanquishing my art block (yes, I'm still incapable of drawing. sigh.) has been to spend hours drawing lineart in Paintshop Pro. I'm getting very sick of it, which is the basic idea. I figure once I literally can't stand this anymore, I'll be so relieved to pick up my pencils again it won't matter what I draw. XD

On a (slightly unrelated) note, I've decided to do camp NanoWriMo, which begins in April. Basically, it's NaNoWriMo, only with more flexible word counts. i'm planning to do 25,000 this round.  The above characters are all part of my plot.

Things I Love: the Secret of Kells

Secret of Kells is basically just a movie. Except, of course, it's a completely traditionally-animated movie in which every scene is basically a piece of art that I want to rip off my television screen and plaster on my wall.

Yes, these are all stills from the movie. Not even stills from my favorite scenes or anything. Just random ones I found on Google. I could post the entire movie in pictures here, and it would be breathtakingly gorgeous.

In other words, go watch it. they have it on Netflix.

two extraordinarily random poems here...

13,000 feet above the ground
coasting through the air inside a metal bird
look out the tiny oval window 
down
down
down
down
down
down
at a tiny silver car
like a busy beetle, all alone
and wonder if the people inside have any idea
that they're being spied on

it was mustard yellow
once
but not anymore
now its been charred
yellowgrey
like a sickly grungy green
because thats how it feels
a house is supposed to 
protect shelter
and this house did
once
but not anymore
now its alone
it didn't mean to kill
the people inside
that isnt what homes do
it was a home
once
but not anymore
now its just a house 
because its veins were all wrong
and homes have to keep people safe
and the house tried
and couldnt protect
anymore

HALLELUJAH

Guess what I have?
a.) a therapy llama
b) a large yellow mug with a smiley-faceon it
c) a lifetime supply of spearmint tea
d) every shade of cool grey Prismacolor marker
e) none of the above

The answer is e), sadly enough. But that's actually okay, because I have something else!

What is this mysterious thing, you ask?
A KEYBOARD. YES.

I may have already posted about this on the blog, but I have been using two keyboards lately, one of which was missing half of it's keys, the other one missing the oppisite half of keys.

It was extremely hard to type. In fact, it even got to the point where I would be happily writing something on my iThing when WHAM "where's my other keyboard? i need to hit the letter g!" Causing me to panic for a second before I realize that I don't actually need a second keyboard on my iThing.

And now I can type again.

blocked

I have been unable to draw anything satisfactory for the past few weeks, which I must admit annoys me to no end. I have tried drawing everything to get out of my rut, but I don't like anything.

Well, this 20's Flapper Chinese style dragon turned out okay, but I don't know what I was thinking when I drew her. Honestly.

I have yet to decide a course of action on what to do-- I should probably get started on a large project so I'll feel compelled to finish it. What that large project may be, I have yet to decide.

For now I may just pick up a new hobby. Puzzles are fun. Hm.

Things I Love: Dovecote Crest

Dovecote Crest is a webcomic, and basically it is the most fun webcomic I have ever read.
(Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I don't exactly read a lot of webcomics... but it would definitely take a lot to trump this one.)

Why, you ask? Let me make a list...

1. the art. Obviously, these pictures are all pages from Dovecote Crest.... and you can probably tell at a glance that it evolves a lot over the course of the comic. In honesty, watching the art grow and become beautiful adds so much to reading it. But beyond that, the art is just so charming and enjoyable, right from the start. I hardly even noticed how much it changed.

2. the stories. They're engaging, well-told, and basically awesome. Enough said.

3. the setting. Dovecote Crest is set on a historic site, and the characters are Civil War reenactors. I especially love this, having been brought up hanging around places like Colonial Williamsburg (where there are Revolutionary War reenactments all over the place) and being a tour guide myself. I can especially connect with some of the museum-y tidbits lying around.

4. this is a major one; the characters. Basically I'm in love with all of them. Some characters only get one or two lines throughout the stories, and yet you (or at least me) still feel connected to them. I especially love the characters separate voices and unique speech patterns--Jeremy's is easily the most noticeable, but they all have small patterns that make it easy to tell who's talking, even without the handy speech bubbles.

Also one more thing before I go... I personally love looking at the art of this comic, because it is so beautiful, but its still very accessible. As I'm trying to plunder through art myself, I love being able to look at the art and see something that I could maybe learn to do someday. I love the colors and the way they work, and being able to see how the artist did them. Other comics, which don't use styles I'm familiar with, seem distant to me. A lot of webcomics use art styles that seem so perfect, like some MARVEL god came down from his cloud and handed over perfectly drawn art panels. This art doesn't feel like that. This feels very familiar, and I love it for that.

Also if you aren't convinced by all this that you should look at it, go look at it anyways. And start at the beginning. HERE.

Guard yourselves, my friends...

Who Is Zuri Sophilia?: The spork...clever utensil combination, or downfal...: What is wrong with the world today?  This question has been asked countless times, and the responses which have been given are as varied as...

Happy Valentine's Day!

This year's Valentine's day drawing! It took nearly two days, much longer than the others. On the other hand, I've been in an art block for a while now and this really helped. So yay!

2012's Valentine's Day Picture

Aaand 2011's Valentine's Day Picture

Things I love: Figment Daily Themes

at Figment.com you can sign up to have a writing prompt sent to you every weekday, Monday-Friday. I love these things. I love them very much.

I don't often use them, but whenever I get into a writing rut I can just go through my email history and find something to dig me out. Plus, they're always interesting to read! :D

bored

And this is what I do when I'm bored!

In case you can't tell what that thing up there is, I build house plans. And yes, I am extremely bored.

On the other hand, this thing easily took four hours, because right after finishing it my little sister ran past and unplugged the computer. The computer is so old that when you unplug it, everything crashes. So I lost all of my work. It was highly depressing. I felt like I had to finish it again, so here it is. XD

Which reminds me of something I just read about Sharon Kay Penman's book the Sunne in Splendour. She wrote the first copy of the manuscript, five hundred pages worth of historical fiction, only to have her only copy stolen from her car. She was unable to write for six years after that, after which she rewrote the whole thing. I was almost physically sick when I heard that. Let it be a lesson to us all to back up everything we write a million times.

And since Ms. Penman's book is about King Richard III... here's an article about the recreation of his face! And guess what? He doesn't have a withered arm...