The Sea Cucumber

Everything's mostly packed up now so in the down time I decided to finish one of my UFO's that's been sitting around for... oh... probably a year. I thought it was going to occupy me for just a few hours but the density of this thing took all day to finish 3 rows! I know it's not technically a 'sketch' for the 'sketch blog' but this blog encompasses all kinds of creativity! So let's have at it! :)

OK. It really looks like a sea cucumber while all stretched out, makes me giggle.

The stitch is called embellished herringbone. It's truly easy to make but very time consuming due to the density of the beads.

There's a funny story about it too. I was on the back of my hubby's motorcycle (before I got my own) and we just happened to drive by the little bead store tucked away on a road that housed many industrial companies. Definitely not where I'd expect to find one! Being that it had 'dragon' in the title we decided to stop and march inside fully suited and probably weirded out the ladies inside gathered around the beading table.

That's when I chanced upon the store owner's embellished herringbone bracelet on display and I fell in LOVE! I knew I had to make it so I signed up for a few classes knowing that the particular class for the bracelet was months away! Thus I started my beading hobby and am poorer for it but happy all the same!

Is that a sea cucumber on your arm?

Mostly invisible clasp, when not looking at it on an angle,
'scuse my terrible photography :p

Winter Woes!

Disaster struck again. I spilled water on my laptop and that's never a good thing. Last time, on my old laptop, I fried the connection to the battery so I always had to have the thing plugged in. Lessons learned, I immediately ripped the battery out and I was able to save my laptop! Yay!

When will I learn that electronics and water just don't mix?

I'll save the sob story but I am being forced to move and it hasn't even been a year in this new place. I'm utterly disappointed. That being said, I also hate packing and moving in general especially in the winter when it's cold and snowy. It just makes for a plain miserable experience.

Looks like any kind of art is going to be put on a huge hold until I can get packed and moved out. It's too bad... I only just acquired my mom's sewing machine and just got all the materials I need to make a denim rag quilt.

The only positives in all this seems to be that I will be able to go through all my storage stuff. I've got about 5 boxes worth of stuff and 1 box of clothes so far to donate to a thrift store. De cluttering is so empowering!

Also, my car will finally get put back together. Exciting! I've been waiting since August! It might look junky on the outside but it'll drive like a brand new car!

I might be able to squeeze in a sketch here and there but I won't make any promises. Even Skyrim has been put on hold. FUS-RO- *hack cough choke*..... *dies*.... Yup that about sums up my life right now.

Peace everyone.

Bug out.

Winter Blues

Been gone for awhile but it's all because of this here table. Notice how shiny and new it is! I spent hours sanding that thing by hand and the flat surfaces with my random orbit sander (yay xmas presents!). Not really a sketch but it's creative in it's own right. I sure put enough effort into the darn thing!!

oooh! aaaahh!!

The chair is here for comparison of how weathered the darn thing was although the table itself was much much worse! I've never sanded and painted furniture for restoration before so this was a definite learning experience for me. And oh the mistakes! but luckily none can be seen unless thoroughly inspecting :p


I've always wanted to go skijoring or sledding with my dog so with the acquisition of my old skis and ski boots from storage I think it would be worth a try although my dog might be suspicious of the entire endeavor. I just need to order a harness for the two of us. My favourite part about this model is the safety release. Usable for when your dog sees a rabbit or some trees get in the way or things are going just terribly wrong!

So in the spirit of skijoring I decided to flex my tablet and make a little sketch painting.

Although this is the ideal scenario, I'm sure I'll be on my face for most of the first run if my water skiing skills are anything to go by.

Smooth Jazz

My father is very much into Jazz music so I painted this for him for X-mas. It is on 18 x 20 canvas done with acrylic paint. The irony of this painting came from the fact that I was going to do it digitally and get it printed on canvas for the hand painted effect. Then it occurred to me that it might just be easier to physically hand paint it in the first place rather than paying an outrageous price to have a digital version printed on canvas! :)

The actual musician and instrument only took me 2 days to finish but the background took me about 4 long days of experimentation.

I had some difficulty mixing the black with red and I soon discovered that the red paint I have dries translucent so there was no going back once I had put the black in, short of painting it over with white. Yes, red background, you almost broke this painting!

I am thinking of doing a tryptic with perhaps a cello and trumpet or even a flute but I haven't decided yet. This might yet turn into a series and perhaps a much larger painting with the lot of them on the same canvas. So many ideas!

Enjoy!

The Peonies: Chinese Painting

I've been pretty lazy in the art department of my life lately due to the fact that I am finally able to play games on my ps3 that I bought 3 yrs ago and the games that were x-mas gifts 2 years ago. There I admitted it. Out in the open. Done.

Sadly they were Dragon Age: Origins and Bakugon Battle Brawlers which is kind of like a Yugi-oh thing with the card game and monsters part but it is also basically an elaborate game of the old style Pin Ball machines in that you can run your 'ball' through an obstacle course to gain more points. Oh and you need to land your ball on a card in the middle of the playing field at the end or else you lose all the points you picked up along the way. Surprisingly this game was a lot of fun despite its obvious catering to the 8-12 year old age group, but it did get repetitive after awhile.

Anyways, on to the goods! I decided this year to paint some pieces for my parents for gifts. So far I only have a background going for my Dad's piece which is going to be some Jazz musicians. But I have finished a painting of the peonies for Mom.

My test piece of chinese style Peonies was done on a type of paper that is used for calligraphy and ink, making it incredibly resistant to the natural bleeding effect of water colors. The actual piece was done on traditional Xuan (rice) paper and I can easily equate the consistency of this paper to painting on a piece of paper towel.

Too much water in your brush makes your paint blush out in all directions without control. While I liked the way it gave rough edges to the leaves you can see how the colors just bled all over the place into a muddy wash of color. I am considering redoing it but I think I'll just get the same thing all in part to how this paper behaves when touched with water.

Behold! The test subject on ink paper!
(happy with how the peonies turned out... not so much on the foliage)

VS. Traditional Xuan paper! Curly edge Shadows of Awesome!
(happy with the foliage on the right but not on the left!)

Both side by side on my counter top for size comparison.
(the inked one is a regular 8x11 sheet of paper)

So yay for traditional media! I haven't done any for YEARS. Probably since highschool. How sad :( With how my dad's painting on canvas is turning out it sorely shows. But more on that later! For now enjoy the Peonies, I know I'll probably be painting these over and over again because they're so fun to do!

Oh and I'll get the jump on the wishing of Happy Holidays, Merry X-mas, and Happy Yuletide! I think that covers everyone :)

Progress

New lion sconces and some minor details. Still not happy with the gawd awful terracotta walkway but I'll get to it eventually... also water isn't flaming aqua but it works :p

System Crash

What a downer... I started today's painting off really well. I decided to go at it with a relaxed attitude. I identified why I didn't like the latest version of my greek town. It's too clean and sterile and dead... and digital. The previous one although it's a really bad quick sketch had so much more feeling to it regardless of how much a lack of skill I had when I made it. It seemed funny because I didn't change the colors of the buildings at all, just the sky.

So I settled to make it more artistic and less computer-like. I had an idea for some lion head sconces as spitting fountains at the base of the pillars. I got to painting, started off with wacky colors I didn't care about, put some roman pillars on my archway. The lions turned out so great! They were beautiful and really looked like they were carved from stone! I was so pleased!

And then... it happened. Horror of horrors PS crashed on me. It's never happened before and I was previously working with a much larger file. Blue dragon got up to half a gig and I was saving every time I paused to think for fear that the program would eat my work. I don't fully understand why PS crashed but of course I hadn't saved my lions and they got eaten. I briefly hoped I could recover them from the scratch disk but alas... the internet consensus is no, you can't. It freely eats your stuff when it crashes. Nom.

I think the most infuriating part is knowing the image is cached in your RAM and you can't get it. Then as you keep using your computer it gets gobbled up into nothing.

What an inspiration killer to a good start on today's progress.

I have a feeling the laptop's outdated 4 GB of memory isn't enough. I really wish I could use my imac with 8GB. But even then that might not be enough for a powerhouse program like CS4.

I guess I'll just have to muster up some courage to go back and redo my work while it's still fresh in my mind. The worst part is knowing that no matter how hard I try, it won't be exactly the same. Poor pretty lion sconces... RIP.

Rawr.

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