notebook drawings

Dug through my things and found pictures from the Italy trip with my cousins some years back. They make very nice drawing references.

I also have a very cute, and very cheap, small notebook, the Chinese-stationery character kind. It has interesting textures, sweet sayings and funny little illustrations. I thought they would go quite well with my new hyperrealistic pen style.

They do!

birthday wish list!!!

It'll be my birthday again soon, and you know what that means: totally unrealistic wish lists!!! Hee hee.

Some of my dreams are already coming true--I've already got some swag from friends like manga and a shoulder bag for work. And I got to visit Manila and party with some very old friends!

But it's not a wish list if you didn't have some completely unlikely items in there, like a Lamborghini or one of those ginormous Phaidon books hand-bound by Italian monks. A wish list is basically throwing your desires out into the universe...just in case it's feeling generous.

So I've mixed up the unlikely with the plausible for fun, and maybe you guys can make up some of your own wish lists to join in!

• Hopeless Savages Greatest Hits volume 1 - a not-yet-printed Omnibus Edition including my favourite comic ever, Hopeless Savages Ground Zero, which has been insanely difficult to find.
• A Lomo Lubitel or LC-A+
• Blue animation pencils or pencil leads
• An extant copy of Helen deWitt's The Last Samurai. I have owned three different copies of this book at different times, and lost them in different ways. :(
• A Softimus Prime!!! Please stop laughing now, you know it's awesome.
• An iPad (you knew this was coming), possibly with a stylus and a copy of Sketchbook Pro.
• Comic book and manga layout sheets.
• Any of the following: Welcome To Temptation, Bet Me, Tell Me Lies or Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie
• Anything from here. If I had to choose, I'd pick a few of the Caran D'Ache Neocolors or the Inktense pencils, or maybe some acrylic medium or canvases. But really I would take anything. Even if I already had it.
• A geeky coffee mug like the Penguin Classics/Moderns

Or, you know, an e-card from Artpassions.net would be ok, because I love that place and people hardly send e-cards anymore.

So I fell down the stairs at work today.

I was short on sleep, and in a hurry, and a little annoyed because of the combination of the two plus some crowding on the stairs, and then my heel slipped.

My heel slipped on the top step, and then my whole body sort of folded up.

And I was so out of it, I just watched helplessly as I slid, on my knees, with a bumpy but steady turn of speed to the bottom of the stairs.

It kind of hurt, but it didn't seem so bad. I was just irritated with myself and in the mood for some mindless self-indulgence, so I went to the mall and bought myself some pens and a blue mechanical pencil.
Of course, when I got back, my foot started hurting enough to notice, and it got pretty swollen, which didn't improve my mood. I finally had it checked out by the company doc (benefits! yay!) who put a cold compress on it and had me prop it up on a pillow while I had a short nap.
Then she taped it up, gave me some meds, and told me to keep a cold compress on it and get it X-rayed if it was still swollen after 24 hours.

I hurt myself rarely enough that it looks kind of cool. If I were younger I could pretend I were Robin and had hurt myself kicking a skel in the teeth, or facing off with Lady Shiva or something. As it is I just draw sketchy comics and sit at my computer with my foot up and an icepack tied round my ankle...blogging about it.

The End!

because you can't reblog facebook things on blogger.

So while I was pretending not to stalk a bunch of my friends on The Social Media That Dares Not Speak Its Name For Fear Of More Bloody F4rmVi113 Sp4m, I happened on this:

On Work by Kent Nurburn (non-FB link--FB link is here)

Which reminded me I hadn't posted any Alchemy for a while.

For those of you just joining us...Kabuki - The Alchemy is the seventh book in a series, but with a very different tone from its predecessors. It stands alone as an exploration of turning points in one's life, of vocation and what vocation means to different people at different times in their lives.

Click the pictures to enlarge and read the complete text.

Stranger on Plane (DM): Don't choose a career based solely on job security. You can work for what you think is the most secure corporation in the world. But even that giant company can buy you off or stab you in the back.

Don't sacrifice your dreams for the illusion of security. There is no security. This will free you up to do what you really need to do. Use this as an opportunity to realise your dreams.

Kabuki: What if you are not sure what those are?

DM: Start by recalling what you liked to do as a child...Around the age of 9 to 11.

At that age your personality is sophisticated enough to know what you are internally motivated to do, but it is right before the age where you begin to submerge your natural identity...Think back to what you enjoyed before they squeezed your dreams into a box of practicality.

Before you were labelled or groomed for your family's or society's explanations of you.

Kabuki (thinking): I peel all that away to peek underneath at what is inside. What I was. Before the mask. Before the scars.

DM: Write down what you enjoyed doing at that early time in your life. Chances are you have the innate ability to do that, because you are designed to do it. Hardwired for it.

You make the list and then the list becomes real. But not just the reality changes. You change as well. You grow as you create. Because you are essentially creating yourself.
You can take a part of you that died or was damaged...and bring life to it.
Take your problems, your baggage. And turn your garbage into gold.

Kabuki: Alchemy.

new scanner

So it's been a month--and I was finally able to buy a scanner!

This is big, you guys. It doesn't seem big, but it means something that I was able to do some legwork, pick my weapon (CanoScan LIDE 100)...and pay for every part of it with money I earned and saved myself. I'm not a very...independent person, so this is pretty much a first for me. It's also the very first scanner I own all to myself and don't share with family or classmates, which feels just as significant.

I've had jobs before, but always with supplemental income. Now I'm paying bills and buying important things with money I earned myself, and...it's about time, you know? Kind of pathetic, but I will improve with age...I hope!

Anyway, I think I'd like to do some sketchblogging to celebrate.

Finished Scott Pilgrim the other day and decided to re-read the whole series, ended up drawing curvy hipster girls...and one skinny one, below.

Her t-shirt reads 'LL YR VWLS R BLNG T S', an inside joke from Making Light, one of my favourite blogs.

Happy Birthday, Canada!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

I first celebrated Canada Day in London, although I had no idea that the 'beavertails' I loved to snack on while I was living in Manila were traditional Canadian munchies. This year they have Trafalgar Cup Hockey playoffs! I wish I were there!!!

altered book pages

a.k.a. more things I have been doing lately.


Mermaids Mean Love


Vanitas. The dark squares are real mirrors so you can see bits of yourself when you look in the book. The quote at the bottom right says '...Man, know Thyself.'

grrr facebook

Facebook has become a necessary evil instead of a fun way to spend an Internet hour or two. Notice my suddenly empty Interests page? Apparently if you don't allow Facebook to link all those interests to Pages, you can't have any of them at all. What's wrong with Pages, you ask?

Facebook SHARES your information with whoever links to those same Pages.

In fact, Facebook shares your information with whoever it bloody well likes, unless you go to Account --> Privacy Settings and carefully change everything one by one from 'Everyone' seeing it to 'Only Me' or 'Only Friends'. If you don't see the 'Only Me' option (another clever Facebook trick) click Customise.

If you link to Pages, or use an application like Mafia Wars or Farmville, you can kiss your privacy goodbye. Other users of the app, not to mention advertisers trolling the app for people to spam, can pick up your info any time they like. Your real name is usually enough, but heaven forbid they get their hands on your phone number, email address, or even your birthday. :/

Now you know. And you know what Joe says about knowing.

low blood pressure beasts and tattooed sea monsters

It is now lunch break, so I can brave the Beast that is La Salle WiFi and do the art post I wanted to do last night but didn't have the energy for.

My blood pressure for the past few days has been at 90/60. Found myself stumbling with humiliating clumsiness through a maculele session yesterday, and I felt groggy for several hours during the day. I know how to alleviate high blood pressure, but what about low? 

On the other hand, this is the first month in two years I am totally cramp-free. Not a twinge! *dances...slowly...and...sleepily*

In other news, I have had mermaids on the brain. I had a spare bit of canvas board, so I decided to reacquaint myself with the painting habit.

'Face Less'. Oil paint on unprimed canvas...not a great idea. I also got a little lost doing the shadows on the face, as I had no live model or reference.

'This One Looks Kind Of Like My Friend Lyra'. No seriously, I can't stop thinking of that as the title. This is when I switched to acrylic. I like the hair, but was very clumsy with the rest of it, especially the blue shadow.

'Fish Face'. Acrylic. Pretty much gave up on realism for this one, which I think actually helped. I could relax and have fun with her skin and mask.

'Jellyfish'. Acrylic. Fun with light and dark! I don't say 'chiaroscuro', though it's one of my favourite words, because...this isn't it.

You'll notice that none of these have anything that identifies the subjects as mermaids. They're only mermaids because I say they are. I think this is one of the things I most like about art.

And some work in marker, which I like even more, just because I feel much more comfortable and confident in this medium and so I can go to some pretty fun places in terms of technique.

'Yakuza Mermaids'. Faber Castell brush pen markers on Moleskine paper.

quietly go through the door

From The Alchemy, issue 7.

Old Lady: Then I saw that there are doors. And through the doors are rooms of knowledge. Like different rooms in a house.

Each room has a different story happening in it. Like it is a different life. Like you are in a book of doors. 

If you haven't learned everything you were supposed to, you have to go through another door so you can learn more. Or so someone can learn from you.

I passed by many doors and looked through them. It was like I could see into other people's lives. Like each life is a little story happening in this book at the same time. 

I passed by these doors until I came to a door I could not see into. It was closed. I had a great urge to go into this door. But when I tried I could not pass.

And then a voice said that I do not have enough knowledge to pass through that door. I was told that my work in my current room wasn't finished.

And then I woke up in the hospital. I had pulled through the surgery. 

I've had two surgeries since and that has happened every time. I get to the door and I can't pass through. And then I wake up in pain. In this meat suit. In this silly human costume. 

When I wake up, I always think that next time it happens, I hope I have learned enough to pass through the door.

Kabuki: I wonder...

Old Lady: I'm tired.

Kabuki: I wonder if that is what...

Old Lady: I'm taking a nap now.

Kabuki: If that is what my mother went through.

And she was gone. She had passed. She had moved on right before my eyes.