tis the season...

...to wrap up warm.

Other people dress up for winter, I dress for a space flight to an ice planet. This is the regular version; the snow day version adds a coat that looks like a duvet Slanket, an interstitial fleece layer and polar boots with ice grips.

Created with layers in Photoshop and animated in Clip Studio Paint Pro.

Calligraphy

Doing some italic practice with dip pens and Diamine inks, using forms by Gaye Godfrey-Nicholls.

Quote from One Week One Band.

My favourite poem, known as the Maboroshi poem, by Murasaki Shikibu. Translation by Liza Dalby, from her book The Tale of Murasaki.

Some quotes from blogs and my new fandom Yuri!!! on Ice. The original was in all caps too! I find it silly but inspiring.

Speedball C-4 dip pen with Diamine Oxblood, Grey and Carnation.

draw the rude 2: fortune cookies

More Hannibal coping sketches. I drew them in a notebook where I had earlier glued a cookie fortune. I'd thought the two were unrelated, but...

The fortune is a bit of a weird look into Hannibal's possible point of view of his own life. Then I turned the page over and saw that on the back of the fortune which I'd glued in...

...was the Chinese word for delicious.

Macrocosmos

Petapixel made a post on clever things you can do with a smartphone camera, and I was especially excited about the water drop macro lens.

First attempt: strawberries. I found it really difficult!

Apparently the water droplet is for very extreme closeups only and magnifies quite a lot more than a regular macro lens.

I tried again with my Hero 9296 fountain pen and was really pleased with the results.

For comparison, this is what that pen looks like in normal photography:

So it's a fun technique, but a bit difficult to control. I look forward to playing with it more.

gulag

I'm sorry for the drawing gap--RL kind of smacked me in the face this month (isn't that always the way?). But am on holiday for a bit and actually got off the computer long enough to do some socialising and some productive things, one of which is an art walk.

My grandparents live in a posh gated community and the association dues alone are astronomical. Wanted to draw some pretty areas around the place, wandered round the back to get a good view of the mountains and found this:

'Park'. Oh good. For a minute there I was worried.

Unless it's an order. 'Park your butt, missy. You won't be goin' anywhere for a while.'

Neil Gaiman Predicts Your Present

Today I was feeling annoyed and mildly upset, and I went and spoke with Neil Gaiman's Wonderful Oracular Journal, and it (he) said:

Arguments about aesthetics and art tend not to get into simple easy right and wrong places.

That wasn't at all what I was annoyed and mildly upset about, but I feel better anyway.

an addict's withdrawal

Oh God, I want more booooooooooooks!!!

Very recently read Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan. Dear Lord, I want this book. In hardcover. In fact, can someone make a whole book of all of Keith Thompson's art for this series? I would buy that too. And I want to read Philip Reeve's Larklight and Starcross again. I haven't even read Mothstorm.

NaNoWriMo is making me want to read instead of write. I am about 3K words behind, although I made a good start. Anyone out there doing it this year?

In slightly related news and to make this post less boring, SIR Terry Pratchett's newly-granted coat of arms from the Royal College of Arms. (You have to scroll down a bit on that page.)

The motto is "noli timere messorem" - "Don't Fear the Reaper". I love the UK, don't you?