Art 48

Computer broke for a bit. Angst! Horror! Drama! It was awful, not only did i not have internet access, I couldn't stare at all my files and procrastinate! Four exclamations marks have been used in this post already, that's how terrible it was.

But now it's fixed. Hooray! I briefly* fell in love with the IT guy, the way one does with the doctor looking after your ill child, or, more to the point with me, the vet looking after your scratched-up cat. Siiigh. But I'm over it, it's all good, strictly professional relationship resumed. Next computer step is to buy a laptop, so I can take my work with me when I travel. Work other than a sketch book, that is.
*- about two minutes. Tops.

Meanwhile... Well. I finished sorting all the cryptomnesia pieces into colours! Awesome. Now I'm slowly and laboriously arranging them over a trial picture, which I may do several times before embarking on the final piece. It's a shot of Laura Palmer*, slightly recoloured so I can use snips that aren't exclusively blue-grey.
*- Twin Peaks!* Spooooky!
*- warning: tvtropes.org will ruin your life.

All the bits mashed together.

Trial piece with recoloured pic of Laura Palmer.
I drag and drop the snips over the pic.

Here you can see the snips I've arranged so far. Still a long way to go.

Have also started work on the cryptomnesia grid piece I mentioned in another post. Pixel by pixel. It may* take some time.
*- it will.

The pale blue is to differentiate the background from all the other
colours, for easy-to-use-ness.

In other news, I did a sketch of an idea I had while falling asleep. Some slightly grisly thing (hint - it involves teeth). No photos yet. Want to work on it more - had a couple ideas for other versions of it, to make it better, etc. It's the first home sketch I've done on an actual easel, though, which somehow seems important to me.

I also downloaded a journal app for my clever clever phone, to help keep a record of the art-making process. It FAILED. Well, it ate all my credit, so I deleted it. There are others I haven't tried yet... I should just get a polaroid camera and keep a physical journal, because that would be cool. Also super fucking expensive. Damn it, world, just give me more money! Then I'll show you! I'll show you ALL! (Note to google analytics/adsense - please don't take the previous statements as an excuse to send me more get-rich-quick ads. Thank you.)

Also! While I didn't have computer access, I started work on another project. It's a sort of... Well, I took seven struts from a broken umbrella, tied them together, and I'm now filling in the gaps with acrylic yarn. It's pretty weird so far. Vaguely sun-like, vaguely dream-catcher-ish, and mostly like a web made by an intoxicated spider.* Again, no photos yet. Really want to finish it, I'm curious to see how it's going to turn out.
*- google it. science is Crazy.

More newsish stuff - I looked at my deviantart print account tonight and recoiled in horror.* I like my idea of having everything in postcard-size-only, sort of thing, but the selection of pictures there... Ew ewwww. I'm reassured that even great artists are cringey of their work as years go by. Nevertheless, action must be taken! But what action? I could just shut the whole thing down and start again somewhere else. It wouldn't be much of a trauma - in five years I've made just over seven bucks with it, mostly through buying my own prints. But then what? I could find another site to sell on, I guess, or sell things through my main deviantart account. Decisions decisions.
Or I could sort of clean up the print account... Upload some new stuff, take away crappy old stuff. I dunno. I like the idea of starting over, though.
In any case, it's something that needs sorting out. I'm just not sure which direction to go with things.
*- slight inward cringing, more like, but that it isn't nearly dramatic enough.

I think that's it for now... Oh wait, there's more. I'm making a 3D fractal tree thing in Second Life now. Not properly fractal, given that infinity is a little difficult to fit inside the standard PC, but it shows/will show that kind of multiple branching that I'm so obsessed with. Currently up to 4 iterations, hooray. It always amazes me how quickly it gets complicated - 3 iterations is already quite a lot of branches. That's what being exponential does for ya.

Art 46

So now I've joined tumblr, pinterest, and twitter. Is that all of them? Is there anything I'm forgetting? Not entirely sure why - mostly just a terrible urge to not Miss Out. Oh well. Feel free to add me on whatever - extrantice, as usual (hooray for made up words!).

I've been working fairly steadily on the cryptomnesia piece (nearly, neearrly, etc) since my last art post, so there isn't really much to report as far as my own stuff goes. I did possibly finish making a pair of goggles in Second Life, but I'm not very happy with them, so i neglected to take any snapshots.

So, that leaves me to find something else to write about. Thankfully there is, of course, a huge amount of art all over the damn place. The South West Survey* was on again this month. Neither my sister nor i entered, or attended the opening thing (circumstances rather overtook us on the night in question, unfortunately - we both would've liked to go), but we're making tentative plans to see the exhibition later this week. Quite looking forward to it. I wish you were allowed to take photos in the gallery, then I could show everyone my favourite pieces. Might be brave and ask about it specially - i don't have a huge gamut of followers, though, so the gallery might not look at it as publicity, or something. i dunno.
*South West Times Survey? South West Art Survey? South West Times Art Survey? South West Times Regional Art Survey?

Elsewhere in town (or possibly connected to the gallery, I'm not sure), there is an art event called... I must look that up. It was in one of last week's papers, I think...
Ah, here it is. Walk Your Art Out. It's about young people (from 16 to 25) making art and putting it in the windows of various local businesses in the central business district. Here is the facebook page: Walk Your Art Out.
Looks like fun, to enter (alas, I'm already 29), and to see. I have a fancy new diary (cat themed. Oh yes.), will definitely be writing in the dates for this.

Meanwhile, here is a webcomic i'm reading: A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. The link shows the page i'm currently up to (i go slow with webcomics - there are so very many of them, all being read at once). Liking the art. Kind of messy, but still definitely clear enough to show what's happening. Colourific, too. The story seems to be about various, one-page adventures of two friends, the writer and artist of the comic. Surreal adventures, on the whole. Yayo.

Art 44

Discovered some new (new to me) music - Fever Ray. Brilliantine, shadowy, somehow air and earth at the same time. Contradictory, I guess. And cool. The few accompanying video clips I've seen so far are amazing, too. This one is Stranger Than Kindness:



I love the feeling that it's a piece of story, that there's a beginning and an end - an explanation - somewhere we can't see.


Meanwhile... I finally got around to doing a little more work on a texture I've been making for Second Life. The octopus one, remember? As referenced in this post. Quite pleased with how it's turning out.

Look, i figured out where to put the trident!

I'm also trying* to finish something in time for Xmas. I've planned two different things - a slightly creepy picture, and a sort of slick, modish one. Both digital photo-collages. Have made progress on the slightly creepy one so far. Creepy... actually, I find it amusing. It's called Christmas Is Coming To Get you, and features a kind of Xmas golem.
*-sort of. It's possible I'm a little lazy and/or distracted.

The snow-covered pines are sourced from morguefile, a lovely free photo reference place.
I haven't started the slick, modish one yet, which is a little unfortunate, given that i was planning to use it as xmas cards this year.

That's it for now. I'll try to post again before Xmas!

Art 36

So! I've been working a little more on that texture thing for Second Life. For the undersea grotto door. Yesss. I don't know where to put the trident. And of course it has to have a trident.

An older version can be seen in this post. Still very rough, of course.










Still, still, still working on the cryptomnesia piece (just over 300 pieces left to import), and also on those quadrilateral Koch snowflakes. I keep forgetting to take a photo of my repaired handbag!

Art 20

The shapes I've now finished playing with in Second Life. Gosh, there's a lot of 'em...

Art 18

All those food pictures from... was it June? May? Something like that. Anyway. I've drawn... I drew... what is it the correct way to say that, anyway? I've imaged some stylised versions of the pills that are in most of the photos (26 out of about 33), and arranged them in the configuration in which the pills appear in the photos. Now I'm not entirely sure what to do with 'em...

In other news, I've finally decided what to carve in a piece of driftwood I found a couple years ago. A mermaid. Obvious, right? :) Have drawn on the wood with marker pen, to show which areas I'll need to carve out. Will leave the base of the wood and part of the sides uncarved. Sort of a bas-relief thing. I have very very little experience carving wood, so it should be interesting.

The postcards! At least two have arrived, but I still haven't put photos of them on the computer yet. I'll remember one day, I'm sure. Will have an opportunity to draw up a few more soon. Must remember to photograph them, too.

Still working on the cryptomnesia collage thing. I have a whole bunch of... I guess digital cut-outs, that I'm using (without referencing any of the original owners. Eeep! But that's sort of the point - cryptomnesia, as a thing in itself, is closely associated with plagiarism.) Now I'm cutting up the cut-outs further. The next stage will be to assemble them into some sort of picture. Haven't actually decided what the picture should be of, yet... Will load 'em all into gimp and play around, most likely.

Second Life stuff. Making very slow progress on the texture for an underwater grating thing. This is what I have so far:

Wasn't happy with that, and couldn't quite figure out why, so I googled some pictures of octopussies. Got the tentacles all wrong.








Also in SL, I've finished playing with shapes, and have a bunch of screen shots of things, which I'll load in the next post.

Art 16

Working on the tree picture again tonight. Sloowww. Was working on the Blue Foundation -inspired pic yesterday... Seem to've lost direction with it. It's a collage, and... yeah. The one image in it that was taking me ages is finished, and now i don't know what comes next with it. This is the problem with not working to a plan.

Meanwhile, I've been playing with shapes in Second Life.

Art 8

Something I quite like are table-top role-play games, like Dungeons&Dragons, World of Darkness, etc. At the start of June I picked up a World of Darkness core rule book, and flipping through that afforded me a bit of inspiration, and I came up with a couple sketches. I have dodgy phone camera pictures, but can't upload them at the moment. One sketch contains tentacles, the other contains zombies, or possibly ghouls.



Somewhere along the way I downloaded a program for making 3D shapes. I haven't explored it much yet - finding it a bit intimidating. It was the same with gimp at first - something with a layout that I was entirely unused to. Presumably I'll get the hang of it eventually though... I'm thinking this will probably be most useful for making things for Second Life. Or I could get a 3D printer!



Hm, what else... Still working on various pictures on the computer. The tree one, and the Blue Foundation one, and now another. This will be for a texture I'll import into Second Life, for a kind of grating thing.



Second Life! Have a made an entry yet about that? Second Life is an MMO, sort of. Or possibly a virtual interactive social environment, I dunno. It's a thing where you make an avatar and do stuff. There's a bit of role-playing, but I haven't really explored that side of it - I'm thinking my 'net connection probably isn't steady enough to really handle any combat-based rpg's, which are, frankly, the only kind I'm really interested in. As for what kind of stuff people do do there - it really depends on the person. I have a friend who hosts live DJing events - that seems fairly popular, but my connection isn't always up to it. I have another friend who gives tarot readings, and a couple others who build things. For myself- I guess it's another creative outlet for me. It's fun making different avatars, and building exotic structures and things. There's some really beautiful 3D art on Second Life - forests and castles and mountains and caves and stuff, as well as cities and things. I think I'd appreciate a few more treasure-hunt style things. There's a couple I've done before - kind of passive mazes runs and stuff - but there's potential for a lot more. Maybe there's not enough money in it, I dunno. Yep, there's certainly money on SL - it always reminds me of that song by the Hilltop Hoods - "Come sit with me honey, I got half a mil in Monopoly money". It's fun, anyway.