thagandizzle

So much!!

2019-07-19T01:17:01Z

So... A lot has happened, y'all! I'm sorry I haven't updated, but I've been feeling pretty wrung out for a while.

The temp assignment I was doing wasn't super great? Like, it seemed fine! But once I got on the floor and started taking calls at the call center, I was doing between 55-60 calls per day of, like, active and involved customer service with zero downtime at all. I also learned that the company I was working for doesn't let employees use the restroom outside of their scheduled break and lunchtimes unless the employee clocks out while they're away from the computer. Y'all... I am a thirty-four year old woman. If I want to take a piss on the company dime, you can bet your ass that's exactly what I am going to do, you know? So, I was looking for a way out ASAP. The money and the location were great, the people I was working with were all really nice and pleasant to interact with, the job itself was the pits.

Then, out of nowhere, an old co-worker messaged me and asked if I wanted to work with her again. I'd left this company after transferring departments and I had a really bad and stressful experience after my transfer. Long story short, J was having some really bad emotional problems at that time and after trying to work with the department head and getting nowhere, raising my concerns with the former owner of the company, and finally getting denied a transfer back to my old department, I had to make a decision. I ended up with the choice between between the mental health of me and my wife or this job that couldn't meet me halfway, so the job went.

However, the company has had some MAJOR changes. The old department head and former owner have been ousted and a lot of the problems that were endemic to the company have been resolved. So, I went back to the original department I'd worked in. I've only been there for two days, but it's already been a pretty restorative transition.

Plus, it's a permanent job. The new branch manager offered a hefty pay increase from what I was earning last time I was there (which was a whole other problem, in and of itself. Two promotions and zero raises! Woo!) and I'm guaranteed annual raises.

So there's that! A lot of moving and shaking! J's trip to Baltimore went well, except for an evening she spent with her parents where they harassed her about going to graduate school (which she's not interested in) and us buying a house (which would be nice, but we live in Seattle and aren't bazillionaires.) Other than me changing jobs like it's going out of style, life has pretty much plodded along. Because of how stressful that temp job was, I haven't been doing too much art. Here's a little Dragonair I did with Ohuhu markers!

Print available via Deviantart

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Mixed Emotions

2019-05-29T01:33:18Z

I started my temp assignment today and it was really good! I'm looking forward to learning more and taking a more active role once training is complete. It's also already been extended through the end August and our trainer thinks it might even be extended further, but we'll see. Still, that means three months instead of two months of money! It's right above a Trader Joe's, though, so I already warned J that we're going to be approximately $300 behind in rent money this month because I'm going to buy all of the mini peanut butter cups.

Speaking of J, she's in Baltimore for a work thing. She and the admin staff at her work were all flown out to Baltimore to the parent office until Friday for, like, team building. No one wants it, least of all me! I miss my honey already and she just left this morning! I'm glad that I have work to occupy myself with while she's away. The kitties are definitely happy to have at least one of their people home after a long day. I had the option of going, but we'd have had to buy my plane ticket (hers, at least, is covered by her work) and I wouldn't have been able to take this assignment and ya girl needs money.

So, I'm happy and sad. More happy THAN sad because at least J will be back Friday night, but it's going to be a lonesome week without her! Our friend Jessica has offered to hang out sometime this week to give me some company and I will more than likely take her up on her offer. This is another good thing. I just miss my wife!

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Not a sexy Victorian exactly...

2019-05-24T07:37:55Z

...But a sexy Edwardian! The sharpest-eyed and keenest of memory among you might recognize her face--I drew her on my sexy Victorians/Edwardians page when I did the 100 Heads Challenge. I love her. I don't know who she is or where she was from, but I have a pretty damn hard history crush on her. Her beautiful face! Her impeccable riding clothes! THAT POSE!!! *swoon*

Click to enlarge

As always, print available via DeviantArt

I had never thought that pastel pencil would take over my love of traditional graphite pencils, but here we are!

I didn't end up getting either of the job offers and J is suspicious that something might be going on with one of my references. I don't know who, though... Everyone I list is someone that I know, like, and trust and who offered to be used AS a reference. I never left a job having been decided as un-rehireable by HR... Not gonna lie, the thought had absolutely crossed my mind, but I can't imagine that it's the case. But, like, one of the jobs was part time in a pizza place call center. I am ABSOLUTELY qualified, the interview went great, and I was genuinely enthusiastic about a--let's be honest--less-than ideal position. My availability seemed basically in line with what they needed. Maybe I wanted more hours than they could reasonably offer? I don't know... It all seems weird. I'm sure we're both overthinking it.

The other job I knew I'd lost after I told who I found out later was the CEO that my experience at Amazon had been weird and then, right after I learned the interviewer I'd met with was the CEO, learned he had been in upper level leadership at Amazon before moving on to making his own company. So, you know, oops! Amazon was SUPER weird, though, and I'm not gonna lie about it. Either way, I've got the temp position lined up so I'm not completely freaking out anymore. But it still seems really weird to both of us that I had all these interviews that all seemed to go really well and didn't get any actual job offers over the last seven months. To be fair, I definitely was interviewing for slightly more involved work than I had done in the past, but fuck, man... I got a fucking promotion during interviews when I was interviewing for Goodwill. I don't know... Again, I'm sure J and I are both overthinking it because that's a thing we do, but it's still pretty weird.

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Art!

2019-05-20T22:23:03Z

Do I ever draw realistic animals? No!

Have I ever seriously attempted to draw a cat? Nope!

Am I 100% at ease with using colored pencils? I am not!

DID I DO ALL THREE FOR MY FRIEND? HECK YES.

This is Lenny. He's a beloved cat owned by a dear friend who has been trying to get me to draw her damn cat for, like, three months. I haven't wanted to do it because of the fact that watercoloring fat hamsters does not make me a master at drawing non-human animals. I'm marginally more comfortable with colored pencils than I was in, like November, but I'm more comfortable with them than I am with most of the other color mediums I could use for this. I watched one (1) tutorial on how to draw fur and then I just kind of... Went for it, I guess. I like him, though! I based a lot of his body shape on one of my own cats--I made him a little manlier than my cat who is very round and very cute and not very much like Lenny who is a more rugged specimen. But it gave me a decent idea of how the fur laid over the body. I had some trouble with his lower legs.

My friend and I share a love of using skulls as decor, so I threw some of them into the background with some (thoroughly pruned) catnip growing around them. I was thoroughly exhausted after drawing him. I think I might draw a hot Victorian next just to relax!

Click to enlarge

As per usual, print available via Deviantart

I had to do a pre-employment drug test today for my temp assignment. Doing those is always kind of hilarious to me because I'm a teetotaler. Unfortunately, no one will take your word for it. In the lab waiting area, these three women came in who seemed to be three generations of a family. The oldest woman groaned constantly the whole time. I think she does that a lot because the other two just blithely conversed around it. Then, a couple came in with a crying baby who they didn't try to, like, hold and comfort, but seemed keen on letting it cry it out. I was in aural hell until I got to enjoy the privilege of peeing into a cup.

Hopefully, J will feel up to going grocery shopping. She came home early from work because she'd had such a hard time sleeping last night and had a sore throat. But we're down to our last roll of toilet paper and need to have something other than ramen in the house to eat!

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Yo, what the F??

2019-05-17T19:36:59Z

My mom always tells me that, more than anyone else she knows, I go into a situation smelling like shit and come up smelling like roses. Always, it seems like right when things are at their worst and I'm at my lowest, some kind of Good Luck Dispenser is triggered and I end up coming out not just ok, but actively well. I've chalked this up largely to my attitude about things--generally, when things are bad and I get despondent, I am so overwhelmingly happy about any good thing happening that ok news suddenly seems like the best news.

That's not what's happening here. I just filed my last week of unemployment benefits. There is no option to extend. In the few days since that happened, I have already booked a temp assignment (which sounds legit amazing and is in my neighborhood and has great pay) and I am looking down the barrel at possibly two job offers. I don't want to say I've already got them, since I still have another interview to go for one of the positions. But they shuffled a bunch of schedules around without my prompting so they could meet with me earlier in the week, so they're definitely keen.

Months, y'all. Months! Of nothing! WEEKS would go by without a peep from anyone! And now? Now, I'm overwhelmed for the exact opposite reason! I didn't do anything different, you know? The Good Luck Dispenser lever was just, like, switched on!

AND I STILL HAVE AN ART COMMISSION I NEED TO WORK ON.

When it rains it pours, I get it, but can I order a light drizzle, please? I'd be fine smelling faintly of plain old grass--I don't need roses. I'm absolutely beyond grateful, don't get me wrong! But I've just done a whiplash-inducing swerve from panicked about not having any work prospects and fretting about making rent to having to CHOOSE the most ideal work prospect and it's just... It's an awful lot. So I'm getting pizza and I'm watching Victorian Farm.

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Blah Blah Blah (and also Quentin Coldwater)

2019-05-09T19:08:53Z

I've been having A Time recently. My unemployment is about to run out and, even though we'll be ok, I am still stressing. The temp agency hasn't found any placements and, again, I know we'll be ok but it's hard to tell my Panic Mode brain that. So, the freaking out in conjunction with not getting ANOTHER job that I really felt like I was going to get has put me in a weird place, mentally. Therefore, I've been watching a lot of Gill and Gilbert on YouTube and playing Flight Rising and not actually doing anything that might be good or useful.

I've been reading a lot of fix-it fics for The Magicians post season 4. I wanted to draw Quentin because they did him mad dirty and I don't like what the showrunners decided to do AT ALL. So, late last night, I went ahead and knocked it out.

Click to enlarge:

As ever, print available via Deviantart

J did manage to maybe network an art-related gig for me, though! There is a firehouse in Seattle that offers retiring firefighters a pencil sketch of them when they first started at the firehouse as a retirement gift. The artist they had on retainer has, himself, retired, and J talked up my art to a firefighter that is teaching a class where she works. Long story short(er) the firefighter really likes my portraits and is going to have me do a test commission to make sure that I can, like, draw a firetruck, and then will quite possibly have me on retainer to do these drawings. J is the absolute best and most wonderful person in the world. I genuinely do not appreciate her nearly enough.

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Temping and Rowlet

2019-04-25T08:20:42Z

I went out on Monday and got signed up again with the temp agency that I worked with before my last full-time job. They're super nice and did their best to get me decent placements, so here's hoping that something comes of it. I'm running to the end of my unemployment and have hit a lot of dead ends. Also, I want money. And to not be in my apartment. So, if temping is going to save me from having to fall back on traditional retail, then temping is what I shall do. The other problem I'm running into is that a lot of places have outsourced their offices to places outside of Seattle and since I bus, it's just not reasonable for me to take a position in Kent or Everett.

If I do have to start looking at traditional retail, though, then that's just how it'll be. I don't know if my back can take it, but I really do want to find SOMETHING at this point. Fingers crossed I'll find something that I actually want/like!

I did paint a Rowlet, though! I like him, but not as much as I liked my Magikarp painting. I think I just really loved the bright colors of Magikarp and I do wish I'd decided on a slightly more dynamic pose for Rowlet. I just wanted him to be a happy orb boy, so I went with my gut. I also wish I had better instincts for cuteness. I think if I'd made him a little wider and squashier, maybe moved his feet apart more, he'd be a lot cuter. I just tend toward elongating things!

Click to enlarge:

Print available via Deviantart

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The Magicians... Oof.

2019-04-21T07:09:14Z

My sister-in-law, her fiance, and their girlfriend came to visit us this past week. They all live in Atlanta and this is kind of the first time we've all gotten together without parents around. It was so much fun! We took them to all of the major Seattle sights and spent a couple of days in Vancouver. This included a sort of impromptu visit to Science World in Vancouver which features Stan, the second most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil in the world. I cried. Possibly more than I cried when I saw the fossil of Lucy. I just... I don't know... Seeing history right in front of my eyes like that is just so emotionally overwhelming. I spent a really significant amount of time looking at him and it was wonderful!

We also got no small amount of British candies. Also, ketchup-flavored chips. Why aren't those a thing in America?? They legit just taste like fries dipped in ketchup. America LOVES fries dipped in ketchup!

But I digress! We really did have such a lovely time with them and are looking forward to the next time we can all get together. It was also the longest amount of time that J and her sister had been able to just hang out together in a really long time. J is seven years older, but they're really close and it was nice for them to be able to have that time.

I also watched season four of The Magicians, which is a show I've been HARDCORE binge-watching over the last few weeks. I have thoughts about the finale which I don't know are solid enough to articulate. There are feelings; some of them are complicated and quite mixed. I keep waffling between loving it and hating it. Mainly, I'm just sad. Either way, I chipped away at a drawing of Margo over this past week and I like how it turned out:

Click to enlarge--the thumbnail makes the drawing look a lot darker than it is!

As per usual, print available via Deviantart.

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Mo' Pokemon, fewer problems

2019-04-11T07:24:36Z

I'm feeling better than I was yesterday. I can push the despairing back into the little hidey hole it hangs out in most of the time so I can go about my day to day without falling apart.

I am, however, still feeling it with this whole drawing Pokemon thing. They're easy to draw, but they're cute and expressive and many of them are hilariously weird.

The inspiration for this Bewear comes almost entirely from the Pokemon X and Y anime series. I don't know a huge amount Bewear as a Pokemon, otherwise, but the one in that show is amazing and hilariously unsettling. So I wanted to draw it! I thought it would be funny to do a sort of underlit thing, but I wasn't confident in my ability to do it how I wanted in most of the art mediums I've been working with lately. So I dragged out a set of chalk pastels that I've had since high school. The fact that any of them are left is a really good indicator of how much I use my chalk pastels. I was a little worried, since it had been SO LONG since I've used them--at least 16 years--but they worked an absolute treat! I spent a lot of the drawing giggling at it, which is usually a good sign for me when I'n doing something like this.

Click to enlarge!

Available as a print via Deviantart

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I don't even know wtf...

2019-04-09T21:19:27Z

I've been listening to "This River is Wild" on repeat, occasionally yelling the lyrics (sorry, neighbors, if you're home!) and painting a Magikarp.

I'm never going to get a job and I'm broke af and stressed out and everything sucks.

So...

Here's Magikarp! Click to enlarge

Print available via Deviantart

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Commission is finshed!

2019-03-29T07:39:20Z

I'm going to go to Goodwill as part of my errand-running tomorrow and get a frame for it, but it is otherwise complete. She provided a couple of reference photos to work from and I sort of Frankensteined the sketch from the references. Neither of them were great on their own (she wasn't even in one of them!), but combined they made a pretty cute family portrait. You know you're in the Pacific Northwest when literally every single person in an image is wearing a hoodie and it doesn't seem that weird.

Click to enlarge!

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It's been a busy week!

2019-03-28T23:07:08Z

I am the Pokemon (and Pikachu, specifically) Master! I have defeated the Elite Four in Pokemon Let's Go: Pikachu and beat the scary Pikachu woman in the forest as an encore.

I'm not very good at finishing games (though there is a lot of endgame content, I am done with the main story) so it's a real accomplishment for me. Also, apparently, J has never gotten even as close to finishing a Pokemon game, so I feel extra accomplished! I'm not someone who plays games except for, like, simulations and sandbox games AND I only discovered a love for Pokemon in the last few years. I am well pleased! Lance's Dragonite very nearly fucked me up but I soldiered through only to get similarly nearly fucked up by Jasper's Jolteon (or, rather, Jasper's near-inexhaustible supply of Full Restores).

All of this victory came at the heels yesterday of a toilet replacement. Our robin's egg blue Cold War-era toilet finally ended up getting irreparably loose from its floor mounting and was causing a leak into the unit below ours so my property manager made the call to have it replaced. I miss it a little bit. The hardware in the tank had been replaced so the flush handle didn't fit right and the seat didn't match, but it was a blue-ass toilet and that's cool. The plumber who replaced it took a photo before he removed it because it was, "the oldest toilet [he'd] seen in [his] life." So that's something. The new one is very nice, even if it is a little high for my stumpy legs.

Also I have a paid art commission! A friend of mine wants a family portrait done for her husband's birthday coming up. Said friend's husband has been battling a brain tumor for several years and every birthday is a real and profound celebration. They've got this amazing kid who has been so cool and mature about her dad's health and takes a lot of pride in helping him manage his medications since the tumor has upset some of his memory capability. They're a great family and I'm only too happy to oblige!

Tomorrow I am going to make myself to the damn post office so I can mail my mother prints of my art. I'm also mailing a few prints to a woman I worked with at my last job--she's incredibly sweet and loves my hamster paintings. The post office is not far from my apartment, I can bus to it easily, and it's been BEAUTIFUL here. So I need to be less lazy and just do the thing. My mother is worth is. My former co-worker is worth it! My desire to merge into my couch permanently is not worth it.

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A little slice of cheesecake

2019-03-24T00:58:58Z

I don't know, guys... When I was thumbnailing Sylveon I snuck a quick little thumbnail of a sort of cheesecakey/pinupy sort of lady in a bikini top and some denim shorts. So, since I completely failed at going to bed last night, I decided to spend some time sketching her out.

I guess I'm into pink right now? Which isn't a usual thing for me. Drawing sexy-adjacent ladies is also not a usual thing for me. Am I going through another weird experimental phase again? I mean... I'll take it, if I am! In any case, I wanted her to be pink, so she's pink. And then I grabbed a few shades of purple and then some palm trees spontaneously erupted and there she was! Not mad at it, though. I do wish I'd worked harder to differentiate the sun and to burnish the color in the sky, but w/e! I worked without a reference and got the base sketch down at, like, five in the morning and did the shading/coloring after I slept for a few hours.

Click to enlarge:

Print available via Deviantart

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On a Pokemon drawing kick

2019-03-23T10:24:25Z

Have a Sylveon!

I really like Fairy-type Pokemon, conceptually, but my playing method is definitely one that just uses sheer brute force and determination to get anywhere, so I don't use Fairy-type Pokemon very intelligently. Thus, they tend to be ones that I gaze at longingly and get my ass handed to me by.

I don't, as a rule, draw things which are cute or which utilize a lot of pastel colors. So this was really fun! I've had the idea bouncing around my head for a couple of days and decided to just go for it tonight when I really should have been going to bed.

Click to enlarge!:

Print available via Deviantart

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thagandizzle @ 2019-03-21T20:06:00

2019-03-22T03:28:41Z

Today was J's birthday! Aaaaaaaaaand she's sick! Woo! She's got some kind of gastrointestinal nonsense going on, so she's been out of work for much of the week and we didn't really do much in the way of birthday stuff today since she isn't really up to going out or eating cake.

I stayed up until nearly 5 in the morning finishing the art I did for her! I thought doing a sort of seedy underground Pokemon battle would be really funny. I've been cataloging her favorite Pokemon for quite a while now, so I was able to get some heavy hitters in this painting. I tried to get as many Pokemon in as I could that we find particularly ridiculous, but I wanted to make sure that Hawlucha was definitely winning the match because it's a luchador hawk and that's hilarious

I also got her a copy of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse which we are about to watch now. I feel a little bad-ish? because I definitely got it for both of us since it's the best movie ever made.

Click to enlarge!

Print available (with J's permission!) via Deviantart

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woooooooo!

2019-03-15T06:26:37Z

I gots some art!

I wanted to do a really fiddly drawings with micron pens with lots of inane little details. I also wanted to do a lady in Heian court dress. So: Two birds, one stone, art happened. I decided to do a lady fleeing the scene with some state secrets of some kind in the scroll she's carrying. She's wearing the juunhitoe or twelve-layer kimono that was popular among ladies of the Heian court. It is EXTREMELY unlikely that a woman wearing this many layers of clothing would be going at any appreciable speed, but maybe there's someone in more practical clothing right around the corner she can pass the scroll to.

I purposefully wanted her features to be very flat to draw all of the attention to the patterns on her various kimono. I colored in her lips to add some contrast in her face and to carry that red into the overwhelming white expanse toward the top of the drawing. I left her hair for last because I just didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Once I did the background (with Ohuhu markers) I really liked the contrast between the white hair and the dark background. So I baaaaarely shaded the hair with the palest marker I have and called it a day.

I'm happy with her, overall! I wish I'd been a little more meticulous with some of the details, but this is SO MUCH MORE fiddly than I usually do, so I'm still pleased with how she came out.

Click to enlarge:

Available as a print via Deviantart

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Birthdaaaay!

2019-03-11T07:48:04Z

I turned 34 today and it was a very good day. :) I talked to my mom and my mother-in-law in the morning and my wife went out and brought us a couple of tasty breakfast sandwiches from this little coffee place nearby. I got a lot of art supplies to play with--including my very first set of gouache!--and some really good books and movies. J got me a pencil sharpener that I was super jonesing for and I am, perhaps, the most excited about that.

It's the little things. :)

Then we went to see Captain Marvel and it was so good, y'all!! It was probably the best origin movie after Iron Man and I am really excited to see how the character deals with things in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame Part 1. I had seen Brie Larson in one or two things in small roles, so wasn't super familiar with her as an actor. She is super charming and charismatic and pulls off the role extremely well! I look forward to seeing more of her. The de-aging on Samuel L Jackson is CRAZY effective. He just looks like he does in Pulp Fiction, basically. There's no weird uncanny quality to it at all. Goose the cat was, obviously, the real MVP and deserves an Oscar.

We had a late lunch/early supper at Din Tai Fung which is the soup dumpling place. I'm not 100% why they're basically the only place around that does soup dumplings. They're just regular steamed dumplings but, in addition to the normal filling, there's also a little blog of really gelatin-rich broth. When the dumplings cook, the gelatin melts from the heat so the filling gets surrounded by a little pool of broth. You get a really tasty juicy brothfest when you eat the dumpling.

I live in Seattle so there are a LOT of Chinese restaurants--including dim sum specific places--but Din Tai Fung is, like, THE place to get soup dumplings. I suspect partially because of this, they are much more expensive than pretty much any other Chinese food place., so we don't go there super often. At our normal dim sum place, for $20 we can basically eat until we want to die. A similar quantity of dishes at Din Tai Fung came to over $60 before tip. And, like, don't get me wrong! Din Tai Fung isn't sleeping on their other dishes--it's all REALLY good! But definitely exclusively for special occasions.

J got me an Oreo cake but I am still too stuffed to have any. I have committed to cake breakfast.

I don't know what am going to do about J's birthday. It's on the 21st and I just... I don't have any money, you know? And, like, I know that you don't have to have money necessarily to have a good time, but I can't really pay on my own to take her to a movie and a nice dinner like she did for me today. I always bake her a cake for her birthday and I'll do that once she lets me know what kind of cake she wants. Maybe I can do some art for her? It's been a while since I did anything really substantial for her. I've designed and had printed a few t-shirts and did a little Pumpkaboo watercolor that she can keep on her desk at work and some years ago I did cover art for a fanfic she wrote. But it's been awhile since I did anything to really knock her socks off. I have a little bit of time to figure something out!

I had a good job interview on Friday. I like the place, the work seems pleasant enough, and it's easy to get to on the bus. Here's hoping!

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I liiiiiiiiiiiiive!

2019-03-04T10:23:41Z

I've been on a huge kick recently for The Killers. They dropped their first album, "Hot Fuss" when I was in high school and I've been a ride or die fan ever since. I don't know why, exactly, other than I just like the sounds they make. Most of my other favorite bands are closely tied to specific times in my life or bring up a really particular emotional connection. The Killers just make music that I really really like. I like literally every single song I've ever heard them sing which I can't actually say for most of the bands that I consider my favorites.

So, I drew Brandon Flowers who is the lead singer. I found a recording of their Lollapalooza in Brazil concert performance which was almost exactly an hour and half long and that's how long it took me to draw this. I could have fiddled with it some more, but, like, it's Brandon Flowers fanart and I wasn't about to spend three hours of life whittling away at getting his stubble exactly right, you know?

Anyway, I love him. Click to enlarge!

Print available via Deviantart

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Just a little update

2019-02-27T20:03:45Z

I've been kind of down recently. Some of it is hormonal, but some of it is also just unemployment blues. My sleep schedule has gone to absolute crap and I'm just not very good at forcing structure on myself. So even though I tell myself, "tomorrow I'm going to do THING!" as soon as I wake up, I'm like, "nah... I'm going to watch 12 hours of crap on YouTube." I'm not seeking advice--I do know of things I can do to help keep myself on some kind of track. I genuinely just need to Get My Shit Together in even a small way. So I haven't felt up to doing much art lately, though that urge has been coming back in the last couple of days which is good!

In other news, my 34th birthday is coming up on March 10th and I wanted to thank mrs260 for A) being a generally super-cool human being with an excellent blog and supreme taste in Garashir fanfiction and for B) the very kind gift of a one-month paid membership on DW. Thank-you SO MUCH! :D And, anyone reading, do check out her blog. <3

I don't know what else I want for my birthday, though. J keeps asking me and aside from Rowlet merch of some kind (because I love that sleepy spheroid) I don't know what I actually want. Like, there is no end to the things that I want, in general. I have multiple meticulously organized and prioritized Amazon wishlists. But none of them are things that I really need, so my priority is pretty low on all of it in reality. What I really want for my birthday is a job that I like and no one can just give me that, you know?

Apropos of nothing, J and I went to dinner this past weekend and saw the Lego Movie 2 (which is a bit of mess, but makes up for it in the second half and is extremely fun) and at dinner, J asked me if, as a history nerd, I was retroactively annoyed with how history is taught in schools. I'm American and I grew up in the southeast, so I definitely had to listen to all the bullshit arguments about how the Civil War wasn't REALLY about slavery (it was) and how the relocation of Native Americans wasn't REALLY a genocide (it was) and how racism is over thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr! (it's not.) But I'm not that annoyed looking back because I never took my textbooks all that seriously to begin with.

Some backstory: My family is a family of documentary-watchers. Generally, the drier and less emotional the better. My parents were all about nature documentaries, historical documentaries, science, engineering, biographies--whatever! We just love to learn about the world and if we can do so on the couch while eating dinner, all the better. When I was 4th grade, I started seeing commercials for a Disney movie based on Pocahontas. I knew she was a real historical figure, so I assumed that Disney was making a beautifully-animated documentary and I was OVER THE MOON. Disney?? Making a DOCUMENTARY?! I expressed my excitement to my teacher, the basically perfect Mrs. Carmen, and I think she could see the writing on the wall. She gently recommended that I do a little bit of reading up on Pocahontas before seeing the movie and I grabbed a few different books and I went to town.

Now, I made SURE to grab a few different books because I had already learned an important lesson about media bias in my Laura Ingalls Wilder obsession of previous years. I'd read the Little House books, The First Four Years, West From Home, and even some of Rose Wilder Lane's short stories, but I wanted more. I had to know every detail about this person. So I started reading biographies that had been written about her by other writers--often posthumously. And I learned that each biographer seemed to focus a lot on a different aspect of her personality. One of them tried to paint her as being an irascible tomboy, another emphasized her domestic skills. None of them did that great a job of presenting her as a whole and complex person. Reading all of them, I felt like, gave me a pretty general profile of her that seemed mostly consistent with her Little House character, but it definitely took some work and some real critical thinking.

So I knew that I couldn't rely on a single source for my Pocahontas knowledge. Even at 8, I knew that if biographers couldn't get their story straight about someone who had already written a mostly-autobiographical book series, there wasn't much hope for someone like Pocahontas. So I read a few books about her and then I read some books about the Algonquin peoples and general culture of Native tribes in that region. I dabbled a little bit into reading about John Smith, but whatever. English dude, white guy, there was enough of that going around in my textbooks.

And then I saw Disney's Pocahontas. And... It was not a documentary. The animation was stunning and the songs were great. I loved her character design because who wouldn't love a statuesque beautiful Native woman with That Hair? But everything was wrong. Like, everything. I've had a complicated relationship with that movie ever since. Part of me wants to love it because, of course, the animation and the songs and the raccoon friend, etc. But I HATE IT SO MUCH. Now, obviously, I know now that Disney never intended to make a documentary so being upset that they hadn't is seemingly unfair. After all, they took notable liberties with the fairy tales they'd adapted. But Pocahontas wasn't a fairy tale, you know? Who cares that the Little Mermaid dies at the end in the original story. She's not a real person! She could turn into a unicorn and fuck off into the TARDIS and it wouldn't have made any difference because mermaids, unicorns, and TARDISes aren't real. Making what amounts to being an everybody-lives AU fanfic of an already-existing fictional work is not a big deal. Making what amounts to an AU of someone's life seriously squicked me out as a kid. Especially since that AU egregiously misrepresented the Tsenacommacah, their relationship to the Jamestown settlers, and played into some really gross Noble Savage tropes. (I didn't know what Noble Savage was at that age, but I hated the concept then and I hate it now.)

So basically by the time I was 8, I was thoroughly disillusioned with how the rest of the world depicted historical events and peoples. I'd read books and watch documentaries and come into class and hear a completely different narrative. And I didn't think anything of it because, yeah, if a bunch of Laura Ingalls biographers AND Disney are going to feed me lies, why wouldn't my textbooks? Clearly, media aimed at children was inherently dishonest about historical representation. Why would my textbooks be any different?

But I think now that I should be more annoyed because I don't think most of the other kids I was in school with were reading history books and watching dry documentaries to fill in the gaps, you know? I mean, I hope that at least some of them were. But I know that a lot of people come to some pretty nasty realizations as adults that a lot of the information they'd been fed in school was untrue. What's worse, though, is that a lot of people don't. And, probably the worst of all is that kids aren't really taught proper critical thinking in school. We're just sort of supposed to absorb information (which is often incorrect or misleading) and then regurgitate it in a sanctioned way to pass standardized tests. That's probably the thing that I'm most annoyed about. So many people I know--people I respect and who are otherwise very intelligent and capable adults--still are tempted to believe anything if it's printed because they never really learned how to question.

I maintain that ignorance is not a sin or a crime unless it's willful. Ignorance is merely the state of not knowing and everyone who has ever lived is ignorant of more things than they are cognizant. I'm a smart person and I know a lot of things, but the world is VAST and there is so much about it that, even with infinite lifetimes, I would never be able to know everything. So I am always happy to defer to people who are more knowledgeable than me about their subject, skill, or trade. I never want to glorify my own ignorance. But man... There are too damn many people who do. Knowledge is power. It's critical to know about both the present and the past so you can use that knowledge to inform the future. How many adults out there think that Pocahontas and John Smith had a brief, passionate, love affair? How many people don't know how she learned to speak English? Probably more people than those that think that Civil War wasn't about states' rights to slave ownership which is already a disappointing number of people. And, on the surface, it doesn't really matter. Knowing that "Pocahontas" was just a nickname for her isn't really something that's going to change the world. But, like, make the effort to be curious, you know? And if you know a lie and someone informs you of the truth, be thankful that you've been gifted a little less ignorance instead of clinging desperately to it like a security blanket. Sure! Be skeptical and do your own digging, but don't reject the massive body of evidence-based knowledge just so you can cling to your crumb of supposition.

I don't really have any point to relating any of this. It's just something that's been rattling around in my brain since Saturday. And goodness knows I've got time to think these days!

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Getting back to basics

2019-02-15T08:52:37Z

As much fun as I've had experimenting with new techniques and styles and art supplies, I wanted to relax a little bit and fall back on my One True Art Supply: Your basic graphite pencil. I specifically wanted to do a pencil portrait (for someone who said she wasn't going to be drawing faces for a while after the 100 Heads Challenge, I sure have been drawing a lot of faces...) and was wracking my brain trying to decide what I wanted to do. Then, I stumbled on Janelle Monae's Grammy performance and, well, that was it. I was reminded just how much I adore her, so I figured I'd give her a shot.

Finding a picture I wanted to work from was not easy. I had a sort of general shape in my head that I wanted to draw and Janelle just needed to have that angle. I basically found it and even though I had to splice a few references together to get my final reference, I'm happy with the overall look!

Click to enlarge:

Print available on DeviantArt

My Valentine's Day was lovely and not just because I spent a couple of hours of it staring at Janelle Monae's face. My wife and I exchanged chocolates and I had designed and printed a shirt for her on Redbubble 0f a Moogle with graffiti letters saying "Get Munny Get Paid." I haven't posted the Moogle art, but now that J has her shirt, here's what it looks like.

I know it's popular to shit on Valentine's Day, but I've always loved it. The candy selection is unparalleled and the packaging on said candy is wonderfully over the top. I love how there are stupid puns everywhere. But, more importantly, I really love the people I love and most days of the year it's considered weird to tell everyone how much I adore them and to get them glittery love-related stickers. I mean... I do it sometimes anyhow, but on Valentine's Day it's actually encouraged!!. The world is my goddamn Valentine. All I ever want from J is candy and she always provides.

So even though it's past midnight here on the West Coast, Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

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This wasn't supposed to be an art blog?

2019-02-13T07:36:51Z

And yet, here we are, lol!

When I finished my metallic deer piece, I thought: What if I used the metallic paint as the background and did black over it? So, I had in my head a piece of paper covered in super pale gold with this beautiful dark-haired life goddess or something just sort of swanning across the page. What came out was... Not that!

Preliminary tests showed that these metallic watercolors are not suited to being sketched upon--especially if you need to erase as you go. I thought about heavily using references for the face so I would feel less need to erase, but then I couldn't find references that really worked and I ended up Googling pictures of Priyanka Chopra and got SUPER distracted because of her extremely pretty face. So, I pulled back and decided to just go for broke and draw a damn lady. So I did. I did the lineart and colored the hair.

But then I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. So I used some scrap watercolor paper and drew some really sketchy little thumbnails of the figure to do some little samples of how I actually wanted to paint it. And I pretty much immediately reached for copper. I just REALLY like copper! I love the richness of it and my favorite "Pimp My Ride" episode involved painting a car the color of a new penny and it transformed my life, y'all. So I wanted her to copper. So then, like, did I want the whole painting to be one shade of copper? Did I want the background to be lighter? The figure to be lighter? How involved did I want to shade it? I still went in with only about 40% of a plan once I finally starting setting paint to paper.

I did a sort of wet-on-wet blotchy background in copper and two shades of gold and then I painted the figure in just copper. I did basically my usual shading because that is what I'm comfortable with and this painting had gotten so completely out of my control that I felt the need to put my foot down about SOMETHING. Then I redid all of the black lineart because she was going to be super linearty, damnit, and that's how she was going to be! so I'm not sure if I'm 100% on board with the shading AND the lineart, but I'm 90% on board with it, so I'll count that as a win.

Click to enlarge:

Print available via Deviantart

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Just a quick piece

2019-02-11T06:04:39Z

This is definitely in a style I don't normally do! I just really wanted to play with a set of Mozart Komorebi metallic watercolors that I got a while back. I remembered that I have some ancient India ink, so I did a black ink wash on a small piece of watercolor paper and went to town! I wanted to do a tree and I thought a deer would be cool because antlers.

The gold is simultaneously a highlight and a shadow because this deer lives in some kind of Escher-esque fantasy alternate universe. The stars look like that because of that reason, as well.

It's cute, though! I wish I could have found a way to scan or photograph it so that the metallic sheen comes through. I tried it probably a dozen times before I just gave up and scanned the damn thing.

Click to enlarge:

Print available via Deviantart

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Marker Illustration

2019-02-09T09:42:00Z

I got a set of Ohuhu markers off of Amazon about a month ago. I've used them to add accents to watercolors, but coloring with markers isn't really something I ever did much, so I'm still not 100% comfortable with using them.

So, in the spirit of drawing the tree earlier today, I decided to do an illustration (which is a type of art I don't usually do!) in marker with flowers (gnk!!) and a paisley background (GRNNNK!) with white gel pen--another tool I've used to add occasional highlights in watercolors, but not for anything else.

And I'm not mad at it! I like how the marker coloring went, overall. I thought I'd ruined it completely about 500 different times, but I just colored over it with my base color until I blended everything pretty much to oblivion. I did a very basic gradient from a darker green to a lighter green on the background. Then, because I love punishing myself, I did a gel pen paisley. I have never done a paisley before. I am not good at, like, patterns and things. But, again, not mad at it! It's bright and colorful and looks pretty good! Since the self-flagellation wasn't complete, I also did flowers. I'm a little mad at the flowers? I don't know. They're ok. I didn't really want to be very detailed with them--I wanted to keep a pretty flat-colored illustrative quality to them to contrast with the comparatively more elaborate shading of her face. I don't know if it worked? Whatever. I did flowers and I only, like, 15% hate them so I'm counting it as a win.

Click to enlarge!

Print available via Deviantart

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A Couple of Gals Being Pals

2019-02-08T22:35:55Z

I wanted to draw a tree.

See, I haven't really voluntarily or seriously drawn a tree since I was, like, in third grade. It's not because I dislike trees. On the contrary! I love them! I just thought they looked really hard to draw and I didn't think I could do it.

So, I watched a tutorial on YouTube and I just kind of went for it. I ended up drawing a couple of my OC's having a nice time together in the countryside. I live in Seattle and it's currently profusely snowing, so I am probably projecting a wish into the universe by depicting a bucolic summer day.

Click to enlarge:

It's become a joke online about how many times lesbian celebrities out with their girlfriends and the paparazzo images are captioned something along the lines of "a couple of gal pals on a night out" and they're, like, OPENLY making out. These characters are super into one another, so I kept referring to this as my Gal Pals drawing to my wife who was very tickled by it. So even though they're not sucking face, it's still a couple of Gals Being Pals.

Prints available via Deviantart.

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100 Heads Challenge day 10.5

2019-02-05T03:58:39Z

I took a couple of much-needed days off before tackling these guys. These are friends who volunteered their faces after I had already gotten 10 volunteers for the actual challenge. One of them is a repeat because he's just so pleased to have someone drawing his portrait, apparently!

Click to enlarge!

I'm not sure what I want to tackle next. I want to design a "Get Munny, Get Paid" Moogle shirt for my wife, but after that, I'm not sure. Probably nothing involving human faces for a while, though, lol!

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