The Monkey And The Plywood Violin

Rats and Candy

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:23:29 GMT

For a contest being held by seanan_mcguire and for those who requested rat photos. The little brown guy is Aeneas, a late and unrelated addition to the Rat Illiad.

Vituperousness and depression charting

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:57:40 GMT

Since it's prominent enough to annoy me, it's prominent enough to journal for next year.

Motivation has reached a new low point for the year. Am managing not to struggle too hard on getting my daily quota done, but all that activity before the con basically killed my creative urges. Don't want to sew, don't want to draw, don't want to write. Not even interested in video games, and my current interest in manga is pale and low-key. The good news is that I'm not actively unhappy. Just not actively much of anything.

I'm also sick, which can't be helping matters. The many joys of con crud. Hopefully this will pass soon. I have to find my mat cutter heads or buy a new one, do my laundry, mail out some well overdue paperwork, etc. It's full dark by 4:50 now, which isn't helping matters, though getting up at eight mitigates that somewhat.

For the last few nights after work, I've just been killing time till it's sleep time again.

Whee.

Augh!

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:31:25 GMT

So, when I moved into this apartment, I carefully stored my matboard and cutter in my closet, behind my dresser trunk and everything else. I put the cutting heads into a bag with their blades, so they wouldn't get lost. I currently haven't the faintest idea where that bag is. I've been searching for it all day, and have been through pretty much all parts of the apartment. Without packing up, I'm not sure I can find them.

This causes some real problems for doing a show tomorrow. After all, as much as I hate mat cutting, it's a world less expensive than buying precuts. And most of the pieces I wanted to take aren't standard, either. Even the standard ones want a margin just a tiny bit smaller than the one on a standard mat. There's a Dick Blick five miles from the con, which could provide precuts, but it'd be expensive and the end result would be suboptimal. Argh!

I am trying to decide what to do, now. I may give one more search for the heads, though the only place I can think to look involves moving furniture and a lot of other things. I may be stuck taking old art, which is disappointing. I can see huge numbers of things wrong with all my older pieces, and the brain monkeys are convinced that no one will want to buy them. After all, they've been passed up for this long, no?

samadi brought me chocolate, which makes her a goddess. I'm also trying to figure out what I'm going to wear. I could go in everyday stuff, but that's kinda dull, though brightly colored. This is an excuse to wear my victoriana, after all. If only it didn't take so much effort.

Geh.

- Also, I'm unlikely to be able to finish the Pygmalion. If I'd been able to find the mat cutter and cut everything while there was still daylight, yeah, I probably could have speed painted until I fell over. But there's another big shiny thing what won't be going. I spose I could take it and work on it there. However, it's big and has boobies, and the con crowd, like the SCA, has recently gotten much more "Think of the children!"

Art and mood charting

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:34:16 GMT

Working on a piece that's a little too hard for me again. We'll see if I can accomplish what I'd like, or if I mess it up halfway through. It's like juggling rats. So far, so good, but they're so -squirmy-! And I know I'm going to drop one any minute now.

Sleep schedule is rotating back - I'm going to bed anywhere between 9 and 11 most nights, though I was up till 11:30 last night. This seems absurdly early, but it's enabling wakeup times around 8 to 8:30, so it's worth it. The extra sunlight is making a difference.

Of course, after dark I'm prone to lunatic beliefs, severe self doubt and big, dramatic cases of the hacks. So far I've not done too much that I oughtn't. Tonight hasn't been bad. I'm trying to get this painting done before the con, and I had a brief manic period that allowed for a lot of painting. Perhaps I must simply keep myself busy. Having time to kill seems to be a real problem.

Must do laundry before the con and hopefully tidy a bit. Housework has been terrible, and I've been eating so much boxed stuff. There's breakfast cereal in my house now. How bizarre is that? Daily monitoring is now required to make sure I eat a non-starchy, non-allium vegetable instead of living on shredded wheat, bagels and potatoes with egg. Caffeine intake is unnecessarily high. But - writing work is getting done and I've done more art in the past month and a half than I did in most of the previous year, so it's not entirely a loss.

Progress art up on the other journal again.

Putting art where it goes

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:26:23 GMT

There's a progress pic up over at http://gracedpalmer.livejournal.com , where it ought to be for once, for those of you who are interested but don't yet have that journal friended.

Rats Plus Angst!

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:07:06 GMT

Don't worry, the two aren't related. I completed a minor project last night, which had been waiting around for about six months, since the first time I flaked on it. So, of course, I hate most of it and went into the Art Angst Spiral. I've pulled out of the despair section (mostly) and have entered the grim "guess you'd better get to work" portion instead.

Let's see if it'll last through this day's quota of nonfic writing to become either fiction or visual art. At the moment, yanno, I'm a failure, and merely mediocre at everything, and I ought to have specialized and become really good at something, so as to be marketable. Also, I should be less of a flake. (No, I don't need anyone to come talk me down off anything. This is just a case of the hacks. They happen, usually immediately following completion of a project).

In rat news, I adopted a baby from the shelter about a week ago. He's my dominant-gene rat - standard coat agouti top-eared, or about as wild-type as a domestic rat can be. He's also half the sizeof my biggest older boy, shiny, friendly, and incredibly hyperactive. I have named him Aeneas, as he's a later, unrelated addition to Paris and Hector. Right now I have all three of them out, and have discovered that three rats constitutes a swarm. I have Lap: the Scampering. Photos if I ever remember to take and upload them.

Back to work!

Woohoo - Hair Length

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:41:27 GMT

We now officially have thigh length. Only in the technical sense - the longest ends are maybe a handswidth below my bottom - but still! And it's not actually significantly less convenient.

Next target - knee?

Up early because they stole my sunlight yesterday and I'm going to have to do something to stay sane.

Some Improvement

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:56:52 GMT

Dunno if I'm quite ready to take over the world, but I'm greatly improved from last night. This morning I am merely groggy, not jumpy and strange. Hooray for chocolate, lots of sleep, and an Octavia Butler novel.

Now I need to write about skin cancer.

For Posterity

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:03:22 GMT

Depression charting under cut.

It's important to post this for next year. Today was pretty wretched, and started with me being relatively unwilling to get out of my warm, flannelly nest. The exploding eggplant incident seems to have sparked a bout of anxiety about apartment mess, productivity, etc. Inconveniently, it's the kind that results in immobility, not the kind that results in a flurry of get stuff done. Managed a little cleaning this morning, but very minimal, got writing quota finished, and inked the clockwork badger partially. Have been useless and poor conversation all day, though. Played a lot of Arcanum, ordered dinner out. Pinnacle of cooking=pizza bagels for lunch. Perhaps I'll crash early? Ended up skipping A&S night in part because of ennui, but also in part because even the barony calendar keeper doesn't seem to know when and where it is. We would have had to guess.

More Arcanum now, I guess. If I'm lucky, more inking will spontaneously occur. I am not looking forward to matting these little guys, I can tell you that.

Ok, Important safety tip time

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:27:51 GMT

Do not bake an eggplant without poking a hole in it. Really.

Now how am I going to get the eggplant off my ceiling?

Also, ow.

The inking, the inking!

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:34:46 GMT

It's late and I'm covered in paint, but it's done. Did you know that right around the five to seven hour mark is when you start staring at the painting and thinking "are we there yet?"

Still 6x9 on matboard, but now including india ink, gold ink, watercolor, pitt pen and interference acrylic in two colors. The scan has been heavily tweaked to try to mimic some of the iridescence that happens on the real thing, and I begin to wonder if my scanner's on the way out. It seems to have real problems rendering subtle teals (it makes them cobalt) and light reddish browns (which have gone way yellower than they should in this piece). Basically, everything that's blue in this picture is shiny in real life.

Jiang Yun and his fabulous mechanical dragon

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:41:48 GMT

Partially finished

This is most of the inking, but I'm not sure what to do with the color. Also debating inking some fine detail into the jacket. Worried about the margins - I always draw too close to the edges and have trouble matting later. 6.5x9 on scrap matboard (it's acid free!)

Samhain

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:50:54 GMT

For many years now, I've had a Samhain dinner/ritual on Halloween proper. Well, I'm not going to do that this year. I'm making this post so that no one feels like I'm shunning them or that they're the cause. Many things are combining (small, extremely messy apartment, recent large and stressful event, lack of planning on my part) to make a formal dinner difficult this year. So I'm just going to skip it, have a ritual on my own, and stick to just cooking that pumpkin I got from the CSA and stuffing it into people at random.

If I'm disappointing anybody who was looking forward to it, you have my apologies. But it's really a sty in here! Have a great Halloween, nonetheless.

Today is A Very Hard Day

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:12:06 GMT

I wasn't going to write about it, but then I remember that depression charting remains a priority. I'm moving slowly, doing that edge of tears thing, and having a lot of motivation troubles. I'm stressed out because of various personal stuff and the fact that I haven't gotten my apartment clean yet, BUT that wouldn't be bothering me nearly as much if I weren't wonky today. Hopefully this nasty phase will cease soon, because all I really want to do is crawl into a hole with something passive (book, video game, etc) and not come out.

At least I'm getting through the work, albeit slowly. I have to call a client soon, however, and that's stressing me out a lot. I hate telephones so much.

And then another one happened

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:01:25 GMT

Still working on stuff that's pretty easy for me - small pieces, ink linework, watercolor, etc. However, they're fun, and it's nice to have done two things in one day, when I usually finish nothing. Of course, I've stayed up too late for someone who's not slept much this weekend, and am very groggy. But here's more art.

Once again, 5x7 on old moldy paper (now disinfected) in gold and India inks and watercolor. Prints and original available, just ask.

I do wish that the getting saturated and moldy didn't make this paper bleed so badly. Several of those lines could have been a lot more elegant.

Well within my comfort zone

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:57:12 GMT

Actually painted something today. It's been a long time, no? And yes, I'm being lazy and posting it in this journal and not the other one, because more of you read this one anyhow.

For a time, it was fashionable in the fairy court to wear wings of brass and artifice.

5x7, gold and India inks and watercolor on mold stained paper. None of the background is painted - it's all from mold that colonized a stack of paper years ago, and some ink that stained it. It's been ironed with a hot iron and water, so there's nothing living in it.) The original is going to Windycon, though if anyone wants to buy it before then, that's great, too. Plus, I have prints, too (5x7, but I might be able to finagle an 8x10 due to a really high res scan). I am strangely happy about the costume - except for the tightness of the pants, it's a perfectly plausible Edwardian cycling costume (plus mechanical wings and a gold spiky hair thing, of course.)

In unrelated news

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:20:08 GMT

When I lean back in my computer chair, the slapping sound is my hair hitting the floor. Well, hello unexpected length.

Griffin's Needle Aftermath

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:29:11 GMT

Oh, we are not eighteen anymore. Five of us (myself, samadi, jmpierce, ladydrake and her boyfriend Cris, who does not have an lj to the best of my knowledge) all went to Griffin's Needle this weekend. This is a costuming deathmarch SCA event about an hour and a half away. Sewing started at 10 pm Friday night, and stopped at 6 pm Saturday evening. The goal is to make a whole outfit from the skin out (underwear on out) in this time period.

We decided to make some garb for me. I feel a little guilty about this, because I got a lot of stuff out of it, but no one else wanted to have it made for them. We could just as easily have made ladydrake's purple and green Florentine, for instance. But anyhow - the goal was a full early 16th century German woman's costume, tradesman class, from the Augsburg area.

We were not a total success. There are issues with the bodice pattern, and we had to get really creative with piecing because my fabric shrank more than it should have. There was enough to get the job done, if I had not borked the patterning. Let this be said: you should not make your test dress in linen/rayon if the finished pieces are going to be in light wool and very firm silk twill.

There will need to be some interesting re-piecing to get the shoulders and arms of the overdress to work, and I'm not totally happy with the undergown, either. This is no one's fault but mine, however. I did the patterning and cutting. Everyone else did lots and lots of hand stitching, and their work is beautiful. It's just that the result isn't quite the shape I expected it to be. The accessories (linen stockings, hemd, and wulsthaube) are beautiful. When I regain my brains, I hope to take photos of them.

I was worried about my documentation, because I don't know how to write it. I took the approach of treating it like a paper from school, which left me feeling like it wasn't terribly good, since my logic isn't spelled out as clearly as it should be and could be questioned as faulty, my citations are a little schizophrenic, and I made some blanket assertions I didn't back up with a cite.

Apparently, I should not have been worried. We entered as intermediate or advanced, were placed in advanced by the person running the event, and all three of our judges told us that we entered the wrong category and should have entered as Pyxis (an authenticity-oriented category that discourages sewing machines and modern shortcuts.) Also, I have been requested to send copies of the documentation to two of them.

I'll probably clean it up before it goes out - some parts of it were written the day before the event, and I'm really rather embarrassed by those. Perhaps I will be able to clean it up enough to web it? I feel a little weird about that, because most of it's not original work - it's heavily based on things I've read online on others' websites and journals, and on the German Ren group, but I can't remember who said what. I don't want to look like I'm taking credit!

The rules weren't too clear, so it looked like people in that category were required to make all accessories, including footwear, and we have no leatherworkers, so it seemed inappropriate. This was apparently incorrect. The point is moot, beacuse I've inadvertantly exhausted all my friends, so we shan't be back (I'd be willing to go again, perhaps in several years, but this is not really a "do it alone" event. I don't sew -that- fast!)

So yeah, mixed feelings in the end. I had a good time. Everyone with me was really good. The reaction to our efforts was strongly approving. But I feel like I really fell short and messed up in a lot of places that I should not have. All the mistakes can be fixed (to one degree or another) but they should not have been made in the first place, were I competent.

No pictures were taken - we were too busy and distracted. If any appear online later (there was an official photographer, but our end result wasn't all that impressive, so it probably didn't get photoed) I'll link them.

Also, I really wish that costuming events didn't require improv presentations. I'm a competent seamstress, but I never want to enter anything I make in a con show (and this event was problematic at the end, too) because they make you give a speech and be an actor to boot. samadi and ladydrake were really the only thing that saved me.

Today, I will not get much done, though I do need to put some attention to the cleaning of the apartment, since it's trashed. I may spend most of the day poking my new nonfunctional tiredness. So far we've discovered that while I'm well-slept, interesting parts of me hurt, I'm still subject to mood swings (sorry about last night, guys - but it's not like I was the only one who was frustrated, confused, and hair-trigger) and my motivation is made of slowness. Let's see what new damage sleep dep hath caused!

If I am very good, I will start on some art in prep for Windycon. Since my monitor went kerput, art has mostly fallen by the wayside (I was being lazy and doing all my practice onscreen). I must try to get going again, so that I can be like a real person. Of course, if I'm working on convention art, I'll still be shirking my sketchbook. I now have a 23" Samsung. It is a widescreen, which makes me feel like I've been cheated of the top quarter of my monitor, but it is at least almost as tall as the old one. No more turning on the computer and hoping that you get more than a blinky flicker.

Eventually, I may reply to all the emails I've been ignoring. I've been a very poor correspondent.

Ok, time to get off this before I go back into wondering why I have hobbies in the first place. That goes nowhere good. I should work up some clockwork animals, instead.

Hey lex, have you seen this?

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:38:30 GMT

http://pics.livejournal.com/lucylou/pic/000tr11y

Argh!

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:23:15 GMT

Shiny new monitor arrived. It is huge. It tries to eat me. It also has a full line of dead pixels down the right side of the screen. So, back it must go.
The old one has been more cooperative of late, returning to its usual five or so tries to get it to stay on, instead of sitting there and blinking at me.
*grump*

By way of apology and update

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:55:57 GMT

I'm having an assortment of issues at the moment, notably fall depression coming on strong and my big computer monitor being on the fritz. So art has stalled a little and I haven't replied to a number of you in email. I'm sorry about that - I'll respond again as soon as I'm up to it.

In other news, I'm boiling wool and walnuts, and I had a good dinner with people. Work tomorrow sounds exhausting.

Reading Steampunk Is My Duty

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:00:58 GMT

But it's not always a fun one. I've decided I probably have a professional obligation to read the stuff that's being marketed as steampunk at the moment. So, I picked up Affinity Bridge at the local library. This was an unfortunate choice. And the people I talk to the most often have already heard me complain about it, so now it's your turn!

Rarely have I seen a book fail on pretty much every front, but this one managed it. It wants to be many things at once, and isn't very good at all of them. This book would like to be a swashbuckling adventure, a James Bond book, a Sherlock Holmes book, and wouldn't mind throwing a little bit of the Dr. Who/companion dynamic in for good measure. It has a plucky female assistant who is not terribly plucky, and never actually causes any friction. There is eventual romantic vagueness between her and the main character (whose age I cannot track, but who does an awful lot of running around the city, fighting on train rooftops, etc) for not reason that I can tell save that it's expected. She's neither a full on Victorian stock character or a modern feminist heroine, and the mingling of the two has reduced her to generic greyness.

The language is dense in some places, sparse and generic in many, and uses the same sentence format and cadence throughout. Most of the sentences are too long by half. The author does not seem to know how to use his five dollar words, either - many are in the wrong place, seem to be substituting for a similar sounding word, or are simply wrong. I found myself fidgeting for a red pen and trying to remember that this is a library book. Do not correct! The saddest part is that the autor is an editor.

The history is poor and over general. It's the sort of thing I expect someone to glean from watching a lot of period flicks. If you are gearing a book to an audience with a love of Victoriana, explaining that Whitechapel is a slum is unnecessary. If you must explain this, please do it in better terms. The Affinity Bridge makes Star Wars' "hive of scum and villainy" look like realistic dialogue.

No character has an identifiable voice, except a secondary character (a secretary) who appears to have a comic lowerclass accent. This disappears without warning. The book has failed on the "show don't tell" front across the board, which would be fine if it were a pastiche of a Victorian novel. It's not, and the end effect is merely clumsy. Further issues include a laudanum addiction with minimal apparent side effects, and none that interrupt the plot and inconsistent science. The mystery central to the plot is one that I saw coming, and I am not the most astute of readers. I'm usually the one who's actually surprised by the surprise ending. Also, it's probably a bad idea to introduce your book with a scene containing the only nonwhite character, who is then referred to as "it." The character is a zombie, and all the zombies are called "it" but the first thing we see, it's not looking good.

A lot of the problems (exciting cliches such as railway fisticuffs, climbing a rope ladder to an airship in midair, etc) could have been avoided simply by writing them tongue in cheek. After all, this genre loves ironic pulp. Sadly, every one of them is written cold. A joy in gratuosity might have exclused this. Likewise, the constant use of archaisms (I like archaisms. Even in period, nobody said "whilst" quite that much) might have been excused by making the writing denser and having some grasp on the history. Sadly, this falls flat in characterization, plotting, world building, theme and nuts and bolts writing.

Two positive points, both of them non central to the plot - the self winding automaton, which functions like a self winding watch, is a nice touch. I also approve of the idea of an eternal Queen Victoria, kept alive well past her time by machinery. Neither concept is explored.

Here's hoping the next one I pick up will have redeeming qualities. I try to never throw a book, but I was tempted.

There's no art today, because I'm not as fast during the week as on the weekend, and I want to put all the studies from the same model together. I'm quite tired of drawing necks, but there are lots more to go. Once I get through a few models' worth of variations on the female neck and shoulders, I get to start on men. Wheeeeee.

Art a day 9-20-09

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:07:58 GMT

It won't be absolutely every day, because there are days when I'm out of town. But give or take.

Less interesting for spectators today. We're taking on the neck and throat anatomy issue at a crawl. Today, we're starting off with a rather thin lady with some significant musculature. The same stock album has images of her doing scarf acrobatics. In the first picture, her neck looks like it has an unreasonable slope, but I actually checked and corrected it with the photo underneath (after the initial drawing) and I didn't have it sloped enough to start with. That one's a little overshaded, however.

Paint Tool Sai, madder toned background with burnt umber and lead white. There are several hours in these.

Day 2

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:19:45 GMT

Alright, time to move away from the comfort zone. Not too far, though - if I jump right into really difficult things, I'll just wander off. So, still with a head shot and still with linework only. But it's a guy, which I'm less good at, and there are three colors this time. Plus the terrifying prospect of dealing with neck anatomy.

Paint Tool Sai again. Colors used: sap green for background, burnt umber for main linework, caput mortuum for some shadows, lead white for highlights. Took about an hour.

I finished something and I don't completely hate it

sisterbluebird@gmail.com — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:03:21 GMT

Theoretically I ought to upload this to the other journal, but I'm feeling lazy. This is the first thing I've managed to get far enough to finish in a long time.

Paint Tool Sai, using the limited palette I posted a few days ago. Background toned with yellow ochre. Linework in red ochre and lead white. Time to finish - 2ish hours?