I've been teaching myself A LOT of Excel at my current job. I am kind of sad because there aren't any obvious applications for VLookup in the office and I want to play with it. But everybody else in the office is afraid of Excel. Most of the spreadsheets I've inherited weren't even formatted as tables. One guy in the office always apologizes to me when he brings me data entry that should have been in a previous stack because he doesn't know about filtering.
I got a new laptop last summer as my beautiful Mac Book was literally falling apart. I couldn't afford a new Mac Book so I got an HP laptop. I did a bunch of research to make sure it could run Photoshop (and Minecraft) smoothly. And it can. It's just too bad the screen is muddy and dark. So I can't really do art on this computer and I was super sad about it but then for Christmas I got a Galaxy Note tablet and friends. It is magnificent. I love it so much. It can't, alas, run Photoshop but for drawing, Sketchbook is very very good. I have been drawing so much with it that it's on the verge of supplanting my paper sketchbooks.
This piece is a commission that I did for a friend of mine. This was actually an ink on paper drawing that I colored on the tablet. I also touched up the line work a bit. I had really a lot of fun with the detail here and playing with different brushes. I have been experimenting with needle felting! I've been going on in more detail on my tumblr, but these are my two most recent finished projects. These were both learning experiences as nether of these guys is particularly well suited to the medium. I made Scraps over a wire armature not so much so he'd be posable as because I didn't think he'd be structurally sound otherwise. The wire I had to hand was a little too thick so it was a bit of a challenge to get him felted without making him too bulky. Zero on the other hand is tissue thin. It was hard to get the felt packed tightly enough for him to not be too fuzzy. They were both a lot of fun though and I'm pleased with how they came out. I've just moved to Portland, Oregon! I've been planning to come here for the past few years but just haven't been able to swing it financially. I finally realized that if I kept waiting for the time to be right it would never happen. So I gave notice at work, threw some stuff in a bag and just went. I really love it here so far, and my work has really benefitted.
I'm starting, and much more importantly, finishing a lot of new projects. I have some new ideas but also lots of old ideas that have been on the back burner. And when I sketch or doodle I don't hate most of what I do! Party I think I'm just more confident, but I also think that the work is just flowing better. Anyway, the piece I'm working on now is a phoenix tryptich. This is the main piece, and the other two will be a hatchling and a smoldering elderly phoenix. I debated basing the design of the mythical bird on a peacock or a crane like you see fairly frequently, or something goofier like a dodo. I settled on basing the look of the phoenix on a guinea fowl because they are big cuddly huggable goofy birds but they can also be elegant. Once I finish this I want to work on a series of humorously nerdy posters based mostly on campy B-movies from the 60's. I'm just very excited right now. I have updated my gallery! Gotten rid of some old stuff and added new stuff that better represents where I am now as an artist. I also thought I'd share some of my current projects. I have been making cameo jewelry for my new Etsy shop WoozyPoodleArt. This one I call "Key to the TARDIS." It's Doctor Who inspired. I have several other cameos up there that are all hand carved in wax, then cast in plastic. I am also currently working on some jewelry pieces made from found objects, hardware, and old jewelry. I want to do some stone carving as soon as I can afford to upgrade my Dremel. Recently I have become enamored of a podcast called The Thrilling Adventure Hour. It is brilliant and hilarious and just shockingly good. It has inspired me to start several sculpture projects. One of the larger segments in The Thrilling Adventure Hour is Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars! "When there's varmints need a catchin' or younguns need a savin' on his rocket steed he'll race across the stars." Mercury, is the "rocket steed" in question and I assumed at first he was just a robot horse, but eventually as Mercury became more of a character, it became clear that he is a live Earth horse with rocket parts maybe? Which sounded like a fun project, especially since I've always been interested in modding Breyers. Somebody gave me an old boring one to work with and I did a loooot of research about the hobby (which is huge) to find out what the best materials and techniques were. I got some epoxy clay (which I've long wanted to work with) and my trusty Dremel and heat gun and took the horse apart. I plan to use pastel chalk to refinish him (still haven't decided what color), and give him a haired mane and tail made of hand dyed mohair. Although I'm a bit torn on the tail just because a haired tail around all the gears and pistons of his robotic hind quarters seems like a hilariously bad idea. I'm going to make his rocket saddle out of leather and more clay. I originally thought about modding a Breyer doll to make Sparks Nevada himself but, no offense to official hobbyists, those dolls suck. I've decided I want to make Sparks a ball jointed doll. I started a practice BJD in Apoxy Sculpt, the same clay I'm using on Mercury, but I think for Sparks I will go with either Super Sculpey or Le Doll clay as ball jointed dolls need to be able to withstand a certain amount of tension and I'm not positive the Apoxy Sculpt is up to the task (although I really like it for the Mercury build). You can see bits of the BJD I'm working on behind Mercury in the wide gallery shot below. It's unfinished but is going to be sort of a big headed Funko pony. I want to use it to practice mold making and casting so I'm making it deliberately modular. I found an awesome looking job to apply for today! It would be an amazing opportunity. The only thing is the ad has already been up for 6 days. Normally I don't bother to apply to Craigslist ads that are more than a couple days old because in this market they've already been drowned with applicants by that time. But this one was too good for me not to try. So hopefully I hear back!
This is Trinity. She's a character from a comic that I'm working on with a friend of mine. I don't know why she's discouraged. I do know that I'm a bit discouraged because I want to move. Seattle or Portland would be ideal but any semi-coastal city would be fine. Basically if there's a risk of it being flattened by kaiju, I am open to it. But I keep coming across job applications in those places that say "local applicant only." I apply for them anyway but I'm not sure which is the right approach. I have friends who'll let me use their addresses but I don't want to lie. On the other hand I don't want these potential employers to think I expect them to help pay for my relocation, or think I'm just generally not serious about the position. It is a conundrum.
A few weeks ago I tried out for the local roller derby team. The team has a great logo and I need to buy some of their merch. A recruiter I met at work talked me into going to the informational meeting for potential Fresh Meat despite my fear of injury. My family was bizarrely enthusiastic about the idea and spent about two days texting me ideas for Derby names. My favorites were Painbow Smash and Slamma Careeninina. But at the first practice my fear that I would catastrophically injure myself came immediately true when I fell wrong and sprained my right thumb. That's my drawing hand. I was afraid I had broken it at the time but fortunately it was just a severe sprain. I decided that my inherent lack of any kind of athletic ability made participating in a violent sport probably a bad idea. But I still think the sport is awesome so at the bout last week I brought my sketchbook and did about 5 pages of quick motion sketches. I wanted to post some of those here but they are mostly really really sketchy and not much to look at. But post bout I did some more finished sketches of Number 14 who was the jammer who racked up a truly obscene lead for our team. I say "our" in the way of all sports fans, like I actually contributed something to the match by merely watching it. But she was so impressively nimble. You should have seen it, weaving through holes and skipping through the pack on the toes of her skates. It was insane. Also, there are some doodles of my dogs. There will almost always be doodles of my dogs.
I am a huge nerd but I have never played D&D. I've always been curious but I never knew anyone else who did it. I grew up in a small town and the nerd culture I was immersed in in college was not the same vein. But I have a new friend who has several housemates who all do it and he invited me to join their campaign. We've had several sessions and while it is mostly a slog through an endless dungeon killing demon rats, I am quite enjoying it. My character is a dwarf named Delvinia Spade, which I think is hilarious but either nobody else gets the pun, or they just don't think it's funny. These are some early sketches where I haven't worked out her costume yet. Her backstory is based largely on Discworld. She's a city dwarf born and raised. Her father is an overseer at the Ratworks, her brother works for the city as an animal control officer, and Delvinia works with her mother running a market stall that sells the ripest meat pies in the city. She goes adventuring because she wants to prove that she is still a dwarf despite her non traditional upbringing. She can diggy diggy hole with the best of them. I wanted her to be a bit noobish at adventuring because I am a bit noobish at RPG (that 2 year streak in high school role playing Dragon Riders of Pern on Yahoo notwithstanding). I drew this while simultaneously fighting rats with a diamond dire pick. Which is not an ideal rat fighting weapon but the DM won't let me solve every problem by digging a hole. I finally settled on a fairly feminine (for a dwarf) look for her. Leather Xena skirt, Valkyrie winged helmet, her mustache and beard are braided and secured with a bow.
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