Thursday Art Walk

 

Today I Made Something GEOMETRIC

This week's abstract geometric creation was brought to you by too much coffee and hyperfixation!

I plonked myself down in front of my computer at around 11AM with every intention of just... doing some lineart over a pre-scanned sketch or something. I wasn't feeling too creative.

And then I started making lines, and...

"CHAOS"; digital art; 2022

Now, at first blush, this doesn't look too odd. It's some colors, fractured around each other like broken glass. If you zoom in, however.... it's a madhouse in there!

Yes, it has taken me until now to experiment with the different fill settings on Paint.net, why do you ask?

The only other thing that really happened today was that a squirrel took a breather on my kitchen steps today. She scurried up the railing and leaned against the top post, keeping an eye on things. I think me standing in the kitchen in my fuzzy Darth Vader pants and Power Rangers tee, sipping coffee, made her nervous, because she never once looked away from me. Unfortunately, I have a screen door and my phone only wanted to take pics of the screen, so no squirrel for you :(

I really enjoyed falling down the creative rabbit hole playing with this one, and I think I could do some more with a similar concept (not identical, though). I'll keep playing tonight, I think.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Am Le Tired

Yesterday was Quite A Day, let me tell you. It started normally enough - took a shower, drank some coffee, chatted with my guy, and started to get ready to finish the shrug I was working on...

And my mother told me to get ready for an adventure with the cat!

I'm always down for a kitty trip, so I threw on some Tromping Around Clothes (I'd changed back into pajamas after my shower, not anticipating the surprise adventure), and came down to find a paper bag on the counter.

The plan was thus:

• Grab the cat and the paper bag, get in the car.
• Head to the Wal-Mart for some forgotten bread and a box of tissues
• Head to the next town over to drop off some Vicks, cold medicine, and tissues for my guy, who has a chest cold (Feel Better, Love!)
• Find a beach that was open and not too crowded.

Now you may be thinking that's a lot of car time for a cat. Would she be okay? Especially with a trip to Wal-Mart?

Sure, she was fine. Annoyed at being stuck in her carrier while I tried to find the tissues (I was lied to by an endcap and looked in the wrong aisle for like 5 minutes before I could find them), but fine.

The first beach we tried was Birch Point State Park, but apparently the state decided that, despite our Septembers being anywhere from 55-75℉/12,8-23,9℃, and Mainers swimming in the ocean up until about January, the beach had to be closed. What a pain.

Well, we weren't going to let a little State Park Closure prevent our girl from having her first ever beach adventure, so we headed over to another beach - Crescent Beach. Poor Evie the Cat was chirping crankily from her carrier and reaching out with her cute little paws by now, so we made our way down and parked. By the time we got her out on her leash (which she was very curious and very nervous about), I realized we'd made a fatal error that my fellow Mainers will probably tease me for.

We forgot to check the tides.

We arrived just as the tide was at its highest, just starting to ebb.

On a beach where the beach head is 100% loose stones.

Yeah, there was no sand for her to walk on for the first half of our visit.

She enjoyed sniffing the dried seaweed and climbing the rocks (which, yeah, was against the rules, but she's a cat, so she can't read signs), and we figured that would be it.

And then another family pulled up and came hiking across the stones.

If you've never met my cat, you need to know this about her:

Evie LOVES people. She is obsessed. She desperately loves new people and wants to hang out with everyone on Earth.

So of course, she immediately had to go visit these people, dragging my mother and I with her. Thankfully the family thought our 3-Braincell Tabby was the bees' knees, and they put up with her crawling under their feet and begging for snacks (they had a banana). Eventually, the water receded enough for us to put her down on wet sand and...

She hated it.

So, Evie did not enjoy her beach trip as much as we'd hoped lol.

And she was also so squirmy and exploratory that it was very hard to take pictures between trying to dislodge her from crevices where she got herself stuck. I did manage two pictures, though!

Here's Evie sitting on a rock, about to go wrap her leash around a rugosa rose bush.
She's just noticed the family and wants to go say hi!

Here Evie has failed to retrieve banana from the other family
And has grumpily decided she'll go climb more rocks in protest.
Also seaweed smells fun to her I guess lol

After that, we scooped her up and took her home, where she sulked outside with my mom. I ran upstairs and worked on yesterday's blog.

I do have to admit, though...

It was incredibly hard, being surrounded by all those delightfully smooth beach rocks in so many interesting colors and shapes and knowing I couldn't keep any of them. It's illegal to take the beach rocks, and at Crescent Beach, they're absolutely necessary for preventing erosion, so it's just bad all around to take beach rocks from there. If I'd gone wading and grabbed one from the water, I'd have been pretty ok with it, but I wasn't going to get in the surf while the tide was receding as fast as it was (we went from no sand to 5 feet of sand in 10 minutes, it seemed).

So that was my adventure this week!

The rest of the week's plans are thus:

• If you want to send me a coffee donation through that light green button, you can leave a message telling me what theme I'm drawing from this week! Those themes are:
• Animal
• Vegetable
• Mineral
• Geometric
  
• Location
• Dedbert
• Word
• Art Blog on Thursday
• I forgot to post the tea last week so maybe I'll do it this weekend? We'll see
• More crochet for Monday!
• Blather next Tuesday!

I hope my feline misadventures have brought a smile to your face today!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

At Last! Progress!
Just not on the Mushroom Bag...

A month or two ago, I started work on another iteration of the Downton Abbey Lady Sibyl Shrug, this time in a beige cotton thread, and I am excited to announce that....

The body is complete!

Now, before you ask, no this doesn't mean I'm anywhere close to being done with the orange/coral version. I... honestly am not sure where that project bag is. I do, however, now know that, without a doubt, it needs to be a bit wider for a linebacker-shouldered bird like me.

After trying this shrug on, even with the added width (I made my rectangle 17" long instead of the recommended 15"), it was a bit of a struggle to get on and off. Perhaps a 22"x17" (56cm x 43cm) would be better suited to me? Or perhaps it is merely the fact that I was trying it on with an unfinished border and a thick t-shirt, rather than a slipperier dress? I'm not changing into a tank or a dress to test that theory, and the border is... unique.

Why do a ch3, sc around into each chain space when the chain spaces are 4-5 chains each? Why was the foundation essentially 4 chains between sc? I don't understand so many choices with this piece, and I'm sure any errata I looked up could explain things, but...

I'm not in the mood to go looking things up, and honestly, I'm feeling too sludge-brained tonight to go hunting down explanations.

I may have had a fairly hectic day.

It may have involved my cat going on an ill-timed nautical adventure.

I may have pictures to share of this tomorrow.

Anyway, here's the first & second rounds of the border, which I've only got about... 30% finished around the body and have not even begun on the sleeves. How is this even going to work on the sleeves. I'll find out. Regardless, I have some work to finish, still, but this is real, visible progress!

I kind of like the 7dc shells, but...
Not sure how I feel about the rest.
We'll see.

Now, obviously, if I hate the edging, I can just frog it and start over. If you have any suggestions, feel free to @ me on Twitter or leave a comment on here.

Unrelated, but there's still time to send me a coffee over on Ko-Fi and convince me to do art in a category of your choice (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Location, Dedbert, Geometric, Word)!

I will be taking the rest of tonight to stare at a cursor blinking on a manuscript.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Attempt More Digital Art!

I am still 100% a novice at digital art, and I really don't know what I'm doing. I tried to use Krita today and all I can say is that either that program hates my XP Pen Star G430S, or I just cannot effectively use it. I just wanted to draw an outline! When I would start my line, the program would either hesitate and then hurry to catch up with me (which sucked, because I was tracing a pencil sketch), or it would pop up a menu.

I don't particularly like radial menus to begin with, so imagine my dismay when one kept popping up when I just wanted to trace an owl...

So I switched programs back to Paint.net.

I know, I know, Paint.net is more like photoshop than an actual art app (despite the name...), but it's what I've been practicing with for the past 5 years.

Yeah...

Progress is slow.

Anyway, I started with a sketch of Dedbert and his Pink Owl Ladyfriend (whose name he will not tell me) brewing coffee together!

As You Can See, It Was A Very Rough Sketch

I loved the composition, but I thought it was perhaps a bit too close to the bottom and off-center, so when I scanned it, I tried to move it around. Didn't 100% work, but it was cute.

From there, I started trying to outline the piece. Like I said, Krita was not cooperating with my tablet for that, so I went with Paint.net and scribbled the outline in with a gray tone. I actually liked the scribbly, scratchy outline I got from there, so I stuck with that and intentionally overran some of the colors when I laid them down!

I tried just doing flat colors, but that was less interesting than just the outline, somehow, so I did some experimenting with dark tones and transparency and managed to put down a shading layer!

If anyone wants to give me some direct pointers, maybe some links to some tutorials for absolute newbie beginners who've never used Photoshop or anything like that, please, please feel free to send me a message on here or Twitter. Links will work better on Twitter, tbh.

"Happy Owlloween!"; digital; 2022

On another note, this was a Ko-Fi mini-commission! I got a nice little donation with a message telling me my benefactor wanted to see a DEDBERT piece, so that's what my donor gets!

If you'd like to have a say in next week's piece, please feel free to hit that Ko-Fi donation button on the sidebar and include a message with your donation telling me which category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Word, Geometric) you'd like and I'll make something next Thursday!!!

I think that'll about do it for me today, guys!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Am Sore For Silly Reasons

Today I had lofty goals. So very lofty. Such goals have never been seen before.

My goals were as follows:

• Get up before 10AM
• Polish the rocks from my goblin horde as seen on Instagram.
• Shower
• Hang out online with my boyfriend
• Eat 3 meals.

Yeah... Not really what I managed to do. Or at least, not entirely and not in that order.

I woke up a little after 10AM, sadly, and when I went downstairs to prep for my shower and morning coffee, I was asked to please shower first, which is maybe suboptimal for when you're planning on making a mess with wet rocks. After my shower, I dressed in clothes I was fine with getting mud & toothpaste on and headed downstairs to polish up the rocks.

I filled half of an empty Sargento Balanced Breaks container with water and popped the rocks in there to soak, hoping the water would offset the dust I'd be making. Then I put that down on my dad's work bench, put a handkerchief over my hair like a cottagecore lesbian with a secret 60s fetish, and strapped on a proper dust mask and safety goggles. Never ever use power tools without protective equipment. Unfortunately for me, I have very short hands and my stubby fingers do not fit into any of the safety gloves we have, so I ended up with a few abrasions from the grinders, sanders, and even the woolen polishing wheel.

First I used a cone-shaped grinder attachment to roughly bring down the peaks of the stones where necessary, and this was where I discovered that perhaps the orange and white pebbles were not going to be polished today. See, my fingers are chubby, the pebbles are tiny, and the grinder bit hurts when it hits you even on the first setting, so I gave up on them pretty quickly and tossed them into the empty half of the container. The rest of the rocks were also difficult to grind because despite my hands being tiny, they are also chubby, and it's hard to grip what amounts to Large Gravel with wet baby hands. Whenever the rock would start to throw dust, I'd dip it back in the water, hence the wet hands. Every time I finished grinding a rock, I tossed it back into the water, which made the water pretty silty and muddy.

The second step was sanding, and I used a larger drum and a smaller drum for each rock. This was when I lost two of my pebbles. One, a scallop-shaped stone with lots of mica in it, I found right before I headed back upstairs at the end. The other is still hiding somewhere around my father's workbench and no amount of bending and pointing a flashlight in random places could reveal it. Other than rocks being flung around the cellar, there wasn't much that happened here. More dipping-when-the-dust-began-to-fly. More standing around and hoping I wasn't getting too messy (spoilers - I was). I ended up popping the rocks back in the muddied water between the large drum and the small one.

The final step was the "polish" step, and here's where I am 100% sure I botched it. See... my polishing compound was completely solid, so I had to improvise. I was gonna use spackle (yes, feel free to yell at me for that in the comments) but the tub wouldn't open. I did, however, have a small tube of toothpaste that had fallen on the hotel floor near a toilet without the cap on while I was on an adventure once. I experimented with the toothpaste and found that, while it kind of worked, it just left everything sticky and unpleasant.

Fortunately, my efforts were not entirely in vain. Turns out that all that silt in the bottom of the water container could be added to the wool wheel and used to serve as a polishing medium.

By this point, however, I was exhausted. I'd been standing in the cellar for about 3 hours, and I was ready for food, a stretch, and a warm washcloth around my neck. 

I had hoped to have this all done by noon.

Clearly not all stones polish well, but I'm pretty happy with the top left one...

So here's the new plan: from now on, all polishing will be done

• outside when possible
• In proper safety gear
• As soon as I get new rocks
• in very small batches (1-4 rocks)
• BEFORE a shower.

So that's what I've been up to lately lol!

For the next few days, here's the plan:

• Tomorrow I'll draw & paint
• Thursday I'll upload art
• Sunday I might tell you about a few cups of tea? We'll see.
• Next Monday I really want to have some pictures of crochet progress
• Next Tuesday I'll blather some more.

That's my plan as the world stands now. We'll see how that goes in the next few days - especially since my neck is now so sore from holding position and grinding all morning!

If you want a say in what I'll be drawing, go ahead and send me a Ko-Fi donation with a message saying which category you'd like!

• Animal
• Vegetable
• Mineral
• Dedbert
• Word
• Geometric
• Location

That'll do it for me today, I think.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which Progress Doesn't... look like much tbh

So the last couple of weeks (pretty much ever since I made that cute little Goblin's Purse) I haven't been showing much crochet. This isn't because I haven't been doing much crochet, it's because what I have been doing is so repetitive and plain that it doesn't look like I've been doing crochet.

That's why there aren't any photos this week.

Also because I'm super duper cozy and don't want to get up and take photos, to be perfectly honest.

It's been perfect weather to curl up and crochet lately (48-67℉/8,9-19,4℃), and I've been in long sleeves and flannel and pants and it's been lovely, but the patterns I'm working on (a pair of gloves, a shrug, the Mushroom Bag) are largely repetitious and same-y, so it doesn't look like I'm making any progress on them.

The Shrug is very close to completion - I'm at about 14.5" (36,83cm) wide with a goal of 17" (43,18cm) before I fold it and sew in the arm holes, then I have to do the edging, which I'm still not sure which one I'll use.

The gloves are just now reaching the thumb stage, which will be visible, but right now they just look like a weird beige lacy cylindar.

The bag is.... frustrating. Every time I think I have a solution, three more problems pop up. I think I can figure it out, and when it's finally done, I think we'll all be happy.

Boy is today the "I Think" day on the blog...

But I've also been busy with other things, and hopefully you'll understand more in a few days what I've been up to.

Related - does anyone have any suggestions on what to use as a polishing compound if the green stuff that came with your rotary tool is solidified? I've read that toothpaste is okay to use, but I'd like to know more.

Anywho, I promise I have actually been working on crochet, but that's just how it do be sometimes, I guess. Sometimes you can work for 8 hours straight and look down at your project and think "Where is all that work I just did? It looks the same!"

Don't lose heart if this is happening to you, too. Just measure after every pattern repeat and try to maintain your gauge, and you'll get through. So will I.

I think that's all I have for today, so keep on hooking along, friends, and...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

In Which The Day's Title is Literal lol

Today's painting was brought to you by Bipedal Ambulation, aka Walking.

Lately, with the weather improving (yesterday it was 67℉/19,4℃), I've been more active. This means I've been going out more, which means that I've been scooping up little goodies to go in my Goblin's Purse I made a few weeks ago.

Generally, I just photograph these little Goblin Hauls and toss them in an empty Stroopwafel box, uploading the photos to my Instagram (which uh... is pretty much all I post there). This week I decided to also paint some of my finds!!!

"Goblin Horde 01"
watercolor, watercolor pen, and Pigma Micron on watercolor paper;
2022

Today is breezy and cool - I'm in my pajama pants and a Jack-o-lantern tee! It's 63℉/17,2℃ and sunny, the wind is blowing, there's 30-40 honeybees sipping water from our bird bath, and I feel fantastically cozy. I'm excited to enjoy the rest of the day.

If you'd like to have a say in what I draw or paint, feel free to throw a donation into my Ko-fi account with a message saying what category you'd like - Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Word, Dedbert, Location - and I'll make something based on that!

I hope all of your art dreams come true this week, folks :)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

*slightly insane laughter here*

Well... my plans for yesterday were for naught, and boy have I had a week since Thursday.

On Friday, my mother found a large crack in her windshield, which was very stressful for her, and even though the replacement is going to be covered by insurance, trying to find someone to do it was rough. Tomorrow is the best anyone in the state can do without her driving to another county or six. She spent the rest of the day manic and cranky. Understandable. I would be, too.

On Saturday, I was so exhausted by... life? I don't rightly know. But I was exhausted enough that I did exactly nothing creative. Which guess what?

Is exhausting.

Sunday was also exhausting, which was weird because I didn't do much besides crochet a glove and then realize that the pattern I'd been using was worthless. Uh oh.

So I replaced the pattern with one from YouTube and I'm working based off of that. It's going better. I think.

Sunday also saw me realizing that I had nothing for Monday, so I started going turbo mode and....

Further exhausted myself.

So I've basically been slowly spiralling myself into deeper and deeper exhaustion to the point where the muscles behind my ears are sore, which sucks because I'm a side/back sleeper and those muscles are pressed against my pillow the whole time I'm trying to sleep. Bread before bed no longer works - we no longer have oat bread. Thus, I remain sleepless.

Well, not entirely. I am managing a few hours a night. I'm hoping that frontloading my day with caffeine will lead to a crash tonight and I sleep until a normal hour tomorrow, waking refreshed and ready to paint or doodle.

Speaking of painting & doodling, if anyone wants a say in the category this week, feel free to leave a donation on my Ko-Fi with a message containing which one of the following subjects you'd like to see:

Animal

Vegetable

Mineral

Location

Geometric

Word

Dedbert

I have some ideas, but I'd love direction.

So yes, no crochet two weeks in a row. I'm very disappointed in myself. At least my art has been consistent!

I hope to get some more crochet done today, or at the very least I'd like to detangle Gordon once and for all.

And I also want to maybe write a page or so in one of my manuscripts.

There is one more thing I'd like to mention before I give my tentative plans for the next week or so, and that is this: I've discovered a silly new way to lightly exercise.

I call it "VGCIA".

Which stands for Video Game Character Idle Animation.

Basically, if you're waiting for something to finish - a scanner or printer, the toaster, the microwave, a kettle, etc - you assume a position with your feet spread apart shoulder-width, and then you pretend you're a video game character in idle animation. Just find a repetitive motion that sways a bit and keep that going while you wait. I did this in a semi-crouch yesterday watching toast brown in my toaster oven and it was like squats but more fun.

I kept my eyes on my toast, bouncing and swaying slowly from left to right until the muscles right above my knees started to burn a bit. Then I adjusted my stance until I could feel a different set of muscles in my legs working. Eventually, I put my chin level with the counter and had my arms akimbo like a spider so my biceps could feel it.

My toast didn't burn and I felt like I'd gotten a nice light workout.

I'm a fairly stationary person, but that's not healthy, so I like looking for small ways to keep my body in motion. I know I looked patently ridiculous the whole time I was waiting, but honestly, if anyone in my family didn't think I was a weirdo already, they've been paying even less attention to me than I thought.

I'm pretty open about the weird.

Anyway, if you guys have any other suggestions for stuff to do that is like exercise but can be fit into times when people are naturally getting up and moving around, I'd love to hear it! I saw someone post something on Twitter about a set of arm/wrist stretches they do before playing Splatoon, and that seems like a good idea, so if you've seen anything else like that, please let me know!

As for the rest of the week, these are my goals:

• Make art tomorrow & Thursday, have the blog posted before 4pm Eastern on Thursday.
• Detangle Gordon finally.
• Finish these gloves.
• Finish one of my shrugs.
• Start work on a possible cross stitch project? We'll see.
• Write at least 350 words in one manuscript. Not picky about which.
• Compile next month's prompts for whatever Inktober alternative I'll try!
• Next Tuesday I'll be back here to blab.

Today will mostly be me fiddling around with things I need to get done, some writing, and probably a sketch at the very least. It's cloudy and humid (87%) and warm (68℉/20℃, but probably feels a good 20% warmer due to humidity), and my cat is being super demanding and wants to go for a walk.

I think that'll do it from me today.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I'm Helping

Yesterday was quite the day! Nothing seemed to be going quite right, art-wise, for the first 3/4 of the day, and I just felt kind of run-down. It was gorgeous out, though, with blue skies and bright sunshine and a birdbath surrounded by thirsty honeybees from the neighbor's hives, and that was nice. It was also nice that, out of the blue, my boyfriend was gifted a new mattress by our Epic Friends - the same ones who transported a bed to him last week!

And then, in the evening, my wonderful mother took my guy and me to go pick up some rugs for his room, and that was great, too!

All in all, and despite my brain being mush, yesterday was pretty decent, really!

But I had a problem - I received a Ko-Fi donation for art in the LOCATION category, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to draw or paint a location all day! I wanted to paint a library - too many lines, apparently, because my lineart was... bad. I wanted to create a sunset silhouetted scene from a desert in digital art - too few colors, couldn't figure out the order of shading. I was about to give up when my boyfriend suggested Mount Katahdin.

I love painting mountains.

I really, really love them.

I was, however, very intimidated by painting a mountain I knew, though.

Thankfully, Google is a total bro when it comes to finding reference photos, and it's pretty easy to find said references for Katahdin! I still wanted to paint a sunset, though, so I changed the time of day, tweaked some colors and got to work.

My first layer was with my Arteza watercolor pencils, and I sketched everything out with a brown sienna pencil before filling in base colors. I chose some pretty wild tones for the sky and the peaks, then more subdued ones for the forest and pond.

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, but you can let me know what you think in the comments either on here or wherever you found a link!

"Katahdin"; watercolor and watercolor pencil on hot press paper; 2022

Up until today, I've struggled to get our scanner to capture the actual colors of my paintings, but I think I figured it out!

I stuck black construction paper behind the painting instead of leaving it against the white lid.

Seems to have done the trick, because that yellow is just as yellow as it is in real life!

Also, I did something I didn't think I'd ever do - I accidentally put my brush in my coffee.

Thankfully the paints are non-toxic and the brush washed out just fine in my water, but that was... embarrassing, to be honest lol!

I think that will do it for me, today. I will be working on some crochet tonight, and if you guys want a say in what I draw or paint, please remember to send me a Ko-Fi donation with a message telling me what category you'd like to see next (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Location, Geometric, Dedbert, Word)!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Needed A Day Yesterday.

Yesterday sucked. I'll just be honest here, it was a garbage day and I felt like garbage the whole time.

I was 100% people'd out, but people kept wanting to talk to me, which would be great on days when I miss people, but I'd already had my fill and did not want to keep talking. I just wanted to exist, maybe watch some videos, listen to the rain.

Definitely didn't want to crochet.

Certainly didn't want to try to figure out why following This Pattern ended up with the stitch counts NEVER ONCE MATCHING UP FOR SOME REASON. Honestly, what a migraine of a pattern. How did our ancestors do it?!

Also, my vintage Boye Steel Hook 3 has a very obvious bend at the tip that sometimes disrupts my crocheting, but I cannot bend it back with my bare hands because, again, it's steel.

So yeah, yesterday was a complete and total bust where I never felt right or good or creative or smart or anything positive.

At least I didn't feel negative, and I'll take "just wants to stare at rain in silence" over "anxious about uncontrollable stuff and also self-loathing" any day.

Today was the exact opposite of yesterday, I'm happy to say, and I managed to go for a little walk, picking up some little treasures to put in my Goblin's Purse that I made previously. You can find my collections here, if you're interested! It wasn't as long a walk as I'd have liked, even though it was only about 60℉/15,6℃. The problem was that it was also 98% humidity! I got sweaty in less than a mile, so I headed home with a can of coke, some rocks, and a general sense of satisfaction.

As for the rest of this week, we've had a taker on the "tell me what to paint" front! You'll see what was requested on Thursday, but if you'd like to give me even more work to do, you can hit up my Ko-Fi and send me a donation with a message telling me which category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Location, Word, Dedbert) you'd like me to work from! I'll do my best to finish any pieces I receive in the next 24 hours by Thursday at noon Eastern :)

Here's the schedule (tentative):

• Thursday: art! You'll see what was "commissioned" this week
• Next Monday: Hopefully something!
• Next Tuesday: Blather from Me To You!

That'll about do it for me today. I'm pretty tired and this blog was supposed to go up 2 hours ago lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which Today Was Productive
(And So Was Yesterday)

Generally speaking, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, I am either a pile of goop or a buzzing hive of artistic industry. This week was a busy bee kind of week, and today's lovely weather (about 25℃/77℉, sunny and breezy and not too humid) definitely helped!

Yesterday I spent the whole day trying to figure out how to work with Redbubble's templates and I'm still not 100% done figuring that out. Instead, I grabbed my hot press Fluid Easy-Block and began painting a lovely prosaic landscape.

I was laying down the sky colors when something... weird started to happen.

The paper started forming tiny little blisters! I've never seen that on hot press watercolor paper before, but this is only my third time using it, so maybe that's just a thing you have to watch out for?

I think, however, that it was my fault.

I think it's because I left the page exposed in my room for too long and it ended up covered in dust. Dust in my home tends to be a bit... greasy. My father is a carnivore at heart, so greasy dust isn't a surprise, but I'd never have guessed that it could deteriorate the surface of my watercolor paper!

The bubbling was strange, but I persisted and over the course of a few reruns of BBC's Crime Watch from the 1990s, I made this lovely landscape that I simply call...

"Moo"; watercolor on hot press paper; 2022

Look at the lovely family of Highland cattle lounging in the high grass! I'm pretty happy with how this came out, though there are things I'd do differently in the future (like actually sketching the picture first...) but even with the weird paper granulation/blistering, I am pretty happy with how the sky came out! I'm also pretty happy with how the grass looks like it has shadows under the cows! Real talk - I painted those shadows first!!!

I want to practice sketching more, so I think that as the weather continues to improve I'll do my best to grab a sketchbook (or even a watercolor notebook and paints) and try to make more art around town. Today was a bit zesty and crowded for a proper walk down to the beach, so instead, I just dropped off my library book and came home. I got barked at by some large dogs in the back of a truck and found out I had just enough change for a can of Coke to treat myself.

I'm sipping that Coke now, typing up this blog, and thinking about the oncoming season.

I have to admit, I'm inordinately excited for sweatshirt weather and art prompt season!

I won't be doing Inktober this year, but if you have any suggestions for prompt lists like Witchtober or Drawlloween, I'd love to be linked to them! Drop a comment here or on Twitter or wherever else you've encountered this blog! 

And if you'd like to have a say in what I draw or paint or what not next week, make a donation to my Ko-Fi account (linked in the sidebar) with a comment that includes the category you'd like to see (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Location, Word, Dedbert, Geometric).

That'll do it for me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC