Thursday Art Walk 243: More Inktober!

In Which I Has Done Art!

The Bubble Drawing is coming along, but it actually doesn't look like it right now, so I don't have any update photos on that. Suffice to say, it's slow going lol.

Inktober, however, is going really well!

"Misfit"; Inktober 2019

Here we see poor Spencer looking at himself in a dirty mirror while ghosts frolic around him. I kinda like the way the ghosts looked in the sketch better than the ink, but that's just how it goes sometimes :P

"Sling" Inktober 2019

Spencer, post-Romania, is on a bus. Or a plane. Or a train. Not sure. Regardless, he's dealing with a broken arm and bad reception.

"Tread" Inktober 2019

 I think this is a post-Negative Scarlet Rose Manor, complete with a little black kitty visiting!

"Treasure" Inktober 2019

The treasures here are the Deed to the Scarlet Rose Manor, some marbles, and a very creepy dagger!

"Ghost" Inktober 2019

 Yes, it's another scratched up door. I might have issues with feeling trapped.

The unfortunate ghost curled up inside this dark and airless room is one of the spirits from the Scarlet Rose Manor, an unfortunate servant named Piotr who ended up trapped in the woodshed, which was built specifically to kill anyone trapped in it. The house was designed by a madman, after all...

"Ancient" Inktober 2019

Here we see one of the appendages of the Negative, an entity residing in the Scarlet Rose Manor. No one ever sees the full body of The Negative without losing their mind, so here's just a tiny little limb. Yeah. It's that messed up.

"Dizzy" Inktober 2019

What is Spencer doing? I have no idea. He's sure dizzy, though. I think this is probably before the Romania Incident, too, since there aren't any scars on his face. Maybe this is in college when he first begins to notice that The Negative left a presence with him?

Regardless, that's this week's Inktober entries!

Hope you liked them!

Also, have another very short video of the cat:

That'll do it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 240: Bubbles and Sketchbooks!

Talkin' bout all the stuff I made!

So, it's been a long week so far, and I'm already tired, but I shall continue on!

I have finished the first three days of Inktober. I made a book. I did more bubble art. I finally managed to watch the first episode of Dynamite. It's been a good, if very busy, week :)

More bubbles!!!

The bubble project is coming along nicely, and while I'm sorry that I didn't get any better shots of it, I am really pleased that it's so far along. It's just under halfway done!

You know what I did finish this week? I made a sketchbook. I know, I've already bragged about it once this week, but now that I've used it, it bears repeating :P

My tiny, tiny hand for creepy scale...

I made the sketchbook for just one purpose: Holding my Inktober art for 2019.

Yes, I wrote the title in pencil.
Yes, I'll ink it later.

And here we see the contents, which indicate three finished drawings!
I mean, it's the third, so it stands to reason, but c'mon!

Day 1's prompt was RING, and while I wanted to make every prompt relate to Spook Patrol, I knew that wouldn't work. No one in Spook Patrol really wears rings...

So I designed a ring.

The faces of the skulls would be the same metal as the band, but the eyes would have
garnet or obsidian in them and the domes of the skulls would be made from pearls!

Day 2's theme was MINDLESS, and since I didn't have it in me yesterday to draw a zombie, I instead drew something equally mindless:

Mӧth loves Candle...

But today's theme was BAIT, and so I present to you: Bait from the Spook Patrol.

I promise, this all makes sense in context.

There are only supposed to be four people in the photo. There are five. House '93 is an audio recording from a haunted house. The copy of Evangeline, the photo, and the necklace (which is a cowrie shell) all came from the house the recording came from. The only person who could have sent all of these is dead.

Spencer, who received this package and its vaguely sinister note, is thus drawn back to a house he swore he'd never return to. Of the six kids who went in, two are dead, one is missing, one is insane, and one is dying. The last one is Spencer, and even he is not unscathed.


So that's what I've done, art-wise, this week!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday 239

It's a gross and warm Tuesday here in the blanket fort. I woke up around 8AM to 68℉ (~20℃) weather - partly sunny with a soft, steady breeze. I'm very tired, but I also feel like I'm getting really good notes for Spook Patrol, so I feel like that's an even trade lol.

Speaking of Spook Patrol, I think that they came into existence around the same time as the sudden burst of ghost hunting shows of the mid-to-late 00s? Let me try out a timeline here:

• Spencer and his childhood friends explore the Scarlet Rose manor in the 1990s - Spencer is a Sophomore in HS. I'm going to say 1993!
• If Joe dies early in the school year of his Senior Year, then that's Fall of 1995, I think? Which means...
• Spencer goes to college in 1996, which means that's when Everett disappears
• Spencer is in a PhD program, but he's going to lose roughly a year of schooling, so that's 1996+4(Bachelor's)+2(Master's)+3(PhD)? Maybe 2005? I'll Call it 2006, actually.
• If Spencer graduated in 2006, that would mean that, with a year of searching for work with his PhD in Research Studies before settling with the Spook Patrol, we're at 2007.
• Unfortunately, there's the mess in Romania to consider, which I'll put in 2009.
• Spencer ends up spending more time in the hospital but begins his solo work in 2010.
• Spencer stays on the Isle of Storms in 2012.

I think I'm pretty satisfied with that timeline, actually.

But you're not just here to learn how I'm putting together the timeline of a project you've had very little connection to so far.

You'd probably like to know how the blog will be going for the next seven days!

1. Tomorrow I'll post another Big Post of Sumo
2. Thursday I'll share my progress on the Spoopy Project and also the cute artwork I sketched out last night from a joke about my usual mood while traveling
3. Friday will involve one of the movies I've seen recently (though I'm not sure which one yet lol)
4. Saturday will be another merge game, but this time without any weirdness in the permissions
5. Sunday... is up in the air. I don't know yet what I'm cooking (if anything) this week!
6. Next Monday, I hope to have much more done with the scarf. If all goes well, we've only got finishing work after that!
7. I'll be back next Tuesday to blather and blab for a bit!

So that's the upcoming schedule for me! I'm pretty excited for the various projects I've been working on, too, so this was a very good morning for me :)

That'll do it for today

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 239: Pumpkin Set Continues

Continuing Work on the Pumkin Set

Good afternoon people! I am having a very weird morning because today I'm doing research about... uh... ghost hunting. Now, if you know me irl, you know that, while I'm a very strong skeptic about anything approaching the supernatural. I'm an atheist. I'm not a believer in the undead.

But I'm also irrationally terrified of anything supernatural. It freaks me out because I see so many parallels between the basic commonalities of hauntings and all of the various symptoms of mental illness. Also, I'm 100% prone to jump-scares. Some day, I should do a livestream of myself watching something stupid and spooky so you can all laugh at me lol...

So why am I watching stupid ghost hunting shows?

Research. I'm doing research on how these shows are run, how everything goes together, what things are common among all of the different shows, what "equipment" they use, what kind of experts they call in. I know I could just ask people who love these shows, but I need to experience it for myself or it's not going to feel real when I write about it and draw it.

I'm doing research for Spook Patrol, and it's a blast. A spooky, spooky blast. No me gusta por todos. LOL.

So that's what I was watching while I worked on my crochet this morning. Time for some spookies while I work on my pumpkin set, which is decidedly... not spooky at all.

I mean, look how pretty!

Okay, so here's what I did: I made a long rectangle that was a little taller than it technically needs to be, but that just means things are gonna fit nice and comfortably. It's the same Fika pattern I've been using on the fingerless gloves and such, and I've sewn the sides together. I've also started making chains along all of the different bumps, which I did by alternating a single crochet followed by three chains. I did that for two different rows, then I alternated (sc, ch2) around once, followed by (sc, ch) around.

And then I changed to brown yarn up near the top, like a stem!

The brown I had as single crochet all the way across (which was 18 sc total), then I reduced down until it was shut. That means that after my 18sc around, I reduced as (sc2tog, sc) around, then (sc2tog). Thankfully, it reduced easily and smoothly, which was fun! The cuff happened naturally, too!

I had no plans for the rolled cuff on this hat, but I'd made it so long that it just... happened. I was very happy with that :)

By the way, at this point, I was about halfway done with an uncut version of the Ghost Adventures 2-hour video of the so-called Demon House in Gary, Indiana. It made me wonder how unscary these things would be without the spooky music and sound effects. I'd love to see versions of these shows without any of the creepy sound design. They'd probably be even more boring lol.

But you're not here to read me laughing at ghostly shows on the internet.

You want to know what I did with my crochet today!

Well, I did more than just a hat!

Since this set is supposed to be in three parts and I've done two, it's time to work on part #3!

The scarf!

I'm going to use up what remains of this skein of orange yarn and if there's not enough, I've got another skein to keep up with it.

So yeah, Spooktober has already begun for me, so I'll let you go and get back to crochet, art, writing, and really, really stupid tv :P

Look how cool they are! And it's going to be just finishing work soon!

That'll do it for me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday 230

It's finally not a million degrees out there. The air is cool and damp - it feels like fall, almost, and I'm absolutely down with that. I'm wrapped up with my extra-big coffee mug next to me, typing away. My desktop is littered with text documents of varying lengths, and I'm pretty excited for the projects inside them. I've been typing away at the Gimmicksmith, I've been working on a potential graphic novel script, I've been working on my weird cannibal vs possibly insane writer story, and I'm trying to figure out where I'm going with an intentionally trashy story about a shark. So... busy busy.

As for crochet, I'm still working on the shorts, though I have to admit that the Micaela pattern is a bit... obtuse on occasion. I want to make a few other projects after the top and shorts, too, like a plushie version of a pocket shark. If I were really crazy, I'd get some glow-in-the-dark thread to add to black yarn and add hidden pockets that contain glow-in-the-dark glittery fabric... that would be so cool. I also want to work on some other stuffed animals and some character bags.

Art-wise, I kind of want to draw some of the characters from my Scarlet Rose Manor series. This world was created for a graphic novel class in college and was one of the only assignments I got higher than a B- on. I was really proud of it and really enjoyed making it, so suddenly I had a million more ideas for it!

I'm looking forward to watching some more wrestling, too! It's great to see the internet really opening up to wrestling and learning how creative these guys are. I'm still a huge fan of Luchasaurus, too, in case anyone was wondering.

As far as movies go, we watched a really weird one last night, but I still have a plan for this Friday.

Actually, here's a schedule for you:

• Tomorrow I'm going to talk a bit about Sumo and how much I love watching Al Snow talk about wrestling.
• Thursday will have me doing the art thing!
• Friday will absolutely be about The Last Black Man in San Francisco
• Saturday is kind of up in the air - I haven't found a game to talk about yet.
• Sunday will be a baking day on the blog!
• Monday will inevitably contain skulls, but also shorts progress!
• Next Tuesday, I'll be back here blathering away.

So far, today has consisted of trying (and failing) to take pictures of the butterscotch-colored pigeon we've had under our feeder, looking for the cat, drinking coffee, and writing. I'm at 1100 words on the pre-script for my Scarlet Rose based graphic idea, but there's no scriptwriting yet. I'm just nailing down characters and setting at this juncture. After this point, I'll start writing actual scenes. I think I'll enter with my character getting his assignment to go to a spooky haunted island. The project is tentatively called Spook Patrol: Isolation.

Spook Patrol is actually a spinoff of the Scarlet Rose stories which follows one of the side characters, Spencer, through his employment with a fairly bizarre internet-based ghost hunting show called Spook Patrol. Yes, I looked up a list of ghost hunter/paranormal shows and tried to make the dumbest name possible. I like the idea that this group with a stupid name ends up getting entangled with actual eldritch horrors and the only one who has any idea how to survive is the little nerdy guy who secretly has already been there, done that, and has the mental scars to prove it. Poor Spencer...

When I write, I usually like some noise, and depending on what I'm writing, that can either contain vocals or it has to be just plain music. Writing my blog, I like to have YouTube videos playing - either some Let's Plays or someone giving a tutorial on how to sew or something. When I'm writing stories, however, it's usually best to just have music.

If my story is pretty chill at the moment (like most of a story I've been pecking away at called Sorcery Con Leche is), I like to put on some jazz or bossa nova playlists. If I'm writing something a little more hardcore, I'll go with something like video game boss music, metal, or cyberpunk. If I'm just feeling like some sound behind the writing in general, I like to go with lo-fi hip hop or Japanese City Pop. On occasion, I'll want something classical - Satie, Gershwin, Copeland, Stravinsky, etc.

Sometimes I'm feeling... weird. If I'm feeling weird, there's only one band to turn to:

Daikaiju.

Seriously, I love me some psycho-surf, and these guys are some of the best. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Daikaiju make writing feel like a privilege when I use them to back me up. I want to buy every album they've ever put out and play them at full blast until I get the cops knocking down the door with a noise complaint.

Daikaiju are the October Dark of music for me - obscure to most, fantastic, and highly inspirational.

At the end of the day, however, mostly, I just love good music, and any of it helps.

How do you guys get the writing down when you write? Do you use music? What are your guys favorite bands or classical pieces? Let me know in the comments if you could!

Now Go Enjoy Something!

FC