Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Show You My Sketches!

I have been busy this week (cats, trying to get the returnables returned, shopping, etc) so I haven't had a chance to properly paint or color or ink anything, but I still managed to do some sketches! These are going to eventually become finished works (well, two of them are), but before that happens, I'll have to take them from these initial sketches to proper compositions and then from there I'll make the finished art (which could also require multiple steps, depending on what I do for the medium for each).

So for now, here's what I sketched out, today:

The whole page of sketches

"Stop, Thief!"; sketch; 2021

"Thanks?giving"; sketch; 2021

"Dessert, Anyone?"; sketch; 2021

I'm not 100% sure how any of these will turn out, nor do I know if I'll be changing them up later, but I love how each one came out, even if the beaver on the right and coendou on the left of "Dessert, Anyone?" might be a bit nightmarish in sketch-form lol!

But this is why I do messy sketches like this - it allows me to assign postures, placements, and ideas to individual elements without spending too much effort and then hating it later. If I want to redraw any of these, it's not going to take the same effort as, say, reworking my logos would (though that's a potential January project...)

I haven't done an ensemble/character piece in a while! The last time I had multiple creatures was... huh... whenever the Pokemon/Dedbert crossover was! Quite a while ago! I hadn't even rediscovered watercolor yet!

I'm looking forward to all of this!

However, I'm also in that weird space where you're exhausted but you do not feel sleepy at all. Every pore of my body wants to sleep because I have a cold and I want to feel better, but... I'm also not in the mood to sleep. Maybe I'll binge some stuff lol.

Maybe I'll just relax and let my body tell my brain what to do for once?

Regardless, I hope you guys enjoyed my sketchy little sketches as much as I enjoyed sketching them!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

It's too hot

I'm not a summer person. I don't like heat, I don't like humidity, and I don't like the sun.

Unfortunately, like a lot of folks right now, I'm experiencing Summer with a capital S. It's not anywhere close to as hot as it is in the PNW right now, we're only at about 90℉ (32.2℃). With humidity it feels around 97℉ (36.1℃), and it's slowly rolling between partly cloudy and sunnier than an optimist's disposition and twice as obnoxious to my pessimistic tush.

I've drank 2 liters of water today, had a bowl of cereal, ate a handful of cold, wet baby carrots (they were from a leftover veggie tray and still pretty good), and of course had my morning coffee (which was probably a mistake since hot beverages are a bad idea lol). I also took a cool shower (cold showers can cause shock! Just pick a temperature that's juuuust warm enough to be comfortable and don't go any higher!) and dressed in all breathable clothing. Natural fibers like cotton and linen are your friends!

You may have guessed already, but blogs will be slow to appear in hot weather. My laptop heats up quickly and uncomfortably in this heat, and my phone just hates the blog format. My bedroom has no AC, so I'm just cycling the warm updrafts from downstairs and across the hall as opposed to actually cooling down. It's 76℉ (24.4℃) downstairs, but up here has to be at least 82℉ (27.8℃). Thankfully, due to the downstairs AC, the air up here is nowhere near as humid as it could be, so I'm fairly comfortable so long as I take breaks from the laptop and spread out my limbs every so often lol!

But yes, tis very toasty this week. Looking forward to whenever it breaks and hoping it's not a traumatic event like a wind storm or something. It'll totally be a massive weather event, though. It always is.

Three days of light to moderate rain with thunder wouldn't be so bad, though. It'd give me a major chance to focus on my writing, which always goes better with consistent precipitation, weirdly enough.

This week will probably consist of a lot of research into how different people handle different elements in watercolor. I'll watch people make neon signs seem to glow, how they make shadows deeper or lighter, how they approach foggy landscapes or rain, etc.

It's been years since I took a class, and those classes mostly consisted of color theory and avoiding unintentional focal points.

No schedule this week because I have no idea what I'll be up for or when - there's a lot going on.

I will try to keep working on things, though, and I hope you do, too (within reason - don't exhaust yourselves!)

Keep an eye out for the following symptoms as you endure the heat:

• dizziness
• sudden chills
• you were sweating hard but now you suddenly aren't
• muscle cramps/weakness
• lethargy
• diarrhea
• nausea
• sudden/severe headache

If you feel any of that - if you feel off at all - get to shade, get something cool to drink and sip it slowly, place cool cloths or bottles against your lower back, the bottoms of your feet (if you're not diabetic and don't have Reynauds - don't do things that will physically hurt you!), under your arms, etc. You are overheating and if you can't get these symptoms under control in say 30 minutes you should probably go to Urgent Care or (if your symptoms are bad) get to the ER. Heat exhaustion is no joke and since you're probably not a ham, you should not bake yourself.

If you don't have AC/access to AC, make sure you have airflow through your whole living space - one open window on either end helps especially when you run a lot of fans. Block as much sunlight as possible with shades/curtains/tacked up towels or pillowcases/etc. Find cool tile, vinyl, or wood floors to put your bare feet on. Take a cool bath once a day and dip your feet in cool water. Anywhere you can feel a pulse, you can press a cool cloth for some relief.

Please, please, please take care of yourselves, and don't let your pets or kids outside without you - they can burn themselves on sidewalks, cement, fences, etc and none of them can really recognize the signs/symptoms of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

If you develop little clear bumps on your skin, that's heat rash. Yes, it's usually red bumps, but it's still heat rash. Go cool down.

If you don't think you're thirsty, take a sip of water anyway.

Take care of yourselves out there,

And Stay Inside and Enjoy Something!

Talk About Tuesday - Wednesday Edition

 

In Which It Is Too Hot

I live where the air, 3-5 months out of the year, hurts my face with cold. I live out of pants and flannel shirts 9/10 of the time. I hate being barefoot.

So for the 3-4 months of summer we get up here, you'd better believe I'm miserable.

It felt only slightly cooler today than yesterday, which, if you'll recall, got to about 90℉ (32.22℃). Today felt that hot - especially in my room, which has no AC. I have my window fan gobbling up cooler air from outside now that it's near midnight (maybe if I type fast and ignore my growing urge to pee I can get this blog out before it's actually Wednesday?) and my ceiling fan spinning that vaguely less hot air around, but man does it still feel to hot to live up here.

I spent a good portion of today downstairs. I even went into the basement to grab some bottled water and it developed condensation halfway up the stairs. I wish the internet wasn't balls in the basement or I'd have stayed down there.

And then of course the internet fluffed off at some point in the afternoon. Maybe around 4? It didn't come back until like quarter to five, though, so that sucked because that's my usual blogging time.

I have a small amount of grumpage, yes, why?

But seriously, I'm not built for hot-and-humid days with no AC.

Today was better than yesterday in a couple of ways though! Namely in that my COVID Vaccine Arm cleared up.

Yeah I got my second Moderna jab on Wednesday last week, and for the next few days it felt like someone had grabbed both of my arms and tried to pull them out of the sockets after hitting me in the back with a steel chair. I felt a little nauseous and very tired, but I prefer that to drowning in fluids and choking on my own sloughed-off lung lining, so jabs it is.

And the fact that I got to have sushi last Wednesday as a treat for getting vaccinated was pretty great too.

But not even a single day after I started to feel better, body-wise, a new symptom appeared in the form of a goose-egg-sized-and-shaped patch on my upper left arm (the arm I got the shot in).

It didn't itch, but it was really red and sore to the touch like a bruise, and weirdly, it was about three inches away from the injection site. Odd.

But it was there, and I was on the verge of freaking out until I looked up some of the weirder side effects and learned that, yes, anywhere from 3 days to a week after getting vaxxed, you can in fact develop this reaction. The suggested treatment was simple: ice if you need it, painkillers if you need them, allergy meds if you need them.

I took the allergy meds mostly bc the lilacs are in bloom but they helped and now my arm is more or less normal! Still a small patch that's a little raised but nothing hurts and it's not red anymore.

In less health-related news, though, I have high hopes for Thursday since it should finally not feel like Satan's butthole then and I can draw and maybe pick up some snax. Those are my goals. The total sum of my goals for this week are

1. draw
2. get snax

That's it.

That's all I wanna do :P

Then again, it's midnight, and I should really be asleep, so who knows what else I'll come up with tomorrow during the possible thunder showers and gross heat?

Whatever the weather brings, I hope you guys are doing well and can

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk: Outlining

In Which I Can Explain, I Swear

Sorry about flaking on Tuesday - I was a bit busy with everything I was up to, including some (very faint) artwork. I can't show you the background of the Noir piece I'm working on, but I can show you the (very ugly) blocking I'm doing to make sure of my layout.

Layout1; digital; 2020

As you can see, I'm not going for "good" on this outline - I just want it to guide me. And trust me when I say: there is a lot going on here that I haven't added.

The image will be of a woman holding a flashlight and approaching a dilapidated mill or warehouse, the buildings on either side of which are misshapen like they're seen through a bottle. There might be a car nearby with a zombie in it, and a strange man is lurking either on a rooftop or a tree...

It should have something of a neon noir vibe by the time I'm done, I hope...

For now, though, it's a bunch of crappy shapes telling me where to put things.

I might take the zombie out of the car and put him in an alley... make him more lurkery and less... just there.

But that's what outline/layout days are for!

How is everyone else's art going?

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday 315

It's mostly cloudy today, and it snowed yesterday. It's still freezing cold and blowing a gale out there, so I'm not in the best mood. I was in a far worse mood yesterday, though, when it was pouring and snowing and not a bit pleasant.

Today, I'm just trying to get motivated. I feel very tired and my brain is not working great, but I'll try to focus more. I won't be updating the blog daily after today as part of an ongoing effort to finish my book before 2021, because while I'm working it'll be hard to blog. I will try to keep up with Tuesdays and Thursdays at the very least but for now don't be alarmed if I go quiet.

I do want to keep posting things that are useful or interesting, though, so you may end up with a few scattered days here and there where I'm blogging a random recipe or game I've played.

There... isn't a whole lot of wrestling right now, either, though if you want to send me a Ko-fi with a link to a match on YouTube you'd like me to watch, definitely do so!

Art will continue on - I'm working on a few pieces right now, including one that will require some reference photos... I'm thinking of possibly taking prompts from people, though I cannot, in good conscience, charge for those. I'm notoriously flaky when it comes to these things.

Movies may be reviewed now and then, but I'm mostly on an X-Files and Dark Shadows kick right now, and it's hard to focus on movies when you're dealing with the current existential dread of a pandemic.

I still play silly clicker games, but I haven't been able to focus on any of them long enough to form a proper opinion. I died in Breath of the Wild yesterday by accidentally landing on a bear while I only had 3 hearts.

Cooking is also difficult - since everyone's home, that means I'm having more proper meals, but it also means that there's no room in the kitchen for lil old me.

Meanwhile, crochet is the easiest thing in the world right now. I'm working on several head scarves that I'll use when I'm done making them. After things calm down and I can get a dang haircut, though, I might sell a few of them... And, y'know, I'm also working on that shrug...

Next week, however, I'll probably still be back on Tuesday to update you on how the writing is going, what's up with my life, etcetera.

So... no schedule this week because I'll be writing!

Go Enjoy Something
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 252: Gaming When You're Sick

In Which I hate this cold so much

As so often happens after Christmas, I have caught the Crud. My head is full of gross, my lungs are full of gross, my mouth tastes like despair, and my eyes feel like they're slathered with grease and sandpaper at the same time.

Perfect time to game, right? lol.

Not exactly.

In this state I can't focus or concentrate, so no strategy, puzzle, or Sim games. My reaction times are garbage, so fighting and platformer games are out of the question. Visual Novel? Nah, can't focus. Hidden Object? No way - eyes too blurry.

And so we're left with RPGs and Idle Games. Huh. My jams.

Except most RPGs have an awful lot of decision making involved...

Idle games it is, then.

Thankfully, both Kongregate and Steam abound with idle games for free, and Android/Google are nigh-bursting at the seams with them, so I'm well covered.

I'll be placidly tapping away on NGU Idle or Clicker Heroes or Trimps or something today for sure. It's that kind of day. I had been planning to tell you about an RPG I've been dabbling in, but... man, I'm so tired.

At least with Trimps I can just let them kill themselves for me instead of making choices and doing things lol

But tomorrow, I hope I'm well enough to talk to you about noodles and other things that make me happy.

Because I'm 100% done with this cold, and I hope it's nearly done with me.

Go Enjoy Something
(Eat some soup, take care of yourself!)
FC