booklust

I just found two books that I need to own. Now. I am in love.

Here is the first: What It Is, by Lynda Barry. It is a crazy, scrapbooky, kooky poetic collage of a memoir, and promises to be an adventure to read. Maybe I just regressed 15 years, but this is the book that will get me out of any funk I'm in.

And numero dos is called The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman. Honestly, I fell in love with the cover first, but after reading the reviews, I was sold.

I'd buy them both online now, but since I'm so close to moving, I might at well wait till I'm back up on campus and visit a bookstore, or go into the city and find one this weekend. That way I can at least get some use out of the coupons I keep getting e-mailed to me from Border's.

(I've also added both to my Amazon wishlist, for those that really care about me. *sniff*)

(Speaking of the wishlist, this Baker's Edge Brownie pan is on there, and I am so unbelievably excited that such a product exists. Buy it for me, and you will earn my undying love, loyalty, and unlimited brownies.)

fresh new look and taste

Mmmm! That looks better. Still tweaking things, but I'm pretty happy with my new colors. Except for that tiny, thin, noticeable line between the masthead and wrapper. Why is it there???

More little changes to come.

Yay Photoshop!

And kudos to the wonderful artists whose beautiful brushes I used for the masthead.

consolidation, coagulation, coalescence

Between bouts of studying for physiology and improving my vocabulary on FreeRice, I managed to complete, more or less, my animation final project. I put it on youtube for easy narcissistic access, and also because it just makes more sense for showing it to people without having to pull up the 100+ Mb file.

Anyway. Here it is (music might be added later):



Also, youtube's compression did something funky to the movie, and makes parts of the screen "jump". That is rather unfortunate.

whoa and steady there

What's this? Another post, so soon? Well, I just had to tell the world about my newest love affair. That's right, my current obsession, discovered at an organic farm potluck last night. Here it is:


Those are the first 3 inches of what will be , to quote one of my friends, a sicknasty scarf. Knitting is fun, yo. Makes me fingers ache, though. Yeah early onset arthritis!

Also, among the few and scanty "accomplishment" in the creative arena...I've been fiddling around with my borrowed and amazingly suave tablet with the intent of making a digital painting Masterpiece.

Yeah...not so much. So far, I've managed to draw a few vaguely accurate human poses before the brain fuzz took over.

And finally, the last demented creation of the fermenting sludge that is my creativity, this little green dude who's name, I've decided, is Hob. I'm also currently attempting to create a 3D digital model based on Hob in my "free time."


Alright, alright, move on, nothing to look at here, folks.

update: png successfully converted to jpg!

Sinfest

Newest addition to my "Sugar High" list: Sinfest. It is highly vulgar, slapstick, and sometimes crass. And it throws together God, the devil, Buddha, Jesus, and the Oriental Dragon alongside its human characters. Quite an interesting comic. The cartoonist, Tatsuya Ishida, used to be a comic book penciller.

Time and Money

The Crazies are in the Ink

What better visualization of just how attention-deficient and convoluted my mind is than with a page from my sketchbook? Be afraid. Be very afraid:


I really have no attention span whatsoever. Inspiration flashes and is gone if I'm not quick enough with the pen.

Some closeups, and may I just say, holy fuck, Ouch. Just...ouch. This is a perfect representation of how I view piercings, and thus the lack of them anywhere on my body. Just the thought sends shudders down my spine and sets my nerves tingling. Eck.

Moving on...past the disgusting piercing (how do I draw these things?), I have always enjoyed caricatures, such as those found in political cartoons, though I'm no politics buff myself. This (poor) guy actually turned out more proportional than I had intended. There is also no intentional underlying message. The image just appeared in my head. I wonder if that is what it is like for writers, except with words instead of lines racing silently through their head.



I also, apparently, have no respect for orientation whatsoever, even with my scribbles. I guess I draw more in a circle pattern. May be because of my left-handedness, from shifting the book around trying to find a position that's comfortable (though, I often wonder, wouldn't that be the case regardless of hand dominance?). This, by the way, is one of the few cases where I just start drawing without an inkling of a predetermined image in my mind.

Hmm, well, that was a nice way to spend a few insomniatic hours. Maybe now I can fall asleep.

Scribbles in ink

So, I've had this slight pressure on the back of my mind for a few days now to respond to meiguotaiwanren's blog post. There is something of a pact there, involving artwork and fighting lack of motivation. And I have been meaning both to draw/paint/[make] more art (I hate saying 'make' art, for some reason. I wish 'art' itself could be used as a verb. I arted yesterday. Hah...anyway, digression), and to get more of it digitized, but I had put it off because I don't have a scanner.

Then, yesterday, I had the kind of mind-funnelingly obvious realization that crashes down onto your head with the weight of a thousand "Duh!"s:

I have a digital camera.



So, without further ado:

This is from my sketchbook, and I've doodled on it on and off for a few weeks.

I have this weird inverse inspiration thing going on, where I can't help but draw in any kind of academic setting, but lose all creativity once I'm actually in an art studio...
Anyway, this is on the back of a handout I got in class. You can also see all of me lovely, er, notes.

I'm not sure out of what perverse depths of my mind this guy appeared, but he doesn't look too happy about it either. And he looks famished! This is from yesterday, on another handout from class.

These are all with various ballpoint pens that have somehow come into my possession...and I wonder why my pens always run out of ink when it comes time to take that 聽寫 test.