Slow return

I guess I shouldn't have assumed I'd be ready to jump back into life just after the funeral. On top of it all I brought home some germs that rapidly devolved into being so sick I was pretty much non-functional the week after I got home. Even now I'm finishing up a course of antibiotics because it tried t turn into bronchitis.

Been drawing some, though, and  pushing myself to get back into the normal rhythms of things. I'm still looking for work, but I also stumbled on what might be an excellent site for getting illustration work, so I'm scrambling to put together a few pieces for a portfolio that would be appropriate to what they look for there. Freelance is scary, but being jobless is scarier.

That said, updates here may be slow, and while on the one hand I'd meant for this blog to be devoted to the 365 project,
on the other hand it's all art so I may continue posting my other work in between proper entries. Click either of the images here to see them full size on DeviantArt, where I keep my regular work.

As a side note, I sometimes worry that my art is so eclectic that nobody will ever be able to see something I've done and know it's mine. I vary so wildly in style and medium, because the concept always comes first to me, and the style and medium are in service to the idea. I think some artists (most artists?) have a style, and all of their ideas naturally emerge through that style, so you can look at any piece they've done and identify it as theirs.
Maybe I'm caring too much about getting credit for my art? I hope that's not selfish of me. Possibly if I got more people willing to place value on my art by paying for it as work I'd feel validated or something. Possibly because I've been out of work so long, art is the only thing left that gives me a sense of accomplishment I feel I can measure my worth against. Probably I should finish this post now, and go make some more art.

In between...

Sorry for yet another pause in posting. There's not so good family stuff going on, and I've been... distracted. Anyways, I did get this done, so have it as filler art until I get the next 365 project up...

Day 24: Green

Going a little simpler today, the assignment was to work with green, on green, with... lots of green.
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised this is where my mind went.
This is a pretty simple flat color acrylic painting, on green construction paper. If the color is a little uneven that's because I had to mix up a color for Kermit's main body, and the outlining/dark stuff is actually a metallic dark green.Cheating even more, this is traced from a drawing I did for one of my younger cousins a few years back, although I wasn't happy with the head so I redrew that. I'm still not sure it's right, but if I'd drawn him with his mouth open I'd have had to put some red in...
I also don't know why he's got a top hat, cane and spats (yes, those are supposed to be flipper spats), it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I actually have a little Hallmark book titled 'It's Not Easy Being Green', which is full of Jim Henson doodles and quotes from both him and various Muppets.
It's not a work of high literature, but it is sweet and smart and wonderful and everything else you'd expect from Jim Henson.
It's all posthumous, of course, but edited by his daughter, Cheryl.
I've been a Muppet/Jim Henson fan ever since I can remember, and I also have several books on the history of the Muppets and animatronics, which may show up on this blog later. Anyone visiting the house might catch on to this, although the Kermit 'drink milk' poster in the kitchen, my Kermit and Rizzo dolls (and smaller Electric Mayhem finger puppets), Boober doll, and Muppets calendar now used as a poster are just so much a part of the house I didn't think of them until writing this. Somehow, despite being jobless and pretty much broke, I own all the Muppet Show Season DVD's released so far and the entirety of Fraggle Rock. 'Labyrinth' and 'the Dark Crystal' were major influences on my imagination, growing up.

When my girlfriend heard today's assignment was green and I was doing a Kermit picture, she went to the kitchen and pulled out an Easter egg I made last year, which we're both astonished is still intact (yes, it's a blown-out empty shell). I guess Kermit has a significant presence in the house. I have two Kermit dolls for some reason, both about life size, so to speak. One of them talks and sings, although his batteries need replacing and he currently sounds a little funny.

What's funnier still? My favorite character isn't Kermit, it's Rowlf, he's just a lot harder to find merchandise of.

Day 21: 10-Word Love Story

The bonus for this prompt was to illustrate your 10-word love story, and I guess I was... inspired, this evening. Because I still wanted this prompt to connect to a book, I chose 'The Dream Hunters' by Neil Gaiman. Apparently this story is available in a couple versions, including a graphic novel, but the copy I have is more like a children's storybook, with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. If you've never seen his work, you should google him, and while you're at it add 'dreamhunters' so you can see his pictures for this story.

The author wrote the very popular Sandman series of graphic novels, of which I'm also a fan. This is technically a part of that and the Sandman, Morpheus, does play a pivotal role in the tale, but it stands alone beautifully so don't be scared off if you're not familiar with the series.
There's several plots here to give you everything you could want in a classic fairytale: Trickery, love, monsters, a quest, revenge, hard justice and a bittersweet ending. It's not a story for the kids, unless they're the kind of kids who also get to read Grimm's fairy tales the way they were originally written.

At the core, this is a love story, between a fox (possibly a kitsune?) and a Buddhist priest, which takes place in both the waking world and in dreams. The Dream King grants help to them both in turn, while pointing out their love is unlikely to have a happy ending.
It doesn't, I'm warning you now, this is not a cheerful book. At the end it's hinted that they still find love together, in their way.
This is a gorgeous book, both the story and the illustrations, which I tried to mimic the style of in my own work. These paintings are watercolors, a couple of 4x6" pieces on cardstock. This marks the first time I've gotten any success out of using salt with watercolors! I did add some pencil for details on both pictures.

Lives sacrificed for love may yet be joined in dreams.

My own artwork of the lovers reunited against Yoshitaka Amano's illustration of part of their struggle.

Day 16: Potato stamp

I'm not eating that.

I actually can't remember if I've ever done potato stamps, although I must have because I already knew what they were. I feel kind of bad cutting up a nice redskin potato for this, but that's what we have, and this one was starting to grow out of the eyes a little bit...
It's a kid's craft, and that got me thinking of kid's books, so this project is based off one of the Lyle the Crocodile books. Specifically 'Lyle and the Birthday Party'. I no longer own a copy of this book, which is kind of a shame, because this and 'Hop on Pop' were the first books I ever learned to read. I never felt the latter counted for much, because the words were too small. I also recall not being believed when I said I could read the book; my parents felt I'd simply had it read to me enough times that I had it memorized. They were wrong, though, because what excited me enough to tell them was the realization that I didn't just know what it said, but that most of the words on the page actually made sense.

Just the stamps...

It was like I'd unlocked some magical door, and I was ecstatic.
Why the story was one of my favorites, I'm really not sure. This was actually the only Lyle the crocodile book I remember, although we must have read the others, and I'm not quite sure if I owned it or just checked it out from the library repeatedly. My father working there gave me ready access, so I know there were books I had him bring me from work more than once.
This particular book is, in essence, about dealing with jealousy. Specifically Lyle the crocodile is jealous of the little boy of the family because it's his birthday. I imagine that's the kind of thing that happens a lot with siblings, but I was an only child so I'm not sure how that spoke to me.

Is it just me or does this look like children's wallpaper?

I did love birthday parties, though, and thought the most exciting thing about my own birthday was that it's just a week before Halloween. I'm not so big on birthdays, anymore, but I still think Halloween is the best holiday there is.
Maybe some year I should dress up as a crocodile.

Day 14: As Tiny as possible

If you squint, you can see Eurasia and Africa?

I did this while looking through the lens of a magnifier, with a very fine-tip paintbrush. Unfortunately my camera just isn't up to photographing it very well. If you squint, you may be able to see Eurasia and Africa, and part of Australia. The Americas and Greenland are on the other side, but I did it all without looking at a real globe so the landmasses are all a little iffy. Considering the lack of detail at this size, I didn't see the point. I can't duplicate the coastline of Japan, for instance, when it's just a couple of dots. Still, I got some color in there, greens in the more appropriate areas and icecaps. This started as a blue bead, so maybe I'll make some jewelry out of it.

The tiniest thing I know of in a book is in 'A Wind in the Door', where the core of the plot involves mitochondria. I don't think much was known about them at the time the book was written, as the scientific explanation given isn't quite right. Mitochondria are real, though, and they're so tiny they live inside of our cells.
The story in this book hinges on the mitochondria within our cells, and a fictional organism even smaller than that called farandolae living inside the mitochondria. The point is to each of these living organisms, the organism it lives inside of is as big as the world is to us. Worlds within worlds, like nesting dolls, and possibly infinite. Who's to say there aren't so many levels of things bigger than us that we may be microscopic to something, somewhere out there.
Size, like everything else in reality, is relative. It's also important to remember that something so tiny, and organism within an organism within cells, is still vitally important.

Day 13: Tea

There are probably different ways to work with tea, artistically, but I've heard of people painting with tea, and I was curious to try it. I'm not all that thrilled with the method, honestly. I made a pretty strong black tea, but it's still a very subtle effect that took a lot of washes. Maybe I'm just not patient enough for the process, but as you can see I gave in and inked the outlines just to make the picture read clearly. It was an interesting experiment, and I might still try painting with coffee, but I'm also not sure what the tannins will do to the paper over time...

For anyone interested, the tea used was Twinings Irish Breakfast. I welcome tips if anybody else has had more success with this technique.

This eccentric illustration is brought to you by the children's book, 'Alexander and the Magic Mouse'. Alexander is the alligator, and the magic mouse really doesn't come into the story much, but my favorite of the characters was always the yak. She doesn't have much of a role, either, but she's described as a lady yak, who gives yak milk every day, which can be made into yak butter, such as the Tibetans use in their tea.

I guess I have this book to thank for that eccentric piece of knowledge, thanks. I have no desire to try yak butter in my tea. It sounds horrible, although that might be partly because I can't divorce in my mind how hairy yaks are, so I picture that in the tea, too.
The remaining animal in the picture is a brindle tom cat, and all these animals live with an elderly lady who's done a lot of traveling and has a weird idea of what constitutes a souvenir, but apparently lives somewhere there's no laws against exotic pets. They all live together in an absolutely gorgeous house full of lush plants and antique furniture, and they spend a lot of time all having tea together.

© Philippe Fix reproduced w/out permission.

The illustrations are gorgeous, especially a two-page spread picture of their house in the rain. At least half of them are in color, but the ones that aren't are done in a kind of sepiatone, which I thought painting with tea might imitate. No such luck, so I'll just go back to wishing I could step into the illustrations in the book.

Day 12: Camouflage

There is a leopard on this shelf.

Another way late post, not because this took me all day (took about three hours), but because I got such a late start. If there are typos or anything strange, that's because I'm typing this at 2 AM. Anyway, the prompt to camouflage something to blend in its environment got me thinking about Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories', for both the story of how the leopard got his spots, and the beginning of the armadillos.
I read this book over and over as a child (although I read 'the Jungle Books' even more), but the pictures in it are a little hard to make out. The pictures in how the leopard got his spots are even harder, because in one of them the leopard is supposed to be camouflaged, and when you add this to a smudgy black and white drawing cheaply printed... well, I really had to hunt for him.

See him now?

This isn't actually a leopard, I think it's supposed to be a cheetah, but I decided it was close enough. I started with a solid black base coat, and his natural environment is of course on the bookshelf. We have too many nick-nacks, which means we frequently have to shift them around to get at the book we want. I cleared some space for him, though, and got out the full set of acrylic paints, and went to work disguising him. I spent a lot of time squinting with one eye to narrow down my perspective, and of course he's best camouflaged at a certain angle. Some of the writing got kind of wonky, but it did get late and I have to admit that where I'm sitting now, from across the room, he's really pretty hard to see against the books.
Just for the lulz, I took some in-progress photos and made a craptastic little video of the painting from tailtip to nose. The photos would be a lot better if I had a tripod, sorry.

Day 10: Water

Day ten's assignment is to use water as your medium or inspiration, but why not both? The idea of pure water as a medium sounded interesting, and initially I thought why not draw directly with water on some hard, resistant surface? I have a black sketchbook with plastic still on one cover, so I got a glass of water and a brush, and started pooling the water and trying to draw it into shapes... but I really don't recommend this method.
One pool of water in the lap later, I decided to paint with water on actual paper. Much better results, as you can see. What's even more interesting to me is the way the first-drawn shapes fade and vanish as the water dries.

Water, whales, it all goes together with this book, 'Deep Wizardry', which I first read in my Freshman year of High School, I think. This is actually the second book in a series, and I read them in order, but at the time my school library only had the first three, or possibly that's all that were written then. The series follows two kids (pre-teens?) who discover manuals to becoming wizards, and tumble into a whole hidden network of wizards that way. These people live like anybody else, for the most part, but also use their powers to maintain the balance of the world against the forces of destruction and entropy. The concepts in the book are nicely more complicated than good or evil, and are the kind of shades of grey that still resonate with me as an adult. I'll admit it though, this book struck me just about the time I was also obsessed with whales. The wizards of the world are not, as it turns out, all human. In this story the main characters temporarily take the shapes of whales to join whale wizards in the performing of an important ritual to keep the balance of the forces in their world, and there's some subtle hints at how interconnected the ocean is to everything else on earth. If the balance falters there, it's just the start of a chain reaction that would affect everything and everyone else.
It's a book well worth reading at any age.