I have switched from bland old blogger to exciting and new Wordpress.
When I started out blogging (a few short months ago) I tried to set this thing up with movable type to no avail. Apparently my cheapo hosting couldn’t deal with it. Wordpress had yet to make the move to 1.5, so I stuck with blogger.
When I saw what thimble and robot johnny were doing with the platform (specifically the way you can easily separate everything into convenient little categories/tags) I was very excited. But I decided to let things settle down a bit before I made the jump.
Being sick this week forced me to do non-active things (like sit alone in a dark room lit by the glow of my laptop meticulously coding) so I decided to move on up.
So here it is, in all it’s glory!
I think it’s an improvement on vector bunny 1.0, don’t you?
If you don’t, or have found any spot that needs a bit of tweaking ( I’m still unsure about this whole PHP thing) please inform me.
My Mom and Dad have returned from their excellently timed trip to London (at least they’ll have a story to tell someday). My dad enjoys taking pictures of architecture. He just sent me this picture:
I took this picture just for you . I Guess this is where Mac Heads hang out and do artsy things, sip latte’s and do Mac things. Disgusting.
Dad
Ick. I feel illustratively rusty.
I was watching Six Feet Under last night when I realized that I have more in common with the character of Nathanial than (the more obvious choice) Claire.
If you have ever watched the show you will remember that the second season closed with Nate finding out he had a blood filled brain lesion, and then having surgery to remove it.
If you saw last night’s episode (spoiler spoiler spoiler) than you will know that it ended with Nate having, what appeared to be a stroke. Liam’s first reaction was: “yeah, right… what won’t this show do to be dramatic!” But I was immediately reminded of all that stuff that happened in the second season.
At which point I realized that all that was incredibly similar to what’s happening to me.
In fact, when a blood filled lesions bursts it is called a hemmoragic stroke, and it’s symptom’s are exactly the same as the stroke that occurs to much older people (who smoke and have high blood pressure).
If somebody has one lesion, than there is a higher likelihood that they have more. It’s actually quite likely for Nate to have had another hidden blood filled lesion hidden elsewhere in his head, and for it to burst giving him a stoke.
So, it also turns out that what I have in my brain is very very similar to what Nate has in his brain. What I have is, in fact a rare form of it. I’m not likely to have a stoke anytime soon, but it being mentioned on a TV show makes it much easier to explain to people.
“I have a rare disorder that producers give characters on TV show’s to make their characters go sympathetically crazy.”
Much easier to explain than what a cavernous angioma is.
In other news: I am sick with a monstrous cold. It tackled me overnight. I will persevere.
I have been feeling guilty. I don’t thinking I’m making with the artwork as much as I should be. But it’s too hot! My brain has just not been in a creative place.
We came up to Toronto this weekend because my parents are out of town, we are incredibly bored, and it’s about two degrees cooler here than it is in St. Catharines.
So far it’s been a lot more enjoyable than sitting around at home. Plus here we have family to pay for things and take us places, so it’s been all around good for us. Last night we took my little brother to his rep. league soccer game. The other team (from a neighbouring suburb) was a little overly violent, and a fight broke out when the game ended. My brother actually held one of his teammates back, so I feel a little proud. Of course he then kept saying that he should’ve punched someone, cause the other team played so dirty. But what’s important is he didn’t. Although he did (accidentally) trip a guy on the field.
All in all it was a fun night.
I’ve decided that today me and Liam are going to do something “fun.” We’ve been trying to avoid fun, because fun tends to cost money, but I’m sure we’ll figure out something.
My parents are actually travelling through England right now. They’ve wanted to go for a long time. It seems like every-time they try to go someplace it gets attacked shortly beforehand. Too late to cancel reservations. Although we discussed it, and none of us thought something would happen again so soon.
But I worry as much for the general situation as I do for them.
a) Lock your door’s, everybody’s a terrorist. Let’s kill them before they kill us.
b) See, the west really does hate us. Let’s kill them before they kill us.
a) Your butter is on the wrong side of your bread.
b) Your butter is on the wrong side of your bread.
Yay!
I have come up with some projects to work on. Alas (which is a word I’ve been using a lot recently … weird) they do not pay.
The first is the aforementioned Brock Press design style guide. I have already written a staff writers guide for them, so I figured since I ain’t got nothin’ better to do, I’d whip up something to help them with graphic design and layout. They need a wee bit of help keeping them in line with what has been done in the past. As much as there are some talented visual people working there right now, they don’t seem to know how newspaper design works as well as they should. Which is fine, since, as I’ve all ready stated that newspaper design is much more complicated and daunting than it needs to be.
My second project is to get my boyfriend a job.
I’ve always stared lovingly at all those creative self-promotional projects in Print magazine. I figure, at this point, it’s not gonna hurt if we throw something a little more creative than a resume together, even if it is me and not him who’s looking for a graphic design job.
It will be creatively done, but I’m looking at it as an ad campaign to get him hired. After working in student media, I’ve seen the kinda crazy stuff movie studio’s and record companies and festivals and the like send out to get people to pay attention to them. Why shouldn’t an english major looking for a job?
Also : ooops. It’s not Google. But I don’t think it matters at this point.
In order to keep myself busy, I offered to help out the Brock Press by whipping up a little newspaper-design style-guide.
So today I sat down to work on it. At which point I realised it’s a beast of a thing. There is a lot to keep in mind when laying out the various elements of a newspaper.
Not only is it a complex and precise art, but each part has a specific name to it, a technical name that the average person would not know or understand.
Do you know the difference between a deck, a flag and a masthead?
I certainly don’t know why everything newspaper related is nautical themed.
When I disagreed with my editors, was that mutiny? If so I should have walked the plank long ago.
Hmmm. Seems all this design rules and nonsense is driving me a little loopy.
Alas, I must soldier on.
Why do I volunteer for these things anyways?
I found the most amazing things at the thrift store yesterday! I we were passing by, so I decided to go in on a whim, and bam! I found exactly what I was looking for… How often does that happen at Goodwill? I was looking to extend the mod and shift areas of my wardrobe, specifically so I’ll have something cute to wear to an upcoming wedding this summer.
It’s taking place overnight on a farm in Thunder Bay (a particularly bohemian area of Northern Canada). In other words it has to be appropriate for varying outdoor temperatures, a bride and groom with funky thrift store sensibilities, and the landscape of a farm.
A tall order.
Not only did I find two amazingly cute dresses that fit me, they were pretty much things I had been envisioning. 
If you will check out my previous post, you will find that the mod blue coat I sketched while watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s bears more than a passing resemblance to the mod blue dress I happened upon. Alas, it’s thick polyester weave is a tad warm so I think it’ll have to wait until the fall to get worn. But it’s ok, cause I found a lime green shift dress that fits me perfectly. The colour actually looks much less wild on than it does off.
I just-so-happen to have a silver cocktail clutch lying around that would suit these perfectly. Now it’s down to jewellery and shoes. But since I’m ahead of schedule (the weddings not for a month) and managed to find my dress for eight dollars, I think I can relax and take my time with the other details.
I haven’t posted much image wise in a while, so I’m putting up some of the images that resulted from my gouache play-time while Liam was away. I popped in my Breakfast at Tiffany’s DVD ’cause I figured it would give me a wealth of brightly coloured and striking images to work from.
At some point I’m going to go through that movie and catalogue all the hats – there are some awesome hats.
So these were all painted with my gouache and inked with a Staedtler permanent marker (fine) – because I’ve broken or used up all my other drawing pens. The only problem I have with the Staedtler is that there is no character to its line, and it tends to leak through the page. Other than that it is probably the most waterproof thing you can buy, so it works quite well for water-colour.
I just worked in my sketchbook. It has fairly thick, textured pages. Not water-colour paper (as you can see, the pages wrinkled) but these were just quick studies, I didn’t feel like going to the effort of breaking out the expensive stuff.
Now that I’ve dealt with that, it’s on to other matters.Like my brain meats.
It turns out, what has been causing my poor little head all this trouble is something called a cavernous angioma. It is a cluster of blood filled cells, rather than normal functioning… brain meats. These “cavernomas” can be especially problematic if they haemorrhage, or leak out that blood. They can also cause seizures, headaches and general neurological problems.
So, it’s still not great, but at least it’s not growing. And, hopefully, it can be removed. Of course that means brain surgery but… all the more reason to catalogue all those hats.
1) Liam is back from Thunder Bay.
2) I DO NOT HAVE CANCER. It has yet to really sink in.
Everybody say yay!
There is still something troubling in my brain, (I will probably say more about it later) but it IS NOT a tumour, it IS NOT growing, and it IS fixable.
Nah-nah-nah to my neurologist.
Yay!
Apparently it’s not so bad to shop at H&M!
I worried about their manufacturing policys.
Their clothes are SO cute and SO cheap, that I often overlook my morals and snap up whatever I can, trying hard not to look at the “made in Cambodia” tag.
Now I feel better.
I just found the single most awsome site ever for very NOW free fonts.
They’re scratchy, rough, lo-fi and slightly gothic (but in that modern Mark Jacobs by way of the Arcade Fire kinda way). Basically, they are some of the most beautiful free indie fonts I’ve ever seen.
They can be found at misprinted type. The site is absolutely gorgeous too.
Thank me later.
I think I’ve finally found the trick to the whole drawing thing.
Number One: No distractions. With no boyfriend around I have no choice but to pick up a pen.
Number Two: No projects. With no paying clients lying about, I actually feel like drawing, for myself in the non-digital realm.
I’ve actually managed to pick up a pen and brush and do some sketching. I do quite like that process coloured gouache I bought for myself a while back. Not only is it incredibly vibrantly coloured (I’ve never been one for earth tones) I can fill a palette with paint, let it dry out, then go back to it later, add a little water to it and use it all over again.
I’ve become so used to the annoying lenghty prep work I’ve been taught when it comes to liquid watercolours, that this is quite a revelation.
Then of course there is the fact that the paints can be used translucently, or opaquely, which is quite nice.
It just seems like there are less limits on the stuff. It’s awesome for someone who’s been so rigidly, classically trained like me. It feels like the first time I discovered Adobe Illustrator.
By the By:
If you know me in person, take me out and do something with me this long weekend. Liam has gone all the way home to Thunder Bay till Tuesday, and I am driving my cat crazy. She keeps telling me to “get out of the house and do something,” anyone wanna help me out there?
I am not a sporty girl. I’m just not, and never have been. So since Illustration Friday’s topic this week is sports, I’m gonna use an illustration whose concept was assigned to me by the sports desk when I worked at the Brock Press, and subsequently published. So it’s not new. Again.
But it’s still pretty neat, and it’s a work I’m really proud of. I think it is both kinda pretty, and fun for an infographic (which can be notoriously stodgy and boring – pie chart anyone? How about a line graph? No? Really?).
Although I am definitely not as much an expert as Annie Bissett. I personally think she’s awesome.
Then again, that one up there is an older illustration. I must’ve completed it a good few months ago, and my style is growing and changing by leaps and bounds. Maybe I could have reached true infographic nirvana back then, if I knew what I know now about texture.
the Sis on 