illustration friday: dream
Boy, am I ever behind on these. I just haven’t felt like working in illustrator recently. Or doing my traditional cutsey cartoons. I think this makes up for a recent lack of both.
clarification
Something in my brain is clarifying today.
I actually feel like today might be one of those days when I can express myself, and actually end up meaning what I say.
The English language makes sense to me again today.
I feel like it hasn’t for a while now.
I will look back through my scattered writings and only some of them will make sense, or be as grammatical as I would like them to be. Actually, today I edited things up a bit. Cleaned house around here.
It’s annoying to know that you could write in perfect grammatical and decently spelled English if only the right side of your brain got up and did something every-once-in-a-while.
Because I can, and I often do, but I often sound like a babbling idiot too.
It’s like having a split personality.
It doesn’t help that the babbler tends to come out in important, nervous-making situations. Like auditions, or talking with celebrities or professors, or other people I immensely respect. Especially when I need to write something important, like an essay, or an article on a deadline.
Then the smart girl tends to pop out when I least expect and need it. Like when I’m trying to make friends with perfectly normal people who I don’t want to talk down, or sound pretentious to.
I have a theory. It is backed up by my boyfriends observation of me.
We think that whatever the brain slug is doing in the right (logical) side of my brain, it manages to do it mostly when affected by my emotions.
So I will literally have good days… and bad ones.
It seems my days are often triggered by sense-memory experiences. Moments where I experience something, sensually (in the sensory, not the sexy, sense), that remind me of another, happier time, and plunge me into yet another wacky mindset.
If you weren’t already aware at this point, the brain is a really, really, really weird thing. I would seriously recommend not having one, if at all possible
pen-palooza
Over the past few weeks I have accumulated mountains of new art supplies.
These are physical manifestations of a pat on the back for actually following through on the whole “drawing a little bit each and every day” thing (the only reason you don’t see them here more often is that they have yet to create an inexpensive digital camera that automatically uploads pictures via wifi onto my weblog/flickr in the correct proportions and file format. Oh what a dream).
The highlights of my purchases include:
a uni-ball vision elite,
a pentel pocket brush pen,
and
a rotring art pen.
I am obsessed with finding the perfect pen. And, indeed each pen has so far served his purpose well enough.
The uniball is waterproof, acid-free, non-smearing, non-fading, smooth-writing and safe for airline travel. If I ever go anywhere that is. Sigh. It’s probably my favourite so far as it is cheap, small, holds a ton of ink and is also refillable. It’s terribly convenient to stick in a purse (along with a moleskine perhaps)?
The runner up would have to be the pentel pocket brush. It looks like your average black pen on the outside (all be it with a sexy silver Japanese character on the cap) but on the inside it is quite miraculous. It looks like a brush tip marker, but is in fact a real live brush with separate bristles and everything. It writes just like a brush and ink. It has glorious dark black waterproof India ink refills, although they are a bit expensive (and I think they might be hard to track down on short notice).
Finally there is the rotring art pen. I’ve heard bad things about it in the past, but it’s really not quite as bad as all that. It just isn’t waterproof. That’s about my only beef. It is a nice fountain style drawing pen. It gives results very similar to a dip ink caligraphy pen, but without any messy spatter. It is a delight to draw with, and while, (for a drawing pen) it ain’t cheap, it is probably one of the most inexpensive refillable fountain pens out there. Believe me, I’ve looked. Refills are cheap and plentiful (although, again, probably hard to track down). There is a cartridge that would allow you to fill the pen by hand with ink of your own choosing, but I’ve heard that it leaks, so I’ve yet to try it out.
pink polka dots
Last Monday was Liam’s birthday. We were still pretty tired, we had just gotten back from our trip Sunday night, so we just hung around and relaxed. My birthday is exactly 6 months apart from Liam’s. When we got the cat for my birthday this year, the humane society didn’t know her exact birth-date, just that she was a year and a half old. So we decided that Kaylee and Liam could share their birthday.
Her big present was a brand new pink polka dotted collar (because she destroyed her last one).
It suits her incredibly well and makes her look a million times more cute (as if that were even possible). She also got fancy wet duck cat food for dinner.
Really she did better than liam. He got a meatball sub and a comic book.
We have also learned that she enjoys fresh grapes. It seems to be the only non-meat product she’ll bother with. Of course we (inadvertantly) killed her cat grass when we went away, so she may have been craving green things.
OK Go is back too
Those crazy OK Go kids have a new album coming out this Tuesday, and just re-launched their web-site with some super tantalizing video clips, and a single or two for download.
I was on their tour-bus once. I rock by association.
Check them out if you (like me) enjoy power pop with some serious keyboard, rounded out by delightfully witty lyrics.
They are my favourite band ever. Did I mention that yet?
back (and with photos to prove it)
We’re back from the T-Bay, and I’ve posted the resulting pictures on my (sadly underused) flickr account. It’s a rather pretty drive, I highly recommend it. I apologize for any blurry pictures as they were mostly taken from within a moving car.
charming place you got here
People from Thunder bay make fun of it.
A lot.
But as a ’sophisticated’ Southern Ontarian, I find it charming.
That may sound like a patronizing description, but it is true, never the less.
Yeah there’s some silly stuff that goes on in a small isolated northern city. This ain’t no Portland Oregon. But in a way, the same things that make a place like Portland so cool, make this place tolerable. It’s the potential that at any moment things could change and the place could turn into a veritable bohemian enclave.
It won’t, but the potential is there.
It’s beautiful in 4 seasons (even though the cold one lasts quite a bit longer than the other 3).
All the junk from the even more isolated and northerly towns ends up here (making for some rather awesome thrift shopping). There’s a general DIY attitude that permeates the place. All the cool kid’s are cool by their own doing. It’s much harder to buy cool at the local store - it takes some work.
It’s a good place to be an artists, or into film, or be in a band. You might not end up famous, but you’ll really get the chance to experiment and grow.
Here you can find some awesome coffee shops, delicious dives, and the kind of regional fast food I personally adore.
It’s cheap to live in, and minutes away from clean lakes and rivers for swiming, fishing, camping and general “getting away from it all”.
Ok, so there’s a few to many sets of bongo drums in this town, and all the young’uns get up and go to Vancouver as soon as they can because they think it’s the promised land. No job’s, no reason to stay in town. But Portland’s no different (just replace that Vancouver with San Francisco).
But this town made my boyfriend, and his friends. And they’re largely successful and super-cool (and currently my personal fashion icons). That alone makes it not a bad place to be every-once in a while.
warning: pomo post!
I hope this helps to heal the scourge that has befallen our once great cyberland.
(via wee me)
t-bay
I am trapped in the north-west ontario region. Actually I’m not trapped at all, I am quite happy to be here by the banks of lake Superior. We’re visiting Liam’s parents, camping, swimming and generally enjoying the cool weather and large bodies of freshwater offered by this region. And we had to go to a kickin’ wedding. We’ll be back in a week or so with pictures and anecdotes of terribly exciting Thunder Bay.
museum pharmacuticals
I took this picture at the cottage last weekend. I think it’s time to clean out the medicine cabinet. Or donate it to a museum - check out that retro packaging!
