It is New Years Eve - and for the first time since my pre-teens I have no plans whatsoever. Normally that would make me feel a little unloved, but this year I’m pretty okay with not having plans to do anything for once.
Especially after Liam tore his hand in half on a cat food can and we had to spend a few hours in the ER getting him stitched back up Friday night. Not. Cool.
Instead we get to sit around and eat yummy food and watch silly movies and I can play with my Christmas presents a bit more (I got a relatively fancy Waterman Fountain pen and I’ve just hunted down the perfect waterproof black ink for it!!! Pen nerd is in lurve!!!).
So we rented all four hours of Gormehnghast, and will probably head out to the big asian supermarket soon to get supplies to make our own dim-sum (yummy-nummy).
No resolutions. I don’t believe in making promises I won’t keep.
Besides, this year I got what I wanted (moved to Toronto, got into and attended OCAD, got a kitten, got a studio, got to work for Torontoist) and found out that sometimes getting what you want can be just as disapointing as not getting it (attending OCAD for instance… and having the stress of that prevent me from staying at Torontoist…).
Next year maybe I’ll make no plans and be pleasantly suprised with the results?
I was out with friends, scouring the suburbs in search of a specific sample sale (that ended up being hidden away in a corporate office up a flight of stairs) when I stumbled upon a Goodwill.
And what a Goodwill it was!
I still say they are far superior to either Value Villages or Sally Anns.
I was about to give up hope, when I noticed a (mostly empty) rack that had a few interesting boxes lying on it.
One of them looked like this:
So (very intrigued at this point) I cracked it open, and found…
This marvellous, little, portable typewriter! For only ten bucks!
I love mechanical things. I have wanted a typewriter for soooooo long (mostly just for decorative reasons, but also maybe for the occasional art project). I have been looking for one in a sweet pastel, but for ten bucks, I didn’t really care that it was greige.
It works too! It even came with the original manual! I just need a new ribbon (which is looking like it will be more expensive than the thing was in the first place).
If you click through the pictures you’ll find more pictures on Flickr because, well, she’s a sexy girl.
Just tell me she isn’t hot.
In a bout of “out with the old” I re-jiggered my inspiration/cork board. It was getting a bit cluttered and dusty.
The phrase “inspiration board” sounds so silly, but in reality it does indeed function as such. When I get bored of typing and clicking away, I look up and get rather mezmorized by pretty colours, and happy memories, and eventually inspired.
If you know, or have met me, you may indeed find little bit’s and peices of things you yourself have contributed to me have found their way up there.
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.
I spent my long weekend up at my cottage. For those non southern ontarians unfamiliar with the concept, I am referring to my family’s cute little hundred year old log cabin a few hours north of here (quite close to algonquin park, actually) on the banks of a cute little spring fed lake carved into the Canadian shield.
It is actually the inspiration for my last illustration Friday entry. The view from my dock at night looks very much like that little illustration.
Of course it was kind of chilly, and with me getting over a cold I spent most of my time inside.
Thankfully I had to find something to entertain myself with, so I got some drawing done. My new project is to go through my brand new copy of fresh fruits and draw lots of harajuku girls with a ball-point pen in an old notebook of mine. I was colouring them in with this brightly coloured conte I had with me, but now that I’m home I’ve switched to crayons. Conte just doesn’t cut it when you’re drawing with a Bic in a lined notebook. Too classy.
I want to practice drawing human forms and faces a little more, and those crazy fruits kids are a pretty distinct place to start.
I’ll post pictures when I get the energy to put batteries in my digital camera.
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.
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.
This week has been, and will continues to be insane.
I just got back from my MRI. Not as freaky as I thought it was gonna be, but still plenty weird. It was actually nicer than the CT scan, just because (even though it’s upwards of 20 minutes instead of just 5) they make sure you’re comfortable, give you comfy cushioning, headphones with music (even if it was John Tesh… and I couldn’t hear it because the machine was crazy, scary loud) and a panic button just in case the super-magnetic rays start melting your brain or something.
Tomorrow Liam graduates, which is exciting (although the ceremony won’t be, I’m sure). So his parents are in town, which is always nerve-racking for the significant other (me). On top of that I have been finalizing my illustrations for the Very Big Project, plus with the on-going medical stuff… I’m not so much busy as incredibly, incredibly stressed.
On the upside I rewarded myself with some new process coloured gouache (cyan, magenta and yellow - just like they use in printing) and a disposable Coptic fountain pen (which are my favourite to draw with, and incredibly hard to find these days). I’m movin’ on up in the world of art supplies. I now feel like I should be buying “artist’s” quality as opposed to “student” quality.
Here’s my rationale: If I’m selling my stuff, I don’t want to give somebody something that I painted with cheap water-colour that will fade in a couple years.
When I was younger I didn’t notice the limitations of cheap paint, or the muddiness of the colours. Since I do now, I think it’s worth it to me to be able to get the exact shade of blue I envisioned. Not that I’m throwing out my Crayolas or anything. But it’s nice to have something a little nicer around to encourage me to draw more in reality, and a little less digitally. Cross your fingers for a old school work of art for this upcoming illustration Friday.
We’ll see if I get lazy or not.
