The Xaotician Revisited, part the second

My muse is joyriding me around the Photoshop workspace. Giggling.

The Xaotician Revisited

A sketchy re-visitation of one of the first pictures I did with my tablet, way back. It still gets the occasional drive-by +favourite over at DA, which I assume is largely due to the fact that Ms. Kos doesn't happen to be wearing much of anything in it.

Not that that's changed or anything.

Curios, Crackers, and Coiffures

The other day, I made a few adjustments to Astreja's recipe for cheese crackers, which is really more like cheese shortbread. My version, as I recall:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup butter
1 cup grated cheese of choice (mine was half gouda, half old cheddar)
A bit of dried rosemary and caraway
1 clove garlic, minced very fine
A smidge of extra butter

Toss the first three ingredients into a large bowl.

Grind up the dried herbs in a mortar and toast them in a dry skillet over medium heat until they've turned a darker shade and become quite fragrant. Toss them in on the flour. Melt the bit of extra butter in the skillet and fry the garlic until it's all browned and crisp, then grind it into paste in the mortar and add it to the bowl.

Mix everything together with your hands. It's going to take a fair bit of kneading to mix it and get it to hold together.

Form the dough into a few balls and roll them out into 1.5" logs, flattening the ends. I tend to do this on sheets of waxed paper, which I then use to wrap the logs. Refrigerate for at least an hour to facilitate easy cutting (though you can certainly leave them in longer, as I did--think icebox cookies).

Pre-heat the oven to 425F. It should be ready by the time you're done slicing the crackers.

Slice them about 1/4" thick and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Do give them a bit of breathing room; they will expand a bit. Bake for about ten minutes, or until they've browned a bit on the bottom.

And now for something completely inedible:

More of the glass beads I used in Elke's necklace. This one is also quite long.

Messing about with wire.

You have no idea how hard it is to refrain from adding stone beads to this, even though I know it's done.

In the space of roughly an hour, I turned a hideous belt from the thrift shop into this, which I am quite fond of.

And lastly, I decided to spend some quality time with two boxes of hair dye again.

Lady Kos, reworked... again.

So, back in 2005, I drew this:


In 2008, I decided that while I really liked the original sketch, that godawful colouring job had to go, and the corset was far too immodest for her tastes.

Better, but still not quite there. Plus there's Mikala being a camwhore.

And now, I think I have her looking like I wanted...

...chaos star, dark circles under the eyes, and all.


On an unrelated note, I need to look into getting a bloody credit card so I can set up an Etsy shop. I'm drowning in friggin' necklaces over here.

Curios and Trinkets, part the eighth

Part of me wonders when this will slow down. I only seem to be picking up speed.

Some particularly nice crab agate. And I have some heartkeys in silver now, because we weren't already totally sick of how often I use the brass ones.

I consider it a measure of my dwindling sanity that I spent several days in search of something that made for a decent facsimile of crystallized mana. I imagine this is kind of like one of those candy necklaces for blood elves.

Moss agate, glass, and watch bits.

Small mammal expressing disapproval of my presence near the peanut stash.

Present for Elke, who's finishing photography school this week. Seemed apropos, given her love of sparkly crystalline things, and those ones turn every colour imaginable in sunlight.

A better picture of one from the other day.

And this one... Ms. Kos' colleague mailed her a jade pendant many months ago (you can find it hanging from her belt in one of my recent paintings of her, actually). This isn't at all what I imagined it looking like*, and the gems are candy jade and serpentine, but I'm not going to look a... gift inspiration in the...

I guess they must have mouths. They certainly do gnaw when they're so inclined.

I know squat about wire wrapping, but it actually sort of turned out half decent.



*The work of a master elven jeweller is undoubtedly more impressive than that of a hack with a pair of pliers. It'd probably look more akin to Litori's work.

Curios and Trinkets, part the seventh

Despite being harassed by a diminutive, peanut-gobbling rodent, I managed to get passable pictures of the most recent batch of jewelery. Thinking I might go back to using the tree stumps as a background, though.


Onyx and glass.

Fancy agate. There are about a dozen other colours in the bead that don't show here.

Moss agate. Yes, again.

Even more moss agate. I curved the leaf so that it would fit nicely over the back of one's hand, with the beads hanging down the sides.


Chrysocolla!

And the one that had me stumbling around with a hammer at five in the morning. Paper, leather, ribbon, a ceramic skull, a hunk of coathanger, and a mysterious jewelery bit that Elke came across (I think it was an ear cuff or something--part of it is now wrapped around the neck of the bottle).

And a bitty little potion bottle. Innit cute?

Nocturnal Lunacy

At roughly 5:30 this morning, I was ambling around the house with a hammer in one hand and the severed head of a coathanger in the other, and a vaguely psychotic look in my eye. I wish I could say that this was something of a rarity, but it's par for the course these days.

(Speaking of which, it amuses me that "sub-par" is a bad thing when the entire point of par is to be under it.)

Anyway, I was reminded the hard way that coathanger-gauge wire is, in fact, serious business. It took fifteen minutes of quality time with a vise, hammer, pliers, and a cylindrical tool handle to muscle the damn thing into roughly the shape I wanted.

And then I put it through a skull. Because I could.

I'll put up a nicer picture of it later. I've four other pieces to take pictures of, anyway...

Celestials

The one on the right is, anyway. She'll probably end up with golden eyes and a rune-halo. The one on the left looks more like a dragon disciple to me.

Devils and Their Bad Habits, part the fifth

And like magic, we have tiefling.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend some nice quiet time with my stash of shiny objects and gibber a bit.

Devils and Their Bad Habits, part the fourth

From yesterday:


And today.


It's getting there.

Devils and Their Bad Habits, part the third

I'll pretty him up soon enough.

Devils and Their Bad Habits, part the second

Further tinkering in between bouts of procrastination.


I also got some ceramic skull beads today. Not the right style to be set on eyepins as I do with other beads, but I have other plans in mind for these wee deaders.

Devils and Their Bad Habits

I found myself drawing a tiefling's portrait yesterday--a city-dwelling Baatezu druid, of all things--and after I'd finished the sketch...


Yes, he's smoking. Vile habit, that. Being a tiefling, it really wouldn't surprise me if he *ate* them when he was finished puffing away. But, I digress.

Normally, I pick my colours from scratch. This time, I decided to try sampling the skin/brick colours from the reference photo that I took the other day, because I really liked the richness of them.


If I can actually pull this off, I'll be delighted.

Chala has a new toy...

Well, perhaps 'toy' is the wrong word. I was never much one for brooches, but apparently that's just because all the other ones I've run into just suck.


Going up against a silver and green gear stickpin isn't really a fair fight, though.