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...

This is rarely a good sign. Or is it?

I've been stricken (again) with the urge to make jewelery. Necklaces, specifically. A grand total of ~12 hours were recently squandered on Etsy, stumbling around and drooling on findings and little pretty bits.

I'm not by and large a wearer of jewelery; I have perhaps four or five necklaces remaining in my collection, and generally wear at least two at once if I'm going to bother. That said, I have developed a penchant for grandiose messes of chain and filigree, and feel like I have nothing to say when it comes to painting, so perhaps it's high time for a change. Making the curios for my tiefling costume last year was an utter delight.

(The main thing keeping me from dropping piles of money on this nonsense is the knowledge that I really don't have a decent non-digital workspace at the moment.)

It's that time again, is it?

My tablet and I continue to glare at each other, but I somehow managed to get it to cooperate long enough to do the linework of another knot. Still waffling on how to best dress it up.

On an unrelated note, it seemed that it was finally time for another section of Smoke and Serpentine. Not generally something I'd post, but given the time of year, I suppose a love note from Winter to Spring is at least a bit apropos.



V.

For a moment, I considered spring
flush with his alien hope
the sting of daybreak and celadon life

The vines slip through stone
in the innocent fashion of plants
and a cobweb of cracks wreathes the heart

My fingers itch to wander the soil
in search of secrets to unearth

Yet here they remain
and I ache to find contentment in his garden
for I am but a guest
and dread to tear the roots with careless greed.

A Map of Swords

I've been fighting with my tablet lately; it occasionally has moments where it refuses to take a straight line and instead wiggles about in an aggravating fashion.

Despite that, a sketch. The odds of Miss Kos forgiving me for this anytime soon are slim, but I wanted to mark down her most prominent scars before I forgot where they were again.

Painty painty paint...

Okay. My current commission is essentially complete. Just in time for another to sneak into my inbox, but I digress. (Yes, I'm allegedly closed. That doesn't seem to stop them, but I shan't complain.)

Colour is a tricky thing. Even with all that I've learned about colour theory over the years, I still feel like I'm flying blind half the time... especially where firelight and dark elf skin are concerned. Ah well, next thing I paint for myself is going to be monochrome for a break--that, and because I dearly wish to avoid botching this picture. Greyscale and I get along swimmingly.

The monochrome palette, not the cat. Stop sticking your nose under my door, you fuzzy sod.

The daydreaming bug has come back to me. Odd as it is, there were a few years when I barely felt it at all, to the point of it seeming like I was only cultivating snippets here and there to harvest them for stories as soon as was possible. That does not feel at all right, somehow.

Now I've gone back to letting them steep and stew for no eyes but my own. Because we all want something that we cannot have--and because actually having it would make it lose its lustre so much sooner.

(It really doesn't help that my friends and acquaintances keep inundating me with delightful music to mull over. I mean, seriously.)

*clunk*

Let's see...

I picked up a new headset the other day. Momentarily considered a wireless one (because the only reason I *ever* have to replace them is because I have an unfortunate habit of getting the cord hooked on things and accidentally yanking it about) but then remembered that it would actually have to charge up, and it is not uncommon for me to be wearing the things for fourteen hours at a stretch.

The eldest of the furry bastards went and sprained his leg. He is presently limping about and receiving a ridiculous number of ear rubs.

I either need to do a lot more lineart, or a lot less. Presently colouring some that I did for a commission, and I never feel so ham-fisted as I do when inking--even though it's digital. Somehow, painting is much easier. Maybe it's just an issue of practice.

And now I leave you with this atrocity of fashion, spotted in Orgrimmar several months ago:

My hand!

My thumb has decided that I have apparently wronged it. I wouldn't really care, but it's the drawing hand and I just started in on a commission. Not that it's going to stop me--it couldn't keep me from drawing druidic dragon girls if it was packing a knife--but it is going to whine while I work. Bastard.

I was colouring some more lineart of Z's to entertain myself earlier, but I'm not quite sure if I like how it looks in colour.

It would really be nice to have a hobby that didn't require the intensive use of my hands. My headset finally gave up the ghost this morning, so I'm stuck typing instead of yapping until I snag another.

And on a totally unrelated note, I become more infatuated with Fuchsia with every comic in this particular arc of Sinfest.

Dreaming Ilythiiri, part the second

Bleh. Bleh I tell you, bleh.

I was thinking of something more dreamlike and deep woods-ish for the background, something to bring out the viny constriction feel, and this lakeside bullshit is happening instead.


Urgh.

The great irony in this is that I was trying to paint a lake for a depiction of Lady Kos' homeland last week and it wasn't working. >:|

Your mount is invalid; my toon is a bird

*cough* Sorry. My druid alt in WoW made it to 72 the other day and I decided to pony up for her stormcrow form, so she can crap on the statue of king Wrynn in style. I also returned to Karazhan with a few friends who wanted the achievement, so she picked up some lovely antlers after we had some harsh words with the Prince about what he did to my shaman a few days prior.

I also finished the commission I was working on.

It's odd. I know a lot of people get hit with a total block as soon as they have to work on a picture for payment, because it Must Be Done. It has the opposite effect on me. I can sit down and open up Photoshop and immediately know what I'm going to be working on--whereas now that I'm done, I'm staring at a folder full of my own sketches and half-finished paintings like an idiot, hemming and hawing over what to fiddle with next.

Possibly I just need sleep.

Urgg...

Working on a trade with Jess. There is so much dusty rose floating around this painting that I actually threw up earlier due to an overdose of teh pink.

It may also have been because of dinner, but I'm banking on the painting.

I'm in utter colour system shock, going from a nice, muted brown/navy/gold piece to pink, purple, and turquoise. I'm not sure if I can see this through without some serious re-tinting.

I may just have to start over with a new sketch, though. This painting, it turns out, wants to be someone else. Wah!

Dragonbutt

Meh... I'm grumpy. I knew I'd be off to a bad start when I woke up from a dream that left me wanting to beat someone into an utterly unrecognizable state, and my mood hadn't improved much during the day, but I went ahead and tried to draw Mikala anyway. Emphasis on 'tried to'.

As usual, he evaded my best attempts at getting a handle on his likeness. But at least he doffed his clothing first.

I think he's just doing this to spite me for always drawing him in a wretched state. As far as figments of the imagination go, he and I do not get along at all.

Not again...

I'm feeling a bit verbose this morning, and a great deal of it has to do with this.

Right, then.

I see what the actual stampmaker is saying, and there is much merit in it. I know exactly what kind of picture they're down on, and I agree that they have no real place in a community dedicated to art. Granted, neither do a lot of the clean photographs and sundry other items, but I'll look past that for now.

What has me sighing heavily are the responses to it. The vast majority of it comes from a rabid pack of prudes, screeching about how much they agree and omg sex is gross, anyone who supports it in art is sick, ban that filth!111one!

It's a little insulting, honestly. For someone whose primary goals as an artist include depicting a very gentle, emotional and understated side of sexuality (which, coincidentally, Vyrl is fantastic at and I want to have her artbabies), being painted with the same brush as someone who takes cheap and boring nude snapshots boggles the mind. Hell, *I* have prudish tendencies, but this is ridiculous.

There's really not much to do but paint more, and hope that perhaps somewhere down the line a mind will open, and an unfamiliar sort of beauty will make sense to someone.

(And in the meanwhile, keep in mind my boyfriend's helpful explanation that they're up in arms about it because they're not getting laid.)

I am not pleased.

Yes, I knew that the art theft "policy" at DeviantART was a flat-out lie, and that when I filed a complaint about someone having misappropriated one of my sketches to use in a painting, the odds were very good that their heads would remain in the sand, but there's a bit of a walk between heavy suspicion and actual, disappointing proof. Which, by the way, I waited something like a year for.

This isn't even an issue of tracing--evidently this girl didn't trust her skills enough to even give that a go, which isn't surprising as she would have some difficulty drawing her way out of a paper bag. She just plopped it wholesale into her picture and coloured it--most of the original lines are still intact.

And yet, despite what the policy says, apparently this isn't stealing.

Am I naming names or posting incriminating links? No. I'm disgusted, and there's certainly something to be said for humiliation as a learning tool, but I'm not quite that much of a bitch. I called her out some time ago on the picture itself, and she apparently lacks the stones to say a word about it.

Besides, publicity is publicity, and that's the last thing one should give such an individual.


...on the bright side, though, I just got a present (!!) as I was typing this, and I'm drawing more Ilythiiri bondage, so I guess it all averages out. *snerk*




Her face still could use some work, but it's getting closer.

Is this bloody thing on?

*tap* *tap*

Now, then. My internet connection was downright abysmal yesterday through this morning, and Zeldyn finished the last of my commissions (one, two, three, four!), leaving me with a surplus of inspiration and eye candy.

Thus, I hauled my carcass out of WoW for a while to get some art done.

Amongst other things--Mikala and Lady Koszephyrus. He's still being a bastard to nail down, and there's no way in hell my hands are up to inking it at this point, but I'm fairly happy with it overall.

I think my flesh-and-blood portfolio is in need of a culling. Lately I keep coming by this uncomfortable feeling (and it goes double for writing) that the advancement of technical skill is just a goal to stop myself from asking the one question that artists regard in near-universal dread: Do I really have anything left to say?

I used to be satisfied by making pretty things for their own sake. Now, not so much.