Wednesday WIP Volume 49

 What have I been working on: A couple of commissions, sewing stuff on paper, a blanket for my cousin's baby, and some new archetypes.

What Would Jareth Do?--This was fun; Labyrinth was one of my favorite movies growing up.

Anime Tarot commission -- Also fun. As a huge fan of Final Fantasy, how could I turn down a chance to draw more of it?

Snowflakes + fuzzy cell phone pic!! I have been having a lot of fun working on these.

Can you see it yet? It's definitely clearer than the last time I posted a progress pic of this.

Just Another Week

It's been a while since I've gotten a chance to post here. I really do want to post here more often. Maybe this is going to be the start of consistent posting again, and maybe it's not. My life seems to be very variable, at least on a day-to-day basis. Anyways. I thought I'd share with you guys a bit of what a normal week looks like for me.

Monday
As you guys may (or may not) know, I homeschool (for a variety of reasons, but let's just simplify things and say I had significant differences of opinion with the local schools as to what qualified as a quality education). You may also know that I am not a morning person. This means my average day gets started around 9:00-10:00. We spend the rest of the morning and a large chunk of the afternoon doing schoolwork--I won't go into the details there; as excited as I get about different curriculum and school stuff like that, I'm sure that would bore most of my readers here to tears. XD By the time late afternoon roles around, I can usually manage to get a little bit of housework--mostly maintenance stuff like laundry and dishes--taken care of. Yeah, my house is pretty far from picture-perfect. There's usually lots of clutter and dustbunnies in all the corners--maybe I'll bother keeping those at bay once the kids are grown and gone, but now, it's just not a priority.

Now most Mondays, after dinner, we head off to scouts. My two oldest are in boy scouts (#2 just bridged out of cub scouts). My youngest boy is a Tiger cub, and in a year or so, Sophie will join the Frontier Girls group attached to our troop--not that I have anything against Girl Scouts, but I appreciate the convenience of having Sophie in a group that meets at the same time and at the same location as the scout troop my boys are part of. =P Besides, not having access to large quantities of Girl Scout cookies is a major plus in favor of my health and my wallet. I have a real weakness for both Samoas and Thin Mints. XD But anyways, back on topic. Scouts ends 9:30ish. We come home, and most Mondays, it's bedtime for everyone. You'll notice that most Mondays there also isn't much time to pick up any art projects or even post to the blog here. =(

Tuesday
Tuesdays start much like Mondays, and in fact, it's just like Monday (minus the generally grumpy attitude that comes with Monday because no one wants to get back to work after the weekend) until late afternoon. Tuesdays, in theory, should be a much better day for tackling projects since it's the day my husband works late (he teaches a nigh class Tuesday nights and doesn't get home till after 9:00). Some weeks Tuesday is a great day to get projects done; other days, for a variety of reasons--usually just standard distractions that come with living with 4 kids and 4 cats or just plain exhaustion--nothing creative happens. XD

Wednesday
Wednesdays are fun. I cut the school day short just after lunch, and I spend my afternoons volunteering at the local Pregnancy Resource Center. Right now, I am training to be a client advocate. I really love my work here. For me, this is just a natural extension of my work as a doula. With my doula work, I provide for support for women and help help make informed decisions regarding their pregnancy, labor & delivery, and postpartum periods. At the PRC, I'm doing the same thing for women in crisis pregnancy situations--I help them slow down, look at all their options so they can make an educated decision regarding what direction is best for them, and if they choose to carry, I get to stand by their side and provide the similar support I would as a doula--it's actually close to the same except with a crisis pregnancy situation I spend a lot more time working with the mom-to-be (and dad-to-be's too if they're there). FYI, part of my training is to make sure I'm not exhibiting any personal bias as to what decision I might think is best. Anyways... I could talk about this subject for a very long time, so I'm going to cut it short here. =P So, after my volunteer time, we go to Wednesday evening church, and after church, my husband and I have a "date night." We don't generally go anywhere, but the kids are given clear directions as to what they can do that evening and when they need to be in bed, and Shaun and I spend the evening by ourselves--sometimes watching a movie, sometimes just chatting. It's a fun time to just stay connected with him; I can attest to the importance of this after being married for more than 14 years now. Wednesdays disappear pretty quickly.

Thursdays and Fridays
Thursdays and Fridays are pretty similar. We have our usual school time, and generally we have nothing planned those days--or at least we're not supposed to have anything planned those days. Considering we haven't been home on a Thursday or Friday in weeks, it would be totally legitimate to question that. These are the two days during the week where I do get most of my art project progress done. That means, so far, that I have Thursdays, Fridays, and the occasional Tuesday to work on artsy craftsy things that I'm supposed to be blogging about here. =P

Saturdays
Saturdays should also be one of those great days to for getting stuff done, and by stuff, I mean art stuff since there's no school or anything like that. I do get stuff done; it's just not usually art stuff. Saturday is spent running errands and preparing school stuff for the next week. Saturdays are also days where we plan game days and visits with friends and other things like that, so it's our social day as well. Sometimes art happens, but usually no.

Sundays
Sunday mornings are spent at church. Sunday is also our grocery day for the week, and Sunday evenings we spend being social with our small group from church. The afternoon time in between is spent relaxing and attempting to rest up in preparation for another busy week. No art (or housework or school) ever happens on Sundays; it's something we decided to do very early in our marriage--Sunday would be the one day we allow each week to be spent reading, playing video games, watching movies, or whatever else we want to do to relax. Most weeks this is the only day we get to do these things because the rest of the week tends to be very busy with life stuff.

So anyways. That's what most of my weeks look like. Some weeks are better for art than others. I guarantee I have a lot of awesome projects in progress--some are pretty much done but I haven't had a chance to photograph or scan them, and others need more work. Stuff is happening and you should see some of it being finished over the next several months.

Where'd Friday Go?

So, I had this really awesome post planned for Friday, and by planned I don't mean written, I mean I had thought about the topic of the post prior to last Friday. Yeah, I know that there are tons of bloggers out there that say to write out your posts at least a couple of days before posting and to have a few back up posts for when writing just doesn't happen. Those are the bloggers that probably have all their posts up on time and never miss a post. That's clearly not me. I've tried. It just isn't something that works for me. So, you'll be getting last week's awesome Sailor Moon post this Friday--the chances of this happening are actually fairly high. I'd give it maybe 90% chance?

I guess that brings me to why Friday's post never happened. Well I had another doula training workshop last weekend. This one was focused on postpartum support (it was excellent by the way--if you plan on having kids I highly recommend a doula to help). Anyways. I knew it was coming, so I thought, hey, I'll just write my blog post on Thursday--I decided this on Wednesday after finishing up the WIP post. I even wrote it down in my planner. And then it was Friday morning and I woke up with less than 20 minutes to get out the door. What? How'd that happen? I'm still not sure what happened to last Thursday... Oh yeah, I remember what happened to Thursday, or at least Thursday evening. I was trying to get a portfolio together for Katsucon's AA application and a description and all that jazz. This time it was a little more complicated because I was submitting a group application for myself and one other artist (Sempaiko--she's an amazing artist you should check out her stuff). This was my first time trying to do something like this. That app was supposed to go in Friday morning before I left, but that clearly didn't happen. I didn't even get my lunch put together that day. By the time I got home Friday evening, all I wanted was food (a diet Dr. Pepper and a tootsie roll pop do not count for much after a 12 hour day) and sleep. I did get the application in, and hopefully we'll still get in--they supposedly don't do first come first serve and base the choices off of variety, although I still imagine that if they're going to take x # of print artists, they're going to take the first x artists they like? Dunno. Whatever. If we get in, awesome. If not, there's always next year. Anyways. The application happend. The blog post did not. XD

Then I thought about writing the post Saturday morning and putting it up late. It wouldn't be the first time I'd done that. But then, I failed to get up early enough to write before leaving for the workshop, and after another very long day which did not actually end with the workshop--it ended after a shift selling popcorn at a Harris Teeter--I was again tired and hungry and not up for much of anything. I did at least have a sandwich and some chips for lunch this time, but when lunch is at noon and dinner was not until almost 9 that evening... You get the idea. So Saturday didn't happen either. =P Yep this is pretty much how my life is. XD

Wednesday WIP - Volume 48

Still don't see it... but there has been progress.

Finally getting back to the FF IV Buttons

Moon

Mercury

Jupiter

Fail at Sales

This might be obvious to anyone who's met me in Artist Alley (or it might not), but I am a horrible sales person. I feel like Fluttershy:

Me: "Hi." =)
Person: "I'm just looking."
Me: "Oh that's okay, I really don't mind. You don't have to buy anything. In fact, you probably don't want to buy anything from here. I mean you could if you wanted to, but there's really no pressure. Nevermind. I'm just going to shut up now and hide behind my table. Bye."

Actually, I really don't mind people looking at my stuff, laughing at the humor, and not buying something. I really am just happy that they enjoyed what I created. There are still lots of awkward embarrassed moments (at least for me) where I feel like just by saying hi, I'm trying to obligate people to buy, when really I'm just trying to be friendly (cause I like talking to people, but I'm incredibly shy and socially awkward, and my table is my comfort zone, so really I just want to say hi and I'd really just love it if you smiled and said hi back.) I only want people to buy my stuff if they really really really like it, and they still have enough money for food and for gas to get home. This is probably why I will never ever "make a living" off my art, but I actually prefer it to be this way. Maybe I'll only ever be an "amateur" artist, but for me that means I don't have as much pressure on me, and I can keep drawing whatever I want to with little consideration of trends.

So, why am I talking about sales today? Because for the last 2 weeks we have been selling popcorn like mad for Boy Scouts (and Cub Scouts). I hated doing fund raisers when I was younger. I hate doing them now, and I feel very horrible that I'm not independently wealthy enough to just fork over the $ my kids are supposed to make selling popcorn (there are minimum sales requirements for each scout) and not subject them to this torture.

Instead, we've been setting up tables in front of local grocery stores (our pack made an arrangement with them to allow the scouts in our pack to sell popcorn during certain hours). We've been going door to door harassing all the poor people of our community. Really, the boys have handled it better than I probably have (except for Luke, but then he's like me and he hates stuff like this too for many of the same reasons). Also, if I step back and look at it, they are learning life skills--things that will help them as adults. They are learning how to interact with people politely even when the people they talk to are rude. They are learning that their demeanor makes a difference (when Luke's grumpy and growling at people, they don't buy popcorn). They are learning to set reasonable goals and how to work toward them. These are lessons I should probably have learned when I was younger too, but my mom was a lot like I am now--she hated fund raisers (do we see a theme here?). She never encouraged me to go out, and because none of my school or band fund raisers had minimums, I never really had to do it. We'd buy a little bit for our own family, and that'd be it.

I'm still happy to not be good at sales. I feel like this way, I can know that people who buy my art do so because they like it not because they felt any pressure to do so against their better judgment. At least, I hope that's how it is.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff

So, I've been watching Doctor Who (finally). I've finished up through season 3--I started with the newer stuff, so I think I got the 9th Doctor and Rose to start with. Do I really need to go into a series overview with this one? I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one on the planet who has not watched Doctor Who. The jist of the series is pretty simple: the Doctor travels through time and space frequently with a female companion (assistant?) saving humans from a variety of alien dangers. That's pretty much it, in a nutshell.

Now, I like the series. Really. I'm enjoying watching it. I'm not sure I'm going to join the throngs of raving Dr. Who fans though. While I will probably keep watching till the end of whatever's on Netflix and the idea behind the series is fascinating, I have trouble really getting attached to the Doctor himself. I maintained neutral feelings toward him for seasons 1 and 2. Maybe Rose brought out the best in him? Having finished season 3 (by the way, I liked Martha--way better than Rose), I've come to the conclusion that I really don't like the Doctor.

It's not the actor. David Tennant (and the guy before him, Chris Whoever--I can't spell his last name and I'm being too lazy today to go look it up) does just fine as the Doctor. I don't like the Doctor's personality. It just rubs me the wrong way. I especially don't like how he treats his companions. Yeah, it's super cool being able to travel around the universe and through time and all that, but he treats his companions like objects (or maybe pets is a better term) much of the time and like actual people only when it's convenient. I'm sure that's all because he's a Time Lord and that's what they're like. That may justify it, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. My general dislike of the Doctor makes it difficult to really 100% engage with the series.

I don't regret watching Doctor Who. I now get a lot of the Doctor Who related stuff I find floating around the internet and at conventions. I wouldn't mind having a T.A.R.D.I.S. as long as it came sans the Doctor. =P I do also like seeing how the series interprets different times--as a historian this fascinates me. In fact, that is probably the one thing that keeps me coming back--to see where they're going next and what it will look like. Some of the odd cultural references tossed in for flavor are entertaining as well. Some of the dialogue can be quite funny. There are definitely series out there I've enjoyed more; on the other hand, there's a lot more that's much worse than this on television and Netflix. I won't rate it fantastic, but I'd still say it's pretty good.

WIP Volume 47

Lame post is lame part 2. XD Progress has been minimal this week on the blanket project I'm working on and no drawing happened. Failsauce.

So, It doesn't look like that much was added to it. The bulk of what happened was disassembling some of what I had finished because I adjusted the pattern slightly. Hence why there's a random black strip and a couple of loose black squares. They'll get added back in later. Final blanket will be 14x14 blocks.