I’ve lived in many various places throughout my life, and I’ve made friends from those places. I’ve got my friends that I met in Savannah, I’ve got my friends from my undergraduate days, I’ve got friends from my home town, I’ve got friends from California… One thing that seems to be a constant in all of these groups of friends is, eventually some of them move to Austin, TX. I can think of at least four friends, whom I’ve known at different times and from different places, who have all picked up and moved to Austin. They don’t know each other, but they do know me.
One of these friends is Marc. I’ve known Marc for quite a long time. I met him in 1988, at the University of Buffalo when I was a foolish freshman. We haven’t lived in the same city since I left Buffalo because I was totally screwing up my academic career, but he has remained on my radar.
Marc is one of my friends who now lives in Austin, and he participates in the improv comedy troupe Improv for Evil. It looks like IFE has some new, interesting shows coming up. If you’re in Austin, you should go check them out. Tell Marc I said hi.
Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and my husband and I have been called upon to bring a sweet potato dish to a gathering. Thinking about what to make, I realized that I have some specific opinions about marshmallows. As far as I’m concerned, marshmallows belong in exactly four dishes:
1. In hot cocoa;
2. cooked over an open fire on a stick;
3. in a s’more, as an extension of #2
4. in a rice krispies treat.
There may be others that don’t come to mind right now, but there aren’t many situations that I can think of where marshmallows should be an ingredient. Notice that “in sweet potatoes” is NOT on the list. I just don’t get this whole idea where people want to take sweet potatoes and then make them even sweeter by adding a pound of sugar to them. People, sweet potatoes are already pretty sweet. Hence, the name. I’m ok with perhaps a little sugar, maybe a tablespoon or two. And spices, like cinnamon or nutmeg, are good too. But please, take it easy on the sugar. Save it for dessert.
So, I took up the NaBloPoMo challenge, with the intent of posting every day for the month of November. But yesterday, I dropped the ball, and forgot to post. What can I say? It was Friday night. It had been a long week. Posting to the blog just slipped my mind.
And you know what? I’m okay with it. The world will not stop turning because I forgot to post to my blog yesterday. It’s not a big deal. The truth of the matter is, I thought a lot of my posts were kind of lame. I’d rather post once a week with some high quality content than putting out fodder every day. And now I don’t have to think about posting to the blog every day. I have other projects I want to work on, and I can just post to the blog when I want to, and focus on other stuff.
I’ll still try to post reasonably frequently, at least once a week, maybe more if I have something good to show or say.
A while back, I was toying around with developing a female character. I still toy around with it. When I want to develop a character, I try to just draw the character again and again and again in an attempt to work out facial features and personality. That’s how I developed the Big Bad Wolf for my short film. I had to be able to draw him the same way, consistently, again and again, from many angles.
This example doesn’t highlight my drawing skills much, but it’s interesting to see some of the stuff that started to emerge. I need to do this more.
My intention for today was to get home and finish this little picture I’m working on. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s kind of nice, and I wanted to finish it and post it tonight. But I’m staying at work a bit late this evening, so I’m not going to have the time or the inclination to finish the painting this evening. You’ll just have to wait, and this explanation will have to suffice.
Someday soon I’ll have a prettier picture for you, but for now I’ve got a caveman for you.
I’m beginning to think I really suck at my job. And that sucks. Because when you suck at your job, you suffer every single day.
Here we have an example of a quick sketch I did on the word “Boundary” from the random word generator. This is just a scribble, really, just me getting down the idea. I know, it’s awful. I’ve taken this sketch and I’m working on a more finished illustration with it. I’ll show it to you when it’s done.
Here’s a photo of me in a sweater I completed recently. The name of the pattern is Mr. Greenjeans. It’s a free pattern from Knitty; you can find the pattern here. I think it came out pretty well, it’s maybe a bit big in a few areas. But I’m pleased with it. I still need to find a button to put on it.
Phew! It’s been a big week. I went back to work at ILM, helped elect our next president, and I even finished my sweater. Ok, it’s not totally totally done; I need to find an appropriate button for it. Or maybe a zipper, I am not sure. Here’s an in-progress photo, which I posted on this blog a while ago. I did all of these things with a cold, which I am sure I caught last weekend at APE. I’m sure there were a lot of cooties floating around that convention.
The fact that I have managed to post every day of the month so far is amazing to me. I haven’t posted a drawing every day, but I’m doing the best that I can. You’re not getting a drawing today; it’s Friday night, I’m exhausted, and I’m going to re-visit the Matrix movies on Blu-Ray. Tomorrow you’ll get some photos of the completed sweater. Have a good weekend!