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Got another new piece completed for the show I’m doing in November, so I thought I’d share it. I think this turned out kinda cool, and I had better luck with scanning it than usual, too, so yay. Plus I’m KIND OF getting the hang of seeing where the colors are off, and knowing what I need to do in Photoshop to adjust them. (Although I really cannot emphasize “KIND OF” enough here.)
Anyway, check it out:
Isn’t she cute?! I love my weird, unpleasant-looking little kids…she would so be friends with the little boy in the Silver Key.
Now back to what I should be working on, which, as always, is an assignment for library school.
*pities self*
[eats some potato chips out of boredom and despair]
*loathes self*
I’m getting ready for a show next month and hoping to get a bunch of new things finished for it; just got this one finished up last night & thought I’d share it.
Malevolent Spirits. 12"x18"; pen and ink, watercolor.
I would explain the story behind it, but everyone who has ever known a cat understands anyway…
I wish the scan did the colors justice, but watercolors are SO tricky to get to scan decently. My strategy now is just to adjust the colors in Photoshop using the selective color tool, and the results are passable, but I sure wish I knew of a better way of going about it. I had found a tutorial with some tips, but the site’s down now… so if anyone out there has any suggestions, let me know!
I’m really not sure how it suddenly got to be almost September all of a sudden. So much for posting more regularly during the summer, huh? Well, I had a tough summer class, okay?! Sheesh! (And of course I’m addressing all the masses of people who’ve been awaiting new posts from me with bated breath.)
Anyway, so I have actually been doing creative things, it’s just a matter of not posting about it. Like, for example……<drumroll>…… I submitted my manuscript at last!!
*cheers and applause*
And I have another copy of it ready to go out tomorrow to another publisher, so that’s cool. I feel very accomplished, because if nothing else at least I’ve finally moved beyond just talking about trying to get a story published.
The hardest thing about the whole deal is just finding a publishing house that still accepts manuscripts from dorkuses like me who don’t have an agent. And then a couple of times I had a publisher all picked out, but then when I went to their website to double-check their contact information I found that just since the last time I looked they’d changed their submission policy and no longer accepted unagented submissions! Oh, how I’d laugh and laugh…
Anyway, it’s a very frustrating process.
But meanwhile I’m doing very well at keeping busy with other projects and not obsessing over whether I’ll hear back about my submission. I’m honestly not even secretly, deep down, in my heart of hearts thinking that I’m going to get an acceptance letter–I’m really managing to be realistic about it, through and through! (Not being delusional is such a big accomplishment for me that I have to reinforce it by giving myself lots of praise and affection for it.)
So anyway, other projects: For one thing, I’m getting ready to submit my portfolio just as an illustrator as well — I know my writing isn’t as strong or as developed as my artwork, so I’m not kidding myself too much about that, but I really think I might be able to get some work as an illustrator. So for some illustration practice and just for fun, I’m doing a series of watercolor paintings for the Keats poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” — I hope I’ll be able to make a hand-bound book out of them when I’m done, though I’m not sure how I’d print them for that yet. Here’s the first finished piece:
watercolor and pen and ink; 8" x 10"
It goes with the first verse of the poem–
“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
(Or something like that? I should totally look that up.)
I had to move all of my posts from Sitekreator by hand because I couldn’t find a way to export them… It was a pain, but I think it was worth it–I really like WordPress’s blog features (still like the rest of my site on Sitekreator better, though, so there it stays). So here I am! I can tag my posts, and categorize them, and oh my gosh do I love sorting things, so I’m really enjoying obsessing over that. Like, for example, since I’m posting this when I should be working on a paper for school, I can tag it with my “things I do instead of schoolwork” tag! Perfecto.
Oh, and and and, I have been working on my Coraline box, and I absolutely *love* what I’m making, and I found the niftiest old cigar box for it! Yay! I wonder if it’s okay if I post pictures of the works in progress…? Probably supposed to be kept hush-hush or something–but I reeeeally want to! I’m going to take in-progress photos anyway, I’ll post them after the swap is over if nothing else.
Okay, now back to work *sigh* on that paper *sigh*
Blah…(Ooh, now I can add the “blah” tag!!)
This is the cutest thing…I am undoubtedly totally late to the party here, it’s prolly really old, but I hadn’t seen it before. Check it out: Austenbook
I love this one: “Kitty Bennet became a fan of Officers” — hee! But now I need to re-read Pride and Prejudice… Oh, and after I tracked the links back to see who made Austenbook, I found out that she’s in library school too! A fellow library nerd, that so figures… :-P I’ll edit and add a link to her livejournal later, when I track it down again. ETA: Here’s her livejournal, edeainfj, and I see that Austenbook actually isn’t old, she just did it. Cool! I’m not behind the times on an internet thing, for once.
There’s also Meyerbook; I haven’t checked that one out yet, but I imagine it will be funny… Sparkly vampires… *giggle*
Anyway, back to working on my Information Retrieval assignment now, *le sigh* It’s my last assignment of the semester though, thank dog… then just studying for finals and then done!! can’t wait–I’ll be updating way more often over the break–got big plans for art/wrtiting projects, yay :-)
Just stumbled on two interesting blogs that i wanted to post links to so I remember to follow them… I was reading Cleolinda when I should be doing schoolwork (putting off the 20-page paper I need to finish up), and followed a link to this blog entry about what-not-to-do as an aspiring writer–pretty funny story! This is Diana Fox’s live journal; she’s a literary agent and I think her blog would be interesting to follow.
Then from the comments on that entry, I found Jennifer Brozek’s live journal; she’s a freelance writer who’s just getting to the point of being able to support herself entirely on her writing, so that’s very inspiring! Plus she has kittehs ^_^
Just stumbled across this while supposed to be doing schoolwork, so I haven’t had time to take as close a look as I’d like, but I’ll definitely be going back! So here’s the link so I don’t lose it: sitekreator.com/ADyinArt/blogsite.html
She has all kindsa nifty tips on using polymer clays like Fimo and Sculpey, among other things. Very cool!
