Another Illustration Friday comes around and this time, the theme is "Lush". For the life of me, I can't figure out who comes up with these and how they do it. All I can seem to think about the word "lush" is that store with all natural body-care products. The one where I always get nauseous because of the strong smell of everything inside. I get dizzy, I get a headache, I can't breathe properly. So why not? Why go the traditional route and do something that actually depicts lushness? I go with my silly idea and here's how it went.
Hey, guys! You know Penny Arcade, right? If you don't, you really should, the people there started with a web comic and built it up to a mighty ninja-wizard empire of awesomeness! (I swear I will buy a thesaurus and learn new words soon)
logo is property of Penny Arcade, folks, I had nothing to do with it
Anyway, what I was going to say that the people of PA decided to make a reality show. All reality shows are set up, made up, tweaked, exaggerated. The people in reality shows are cam-whoring attention-seekers who would sell their own grandma to goblins, if it would mean screen time. Right? WRONG! Oh so dead, goblin-grandma-eating wrong! At least in this case. "Strip search" is the most fun I've ever had watching a "reality" show. There was no backstabbing, no plots, alliances, no over-the-top screaming and weeping into the camera. It was a group of 12 artists, doing their thing, going through some challenges and facing off for elimination.
What I found very refreshing about the show was that after elimination, the Creators, Mike and Jerry, would go have a talk with the eliminated artist. The person wasn't just discarded like the format of other shows dictates. They got to talk and say what their plans for the future are, how they enjoyed the experience of participating in the show and get advice from the Creators.
I found out about the show through following OhJoySexToy (if you're a minor, I will suggest not following this link) by Erika Moen, who was one of the contestants. I'm not exactly sure about the time-line and when this all took place, but it was nice to have all the episodes on hand at once.
If you like good art and/or web comics, I suggest you check them all out. Every artist introduction page has a link to their own page, where you can find their comics, artwork, blogs, twitter account... Just take a look, it will be worth it!
Now, what I really wanted to talk to you about is what you and I can learn from the show. Every set of episodes covered a certain topic that a budding (or seasoned) comic artist may encounter. Dealing with fans and trolls, evil contracts that screw you out of house and home, making money through merchandise, promoting yourself at cons. I think these lessons aren't limited to comic artists. Anybody trying to make and sell things can learn a thing or two from this show and that is what I loved most about it. Behind the heckling, the silliness, there were serious problems being discussed and shown.
image came from otakusphere
Do you know how to set up your booth? What will draw the most attention? How not to get ticked off by trolls? Personally, I have huge problems with that one. It's all very useful. There are such articles on etsy, but here you can see real people making some very real-people-type mistakes and being corrected. Maybe that's exactly what I was doing wrong and now I know what to do! Yay!
property of Erika Moen
Another useful thing I've found through Twitter, is a lecture about self-promotion by Erika Moen. It's full of little bits and pieces you can't know beforehand, that you can't have learned unless you were in the con trenches fighting your way through booth barnacles (I love this term so dearly). For me, it's better to learn from people speaking and showing me things than from articles, so this format is perfect. Maybe it isn't your thing, in which case I suggest Etsy's Seller Handbook, which updates often and does have great advice, it's just that the video format works better for me.
To recap: Strip Search and the vimeo lecture about self-promotion are very useful things that I suggest anybody who wants to start their own art-related business should watch and learn from.
Hey! Remember Valentine's day? Yeah, neither do I. My idea had been to make a penguin for my boyfriend and I had set about it kind of on time, but alas, it turned out that I was merely finding another distraction and reason to procrastinate. So the project was put on hold until such time as I could finish it properly without the goblins of guilt tugging at my hair. Here's how it went.
I thought I would start out doing a bit of research about penguins. My trusty Google at my side, I dove into the internet and you know what I found out? Making a true-to-life colour pattern on a penguin is really difficult. Here I was thinking that they're mostly like Tux. They aren't. I decided though to stick to what I know and went for the familiar pattern we all know and love. A chubby dinner-suit-wearing bird with awkward little legs.
See that? How the bloody hell do you do that in terms of fabric?
Or this?
Or this?
I got about sketching. Drawing a silly little ball of cuteness with a Valentine's day theme wasn't difficult at all. Pin a heart on something and the theme part of it takes care of itself. Then I set about measuring and drawing a pattern. I get really OCD about sewing patterns. Where as any normal human being would just freehand it onto a piece of paper, I had to use rulers (yes, plural), bits of string and a compass. Complete bloody time-suck, but I was very happy with the end results.
After the tough part was through, I purchased felt and set about cutting out the pieces. This was about the time that I realized I will have to pause this project because I had spent the better part of a day working on it. The parts were stored in a box and put away for the time being. After my exams, I visited the bf and brought the penguin parts along (does that sound morbid to you? Does to me) fully intending to present him with his penguin on the spot. Being the scatter-brained genius I happen to be, I forgot to bring any stuffing and again, the poor little penguin's creation was put on hold. He spent about a month in that box, moving from my desk to my travel bag to my to-do bin.
Finally, after much delay, I started putting the little guy together. Soon after completing the body and wings I realized that he was too small to have those legs as well, and thus to pasture that idea was put, leaving the penguin go be a flat-footed ball of adorableness.
That whole "Measure twice, cut once" thing turns out to be true. I shook my fist angrily at the god of useful proverbs when I discovered that through all my obsessive calculating, drawing and measuring, I forgot to take into account the curve of the body for the length of the wings. What this meant in practical terms was that the penguin's wings were too small to hold the heart. A quick heart transplant later the heart was big enough to hold, but created a whole new problem: You couldn't see most of the penguin because of the heart.
Well, bother! What to do now? Scrap the whole heart thing? But then it won't be a Valentine's day thing! It simply must be a Valentine's day thing because... reasons! And you can't tell it would be unless there's hearts and/or flowers and/or chocolate. I suppose I could have smeared some chocolate on him, but why would I do that when I could enjoy it instead? To the side the heart went, being held up by the brave little penguin, who was pretty tired of my miscalculations by this point.
Adding some final, but important touches, namely eyes and a tail, the little guy was finally ready to be mailed to my boyfriend's office, where he now lives happily, reminding him of me and home. Oh, btw, did I mention he loves penguins? That's why I went with the penguin in the first place :)
Everybody in my family likes the white cake and it is the go-to cake for marking any occasion. It's quick and easy and people tell me it's delicious. Frankly, I've made it so many times, it lost all appeal to me, but since I'm strapped for a topic to write about, and late to boot, here's how the white cake is made.
First you will need a lot of very yummy ingredients:
1 liter of whipped cream
about 1 liter of sour cream
1 kilo of defrosted frozen fruit (I used cherries and raspberries)
3 layers of cake (store-bought)
around 200g of sugar
You will also need a huge-ass bowl, like the yellow one in the picture. Why, you ask? Because no mere mortal bowl can take this much stuff without spilling! (does that sound a little bit pervy?)
See, what did I tell you? That's what one liter of whipped cream looks like. It took me 20 minutes to make that sucker stiff (I'm turning into Nigella with the food porn). It made me long for a nice KitchenAid mixer that mixes stuff for me and that I don't have to put any effort into. Until the day that happens though, it's the elbow-grease path for me.
After that is done, in another much smaller bowl, we mix the sour cream and the sugar, then add this mixture to the whipped cream. Folding this is a bit tricky because the whipped cream moves out of the way for the sour cream and sometimes you are left with a bunch of sour cream on the bottom, which, though making for a good dirty joke, isn't much good for a cake, because it will just spill out. So take your spatula, mixer, hamster wheel or whatever you like to stir with and patiently even out the mixture.
And you're done! That's all the preparation you need to do.
So what you do next is you separate your cake layers and place one on the serving dish. Cover it with the cream mixture, leaving about 1cm of the edges free, so when you press down, the filling won't spill over. Then put the berries over the cream and add another layer of cream. Cover all this with the next cake layer and press down gently.
You should end up with something like this. The top layer doesn't have any berries, except the ones that will be used for decorating. Now all you have to do is put the remaining cream mixture onto the sides of the cake and it's done!
This, in total, took a half hour to make, despite the horrid cream whipping session. The cake is really easy to make, but it isn't for the faint of heart or the lactose intolerant. I usually have some cream mix left over and I combine it with the juice that came from defrosting the berries. It makes for a simple and yummy ice-cream.
Oh, and finally, don't forget to do the little lad dance if you want your cake piece!
Somewhere along the way, I had to become grown up. I don't know how this goes for other people, but at the somewhat advanced age of 27, I still find myself confused by the adult world and its responsibilities. Part of my brain wishes to play forever and doesn't understand why exactly I should do all these dull tasks that are a part of everyday life. Play-brain, from now named George, grasps some basic human rules like brushing teeth and paying for stuff. He enjoys showers, sitting in the library while being quiet and even enjoys calculating how much money is to be set aside for bills. What George doesn't like, it seems, is everything else.
"Why? Why do I have to study? I would much rather draw! I don't wanna study! I want to look at stuff online!!!" - yells George petulantly and then goes on to drag me into his slacker schemes. I know I must fight this impulse, but I've been finding that very difficult ever since puberty. Maybe it's because I never had a rebellious phase, maybe it's because my hamster died, who knows? I hope to one day have a lot of money to give to some nice shrink who will tell me why this is.
For now, though, I am interested in solutions and how to keep George from totally messing up my life! Books have always been the go-to thing so I tried self-help books. Who better to help me than me, right? Here is what I found out: I really don't like self-help books! The few I've read were long-winded, somewhat patronizing and spun the same sentences 27 ways. I'm not saying all of them are bad. My sample wasn't large enough to establish this without any doubt. I am saying, however, that I would like my advice given to me in concise, logical terms without any fluff on the sides. Enter lifehack.org! Oh joy of joys, I found a good one! I've been slowly following this page for about ten or so days now and I really like their style. The articles are divided by topic to lifestyle, communication, productivity, work. It's all peppered with inspirational quotes and this thing called '30sec tip'. Oh boy are those things painful. In two or three sentences, this short article makes you assess your life choices and plans for the future. Unlike the patronizing "do this or fail at life" approach, the 30sec tip tells you "Look, I know you're an adult and you can do as you please, I'm just offering this for your consideration. Another perspective, if you will. Just think about it, that's all I ask."
I hate that 'motivational' quote: "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?". Failing is an integral part of the human experience. The thing to ask is "What would you do after you've failed?". Pick yourself up by use bootstraps or wallow? I've been known to wallow. I've spent a considerable amount of time doing this and if there were such a thing I would have a black belt in wallowing. The thing is though, being a wallow-ninja isn't a cool thing to be. It made me sluggish and angry at both the world and myself. While some people can make being angry at the world profitable, like Gordon Ramsay, I couldn't do it. George just wanted to sit in the corner and hate everything and everybody. Hm. I guess I did have my rebellious phase after all, it just wasn't particularly impressive. George and I are just barely on speaking terms, or whatever you call being "in touch" with your slacker-brain. Seems there is no hack anywhere that will kill George forever and the smug little bastard knows it. I am stuck with him. For the past few days we have worked out a compromise of sorts. He lets me work a little and then I let him have fun. Somehow this always gets out of hand and I end up doing much less of the useful stuff than I had originally planned, but it's a start. Here is one useful link for those of us with productivity problems. I've recently "discovered" the GTD (Getting Things Done) method, but being notoriously slow at reading, haven't moved past page 5 or so. When I do (see how I use "when" instead of "if"? Take that, George!) I'll write about it, hopefully. In the meantime, good luck to us all!
Valentine's day is upon us and despite my efforts to prepare a good design for it, things didn't end up too well and I'm fighting to make my self-imposed deadline. The first idea I had was of a zombie hugging a brain and that's what I went with.
Turns out it's much harder to draw a zombie than I originally thought. Thankfully deviantArt to the rescue, with many a tutorial on drawing a skull. Because, really, it isn't a zombie if it has an entire face, am I right? The wonderful stock of SenshiStock provided a good reference for a pose, though I couldn't exactly capture the facial expression... what with the zombie not having lips and eyelids. Still, I took this nice lady's lovely stock and doodled all over it so I could get some skull practice.
You know just up there when I said it's hard to draw a zombie? It's even harder to make one look cute. My first attempt ended up looking too creepy and I was about ready to scrap the whole thing. Decided against it, thankfully. No point in giving up on the first go and all that. Even if your zombie looks like a horror reject version of the Phantom of the opera...
Yeah, don't look at him too long, you might have bad dreams. The writing that somehow made into the scan says "Bye bye", because I like to write comments in my notebooks. Hard habit to break, let me tell you!
Anyway, after much a-doodlin', erasing and re-doodling, a cute, happy zombie was... well, not born... transformed/transfigured... made! I'm gonna go with made. As a little sketch, he moved into Illustrator and underwent some adjustments, a lot of colouring and detailing. Lost some hair in the process, gained a lot of spotting and a brain in his jar of love. With some lettering added to convey the message I was trying to put out there for Valentine's day, "Zombie Love" was done.
So happy Valentine's day to all love-birds and happy chocolate 50% off day to everybody who'll shop on the 15th. Hope to see you in the queue!
A blog wouldn't be a blog without some shameless self-promotion so "Zombie Love" is available with or without letters at my Zazzle shop.
