Holding pattern

Just waiting for my cello to be ready.... We're also looking into teachers. Hopefully I will have one lined up soon. I think I've exhausted my creativity for a few days, so I'm going to lay off the art and let the ideas begin recharging in my mind. In the meantime, Patrick has graciously indulged me by playing F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) for me, which is a fairly old first person shooter but still has great AI and a wonderful atmosphere. I love those kind of games, but I can't play them. I can't separate reality from game, and my hands end up getting so cold from blood loss that I can't feel my fingers and they move stiffly.

I have weird problems.

So instead I watch him play them! I've seen a bit of this game before, but I am enjoying it very much nonetheless. All of us (myself and kitties) pile onto the bed and watch Patrick play the game. He sits in my old computer chair and uses the bed for his mouse. We're running it through the television because when he tried to play it on his laptop it made us both incredibly motion-sick. Something about the refresh rate or the camera. Not sure exactly, but we do not have that problem with the TV, thankfully!

Come on, cello...

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I drew a chessboard! Sort of.

This took me several hours. I hope you guys enjoy it! If you right click and download, it is a fairly large version, so it should come out pretty well. Created with new art supplies and copious amounts of tea...

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New art!

Drawn while listening to Emilie Autumn's awesome new album Fight Like A Girl.

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Beautiful Friday

I think I'm going to start a tradition wherein every Friday I post pictures of beauty in its various shapes and forms. Some of these I want to wear, some I want to be, and some just make my eyes and soul happy.

Enjoy.

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: 25.media.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: 24.media.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: hepsylone.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: lampadani.it via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: 25.media.tumblr.com via Adrasteia on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Adrasteia on Pinterest

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Organic French Curve

Finished, at least for now. This took me quite a while.

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Sketches 5 and 6

Sketch 5

Sketch 6

I was going to add more to Sketch 5, but then I decided I liked it rather spare. Patrick had a curious impression of it, that it was musical in nature. As if, instead of regular notes and guides such as cresc. and rit., you could write music graphically the way you wished it to be played, complete with flourishes and swells. I like it. That's the great thing about art. It speaks differently to everyone.

I have sort of a vague idea about what to do with all these little bits and pieces. I think I'll get a nice big chunk of canvas, paint it blood-red, then glue these little sketches all over it in a gridlike fashion, with red showing between them. It should be really striking, actually, with many tiny black and white abstracts on top of the red background. I'd do one massive piece in this much detail, but the thought is overwhelming. These little ones are manageable, and I can envision doing a lot of them for cathartic reasons that I later turn into a singular piece.

We shall see how it goes. I also have all these little easels, so I'll probably end up buying a lot more tiny canvases and using those for the ensemble piece while keeping a lot of these still on their own displays. The Widget doesn't care as long as they don't start invading her lounging spot on top of the piano.

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Busy and tired

That's pretty much it for today. I've got a zillion things to do and fewer than a zillion minutes to do them in. Hope everyone is well. More art is on the horizon, when I'm not feeling quite so harried.

Bisous.

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TMI - Say it with Song

1. Describe your or a lover’s penis with a movie title.
This is too easy –
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
The Forgotten
The Lost Boy
The Incredibles
Shaft

2. Describe your pussy or a lover’s pussy with a movie title.
The Swamp Thing
Forbidden Planet
Paradise Lost
Our lips are sealed
Highway to Hell
Land Down Under

3. Describe your last sexual encounter with a song title.
On the road again
The Fast and The Furious
Lip Service
Bring on the Noise, Bring on the Funk

4. Describe your body with a song title.
Waisting away in Margaritaville
Smells like Teen Spirit

5. Describe your sexual appetite with a book, song, or movie title.
Hungry like the Wolf
Only the Lonely

Bonus: Recommend your favorite sexy, sensual or kink oriented book.

I learned the word “Orgasm” from Logan’s Run.  I read it and asked my mom what it meant.  She said, “it was a good feeling two people got when they were together physically”  Boy was she right.


I read “The Godfather” several times for a few key passages and learned that a woman’s vagina changes with age.  Since I didn’t know how it started out, I didn’t get it, but, according to the book, the right doctor can tighten it right back up.

I’ve read excerpts of 50 Shades and found it boring. 

I masturbated constantly to my mom’s art books, page after page of beautiful women, exotic, nude, romantic, painted in exquisite detail, women that made me love art and my own hand in equal measure.
————-
How to play TMI Tuesday:Copy the above TMI Tuesday questions to your webspace (i.e., a blog). Answer the questions there, then leave a comment below, on this blog post, so we’ll all know where to read your responses. Please don’t forget to link to tmituesdayblog from your website!

Happy TMI Tuesday!

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Pictures from today

I have been so up and down and all around. Two days ago and most of yesterday I was extremely hypomanic, then crashed (emotionally) on the way home from visiting my sister and sobbed uncontrollably for about half the trip. SIGH. No reason other than the crash from the hypomania. Fortunately Patrick was driving. Today I was back on the high end of my mood spectrum, so we got gussied up and went out to indulge my craving for attention in a safe fashion.

We went to a store called Otherworlds in Edmonds, and it was amazing! So much steampunk stuff, I nearly had to lie down. Sadly I was unable to find a suitable tophat or blouse, but I did find some amazing earrings. I tried on a bunch of hats, and they all looked awesome (I am a hat person), but were too expensive. After we came home, I worked on some more art. Pictures are below:

Before we went. 10% off if they like your outfit! That streak is our mirror being dirty. Sorry.

Clockwork earrings I got there. Super light and they actually turn when you touch them!

I know these are probably repetitive for y'all, but they are oddly cathartic for me.

And by the way, that isn't a break in that one curve. There was evidently some lint on the canvas, as I discovered after looking at the picture. I wasn't inclined to retake it, so apologies for that.

As Maurice Herzog so memorably said, "There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men." Indeed there are. My Annapurna is madness. 

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Blue dots

Although you can't really tell, in person they match the necklace. Oh well.

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I would wear the hell out of this.

From artist ukapala, in Ireland.

I love gothic heart jewelry. It's just lovely. I think my friend Jenn was right a year or five ago when she said the closest word to describe my weird-ass style was probably "steampunk". Although I also favor "profoundly insane". Anyway, I love ornate things, red, black, green, blue, black-and-white stripes, clockworks mixed with organic designs, frilly things, flowy things, and so forth.

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Remember: DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE

I don't normally wear very much makeup, so I'm not used to being unable to rub my face any old way I please. I suppose I could do that now, but I'd look like the Joker after he got hit by a truck. I have black dots today, which are pretty cute, but they keep rubbing off near my neck because I'm wearing a shirt with a collar. SIGH. The things one has to consider. I am however quite matchy-matchy. I have red boots, black stockings, black-and-silver skirt, red shirt, black sweater, black dots, red lipstick, black coat, red scarf. ;)

OBVIOUSLY I HAVE A THEME, Y'ALL.

That elaborate tree-ish design thing I mentioned in the last post might have to be a weekend sort of deal. The regular drawings on paper or canvas literally take hours, and I can't fathom getting up at like 4am to do some bullshit like that on my face. Plus it would be HARD. Really, really hard. It's hard enough trying to get dots instead of smears. Eyeliner is not the easiest medium to decorate oneself with. And anyway, one accidental brush of my hand and poof!, there goes all that work. Plus I'd have to look even weirder than usual for the rest of the day.

On the up side, this stuff comes off almost magically easily with Almay's makeup remover. Once I didn't actually own any makeup remover and had a bunch of crap all over my face that I could not scrub off for the life of me, so I read somewhere that you could get it off with olive oil and proceeded to smear that on myself, then rub away until it finally came off. I told my sister about that later, and she looked at me with horror and said, "You did WHAT?!" Evidently this is not something usually done. I guess it helped having dry skin. Nothing bad ever did come of it.

I've decided that my hair does not photograph well when up. As far as I can tell, it looks cute enough in person, but photographs make it look lumpy and strange, like an ill-appointed wig. I was going to post a picture of myself so you could see the black dots, but I've decided I hate this picture, and I can't figure out a way to take a better one just now. So you will get to see the dots when I manage to improve on this. Somehow. Stupid hair.

Really, though, basically just imagine black dots instead of the blue. And smaller. There you go.

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Vaccinate ALL THE PEOPLE!

This was at my local pharmacy when we went to pick up our prescriptions yesterday:

Amen. I miss you, Allie Brosh (whose art that is).

Patrick will be out Friday evening auditing The Nutcracker (put on by the Pacific Northwest Ballet), which he will be playing on Saturday, so I will take the opportunity to finish off the last gasp of my Christmas shopping. All that remains are some stocking stuffers and gifts for Patrick and my brother-in-law. I kind of hate buying stocking stuffers because it is so hard to get something that isn't tacky and cheap but will fit in a stocking (no ski poles) and won't make you poor (diamond jewelry). And one can only have so much lotion. I mean, I enjoy lotion. But I don't want to fill someone's stocking with it. Or, like, plastic barrettes. Sigh.

Hopefully ideas will come to me as I shop. A girl can hope.

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I can't make that damn tree scan correctly.

So instead I just uploaded three big pictures of it that I'd taken with my phone. This art paper is JUST the wrong size. It's 9x12, which is a retarded size for anything to be, given that standard paper is 8.5x11. Thanks, art jerks. Hopefully these will work for printing out. The original files are fairly huge, so they should downsize all right. Here you are, right click and save as whatever you want to call them:

Tree one, just plain.

Tree two, with bluish around the edges.

Tree three, reddish all over.

See previous post for examples of two and three. Hope this works out for whomever wants it! I tried a whole bunch of times and the scanning was just not going to happen.

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Tree in the garden of good and evil [finished]

Hey y'all. I know I said I was going to update that other post, but it was getting a little confusing to edit. I'm going to scan this thing in at work tomorrow and upload the scanned image if you want to print it out or whatever, but in the meantime here it is with a couple filters applied to it. I find that they make very interesting phone backgrounds! (I'm currently using the reddish one as it matches my phone.) I tried to crop out the edges of the pad, but they're still present a little bit. Anyway, they'll be gone when it's scanned. Enjoy, and as usual click the pictures for larger/clearer versions.

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Art in progress: Tree in the Garden of Good and Evil [updated]

Obviously I'm not done. But this is what I'm working on tonight! I picked up some new markers, paper and a set of French curves (only used for trunk of tree, all else is freehand). While I do this, Patrick is practicing the guitar. Happy early Christmas, darlin'. (This might not have been clear before: the guitar is Patrick's early Christmas present. We picked it out together yesterday, along with a strap, case and book.)

As usual, click for the larger/clearer version

After another hour or so of work, my hands are tired!

That'll be it for tonight. I can only do this for so long before I start making mistakes. Fortunately when you're using Sharpies, most of those errors are easily correctable, but I don't want to make ones that are not! I'll update this post when I do more work on the tree. Have a good night, everyone!

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Pictures as promised

Trying this from new Blogger app. My poor phone is geriatric so this is a stretch. Hopefully it works. In the picture with the leaf, that's my whole forearm and hand. I guess I could've used my upper arm too, but you get the idea. Huge!

And we are now at 850 cranes. Just a few more strands to go. Five on one side and four on the other, I believe.

Ambien is making typing this difficult so I'm gonna go sleep. Love y'all!

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FFF - Calm

80-112
"calm"

Shhhhh.

Why can't….

Be quiet, please.

I don’t understa…

SMACK!  Her cheek stung as his hand flew.

I said don’t move.

Yes Sir.

Come on now, you are ruining the illusion, paintings can’t cry, and stop breathing so heavy, I can see your breasts moving.

She breathed in and out and felt her blood cool and her back soften.  She held the pose one last time. Leaving him would be easier than she thought. 

She knelt on the had floor, wishing they had carpet, like in the old days, but no one did anymore, except the Imams.

She slowed her heart rate, smelled the food, and turned the sound of the crowd turn into music as she let her mind drift to later.  She tried to suppress a smile, later she would be allowed to move.

She felt the frame around her and let it define her world.  For the next two hours she was beauty, presented, displayed, and appreciated.  Men and women gazed at her, longed for her, and smiled; some even reached out, but stopped, fearing reprisals. 

“Go ahead, “she thought, “ban brushes and canvas and thought, art cannot be stopped”

He had her step through the frame and kneel.   She giggled with anticipation and he told her that paintings can’t laugh or move.  She felt herself swelling.  She brought her breathing down, grateful for her training in yoga.  He adjusted the lighting and the frame and the cameras until they were ready for the first painter.  Making the highest bid got him his first choice, and he had wanted a fresh canvas.  He stepped through the frame and stood over her as the shutter chorus clicked,   His paint was hot on her cheeks and she grinned widely.   The next painter approached and covered her neck, then leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.  More painters followed with all sorts of brushes and glorious warm paint.  Others dipped in and pulled out her paint to cover some unattended corner of the canvas, some reached inside themselves to do the same.  She did not mind.  It was all for art.

No long commentary today, just a thanks to all who did, will, or wanted to drop by.  If you didn’t play this week, join in as next time!

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It's been a while....

The Terminal at the Houston Airport.

Welcome back.

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FFF 7/15 - Stock Still

“Crap! 9:30 already? “

Jerry jumped out of bed and ran through the shower, shaving his neck; hoping the stubbly look would work with the art crowd at the premiere this evening.  He skipped brushing, grabbed an apple and ran to the front of the building. 

“I need a cab!”, he said to the doorman who stood stock still at the door.

“Yes Sir” Maurice replied and blew his whistle that reminded Jerry of trains.

“You seen Marcy this morning?” Jerry asked “I’m late for breakfast.”

“Yes, she wanted me to give you this,” handing a note on letterhead, “she did not look pleased.”

“Jerry, I know we were supposed to meet for your birthday breakfast but there is a new exhibit I need reviewed at the gallery before the opening.  Meet me there ASAP.” (135)

He rounded the corner and his heart stopped, holding stock still in his chest as he tried to remember how to breathe.

There she stood, there she hung.

Where did the picture come from, what was going on?

The light from the gallery window highlighted her perfectly.  Like carved marble perfection, he wondered which version should be on display.

His heart found its rhythm, but it was unfamiliar and erratic.

Every thought about her he ever had flooded back into him

His first interview, the three follow-ups. The first time he noticed her hair, her perfume, shoes, her smile.

He remembered everything.  Each boyfriend that filled him with envy, every cup of coffee during long nights consoling her when they left.

Now she stood against the wall in perfect presentation.

“Happy Birthday Jerry.  I’m ready.” (135)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Again, I had to stretch the rules to get my story out.  While both may stand on their own, and the 2nd one throws the punch, I wanted the back story to get in their somehow.  I love the picture, and if work, schedule, and a midnight showing of Harry Potter hadn't gotten in the way I might have developed this more.  But that is what FFF is all about.  It's about the first response, the quick idea, the flow of words constrained by a number that force us into quick thinking and decisive action. 

The minute I saw the pictures I knew she was presenting a gift of herself, of her heart, of her everything.  It was the culmination of something, the end of a fight, the escalation of love, or even, in a sadder mind, a final goodbye.  I didn't put anything erotic in the words because the picture handled that so well for me this week.  All I had to do is explain why she was there, and to me, it was obvious. 

Go over to Insatiabear to see what other wonderful writers have joined in the fun, and, if your name's not on the list, get it there for next week.  And thanks to Lexi for finding another great picture.

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