Flashback Friday: Sorry, More Elves

Yes, more elves. I drew a lot of them. I cannot understate the influence ElfQuest had on me. This time, two of my characters have some... er... private time in the forest.

I don't know what possessed me to draw on lined paper. I was probably doodling in a school notebook and decided to make a finished drawing without transferring the sketch to better paper (I probably didn't really know how).

My backgrounds were always pretty sketchy, but it looks like I was attempting something like atmospheric perspective here, with the background fading out while the foreground is more detailed. Or maybe I was just lazy.

Flashback Friday: Another Elf

There are going to be a lot of elves in these Flashback Friday posts. And also a lot of dragons. It's pretty much all I drew for years.

In this one, I was obviously still figuring out the inking thing, and ended up obscuring a lot of pencil detail with big, thick awkward outlines. Ah well...

This is about the same vintage as the last one, around age 14 or 15.

Satyrday

Because I haven't posted anything in a while, here are some satyrs.

Prints are available on my deviantArt site, and will soon (probably) be up on Redbubble and Society6 too.

Also, I will be starting up Stamp Saturday again soon. I'm very excited to finally have time to play with all those materials I bought.

Flashback Friday: Elves

I always loved to draw, and pretty much started drawing (and writing stories) the moment I figured out how to make marks on paper. But in junior high I encountered the wonderful indie comic Elfquest and really started drawing all the time and trying to make my own comics (though many of my earliest drawings were accompanied by words in the form of illustrated stories).

The influence of Elfquest on my drawing style was huge, and still quite visible in my work today. 

This pencil crayon piece was one of my earliest attempts to create my own characters in in the Elfquest world. (Warning: there will be a lot of elves in upcoming Flashback Friday posts. They were my favourite thing to draw for many years, and if you know my work, you know I haven't outgrown them yet.) Oh, and the guy on the left isn't aiming at the girl on the right; they're meant to be two separate character studies.

I think I was around 14 or 15 when I drew this.

Writing Wednesday: NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo starts in a few days, and I'm planning to do it again this year. I'll be writing the next Others book (unless I change my mind at the last minute). In the meantime, I'm working on a story -- maybe a novelette or novella -- about a big old museum on the odd people who work there. I was hoping to have that done by the end of October, but with only a few days left, and one full 8-hour shift at the video game store (I usually do 3 or 4 hour shifts as a part-timer), plus a variety of errands and a dog to entertain, I don't think that will happen.

So I'll be trying to finish "The Curator's Tale" (working title, and probably won't stick), while also starting Koldun (book 4 of the Others series). This could be disastrous, because I also have a lot to do throughout November for the Halifax Crafters winter market, and I'll be getting more hours at the video game store because of the holidays. And I'll be looking for a regular freelance gig to replace my About YA Books writing, when ends at the end of this month.

In related news, my novelette "Ichneumon" (under my Nic Silver pen name) is now free on all the Amazons and will be until the end of day on Halloween. It's a creepy story and not for everyone, but if you like that sort of thing, here are the links:

Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Amazon UK
Amazon Australia
Amazon India
Amazon Germany
Amazon France
Amazon Spain
Amazon Italy
Amazon Japan
Amazon Brazil
Amazon Mexico

Remember that you don't need an actual Kindle to read Kindle books -- most devices these days have a Kindle app that works just as well (you just have to buy through the website and not through the app). But if you have a Nook or a Kobo, let me know and I can send you an epub version.

Now I need to get at those errands so I can do some writing this afternoon.

Flashback Friday: Bird Wizard

Here's another cringe-worthy old drawing for your enjoyment. I was still rather awful at adding colour to pencil drawings. Right after I drew this (but before adding colour), one of my younger cousins was so impressed he wanted to draw one himself, so he copied off my drawing. I think I used to have his version, too, but it seems to have been lost in the mists of time. Or something.

I can't remember how old I was when I made this, but I'm pretty sure I was in junior high, so I must have been between thirteen and sixteen. I had probably just re-read The Lord of the Rings. Again. (I still do that from time to time, though I haven't drawn any wizards in ages.)

Flashback Friday: Rainbows and Unicorns

I was going to try to start doing occasional Throwback Thursday posts, but yesterday I got called in to work early and didn't get time. So instead, here's Flashback Friday, in which I will post old drawings of mine.

Some of these, like this week's, are really going to make me cringe. But I think it's useful to look back at old work, especially for me, because I have a tendency to not see the progress I'm making the more I practice. Looking at these really old pieces makes that progress obvious.

I don't now how old this particular piece is, but if I had to guess I'd say I was maybe twelve or thirteen when I drew it. I'll dig out the original later and see if I might have dated it somewhere (I made a book of old drawings for a second year creative writing class about a million years ago -- aka the early 90s -- then photographed that book maybe seven or eight years ago, so I have quite a few terrible old drawings around).

Anyway, here's a lovely crayon image of a unicorn, a pegasus, and a rainbow. Because I was a tween girl once, and even if I was a tomboy I also liked unicorns and rainbows and sometimes even sparkly things.

Writing Wednesday: End of an Era

Okay, maybe "end of an era" is a tad hyperbolic, but it kind of feels like it. As some of you may know, I've been a freelance writer for many years, and my main gig, the one I could always count on, was writing for About.com. Over the years, the pay has ranged from pretty good to pretty bad, depending on the contract (there were quite a few different ones, using different ways to calculate monthly compensation) and how much web traffic I was able to generate for my articles and reviews. But I always got something for my work.

I started writing for About way back in ... er ... 2001, I think. I took on the Creative Writing for Teens site, and did a lot of work I'm really proud of (some of which I hope to edit and re-use at some point in the not-too-distant future). In 2005 the PlayStation Portable site became available, and since I was feeling a little burned out writing about writing, and had been reviewing games part time anyway, I applied. It was a brand new site, and I built it from scratch. It was fun. But if you play videogames, you know the PSP was never the success Sony had hoped, and it wasn't too long before people just weren't reading about it -- or its follow up, the PS Vita -- any more. Lucky for me, the Young Adult Books site was created in 2012, right when I was feeling most discouraged about the future of the PSP site. I applied, and got it, and once again, I built the site from nothing.

It's been tremendous fun reading, reviewing, and writing about YA books. But my contract comes up for renewal at the end of this month. About has a new (ish) owner, and I knew the contract was going to change. I expected I'd be making less money until -- one hoped -- I could build more traffic. I didn't expect my contract to not be renewed at all.

But, hey, "expect the unexpected" and all that. I'm writing for About YA Books until October 31, and then that's it. I could speculate about why my contract isn't being renewed, but I won't. About.com was good to me for 13 years or so. I'll probably apply to write for another one of their sites, though I don't expect to get the job. But you never know. I may not have a huge socila media presence (yet), but I can sling words.

In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a writer -- I know lots about books, writing, assorted forms of art, comics, videogames, nature, and all sorts of miscellanous stuff -- let me know. I'm going to need the work.

Inktober Fish

In an effort to climb out of this creative slump I've fallen into (well, a slump by my standards, anyway), I'm doing Inktober, where you draw an ink drawing every day in October. You can follow my efforts on Instagram and/or Twittter if you want to (I'm anagramforink on both), but so far I've mostly done simple things (especially my two for the 2nd and 3rd days, when I got home after work too sleepy to accomplish much).

Anyway, yesterday I drew a fish I was rather happy with, though I could tell it needed more to really make it a finished drawing. Here it is, in green ink with touches of violet and silver ink, drawn with a brush (well, two brushes -- one for lines and one for washes) on watercolour paper.

This is not any particular sort of fish, just something out of my brain, that developed as I was looking at a little print of a flying fish by Charles van Sandwyk that I have on my wall next to my desk (I'd kind of like to be CvS when I grow up...). The head ornaments are loosely anglerfish-inspired, and the fins might have come from a fancy goldfish.

This afternoon I decided to scan it for a better image than the one I posted last night on Instagram, and then, well, I couldn't resist dropping it into Photoshop to play with. I knew I wanted to keep anything else I did to it subtle, so to start I just plopped in an old foxed book paper texture, then made the texture on the fish itself less opaque, which gave me this

Even this little bit of work makes it look more finished, though I still have niggling thoughts about adding some other little touch. Bubbles, maybe? Then I thought how much fun it would be to have this fish on a coffee mug, so I made a version I can use on deviantArt (where you'll find me as feynico) and other places that do POD mugs, with a white background (I might take out the signature glyph, but I also kind of like it).

In this case, I made the paper texture 100% opacity on the fish to show up better. I'm half thinking I might add some muted reds and oranges to the scales, but I'm not sure...

Writing Wednesday: Plugging Away

I'm still not back to my regular writing output, but I'm determined not to stress about it anymore (dertermined, dammit!). I have been slowly working away at a story--a novella, maybe--that's going well. I'm enoying the main character and the setting, and thinking that it may be a recurring series, probably with different charaters in the same setting. Kind of like what I have planned for my Wonder Island stories (the first one, Ichneumon--the title of which I may change since it says nothing about the story if you don't know what it means--is available at the usual ebook outlets (no link at the moment, as Blogger for iPad won't let me add links)).

Anyway, "The Curator of Improbable Fossils" is somewhere under half finished. As I got closer to what I thought was the end, I realized it might work better as an alternating viewpoint story, since there are things I can't address properly from the one point of view. So I've written most of the Curator's part of the story, and now I'm transferring it out of my handwritten notebook (I don't always hand-write, but I find it helps me get un-stuck sometimes because it seems much less permanent, like I don't have to get it right).

Next, I'll write the Librarian's point of view (and maybe even type it directly into the word processor, since the Librarian is a rather more modern character than the stuffy Curator). Finally, I'll write the end. I don't know yet if the concluding parts will be alternating viewpoints, or from one or the other's point of view, or from something more omnipotent. I hope I'll know by the time I get that far.

Suspending Stamp Saturday, Sort Of

I just found out that I got a table (actually, a half table) at the Dartmouth Comic Arts Festival in August. Yay! It's only a half day thing on a Sunday, but I have so very much to get done by then. Add to that the fact that I just started a part-time retail job, and retail is extra-exhausting for an introvert like me, and I just don't have time to do everything.

So, sadly, for now, I'm going to suspend my Stamp Saturday posts. Probably not entirely -- I am going to try to work on them a little at a time between other things, but those other things have to take priority for now. Rest assured, though, that I will get back to stamp stuff. I have all that wonderful material to play with, after all!

Just as a taste of the length of my to-do list, here are some of the main things on it:

• write 8+ reviews and articles each month for Young Adult Books site, plus site maintenance and other odds and ends, and reading the books I review
• work two or three shifts a week at video game store
• teach letter press one evening a week (until the end of June) -- this usually takes up most of the day as I also run errands and print some things of my own while I'm in the city
• make corrections to Fey chapter one digital files and re-print
• scan, touch up, and letter Fey chapter two pages for posting on the web
• lay out Fey chapter two in book form, order a proof, correct, and print
• finish as much of Fey chapter three as possible
• finish Art Nouveau satyr illustration and print as poster (and maybe other things)
• make prints of dragons (first test different sizes)
• text for Monsters mini-comic
• scan and touch up images for Monsters mini-comic
• make cover (possibly letterpress printed) for Monsters mini-comic
• make fairy stickers
• make Fey business cards and flyers
• wrangle Wordpress so Fey site looks better
• make myself a Fey t-shirt to wear at DCAF
• figure out table set up and buy/make necessary stands, etc

So yeah. Whole lot to do and no time to waste. Plus, in order to be able to do my video game store job well, I need to read video gaming news and reviews so I can better help customers. And I need to decide if I'll have my novels to sell at DCAF, too, and if so, I'll have to lay out several of them for print, get and check proofs, and order copies. Probably I'll just get a few more copies of the ones I already have available in print (though one needs a cover change to match the new e-book version cover).

I think the rest of today may very well be spent scanning. I may also drop dead before I even get to August. Heh.

Writing Wednesday: Back on Track… ish

Just before I sat down to write this, I found out that I got the part-time retail job I applied for. It means I'm likely to have less time for writing and drawing unless I sacrifice something else. And since I'm determined to keep writing fiction and making comics, it may be this blog that suffers. But it's only a part time job, at least for now, so maybe I'll be able to keep juggling everything else. At any rate, it'll mean being able to pay the bills every month, which is a huge relief.

But not all is lost. I've managed to write a couple more parts of the odd story I started, so I'm up to about 3500 words (hand-written, so my estimate is probably a little low). It's not a prodigious amount, but it feels good. And I'm excited to see what happens to my characters.

I've also been working on a little mini-comic or zine, with monsters reconstructed from fossils -- based on the idea that ancient peoples interpreted huge fossil bones as giants and dragons. It's pretty fun, and silly, and I hope people will like it. And of course, I'm slowly pecking away at the dragon faux natural history book. I've set a goal of November for having that done, but there are a lot of illustrations yet to do, so we'll see.

And, as if I don't have enough to do, I'm tossing around the idea of doing an occasional webcomic about being an almost-middle-aged woman working at a mall video game store. I'll have to see if I have anything interesting or funny to share from the experience first, I guess.

Writing Wednesday: Nothing to See Here

How the heck is it Wednesday again already? Have I finally reached the age when time seems to kick into fast forward? Wait, slow down!

Er, anyway… I'm essentially still where I was last week. I've been trying to get myself back onto something resembling a schedule and am making slow progress. But those stories are building up in my head and if I don't get them written soon my brain will explode. Or at least that's what it feels like.

I did at least pull out all the pages of my comic Fey that I have done so I can assess where to go with that next. I'm going to have to start re-scanning and re-lettering the rest of the pages soon, as I've almost reached the end of chapter one. And, a handful more pages to draw and chapter three will be ready to scan and letter, too.

So yeah. Not much done, but I think I'm slowly crawling out of the hole of non-productivity. Or at least I hope so.

Stamp Saturday: Machine Cutting

I don't have a proper Stamp Saturday post done, and it's being one of those days when I get the minimum of work done so I can enjoy the sun outside and/or do something silly instead (like today, I have done yard work (!) and next I'm going to start working on a minicomic). So instead of the cutting techniques post I was intending to have ready today, here's an image of another product I'm going to be evaluating at some point in this series:

It's the Stamping Starter Kit, from Silhouette, intended for use with their desktop die cutters. I have a Silhouette Cameo. I'm hoping the latest software version will work with my computer (for some reason, I could never get the last version running, so I've been using the next-to-last version, which does not include the presets for cutting stamp materials) (which is why this box has been kicking around my workspace for months instead of being used).

Anyway, assuming the software all works, I'll be giving this stuff a spin to see how fine it can cut, how cleanly it cuts, how easy it is to set up with the software, and how well it stamps. Exciting! If it works well, I'll be buying lots more of the stamp material (and probably more cutting mats, too, as they do wear out) and mounting them permanently rather than using the reusable acrylic blocks that come with the kit (well, I'll use those, too, but for ones I don't want to mount permanently).

This isn't going to be a material I'll use to replace hand-cut stamps. They're not likely to have the same look, and I enjoy cutting my own. But I'm hoping it will be a good addition to my arsenal of printmaking/stamping supplies.

Writing Wednesday: Dealing

So, there's been a certain amount of crap going on in my life lately. Things mostly beyond my control, but things I still have to deal with. Eventually, maybe, I'll write about what those things are, but for now I'll just say they're making it really hard for me to focus or get much more done beyond the absolute basics I need to do for my various jobs.

But not all is doom and gloom. Even though I'm worn out with the crap-dealing-with, and my brain is a little scattered, I've actually written a little. Not a lot, and I still have a ways to go to get back on track. But I did manage to start a new story -- maybe a long short story, maybe a novella. It's probably not a novel, but I'm not really far enough into it yet to know.

It's a story, or one of a series of stories, that I've been thinking about for a while. It'll most likely appear under my "Nic Silver" pen name, not because it has lots of sex like my other Nic Silver books, but because it feels more like a Nic Silver story. Which is to say, dark and weird. Probably.

I also managed, finally, to get started on the next "Others" novel (also written as Nic Silver). It's only half a chapter, but it's a start and it gives me a vague direction to head in. I think I have less of an idea where this book is going than I did for the previous books, which might be why it's taken so long to get to it.

And, not writing, but related, because it's for a book I'm working on (which I will also write the text for), I've managed to finish some more dragon illustrations and get started on a couple others, which is why there are dragon pictures decorating this post. I'll make the finished ones (well, mostly finished -- they will eventually have hand-written text on them) available as prints in a few places online soon.

So yeah. Dealing with crap, but still dragging one foot after the other. I'm too damn stubborn to ever give up.

Stamp Saturday, on Sunday

I'm planning on getting back to regular Stamp Saturday posts soon, but in the meantime, here's a little bit about some rubber stamp stickers I made recently. 

Everything starts as sketches, of course. In this case, I needed to make some one inch round stickers, so I drew a few pages of one inch circles to doodle in.

Once I picked the designs I liked, I cut the stamps from white rubber erasers (in this case I got them all out of one eraser).

I tested the final stamps with a couple of different stamp pads to see which would work better. Then I stamped them on some sticker paper that I had already letterpress printed a wood grain background on and cut the circles from on my die-cutter.

I ended up with quite a few extra, so I packaged some up for sale. 20 stickers per sheet, three different designs.

Throwback Thursday: Marionette

Here's a thing you may not know about me: I love puppets. I grew up on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, and my fascination for how a skilled puppeteer can bring an inanimate object to life has never waned. One of my favourite toys as a child was a raccoon hand puppet that my dad brought back from a trip (I had a huge collection of stuffed animals, too). It was realistic enough that even my young self could make it look like I was holding a live animal in my arms.

Also, my paternal grandfather had puppets. I believe he made some of them himself. We grandchildren weren't allowed to play with the marionettes, but I remember when we visited I'd always try to sneak into the basement and just look at them. One in particular fascinated me: a papier mâché skeleton. Now that my grandfather is gone, I sometimes wish I had that puppet, so I could look at it, the way I did as a child.

Then, a few years ago (okay, more like ten or fifteen years ago), I decided I should try to make a marionette. So I did what I always do when I want to try something new: I went to the library and got out a stack of books, and I read them.

I was already making dolls. Not many, just the odd one as an idea came into my head. So I figured why not try a stuffed doll marionette first, to see if I could. So I did. Meet Iris.

Iris was inspired by the Greek goddess, messenger to the gods of Olympus, and spirit of rainbows. As I child, I also loved rainbows (unicorns, too). I used black cloth with white paint because I love the look of Greek white-on-black pottery, and I used ancient Greek art as a starting point to design the look of her face.

Her hair, hand-dyed yarn that I picked up on a whim, is much more rainbow than it looks in the photos -- the greens and blues and purples are at the back -- and it has little crystal beads tied into it, like the water drops that make a rainbow.

I don't think the Iris of Greek myth was depicted with wings on her feet (Edit: according to my notes, she did indeed sometimes have winged boots), but Mercury -- also a messenger to the other gods -- was, so I extrapolated. Except I gave her butterfly wings. If I were to do this same puppet again, I might go with dragonfly wings instead.

So why a sudden post about marionettes? I always meant to make more, after Iris, but I never did. Soon after I made her, I went to art school (she was in my application portfolio) and didn't have time for such whims. But a couple of weekends ago, my neighbour at the Halifax Crafters spring fair was Pam of Puppet Dudes. She makes Muppet-like hand puppets, but my puppet-love was roused again. And I've been watching Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge on TV (don't tell anyone, but I might have a slight celebrity crush on Brian Henson).

Now I want to make another marionette. I had an Idea. I bought some fabric: black cotton again. And then I haven't had time to work on it. Right now I'm in a slight pause between the two halves of a big bookbinding job while I wait for the artist to finish the rest of the pages. I should be catching up on my April book reviews. And I will. But since I haven't had time to play with my marionette Idea, I thought I'd write a quick something about it.

Edit: I remembered I have my NSCAD application sketchbook still. Here are a couple of the pages where I was working out Iris's design (one added above, one here):

When I get some free time, I'll make another cloth doll marionette. If it goes well, maybe I'll try a papier mâché skeleton.

Writing Wednesday: Almost There

I'm still not writing much, alas. In fact, I have a short freelance article I wanted to have handed in at least a week ago that I haven't finished yet. I can't express how much that bugs me.

But no sooner was the craft fair over with that I had to launch myself into a big bookbinding job. It's more catalogues for textiles artist Sandra Brownlee (I'd link to my previous post about the work, but I'm on the mobile Blogger app for iOS which, for some inexplicable reason, lacks the ability to insert links), and is going to keep me busy for at least another week or two, especially with juggling my About YA Books work (and that damned freelance article I *will* finish soon).

The above image is just a fraction of what I have to do. I'll be binding and putting covers on 76 regular edition books, and once I have the rest of the materials I'll also be doing 12 deluxe versions with all sorts of extra inserts (if I remember, I'll add links to the two earlier blog posts about these books when I'm back at my desk; in the meantime, if you search "Sandra Brownlee" in the little search box at the top left they'll come up in the first few results).

So far, I have managed to sew 15. I'll need to speed up if I'm going to get this done in good time. So now I'm off to make supper, and then back at it. Oh, and this means my Stamp Saturday posts are probably going to continue to be nonexistent until this job is done.

Here is a Pretty Picture or Two

Thing I made recently for the upcoming craft fair, after which I will be resuming regular posting with more than a single sentence.

Busy, Busy

(This is the second time I've written this post, and I'm stuffed up and groggy, so it's going to be even shorter than the first time (damn you, Blogger for iOS, for dumping my post when I switched to Safari to look up a URL) (yes, I should have saved a draft first, but I really shouldn't have to) (also typing while annoyed) (and too many parentheticals) (I need more cold medication).)

What was I saying? Oh yeah. Busy with craft fair stuff, teaching, and sick, so not posting much until a few weeks hence. There was more detail and better sentence structure, but my ears are starting to ring, which means I need to rest, so I'll leave it at that. Here's a picture of some of what's keeping me busy:

Oh, and this is for the Halifax Crafters spring market, the first weekend of April, at the Olympic Centre. If you're in Halifax, stop by. There's no admission fee, but there is food and chocolate and cool crafts.