new year, new me

New year, new me. Well, kind of.

I'm 33. When I turned 18 way back in 1997 I left home and went off to college where I met something that would become part of my life forever: the internet. My generation made the message boards, the forums, the chat rooms... and really, to do those things, you need an avatar.

So, one night while I was on break at work I sketched out a caricature of me and colored it in with prismacolors. And that's been my avatar for 2 or 3 years now. People who know me in person who find me online always seem to be amused that my little rendering of myself looks like me; well, me-ish. I decided it could look a little more like me. So, I sat down at my desk yesterday and went about updating my avatar...

The progression - from current to new...

I took the old avatar, enlarged it, got rid of the color, and added a new face. I printed that out as a blue page, inked it, scanned that back in - colorized it and then printed that out to color over:

 So, now I suppose I should get to work on the rest of the projects I have lined up. Hopefully your new year has gotten off to a productive start!

busy busy busy...

So, it's September now.  And it's a mere 3 months before Christmas.  So, that means that it's time to start working on the calendar. Yes, I am that relative that makes a calendar as a catchall gift for all my relatives every year... I've been doing it since at least 2005.

 Every calendar is as different as it is the same.  After making them for 3 or 4 years I finally figured out how to transfer some of the parts from one year to the next — like the grids and changing the dates — since I do the whole thing in photoshop instead of just coming up with the graphics and sending them off to a printer and paying an arm and a leg to have them made — something which kind of entirely defeats the point of giving out a homemade gift.  At the core, I am a thrifty gifter. Enjoy your socks, eventually you'll need them...

 Anyway, at some point in time I need to know that my 12 illustrations are chugging along the trail of progress.  Since I use the same technique for all 12 — I've found it useful to make myself a schedule — to know that I have 12 illustrations sketched out, that the sketches are scanned and printed as blue pages which will then be inked, the inked drawings will be scanned back in and a PSD file will be created where I fill in the file; I may need to print that out and color over the fills and scan it back in, and eventually, the thing becomes a completed illustration...

But really, everything starts out as a sketch, or as multiple sketches that will be combined via the magic of photoshop:

I drew this one while getting an oil change...

 Sometimes sketches that were done for other purposes get sucked into the calendar graphics project, and they get converted into

 Sometimes I forget that I used a sketch last year and just use it again...

 And sometimes something that was drawn for last year's calendar didn't get completed in time, so there it sits waiting for the next year...

And then blue pages get inked:

 

So, if I'm not sleeping or at work, then I'm probably sitting somewhere coloring a drawing or at the computer moving pixels around on the screen. But this year, I will not be finishing everything at the last minute. It doesn't mean I'll be enjoying my December, just that I won't be hastily completing pictures.
; )

Have you started your holiday preparations yet?

so...

There was something that I was going to do this week. But I didn't get around to it. Things are like that sometimes...

I sent this off to a new destination:

I hope it is liked ; )

...

This was a week of wasted time, I guess.

I was told by one of my co-workers that no one likes me and that I have no friends... so, in real life it felt very ironic to discuss this conversation with my friends and wonder why this person has started to act like the character of an abusive husband in a lifetime movie. You know the cliche: you have no friends, no one likes you, so-in-so said this about you, this is something you did seven years ago (what do you mean you don't remember it clear as day?), whatever you do is wrong, it doesn't matter if our boss told you to do it - because you're doing it then it's wrong, you have your own agenda, you're such a disappointment, I like our other co-worker so much better...

You know, things that are completely inappropriate to say to someone.

I doubt this person knows what my favorite color is, let alone what I really do when I leave work — so making over-arching broad generalizations about me and my life is really phenomenally inappropriate; moreover trying to force the idea that everyone that I've ever worked with has despised or hated me is a just a mean thing to do. Like, really, you sit around in your spare time and call up people I worked with 10 years, 5 years, 8 years, 7 years ago — asking for salacious stories about me? Seriously?

On one hand, the rational part of me that is a college graduate sees this co-worker as trying one of the worst motivational techniques in the world — negative reinforcement. And that same rational part of me knows that people who act like that and say things like that have control issues and often need to take review of their own lives before giving other's a personal review.

It's funny, because the reason I don't spend oodles of time standing around and BSing at work is because I have a home life, and family, and (ironically) friends. I think I spent more time this week pointing out that I wasn't interested in wasting more time discussing this co-worker — the stereotype of the abusive husband from a Lifetime movie.

 So, there, now everyone knows - that according to some person who doesn't really know me - no one likes me. That's why you're reading this on the internet right now, right, because you come here and read these entries to remind yourself of how much you dislike me.

/sarcasm

...

In the mean time, I worked on a project, and in the background I caught up on episodes of Episodes, Leverage, Franklin & Bash, and Anger Management, and managed to half pay attention to a Kathy Griffin comedy special... she's not quite as grating as I once thought she was, I guess you never know until something is playing on the tv in the background and you find yourself chuckling at it. Plus, I finally caught part of the Daily Show for the first time in a long time... oh, and I watched a little bit of Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Not unlike how I don't care if I'm the most popular employee at work - because work is about work not about who likes so-in-so - for someone with a party affiliation, I don't watch every god damned second of political talk available on the television. Caring about it would probably drive me mad. I know who I'm voting for come November. I voted for him last time too.

Anyway, have a good weekend. I have a project to work on.

butterflies

Enjoy your Memorial Day, whatever it is that you do.

I spent the weekend mostly indoors, and well, it was what it was. I don't feel spectacular, and I was thinking maybe Monday I'd make a doctor's appointment, and then remembered it was Memorial Day, and just kind of sighed.

It wasn't an entirely lost weekend. Somewhere, somehow between sleeping and eating, there was some art created. Yeah, there was some cheesy bread and cheeseburgers and orange sherbet and cheesecake and chicken nuggets and potato salad, and a lot of Dr. Pepper. It was one of those kinds of weekends... plus I caught up on the last 5 episodes of Revenge while I was working at the computer.

Anyway, I worked on the fantasy butterfly series, because for no reason other than it occurred to me to do it — I designed a couple new sets of wings and then went through the process of converting new sketches into fully finished images.

 chalcedony angel

ruby cypher

So, in addition to the majestics, the swallowtails (okay, so maybe those are a little less fantasy), the duchesses, and the fairywings — now there are the angels and the cyphers (and eventually the gliders and that new one that I finished this morning that I haven't named yet).

glider

 the yet unclassified fantasy species...

And, of course, I have 2 more sets of butterfly templates that I have yet to fully work through. Maybe this week? Maybe not. I've never been one of those plan things in advance people...

Anyway, to all the United States peeps — have a nice holiday, and the rest of you — enjoy Monday!

my paper heart

Things tend to be relative, and unconnected or seemingly unconnected things can hold some amount of influence over other things... There's currently a story popping up on various sites that I frequent about a woman in New Zealand who drank a gallon of Coca Cola a day or something ridiculous like that. Evidently she ate very little and also smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and then died of a heart attack. You know, really, no sh**? *sarcasm* Duh, that's unhealthy.

At 32 years of age I'd love to know where my universal healthcare is. You know, like the stuff they have in England or Canada. I'm insured through my employer, but my insurance company for whatever reason would like to keep my premiums low by having me enroll in some (expletive deleted) non-specific diet plan... I mean why the (expletive deleted) would I not want to log onto the internet every day to have to report what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on some random form compiled as statistics in some computation storage file somewhere on the internet.  *eye roll* 

Evidently keeping my premiums low involves wasting my time.

Regardless, a couple years ago I attempted this diet plan (expletive deleted), and well, 25 extra pounds later I can tell you that it didn't work. Funny thing, before I started "adjusting" the food I consumed — I had never gained weight that quickly. The form for the enrollment in the new year is due at the end of the month. I'm not wasting $20.00 + a day of fasting to do this crap again. I'll just wait for my universal healthcare and continue to feed the pyramid scheme that is insurance — considering my average of 2-4 doctor's visits a year (2 of which are almost always for some form of cold that I picked up at work).

Anyway, the one thing that my dentist (insurance actually worth buying) established years ago was that I drink too much pop. Yes, that's what we call it here: pop. Ironically, my carbonated beverage of choice is Classic Coke. I sure as hell don't drink a god damned gallon of it a day— you hear that, dead lady from NZ? But I also don't drink coffee, so it is my source of caffeine... when it's on sale. Otherwise, I will settle for Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, or A&W Cream Soda (which I was surprised to recently learn contains caffeine).

However, pop was eroding my tooth enamel, so my consumption needed to be curtailed.  And so, I became one of those people who drinks tea, at least while at work. I'm not sure calorie-wise it's healthier, but apparently it's non-acidic and otherwise not eroding my tooth enamel.

When it comes to tea I'm particularly fond of:

Twinings African Honeybush, Mandarin & Orange

Twinings Spiced Apple Chai

Bigelow Red Raspberry Herb Tea

Bigelow Raspberry Royale

and

Bigelow Pomegranate Black Tea

With the exception of the Red Raspberry Herb — I usually make them all with a dose of vanilla coffee creamer.  I like the Red Raspberry Herb with Torani Vanilla Syrup. Yes, I know: it's sugar.

 I accumulate 5 tea bags a week. And at some point it occurred to me that tea grounds were an art supply waiting to happen... because way back when - before people hated Nickleback - in the days of grunge music I was a teenager and I did this project for my AP art class that involved making worms out of polymer clay. Fast forward 15 years and I spend my spare time thinking about making artsy-craftsy stuff, and well, polymer clay worms entered back into the arena of possibilities... So, the tea grounds were how I was going to having feces-free dirt. In other words: tea grounds = simulated dirt.

 So, I have a supply of spent tea grounds. Yeah, no, those are not Pepperidge Farm Pirouettes, that is my canister full of tea grounds, in the event that anyone is poking around in my studio and thinks that I have some treats sitting around. And one day while I was catching up on episodes of American Horror Story and emptying out the dried-up used tea bags - I happened to notice the pattern on the tea bag filter papers.  And I thought "well, that's cool... I bet I could make something with those." And so, I saved a bunch of them and put them in a pile somewhere, and a couple months later I was probably supposed to be doing or thinking about doing something else and I came up with a project for my tea stained filter papers: paper hearts.

 I made a heart template, and then sat there on my breaks at work tracing hearts onto filter papers and cutting them out with tiny scissors...

The coloration on the filter paper really is created by the tea.  The dark pink color comes from the raspberry herb tea; as does that bluish color. I'm not precisely sure how or why - but when I put the raspberry herb tea bag into hot water it gives off this blue-purple cast first before curing as 'tea colored.' So, when I glued the hearts to the illustration board - initially the blue cast returned to the paper — although later on it subsided again...

I had to format my project into something stable and useable... I decided that 5X7 inch pieces of illustration board would do the trick. I actually considered a litany of things from painting to collage to assemblage, but ultimately settled on the simplicity of illustration board.  Of course, it's not pictured, but in order to get everything standardized — I made a template.  So, while every heart is unique in its own way — it's positioned the same on the illustration board.

 I decided to finish them with paraffin wax. I'm not precisely sure why, it just seemed like the thing to do.  In retrospect I suppose I could have just used varnish... but, well, I didn't.

my paper heart encaustic mixed media collages at sarahknight.etsy.com

Relatively speaking, this project began with a healthcare form and a blood glucose test... and relates to something completely different — my worm assemblages — which originated some fifteen years ago from my enjoyment of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and ceramics classes I happened to be taking in high school. Life and art random and relative like that.

Enjoy your weekend, but don't drink an entire gallon of Coke or smoke a pack of cigarettes in one day. I'd probably skip the cigs altogether (as a lifelong nonsmoker)... anyway, enjoy your weekend in responsible adult-like insurance company approved moderation!
; )

oblivion

I'll Follow You

I made this picture.  I made it first by standing outside somewhere in the country presumably some morning, and then I enhanced it on my computer... because really, without some digital device - this image does not exist.

I think images tend to stand for themselves, so as I type this I cannot really see the purpose of explaining the image. I think it's self evident.  I also think that people can read into or take away whatever they want from a picture.

I'm particularly fond of this one.

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I've been MIA from blog comments lately, I know. If it makes me a bad blogger, then so be it.
Life is busy sometimes.
I started a writing project 10-12 years ago, and I've been on it on and off for a while over the years. But recently is the most consistently I've stayed on it. I suppose in a way it's like going through an old box of mementos that was shoved away in a closet somewhere... although I remember most of it as clear as day.

So, if I haven't visited you in a while, it's probably because I'm sitting here at my desk staring at a word processing document and thinking about printer formatting for book pages... and grammar quirks, and possibly semi-colons — they're not just for winking emoticons.

Every year I think to myself that I should just go for it and work on this project. And slowly every year life creeps in and provides a distraction. I think, perhaps, this year will be different.

nature in my heart

It's been a mild winter so far. I mean, technically, winter started on 21 December 2011. So, it's only been winter for a little over a month... here in Michigan that usually means we're 2/5ths of the way done. Maybe by May we'll have had the last snow. Maybe. I make no promises.

It's been mild so far, but we still have bitterly cold days - like last Friday it was about 6˚F. Brrrr.
So, I spend most of the winter inside trying to avoid frozen fingers, chapped skin, and shivering. And it's also project time.

Sometimes things just happen. Because when I plan things, the statistical possibilities of the details have this habit of getting in the way... and then I have another thing in the pile of unfinished projects. It's a never-ending cycle.

Well, sometimes I just sit down in front of the computer and go. No over-thinking it, no hemming and hawing... no what ifs.

nature in my heart
Valentines:

The project came together in the span of 3 hours, technically... I had been working on printing photo cards, and in the last few weeks I had done collage Valentines. And well, this project was just the natural progression.

The actual heart - I folded a piece of paper in half and cut it out. It was for yet another incomplete project involving tea bag filters (I drink a lot of tea, and the pattern left on the filter paper of the bags intrigues me). I haven't gotten that project done, but I do have my paper heart. Well, to use the heart for my collage Valentines I scanned it and turned it into a template - so, you know, it's just there in a folder on my computer.

Now, I like weird stuff and arty stuff, and I suppose I like indie stuff. I was always into science in high school. Pictures of cells and microscope enlargements were always just so interesting to look at... so, when I take pictures - I take pictures of all sorts of things - from flowers to the sky to tree bark to rusty things to fallen leaves.

So, I have all these pictures of all these strange things. And I had my heart template, and I thought "why the hell not?" Obviously I'm biased, but I think the finished project looks pretty cool, even if I know some people will think some of them are a bit ookie. I know they're a desired taste kind of thing.

You can check them out here ; )

I've been on a bit of a project spree lately, partly from being stuck inside, and I suppose residually because it's January. You know, the month of New Year's Resolutions. I'm not so much a resolution person myself... but I suppose I can pretend that I resolved to impulsively execute projects, at least for a little while. Then I can stave off the thought of "what if?"

earthworms...

By all accounts I was missing in action for most of September, or at least from my blogger account. Since I'm not a meticulous planner, I cannot say it was a planned absence, circumstances and life just kind of dictated that it occurred...

Part of what I was doing in that period of time (aside from sleeping, working, driving, eating, and watching television) was working on a project: the worms. Yes, worms.

I first "made" worms when I was about 16 years old. They were part of an art project I did either for AP art or ceramics when I was in high school. I suppose they were inspired in a way by Pink Floyd; more specifically the iconography of the film "The Wall." Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands, and at the time actually seeing "The Wall" was kind of my white whale.

When I was in high school, this was back in the nubile days of 1996-97 when the internet came to people through landlines. Yes, there was a time before broadband and netflix and onDemand and, well, you know the rest...

Anyway if I really wanted to see "The Wall" I would have had to have rented it from our local version of Blockbuster... which I could have done if it was ever there on the odd chance that I happened to go to the local video store, which happened maybe 1-2 times a year. "The Wall" and "A Clockwork Orange" were never there, just that damned VCR case indicating that someone had rented it...

Yes, so anyway, I finally saw it somehow on some trip somewhere... but in the mean time, I was doing this project that involved making worms out of polymer clay.

Well, years passed, and projects came and went. And some time this last spring and summer I found myself standing in that aisle of the craft supply store where they sell the polymer clay... and well, just like riding a bicycle, I remembered the formula for mixing the colors and how I got the segment effect, and voilà: worms

Well, okay, so it actually takes some time to warm up the clay so that it's pliable so that colors can be mixed. But one Saturday afternoon over the course of watching "Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf" I cranked out a batch of worms. And then proceeded to cook them according to the directions on the package.

And then, while watching what was quite possibly one of the cheesiest Lifetime movies ever — "Pretend You Don't See Her" — I applied a coat of gloss varnish to my worms to give them the appearance of looking wet.

Now, some of the worms were created for a series of assemblage pieces. These were made out of a combination of illustration board, spackle, acrylic paint, varnish, and tea grounds. Yes, I said tea grounds. I wanted something that looked like dirt without actually being dirt... tea grounds, as it turns out, look like dirt. Fortunately I drink tea. So, this project incorporates some Twinings Spiced Apple Chai, Twinings African Honeybush, Mandarin & Orange Herbal Tea, and some Bigelow Raspberry Royale.
It took an afternoon of trial and error, because after laying down my spackle and then waiting for that to dry I knew I needed a coat of what would essentially serve as primer. So I had to mix up some brown-gray paint, and then paint that with a coat of umber colored acrylic... and then I needed to figure out how to get the tea to stick... some elmers glue, more umber paint, and some gloss varnish later - I had my formula. Of course, then I had to wait for that to dry too. A lot of time is spent waiting for things to dry...

Wow, that's a crappy photo!

Yes, after everything was spackled and glued and painted and sprinkled with tea and finally dry - then everything needed to go into the frames... and then the pieces needed to be photographed. From an idea-on-paper standpoint, simply photographing the piece is much harder to do well than one would hope. There were a lot of bad photos. Largely because it's hard to photograph something glossy and shiny (the worms) against a background that is dark and matte (the tea dirt) in a frame that has a shiny faux metal finish. Yes, there was some swearing and consternation and a lot of flipping thru the camera settings and trial and error and probably like 150 photos taken of 6 pieces, many of which were just terrible. Indoors, outdoors, with flash, no flash, lit... hell, I even set them up in the bathtub hoping for better light...

The other problem (particularly if you feel you take the best photos outside) is when the weather doesn't cooperate. Between just being dark and overcast it also rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. Things look wet in this picture because they were wet with rain.

The back of the old rabbit hutch is an ironically "etsy-ish" place to take photos... old white paint weathered on wood, and it faces away from the sun... plus I could just hammer a nail into it.

Yes, somehow that's the sweet spot for taking pictures, except for the relatively minor problem of the green grass reflecting on my faux metal frame...

These are my finished pieces:

digging in the dirt | tilling | fertilize
earthworms | unearthed | undulate

The rest of the worms were divvied up between two projects.

Yes, worm earrings. Ew, yes, I know. But they're polymer clay, so they won't nibble on your ear lobe, pinky swear.

You can see them here.

And now I have to get cracking on that other worm project...

Oh, so it's September now...

Yes, Mr. Calendar, I see how we're going to be about this. The sun goes down, the sun comes up, days pass... and suddenly it's the middle of September.

So, I've been working on some of those projects that I think about every now and then when I'm at work or doing something. Those thoughts you might have that usually begin with "that'd be cool..." Yes, those.

I've mentioned before that I enjoy kitsch. Yes, I like weird stuff. I decorate with color and silk flowers and have a massive collection of figurines of lizards and frogs and turtles and the occasional snail... I have birds & butterflies from the ceiling in the summer, and winter time is for glitter snowflakes.

Yes, I like kitsch.
So, every year I dress up for Halloween to pass out candy. I wear the same costume every year. It's a long dark robe (it's navy blue that's almost black) and it has lizards sewn onto it. I have lizard and spider barrettes that I made, and I do some gothy makeup.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I thought it'd be fun to make some lizard barrettes. Yeah. No, I don't exactly recall what spurred the desire to embark upon this craft project. I just went out & bought lizards and barrettes and glue, and well...

I sat down on the cement floor in front of the paper cutter last weekend with my acrylic paints and gave all the lizards new paint jobs while watching Haven on Syfy. Yes, that show is awesome. I like shows like that. I used to watch the X Files back in the day (Fox Mulder, whatta cutie) and I also like Fringe and Supernatural. So, yes, watching Haven and painting plastic lizards (and frogs, yes, there were frogs too, I just haven't finished them yet).

After I painted them I coated them with varnish, and then glued the barrettes on, and waited forever and a day for the glue to dry, and then went outside and took "product shots."

Yes, frightful, I know ; )
You can find them here in the Weird Stuff section of my sarahknight shop on etsy.
And yes, those are my green eyes, not contacts.

I finished this at the end of August. I suppose I made it on a whim.

fall fantasia

And now I have to get back to my craft projects... and maybe cleaning, before they have to send a professional organizer and a Hazmat team in here to deal with the after crafting mess.
: )

Here's a little peak at another project I'm working on...