summer_jackel

I keep watching this. It's so cute, and the art is beautiful!

So I had a great time at FC! Sharing a dealer's table with Kyn was really fun, it's always great to see everyone who I generally only see at these things, I drew lots and lots, and I came back very inspired to do more art. I am resolved to create more of it generally this year, and come to next year's FC far more well prepared. We shall see how that goes.

Unfortunately, I seem to have caught the king of the con crud; I feel better now, but am STILL sniffling. Wretched. I can trace it to the first day in the dealer's room when the AC broke, and the place was horrible for most of the afternoon. Other than that, though, fun con.

Does anyone else hate the flashy ad banners on Fur Affinity? Honestly, I loathe them; I like that FA has artist ads, but flickering images and text hurts my tender eyeballs, makes me mad at the artist in question and much less likely to look at their page, and without question makes me use the site less. Rawr.

When I got home today, Mr. Greybird was happy to see me, hopped right onto my hand and wanted pettings. I'm so touched. I introduced him to his play area and cage in my bedroom (essential to maintain household harmony; most of the sounds he's produced so far aren't any more obnoxious than my little birds', but Nicki isn't quiet, and he can project). He wasn't nervous or hesitant at all; he's hanging out on the tree, watching me ride now. What a sweetie.

Kyn called me this evening, and we both happened to be in the room with birds. Nicki and Ninja started whistling at each other over our conversation; it was hilarious. It is probably for the best that I'm seeing someone who also keeps parrots...

Gavin is regrowing breast feathers, which makes me happy. He still Wants Kaya More Than Anything. Kaya is seeming a little jealous and a bit needier than usual, so I'm giving her extra attention and taking care to handle her before I take Nicki out. None of the other pets seem to care, although of course the dogs immediately added Nicki's cage to their list of areas to check regularly. The area that skirts my birdcages is spotless. This is not because my parrots eat neatly.

Coba and I did a practice obedience trial, and he did very well! We have a real one next month, and I hope we pass it.

I finished a couple more pages of Bone Shard, which you can see here and here. I'm rather pleased at the coincidence that had me finsihing the pages which introduce Travis's Scottish Deerhound, Ghost, on the same weekend that a gorgeous Deerhound bitch took Best in Show at Westminster, for the first time ever. One of my favorite breeds taking BIS is not something that happens much!

I am just back from Furcon and had a great time...I'm still completely con-crashed, of course, especially since I stopped for my weekly dance lessons on the way home from the con, just to make sure that I was absolutely exhausted, not just a little exhausted.

It was a really fantastic convention, though. Speaking of dancing:



corpsefairy and I had a lot of fun foxtrotting in the fursuit dance competition, although we'd have been better if we had more opportunity to practice our routine. (I'm the lead in the gold leopard mask; she's the follow in the silver leopard. The heads will be better next year, too; I ran out of time and had to rush them). I giggle at the commentary to the video that claims we were "choreographed perfectly," though of course I'm happy that we were appreciated. What I led on stage was only roughly approximate to the routine we'd planned, partly because we had more stage than we were expecting and partly due to leader error. I was literally weak-kneed with stage fright, but I'm pleased to see on the vid that I don't look nearly as bad as I was afraid I looked. I'm fully aware of every glaring flaw in my performance there of course, but hey, it's a recognizable foxtrot.

I just began silver level lessons (omg omg how did that happen??), so next year's performance may be a silver foxtrot. If it isn't a Quickstep.

I have to say that it was extremely amusing to be the only slow ballroom dance in a show full of techno acts---some of which were jaw-droppingly amazing and all of which were quite good, but variety is nice. I'm making it a bit of a personal goal to encourage more partner dancing in the fandom, and to that end corpsefairy and I taught a waltz lesson on Saturday. I have never taught dance before, so let's just say that I now have a greater appreciation for my own teachers. Still, the class was really fun, we had good attendance and people were totally waltzing at the end! We will be doing all of this again next year, only hopefully with more preparation, more space and a better floor.

I did quite well in the art show and adequately at the dealer table, especially given that I had no real table decoration, prints to sell etc. and have not been a terribly active artist, other than my comic, for a couple of years. It has been a very hard couple of years, but I am pleased to say, quietly, that I am doing better now and really want to make a point of creating more art in 2011.

It was great seeing everyone I saw; it is a wonderful pleasure to spend time with all of you furry folks. FC is definitely a highlight of my year.

I also want to specially thank everyone who came to me offering support regarding eclipsegryph's cockatiel situation. It was gratifying and touching to have so many people care about this. If you don't already know, we won the case and all three birds are now safely home. I haven't written about this since I took the case; as a lawyer, I owe a duty of confidentiality that does not permit discussing such matters in public fora. However, my client and kynekh_amagire have made the story public here and in their journals, which I find personally gratifying since this is a case deserving of public interest and concern. So here's my own closure to the matter (including no confidential information and nothing that isn't discussed in much greater detail elsewhere), as a pet owner who once supported Mickaboo and never will again.

This situation should be of great concern to anyone with an interest in pets and pet rescue. Mickaboo's behavior was deplorable and appalling throughout the whole ordeal, and though justice did in fact prevail in the end, a pet owner shouldn't have to fight a corrupt rescue in order to reclaim animals fraudulently surrendered to it by an angry spouse. Some of Mickaboo's volunteers are trying to do good things, but its administration is corrupt and the organization deserves no tolerance or support. Behavior like this harms the birds in Mickaboo's care and the credibility and value of private animal rescue in general.

I have decided to adopt another green cheeked conure some time this spring (more detail about that later) and, wherever I end up getting him, I absolutely will not be adopting from Mickaboo. I urge everyone to continue to boycott the organization and its supporters---but be happy; we won. It's a brand new year, and hopefully this one will be even better than the last.

This is adorable. Via Kyn. Somewhere in France, an undoubtedly underappreciated animator kicks ass. And all the cute puma cubs drink Orangina.

We can has female version next? With lionesses, maybe.

OK, so if you are in the furry thing, you've probably seen this meme that keeps going around, where an artist juxtaposes an old and current artwork, often of the same character, to demonstrate how her work and style has changed and improved. They're usually really interesting to look at.

I always feel a little weird, though, when I look at these things and, as sometimes happen, like the older work better than the new. The one I saw today had artist's character, then and now. The new work is extremely skilled (we're talking about a fairly well known artist here; I'm naming no names but it could be a lot of them), very slick, very pro, very computer generated. The old pic was a pencil sketch, pretty but with a great deal less technical sophistication, like something a new artist or talented teenager might doodle in the margins of paper, and it probably was. Still, I think I liked it better. Hard to say exactly why.

I guess traditional media just attract me more as a matter of personal aesthetic, although there's some lovely photoshop-generated art out there that I like a ton. Maybe it's that it seems a little more commercial, like the packaging art on a toy or something. Or perhaps I'm just interested in how an artist's eyes, hands and body interact with that media to create something unique. The photoshopped furry art has this sort of homogeneous plastic look so much of the time. It looks less individual to my eye in some ways.

Of course, CG art also tends to look more professional when you're looking at it on a computer. Maybe I just don't get it; it's certainly true that even cleaning up my work to post in PS is enough of a chore that I can't imagine enjoying computerized artmaking. Takes all kinds, and I'm certainly not down on people who art on a computer or anything, but it makes me sad when someone who's done a lot of trad stuff discovers the electronic media, and then you almost never see anything in real media from them again.

I'm not sure why I'm rambling about this and not finishing this here pile-of-furry-porn (real media, natch). I could do the meme, I guess; I still have pretty much all of my sketchbooks, boxes of them. Don't know that I ever will. Back to ink now.

Winter has come to Camp Meeker. The fungus is in bloom, the banana slugs roam freely, and if the curtains aren't kept open in the bathroom, water condenses on the window beside and they mold.

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I just ordered another bottle of fountain pen ink, Abraxas light grey. I'm going to try lettering 'Bone Shard' with it and see what happens; black ink just looks wrong with all the washy watercolors of the piece, watercolored lettering is just sloppy-looking (I regret page nine), and the penciled lettering, which is how I've done it so far, doesn't look quite finished to me. I am hoping that grey ink will be a nice solution; I just hope I don't need to buy three different bottles of it before I find one that I like. Ask me about my sepia collection.

My usual source has stopped carrying all the interesting colors of Noodler's, the brand I tend to favor, and this shop is local, ergo I am trying a brand I've never used. The conversation I had with the store about this and my necessary questions, "How lightfast is it? Does it flow evenly? How watertight is it? Is it a warmer grey or more of a colder grey?" made my brother crack up and made me feel kind of like a wine snob. Yeah, so I'm a pen geek. Worse fates. Anyone out there used Abraxas? I should go check the fountain pen forum to see if there are any reviews...

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My dogs got beaten up and coerced into inter-kingdom sex by a plant this afternoon. The horseback ride by the river beneath a lowering sky, complete with picturesque blue colliethings at heel, was really an epic high point, but I need to work on training the boys to stay out of the underbrush. It took over two hours to painstakingly---literally, those things are really sharp---remove all of the burrs from their impressively flowing coats. Pulling as little coat as possible and doing as little damage to my skin in the process, of course. I have no idea what these plants were hunting for...their burrs would probably stick to an elephant...but their use of my collies as gamete dispersal failed, because I chucked at least a quart of them in the fire. The dogs look nice again, and Coba in particular is in full coat and is all kinds of gorgeous.

Chaos has more surface area, though.

OK, how cool is it that Santa Rosa is apparently home to a steampunk event? This would be the Handcar Regatta, (http://handcar-regatta.com/), a way keen rail-based kinetic sculpture race with decided steamy styling. Unfortunately, it was a very hot day, so I only stayed for a few hours, but it was a very fun-packed couple of hours. Lots of bicycle-based craft and a pervasive pro-bike/bike activism atmosphere, which was also lovely. Also, really delish fair food, but then this is Sonoma county, after all.

Chaos was extremely well behaved, although he got a little bit overwhelmed at the end, mostly because of the heat. But he enjoyed himself too, and politely met a lot of people and dogs, most of them also polite. It pleases me very much that his overwhelm behavior is to lay down quietly behind me and occasionally hide in my skirts, and also that he likes to drink water out of a bottle, a feat that impressed several people. I love my collie, and not just because he's the ultimate neo-Victorian fashion accessory.

Nobody knows he's a collie, though. I get this about Coba, too...approximately 8 people out of 10 who approach me about either of the boys say something to the effect of, "What a beautiful dog! He's Australian Shepherd and...what?" Nope. Purebred Collie (or Sheltie). No Aussie anywhere. Like Lassie, only blue. And no, it's not a new thing. They have come in that color (and Tri, which must exist in at least half the population if a breed comes in blue merle) at least since they were first exhibited in 1860; the sables were originally the weird new color and can all trace directly back to one dog. Of course, this was also before they were crossed with Borzoi to make them what they are now. Today I got the most interesting 'what is your dog' comment I've heretofore received; some lady asked me if he was an Afghan hound. I was totally amused. But it's true: anyone who has looked closely at sighthounds can see the influence clear as day in a certain snout.

So, here we are.



( cool kinetic sculptures! )

Work on the comic proceeds apace.

Here, have a page 14 and a page 15.

I feel a little compelled to apologize about how slow the pacing on this is; I don't feel that it works as well as a serial as it will as a complete story, which is how ultimately I intend it to be read. I still really appreciate everyone who is reading it as I go along, anyway, and am having fun taking my time developing the thing. Now that a lot of the preliminary introductory first-bit-of-story is winding up, things are about to heat up a bit, and that's enjoyable to work on.

For those who are lately arrived, 'The Bone Shard' is a graphic novel that I'm working on. Furry, Victorian-AU, lesbian romance ghost story. Link to the beginning is on all the pages, it will eventually be rated NC-17 though we haven't gotten there yet (see above about slow pacing) and y'all are welcome to read or ignore it at your leisure.

Can we all have a moment of silence for Little Scanny, please, who has died the true electronic death.

I know I'm super posty today, I'm sorry. But for this latest development, I actually think I need some advice.

The machine I'm using to scan my stuff is an Epson Scanner/Copier/Printer threeway I got, I think, in 2002. It is, I believe, on its little electronic deathbed. The copy and print functions have long since failed, no matter how often I clean or attempt to troubleshoot it by the manual directions, but the scanner still worked. The thing is, unless it has ink, it won't run the scanner, and it will automatically determine that the ink is out at a set time no matter how little ink in the cartridge has actually been used. (which is none, in this case, since the print/copy functions died more than a year ago. Does the stuff go bad?) The ink for it is both expensive and no longer carried in local stores.

I loathe the quick obsolescence of computer technology and cringe at the prospect of having to responsibly dispose of this hated boat-anchor of a once shiny and exciting device. But I'm not buying really expensive (like, $40+ a cartridge) ink for a broken machine that can no longer use it, but is just designed such that its tertiary function won't run without the stuff.

Perforce, I require a new scanner. Quickly, because I need to scan a commission with a Feb. 14th deadline, and since I am about to be really busy, I was hoping to get the finished art scanned tonight (inks) and tomorrow (finished painting). Thankfully, scanners are cheaper than I thought they were, for instance this little puppy for $150, which is about what I can afford for this acquisition. I plan to cruise Best Buy tomorrow.

Given that I have a friends list full of artists, and keeping in mind that I am just barely technologically literate compared to many of you, I am encouraging all of you to share your opinions on what to get, what to look for and what to avoid. Scanners: we all love to bitch, complain and hate on 'em, but it would be nice if I could actually get something that would kill my artwork somewhat less than the old clunker.