Counting with Weasel
Can you tell I worked in a corporate art department for a lot of years? Yes, you can.
I once had to create a whole multi-page illustrated booklet on hygiene because nobody wanted to tell that one guy in the kitchen that he smelled bad. With mostly pictures, because I think he was special needs.
NOTICE: Dead Pool queued. 18:00 WBT.
October 10, 2019 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 13
We’re back!
You may not have noticed, but the blog went away for a bit today. We got migrated to a new server and it broke something.
A plug for my host — HostingMatters — they’re very good and we’re back.
I’m kind of back, too. Feeling a bit better today, though very breathless with the slightest exertion. I reckon I’ll go in tomorrow. The longer I’m out, the bigger the mess waiting for me.
Speaking of the slightest exertion, here’s a quick ballpoint pen foot scribble.
No, seriously – have you seen what some people can do with ballpoint pens?
October 9, 2019 — 8:28 pm
Comments: 11
More foot!
Better today. Still creeping around the house like a bad smell.
Have a foot!
October 8, 2019 — 5:52 pm
Comments: 6
Sod it. Mostly pencil.
I can’t be fooling around with quill pens, la dee da.
Maybe a little better today, but now Uncle B has got it, so we’re stuffed when the supplies run out.
The liquor supplies, naturally. We’re not eating much.
How’s you?
October 7, 2019 — 6:03 pm
Comments: 7
My bed of pain…
I’m dyin’ over here. Seriously, this is the worst cold I’ve had in I can’t remember.
Fortunately, my colds mostly burn themselves on the first day, so if I can hold out a little longer, I…I should make it.
A hot bath and visit from the Gin Fairy should help.
October 6, 2019 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 5
No promises
Woke up this morning with a terrible cold. First rhinovirus of the season – yay me!
But 4 days of Inktober would be pathetic even for me, so I’m’a give it the old college try.
Did I mention I dropped out of college?
October 5, 2019 — 7:48 pm
Comments: 5
Foot!
Feet. Everyone talks about how hard it is to draw hands, but to my mind…feet.
I don’t know how to think about feet. I can’t figure out what the big shapes are, and I always exaggerate the toes because at least they’re interesting.
Rookie mistake, that — making the interesting bits way too big.
It probably doesn’t help that I have gnarly, unpleasant feet. Maybe if I spent more time staring at nice feet…I’d be mistaken for a foot fetishist and run out of town.
Are there women foot fetishists? Women don’t seem big on fetishes.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
October 4, 2019 — 8:29 pm
Comments: 9
phun with pheathers
This is mostly why I was interested in doing Inktober this year: I’ve been playing with quill pens. Like, I bought 30 goose quills for £5 on Ebay, and I started makin’ pens.
Plenty of tutorials on YouTube, if you’re interested. Basically, you slice the pretty feather parts off, cut the shaft of the feather at an angle up high where the feather is sturdier, tweeze the junk out of the middle, cut a little channel for the ink to go down, and there you go. Quill pen. This is what people wrote with for, like, hundreds of years.
Then I branched out. Rook feathers. Gull feathers. Even a few of the bigger feathers off my chooks. It doesn’t always work, but it’s great fun.
Sadly, my ambition to draw chickens in the style of da Vinci has foundered on the fact I can’t draw like da Vinci. I have phailed.
October 3, 2019 — 7:41 pm
Comments: 6
Gnarly
In ink, everyone’s hands look gnarly. But this is an old lady with hand eczema, so fair enough.
I can never spell eczema without looking it up. I really feel there should be an x in there. And I supposedly suffered with eczema for, like, five years. Then they decided it was psoriasis, which I can spell just fine and don’t need no x. Whatever it was, nothing they did helped much but steroid cream, and that shit’s evil.
Then I took turmeric and it went away. Poof. Like that. I wasn’t even taking it for that. I was taking it for joint pain, for which it did absolutely bupkis.
I know, I know…stupid hippie holistic medicine woo. But every time it tries to flare up, I take a spoonful of turmeric with freshly-cracked black pepper and it simply goes away.
I’m ain’t argue with that.
October 2, 2019 — 6:35 pm
Comments: 2
It’s here!
It’s Inktober!
I can hear your anguished groans of delight.
First time I tried it, I did three or four terrible drawings and quit. Next time — last year — I did lots and lots of terrible drawings. And then quit.
Thinking about it, if you’re doing terrible drawings, the sooner you quit the better.
Oh well. Let us begin our wild, if probably brief, journey.
Oh, yes, I’m looking at you, weirdly foreshortened thumb. It is an axiom of working from photos: if something doesn’t look right — even if it is measurably, demonstrably right — it ain’t right.
Photos are stupid.
But that’s the thing about working in ink. You just got to suck it up buttercup resolve to do better next time.
October 1, 2019 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 9