ACEO Peregrine Falcon and



ACEO Wolf Mountain were what I did last night when Lisa came over for our weekly Thursday Night Art Jam. It was great. I had both of these started earlier in the week. I did the sky on Wolf Mountain and the background on Peregrine Falcon separately, fooling with wet in wet and lifting out clouds on Wolf Mountain. Then didn't get back to finishing them till Lisa came over and it was our time to art.

She finished up a beautiful elements-and-goddess Inktense painting that came out 11" x 13" finished on 12" x 16" paper. Then started a new one in graphite with a wolf from a reference I lent her, which turned out to be Artemis behind the wolf and a tree, with her wolf and a quail and a bee and her crescent-moon bow floating in it -- wonderful symbolic piece.

I don't usually do symbolic art. As we were talking about it and I'd just done the distant mountain, she picked out a wolf's face in the central snowpatch so I added a rock outcrop for the eye of that wolf and she noticed it was biting a second one that's howling with its mouth open. So Wolf Mountain actually has three wolves, since I added another peak in the foreground with mist and snow in between to keep to the theme. It's cool. It's not like most of my art, it has that other layer.

Kitten and I talked this evening about my writing and I got sorted out on something that's been puzzling me -- not some burning deep painful inner change but a minor "Eh?" important but not all that painful one. I'm finding a new direction for my fiction. Not so much a change in genre as changes within genre and a subtly different type of theme. The way Karl put it, a different type of hero. I have written heroes who had nothing to lose sticking their necks out with a certain type of courage, but I haven't written the kind of hero who very much has something to defend, a patch of land, a few people who matter that much to him. It's a different focus more than a genre change.

I like heroes, so I'm not going off doing heroes. It's more that I may set up a different starting context for my next round of novels and see what happens. I seem to be drifting away from vampires and other Outsider archetypes toward something else. It should be good though, I'm looking forward to writing it. Tonight I may dream. I'm in a strange mood that's a little like a fisherman seeing ripples in the water and starting to slowly lower the hook. I may be onto a big one. What I hope of course is for a novel that just grabs me so much the whole process of writing it is a Nantucket sleighride, that I can't put it down while I'm writing and that energy, passion and joy comes through when it's done.

What's cool is that tonight I have a sense of setting off into completely unknown country, no idea what will come into this novel, where it'll start, where it'll head, what the antagonist is, what the conflicts are, even what kind of magic it is, but knowing cool stuff is just down the road and about to start soon. Very soon. It'll be fun. That is the one thing I know about it -- this one is going to be fun.

Pie. I like warm pie more than cold pie, but I like almost all pies more than cake. I include meat pies in that. I don't like ala mode because ice cream gives me problems with a lactose sensitivity -- something I did not understand the few times people talked me into pie ala mode. I'll swap the ice cream for a second serving of pie and be happy. My daughter's chicken pot pie is actually better than the frozen ones I used to get and love. She makes really good pies.

I have now met the world's meekest dog.

Ayla is an Australian Shepherd puppy. Kitten's puppy. She is a shiny black shorthaired dog with a sweet face and big brown eyes. She is scared of everything and everybody. She grew up in a shelter, she was taken into the Humane Society as a very small pup and not adopted out because she had some problems that needed to be cleared up before she was presentable -- she lost all her hair in anxiety and so they gave her special care, fed her up, took care of her veterinary needs and released her as a four month old.

Yep, not even five months old. She's a large puppy that'll grow to be about Zoe's size, maybe a bit smaller.

She has an engaging, waifish manner. I met her last night. She was meek. She did not bound up to play the way Zoe did. She sat down and looked up at me with the big brown eyes shivering a little and hoping that I liked her -- every quivering inch of her big-head, big-eared, big-footed little body was focused on me with this endearing "Do you like me? Am I good enough to be in the pack?" manner. I petted her gently and let her sniff my hand. She dutifully and thoroughly sniffed both my hands, my knees, my face and breath, but didn't lick me or jump up. She was scared but not mean-scared, more hesitant and shy.

Meanwhile, in order to get Ayla, we had to get Ari's shots in order. kkitten42 made the appointment the day that she first met Ayla and picked her out. Our usual vet was on vacation so we had the substitute veterinarian, a bloke who likes animals better than people. I rather approve of this, since it's my cat's health that really matters. Kitten warned him on the phone. "Be careful. This cat is a chainsaw."

I didn't really expect him to misbehave much. After all, he is the world's best traveling cat. He settles down in his carrier like it's the natural way of the world and he'll ride for 12 hours between states without a meow, sleeping and occasionally watching out the window. But Kitten was right to warn them.

It started when the assistant began to clip his claws. "That was when he started trying to kill people." Disarming him temporarily was absolutely necessary, because he continued to try to kill people all the way through the rectal exam, ear and eye exam, and worst of all getting his belly palpated.

Ari has a ticklish tummy. Many cats like having their fluffy bellies petted. Not Ari. I am the only person in the world who he allows to ever touch the fluffy tummy, and I have to do it special-right exactly the way he likes it or I'll tickle him. Slow gentle petting that starts in a non ticklish area and flows smooth and firm down his tummy to slide off rather than stop on the irresistible fuzzy tummy. Absolutely no scritching, poking, prodding, palpating the way a veterinarian has to in order to find out if the cat's got internal problems.

Quote from Dr. Bradford, during the stethoscope part where he was listening to Ari's heartbeat and breath. "Would you please breathe deep one or two breaths without roaring? I can't hear your heart well past the roaring."

He talks to cats reasonably as people, this is a point in the vet's favor. But I do not think Ari has forgiven him those indignities.

When he came home he was all rattled and a bit shocky. He'd been carried off by alien veterinarians and been probed and clipped and handled without mercy. He spent the rest of the day in the bathroom crunched up in the "Shortened Brick" pose with his fur poofed out, and went to sleep that way with his eyes slitted. I petted him and talked to him quietly every time I went in and he blinked in the most confused way when I did.

By the time I went to bed, he went to the end of the bed and sat fluffed up the same way down at the foot of the bed. I laid down and he did walk up over my body to hunch up and snuggle near my hand. I petted him and made much of him and he went to sleep leaning on me, but didn't purr or woolbite last night. Today he seems more like his old self though, prowling around our room, watching birds, watching the kids, listening to the dog training in the other room. He's survived the Invasion of Dr. Bradford from Planet Vet.

Amazingly enough, he does not seem intimidated by Ayla. I think he knows Zoe well enough now to comprehend that Ayla is a submissive dog. Her reaction to the Cat Test at the Humane Society was to ignore the cat. Ari's reaction to her arrival was to ignore the new puppy. So they have truce and I'm sure if they bump into each other as Ari rambles through canine territory, she will bow to Ari as the Cat King that he is.

So we are having fun with critters. When Ayla has settled in a bit and all, I may try to get some pictures so I can post them. She is a pretty dog and so gentle. I liked her immediately, maybe it's just that Ayla could fluff up anyone's ego with a look. Both dogs are outside now, appreciating the wonderful reality that the house has a yard and dogs can play in the yard.

I swear it feels as if I moved here last week. My room is as clean as if I moved here last week and just finished unpacking. Everything has been gone through. Everything has been sorted. Books are shelved. Art is on the walls -- and rearranged to take down some pieces and put up others, a good way to keep good art from fading in the light.

Today, this afternoon, Karl just vacuumed and steamed the carpet. It's three shades lighter, beautifully clean, still damp and soft on my feet. That's what's giving it the new-home feeling, the scrubbed carpet. We pretty much dusted most of the surfaces on Monday when Eric helped me move furniture and sort everything into its new places. The middle of the room is still spacious, with lots and lots of cool floor space to spread out. I could cut mats easily without bumping into stuff, even the giant mat boards.

This isn't the first time he's steamed my room. He does that four or five times a year and it's a big deal to me every time. I think that more than anything has been helping to keep my dust allergy down, that and the more frequent vacuuming. It gets dirty. People track through, I track through, Ari sheds a whole lot of his fur and various types of dirt get ground into the floor. Toddlers come in and play on the floor carrying dirt from their outdoor excursions and random children's art mediums.

But this feels like a new beginning. I have this lazy easy small smile on my face that won't go away, because it's just too cool to be here and have everything in a good sensible place. It's as big a step in organizing as it was the last time I organized my art area and moved the table over by my chair.

The next steps in organizing will be to get a small dresser to act as a taboret and make even better use of the space in my art/writing area. Plus a medium to small dresser to go at the end of the bed and hold clothing, that'll eliminate the clothing tubs and let me reorganize that and not have stacks of clean laundry in a laundry bin at the foot of the bed.

Winter is good for crafts. I might look at getting cheap furniture this winter and refinishing it when I'm indoors puttering instead of getting to go outside and do plein air. I have flip flops now, but today is humid and overcast without the kind of sunny directional brightness I really want for outdoor painting.

I packed up a little khaki shoulder bag sort of like a miniature back pack, with a pocket field box of watercolors, small watercolor block and postcard pad I want to finish up in OSWOAs, a small sketchbook or two, small sets of Conte crayons and the 24 color set of Koh I Noor Progresso colored pencils for working outside or just grabbing and heading out if we go to the park or something cool like that. All the small art supplies that beg to be used for travel are in one place easily grabbed for going out in the yard.

I put some ACEO blanks in some of the pockets too, so that if I get moved to do ACEOs in this medium or that it'll be easy.

So while I'm taking it easy today, I'm also enjoying my clean new environment and deep relaxing, about to start puttering with some art. I cut some more Fabriano Artistico ACEO blanks, the hot press watercolor paper is much better for ACEOs than cold press because it allows more detail.

It's a good day and I'm very grateful to Karl and Eric for helping me get this place as clean as if I moved. It's amazing to me to live somewhere for two years and not be sinking into overwhelming filth through not being able to take care of even a room by myself. It's funny, but I think that is some of why I moved so many times even back in the 90s -- if it got too bad and needed a deep cleaning, I wasn't able to either do it or get help with it to make it possible. But if I moved it was easier to rope in friends to help me move. Moving is more of an emergency. Cleaning up is more of a chore. Perceived need versus real need, if I hadn't moved all those times I'd have lasted longer on my own... but that would have taken help that wasn't there.

My family. kkitten42, Karl (HeraldoftheAbyss), Sascha, Gabriel, Eric, Zoe the Siberian Husky, Ari Cat, and this evening our newest clan member, Ayla the Australian Shepherd.

Yes, I did rate the critters as part of the family. They're individuals and part of the whole that is our family. I'm not picking favorites between Kitten and Karl and the children, and the dog/s are part of the family too. I would miss Zoe the world's most well behaved canine if she was gone. Ari Cat has been my closest companion all his life, from the time he was six weeks old.

It's bad juju to pick favorites among the people you love. Those are the ones I love, in my household. Lisa my Thursday Night art pal is part of the clan too, even though she doesn't live with us.

ACEO Muddy River is my latest watercolor landscape. An experiment with doing a river that's silty and shares the color of the rocks around it more than reflecting anything. I like how it came out. I used the Daniel Smith sampler to paint it.

ACEO Theme Week Nursery Rhymes: 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall is why Humpty Dumpty had a great Fall. I had trouble taking the Nursery Rhymes theme seriously, so I did silly ones.

ACEO TW Nursery Rhymes Spell Check Little Star has the real title "Tinkle, tinkle, little star."

I was in a silly mood with them. Both of the TW cards are up at the usual Theme Week entry minimum bid of $4.99 and Humpty Drunk had two watchers within an hour of posting him. Yay and cool.

I also got my check and spent it. Predictably, it went to Tiger Direct for an external DVD-CDRW that does plug into a laptop although the model I had bookmarked seems to be gone and must have been an ephemeral sale item. I found one just five dollars cheaper so that helped to fund my Daniel Smith order. By carefully checking the colors in all of the sets and juggling what to get, I succeeded in getting all the colors on the sampler and in getting a six color Caribbean Luminescents set that has the Duochrome Aquamarine, but also Iridescent Electric Blue and Duochrome Ocean in there as well as Hibiscus and Iridescent Garnet and Iridescent Mauve. I was able to squeeze in Duochrome Autumn Mystery, which is sort of orangy-pinkish color changing iridescent that'll be good for some types of undersea things, fall foliage, florals, various cool things, maybe even hummingbird feathers.

Their luminescent watercolors are all done with finely ground mica particles that get coated to change colors. Interferences almost look clear on white, Iridescents have more color and Duochromes have the strongest color. They all look awesome on black. I'm wondering how they'll look when I use them over strong deep colors like Burnt Umber under the gold, or even Carbazole Violet with just a thin gold wash over it on something.

Carbazole Violet is an insanely strong purple with a deep dark value range, one of those colors that the tab looked black. So was Quinacridone Burnt Orange, and I used those together on the watercolor landscape. The sampler is still going strong. I may still be painting with these right up till the middle of the month when the package finally arrives.

And there is much rejoicing for the very last thing I needed to do plein air painting -- a pair of flip flops so that I neither wreck my good dress shoes or sweat to death in my heavy boots, which are not great for just scuffing around summer wear. They are black. They were only $2 and best of all, they fit better than flip flops ever did in my life. I'm used to them being either too small or really way too big and dangling out behind me, but these are just right. Either my feet are bigger or this brand scrimped just enough on the rubber sole to make them fit perfect.

Now for the rest of the long rambly entry of happy things.

Eric, kkitten42's younger half brother, is staying with us now. He's 14. He needed a phone and I've been using my new Razr rather than the Blackberry, so I traded him the Blackberry for his help rearranging my furniture. He carried it way beyond just pushing the furniture around and helped me deep clean my room. It's almost like I just moved in, and it will be as of tomorrow when Karl (HeraldoftheAbyss to my longtime readers) comes in to steam clean the carpet.

Karl got the big 19" television that I never watched and the hassock filled with storage stuff out to the garage on Sunday, and toted the big tub of good garb fabric upstairs where Kitten can turn it into good garb for us. This left most of what I own piled up toward the right end of the room and the left side suddenly empty.

I had the plan of moving the chairs farther toward the right hand wall and emptying the bookcases and putting those over on the wall where all that stuff was. Eric moved all of them and he also went through everything that was in them with me, he was the one who put up 98% of the stuff and spared my back. I wound up overexerting anyway especially in the hunt for the missing artwork, but the artist I bought that OSWOA from said she could redo it for me next month at a reasonable price so I don't feel too bad about it.

I wound up in major pain last night for all evening even with Tramadol and a rum nightcap, but Karl gave me a massage that helped after all the dust had settled. This helped no end. Today should have been screaming agony don't get out of bed bad, instead it was a bad morning and lightened up as the day progressed.

My room is actually looking decent but for my spending money on art supplies instead of getting a dresser. I really should get a dresser sometime. But it's not going to be this month or next month and I lived without one for two years now, so unless someone turns up a freebie on Freecycle for me, I'll keep going till fall.

Caran d'Ache sabotaged my plan to get the Master Sets of colored pencils completed in 2008. Yep. They just came out with the $249 set of 76 "Luminance" colored pencils that all the CPSA experts are drooling after. I'm drooling after them too, but guess what set of Pablos will get bumped down the line again, plus other things I wanted to do, and I'll finish those up sometime in 2009. I'm still getting used to some of the big sets I already bought, so maybe slowing down on Master Sets is not a big deal. I could do it but it'd mean doing nothing else till January but getting colored pencils, and I still want to do an SBI site first. So next month is SBI. Computer trouble pushed everything back and then Caran d'Ache pushed it back farther, but meanwhile I am very happy with the Daniel Smith watercolors.

My only frustration with Daniel Smith is much slower delivery time than Blick. They use the post office and it gets seriously slowed compared to FedEx, my triad didn't come fast after I ordered and I doubt this order will be here soon -- but I think the sampler may last till it arrives even if it doesn't show up till the 15th or so.

I might do another TW one and post it later, but this is what I have listed for now. What started out threatening to be a bad day has turned into a wonderful day! Maybe I'll do some writing tonight on Three Punks or a new Hubpage.

This house. Where I live now with kkitten42 and her husband and my grandkids and her half-brother Eric, with Zoe the Siberian Husky and Ari my cat and our newest arrival who comes in tomorrow, Ayla the New Dog. Ayla is actually the New Puppy at only five weeks old. (Edit: Ayla is actually five months old, the preceding factoid is completely wrong. Think of it as fibro fog in action.) This house is a real home, and I feel at home in this household as I never have before, as I didn't when I was a kid or a teen, as I didn't in any of those apartments I shared or had alone. The one on Dauphine Street in New Orleans was almost home, but I moved away.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. Stephen King, The Gunslinger, book one of The Dark Tower series.

This line sets up a distance shot like the opening screen of a good movie. You don't know who they are yet, but you do know what's going to happen. Violence hangs in the air like the heat shimmer above the desert. You know because he's a gunslinger that there's a good chance the man in black did something worth shooting him for, and that he's not going to stop till he catches up to the man in black. Events in the story make it pretty clear that first impression, that the man in black is a bad guy, is bitterly accurate. He's a seriously bad guy, and by the time he gets to him, the gunslinger isn't that much of a good guy. He's ambiguous. But you can see the conflict.

These people don't have names yet. But it tells you the conflict is going to be big and that a long difficult journey is involved. You know this novel's going to have salt sores in characters' mouths and heat sickness and mules dying out from under their riders. You know everybody's starving on the edge of madness.

Somebody scared enough to flee into a desert has reason to fear, or he's insane. The gunslinger is established as a badass that way. It says a lot about the book and a lot about the series -- that the gunslinger will go through a lot worse than deserts to get to the Dark Tower. Certain word choices give it a sonorous dignity, a Tolkeinesque air. "Fled" is one word where you'd need two to say "ran away" but it is also a more formal word. "The man in black" carries resonance and mystery -- you know his gender and his clothing and it's a descriptive. Much information in a few nouns and verbs, no adjectives there. No adjectives needed. The sentence also follows the order of events. You see the pursued first and then the pursuer, as you catch your first glimpse of the epic chase that is the plot of the first book.

It says "Here, this is what the book is about. Now read the rest to find out why."

So it's a beautifully structured first line that does the job and sticks in my mind. I had the image of it and had to go get the book to quote it verbatim, because I did not remember it accurately. But at the sight of the question, I knew I needed to post this as an example. Stephen King is one of those authors who will be known as a classic for centuries, he's just that good at the craft like Mark Twain. The Dark Tower is his masterwork, the series that ties together everything else he's written and drove him nuts for years without leaving him alone. It's worth all the work he put into it. HIs struggle to write it was epic too, and he finished the job. I love it for that.

Moon Jellyfish is the last of my Under The Sea swap cards. I'll get this packed up and addressed, do a cool bookmark to go with it and then I'm done with all my June swaps.

Meanwhile this morning I did a doodle ACEO that wasn't quite Under the Sea, though those chaps in it are probably close to being Under the Sea soon!



ACEO Sea Storm June Doodle is another of my 99 cent start Doodle ACEOs. I like how it came out, the wave was inspired by my memory of Hokusai waves and I put in the boat in memory of Hokusai woodcuts too, but it was also influenced by many little scrimshaw pieces I've seen and some 18th century and 19th century engravings. I like how it came out. I may do some more "above the sea" pieces next, having done a lot of undersea scenes!

Reef Gold is going out to one of my nine swap partners in the Under the Sea swap from ACEO Art Cards Editions & Originals group on eBay. I've now done eight of nine swap cards! It seems like a shock to realize I've got only one more to do, and then I'm done with the Theme. At least officially. I love reef stuff and underwater scenes, but I am also getting drawn to fooling around with the Surf n Shore Triad some more. I used it on this watercolor card.

I got the Blue Tang a bit too dark, but I'm sure there are some dark fish like that out there. Overall I like the feel of it. While I was doing it, I tested the washes on a bookmark slip and with just swishy brush strokes realized I was doing a shoreline. So I added the Goethite shore and then decided it was elegant, but needed something in it so it wouldn't be so empty. I added the tiny shorebird with Sodalite and then gave it a Carbazole Violet mixed with Sodalite Genuine shadow, which made the whole thing pop. Funny how one little stroke maybe an eighth of an inch long can make a whole scene work.



The same swapper who's getting the Dark Blue Tang in "Reef Gold" is getting the Shore Bird too. I hope they like these. I'm having a lot of fun doing them and I'm getting some very cool ACEOs from the people above me in the swap signup -- they flip a coin whether direction is up or down and you send one to the person above you, for each time you sign up, or the person below. So you don't actually get return art from the person you send to. It's very random and fun, and the theme means that I get a lot of them on subjects I like more than not because I sign up more often for the ones I like best. Like this one. Me and reefs.

I have no idea what I'll do for the last one but it'll probably be watercolor because I have them out and I'm puttering with them.

Opalescent Squid, Daniel Smith Interference Green, Iridescent Gold and Duochrome Turquoise watercolors on black Rising Stonehenge with just a touch of Sakura Koi black in the eyes to touch up the pupils. I love how strong these colors are, and the Duochrome does shift back and forth bluer or greener depending on the angle you look at it. I've got to get an entire tube of that color at least, it's way too useful.



Northern Sea Star again in Daniel Smith watercolors from the sampler, this time using Undersea Green, French Ultramarine, Carbazole Violet, Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Burnt Orange, Sodalite Genuine and Perylene Red with a little Winsor & Newton Titanium White Gouache for the tube feet and some mottling on the vase sponge it's crawling over. I had fun with the rocks and the algae. Genuine Sodalite is expensive but it's wonderful, like a granulating Paynes Grey, useful in all the ways Payne's Grey is but has this neat texture of its own.

They knew what they were doing sending samples like that -- and big usable samples too that I could do entire ACEOs with.



A Surly Fish might be a piranha, I got it from Unrestricted-Stock on DeviantART Underwater Pack III, and there were no species labels on the royalty-free photo references in the pack. But it looks like a piranha, it has that look to it, that shape and also those eyes with the bony shade over them. Pretty nasty looking fish in a bad mood there. Or just built to bite. I used Sodalite Genuine, Hansa Yellow Medium, Undersea Green and Duochrome Turquoise -- the background is a light wash of Duochrome Turquoise.

I love how these watercolors handle. They are excellent. I'm very tempted to just order the colors in the sampler, having tested them all before using any of them in these. They mix wonderfully, the shimmery iridescents and duochromes and all have enough intensity to show up well on black and are some of the best iridescence-on-black things I've done. I was especially impressed with how the Opalescent Squid scanned. Often if I do metallic on black, it'll scan dark and the metallic or shimmery effects will be lost in the scan -- but it shows up great. Nothing to sneeze at when the market really likes glittery ACEOs but if they don't scan well that's hard to impress buyers with, those paints themselves might be worth it. Just those three.

I'll have to juggle what's left after I do my computer repairs and see whether to do some of the Blick or go to Daniel Smith and still plan Blick as an entire month unto itself. The price went up on some of my Blick stuff so that also makes Daniel Smith more attractive. None of the colors in the sampler were the same as the ones that I bought either, and none are the same as any in my Winsor & Newton set except French Ultramarine, which is one of those staple colors that gets used in vast quantity and is on sale. Both the Primary and Secondary triads are on sale cheaper than the one I just got. But the way their site works it's got its own coupons and deals, and so planning the order rather than spreading it out might be good too. I'll decide later. But their sampler was definitely a good idea for them, it's got me seriously understanding why Aladyx swears by these paints.

They are completely dried out and dissolve very easily when touched with a dry brush. If I got these I'd probably use a dedicated palette and just squish some out and keep refilling the palette rather than wiping it out every time, though the size of the tubes is very handy for frugality -- the price is not bad at all for 15ml tubes that are really good size.

I am happy with them and extremely relieved about the swap. I've sent out four cards plus my two Open Swap cards, now I've painted three more tonight, and so I've got only two to go.

Lisa did an enormous beautiful Goddess painting in Derwent Inktense with the four elements, and she loves Inktense. It's so her medium, she took to it naturally as soon as she tried them. It's bright and vivid but she did it on 12" x 16" watercolor paper so we don't have scans of it for me to post hers too, or I would. I should've snapped a photo. I hope she does and posts it on DeviantART.

kkitten42 has three new LJ accounts! All of them topical. kansasspinner, copywriterinfo and [Bad username: kansasherbalist> are all <lj user=] doing her Topical Blogs thing. Check them out and friend them, all are going to have posts with tons of useful information. That is if you're interested in the topics -- Spinning (and dyeing and knitting and stuff with yarn, making it and using it), Copywriting (a useful skill for anyone who sells anything online) and Herbalism. Way cool sites.

The Octopus is going out to one of my eBay friends in the June Under the Sea themed swap that I signed up for nine times. It's the fourth Under the Sea swap card I've done. But I've also got it up as a step by step demonstration in How to Underpaint for Colored Pencil where it's got lots of scans every step of the way underpainting it and penciling it. I made the picture with the sketch full width so it would be easy to grab, enlarge and print out for the reader's version of the Octopus and gave explicit permission for readers to copy this drawing and artwork, and even sell your version or prints of your version as long as you credit me for the sketch and, if allowed, link to the article when you put it online. eBay may not allow links in an item description to go out to HubPages, so I got them off the hook for it, just post the link if it's allowed. Like say, on LJ or DeviantART or your blog wherever it is.

If you were considering doing eHow, now would be the time to sign up through this link: Robert's Referral Link to eHow because they are doing a membership drive, and referrals will get me bennies. eHow is the place where I've posted so many How To articles, and it's easy to write for it. Unlike some other pay for posts places I've signed up for over the years, eHow actually paid out during the first month I was doing it.

That's a biggie in itself, a lot of them say they pay and then you wind up with 38 cents in your account after dozens of articles and wonder just who's actually getting paid there. Ehow has a template that's very rigid, it's boilerplate Step By Step Instructions and you may want to use only one paragraph per Step. Some of my articles had multiple paragraphs suddenly and mysteriously combine to one. Pictures with the steps are good, but they can be phone-cam shots as the pictures aren't very big.

It can be anything, not just how to draw stuff. That's just my gig. A lot of people seem to be raking it in on posting recipes for this and that, and household repairs or love advice. I did a few things like that, things like how to write a love letter to a goth or how to clean cat urine off your couch.

So if you wanted to try it, doing it now before the 29th will actually get me some bennies if you click that link to go sign up versus just going there off one of my articles. You also have to post at least one article, but it can be literally on anything, it just has to be How To. How to get mushrooms out of your basement. How to find things in your attic. How to pass an AP exam. Just anything you know how to do, put in Step By Step format, which is not hard with their software.

I finally got out of the up all night thing, and got up at nine this morning. Wow wow wow. Too bad that had to happen on a sick day, it's been a bad morning for the fibro n arthritis. My spine is giving me big problems at the moment and I haven't created anything, haven't finished the article for hubpages or done anything else but go through my email and pack up an ACEO to be mailed out. I need to get caught up on my Under the Sea swap cards, maybe that is what I'll try to do today. I could do one of them as a demo for the article and that'd help get things done.

We have Eric here for the summer, Kitten's fourteen year old brother. If you're wondering how her brother isn't my son, I adopted Kitten and have not adopted Eric, but he is a very cool guy. I was giving him art lessons a while back before her mom moved, and he is very talented. He came back to spend time with his friends, everyone he knows is here where he grew up.

We have the naptime waterworks starting from Sascha, but that's ephemeral. I love living here.

ACEO Winter Rabbit is another June Doodle Challenge bargain. I played with different scribbles and marks, started with the big fat snow covered pine and then did the rabbit in and the banks of the creek. The creek just happened. I can't seem to avoid putting a creek or a lake in when I make up landscapes. There must be water. It's a little light, but that's partly the scan, in person it's a bit easier to see the most delicate lines.

Other than that I'm feeling vaguely drug out and the weather is overcast and vaguely drug out. It could well be the weather that has me not feeling like I've got the energy for doing anything difficult, be it article or drawing or whatever. Eh, I'm going to relax and see if I feel better in a bit. Or pick an easy topic to write a new HubPages article. Like one without a difficult demo artwork involved. lol

I got to bed around six this morning and got up around two, so maybe tomorrow I'll be up by noon and feel like I have more energy to do things. I hope so. I'm tired of being this tired and drug out.

That's easy. I don't associate food with romance or attraction. It could be anything that tastes good that I happen to be sharing with someone I'm attracted to. My ideas of romance are tied up in other activities than meals, like long intellectual conversations or shared fiction or roleplaying games or shared craft or art activities. It's not really about eating for me. In a lot of ways food isn't as social to me as it is for a lot of people, partly because I've got food allergies and sensitivities that interfere and make it hard to eat with other people, combined with the logistic problem of most "romantic" restaurants involving chairs I can't sit in and formality that leaves me feeling anything but romantic. More like in a panic that I'm going to get flamed over what I like to eat or can't eat or how I sit when I can't sit like a normal person. My experience of "romantic dinners" is very limited and they were mostly at home with a lover... and even then it wasn't the food that was memorable compared to what happened later.

Valentine chocolates don't mean romance to me, they mean rejection and social rejection dating way back before romance was even an issue. Or they mean a treat childishly gained at a bargain by grabbing the big cheap marked-down boxes the day after the anxiety-raddled holiday. Cheap Chocolates Day is what I celebrate.

Getting Started on Colored Pencil Realism is my latest HubPages article -- and in total it's 5,149 words in seven text capsules. It's almost a chapter for a North Light book. It's mostly about getting the right supplies and covers the differences between brands on colored pencils in a bit more depth as well as papers and erasers and sharpeners. Check it out. I had a little trouble with layout on it and breaking up the sidebar into four different article-lets but once I was done formatting, it came out well.

I may not get quite so long on later ones, but this one stuck together as a topic and I wanted it all in one place. Experiments.

I was up all night last night. I couldn't sleep, and then kkitten42 couldn't sleep either, so we talked for a while and then watched Batman Begins together. Then the kids got up so we all watched Men in Black II again at Sascha's insistent request. By the end of the second movie I was finally tired, went nose down into Ari's waterbed and didn't get up till four in the afternoon. I started on HubPages and so I haven't even done all of my email yet, or drawn anything.

I did post one eBay listing: Ari Vignette Photo ACEO limited edition print 1/12.



It's one of the best Ari photos ever, and I have seven more that I can list on days when I don't have new art to post because it's for swap cards. I should work on my swap cards tonight, since I still have six more Under the Sea ones to do.

Or I'll turn in early and get back on my regular sleep schedule, which would be great if it happens since I like having daylight for drawing. But I accomplished something! The fourth HubPages article is a good one. I should put all four of those up in my DeviantART footer in another list with the eHows list, so people can find them easily.

I'm tired even though I haven't been up that long, so maybe the sleep early thing will work. Maybe I just needed a whole lot of sleep...

Bookshelf Cat is the demo drawing from my third HubPages article: How to Create Five Minute Art, which was fun to do and expanded my understanding of the upload process. Instead of putting the whole article in a text capsule, I made three separate text capsules for the beginning, middle and end of the article with a separate illustration for each. It takes stopping to post again more frequently, but the article's total wordcoust is a happy 2,760 and I can credit myself for it twice on Summer Fun Run, because I also edited it before posting. That includes the little tinted sidebar article on photo references and copyright.

If you sign up as my Fan on HubPages, what that means is like friending someone at Etsy. But it also does something else -- it gives you an email whenever I post a new article. So if you enjoy these, become my fan. If you write any HubPages articles, let me know and I will fan you too. The term is cute but the connection's great, and I am having so much of a good time getting the setup going on this. It's like when I first started on eHow, let's see if these articles get as popular as the eHow ones! They are a little longer and sometimes structured differently. If you read both groups of my articles, I'd like to know what you think of the formats too -- I could with a little work create a Hub that has a layout somewhat like eHow with less text and more small pictures.

Today is a good day. With both an article and an ACEO posted already, I think I may get a lot done today! I hope so anyway.

Yes and no. I wander in and out of the LJ community, and I joined years and years ago. But what it means to me is essentially a place I can meet cool people and keep in touch with my friends, converse about those weird subjects that come up at four in the morning sometimes, and post my progress on things I'm doing. I think over the years though, that while I still come here to do that, my content has changed.

Before I moved here to Lawrence, the content of my entries was more often ideas and long term plans. Hopes that I hung onto despite crises and unlivable extremes of hard times and bad situations. I was not often posting day to day things so much as my ideas and plans. Two years ago when I moved here I was about half dead, as happened in more than one move. But I recovered, and kept recovering, and things never did turn bad. A lot of the dreams and hopes we had at the start are either real or are near-future plans instead of long term plans. Things that were just cool ideas for Someday are things here right now or planned tangibly for next year or next month.

I'm happy. It's a vast difference, the biggest difference. I'm happy, my life is good, there are a lot of good things to post about and cute stories about my granddaughter and grandson and puppy Zoe and Ari Cat and kkitten42 and her husband the anthropologist come into it more often. There were always Cute Ari Stories, there are more cool things now on that order. Things that used to be wishes are just plain tangible plans or have been done and are showing results.

So it's the same topic but the life I'm writing about is so categorically different I might as well be on another planet. I'm in the Good World, not just trying to make it real by moving toward it and believing it will one day be possible.

I'm changing my avatar for a new cool artwork, it's time again because I did another one I like that much.

I didn't draw or write articles today, I rested. Yesterday was three major accomplishments and today I mostly did my mail and hung out on forums and relaxed, which is okay. I could use a rest after a day that intense! And I am happier still about how that Silver and Cherries one wound up, it is growing on me the longer I look at it sitting on the easel -- I don't keep it hidden in the album, it's out where I can enjoy it. If it doesn't sell this time, then it doesn't get relisted and I'll do a different one to sell, this one is way too cool to keep trying to chase it out of my house.

I did something cool in editing it. When I selected the main points to create a square version and crop out some of the background elements above and below the silver creamer and cherries, the only way to get the full width was to cut the signature monogram in half. I wound up covering the partial monogram with about five or six layers of scribbled and airbrushed selected dark colors from the rest of the background in Gimp, then after I textured and blended that to look like I'd never had one there... I selected and copied the monogram and pasted it into its present position closer to the creamer. Voila, it worked, and looks like that's where I put the monogram in the art. I'm very proud of that careful photomanipulation even if it was just to create a digital variation of a square artwork from an oblong one. When this one gets reduced, the metallic effect is still powerful. I loved how the thumbnail on the listing looked, and that's what made me think it'd be a good avatar!

Yep, here's a new Hub: Review: Masterful Color by Arlene Steinberg. I reviewed Masterful Color. Not just a happy rave about what it did for me, but a good thorough review including my observation that her techniques do work best using her materials -- Prismacolors Premier or Lightfast, and Rising Stonehenge.

As I test other colored pencils sets with the technique I can add little side text boxes with the results of those trials, or put all the trials results into one tinted sidebar. It's relevant information, but I haven't researched it yet. I can add more pictures too, so I can add images of the ones I create using Caran d'Ache Pablo or Polychromos or Lyra to see how those work. My guess is that Lyra Rembrandt is the other brand most likely to come out with stunning results when doing dozens of layers, though Pablos may do well with it too.

I also need to try it using just Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils for the simple reason that someone reading my guide to buying colored pencils brands on eBay decided the best starter set was 36 Prismacolor Watercolor. It made sense to me -- those do have a texture just like Prismacolor Premier or Premier Lightfast, but I need to test them used dry with this technique just the same to prove the point, to see if I really can do something like that just in that range and just with the watercolor pencils.

I love and adore the technique.

The best silver metal object I ever painted in colored pencils or any medium is sitting down there in the previous entry to this one and I used Arlene Steinberg's techniques with it on white Rising Stonehenge paper. But I need to test it on Arches Paper too, and on Arches Paper that has been soaked and let to dry so that the sizing is washed off.

So many product tests. So much fun doing them as ACEOs too.

I'm feeling all accomplished because in one long creative day I have done two excellent artworks plus written and formatted an article. This rocks. I should go wordcount the review so that I can add it to my Summer Fun Run total -- since writing Hubs is now a part of this summer's main project.

It's launching enough online cool things that I can be self supporting again and novel sales do not knock me off Social Security or vanish into it without being any material improvement in my income. Just one pro novel sale could -- and I would bitterly resent that if I wound up losing my check because of it but had no cushion or no backup plan or anything I could do if I didn't just live on the same money as the Social Security till the check ran out. I think I'm economically safer building online businesses till I'm full time Self Employed again.

I think that I have been through enough trouble in the past decade to deeply fear losing Social Security without something steady to land on, and that this has more to do with my procrastination on major submissions than anything else right now. But it shouldn't really stop me from magazine subscriptions, so maybe I'll try to do some short material and aim it at magazines while I'm doing all this online stuff, while puttering and preparing good novels and do the agent search.

If I concentrate on the agent search, then I have got one fallback itself. If I get the agent and explain my entire situation -- yes all these titles, triaged for how much work to edit and prep them for proper submission by how much work they are -- plus "I need to earn enough to live on reasonably well like a working person does, this is the income I've got," would be enough to get the agent doing the thing I don't have the knowhow for -- sorting the stockpile and finding markets for what there is. Plus finding markets for some of the nonfiction, the one I want does handle some nonfiction books too.

I entered the big Prismacolor contest with an eye to becoming a North Light author. I may want to join the CPSA once I'm past my next big goals -- and my biggest after getting my Master Sets now is to build up savings for a computer replacement/repair fund, so that I don't wind up offlined if I have a problem like this CDRW crash. Oh in some ways I'm not offlined, I could at least check my eBay listings on one of the upstairs computers daily so that I'm not leaving buyers unresponded to for a week while offline if they bid on something. It's that or cancel all my listings before handing off the computer so that there is nothing that needs checking and post Leave of Absence on all my groups so none of my friends think I'm dead and no one leaves me urgent messages expecting a reply.

It's 3:00 am and I'm awake, but may wind down in an hour or so. I've had an incredibly good day with three accomplishments, not just one, so I think I'm going to relax now and feel good about it. And get up when I get up, the days are so long that if I sleep late I don't miss the daylight and still have some bright hours for art or reading or whatever.