No art today either, unless you want to see the color chart for my 92 stick set of Erengi Art Aspirer. It came this afternoon and it's beautiful. A much smaller box than I feared from the picture up at Jerry's Artarama. It weighs all of maybe 4lb when it's stuffed solid with brand new sticks. So compact and handy!

I didn't do anything except answer some (not all) email and post a little on forums and ... be sick and sit around reading. But thanks to a critique I got on Raven Dance from a friend, I came up with some good ideas on what to do in the rewrite -- what to fix and what to highlight in order to improve the misplaced emphasis and eliminate excess explication.

The title of the first book when it's split into two just made sense too. Raven Song. Yep. Music is running all through that one as a theme. The dancing doesn't happen till the second volume. Works! Followed by Raven Flight when they do finally go to outer space and bang into culture conflicts there.

Its time has come, there are a few very timely things in it.

The person who critiqued my book also pointed out that the character who has the most major change of heart does not actually change much in his personality or even his values and priorities. He changes his paradigm and his views on right and wrong to a large degree -- and is still the same person after the deep change. Happier but still himself. I was so glad someone noticed that!

That also twisted around in my head and became major rumination for my Nano2008, yes that really is its working title. Unless I change it to Untitled, Mixed Media, except I think that one has to be about an android or someone's magical creation.

Perhaps with everything I'm doing, what I needed today wasn't just physical rest but a mental rest. I'm a lot more clear headed now on doing the figures for my digital artwork -- and tomorrow is Thursday. Lisa got tied up with a computer crash at home, personal crisis when her mate Alfred lives online. It would be for me too, don't laugh! But she'll be here tomorrow.

If I crash early I will probably be up early again tomorrow. I didn't sleep much last night, went to bed at four in the morning and got up at seven thirty on one sleep-cycle, not two, but got in some daylight which I sorely needed.

I am feeling... rested, and happy.

Oh. I did do something! I just hesitate to get a photo or scan of it because it's in progress and it is SOOOOO bad!

I used my early birthday present from Kitten & Karl today on a nice chunk of smooth grained 2 x 4 that Karl gave me, to do a piece of Ugly Firewood. Yep. I carved out a little triangle knot, very badly. I suspect I was using the wrong tools for the shapes I wanted. But I can try again and again. It's a big piece of practice wood and pine is pretty darn soft. The knife is very sharp in all its tools. I stropped both of the ones I used, the v-gouge and the chisel.

I don't think I will be doing any woodcuts with fine lines in soft pine, it got pretty splintery across the grain with the V-scorp and that would not make clean lines. But I could get very good hatching with it if I go in the direction of the grain.

Learning curve. New artform at which I am so much a total duffer. I'll be trying the other four tools in succession on the bit of pine to see what they do and how best to handle them. I think cutting shallow is probably best for this more than trying to drive it deep and it got stuck and I had to break off the splinter.

I do not need to drive myself seven days a week to get things done, especially if I'm pushing my comfort zone and trying new things. Some time thinking through what worked in Gimp may even make the people LOTS easier to draw.