Nothing to say really, just had something if anyone wanted to see.

I kind of love Pigeon Eagle but he needs a lot more work, crit would be nice.
 

 
 

ETA: I suck at vector, but this is not news and probably needs no heralding. I thought I’d share an embryonic little vector w.i.p. though, because I might as well get used to practising my crummy vector skills. At the moment this looks like it belongs in a nursery, but I’m planning on making this look more bad-ass and forming a repeat pattern. The colours aren’t really set yet, the current ones are just to work with for the moment. I realise I might have a lusty obsession with the colour blue at the moment.

Tags: my vocation, w.i.p.'s

So my Dad came home from the shops with one of those 50g Smarties boxes for me - and one for himself, I feel like he's using me to be complicit in his own binge, although too be fair I'm so buried beneath work I'm behind I'm eating whatever happens to be around whenever I crawl out of my little half-corner. My first though when seeing the box (apart from Oooooh Smarties) was the clearly articulated thought of "Wow there must be some weird shit in nature" upon seeing the new "No artificial colours or flavours" line bannered across it. Actually though, the colours of Smarties have changed. They're actually a lot nicer now, the blue is just gorgeous independently of the other colours, and they all work brilliantly together. The colours also proved to be very rapidly appetising, hence why I have no photographic documentation to share and can only implore you to conduct your own research.
I must find that blue again. It was this kind of muted electric blue. It would be a great colour to paint my bedroom once I one day get my own place. I'd love to have an electric blue room like the David Bowie line.

In other news I went to a fantastic 21st on Saturday - no pictures, I should have remembered a camera but I'll link to any that appear - with very fun people abundant. We also played this cool game named Werewolf involving cards, and villagers, and werewolves and other roles and during the night (when the other players have their eyes closed) the werewolf card-holders decide by committee who they're going to maul, and then the next day the villagers wake up sans one, and decide who'll be lynched as a suspected werewolf today. Shockingly, I actually got elected as sheriff for the first of the three rounds because of my advertised abilities to make quick and irrational decisions - and as sheriff I had a double vote in the lynching. My rein was on the whole fairly successful; sure it was a little bloodthirsty and I lynched my oldest friend who had helped me rise to power on suspicion that she was being nice to me out of wolfish motives, and sure she turned out to just be a villager, but my theory that ruff-collars was a sign of lycanthropy in players proved strangely sound as she pointed out - two of the three ruff-collar wearing players were 2 of the three total werewolves. Oh, and I had a bloody end in a scheme by the two then surviving werewolves, but I at least had the good judgment to pass my double-point lynching vote onto someone who was NOT A WEREWOLF. For serious.

On the plus side the werewolf who schemed for my demise in the first round (in the second round I was a werewolf and in the third was lynched by my friend's avenging boyfriend even though he'd already used his seer card to see my card and knew I was merely another bloodthirsty villager) was a totally cool individual. I mean, we were trying to bargain for being allowed to speak from beyond the grave after our lynchings (or maulings, she may have been mauled, I can't recall exactly) and I looked across to my friend Siobhan to make reference to the 51st century comm systems in the Doctor Who season four two-parter Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead which are telepathic and continue speaking for a while after the body has died (the drink I'd imbibed may explain why I thought this far-fetched argument would hold water) and Jayde (Jade?) the long-time friend of my friend Ros whose birthday party it fabulously was, and first-round lyncher of myself, totally got the reference too. Or at least i think it was her, the sequence of events at the start of the party I'm finding is unraveling in a  somewhat jumbled manner in my piecing together of it, explained by the early C'mon-get-happy-drinks I enjoyed.

Anyway, life is good if busy. Partying is not as conducive to progress in my work as I'd like it to be. I'm liking wondering what sort of degree I could do that partying would be conducive to getting work done, although education and social lubricants and fun times and witty banter and geeky references might never fall in perfect sync.
More the shame for my university work, really.

Dad brought these back from his travels. They were less bean-shaped than I usually expect jellybeans to be, and more favourable too. I mean, they actually tasted like flavours and not miscellaneous colours, which is always a little strange but I did find myself getting hooked on certain colours – pink, purple, white, and to a lesser extent red because I don’t like raspberry flavour as much as I enjoy miscellaneous red flavouring.

Also in catching-up-in-blogging events, you know how when you pause a film, or take a snapshot you kind of wind up with really strange looking poses sometimes?

I swear my blog yesterday was true and my kitten does not ride the special school-bus.

Here he is, in his occupation as the bed-warmer to our oldest cat – there’s a fifteen year age-gap between them.

Also, 3^rd w.i.p. of Pigeon Eagle. I think I’ll get it finished tonight. (I hope).

This is actually from a few weeks ago, and I'm surprised even with how busy I've been that I haven't posted this sooner. It's photographic proof that my sister's young cat is actually dumber than my own cat - to provide some back-story to this image, of our 5 (5!) cats the three youngest (Scout, 1-and-a-half, and Mowgli and Gulliver 7 months) all believe that getting inside the house is not through the place the door opens but through the flyscreen. This is a reasonable assumption during warmer days when it's the flyscreen door closed, but not so well when it's the glass door closed. They still try to climb in through a loose corner on the upper part of the flyscreen my older cat Spider created some time ago (clever thing she is) and it doesn't really work so well, after a few times prior to this of fat cats hanging from the flyscreen the top part gave way so they would wind up then sitting on the half-way point of the door. Except for this one time, where the picture comes in; when Mowgli fell down into the maybe two-inch gap between the sliding doors.

I came to discover this, when while I was sitting in the den working on some university work, and Gulliver started to desperately cry, not in itself an unusual occurrence at all as Gulliver is both needy and obnoxious and has never had a thought in his head that he didn't articulate. Up to a couple of minutes ago, he was thrashing and moaning from where he had taken up residence behind my computer screen because I was not patting him  right that second. So as I normally do, I called him but when he ignored me after two calls and kept crying inconsolably I had to set aside what I was doing and go check him out, and this is what I found when I did. Gulliver had stridently raised the alarm to his brother's peril, as his brother is contrastingly a very quiet cat and even while stuck (uncomfortable and causing the door to bulge, but in no harm) he still didn't think it was a good time to speak up. So anyway, in the true story of photojournalism, I took a picture and then went to get my father and helped ease the glass door open so he could go outside and take the flyscreen door of its hinges and bust my sister's cat out.

When I recounted this story to my sister she started panicking and was all "ZOMG, does he have internal bleeding?" because like I said, the gap between the doors is small, but I was like "No, he's fine, just stupid." And having photographic proof of that is good because she likes to call dear earnest Gulliver brain damaged and orange school bus special. He is kind of the latter having bad knees all round and a congenital deformity in his forelegs and a more majorly kinked tail than her own cat, but he's kind of clever (and a hero!) in his own mad little way. On another Gulliver related note he's now been around long enough apparently for my Grandfather to add the prefix "old" to the name he calls him Marmalade because hey, we have too many cats for my Granddad to remember the names to now.

In other cat news - during my father's recent trip abroad his cat expressed her grief visibly as well - her tail lost a staggering amount of bulk and length, and is now a sad echo of its former coon glory. My Mum thinks it's just a coat change from the seasons but bah-humbug I say to that.



And here's a second w.i.p. pf Pigeon Eagle (the initial w.i.p. is in my dA scraps, along with an explanation for the name). Things are a bit rough at the moment (especially the feet - I scrapped the old feet so they're now very early stage) but I have good hopes that it'll turn out okay. Feedback will be nice.

Hopefully I'll start posting regularly again (and getting time to read my friends list) soon.

Tags: family, higher education, kittens, kittyhood obesity, lolcats, my vocation, pets, university work, w.i.p.'s

Okay, so I’m about as caught back up on my university work now as I’m likely to get – I was sick for a bit, and fell behind on course work, hence why I’ve kind of dropped off the face of the internet for a while. Or the inner elbow of the internet, or wherever it is I appear on the anthropomorphic personification of the web.

Anyway, back now, got a lot of blogging and stuff to ramble about to catch up on but for the moment I’ve got some work to share.

Here’s some in progress working on a thistle design. This is going to be a part of a pattern design actually which will involve at least one more major element and maybe some more bells and whistles and flourishes in between.

 

Question I have for all of you – do you think the central thistle motif would look better with a Rampant Red Deer (see a sketch here) or a Lodged Irish Elk (sketch here)?

I’m just interested in hearing some initial ideas from you all. And if there are any other quick little heraldic oddments any of you can come up with that you think would look good mixed in with the specified elements I’d love to hear suggestions of those too.

Thankyou.

ETA:

Tags: my vocation, university work, w.i.p.'s

So I've got a poll for a university assignment to do or fudge, if you feel inspired to respond to it, please do so here. It's mainly for people living in Australia I suppose but anyone can reply to it really. You can also reply with multiple personalities if you so desire, although I don't think I have to turn the full results in at any point (I have to speak generally about the response though) so it doesn't really matter that much how many responses I end up with.

In the meantime, and for this entry to not be entirely boring, have some virtual Double Chocolate Cheesecake with Chocolate Ganache I baked for Easter from this recipe on Instructables. I think it turned out pretty well to how it should've, although I also believe that the recipe is inherently just a bit too rich to really be a candidate for cake perfection. The oreo crumb base was cool though, and the cook books I've ordered have now arrived so I'll be well prepared for the next time I need to bake a cake.

Tags: fun in the kitchen, university work

 

The kitchen smells good. Like, really, really good. Between the Gloria Jean's Caramel flavoured ground coffee wafting from the coffee press (my "whatever-gets-you-through-the-Easter-weekend" supply since our coffee machine is still being fixed) and the freshly baked Double Chocolate Cheesecake with Chocolate Ganache cooling on the stove-top, it's olfactory bliss.

Backtracking though - I meant to blog about this earlier but there always seemed something else I should get around to before this - about a week ago my uncle and father went over to help clean my Grandfather's house. Afterwards I found some authentic fabric from the seventies (Granddad's house is a snapshot of an era past) sitting innocuously in the washing machine. I couldn't resist photographing it because I do love surface pattern design from the seventies, and how often do I encounter real seventies, seventies fabric, in my own home? Now if only a nice constellation mirror would just wander in and never wander out again...

Ideally I would've waited until these were dry to photograph, but I knew I wasn't going to be around when that happened and before they were returned to my lovely little grandfather. I really do love seventies styles, I also would love to get back to my 70's cat postcard series. Hopefully I'll be able to make progress on that soon, I think I'll be going into overdrive on all my personal projects when the far off break between semesters comes up.

I'm also planning on working on my chameleon picture some more on Easter day, but other then that little personal work will be getting done.
 

Tags: creatures of the deep, family, fish, fun in the kitchen, home life, pets

So my dad just showed me this flat beaver shaped pancake like thing lying out on our back lawn. It turns out Scout has a physics defying hunting mode.

It must be super-strength inbred barn cat genes. Her Mother-Grandma is a terrific mouser.

I'd also already this morning conducted an experiment with making a mock-cat door using a cardboard separator that came from the inside of a box, as it turned out, Scout was able to fit through it (though gingerly) though my disbelieving Dad (who treats this cat as his baby) had to repeat the experiment to be sure for himself. We're so wicked to her but she's just so fat.


Gulliver enjoyed the box-part cat door, though Darcy was confused by it. Darcy is confused by most things, although he's also a scheming fiend. I've never known a poodle to be capable of such duplicity as he is with his trick of flamboyantly greeting people into the house as a ruse to nab one of the tennis balls from the front yard and sneakily spirit it away.

Of course, I should remember that this is also the dog who still thinks when he puts the ball on a chair next to him; that our fifteen year old Siamese Cat is going to throw the ball for him. He seems to think when he does it that every other time Pippin's just been being coy, but that this time it might be different. Darcy is special. 

 

Tags: family, home life, kittens, kittyhood obesity, pets, wooffies

So, there was a drawing meme going around, which was modded into another drawing meme, which I'm kind of doing at a snail's pace even though I only have the time because I'm avoiding university work. The original idea with the meme is that you draw in the template, but because I'm a person who draws things out with pen and pencil the old fangled way, I found the boxes too small to draw within, so eventually I decided I'd just rule up panels twice as large, and submit each panel separately, rather than strung together. This makes a lot of sense for me personally, because I don't have the time to do them all at once really, but I'd like to not wait ages to post my response to it, so it's better for me to get the panels done individually and upload them as I finish each of them.

One of the prompts is drawing the skeleton of whatever character you're drawing, so I thought that would be the logical prompt to start on for me, rather than doing them in order (though I've already drafted concepts down for all of them). This is just the basic sketch for that one, and a little bit of initial colour put underneath it, I haven't really tidied up the line work even; it's still very rough.

Tags: personal projects, ugly-as-fuckery, w.i.p.'s