Who says Batgirls don’t read comics? See, Barbara Gorden likes to relax after a night of crime fighting by catching up on the latest Detective Comics.
I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I just had the image of Barbara chilling at home knee deep in comics.
Colored Pencils.
Today is Thursday, so I’m going to tell you about someone I’m thankful for. It’s also lent, so I have a Daily Creativity for you also. I combined the two :)
I’m Thankful for my mother, who I lovingly call Momacita. It’s not just an internet code name I use, but something I started when I was younger. Whenever we were in a store and I called out “Mom,” looking for my mother, six women would turn around. So I started calling her Momacita to circumvent this.
My mother isn’t perfect, but she is awesome. She taught me a lot of things, like how to be strong, stand up for yourself and that you can take on a million things and not be a failure. I have a habit of wanting to do everything, and perhaps part of that is because my mother always was doing everything. With a father out to sea for half the year my mother was a single mother, not just when Dad was away, but even when he was home because she was the only constant parent (aside from the help my siblings gave her.) My mother took care of not only her nine children but also took in extras. She volunteered most of my youth and then went to work full time when I was in the eighth grade. I watched my mother rise from middle management to executive pretty quickly and found that to be an inspiration. My mother taught me how to interview, how to conduct myself in business and how to keep professional without being cold. (After an interview, send a thank you note, trust me, it works). I want to do everything because my mother (and other women in her family, I’ll get to those later) take on everything. Because of this I also know it’s ok to fail sometimes, it’s ok to not be perfect and it’s ok to pick yourself up and try again.
Years ago I was living on Long Island and Momacita and I fell into a nice groove. We would go to the Laundromat together each week and do laundry. We would meet at the gym and work out (I should post the picture of us crossing the finish line at the long island half marathon here, but I’m not sure I would have her permission) together five days a week and trained for races together. We would hit up the wholesale bulk store together and split up the giant packs of food. It was more than just doing errands, it was a time to talk and get to know one another. In my whole life I think that time might be one of the best times with my mother, we formed a bond then that I hold onto today. Now that I live in another country I miss my mom, I miss being able to run errands with her, to go for a manicure with her, or just workout. I miss her, but because of the bond we have I will always have her with me. That, and Facetime :) Thanks to Momacita being plugged in, all I have to do is use the facetime app on my computer and it rings her iPad, we make sure we video conference every week (since we realized we could do this) and it makes me very happy to be able to visit with her, even if I am so far away.
As for the daily creativity. I drew this with pencils, based off a snapshot I have of her holding my nephew. It’s not quite Momacita, there is something off, but it’s kinda close. It’s always hard to draw people who are so close to me. I don’t know why.
Today is Ash Wednesday and that marks the beginning of Lent for us Catholics. For any of my new readers since last year, let me explain what that means for this blog. Often for lent people give things up, that doesn’t work for me, it doesn’t make me feel closer to God at all, instead I take something on. Every day of lent I MUST do one “Daily Creativity”, one creative work of art. Then I post it with a little bit about the piece on this blog. I also make sure that every day in March I do this for “Art Month”, since this year lent and art month coincide it’s no extra work and 40 days of daily creativity.
Today while looking for inspiration I opened up google to find a google doodle in honor of Heinrich Hertz, so I decided to do his portrait. I must say, he died young but gave science to much.
I started this sketch way back in November (at the write all night event in Nova Scotia) and FINALLY finished it this week. I decided to use colored pencils on this and I think I like how it came out. It all came out of a joke when someone (Pretty sure it was Liz) wanted a dragon for their NaNoWriMo story, I held up Rory and they said they needed an Asian Dragon, so I said Rory just needed a kimono :P
I said I wanted to blog more in 2012 and it has taken me ten days to come up with a second post. (Granted, I was away in New York Celebrating my family’s christmas and not able to blog for 8 of those days and I don’t really have a blog topic per say.) I need to record Nutty Bites, but they are doing construction to the foundation of the house behind me so every 30 seconds to ever minute there is a loud thud sound that makes it sound like I’m under fire, not to mention startling my nerves. I am currently avocado (this is a term my husband and I have come up with when you use your big headphones to block all audio from the real world and tune into music, a game, a video or podcasts) to save my sanity.
I wanted to post this picture when I painted it, but I couldn’t because it was part of the present I gave to my Kris Kringle (confused? I refer you again to my family’s christmas) so I didn’t want to give away the surprise. The painting is a water color of a sketch I did a while ago of an elf, a specific elf, an elf my sister plays named Caelan (or some spelling like that, she has a few characters with the name.) Again I will say I am really enjoying getting back into watercolors, I can see why a lot of artists like acrylics these days, its faster, but I just don’t like the flatness when the painting is done, yet with the watercolors, which are even faster, and easy to clean up and set up but I feel like I can get a lot of depth to the images.
A lot of people tell me they can’t get behind watercolors because they are so drippy and uncontrolled, I hope that from my few paintings I have shared so far you can see how much control you can get over the medium. I wish I had images of the sailboat scenes I’ve done for my mom years ago to show you. I didn’t document my work as much then as I do now and it’s a shame. Then I only used film on the most completed of works, I didn’t want to waste film (remember those days?) Now it’s easy, everything is digital, scan it, photograph it and it’s saved forever.
I’ve been trying to draw on my iPad but I just can’t control the stylus like I can with my tablet, the iPad isn’t sensitive enough, I know that Cynical Woman does amazing things on her iPad, I’ll have to get her to show me how she does it at Balticon or something.
I cam home from vacation with stacks of day job work and all the stacks of voice work and recording I’m already behind on. Coming back to construction wasn’t helpful for the recording side, but I’m hoping to do some late night recording to get it taken care of. I really need a sound proof booth because the new house just picks up every sound from the outside, you’d think I would hear our neighbors a lot more (it’s a duplex) but I have heard them perhaps three times since moving in. I’m not creating excuses for why things are behind, I don’t like it when other people do that :) I’m just reflecting on what’s going on in my life.
Something I have done, that isn’t recording or paying work but is a good break is I’m playing Star Trek Online again. I played this when it first came out, and since the game is going free to play they are allowing anyone who have subscribed in the past to play now, before everyone else (Jan 17th) which is pretty nifty. There is a bit of learning curve as they changed so much about the game since I played last, a lot of really good improvements. The game is sleeker and runs a lot nicer, there doesn’t seem to be any wait to get onto the server, which used to be a problem. There has been almost no rubberbanding, which also was a problem before, I haven’t had it happen once, Tek had it happen I think on the first day and that’s it. Going back to STO just reinforces my decision to not play an MMO in the first six months, I know that doesn’t help the game thrive, but I can’t take the adjustment period. Also, I LOVE free to play games. I still play a subscription for DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) but I can’t see myself paying for more than one MMO, I can see myself buying items from the store and doing micro transactions. I think it’s a great business model and the way to go for MMO gaming, I never feel guilty if I don’t play LotRO, Champions, Conan or now STO, because I’m not paying monthly for it. I actually think just describing this I may have talked myself into switching to F2P for DDO.
I got a lot of comics for Christmas and Epiphany, Kill Shakespeare, Game of Thrones, Dollhouse, Mause, Iron Man Nior and now Vol 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 I think of Buffy Season 8, I need to get my hands on 3 & 4 before I start that though. I looked into getting the digital versions, but they sell those by the issue number, not the trade volume number, so I need to figure out what issue number was the last in vol 2. I also started downloading a ton of Sherlock Holmes books in digital format so I can reread them, I started reading and am just loving every minute of it, it’s transporting me to happy childhood days of reading.
What are you reading now? What are you playing?