|
Guns and War and Other Manly Stuff | June 22, 2007 |
Mike sometimes squires around famous people as part of his job. He squired around a famous person yesterday, a famous person and her boys. Don't ask me who it was, 'cause I won't tell. The boys love all things guns and war and snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Or kitty cat tails. Mike had a long conversation with one of the boys about kitty cats. This boy, Mike said, held hands with him the entire time Mike was squiring him around along with the famous mother and his brother.
I know that women are perfectly capable of and in many cases have no choice to do anything but raise children on their own. And this boy, this child of a famous person, has a life a billion times better than billions of children throughout the world. But it was so clear from what Mike told me that those boys, especially the one who clung to his hand through the entire squiring around, need some sort of trusted adult man-type person in their lives. And when Mike told me about the hand holding and the shared words about feline friends, it made my coal black heart crumble just a little.
|
|
Founding Fathers Prefer Sudoku
to the Times Crossword | June 18, 2007 |
Still scannerless at the moment. Not that I've drawn anything to post. I did want to make a sketch yesterday on the train home, if that counts for anything. I didn't because it had been a hellacious day, and the headache I'd had for three days was still in full force.
But if I had drawn the sketch, it would have been of this man with longer, wild grey hair and little round glasses who had a mug that looked just like George Washington's. He really looked just like him. White hair, just that certain length and cut. Not all coiffed and curled like GW's official portraits, but more like what you'd expect to see on a general or gentleman farmer.
Looked just like him except that he was wearing a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers.
That and he was working a sudoku puzzle in the Post. |
|
One Foot on the Brake,
and One on the Gas | June 17, 2007 |
Had the test this morning. The administrator was a tough native Staten Island broad with dyed-black hair and giant Dior sunglasses, frosty pink lipstick.
She called me "honey" right after she told me that I passed. Woohoo.
Now what shall I fret about? |
|
No new sketchbook comic or sketches today. I've been busy inking the redrawn/edited version of Cat Nap, trying to get it finished in time to make up some minicomics to take around with me when I go to MOCCA, a comics convention, here in the city next weekend. Just to have, you know, in case I met anyone who might want one, because I was in no way ready to get half a table and put my wares out, because I need some wares first, you know.
I'm happy with the way the redrawn piece looks. I think my drawing has gotten better since the first version, and also my inking. That's been a huge thing to work through, trying to figure out how I wanted to ink. I tried inking with the brush, because that's supposed to be the thing to do, but I didn't like it. I like drawing with rapidographs, but I've read and heard over and over again that inking with those gives an unexpressive, boring line. I do like to keep my sketchbook in rapidograph, but I can see the point for inking finished work. Sort of. Really, you should use what you want, right? I've gone back to using a nib pen with ink, the kind you dip in ink, for most of the inking, using a brush for large areas of black, and doing my borders and lettering in rapidograph.
I'll post the revised version sometime next week.
Not only do I not have anything new to post for you to see today, I wouldn't be able to scan it anyway. We are moving into new offices tomorrow, so everything's all in disarray, and the scanner is disconnected. So if posting is spotty this week, that's why.
By the way, my road test to get my driver's license is tomorrow. |
Namaste? | June 14, 2007 |
|
Oh lordy people. I can barely move to type this. Last night I went to a yoga class at my gym. I'd been practicing at home, telling myself I was so fabulous for practicing almost every day (when in fact I have only practiced once a week for the last month). The last classes I took regularly were beginner level, and I think those were easy even for beginner classes. I totally got what the yoga teacher I used to take classes from was all about, but it wasn't what I was looking for, and I was also tired of being made to feel like a jackass because I wanted something more from it, so I quit going to him a few months ago. I'd been to a class here and there, but just hadn't been able to find anything I liked. Now that I have a fancy new membership to a gym that offers serveral yoga classes a week, I decided to quit kidding myself with the home practice, which was more like meditation with a little stretching thrown in, and take a class.
I went to an Anusara class, which is a popular new type of yoga. I've read several descriptions of it, but I couldn't even tell you, other than it's "heart-centered," whatever that means, how it's significantly different from other types of Hatha yoga. The description on the official Web site was a bunch of New Agey yacketyschmackety.
The class led up to doing this one pose called pigeon (see what it looks like here). I did get into it (with the help of a strap), but I quickly got out, because I thought my thigh muscle was going to detach from the bone. At one point, for another pose, I just stood there, because I couldn't make my leg move. I just looked at it and laughed. There was little puddle of sweat in front of my mat by the end of class. Of course, I'll be going back. |
I'd been thinking of doing a fake ad based on the kinds of things I used to see in comic books when I was little. We never really had too much access to comic books at home, because the only place we would have seen them would have been the grocery store, and the answer to any request we may have had for anything that was not on my mother or grandmother's shopping lists was always "No," but when we'd go stay with our grandfather, he'd buy us whatever we wanted. I remember reading Thor and The Hulk and Archie. The ads for stuff like Charles Atlas and X-Ray goggles and Sea Monkeys were just as good to me as the comics.
Click on the link to see what I came up with. It's a sketch, and I'll probably change it a little when I do a final version, but I'm thinking something like this would be a good last page in the back of the mini comic I'm making.
I've got an idea for another one, but I'm still chewing on it.
See today's sketchbook page. |
The other day I met this guy who's also going up to art camp. I'm thinking I'll probably ride with him, even if I get my license in time. He, like me, is an ex-academic, though he actually managed to finish his dissertation and get his Ph.D., whereas I only pretended to be working on my dissertation for two years and then stopped torturing myself and got out. He's about Mike's age, has been working as a communications writer, like I do, since he stopped teaching. Like me, he always had the desire to make things rather than write about things that other people made, and finds himself now, at the age of 48, recently laid off with a nice severance package, and nothing to do for a while but paint. He'd taken classes at SVA a few years ago and became good friends with my drawing teacher there, the one who leads this art camp dealie in New Hampshire.
Anyway, we were talking about how we'd both gotten to where we were, and we both talked about choosing the academic route because that had somehow seemed more sensible than actually studying art or writing. He'd gone for Lit/Critical Theory, and I went for Art History.
I agonized over that decision about going into Art History after I quit my M.A. program in German. What I really wanted to do was to go to art school, and there was a good one in Columbus, but I had no idea how to even begin to put a portfolio together to try to get in. I'd had a great-grandmother and an auntie who were self-taught gentlewomen painters. It was a hobby, something akin to china painting or needlepoint. I was never discouraged from pursuing anything I wanted, but I wasn't exactly encouraged either.
So here I am, at the age of 40, trying to patch together something like art school, one or two classes here and there a semester or a summer week in New Hampshire at art camp at a time.
I have regrets for sure, but I guess I'm sort of happy that it's turned out this way. He thought that, too.
My conversation with made me recall something from first grade, and I drew a little sketchbook comic about it last night.
See today's sketchbook page.
|
|
So, welcome to the new joint, former readers of a blog that shall remain nameless. I'd been thinking for a while now about starting to do something like a blog, but with comix and drawings. I'll still write some prose posts here, for sure. It's just no longer anonymous, even though I think most of you know who I am anyway. I was starting to not like the anonymity. It's going to take a little bit of work to get this in a format I'm happy with. I've got haloscan comments installed. I know those can be pesky, so we'll see how that goes. You can always send me an old-fashioned email if you have something to say: susanne.shaver@gmail.com
See today's sketchbook page.
|
|
 |
I did this one back in January, when temperatures in New York City were in the 60's and even 70's for much of the month. |
| | | |
