Went on a photo excursion today. I’m working on this little seasonal photograph-based art project and I had photos that worked for every season except spring, so we ran around graveyards and wandered around Salem to get some appropriately springy photos. I have one I can use for my project now, and a bunch of lovely other ones to spare.
Bunches more on my Flickr photostream. Beautiful day, happy blossom-filled spring with flowers and bumblebees and sunshine.
It’s May! It’s warm and blossomy and rainy and happy Springy goodness. I baked cookies today, which wasn’t terribly Springy but still fun.
I won Jenny Rappaport’s blogiversary microfiction contest over on Lit Soup. I was totally surprised, I entered on a whim mostly because the challenge of a 140 character story appealed to my OCD tendencies and I liked the result I came up with too much not to enter. I’m still giddily happy about winning. It makes me feel better about the writer part of artist/writer, since I still lean heavily to the art side. Excited about getting new books. One can never have too many books.
I started a dreamwidth account, mostly because I could. I’m erinism over there. Have yet to decide what to do with that journal, exactly, but I’m oddly glad to have it. Art content may migrate over there, or maybe not. We’ll see how it goes. It’s shiny and new and I do have a penchant for shiny things.
Anyway. Have wine & cookies. Am going to try updating this blog every day in May and see how that goes. Topics & suggestions welcome. There will likely be lots of pictures of kittens
For spring, which has sprung, a random list of artsy things I would like to do/try/attempt someday, when time and space and money and such fickle things align properly:
And I have a long-harbored desire to make an installation sculpture consisting of a skull stuffed with teabags and a top hat, entitled Requiem for the Mad Hatter.
The weather gods decided to drop a weekend of summer into the middle of spring. It is warm to the point of floptastically floppy kittens and desperate desire for sangria. (I have the floppy kittens, but sadly lack sangria.)
I am reading and writing and contemplating a series of monochromatic rainbow paintings.
The other day Stephen Fry tweeted about Bat for Lashes and of course I had to investigate Stephen Fry-approved music. I haven’t fallen this hard in music love since I first heard the Dresden Dolls.
I listened to everything I could find online and then promptly bought both albums on iTunes. LOVE. It’s like someone put all my favorite music in a blender with a volume of fairy tales and a bottle of red wine. There was supposed to be a show in Boston tomorrow but that’s now postponed until August, which makes me extremely happy since I wouldn’t have been able to go tomorrow but might be able to depending on when exactly in August said show is postponed until.
So, anyway. Basking in unseasonable summer and in music love. Will likely spend the afternoon sketching knights and keeping an eye on the Kitten Flop Barometer.
I finished draft 4 of the novel on Monday. I think it’s draft 4, it might be draft 3.5. I immediately found about 8 things that need changing but since that draft is now safely in the hands of three trustworthy beta readers (if they’ve already beta’d it are they gamma readers now?) so I am trying to let it go. I made notes, but I put them aside to work on and I am trying to distract myself with other things.
It is not going so well. But it’s only been a couple days so I should probably chill out about it.
I’m working on the tarot court cards. I have rough sketches for the pages and yesterday I worked on the knights a bit. Here is a sneak preview of the Knight of Wands for those of you who did not already see it via Twitter:
The large stack of paper the sketchbook is sitting on is the aforementioned draft 4-or-possibly-3.5. Happily the boy has taken it away today so it’s no longer taunting me from the coffee table. Am pleased with the knight sketch, need to do at least another one today and hopefully will have sketches for all of them by the weekend. Still not sure what to do with the queens or kings, but will worry about that later.
Other things I am doing to keep myself from over-thinking the novel include reading other novels. I finally finished Palimpsest yesterday and sadly didn’t like it as much as I’d wanted to. It’s gorgeously written, of course, but I didn’t connect with it at all. It hit wrong notes for me, or wasn’t my cup of tea or some other musical or beverage-based metaphor. Everyone else I know seems to love it, so it may just be me and my peculiar tastes.
I’ve pulled out a lot of my creativity books again, to continue ongoing self-analysis of my often tumultuous creative process. And I have more novels in the to-read pile for when I get sick of my own brain.
There is tea and sunshine, and I should probably paint something but not while I’m wearing this shirt.
Also, I have vague aspirations of updating this blog every day in May. Suggestions for content or photos or questions to answer welcome.