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Why did I wait all this time and hang out like crazy for Ravelry and then spend most of today doing calligraphy, knitting and spinning? I can be a perverse individual, hm?
Anyways, I give you... the finished fing! I'm enormously satisfied with my efforts. It took about 3 1/2 hours total, so a nice little quicky there. I can hardly wait to drag it in to work :D
OMG!
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hehehehehehe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *disappears for a week*
I put another coupla layers on the "why not" piece today, and I'm learning and re-learning lots of valuable lessons (like why it says on the fixative can to hold 20cm away from piece and apply in THIN layers) *ahem* and how to cover up or compensate for disasters (like when you get carried away with the fixative and end up with magenta runs all over your piece. Hehe.)
So this is how it's looking! I've been adding layers of gouache and doing things like writing, and then rubbing it off (the why nots in the background are done like this) and applying watered down gouache which pools and makes interesting patterns when it mixes with the fixative and other layers (the big white letters on top).
I'm happily anticipating adding this to the office wall - which is bare and boring and beginning to look better week by week as I pop new pieces up. If only I could work out how to make things actually stick to (or in) the wall - it's bumpy concrete, and even blue tac gives up. Revolting stuff. I wasn't really very interested in putting much up when I first started, as I was unsure whether I would stay with the job or not. The three months I've at work have been difficult for me as far as future focus, energy levels and general coping goes. I've decided that I'll be staying, at least for the next year or so, unless an internal counselling job pops up. And you never know your luck :)
2413 on the ravelry list....
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
In shameless imitation of Didolikali's purchase of a heap of cheap canvases with the intention to just produce work, quality optional (though it seems to me she always gets that anyway). So yeah, cheap canvases, nice bright coloured backgrounds, and go for it. No artsy inhibition, just do it. Good plan, and one well worth copying, so I bought me a little handful of canvases and I'm covering them in calligraphy.
I thought I might take progress photos this time, so here's a base layer for the current quote "some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'"
I'm not sure if I'm gonna change the "men" bit. Hm. Changing quotes makes them a misquote. I really like the sentiment. I'll have a think about it.
The base layer seemed very stark, so I've gone over it with a foam brush and some silver gouache. That's a slightly better start I think.
As for knitting progress, I'm a few rows off the armhole shaping for my green jumper. Ah... yay for getting jumpers finished just in time for summer...
I'm becoming obsessed with it. I look at it 3 or 4 times a day.
But... omigawd!
I've gone from 5506 to 3483 since Monday morning! Yeeeeeeeee!
There are 81 psych jobs on the Psych Xchange email today. Sounds good, yes?
How many in Sydney? 19. Hm.
How many in the ACT?
None. Count 'em on your (clenched) fist. None.
Some days I seriously feel as though I'm living in a shit-hole pretending to be some sort of fucking capital city. What a joke.
The latest thingy hot off the calligraphy desk. This is a very simple piece, a manuscript book done on plain black card, the covers are made of heavy card and decoupage paper (with stars of course!) and the writing in gold gouache.
I cut the little stars out with a very fine knife tool, I'm not sure what its proper name is, but it has a tiny blade cut on an angle, and mounted into a little pen-like device which swivels at the blade end to give ease of movement when cutting curves. Very nice.
I've been working on a piece for the exhibition that my class is participating in; we have to make a small piece 10x15cm, (small!), in "naturals" (ie the colours), and the theme is "write of passage".
My god. I'd forgotten how much I detest working to external requirements. Blech. I had some awesome ideas, but none of them are going to fit onto a 10x15 piece of paper - one quarter of an A4 sheet doesn't give you much room to work with.
So I abandoned all of my grand ideas and came up with this. I sat my very old Raggedy Ann doll up on my desk and roughed out a quick sketch of her (complete with stitching on hands and feet!) and a cute little saying about growing into yourself. It's just plain old gouache on canson mi-tientes. I'd forgotten how much a textured paper will drag a pen-tip all over the place, so as a result my spacing is completely up to shit, several of the letters are deformed and I completely misjudged the first line, which is not-so-cleverly-disguised-as-I'd-like-it-to-be.
... and the heart? I'd say I have no idea what I was thinking, but that's a lie. It's there to cover up a big-arsed smudge that appeared right after I'd spent nearly an hour on the drawing. So I wasn't going to start again, and I was going to cover it up any way I could.
I don't like it - it looks like something I would have produced when I first started doing calligraphy. But it's the contingency plan for if I can't rustle up something better between now and Thursday night. Which, with the work week starting (you know it's not so great when you wander in on Monday with the "jobs" section stuffed into your handbag), is looking pretty likely. *shrug* My inner perfectionist is throwing big tanties right now, but I'm just gonna bitch slap her til she shuts the hell up.
When even your boyfriend flips out at how cute they are, you know they're pretty damn cute.
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall07/PATTwoodins.html
Must. Make. Them.
So I was driving along Ginninderra Drive this morning and the traffic ahead of me was all slowed down (it's an 80 zone and they must be almost stationary) and I’m thinking WHY GOD WHY I’M GONNA BE LATE FOR WORK, and then I get up to where they are doing something like 50km/hr and there’s these two ducks crossing the 4 lanes of highway with about TEN DUCKLINGS!!!!!!
If any of you locals heard a strange squeal of joy and cuteoverload at about 10 to 9 echo around Canberra...
That was me.
Am having ideas. May need to adapt a semi-stolen concept. Hrmmmm.
Weddingy goodness, as requested... :D
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vtghf/sets/72157601933693718
http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturalredhead/1353548503/
Yay for other people's digital cameras!
Ack...
I've started doing a superfast 10 minute yoga routine in the mornings, in the hope that I'll become a bit more motivated and do yoga more regularly. So... three full sun salutations is my minimum aim, and I did that yesterday and felt great so I did it this morning and I feel even better, except that I was in a hurry and didn't shavasana for long enough and now I'm manic. MANIC.
Everyone at work is giving me funny looks. Ack! *covers mouth* Somebody stop me...
...I can hardly keep my squeaky little eyes open. Apologies to those who expected me to be a the knit-meet in Lyneham, I know I said I was going to be there but, nuuu. It's just me, and a grannyrug, and a dvd, and a lovely man who just started cooking dinner. That's pretty hard to compete with. :)
I've been giving the pens and brushes a workout again. I do apologise if this is boring to some people, but I want to share the process of a calligraphic work for people who are interested (like probably only other calligraphers, hehe). Also, calligraphy is really rocking my squeaky little world right now, so you're just gonna have to deal with it ;)
This time I've been working on a multilayered piece which was a bit of an experiment/exploration thing that started as a class project. The project instructions were "Using the Neuland script scribe the word ALPHABET in pencil and wet the background up to the letters. Vary the shading of the paint. You will be left with the letters the same colour as the paper. When thoroughly dry and in a different script, if you prefer, scribe 'so few letters, so many words', anywhere on the page."
I wish I'd taken progress photos, but I had no idea it would even turn out being anything worth looking at, even after about 3-4 hours work. This is it after about 6 hours total (not including drying and thinking time, hehe)
First I wrote ALPHABET with the nifty pen I made from the plastic bits off the side of a yoghurt tub, and when it was dry I used a lightbox to trace the letters on to plain white watercolour paper. I painted the background with water (leaving the letters dry) to make the paper damp and spongy, and then flooded the damp paper with watered down designer's gouache (I'd never used this technique before - our teacher showed us in class and I happily toddled home and played with it). I did it quite messily, and David spattered it with red wine, but I wasn't too worried, and just kept going. I layered blues and purples and the next day wetted it up again and layered some darker and more intense shades. I wasn't happy with how it looked, it was messy and dodgy and looked like crap.
I took it into to class, the teacher wasn't fazed and got me tidying up a few smudges and rough edges with a hyperaser, and then I wrote two lines of script over the top of it all, embedding "so few letters, so many" into a paler repeat of "blahblahblah" - all in carolingian, and charcoal coloured gouache. You can see in this first detail photo the darker focus word "many" with "blahblahblah" melting into the background.
Then it was masking time, and I went over the entire two lines of carolingian with a paintbrush and masking fluid (liquid latex), I was fairly rough with it, so it would give an irregular outline when the mask was removed afterwards. Then I lightly penciled a freehand "words" right over the top of the lot.
For the final "words" over the top I used three stages of layering. The first layer was a very even dark blue brushed line in gouache. I then mixed process cyan gouache with LOTS of water to make a very translucent mix and used a large chinese calligraphy brush over the top of the still-damp blue line of gouache, very uneven and irregular. Finally, when these two layers had dried sufficiently I went over the lot with a brush and black chinese stick ink. You can see in this detail piccy the way that I've allowed each layer to have a life of its own, none of the layers is a shadow or a regular background, each just sits mostly on top of the other with no rules as to which is shadowing which, the only obvious thing about it being that the black line is the dominant one, and that is really all.
I was eventually happy with it. I was very tempted to put a very fine metallic shadow underneath the black "words" line, but I thought that it would be too much then, so... I stopped. And here it is! :D I think one of my favourite things about it is the negative space formed by the white parts of the big "alphabet" word in the background. These, along with the similarly intriguing cyan shapes within the "alphabet" letters, were an unexpected and delightful accident.
:)
It was a pretty fun wedding. Del came and stayed with us, and there was an enormous amount of culinary indulgence over the weekend - brekky this morning at Black Pepper, dinner on Friday night at Two Sisters Lao Thai at Dickson, and the heavenly cocktails at the Hyatt yesterday arvo. Mmm. Posh dress, posh hotel, posh cocktails. I do enjoy me a dose of teh pawsh.
The vows were delightful, and my inner mushy-squishy-soppy-squeak needed to be slapped back into place for a few dangerously damp moments there. And I'm not talking about the gentle drizzle of rain, either. Despite the light rain and the cold, it was gorgeous.
My creative and delightful man's speech was... memorable. I have a feeling many choristers will blog about this on their livejournals. Chas and Amanda used the format from the traditional AICSA choral ball for their reception, so the speeches and formalities involved singing and silliness (though the toast to the Queen, or even queens as sometimes happens, was sorely missed *grin*). D was given the task of making the Toast to Women, and started it by stammering "um... I think I've made a mistake here... Chas asked me to make a speech about my favourite thing, so um..." the blood drained from the faces of the entire bridal party here "I wrote a speech about dinosaurs. But don't worry, I'm just going to substitute the word women for dinosaurs and we'll see how it works out coughcough..."
I think the highlight for me was the bit where he said that when women ruled the world, some were peaceful vegetarians, and some were sleek hunters... and then stating that the latter had always been his favourites.
Hehe. I have a feeling my contribution to the song following was considerably off key. Ever try singing and snorting at the same time? I wouldn't recommend it.
Just discovered an AMAZING blog. http://landesgeeks.com/Danielle/blog/?p=316 Ooh. Makes me wanna drag out my dyes again for the first time in AGES. Yay for inspiration.
I really really REALLY must update my bloggy sidebar. Oh procrastination sweet, how I do love thee!
And while I'm being completely random, I have 7582 people ahead of me in the ravelry queue. Gimme gimme!
I stood betowelled and dripping in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, having just shampooed my spiky mop of hair, and glared at it crankily. It's in need of a mow, and my hairdresser with the cool razor-cutting skillz had an accident recently which has buggered up her forearm, so she's quit her job and nicked off to Byron or somewhere similarly lush n lazy. Booo.
I quell my jealousy at Natalie The Hairdresser's apparent free and easy life, and wonder what I'm going to do about my out of control hair.
I get myself a bucket, and a pair of scissors, and I start to play.
After about 20 minutes of maniacally giggling, snipping and dancing about in an attempt to see or perhaps guess what the back of my head looks like, I decide that there's enough snipped bits of hair on the floor... and the sink... and the towel... and me...
...and I toddle off to work.
It doesn't look half bad actually, and not that different to what Natalie T.H. does with it anyway. Yay for just saving myself $50! I think I'll buy a foil or streaking kit on the way home, and I hope and pray that I get there before David does and have the opportunity to vacuum my extremely hairy bathroom floor...
I bought a Legacy badge today.
I'm not a supporter of war, but I do consider the Legacy charity worthwhile in that it provides ongoing support to those silent victims of war - the families and spouses left behind.
So I see this old guy standing out front of the newsagent I was about to walk into, he looks to be in his 80's and he's smiling cheerfully - and what else can you do but smile back? He laughed and said that I was a real little ray of sunshine (how many years has it been since someone said that to me with absolutely no trace of sarcasm???) and I paid him a few dollars for a shiny pin.
He grasped the pin in between his knobbly fingers, and came at my throat, hands shaking in that parkinsonesque way that oldies have, and I couldn't help but cackle evilly and say "you're gonna stab me with that, aren't you?", to which he gallantly stated "I haven't missed in 46 years!"
*giggle*
