(Long) Weekend Update

Jenny's enjoying her stay-cation - we stopped by the library Monday to pick up some holds and checked out a whole bunch of books and comics. We're also borrowing the complete DVD set of Daria, one of Jenny's favorite series, from our friend Josh. So she's got a few things to keep her entertained for a while. Otherwise she's just relaxing and working on crochet projects. She also sold a nice set of gloves (as seen to the left) she made for a co-worker this week.

Then yesterday we headed over to Coeur d'Alene for most of the day, to see Jenny's folks and catch up a bunch on the TV shows they record for us. The Fall season has started, and we've got a few new shows we're starting to follow, plus all the our regulars. Though as usually happens, one of the new ones we're really enjoying (The Playboy Club) has already been cancelled only 3 episodes in. Sigh...

This weekend was pretty fun too. One of Jenny's friends from work got married on Saturday, and she and her husband are really big geeks. They had a whole bunch of board games and card games for people to play at the reception, and even had the Star Wars Imperial march play at the wedding.

Saturday was also the annual 24 Hour Comic Book Challenge event. I knew we were going to be at the wedding months in advance, so didn't plan on actually attempting the challenge this time. But we still went over to the location after the reception was over for a few hours - I drew a little, and Jenny worked on her novel some, but we were mostly just there to hang out with our friends.

What's Happening....

So, how are things going, now that we're a week into 2011...?

So far, so good, I suppose. Jenny got a couple extra hours added to her schedule, bringing her almost up to full time, and she's been selling a few more of her crocheting projects to her co-workers. She's also been trying to work a little more on her novel, when she has the time.

I've got a few art projects on my plate - some new and some way overdue that I'm concentrating on playing catch-up with first. Also, the first Comicsmiths' Guild anthology comic is printed and should be on it's way here. We'll have those available soon-ish, both on-line and at local shops & events.

We've got all the Christmas decorations down and out to the garage, and are in the beginning stages of completely re-arranging the apartment. So of course, at the moment it's a complete disaster. But when we're done, the plan is to have a real living room and dining room again, with the studio space moved to the smaller bedroom.

We're figuring this will also encourage us to do some much-needed un-cluttering, and get rid of some extra stuff we've been hanging on to for way too long. Or it may just end up in the garage. Guess we'll see....

What's Happening....

Lately, I've been doing some lettering work for a couple of comic pitches, and also working on an original comic short for an anthology the Spokane Comicsmiths Guild is putting together. It'll be a collection of several stories, most around 4 pages long, showcasing the skills and diverse styles of our little group. We're hoping to have it printed up and ready to distribute by the end of September, in time for the Jet City Comic Show in Seattle (which a few Guild members will be attending) and the next 24 Hour Comic Book Challenge at the start of October.

Last month we had another fun event - members of the Guild taught a class on making comics at a week long day camp for kids. It was a superhero themed camp, and over the course of the week the kids created their own characters and made a comic featuring them. They also had classes in costuming, pop art, and even culinary arts. It wrapped up with them putting on a stage presentation, with the kids dressed up as their characters. It was an awesome experience, a lot of fun, and hopefully we'll get to do something similar in the future. You can see more about it on the Guild's website, including video of the presentation and pics of the comics the kids made.

Jenny's been crocheting a whole bunch - she's made a few larger tote bags and just made me a new hat. She also recently got back to work on her superhero novel she started writing some time ago. Otherwise she's mostly been working - while her job at the law firm ended a few weeks ago, she has been able to pick up a few extra hours here and there at the library. But she's still happy to have two actual days off per week again.

It's also been ridiculously hot here recently. It's still about 80 today, but there's a tiny bit of a breeze and it's overcast with a slight chance of rain, so it's relatively comfortable. We'll take what we can get, I guess.

Arts & Crafts

Just a note for any Spokane locals who might be reading:

The next meeting of the Spokane Comicsmiths' Guild is this coming Sunday the 15th, at Merlyns, starting at 3 pm. Anyone is welcome, and we're always looking to meet other local artists, writers and creators.

Also, the Spokane County Library Crafty Club is tomorrow, Friday the 13th, at the Moran Prairie branch, starting at 7 pm.

Feel free to leave a comment if you would like additional information about either event.

What's Happening...

Yesterday was Jenny's father's birthday, and we spent most of the day over in Coeur d'Alene with her parents. We went to see the Surrogates with him - which was a pretty awesome sci-fi flick (based on an equally cool indy comic). Glad we got to see it in the theatre, though I think it could've been a bit longer.

Then after the movie the four of us went out for Thai food at the local Thai Bamboo (which was, of course, delicious), and then caught up on a bunch of recorded TV from the past week. A very fun and relaxing day!

The library is doing sort of an "employee exchange" program, where they're moving some people to different branches so they can see how things might be run differently and meet other co-workers. So now Jenny is working up at the North Spokane branch once a month. Her first day was this last Thursday, and she really enjoyed it, although it does mean a much longer commute (like 45 minutes instead of 15).

Otherwise things are going OK. Jenny had her year review at the library, which went well and got her a raise (yay!). The temperature is dropping, and even dipping to freezing occasionally, but the apartment seems to be holding the heat pretty well. Maybe those new energy-efficient windows they installed actually work.

I've been working on some commissions and tinkering with one of my comic ideas. Doing the 24 Hour Comic Challenge has definitely been an inspiration to get back to work on it - hopefully I'll have more concrete news on that relatively soon...

Jenny's been working on a bunch of cool crocheting projects, which we really need to take some pictures of and post up. It would probably help if we had a decent digital camera, since right now we have 3 old ones that all only work about half the time. 

Local Arts & Crafts People: The next Spokane Comicsmiths' Guild is on Sunday the 18th at Merlyns, from 3-6 pm. The next Crafty Club meeting is on Friday the 23rd at the Spokane Valley Library and starts at 7 pm. Feel free to leave a comment if you're interested in more information.

Today is Pleasant

In fact, it's the first time in weeks that we've had both the A/C and the fan turned off and it's still comfortable. We had an awesome thunder shower last night that dumped buckets of rain, and there's actually a nice breeze today. Very pleasant, indeed.

Saw on-line that Fairbanks finally got some much needed rain as well. Hopefully it'll keep up and help squelch all the smoke they've had to deal with from the fires up there. Of course, the timing of the rain is not too surprising for those of us who are from Fairbanks, as the fair starts today... ;)

Speaking of the fair, our friend Tigger (aka AlX Hurlbut) has a booth this year and will be selling prints of her photography. Any locals who are going, be sure to stop by and check out her photos & say Hi (and buy something!).

Also, this will be my friend Ellen's (of Ellen Million Graphics) last year selling at the fair. She's closing down the Gift Shop portion of her website, and expanding her business in other directions. So drop by her booth as well, to find out what's happening in the wide world of EMG and grab some of the cool Gift Shop merchandise that might be gone soon!

Arts & Crafts in Spokane

Anyone who might be in the area this Saturday (May 30) should be sure to check out the 3rd annual Spokane Comic-Con, being held at the Spokane Falls Community College from 10-5.

Jenny normally works on Saturdays, but was able to get the day off, so we plan on spending the whole day there just hanging out and being geeks (next year I hope to have a table there myself...). Several of my friends will be there, however, so be sure to swing by their tables and check out their work. You can find a lot of them on deviantArt:

Ben Hansen
Jesse Acosta
Lars Brown
Levi Skeen
Matt Nelson

More information about the convention can be found here: Spokane Comic-Con 

Also this weekend (Friday through Sunday) is Spokane Art-Fest, the annual arts and music fair, sponsored by Spokane's Museum of Arts & Culture. You can find out more about it here: Spokane Art-Fest

And finally, Jenny also has her Crafty Club meeting on Friday, which she organizes through the library (where she works). Needless to say, we plan on being pretty busy this weekend, but it should be a lot of fun!

Arts & Crafts

They just revealed the results from the most recent Project: Rooftop contest (which was to re-design Batman as if former Robin Dick Grayson was to take over for Bruce Wayne), and while I didn't win, I was pleasantly surprised to see my entry had made it into the Runners-Up. This looked to be their most popular contest yet, with a huge amount of impressive entries, so I'm just happy that I was even mentioned. You can see the winners and results here: Project: Rooftop Batman 2.0 Results

I''m still participating in the AngelCrusher's Fighting League art jam/trade over on deviantArt.com, although I did get behind when I was doped up and recovering from my dentist visit. After I was back to semi-normal, I knocked out the 2 entries I was missing and am now mostly caught up. Just have to get the last 2 entries done in the next 5 days before the semi-final round starts. You can check out what I've done over at my deviantArt page: Peter's Gallery on deviantArt

Jenny had her first Crafty Club at the library last Friday, and it was a success, although she's thinking of changing the time so that more people could attend. She did make a necklace for her mother's birthday, which her mom loved. She's actually in the process of modifying it right now so it fits a little better, but here's a scan of it in it's original incarnation:

A Good Day

Jenny's schedule at the library has been a little wonky lately, and as she's working this Friday she took all of today off from the law firm and we had a pretty good day running around. Nothing too exciting, but still fun - had our haircuts this morning, got some fast food for lunch and then spent a few hours shopping. Not that we have any money to burn, but we did still have money left on various gift cards that we could use - got some things we wanted and some things we needed, and even something for Jenny's mom's birthday (which is on Saturday), and barely spent any real money.

Spent the rest of the evening catching up on some TV shows on-line and working on some arts & crafts type stuff. I haven't really drawn anything for the last week or so, as I was knocked out by painkillers most of the time, but I'm finally feeling mostly all right and am getting back into it. My mouth is still a bit sore, but I'm doing OK.

Jenny's been working on beading and making jewelry lately, and she  picked up some more yarn today. She's also set up a crafty club at the library for people to get together and work on projects - the first meeting is this Friday evening.

As an example of the type of stuff she's been doing, here's the bracelet that she made for her sister's birthday last month:

Arts & Crafts & Other Stuff

Well, the computer seems to be cleaned up OK. I'm glad I had recently backed up the hard drive - I need to get in the habit of doing that more often....

Now I'm trying to get back to "work", as it were. No actual work, of course, as it seems everyone is losing their jobs left and right now. I'm still looking, but there's less and less openings, and more people to compete with (most of whom probably have more education and better experience than myself).

So, it's (literally) back to the drawing board. The AFL over at deviantArt started this week, and I'm going to try to do all of my entries as sequential pages, just for the practice. I got my first fight pencilled today, and will finish it and my second one over the weekend.

I also realized that the American Cancer Association Sketch Card Auction due date is drawing near, and I need to submit to that. I got my blank cards back before the new year, and told myself I had plenty of time... well, March 1st is right around the corner, so I'll need to do those and get them in the mail this week. It's a great fundraising event, and I'll post more info about the actual auction whenever I get it.

Jenny's started working on a new craft project today - hand making fabric beads to eventually turn into jewelry. Her first experiments are already looking pretty good, although I'll let her say more about it. :)

Also, we got our doors re-keyed today. Exciting, I know.

Opposite Of Busy, Busy, Busy

Not too much going on as per usual. Yesterday some friends were supposed to stop by for a while, but one of them suddenly started throwing up, so they wisely decided to stay home. Poor guy. Other then that just enjoying a slow week and the beautiful Spring weather, and all the cute little birdies fighting over every possible nesting site around here.

I keep waking up with invention ideas in my head. Ok, well 2 so far, but that's more then usual. They may very well be ideas that already exist and I have just forgotten, but here they are:

I own a lot of handmade mugs with no handles. I suppose you could call them glasses, but they are clay. If my mugs with handles are dirty, and I want some Tea, I use the others. Problem is, after microwaving them to heat up the water, they are usually too hot to touch bare handed. So, besides trying to grab them with oven mitts on, I thought maybe a mug holder thing could be invented to grab the mug out of the microwave and be strong enough that I could use it as a handle until the mug was a cooler temperature. I drew some crude drawings of the idea, but I need to refine it better before I try showing anyone the idea.

The other idea I got was from watching too many CSI shows in row. I woke up with the idea of a "field microscope" for when there is a lot of something that a little can be spared to look at right away, while at a crime scene. There already exists a handheld slide projecter which is only used to look at photo slides by one person to see what they are. It has an about 4 x 4 inch lens and a light and battery. You stick the slide into a little slot and press it down to turn on the light. I thought, with digital cameras, not many people really do slides anymore, but that doesn't mean the technology has to be obsolete. I figure, if a wider specimine slide with protected edges was made. And the viewer updated to have multiple magnifying capabilities, as well as protect the light from shorting out incase it's dropped in water or whatever, then I think it might be useable by crime scene peoples. It could probably be marketed to us civilians too. I think kids might like to be able to take a closer look at things they might find out in the woods or a pond or something. The only real problem I can think of at the moment would be how to clean it. Hmmm.

Ok, the major problem with these things I sometimes come up with, is my lack of marketing skills. I freely admit that I am more a thinker then a doer. Unfortunately, I don't really have any friends who are doers either. Hmmm...

Let There Be Light!

I have completed the lightbox! Huzzah! It lives!




More importantly, it actually works, and doesn't look like it was just cobbled together from spare parts. Work space is 16"x20". I am quite pleased with myself.... I think I shall christen it "Black Beauty".

I got some more resumes faxed yesterday, and applied for a job at WAMU this morning. We also got a whole bunch of laundry done yesterday, and more dishes as well. Jenny found some more jars at Freddies that she can use for her gift project, and Freddies also has the bookcase we want on sale, but we'll probably wait until we're gainfully employed again before buying any big things.

We might be getting some free furniture though - Jenny's grandfather is looking into moving out of his house and into a smaller place, and is figuring out what things he want to get rid of. Jenny's mom is going over there and inventorying stuff and is keeping an eye out for things that we might need/want.

It's Wednesday - New Comic Day - and we didn't go to the shop last week, so we'll probably be heading into town later. We did pick up some comics the other day, though, at Value Village of all places. 9 comics for just over $2.00. Woo Hoo!

We finally got the UPS sticker to mail back our Verizon modem, so we'll be needing to get that sent back soon. And we borrowed Jenny's parents' ladder, so we can try to get the shelf cleaned off. After looking up there again, it's even worse than I remembered. Gah!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today was the funeral ceremony for LaFaye (Jenny's Grandfather's wife), although since she was cremated, it was just a ceremony/memorial type of thing with a potluck lunch reception after. We were up there a couple of hours, plus about 3 hours driving time total.

After getting back home, I did some scouring of the classifieds and we did some shopping - I finally own some black slacks (and a new pair of brown cords). Also got taco fixin's, which was dinner tonight.

So, I've been fighting with this light box I've been trying to put together since before Christmas. I bought a shadow box frame and a couple of fluro fixtures to mount in it, and was planning on just it throwing together and it'd be real easy. A "real" light box starts at over $100, and this one cost me about $40, and I thought it'd be really simple to kitbash it together. But the fixtures have given me no end of grief trying to mount them to the frame using the little slidey connectors that come with it (plus the instructions, that seem like they're badly translated a couple of times, don't help either).

I've been pulling my hair out trying to fit everything together and make it work, and tonight I had the little lightbulb go off over my head - the one thing I use to hold everything together: Electrical Tape! I still need to drill/cut the hole for the wire to come out of the frame, but I decided to wait till tomorrow, during the daytime, to use the power drill.... But, hopefully I'll soon have a working lightbox, and I'll be able to slap together my sketches into a coherant art project.

And in even more excellent news - I talked to Tigger yesterday and they sold the trailer in Seattle, and Lincoln has finally, completely, moved over! They can finally really start unpacking and "moving in" to their house. She seemed (understandably) very relieved and happy. Hooray!

Cabin Fever - and Other Craziness....

With the Holidays over, and neither of us working, we've been going kinda stir-crazy being in the house all day. We really need to get out and about more; I'm thinking we might take the bus into the city Saturday and check out the Riverside Park. Jenny hasn't seen it yet, and it's been so nice lately. Otherwise, let's see, what's been going on....?

The last couple of days have been relatively productive (atleast when you add in the "not getting up till Noon" factor). We got caught up on dishes (2 loads) and laundry (3 loads), and got a lot of re-organizing done in the dining/living room. I've successfully re-written my resume, and today I sent off my application to Northwest Andrology. I've still got a couple of cover letters to write, and plenty more resumes to send off.

In not-as-cheery news, Jenny's grandfather's wife passed away after fighting Alzheimers for quite some time. The funeral is next Monday morning up in Sandpoint; we'll be driving into CdA to meet up with Jenny's folks and then driving up with them.

The maintenance people came by and changed out our fluorescent lights, but the ledge in the hallway still needs to be cleaned off. Looks like we're just going to have to borrow the parents' ladder and do it ourselves.

I did finally dye my hair (and Jenny trimmed it up for me), but it turned out red instead of blond. I'm happy with it, tho; I probably look better as a red head anyway. I don't have any pictures yet, but we did get our pictures from Halloween back. We dressed up as Peter Parker & Mary Jane:

Arts & Crafts

So, I'm trying to get myself back into drawing every day, no matter what. I really want to work on expanding my portfolio beyond superheroes and Warhammer art, in the vain hope of one day getting a real illustration job....

I've had this Graphic Illustration book for about 6 years now, and never really looked at it; turns out it's from 1982, but it's a very cool handbook that walks you through various techniques and "real world" scenarios starting with basic assignments and progressing from there. Since it doesn't look like I'll be going back to school anytime soon, I've decided to work my way through the book, doing all the suggested assignments and exercises, hopefully building up my skills along with my portfolio.

The exercises start out super simple, and the first one I did today was to draw a portrait of someone's face 3 times: from your memory, from life and from a photograph. My intent was to draw 3 pictures of Jenny.... (Click the Image for a Larger View)The first one, from memory, ended up looking like an elf. Not really what I was going for. The second one was drawn from her sitting next to me, and came out looking better, but not as much like her as I would have preferred. The third picture was drawn from the photo of her dressed up as Mary Jane for Halloween (which explains the long hair, if you're wondering), and was pretty much dead on. I'm really happy with this one, since it's been forever since I've drawn anything "realistic."

Well, once again I told myself I was going to enter Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga contest, and once again I have done nothing. The due date is tomorrow (Friday the 13th), and I had completely forgotten about it even existing until a week ago. Next year, right?

There aren't any Draw-Offs going on over at Digital Webbing that have piqued my interest; however the deadline for the Runes of Ragnar Essence of Odin contest has been extended, so I might still get an entry in for that one. I had every intention of entering when it was announced, and then stuff kept coming up and I never sat down and worked on it. I finally started sketching out ideas the other day, but I thought it was due tomorrow so I had written it off, but apparently I can't read my calendar correctly since it's actually due on the 22nd. Here's the thumbnail I settled on:

Jenny's been crocheting up a storm, working on a big blanket which is about 4'x6' right now. The plan is for it to be about 7'x6' when she's all done. She also just crocheted a hat for herself with cute little cat ears:

I guess that's about it for now. I hope to keep this Blog updated more frequently now, and to include more of our photos and artwork. We also are trying to get back into gaming again, and we'll probably post up pics of our painted miniatures from time to time as well.