Going somewhere cool this weekend

I'll be back on Tuesday

Playing with grass, textures, and some very, very mixed media

How mixed? I don't hear you ask. But I'll answer anyway. I started with paper. Then I added: Pencil; water-soluble ink; non-water-soluble ink; watercolours; oil paints; shiny metallic oil paints; turpentine; water; digital editing. This is pretty much my ideal process - I will always try to cram more media into any given picture. The incompatible media result in some very interesting textures and bold colour combinations without muddiness.

The drawing is awful, though. It started out as a longish rectangular picture, but the right hand side was just so bad that I cut it off. There is still some horrendousness around the horizon line on the right hand edge, but I couldn't get rid of that and still have a picture.

I'll just pass it off as a cautionary tale. Listen here, children: having two lines (here, the grass and the mountain) arbitrarily touch instead of either crossing or having a gap in between them is just as bad as, in fiction, having an arbitrary coincidence with neither plot significance nor relevance to the theme. If your writing is all about the randomness of life, for instance, you might have a pass, and likewise under some conditions it would be okay to break this line rule.

Of course, both incontrovertibly happen the whole time in real life, but are still unacceptable in art. Reality is unrealistic. Seriously though, we do it all the time without noticing, and it's one of those things that can make an otherwise fine picture look unaccountably icky. (Until you notice it, of course, then it looks accountably icky.) Oh no, now everyone who reads this will only look at the mistake. And don't even ask me what that pink thing in the sky is. It's art, OK?

I'm still here

Well, last night I found out that I have at least one friend who reads this blog to check that I'm still alive - which has made my recent lack of posts somewhat unsettling for her. (Hi Bonnie! I don't know what I'd do without you :))

So. I'm not dead, I just don't have a life at the moment (a small distinction, but a crucial one). I'm going to try and post more often. And in the meantime, just to show you guys that I care - here. Have a picture of some plant insides.