Plans for the Stay At Home Housewife / New Mom

What to do with myself?

I may have mentioned before that my mind gets racing and I often have these ideas of things I can do or write about or whatever.  Of course, right now I'm just plain exhausted due to my present condition.  I was working graveyard shifts at the airport to provide a little extra income but put in my two weeks as soon as I confirmed that I was indeed pregnant because my job consisted of cleaning airplanes.  Right now I kind of want to avoid cleaning chemicals.  I do need to get another job (aside from my weekend warrior stint, don't know where that's going to go for the next year other then me just sitting around because I really shouldn't do anything) and it has got me thinking. 

Truthfully, though I am fiercely independent in mind, I'm old fashioned at heart.  Hey, what can I say?  I am conservative and I was raised in a two parent household with five brothers and sisters and my mom was largely a house wife.  I don't want to raise my kidlings via day care, I think the day care generation that is coming into age now a days has a lot to say against it because of the fact that their parents weren't at home raising them.  I fully plan on being a stay at home mom and being the primary raiser of my offspring (until of course, my husband retires from the Airforce and becomes a full time stay at home dad and sends me off to earn the living, so he says)

Fortunately, with the invention of the internets came many great and wonderful things, such as working from home.  I'm trying to figure out what exactly I can do where I can be available for my kids and be here for them where I am also earning a living on the side and therefore contributing to the inflow of household cash for other things like clothes, food, and spontaneous trips to wherever our minds or hearts take us.  I want to get back into blogging, like I mentioned before, I enjoy it and I felt if I pursued it when I got my fluke hit with fame back in 2004 that fizzled due to Army not liking my blogging habits (and since then, I have come to better understand their concerns, but still) so yes, when I feel up to it and not completely wasted by exhaustion, I might post my thoughts and opinions on whatever.  But I don't think I can ever make a serious living off of blogging alone. 

Fortunately, having a house has given me one thing, and that is room to get back into my art again, something I have been dutifully neglecting for the last six years or so.  I don't know if I can make a serious living off of my art, but the extra income would be nice and I can do something that I love to do.  But how to market it?   eBay?  Craigslist?  Could I just sell random stuff on either?  Hmm. . .

It got me to thinking about some of my other hobbies and things I like to do, why not marry them together? 

Children's Book?  I've been wanting to do one for a while.  Well, I'll be stuck at home next spring and through the summer?  Well, it's going to be a while, maybe I can write and illustrate one, market it and find a living?  Would love it if I could do that, so I think I'm going to give it a shot.  What's the worst that can happen?  Nobody buys it?  If nothing else, perhaps I can make just enough to recoop some expenses. 

But first, I have to get my studio up and running, in the spare room I've claimed in the house. 

Other thoughts, possible Photography business, since I have the equipment.  Maybe even get in with my two sisters and work with them from time to time.  Just as soon as I find my little niche in the world I guess.   

Ibex / Equine Creature

I got into a bit of a drawing mood, signed up for an exchange and this creature is what I got to draw in exchange. I've decided I want to go back to traditional media and so I drew it in graphite, my preferred media as a budding artist in my teen years.

I look back now and think I should be a better artist then I am. I've decided to move away from the illustration bit and more towards traditional media once more.



Drawing two images on two seperate sheets of paper with the intention to merge later doesn't always work. But I feel pretty decent since I used minimal references to draw.

Arts

More Arts

Other then the background, this is probably one of the most satisfying arts I've done in a while.



He actually originally had lightening wings, but they didn't come out right, so I took a file with them off.

Well, Onto Other Things

I was moody yesterday. Then I discovered it was probably because I'm not feeling well.

Heck, I'm generally just a moody person, and I take opportunities to cultivate my moodiness for the purposes of jumping all over people when I hit the trail. One day.

*sighs*

Meanwhile, I drew a Mosquito.



I'm doing a homework assignment on Mosquitoes and took the opportunity of having to insert a picture into my assignment as an excuse to draw. I'm going to take all of the excuses I can get, because I need to draw more.

Artists are Finicky Peoples

Alright, so I think I need to explain my little rant more in depth, to give you an idea of the mind of an artist.

Most real artists like critiques. They see it as a way to make themselves better, as long as the critique is constructive. Nobody likes to hear that their work sucks without it being explained why.

If you look at my gallery and tell me i'm a sucky artist, I'll go right back in your face and tell you you're an idiot, unless you can give me a reasonable excuse as to why you think my art sucks. If I don't know what is wrong with it, I can't change it, and as an artist, I often get to close to the work to see the obvious faults in it, or on the flip side, I'll see everything that is wrong with it.

Most often then not, I can rip to shreds any artwork you throw at me. You want it critiqued constructively? I bet I can find something wrong with it.

But let me go into it a little further. To tell you the honest truth, I don't see myself as much of an illustrator, I never have been. I've been working on the illustrator side of my art for a few years now, but honestly, I consider myself an artist.

My illustrations always have something wrong with them. heck, my art does too but usually not to the degree.

So I had a bunch of illustrators tell me my art is 'wonky' (which is a word I am going to use to describe everythign I see wrong with a peice from now on) without going into detail and me, being, well, me, I blew a gasket on them. Because you don't tell an artist they suck without giving them reasons as to why. Especially somebody who considers themselves an artist.

My illustrations are always from my head, but this latest episode made me realize that I need to work more on my art and away from my illustrations (which has, in fact, been killing my art to tell you the truth). So I'm going to start sketching more. I just need to draw more. I need to find pictures and draw what I see. It doesn't matter that it doesn't look like the person I'm drawing, just so long as it is a drawing.

I need to focus on how I'm going to illustrate my project anyway.

I'm A Little Annoyed

Ok, I have to say something, because I'm a cranky person and I can't stand it when people tell me I suck at something without having a good reason as to state why.

See, when I draw anthropomorphic characters (basically anything non human with human qualities) I generally draw them a little cartoonish, and granted when it comes to art this is not my strong suit. At all. Even though its basically the only thing I draw anymore because I don't draw as much as I used too.

I am also usually very good at taking constructive criticism with my art, because I am an artist and sometimes when a person is too close to a piece, they don't see the problems with it. So as long as the criticism is constructive, I take it well.

So I joined this art exchange, thinking I'm bored and I want to draw more and I like drawing other people's characters because it gives me a fresh look on things as I tend to get caught up in little rifts where I draw the same thing over again. I gave them a link to my two galleries online, one on this website and one over at DeviantArt.

I got this email in the mail saying I had been declined for a sketch exchange. Here is their exact wording in fact.

Mods voted: You have some interesting stuff, but we feel you could use a bit more practice before you join us. Feel free to try again in the future though! :)

Comments were: Anatomy's a little wonky, such as this piece: The legs look dramatically different from each other. She needs a little more work on getting her anatomy to look natural as far as her anthros go.

This is the piece they critiqued.



So basically, because I use foreshortening in a lot of my art so the legs don't look exactly the same, I got dismissed. Is this on me as an artist? Or is this on them as art critiques? Because as far as I'm concerned, this is a perfect example of foreshortening. You are looking at two legs from different angles, of course they are not going to look the same. This looks like an example of a Digigrade Biped to me (digigrade meaning walking on toes, not flat footed, all of my anthros are digigrade unless stated otherwise.)

I replied with a comment that wasn't so nice that I won't link to because, well, it will most likely get deleted, but I mean, come on?

Because my reply will most likely get deleted, I'll post what I wrote to them here.

Um, do you guys know the definition of Foreshortening?

The freakin' right leg is at an angle facing the audience, if you were to actually look at the left leg, you might actually see that there is nothing wrong with this. But oh wait, that's right, this is a freakin' SKETCH exchange. This may not be a traditional anthro because it doesn't show as much human in it, but it doesn't mean its wrong.

Oh, and I know how to draw anatomy, thanks for the heads up on telling me that I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

PS - for a sketch exchange, I would probably complete my art a little more so that it doesn't need to be completed in Photoshop, because believe it or not I CAN draw.

Thanks for everything, but I think I'll pass and not bother with this stupid exchange in the future.

PPS - The rejected art piece is freakin' two years old. Since you said I apparently need to practice my anatomy, I'll let you know I've had plenty, thanks.

Ok, Yes, the annoyance is apparent, but really, come on!

Give me your opinion, do you think I have a decent argument or do I suck at anthros? Or are you just a non-artistic type that goes 'hehe, puppy!'

EDIT - So my rant got some attention, they didn't delete the post after all, but I calmed down considerably when I got a constructive critique back. Mind you, I don't delete this stuff, so if you want to see how this goes, please visit the LJ.

I just don't know what to get from 'wonky'.

Constructive Criticism is always game for me.

Occupying My Time

I may have mentioned that I have been let go from my civilian employer (but I have been meaning to quit so no loss there), my *six month* deployment has been pushed back a couple of months, and I cut my class load back to one class on Adobe InDesign which is about Digital Layout.

I have a lot of free time on my hands.

The thing is, I really enjoy working my creative side, so I thought about this and decided that I would utilize my creative side toward something that could eventually be productive and make me money.

I want to write a book.

And not just any type of book (I've written a gob of unpublishable crap that sits on my hard drive) I want to write a Children's Book.

When I was in first grade or something, I wrote a book about Animals doing fun things. The art in it can be described as cute, as I was quite a little artist at the time. And I've always wanted to go back and rewrite it and get this idea published.

So I was reassessing this little picture book I had planned when I was about seven years old and thinking to myself 'how can I make this idea work for print?' It occurred to me that I wanted to be the artist, but with some creative help, I could probably work on putting this book to verse.

I just hope that the idea is original enough that I'm not infringing on somebody else's creative genius. But the thing is, I had the idea for this book for something like twenty years now.

I think its doable. I just have to figure out the medium I want to work it toward.

Snowed In

Today had been interesting, in the absolutely nothing going on in my life sort of way. I was thinking 'gosh, since I'm not working, I should have all of this free time and my creativity should just go nuts and I should be getting all of this stuff done!'

Um, no. Yes, I have put myself on a budget because I have money in the bank, but I got to make it last until I get a new job or go to Ft Knox, and I've still got living expenses. So I've got a few projects I'm working on.

I thought about going out and renting a movie or something, but something else got in the way.


It's called about a foot and a half of snow. I shoveled the driveway with the help of the kid across the street (we started talking about the army, he has the perfect private mentality and plans on joining as soon as he turns 17) but I just gave up when it came to digging my car out of the snow. It just won't stop snowing around here, I'm thinking about trying to go up to the mountain if my car can handle it and taking advantage of the conditions, but, well, I am on a budget right now.

So I did the next best thing. I decided to get my creative juices flowing by doing some art. I don't do enough art these days.

And when I mean art, I mean fine art, not illustration which is what I tend to do more then anything now a days.

I actually found this exercise to help loosen up the creative juices, you grab your MP3 player, put it on random, and draw a picture in the amount of time it takes you to listen to the song. THe song is supposed to help you come up with an idea of what to draw, but I discovered since I haven't been in figure drawing for about five years, my drawings gone to crap when it comes to gestures. I don't think I got a single good drawing out of the mix, at least, nothing worth posting.

But it is a little exercise I plan on doing again soon.

Once I got myself loosened up a bit, I decided to dig out some of my paints and a canvas and paint. I didn't have any idea going into the painting, so I just threw paint on the canvas as an idea started to take hold.


Um, this was kind of where it was heading, and I was just staring at it as I was painting it and thinking 'what is this mess?' It wasn't doing anything I wanted it to so I came up with this brazilliant idea and flipped the canvas over.


Um, it's still nothing fancy. I'm letting the paint dry while I stare at it and decide what I'm going to stick in it. When I paint, I tend to be a little bit on the expressionalistic abstract side, so I have to create a focus for the painting and shove it right in there, probably within the first third of the painting because if it is dead center, it is going to be BORING. Not that this is anything exciting anyway, because I still have no freaking clue as to what I'm going to do with this painting. I think I'm going to put a figure wading in the water with the nuclear sky in the background, but the figure will have to be in bizzarro land colors in order to make this work.

No, it is not done. It might go the way of my last painting, which I hated how it was going so much I covered the canvas in Gesso and am awaiting the opportunity to strike so I can cover it with more paint. Not going to happen anytime soon.

I really need to get back into my art. Maybe I'll put a post where I ask my readers to give me ideas, or something. Because I haven't got a creative flow going and it's driving me stark raving mad!

And I'm snowed in . . . *sighs* Damn that Global Warming

Flash Stuffs

So yes, I have made a few more flash animation type thingees, and I can definitely say that these will become more and more frequent upon my blog and other various ideas on the internet.



Bloody hell, I feel like I'm twelve again. Everything I do seems to surround a horse or horse like creature (with an occasional ferret jumping in and stealing the show now and then.)

So you have a horse, and you can dress him up, granted if you know what's going on here. The assignment was called "Ms Potato Head" and the example was a potato with a bunch of body parts, kind of akin to, well, the potato head toys. You were supposed to be somewhat original with this game, but I didn't know what to do really so I decided to draw up a horse and give him a bunch of tack that you can put on him. You can even mix and match a bit. Hmm, I probably should have done more mix and matching. But whatever the case, here he is, though yeah, not to exciting but the fact that I can do this is just cool to me. I'm going to do a lot more with it later.

Flash is awesome and I'm totally getting it (most of the time). I'm still completley lost on 3ds Max.

My First Flash Animation

Yes, I am currently learning how to use Flash, however there are still quite a few things that I still need to learn about it. Like how to embed files so that they look exactly how I want them to look.

This file is VERY rough, as I ignored artistic talent in favor of actually making something that was animated. If you use Netscape, I'm sorry but I'm still trying to figure out how to embed objects for Netscape browsers and I can't test it to make sure it works, so you might not be able to see it. Also, you will need a Flash Player.



I call it Running Ferret. I can foresee using Flash a lot more in the future. It is lot's of fun!

Stupid Thing Happened Yesterday

I was at work after stocking some Cds and when the cart gave me a flat tire that caused me to nearly lose my shoe, I looked down and realized that I was wearing an old Nike Tennis shoe on one foot and a new Sketchers Sneaker on the other.

Fortunately my pants were covering them up for the most part, so they weren't entirely noticeable, but it didn't stop me from laughing at myself and showing a couple of coworkers my error. They laughed with (or maybe at) me. Doh.

I get to be gone for the weekend, away from a computer, but things should be fun. I actually was on top (for the most part) of my homework this week and its all done so I can focus on playing Army all weekend. I should have a post up by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, detailing my adventure.

In the meantime, I leave you with another piece of art I did in Illustrator. Not perfect, I understand, but still fun and I used a couple of techniques to do the lineart and it has become a thing I can do a lot more with. I think I will be using this particular program more and more. Now that I actually comprehend how to use it, I can see it coming into a lot more use.

Homework Update

So, remember the post of me with the bigass gun that I did in illustrator a few days back?

Well, let me finish the assignment for you.

See, we had to take a picture of us and convert it into a super hero pose, and I decided to do a girl in a post apacolyptic world. So I stripped her down to just grey BDU bottoms and a tank top, and gave her a scar and some tattoos (that's to seperate this fictional alter ego from myself) and then I slapped a horrible background onto it because I suck at backgrounds and this popped out.

I had to give it a comic title name, so its a comic called "Girls with Guns", until I could think of something more clever, which I didn't by the time the assignment needed to be turned in.



I've grown a little attached to Illustrator now. Excuse the abnormally long neck and the strange shape of the left pantleg, I took the bottoms directly off the other picture and I'm actually not this skinny so it looks a little. . . weird.

Eh, but not bad for a person just learning how to use Illustrator, eh?

Super Hero - HAH! (work in progress)

So, for my current homework assignment, I have to take a picture of myself or somebody I know and convert it into a digital illustration, or more specifically, a super hero.

Huh?

Well, I got the converting part down at least, and so I've been playing with the illustrator software and I must admit, I'm not in love with it. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I'm kind of getting the gist of it.

So, back to the 'super hero' assignment, which had me scratching my head. When I first heard the assignment, I wasn't aware of it being an assignment converting a picture into a super hero, and I was thinking of doing something with a ferret (I have plans to do a spoof comic with ferrets, its not a long term thing by any means) but alas, I got the memo that I was to use a picture for this assignment.

Well, I need a lot of work, but after fiddling with it, I got, something?

What picture did I use you might ask? Why, the one that I ran into the ground about two years ago.



It's still a work in progress. I've got to find a way to make this all super hero-y. But I just converted the bare basics.


I even thought about giving myself long hair with it down, but, well, that would feel weird because I'm in uniform, so in order to make that a go, I have to ditch the uniform. And its so baggy that I'm having trouble trying to figure out where my limbs are underneath.

Maybe I should get another picture instead? Ah, but it's so much fun!

Latest 3DS Creations

I need to tweak with it a little more, but currently this is my rough draft product assignment. I decided to do a guitar.

Much frustration has overcome me in trying to produce this, but much satisfaction has been the reward so far whe I get it to render right.

The finished product will be done next week. After I get some critiques back on this thing.

Kitty Sculpture

I rendered this strange abstract cat sculpture in 3DS Max. Then I made a virtual gallery and put some of my other artwork in there as well.

I'm starting to get the hang of this software! And it makes me so freakin happy!



I really need to learn to fine tune the modeling aspect itself, but I'm finally figuring it out!

For some reason I like to do cat themed sculptures.

Homework Status

So, I'm ending my second week of this quarter and so far everything seems to be going fairly smoothly.

So far.

My first real assignment in 3d Modeling was making a robot. This is the rough work-in-progress. I decided to do something along the lines of a dinosaur bird type thing.

View Robot HERE on Devart.

I get to fine tune it this week.

Meanwhile, in my character development and design class, I had this assignment that I ended up doing backward. Once upon a time I used to not draw humans at all. I've gotten a lot better, but now I need to learn how to color.

I took a basic character design and had to give them traits of a character type (ie Villain, hero, side kick, comic relief, etc) that you find in a story. Then you had to take that character and modify them so that they fit another role. I ended up making a girl and giving her five character roles. The last one is my favorite. I think this is obvious.

No, just because she's blonde and a chick, this is NOT me.

Character Types

It was actually fun to do, but now I have to go back and actually do the assignment properly. Which is going to have to happen tomorrow.

Undue Flattery

Am I heartless?

I don't get the reason to flatter somebody over a job that is subpar. Being an artist, I am a firm believer that if you see something you don't like about a piece, you tell the artist what it is (constructive criticism here). They can then use your criticism to either fix the piece, take it into heart the next time they do a piece, or tell you to go to hell and ignore what you said. I don't believe in being rude about it or anything, you can just say "hey, I really think that this color doesn't go well with this other color in the way you put them here, try a different shade, like a darker red perhaps.)

I've been getting this from my Image Editing class. There are some people who are awesome in the class, and then there are others who are still learning the software and therefore because of their experience, they are prone to having work that is not as clean as the others. Often times, I get the impression that other students in the class are catering to these students by telling them "this looks great!" when it is obvious that there is plenty of room for improvement. I won't cater to your feelings by telling you a piece looks great if it doesn't, however I will acknowledge improvement and encourage them to keep working at it. Undue flattery doesn't help anybody, and I have found that you learn greatly from your mistakes.

In fact, I learn more from my mistakes then my successes. As long as my mistakes aren't fatal, I generally only make them once because I learned from them the first time. I like to be told what I'm doing right and not have every mistake pointed out to me, granted, but please give me constructive criticism and tell me how I'm doing. Let me know if I totally messed something up or if it doesn't work. I'm a big girl, I can take it.

Image Editing

So far my image editing class has been interesting. A lot of this stuff is repeat of things I already knew but I'm also reinforcing techniques and picking up on some stuff I didn't know. I've been enjoying the class immensely.

My first assingment I was given three black and white photos of butterflies and was told to put them into a collage in some manner. This was in essense a practice of the Marquee, Lasso and Magic Wand Tools. This is what I came up with.



Nothing fancy really, me mostly playing around and messing with the color.

The second project was reinforcing the ideas of the first, except for we had to find a full body image of a human either online or a picture of ourselves and at least five additions to it, whether it be articles of clothing, background or what not. I didn't feel like searching for an already made image, so I used myself. I mean, i have Photoshopped myself before. And then I looked for the strangest outfit I could find. It was really tough finding a pair of shoes that would work. But overall, I had a lot of fun.



I actually bought a hat like that in Bulgaria. More for the novelty of it then anything.

This week's assignment was a practice with the Gradient Tools and an enforcement of colors. We had to create a 'still life' using geometric shapes. Well, I wouldn't really call this a Still Life so much, more of me goofing around (which a lot of these assignments seem to be) and for a bit I was thinking that this wasn't going to work. And then I messed around with it a bit more and then discovered that I actually really liked it! I'm not much of a color person, I'm more into subtle tones, monochromatics and neutrals. This is bright and cheerful, and it looks sweet! I see one thing I should probably go back and fix but overall, cool!



I do one to two images a week like this, one major assignment for that week. The fact that I have prior experience with Photoshop (and a lot at that) has really helped, and so does the ownership of a Wacom Drawing Tablet. Don't do Graphic Arts without it!

Art Combined with Life

I really need to draw more, and not just sketches colored on the computer. I mean I really need to draw and paint and do more of the traditional art more.

Its kind of cool that we have a bit of a studio set up in the basement now, so I can actually make a mess with my paints and stuff and its all cool. That's what the room is for. Upstairs is getting more of a home-like feel to it, and all in all, its feeling like home. This place didn't feel like home back in February.

Meanwhile, I'm working on getting a job and not spending money. I'm kind of found myself on a budget for the first time in, well, a year and a half. So I have to maintain some discipline that doesn't include going out and buy a LCD Flatscreen Television and the such (however, we really did kind of need the TV upstairs).

I should be fine in the long run.

Latest piece of Illustration I did, includes a Kelpie stallion that looks kind of. . . dead.

Sketchity. . .

I was wondering if I portrayed this picture properly, in the longrun, it came out pretty good.

Girl blowing a bubble.

I need to focus on drawing like this more often.