Brain Flotsam V2.007

This evening the lovely alisanne was in town, so we met up for dinner and tea and much chatter of fandom and other topics.  It was quite a nice time. 
Now I must prepare for my weekend adventure in Austin, plus try to make some progress on my art coming due.

Ok, so I've been remiss in tracking my art lately. 

I did three pieces for the Snupin: Bigger, Longer, Uncut fest, a Big Bang that ran earlier this summer. This is my artist page.

I did three pieces for the Hermione Big Bang, which just published last month. This is my artist tag on that LJ community. All links go to the Big Bang fic archive.

Also, just to repeat, my Snarry Games entry is over here, and the Games are almost over!

I'll have to get my stuff together and post those to my personal archives shortly.

I have a few original pieces in the works, plus more illustrations from the Far Away as Moonshine 'verse, and those will also get posted soon.

In the meantime, who wants to give me suggestions for steampunk/cyberpunk/otherpunk fairy tales?  (Images, please, although story adaptation ideas might also be fun for my writing exercises.)

• my best friend really really really wants me to read Twilight.  sigh. I probably should read it just so I'll have a point of conversation with my younger cousins, who aren't readers but have apparently all finished the series.
  
• she also spent some time discussing the ways that she thought my characterization of Draco Malfoy in Far Away as Moonshine echoed that of Michael Corleone in The Godfather series.
  
• and we spent our lunch talking racebending and white-washing in film, something she's been aware of and talking about for longer than I.
  
• good times, despite the sparkly vampire complication.

• Friday evening I actually went out. Yes, really. Had dinner and then drinks with friends. I visited a new bar I'd never been to, and had some lovely Scotch.
  
• The lightning on Friday was apocalyptic.  Made me wish I had a camera with instant shutter speed, to capture it.
  
• Saturday morning at the gas station, a lady saw my "I'm blogging this" t-shirt and said, "Hey, can I ask you about blogging?"  So we ended up having a conversation about social media while my tank filled. Bizarre.
  
• Spent Saturday evening at my aunt's house. We had dinner and conversation and played two rounds of Scrabble.  Fun times.
  
• Today Mom and I made a HUGE dent in my cleaning. We moved the sewing cabinet, and put away almost all the books, although actually really they're all thrown willy-nilly onto shelves, not actually organized.  It'll take me weeks to get them organized.
  
• I hung two more pictures on the walls, too.
  
• Baking soda really is a miracle cleaner.
  

• I have two more bigbang arts to do, and then a fest to illustrate before Snupin Santa hits.
  
• I'm working on a concept for a series of fairy tale illustrations in Prismacolor and ink, for my Advanced Visual Arts studio class this semester.
  

-- Jaye and I are going to hell.
-- Jaye fell asleep in the panel on Consciousness.  (I fell asleep in the Putting the World in WorldCon panel)
-- I feel like I walked several miles along the corridors at the party hotel.
-- the Polish restaurant in Old Montreal is awesome, as I remembered it, and I really must get back there for dinner.
-- We are still in search of decent coffee, but the place in the Palais serves "cafe mocha" ghetto-style, which is hot chocolate with regular coffee poured into it. OMG, it is So Damn Good.
-- became a pre-supporting member of the Texas 2013 bid. Yay.
-- found Jake randomly by the elevators at the party hotel.
-- random guy in the panel about Genocide in Literature spent 5 minutes of panel time summarizing the most recent Star Trek movie.
-- Charles Stross predicts human drivers will be illegal in 30 years...
-- Paul Krugman to Charles Stross: So where do you get your ideas?
-- Opening Ceremonies included a really good contortionist. Those folks always make me cringe a little, though, when they fold their spine backwards just below their diaphragm. Eep.
-- Neil Gaiman seemed shorter than I am when I ran into him (almost literally in a narrow doorway). That is so weird. Also, he did not offer Jake a blow job. (But hey, it's only Thursday.)
-- Margarita ok. Aquavit excellent. La Fin du Monde local microbrew AWESOME.
-- Now Jaye and I are going to bed.

Well, I managed, by staying until after 7pm yesterday, to finish the deadline stuff for work today, so that I have a few loose ends to tie up before leaving for Azkatraz, but mostly things are done.

I'm flying out tonight, so perhaps I'll see some of you guys at the hotel?
If you don't have my phone number and might want it, drop me a line at zephrene AT gmail, and I'll pop it over to you.  Otherwise, I expect I'll see quite a few of you at HBP tomorrow, and at various volunteering gigs Friday.  :)

I'll be back, and hopefully more productive, in a week, but only until the time rolls around to leave for this year's WorldCon in Montreal.  (eeee, exciting!)

See you in San Francisco!

I have this unfinished WIP that was really close to my heart - and still is, in its way, and I'm wondering now whether or not to finish it.  It's a one-shot featuring Harry and  Luna, in my Far Away as Moonshine ''verse, which I love to pieces despite the extreme rarepair-ness of it.  :P

I also have a bunch of prompts to fulfill for my now-defunct but still inspiring table on Luna.
Haven't been feeling the writing bug lately, but now that my ApolloCon stress is mostly done for the year, and I'm gearing up for Azkatraz, HP is back on the brain. (And I just can't do fic for Merlin yet. It took me years to work up to it in HP, maybe someday.)

To write, or not to write? Maybe I'll just keep drawing...

And oh crap, officially less than two weeks to the Con and I need to frame my art for the Gallery and Auction!
And print postcards... And test my DVD cable... And move all the pr0n off the  laptop that's traveling with me.  Yeep.

So my Mom told me she followed the link from my LJ to sign the petition at racebending.com about the whitewashed casting of the Avatar: the Last Airbender movie.
Is that everybody now?  Go sign it!

Also, the TV and DVD player are both installed and working beautifully, and MY GOD Colin Morgan is adorable when his face is a foot tall in my living room.  ;)

Now all I have to do is actually build my IKEA furniture.
And finish my art before deadline.

Also, I posted a bunch of art here the other day because I'd forgotten to add it to this journal.  Reveals for a couple exchanges and my contribution to LJ's hump_day_smut for the last few months.

Well, it's official. I'm a Snitch.
In true comic timing, my tablet pen has given up the ghost.  I decided to use the excuse to update my entire Intuos set up. The new one is in the mail.
I am in intimidating company, so I shall have to give some thought to how best to use my time to get some really compelling work done for the team.


2009 SNARRY GAMES - Team Snitch vs. Team Cauldron!

I love going to see movies with my parents. They are a riot.
( slightly spoilery riot within )

Also, there was a preview for G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra and I squealed in excitement in the first three seconds, which made everybody look at me funny. Sorry, but I recognized it immediately by the menacing Christopher Eccleston surrounded by evil types. Yay!

Mom did comment that so many of the movies we saw previews for were dark and violent. I was horrified by the preview for the new Tarantino film, and the ones for Transformers and Terminator both involved a bit of robot apocalypse so they were also really dark. Terminator moreso than Transformers in terms of actually being almost always dark and dreary with guts and explosions, but... can we maybe make a few good SF movies that aren't marketed solely to video gamers?

I'm planning to put four of my Tarot cards in a frame for display at the Azkatraz Dungeon of Art, but I'm having trouble deciding which ones.
At first, I was going to use the Aces, because I love them, but then I thought perhaps some of the book characters would be better, and more fitting to the con theme (Hanged Man, for instance?).
So now I can't decide.

Anybody have any ideas?  Here's a link to the cards I've done:
http://zephre.insanejournal.com/tag/art:+hp+tarot

If I don't do the Aces, I thought perhaps The Lovers, Death, The Hanged Man, and Temperance?

Or perhaps somebody else has a card they really think is excellent that I'm not remembering...

Please do comment if you know the work.

Ok, so I noted that I haven't updated here with anything of substance in over two weeks, which we all know is the internet equivalent of ten million years.
I'm still living in what I like to call cardboard chic, a house full of piles and boxes and no real organization.
True to prediction, though, I am spending a lot less time at home. Dinner and/or coffee with friends, meetings, meet-ups, a con, family events, and evening classes have all conspired to keep me far from home.
And I'm going out of town for a week starting next Tuesday. I'll be in the New York metro area, attending the Tarot Reader's Studio as well as hanging out with my beloved friends in the vicinity (and some coming in to town from afar, including Australia! Wow!).
That said, I expect to be spending more time at home in May. I have quilts to make and paintings to paint, for one thing. Plus a lot of tarot cards and still some fan exchanges to finish.  Plus the three Big Bangs I decided to sign up for. Mmm, fun. I also have books to unpack and an apartment to arrange. I also plan to acquire an actual TV. No, really! I'm going to set it up and watch it and everything. Probably.

That plus the whole Summer of Cons (ApolloCon, Azkatraz, Anticipation - I sense a theme here.)  should keep me busy.

Especially for fandom:

I AM MOVING THIS WEEK. 

This means that I will have questionable access to: the fandom parts of the internet (you know what I mean), my art supplies, and in fact, all my stuff.

I'll try to be back and on point for any pending deadlines by this weekend, but it'll depend on how cooperative the cable modem is.

Hey, I get a bed on Friday! w00t!

Good: finished the quilt top, except for the photos, which can be put in later on top of the quilting.
Bad: couldn't print the photos because my printer is borked and full of blots, and the parental printer is out of color ink.  D'oh.

But it was a good day for progress.
Had a mediocre weekend health-wise, with some downs and some okays, and even this afternoon when things were really good.
Did not go to the art museum, but will hopefully get that in soon. 
I need to start making some lists in anticipation of my move, whenever that ends up being.

Haven't finished my art for Wednesday yet. Coming up on a series of deadlines now, plus I'm now signed up for THREE Big Bangs in a row this summer.  Geez. Not only is it con season, but I've signed up to illustrate novellas in two fandoms.  Fun times, indeed. ;)  At least there isn't any active overlap in production time, nor any crucial overlap with my travel times.

And now, snack time then bed, with fanfic. Yay fanfic.

Last night I finished watching the first season of Merlin. This morning's weird dream was unrelated to the show. It was actually about my family and home improvement. And definitely weird. But it was definitely a festival of television last night, with a marathon viewing of the last few episodes.
Thank goodness for the interwebs, I say!
Such a fun show. Merlin is a doll. It's too bad I find doing TV-based fanarts so intimidating. Perhaps some of my friends can convince me to give it a try anyway. Portraiture is something I'm good at, right?

Got a meeting today and I'll probably pop into a discount store on my way home, then it's a weekend of arts and crafts!
I really want to finish the original illo I've been plugging away at since the New Year, and I have some character portraits I hope to squeeze in before the exchange deadlines loom.
I think one of my goals for 2009, now that I'm part of a weekly art posting community (not that I need to pick every single week), will have to be being a bit more choosy in my exchange sign-ups. I do want to have time to do more tarot cards and more original or other-fandom stuffs.

Ah, my files have done copying.  Time to get ready to go!

This is what happens when I watch web TV before bed with the Snupin chatroom...

I dreamed that I was in a beautiful antique bookstore with Colin Morgan, Bradley James, and Emma Watson.  (Presumably my dream-self had been de-aged for the adventure.) We were drinking red wine and playing a Latin word game which for some reason involved a lot of standing up and walking around to rearrange words on the wall. Or possibly to write them on the wall in light, I am still not entirely sure how the words got up there. Luckily for my slightly inebriated dream-self, Bradley seemed willing to be leaned upon an awful lot. (And having not seen any DVD extras yet, I suppose really I was hanging out with their characters, but in a British bookstore. Except that Emma was obviously Emma, not Hermione.)
Anyway. It was really quite vivid and odd, and sadly there was no dragon in the cellar. I think that every good antique bookstore should have a dragon in the cellar.

As for Merlin, I watched the next two episodes before bed and while continuing the general snark, I thoroughly enjoyed them.  I do wonder what Morgana does all day besides get dressed, pose dramatically by windows, mouth off to her guardian, or annoy Arthur.  Surely she must have some occupation?

And for those who have watched the show, ( spoilers for Episode 1.03: The Mark of Nimueh )

This show is so cute, I can't stand it.

Post #1:
Here are the caveats:
I don't tend to watch TV, so I have seen neither the show nor any clips.
The web site video doesn't work if you're logging in outside the UK, so all I had to go on were the character descriptions and stills. 

Transcript of chat below:
( a plenitude of snark and a lack of saxony goodness, or evilness as the case may be )

Post #2:
I have now seen the first episode of the BBC's Merlin.
Here is my running commentary.  bwahahaha.

( snark and hilarity )

Oh, interwebs, I love you! I'm going to watch the whole show now!
Except not right this minute because it's time to sleep.

January is a crunch time at work, and I have been home only a couple of hours (awake anyhow) for the last few days. Next week looks like more of the same. It's CRAZY busy at the office and I have tons of club meetings and an evening art class and I just haven't had a space to breathe since I got back from Philadelphia.

I am thinking that there are fests signing up that I am missing...
And I could do a Year in Art post...
And I think reveals have gone up that I missed... (will have to catch up this weekend for thank-yous and such)

The only thing I've managed to do fandom-wise is my clunky Happy Birthday sketch for Snape, which I will post when I get back to Ginevra, I hope. Sofia is a mighty little machine, but she doesn't keep any art.

What am I forgetting? 
Don't you hate that feeling?
And seriously, I have this Godzilla quilt practically designed in my head, but I haven't had the chance to get out my fabric yet. It's all in a basket on my desk! Curses! Where is my Time-Turner?

Ok, lunch is over. Time to be crunched by the Jaws of Industry.
I hope this settles down by February.

Well, I'm at the close of my last day of work this year, and it's time to prepare for an art weekend. (And a cleaning weekend, and a purging weekend, and a haircut weekend, etc.) 
I have some deadline stuff that I must get done before I cut out for Philly after Christmas, so I have to buckle down now. I was getting some done as well as reading/commenting at fests and writing/drawing Advent Drabbles earlier, but then I got a cold and then I had some unexpected (but very useful) meetings and now I just can't keep up.  I'm tired of feeling like I'm running late. So, I must now actually stop reading/drawbling and start producing the real stuff.  I'll hopefully be able to do some reading and commenting later next week, or in the New Year.

This comes, of course, right as I also really need to be working on original creations, both written and artistic.  Although there is the Azkatraz Art Show to consider, I suppose. I may investigate printing ideas for my tarot cards for that.

I'll probably write the beginning set of Dark Season Greeting Cards before Solstice hits, and then start mailing them shortly after Christmas.
I'll have to ponder what to do for Longest Night this year. I have many many candles, and actually several wands, although a few of those should be restricted to costuming use only. One thing I would really like to achieve during this time of cleaning and re-arranging is finding a place to put up a semi-permanent altar. I would feel so much better if my ritual stuff weren't tucked into odd corners or still packed in bins.

The flap about the new photo of Narcissa confirming the horrifying truth hinted at in the early HBP stills has me wanting to draw.  Quelle surprise, right?
Perhaps my Mucha homage should be Narcissa instead of Luna. (Not that I won't do Luna, too, eventually, she is my default female subject after all.)
Well, it's all up in the air and the sketchbook for a few more days, because between the Quilt Show and Julie's visit for the RenFest in the next three weeks, I am tuned to channel "ACKFESTDEADLINELOOMING" for the foreseeable future. (Halloween? What's that? -- and even worse, in some ways: Samhain? I think I'd better do the abbreviated version this year.)

But the concept idea has been planted.  It will grow. ;)

It can sprout right next to my "The Emperor: Evil is Sexy Remix" of Lucius.  LOL.

Ok, I can't imagine not reccing Rana's entry in the snarry_games, it is just that much awesome. All the entries have been amazing, actually, but I want to be sure this one sees a wide audience.  I think that even non-Snarry fen can find joy in Rana's animation, because it gives the boys a fantastic and creative alternate ending without being explicitly slash. It could be seen as deep friendship, even. However you interpret it, it's just beautiful, and her character design for the older Snape and adult Harry is worth a look.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation by littleblackbow/chibitoaster
post-war story, rated PG.  links to Quicktime video or YouTube.

(Full Disclosure: Yes, she's on my team. Take a look anyway. It's worth it!)