Music, art and writing: I love my life :-)

The drawing above is for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Insect." I created this in Corel Painter 8, used the Scratchboard Tool. My usual favourite drawing Painter Brush has been the Croquil, so I've been forcing myself to use other brushes for practice. I used the Gel Composite method for the colour layer, and the Salt variant of the Digital Watercolour Brush for the speckles, then the Subtle variant of the Palette Knife Brush to add more texture to the green area. You can see more of my drawings in my Flickr sketchbook.

I've been getting more inquiries about illustrations I've been posting to Flickr/Blatherings (like my book drawing yesterday)...I really have to get some kind of proper online portfolio online; I'm just way intimidated by all the amazing portfolios I've seen online already. Got the cheque for my first corporate illustration sale today, yay!

Plus I've been focussing on my writing. I'm working on THE LAST FEW CHAPTERS of my YA novel, woohoo! I started this novel (the edit of a Nanowrimo novel) just before the worst of my tendinitis hit and had to put it on hold for a while, focussing on shorter pieces and using ViaVoice while I recovered. Looks like it'll be about 60,000 words. Having this mss sent off to my agent is important to me for many different reasons, so I'm anxious to get this finished.

I've also been selling some shorter pieces: nonfiction and poetry. Yes, I'm writing poetry now. I've read and written it for years now, but for some reason it never crossed my mind that I could get it published. :-) I'm getting a lot rejections, of course, but I'm also starting to find markets for some of my non-rhyming and rhyming poetry. I've been working very hard at it, writing a bit of poetry every day, sending out at least one poem a week.

Looking forward to Urban Tapestry practice tonight at Jodi's place. We'll be working on material for our concert with Franklin: both our stuff as well as his stuff; we've all been exchanging MP3 files by e-mail in the past few weeks. It's going to be a fun concert, I gotta say. :-D

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Mar/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Chester Brown, Will Write For Chocolate

Last night I went to a talk by Chester Brown at the North York Central Library, where Chester is the writer-in-residence from April to June. The talk was excellent; Chester talked about the world of graphic novels and graphic novel publishing from the perspective of his own experiences...how he got interested in comics, his struggles to get noticed in the industry, his influences.

The venue was great: a small meeting room on the second floor, with a good sound system. Chester used an overhead projector to show us various comics by himself as well as comic artists who have been an influence. We also got to see roughs for his most recent project: the front and back covers of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," one of the new Penguin Classics which feature the work of comic artists. You can see covers by some of the other artists here.

My friend Rand told me about Chester's I Never Liked You, which I loved. That got me interested in autobiographical comics in general and eventually inspired me to start My Life In A Nutshell.

Thanks to Ruth for telling me about the talk!

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated with a new comic and a column. Column topic: Tax Tips For Freelancers.

Mar/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

family photos,Värttinä, new postcards

The picture above is of my sister and my brother, years ago. I've been gradually taking our childhood albums and scanning them into digital format.

I know photos mean different things to different people. Some take photos for art's sake or to record an event, some focus on technical perfection, and some aren't interested in taking photos at all.

Since childhood, I've taken photos to capture moments and people. I know I'll never win photo awards...for me, the technical and compositional aspects aren't as important as trying to find the essence of the photo's subject, whether landscape or person or atmosphere. I have a long way to go, but every so often I manage to take a photo which I feel comes tantalizingly close. People have always been more interesting to me as photo subjects than landscapes.

SURVEY: Do you have a camera? How often do you use it?

I had mentioned before that the Lord of the Rings musical (and comments from Hitch in LJ) inspired me to buy a CD by the Finnish group Värttinä. I chose Värttinä's "Iki" CD because it seemed to have music closest to the LOTR show (at least of the CDs available in the Canadian iTunes) and I love it:



I've been listening to this CD over and over and over and over again. Such incredibly gorgeous harmonies and instrumentals. It's also great music to work to since I can't understand any of the words. :-) You can hear sample sounclips here.

Thanks to Julie, "Lord Korak" and John for the postcards for my collection! You can see my whole collection here, but here are my newest additions:



From Julie:

GREETINGS FROM INTERCOURSE, PENNSYLVANIA
A horse and buggy travels down the busy streets of Intercourse.

"Hi Debbie

Thought you might enjoy this classy offering from the heart of Amish country (& yes, there really is such a town)

Love Julie"



From John Hall:

Views of Abu Dhabi - The Capital

"Debbie,

Greetings from Abu Dhabi in the UAE

John"



From my pal "Lord Korak" (who might be attending FilKONtario, his very first filk con!). Here's what was on the other side:

Feb/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Illustration Friday: "Tea"

The drawing above is for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Tea."

For those of you not familiar with Illustration Friday, here's the intro from the site: "Illustration Friday is meant to challenge participants creatively. We believe that every person has a little creative bone in their body. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It's a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art. Curious about collage? Try it here. Never even picked up a colored pencil? Why not now? Just have time for a doodle? That's okay, we'd love to see it. You don't have to be an illustrator or an artist to participate. Just pick up a pencil, for the love of pete."

I have fun participating, and also enjoy looking what other people come up with, especially for topics that can be interpreted many different ways. Here a few of the other drawings I've done for Illustration Friday:

"Ancient"


"Sorrow"


"Friendship"


"Fragile"

Feb/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Session sketches, Wendy Cope interview

I took my sketchbook to the Tranzac last night. I've been doing this for the past couple of sessions. I was way self-conscious about it at first, but people don't seem to mind and I try my best to be unobtrusive.

Sat beside a fiddle player named Sophie last night who normally goes to McCarthy's Irish Pub on Monday nights. My whistle teacher has suggested that I go to other Irish music sessions sometimes, at least just to listen, so I've been investigating the other Toronto sessions. Here are the ones I've found so far, mostly through Toronto Celtic Music Pages and SiegelProductions.ca:



Tranzac: The one I already attend.

McCarthy's Irish Pub: 1801 Gerrard St. Sophie mentioned Monday nights, but online schedules seem to list Wednesday nights. I'm hoping Sophie's right, else these sessions could conflict with the ones at the Tranzac.

The Victory Cafe, 581 Markham, south of Bloor (just Southwest of the Bathurst Subway station. This list says the sessions are on Thursday nights, but that they sometimes don't start until 10 pm. (!!)

Dora Keogh's, 141 Danforth, east of Broadview, Sunday, 4 p.m. as well as Thursday nights starting around 9:30 p.m. "This is apparently the red hot Irish session to attend if you can keep up. Usually hosted by flute player Pat O'Gorman and fiddler Jim McGee."

The Foggy Dew, corner of King and Niagara, 2- 6 p.m. Sunday. "At this point, the pace is middling to almost fast, but beginners are definitely welcome. Singing is also encouraged."

If you're in Toronto and know of others, please do let me know.

It's good practice for me, drawing from life, and it's also a challenge since the players are all constantly moving and changing positions. It's a good challenge, and forces me to push myself to learn some new skills. I also have a tendency to stick to head shots (shoulders and up)...I need to practise doing full body shots, though this is hard with a live subject unless they're very patient and posing on purpose.

I'm starting to purposely choose angles that are difficult to draw, like the one below, which I digitally coloured after scanning. Frances is actually playing a flute held horizontally, but it looks like she's playing a penny whistle here; I think I needed to make her right hand bigger. I still need to work on my perspective skills. I'm reading books on the subject but I'm realizing that the most important thing I need is PRACTICE. So I try to do some drawing every day.



From music to poetry....

About three years ago, I Blathered about a stranger in a bookstore introducing me to Wendy Cope's poetry.

Well, I loved her Serious Concerns (one of my all-time favourite poetry collections) and decided to see if she'd be willing to be interviewed for PoetryFAQ.com. I wrote to her rep at Faber, half-expecting never to get a response. Within a 24 hour time period, he had sent me her e-mail address, Wendy and I had exchanged several e-mails, and I had posted her interview on PoetryFAQ.com.

I love the Internet. Wendy was a wonderful interviewee.

Wish I could find that bookstore stranger again somehow, to thank him.

Feb/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments