There’s chalk everywhere
Whenever I say this people’s eyebrows shoot up over their heads, they lean in close to me, only to lean back and squint and say
“REALLY?”
And yes. Yes really. Here, I’ll say it:
I’m afraid of chalk.
Yes, I know it’s not going to hurt me. No, a chalk didn’t kill my father.
It started out as just a dislike. Then an intense aversion. Now a fear.
It makes my blood run cold, and gives me the overwhelming urge to lick my fingernails in recovery. (Yeah, I don’t understand that either).
And you know what sucks? REALLY sucks?
Chalk is everywhere!
I swear that almost every movie, every sitcom, even every documentary that I’ve watched in the last 3 months contains at least, at least one chalk scene.
Can’t they put warnings for this sort of thing on the DVD cover? Or in the opening credits? What if I had a seizure and died from seeing chalk?
Seriously, next time you’re watching a movie, take note of how many times people use chalk.
And if the number is zero, drop me a line – it sounds like the very movie for me!
June 15, 2010 Comments Off
Strength in numbers
We all know about the importance of being part of an art community for support as an artist, and the importance of customer/client support to keep us going.
That said, some of the best support I’ve gotten didn’t come from other artists or even my clients.
Some of the best support I’ve gotten came from small business owners who know what it’s like to do it tough, and generously offered me a helping hand.
[Read more →]
June 12, 2010 Comments Off
This goes for illustrators too
“My 3 magical words now: “don’t be afraid” (every morning a writer is afraid of what he wrote in the previous day…) ”
- Paulo Coelho via twitter
March 9, 2010 Comments Off
The secrets of painting skin in photoshop
Firstly, the title to this post is deceptive. There ARE no secrets. It’s just boring and straightforward, no hidden tricks, no secret societies, no special handshakes.
But it did sound good didn’t it?
My skin tones and textures are something people compliment me on a bit, and I often get asked what I did to get those results. So, to finally answer that question (and in a manner better than ‘Uh…paint it that way?’) I present:
My list of things that I do when I’m trying to paint the skin to be the good skin, you know, and not the bad skin, when I am painting, like I often do, because it’s my job.
Told you the original title sounded better! [Read more →]
January 3, 2010 1 Comment
More with the spider and egg cups.
So the doctor wasn’t happy with how the spider bite is healing. He gave Seth heavy duty antibiotics, some cream and took swabs for tests.
We’ll get the results Friday, so hopefully we should have a better idea of what we’re up against then.
The funny (yeah, hilarious) thing is that we’re still not sure what sort of spider bit him, or even when. Luckily necrosis is very rare, and while Seth’s wound isn’t healing, it’s not spreading either. Though it does look ugly.
Just hit me the other day that Christmas is pretty much here. And I’ve done almost NO Christmas shopping. Currently I’m working on making some little things as gifts for people, and need to find some nice (but fun) egg cups to complete the project.
And yet, nice egg cups seem to be hard to find!
Well, reasonably priced, nice egg cups within Australia at least.
These are like what I want, but they’re in the USA. I’ll have to keep hunting.
November 9, 2009 Comments Off
STILL with the spider bite
Well, it’s a month since Seth was bitten on the ankle by a spider, and again we’re off to the doctor.
It’d been doing pretty well, healing slowly while we cleaned it with a tea tree solution and put paw-paw ointment (recommended by a friend. Thankyou, by the way, it’s great stuff!) on it.
Last night he had a performance at the uni and came home with it very red and inflamed again. It looks infected to me, and apparently he finds it very, very painful. We soaked it in warm water with tea tree while we watched a star trek, and it looked a little less angry, but after a whole MONTH of this we can’t take any chances. Back to the doctor it is!
November 7, 2009 Comments Off
Spider
I’m pretty worried about Seth at the moment – a week ago he woke up with a weird blister on his ankle. No idea how it got there.
We had a wedding to get to, so we drained it with a sterile needle and ignored it. Then it came back. And back again.
A trip to the doctor confirmed a spider bite, but we don’t know what kind of spider or even where or when it happened. We suspect it came out of his boots as he was putting them on, but we really don’t know.
He’s got a tetanus injection and a shitload of antibiotics, but athat on top of daily cleaning isn’t really seeing it get much better, and tonight he’s feeling so exhausted that he just came home, ate dinner and flopped into bed.
So tonight, after bathing it and the surrounding area in diluted tea-tree oil, I used a sharpie to draw a line around the red area before we put a new dressing on it. If the red area is bigger tomorrow, we go back to the doctor’s.
I’m aware necrosis is very rare, but spider bites are very prone to nasty infection, so you can’t be too careful there, really.
October 16, 2009 Comments Off
