sutures1

Foolscap Con X: Be There

elleneades@gmail.com — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:36:07 GMT

Here's the link:

http://www.foolscapcon.org/

GOHs are Esther Friesner and Michael Kaluta. Foolscap is a literary relaxicon focused on "flat things", e.g. books and paper art. I'll be helping gofer it. It should be tons of fun. September 26 weekend, Bellevue, Washington.

What's the Japanese for ROFLMAO?

elleneades@gmail.com — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:32:19 GMT

My mom's staying at my house over the weekend. She just moved here from California. Let's gloss over all the obvious omg stuff, and cut to the chase. Scene: this morning at breakfast. I'm wearing a black T-shirt that has a Japanese character on the front.

Mom: Why are you wearing that shirt?
Me: Ummmm ... why?
Mom: I don't understand what it's saying.
Me: (shows mom that underneath the Japanese character it says "PEACE" in English).
Mom: But that doesn't say "peace," it says "flat"!
Me: OMGWTF!!!!
Mom: Ohhh, I get it. This character 干 plus this character 和 together means "peace," but if you only have the first character, all it says is "flat"!
Me: (rips off t-shirt, throws it in trash, dies of embarrassment)
Marcus: Hey! KANGA! Guess what Rabbit's shirt really says!!!!

Wiscon 32

elleneades@gmail.com — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:01:14 GMT

I just got home from Wiscon 32, which is the feminist science-fiction convention in Madison, over Memorial Day weekend. I'd gotten Chris a ticket and twisted her arm until she agreed to come out from the wilds of New Jersey and meet me, and we had an awesome time. I found myself thinking of ideas that I hadn't wrestled with since college or shortly thereafter. There were discussions of racism in fantasy writing, how to create a world, a smackdown between Philip Pullman and C.S. Lewis (general conclusion: Pullman wins hands-down, but Lewis gets points for writing a series to which Pullman felt the need to respond so brilliantly). The art show was better than most, although still not devoid of badness; however I really liked Laurie Edison's images of Japanese women which included old and Korean-Japanese and Ainu and other women not often seen when you google "Japanese women". There was a fat acceptance panel, which I did not attend, but I noted that actually in comparison to Norwescon the Wiscon-goers appeared, overall, slightly more mesomorphic. There were some wonderful discussions of books for kids, books about nonwhite societies or with nonwhite protagonists, books that push sentience in different nonhuman directions. I got to hear Ted Chiang read something new, and I introduced myself to him as a friend of his wife's. Chris fiddled and I played dulcimer at least 45 minutes a day, ending with a lovely jam on a grassy lawn across the street from the Concourse hotel before my shuttle for the airport left. I found myself wishing I could be three places at once quite a lot, or at least not so much of a late-night zombie.

Back home I am struggling to put the ideas in my head into ideas on paper. The problem is that it's often easier to put ideas into words than into images for me. For example, I can think of two or three interesting ways to write about an outsider protagonist in a story right now ... but trying to figure out how to *paint* an outsider, that's harder. OTOH, the idea of painting a picture of a magical Negro is funny as hell, and very tempting.

I joined the Carl Brandon Society this morning, having missed the party on Friday night. Then I got online and started reading various people's LJs, jumping back and forth, finding all sorts of interesting people talking about ... all kinds of things, including all the panels I missed (duh, aforementioned desire to be three places at once). I really hope I can get more involved with these folks; they remind me of what I've missed since I left off working at Aradia. Feminists! People of color! Science fiction! The Buffyverse! Terry Pratchett! And, of course, Ellen Klages, whose auctioneering skills are simply without peer. I would post a picture of her in a mustache doing the Happy Dance Of Reaching a $100 Bid, but we are having photoshop problems at the moment, so perhaps later. I bought both Wiscon Chronicles 1 and 2, The Green Glass Sea, Marque and Reprisal, the comic book collection of Buffy Season 8 #1-5 which I didn't know about, Zahrah the Windseeker and a bunch more I've forgotten, plus I've got a long list of stuff to order because I didn't want to carry it all home.

In art news, working on painting of Tim at the moment. He is shirtless, leaning an elbow on a yellow book on a desk, writing on a white pad with the other hand, and looking very GQ. I would post a pic of that painting in progress except, as I mentioned, PhotoShop not talking to my camera atm. So, later. The painting I did before, of Quinn's naked torso, is mostly done although I have to re-work a couple of gray spots on her breastbone and thigh, and Kimberly wants me to put it in the end-of-year student show, so I am excited about that. Going off now, in fact, to think about that.

Obama and me

elleneades@gmail.com — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:27:49 GMT

Went to the 43rd District Democratic Caucus in Seattle on Sunday. It was a zoo! There were about 1300 people there trying to fit into a 1000 seat high school auditorium. I am pretty sure the fire codes were not observed :). But boy, was it great! Hundreds of people of all shapes, sizes, colors and persuasions. People in wheelchairs, people with babies, people with buttons of all kinds. Old people with canes, new people with binkies. The Hillary delegates were LOUD and PROUD. The Obama delegates were LOUDER ... but I gotta say, proportional to headcount, the Hillary delegates were amazingly scrappy. We heard speeches from each candidate's surrogate -- and the Obama and Kucinich surrogates were local people, but the Clinton campaign sent Sean Astin, a.k.a. Sam Gamgee, to plug Hillary. It was an interesting choice; I'm not sure he's cut out for public speaking, but he basically hit the "experience" and "strength" notes as required. At 1:00 (I'd been there since 9 and the caucus officially opened at 10:07) they announced, "The hot dog stand outside is down to its last 150 dogs," and there was a small stampede. Since my delegate vote had already been counted, I decided to bail at that point, since next up was delegate selection to the next convention, and that was going to take forever. There were dozens of would-be delegates, each of whom had thirty seconds to make their bid! So I don't know who went on to the next level, but I really enjoyed having been there. (And I would have enjoyed it far less without Matt's Kindle to play with during the parliamentary-procedures stuff...yay!)

Things I want to remember

elleneades@gmail.com — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:06:13 GMT

One of the best things about Marcus is his laugh. He still laughs like a child, with a completely unconscious, utterly contagious hilarity. He giggles and chortles. The first time he saw the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man in "Ghostbusters" he laughed and laughed and laughed, tears streaming, clutching his stomach, the whole thing.

The other day he came across the word "Scheisse!" in something he was reading in the car and asked Matt what it meant and Matt said it meant "poop." Marcus cracked up. Then Matt, being Matt, pointed out that it is fun to swear in German because it sounds so good, and another good swear would might be "Scheinhund!" Marcus cracked up again. He came home yelling from the top of the stairs, "Rabbit! Rabbit! Scheisse! Schweinhund! Shleisshun! Scheinsche! Poop! Pig-dog!" amid gales of laughter, staggering around drunkenly. He had just managed to calm down by the time he was half way through his snack about ten minutes later when Matt walked up behind him, leaned over and (in falsetto) yelled "Schweinhund!!!" Marcus promptly snorted milk out his nose and all over the floor.

Rachel and Caroline

elleneades@gmail.com — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:42:40 GMT

Here are a couple of recent portraits. "Rachel" is an oil painting from Beginning Figure Painting. I don't recall exactly but I think she sat for 4 sessions, or 12 hours. I think she is my most successful painting so far, at least in terms of getting the colors and the composition close to real life and aesthetically pleasing.

"Caroline" is a pastel painting. We were supposed to emphasize the very light hues, and the contrast with her hair and the dark trim on her dress, in imitation of the Klimt and other early modern work (posted previously). To my mind, she seems a bit insipid, but that goes with the style a bit. I was very happy with the bouquet of flowers, as flowers are not my strong suit.

Not me, but kinda

elleneades@gmail.com — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:39:22 GMT

As a followup to the Klimt white painting master copy, we were supposed to do a self-portrait "in the style of" the white paintings. Here is mine. I call it "My Grandmother, My Self." I don't know that I can really envision myself sitting for a portrait with my hair up and a white high-collared blouse on (I used a turtleneck), but perhaps a turn-of-the-century Japanese immigrant bride did. I'm channeling her.

New art projects

elleneades@gmail.com — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:09:55 GMT

I'm taking two classes at the moment: the second part of Foundation Figure Painting, and a class in Pastel Portraits. For the first one, the homework was to paint a self portrait in oil. Here's the second layer. It's still in progress, obviously. I started with a pink and green (red/green complementary color) base, and decided my face was way too pink and not yellow enough, so for the second layer I took the dark pink paint, added a bunch of cadmium yellow, and then added in more white to lighten it up again. The chin needs more green still, that'll be layer 3, and the background needs to be dulled (the sheet behind me was white, with kind of light umber shadows) and the shirt needs work but I hate drapery :)

For Pastel Portraits, we're currently working on a portrait of a model named Caroline who has dark brown hair and pale olive skin -- sort of Mediterranean coloring -- in a light colored dress against light pastel backgrounds. There's a whole bunch of turn-of-the-century work in a similar vein -- you can look up "white portraits" of Whistler, Sargent, Klimt and others -- so homework was to copy one of the master works. I picked a Klimt (yes, it's Klimt, even though it looks like a cross between Toulouse-Lautrec and Mucha) to copy. Here it is. Some hat, eh?
Here is the original Klimt.

Another old drawing

elleneades@gmail.com — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 04:38:52 GMT

This is from Suzanne Brooker's workshop, Drawing Portraits of Trees, from August 2007. We sat on the grass in the Seattle Arboretum and drew trees for a week. It was lovely. Suzanne is very exacting, and she definitely had a lot of critiques for all of us. This tree is one that I worked on in the early morning when the sun was right for about four mornings.

elleneades@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:02:42 GMT

Here's the final project from fall's Foundation Painting class. We worked on this painting for four sessions of 3 hours each. I think the most successful part is the frontmost foot and shin crossing over the rear foot; it looks very 3-D and realistic. I'm pretty happy with the red glow on the left torso from light bouncing off the cloth onto the model, and with the colors in the breasts and torso, and with the way the curtain in the backdrop disappears into the dark upper left corner. Things I don't like: the right arm is too orange, the drapery is awkward, the face is VERY awkward, and I never managed to finish the floor.

New art from Classical Realism workshop

elleneades@gmail.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:28:45 GMT

Here are three charcoal drawings from the recent workshop I attended with Juliette Aristides. She teaches the classical atelier at Gage, which is a 4 year (!!) full-time drawing and painting program from which you emerge painting like, I don't know, Caravaggio or someone. I can't manage that commitment, but I CAN do a weeklong workshop, so I did.

This is a two day study of Sarah, the female model. Total hours worked is probably about 4-5. Natural lighting (limited because it was January).

This is a two day study of Richard, the male model. Again, natural lighting and total hours worked around 4-5.

Finally, this is a three or four day study of Sarah; I can't remember exactly, but total hours worked around 8-10 maybe. It's much more contrasty than the others because in addition to using vine charcoal I also used compressed charcoal, which makes a much blacker mark, in order to get the heavy shadows around her figure. She is leaning on an invisible cushion, in case you were wondering ;-p

Cool presents!

elleneades@gmail.com — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:50:09 GMT

Matt got me one of those turntables with a USB port that can convert all my old records which have been stored in the closet for 15 years into MP3 files! I am so happy! I'm sitting here listening to a recording of Malcolm Dalglish playing hammer dulcimer with Grey Larsen, circa 1977, which is just awesome! Yayayayaya!

I also got a truly kick-butt bumper sticker to add to my collection, courtesy of Lauri: TAILGATE ME AND ROLL FOR DAMAGE. Bwahahaha! She also loaded me down with tons of cool Fimo art and mosaic books for inspiration.

The kids, as usual, got too much stuff and lost interest several times; the cats enjoyed the tissue paper; much leftover turkey was consumed; a good time was had by all.

I'm bored and my arm hurts

elleneades@gmail.com — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 19:02:08 GMT

I've been having problems with my right arm since about mid October, probably related to overuse. It varies between a forearm pain at the insertion of the extensor digitorum comunis (upper back forearm, just below the lower elbow) to an upper arm pain which is accompanied by a pop when I rotate my shoulder. So I think it's some combination of biceps tendonitis and forearm/hand overuse injury. The latter is probably related to mousing and too much computer use; the former, which began first, is probably related to the painting and pastel classes I've been taking this fall. I'm loath to stop art classes, but I've been resting the arm as much as possible the last month and am now also stopping computer gaming (and switching to a lefthanded mousing style for a while).

I'm also a klutz. I decided one day to ice the forearm to reduce the pain, and I got an icepack out of the fridge and put it on with an Ace bandage to hold it snug. It felt so good I left it there for about forty-five minutes. When I took it off -- wow! I'd frostbitten my forearm! So now I'm also recovering from that (there's really no treatment for a light frostbite other than to not re-injure it). Silly me. Anyway, that's the state of my arm for now ... sore, a little swollen, kind of red where it got frostbite, and slightly tingly.

The kids are downstairs doing their computer games and I can't play. I made cookies yesterday and need to make more today. Matt's going to roast a turkey for dinner and Lauri's staying over to open presents in the morning. I guess I'll go find something to read. Happy holidays all :)

500 Years of Female Portraits

elleneades@gmail.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:23:18 GMT

http://miraulam.multiply.com/video/item/38

This is awesome. I note the absence of Vermeer, Degas and Rossetti, plus a slight overemphasis on Leonardo, but other than that I'm pretty impressed.

Alex learns to spell

elleneades@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:18:22 GMT

Today, volunteering in Alex's class, I was teaching the kids a pair at a time to make different words by swapping out consonants.

Ellen: "First, write SHE. Now, what do you have to do to turn that into HE?"
Matthew: "Erase the S."
Ellen: "Right! And now, how do you change HE into WE?"
Alex: "We is spelled W-I-I."

Quick notes from Orycon

elleneades@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:03:55 GMT

It was fun!

I need to read a Michael Chabon novel called the Yiddish Policemen's Association, or something like that. Also a nonfiction book called Paradise Rex, which is about sexual reproduction having evolved as a defense against parasites.

Look up Maslo's Hierarchy.

Steve Barnes on teaching old dogs new tricks (e.g., southern whites and learning to be colorblind): "Just because we like sugar doesn't mean we can't put it off until the end of the meal. Adults can learn to do that."

Vonda says I need to read a short story called "The Cool Equations," by Deborah Wessel. Apparently a reply to the infamous "The Cold Equations."

The filkers sang "There's a Hole in the Middle of it All," "Have You Got Any News of the Iceberg?" (a song about the Titanic from the point of view of a polar bear), and a capstan shanty called "Paddy Lay Back."

I got a couple of good ideas for drawings/paintings which I am not a good enough artist to render. Yet. But the art show was disappointingly, um, typical. Fairies and rocket ships. SF authors write books about more than fairies and rocket ships ... how long will the artists continue to be purely derivative? Sigh.

Great panels on global warming, cloning and genetic engineering. Lousy panel on reconciling science and religion ... stacked in favor of the religious. Say what?

Ctein has a book out on digital photo retouching that might be fun to get for Matt. As if he didn't have enough to do with his time.

I had a good time, and was welcomed by the filkers and complimented on my ST uniform and Matrix coat. Kudos to Lauri for the latter. Yay!

More red hat

elleneades@gmail.com — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:30:46 GMT

Got more color in. Hat needs more work, and the shadows are getting muddy. I will probably have to brush off the pigment and rework them if I want them to not be so brownish. Terry made some small corrections to the likeness. More work this week. Also, more successfully, Tim, a model in Pastel Portraits class. The idea was to recreate the colors and pose of a famous work by Vermeer of a young man in blue-grey and black. I am much happier with the colors in the shadows on his neck.

The Guinness book

elleneades@gmail.com — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:04:47 GMT

Alex: "Marcus says there's a guy in the Guinness record book who can squirt milk out of his eyes. Isn't that disgusting?"

Rabbit: "That's not only disgusting, I don't think it's possible."

Alex: "I think it is..."

*thoughtful pause*

"...after special surgery."

Red hat continued

elleneades@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:42:09 GMT

Going well so far! Matt says it's his favorite of my self-portraits, and I agree. I really like the hat. I'm starting to lose control of the edge of the right side of the face, and the mouth is a little funky, but the large shapes are still good overall. I am a little unsure how to handle the highlights on the left shoulder and arm, and I haven't touched the background. But still, fingers are crossed.

It's been a lovely weekend. Alex had a great seventh birthday party at his gymnastics gym, and then both kids had a Halloween overnight party, so we had an evening off. Then I had a great time playing dulcimer and guitar tonight for the first time in ages with annathepiper and her pals in Kenmore. My fingers have long since lost their calluses, alas!

Oliver gets some air

elleneades@gmail.com — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:01:00 GMT

Oliver jumps! Popcorn watches admiringly. (Bad picture taken at night, oh well.)

elleneades@gmail.com — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:18:16 GMT

Self portrait with hat, layer 2

This is a continuation of my self portrait homework with local color added -- red hat, yellow ochre and green on skin, brown easel, green curtain. Changed hairstyle to a bun but I think I will change it back again later. On advice of teacher, made the portrait a bit longer as well. Need to fix and continue adding color layers.

Last night I had...

elleneades@gmail.com — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:52:53 GMT

... a dream in which I was cursed. The curse entailed having my hair plastered immovably in front of my face, making it difficult to breathe, much less see. I kept flipping my hair up, and it kept re-appearing on my face again.

I woke up to find a certain orange kitten plastered to my face.

Sigh.

Arty stuff

elleneades@gmail.com — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:28:50 GMT

Project of the day: put art online. This necessitates consultation with Geekboy. There will be gnashing of teeth (mine), probably.

I am working on several assignments at the moment. For Botanicals class, we are doing a study of fallen leaves, and we are supposed to start with a grisaille underpainting. I spent last night pasting the leaves onto a sheet of paper and then sketching the result on a gessoed board, and then I mixed 5 tones of ivory black/raw umber/titanium white and painted the grisaille. It's now drying.

For Portraits, homework was to start on a self-portrait. This will be a work in progress for 5 weeks, and is to be brought in and critiqued each Tuesday night. I settled on a pose and lighting, smushed my easel into a corner of the studio, put my red hat on, and drew the contour and shadow shapes in charcoal. Then went over the lines in Mars violet pastel. Then added in the darks, again in Mars violet. Next is to add local color. I guess that means I have to look for a warm and cold of each local color in the Nupastel set.

Also, I want to put my tarot cards online and look into getting some prints of them so that I can actually sell them and not lose the originals. This would additionally make colored prints more likely. Wonder who to ask about that.

Marcus to Kanga this morning, about the computer: "How come it works when you do it, but not when I do it?" Vindication at last!

Oliver is sleeping between the monitor and the keyboard. I am so happy with my orange kitten.

Half way thru The Sons of Heaven. What will I do when Dr Zeus has finally been destroyed? Go back to Crusade, I suppose :)

The important things

elleneades@gmail.com — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:33:44 GMT

Alex, while eating dessert at Azteca, observed: "When it comes to sugar ... I don't waste."

What If?

elleneades@gmail.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 05:29:34 GMT

"Rabbit, what would happen if the sun went out?"
"Well, it's not going to. We know how big the sun is and how long it will take to burn up, and it won't go out for billions of years."
"But what if it does?"
"Well, all the plants would die, and then we would die."
"Why?"
"Because we wouldn't have anything to eat."
"Couldn't we eat ice cream?"
"No, because ice cream is made from milk, and milk is made by cows, and cows eat grass."
"Couldn't they eat dried grass if the fresh grass dies?"
"Yes, but then you couldn't plant any more, because grass needs the sun to grow."
Pause.
"Well, would it grow if it had flashlights?"