busy bee

I have been so caught up with Christmas and work, and other distractions, that I haven't been doing much art these past few weeks. Now that the holiday is over, I can get back to business.

I FINALLY finished my commission prize for the second place winner of the contest I helped judge last month, ....two months ago....anyway, I think it turned out nice, even though it took me forever.

I have another commission I need to work on, and I have to finish my second sculpture of Cteno, which will most likely go up for auction.

I have been working more with my new technique involving a grayscale underdrawing.

It helps me a lot with maintaining the style of my original sketch, and with keeping a good amount of contrast, which I tend to lose when I color more traditionally. I used to work almost exclusively in pencil, so all of my drawings were black and white when I was a teenager. It's kinda what I'm used to even though I've been using photoshop for several years now. I like this new technique because it allows me to work more easily with my paper sketches, and with a method of shading that I am more comfortable with. I think there is definitely room for improvement, but I am going to stick with it for now.

stringmouse

I have had a deviantART account for many years now and have been using the same one for two years. Which is not very long for these things. Many accomplished artists have had the same account/username for 8+ years. And in my two years, I hadn't really acquired a very large following, so I have decided to make a change. I am renaming myself for the purpose of spewing my art all over the internets. Don't think too hard about the new identity. Stringmouse.

It will take me a while to build up my new gallery. I will be resubmitting a lot of my older work and mixing it in with new work. It will be a long transition, but I think it will be a good move for me. For some reason I have been reluctant to do anything too expressive. Fear of judgement and/or rejection, I guess. But this new name has a little bit more feeling. It's kinda cute, a little confusing, kinda feminine, but not really. Like me! It has meaning to me, but does not represent anything really specific. I mean, who really knows what the hell a string mouse is...?

I will probably continue to post journals on my old account for a while, maybe a couple months. And I will keep posting here, but the blog will eventually be renamed. I'm a little scared. But I think once I get things started, I will become more comfortable with it.

tests=normal=what now?

Well, I found out that there's nothing wrong with my thyroid. Which really just means that I have to keep looking for ways I can improve my health, both physical and mental.  I feel a little deflated because I was kinda banking on this one. But I have some plans to make improvements here and there. So hopefully those things will make a difference, even if it's not an immediate change.

There are a lot of things I like to do creatively that I have let fall by the wayside over the years. One of the things I am going to try to do is make sure I do some of these things, at least once a week.

Today I bought some clay! I have worked with clay a lot in the past, but I have never tried polymer clays. So that's what I picked up. I had a little idea that I wanted to try and I'll actually be posting about it later, once it's all complete. It's nice to do something different and I feel like I am getting back in touch with myself through these little endeavors. bit by bit.