Art Dump: Tattoos for Others

Random person on deviantArt asked for this. I have no idea if she actually ever got it done, as I create and molt devArt accounts like a new snakeskin skirt that looks SUPER AMAZING and IS GOING TO BE THE BEST and WORN EVERY DAY THIS TIME I SWEAR MOM until I wear it twice, it starts to itch, and smells like, well, dead snake. Then off to the internet ether it goes.

Someday, I imagine all my abandoned devArt/Elfwood/etc. accounts are going to gundam up into one hideous, malformed and backgroundless beast and come looking for vengeance on the cruel creator what left it in the web equivalent of an abortion clinic dumpster; thank God I didn't get good at drawing proportionate bodies or people without spina bifida until way later on, or I'd have to worry about them, you know, walking after me all upright.

I'll... get... you... even with my question mark of a spine!

Hahaha, dat tumory arm

Needs a background, eh?

*Why not STARS******

He didn't end up getting it, if only because he got himself kicked out of the military for smokin' the ganja, getting hauled in for Operation Golden Flow, and then promptly surrendering AND ratting out all his friends. Pretty sweet design though, right, Space Cowboys?

Has she ever seen a gun? Let's pretend she hasn't so it's just a little sad. 

If you're going to ask a person to draw you a tattoo, it behooves you to ensure they are skilled, are fairly reliable with completing tasks, and that they draw in the style you like.

It also helps if they have experience drawing whatever it is you're looking for; for example, if you want a dragon of a European style, and the only dragon said artist has to their name is an Asian monstrosity with fortune cookies that invoke a Georgia-O'Keefe-ordered-Chinese vibe, well. Like the coat hanger said to the excited fetus, prepare for disappointment.

Why yes I did own a few deep-chest-bodied dogs, why do you ask?

 

This was for Mike. Mike was another guy I met on the ol' dA, except unlike Random McWhat'shertits up there, I actually liked the guy a lot, particularly when he brought me in on a project of spectacular distaste. I mean, how could you not love a guy who would order up the tattoo above? He ended up quitting dA too (if you needed another example of how neato the kid was) but we Facebook friended, so, it's pretty legit you guys.

Did I mention the re-appropriated superheros as fan characters? 

ADVENTURES!

 

Anyways, any of you kids want a design, keep ol' Tennaners in mind, eh? Eh? 

...where are you going?

Art Dump, Life Update

 Art tends to come in all-out phases for me. An old friend of mine used to attribute it to my zodiac sign; she'd nod knowingly at my pages and pages of comics or fan art or tattoo designs (of which the dragon above falls, surprisingly) and draw parallels as to how ram-like my run-run-run-ohshitawall-KEEP-RUNNING behavior was, and I couldn't really argue (aside from astology being absolute hokum, I mean.)

This phase was the tattoos and flash art phase, and fittingly enough was the same year The Roommate took me to get my first tattoo, which was also my first tattoo design.

This is why it is imperative to find not just a talented artist, but a *smart* artist, kids; she wisely talked me out of both the cliched scroll AND the Chinese characters. While you'd think someone who had been trained by the military to understand a foreign language for 63 weeks would be less likely to get a screwed up, incorrect or even crass foreign language tattoo, off the top of my head I can name such a one: a guy who flipped two characters' places in a four-character phrase, which are pretty common in Chinese culture, which he would also have learned through the course.

Thanks to his inattentiveness, his "寧 為 玉 碎" or "níng wéi yù suì (colloquially, death before dishonor)" became "寧碎 為 玉 " or rather, dishonor before death.

This week has been choppy and left me feeling a little like one of those dreams where you're juuuuust drifting off and then you TRIP on a curb and TWITCH your silly butt awake. This is what happens when a federal holiday squats in the middle of your week, I imagine, and while it must have happened at least once before in my twentyCOUGHcough years, I don't remember it. 

What I did remember, however, was DEADLINES!!! prompted by the story I posted last time. That particular zine is headed up by a kid I used to babysit (and who was nice enough not to point out that I did manage to outgrow my awkward teens finally, as he seemingly skipped his and records albums now) and two of his compatriots, and while it does ostensibly accept short stories in the form of flash fiction, the last couple of issues have been all poetry. Which, if that's your bag, by all means, but it's not my scene, jelly beans. < the most poetry you will ever see me do.

But while sonnets and slams are out of my ken, they also troll for high-contrast black and white art, and while I'm about 80% sure it's not just my former charge exhibiting some nepotism for his elders, I *did* manage to get a picture published as the back cover on one issue:

So I'm currently running about with my hair on fire, trying to figure out 3-5 black and white pictures for an issue entitled "Kisses for Fishes." And while they stress that there's not a thematic requirement, well, I imagine you'd be pretty confused if you were told about a magazine of poetry that had 'something to do with fish?" and yet, when you went looking for this volume, the cover was, say, Ninja Turtles fan-art / character design:

So I'll let you know if that happens... but wouldn't it be fun if you knew because you got published too? Seriously. Submit some brilliance, people.

Real Life is non-non-non-non-NON-Heinous!

So it's been a while. And I haven't written, haven't called, haven't so much as posted up a quick link to someone else's top ten. I wish it could have a good reason attached, this sudden drop off in posts- like, that I had secretly fostered super powers and was spending my free time running about in long johns, fighting crime via punching people doing the crime a lot. Or maybe that I had been tinkering in the kitchen so long, I discovered a cake that tastes exactly like red velvet but actually is made of celery, and the more you eat, the more you look like the very first movie character you ever found beautiful. 

On second thought...

 However comma, I have no such life-altering goodness to share. Or goodness. There is something afoot in my life, and not in the funny way that would provide either an entertaining or a Very Special episode of this rinky-dink one-chick show we're running here. It's something I can't go into, not now, and really, probably not for a good long while, as I'm having trouble finding humor in the situation at all. Which, come on people, if you've been reading along, you know full well that if I can't wrest out a "dumb me" story or even crack a joke about what shenanigans I got up to this time...

then it is probably, potentially, possibly (and in this case, definitely) something pretty horrible and let's just spare the melodramatics and woe-is-mes for when I'm on the rag and much more likely to provide adequate waterworks as to convey just how awful it all is. 

So here's a story I wrote that got published. 

She straightened as her friend approached the booth, hands skirting down to smooth her scrub pants as she did so. "Well there you are, Susan!"

"Sorry I'm late, lunch-time rush traffic." She pulled her sunglasses up over her forehead and with a quick smile and a nod, dispatched the approaching waiter for a glass of water. "But you knew I wouldn't flake on you, not when you've got juicy details." She leaned forward against the table and in the conspiratorial fashion of little girls with candy, lowered her voice an octave. "Now. Spill."

Rebecca slouched back with an exhale. "Oh, wow. I thought he was obnoxiously persistent on the flight, but when he called the third time the next day-"

"The old divorcee called again?" A titter erupted as Susan followed suit, sitting back against the booth in her own body language for disbelief. The waiter slipped her water onto the table, and after a perfunctory order of salad nicoise and peach cobbler, disappeared again.

"I know, right? But should we be surprised, from how obnoxiously he behaved on the plane, and me, completely held captive -check that, hostage- at 30,000 feet?"

"It's probably the only time he ever gets a girl's number, when she's good and trapped. Then he can casually bring up his millionaire self -flying coach- and his yachts and music videos." Her eyes rolling, Susan continued. "I mean, when you told me the bit about his owning a clothing label specifically for his own use, because, what- he's so special that he can't bring himself to wear something us pedestrian bourgeouis pick up in stores?"

Laughing, Rebecca jumped in, "Right, because that just means he really must be a millionaire; it's a well-known fact that Armani and Versace's lines are really only for the middle-class, and any really rich people just open their own lines when they spill a little sauce on their white button-ups."

The giggling continued as lunch was served, and Rebecca tucked a stray red curl behind her ear as she speared a cucumber slice with her fork, continuing her story between bites. "Well, apparently the elderly have nothing better to do than phone girls half their age and beg for dates, and well, I figured if it went poorly enough, that'd be the end of the phone calls. So he promises me a day I'll never forget, right? Makes a reservation at some little bistro, orders a car, I'm to be out waiting by the drive at nine.

"So the car rolls up- only it's not a chauffered car at all, it's him driving- he wanted to show me he was a 'take-charge man.'" She paused for effect as Susan nearly choked on a hard-boiled egg, then continued. "The restaurant is some hole-in-the-wall Italian joint, and point for him, it was really good -burned-tomato-flavored sauce, excellent garlic bread- and then we hit this country bar for dancing. Hypothetically."

Susan tilted her head, subconsciously mimicking her last patient, Woofles, the French Bulldog. "And pray tell, how does one, "hypothetically," dance?"

"Well I'll tell you, Suze- you go to a bar, boasting a whole host of knowledge and alleged compliments on your dancing abilities, and then you get inside, realize the median age in the bar is approximately that of your youngest child, and then claim that it's too noisy to get to know eachother and relocate to his 'pad' for a nightcap."

Susan regarded her coworker with incredulity. "Ugh! Seriously?"

"Seriously. And the whole drive there, he kept mistaking my thigh for his gear-shift." She shook her head. "Thing is, he was almost in the clear... up to the groping, that is. And the rohypnol in my drink."

Susan's eyebrow quirked. "So that'd be a gin and amnesia for you, and a Geritol and Viagra for him?"

Rebecca held up a hand as they giggled on, empty salad plates being replaced with peach cobbler. "No no, I have no idea what his drink was... because I was too busy staring at the gold-framed 2-by-3-foot portrait of him, his current wife and three kids."

Susan let out another laugh, but her reserve was depleted and the sound barely carried. "So that's when you knew."

Rebecca nodded sagely, turning to regard her reflection in the window. "That's when."

The redhead lowered her eyes from the glass pane and blushed. Susan coughed delicately, then picked up her fork to prod her cobbler. "So what about the body?"

"Turns out, he wasn't lying... about the yacht."

750 word flash fiction; published under the name Joan Colairta* by Bank Heavy Press in their September 2011 offering, "Orangutan."

*Oh, come off it, anyone who's ever dreamed of authoring more than a shopping list has toyed with a nom de plume. Especially if their name puts them in shoddy cupcake territory. 

April (New) Tools Day!

I'm still trying to get a feel for how often this thing should update, so I can say "Updates once a week!" and mean it. This seems like an important kink to work out before I take any big steps, like telling anyone about it.

Yesterday was my birthday, and the roommate, misjudging just how good I am at being an actual artist and not just a doodle-queen extraordinaire, bought me a HUUUUGE tablet! I mean GAIS. This thing is immense, replete with bells and whistles, and is now my second favorite thing ever (first favorite being the e-reader; I bemoaned the loss of tangible books and sensory deprivation when turning a page no longer brings that musty smell or that crisp turning sound... and then the Borders down the way from us closed down. The nearest book store being roughly eighteen miles outside of my 'sphere of influence'* meant I needed a new way to get a book fix at 3am when the roommate refuses to indulge me and my fear of any and all sounds in the apartment ever, and thus he obliged me. And it is awesome and I spend SO MUCH MONEYS on books and get NO SLEEP, but he does get sleep and that's what matters to him.)

*Sphere of Influence: Anything outside of the fifteen-miles or so radius from my apartment that encompasses the base and the downtown drinking area; anything beyond this circle necessitates an iPhone open to Google Maps balanced on a leg as I drive along. No interest in being another Magellan here.

Man. This kid sure spends too much trying to keep me entertained, considering string and sticks are both plentiful and mostly dirt cheap in these parts.

So now I have a cluttery setup, which will be rectified at some point when I can figure out what bits of desk flotsam I actually need to keep (statements, education stuff, official documents from the military that have my social security number ALL UP ON THEM) and what bits I can toss without fear of identity theft or needing to prove I graduated the first grade (uninstalled anti-virus crap, old coasters, apple stems.) But as it goes with new toys, I had to had to had to hook it up and try it out, and fair warning, I am SO not good at the computer/graphic arts, and now you all are subject to watching me struggle along and try to learn how to not make everything look like I drew with my feet. Feet in which I had arthritis before my diabeetus necessitated having them amputated, and now I have to hold them in my hands and try to draw that way.

This is how I repay people who dare to invest hope or cash in my skills:

So let that be a lesson to you all.

In Which I Admit I am a Ginormous Puss

Now all he'll recommend for me is Nicholas Sparks. >:(

Click for bigger (read: legible) version.

Art Dump

Old art. I have precious little of it floating around in the ether (read:3 computer hard drives and a floating, detachable hard drive, all moved approximately 6 times in the last 3 years at least) and while I often hear people lament that you should never ever ever throw away old art, well, I have. For years. Take that, suckers!

The few bits I did somehow retain I will post here, as many websites out there have taught me, the people like pictures. Also, I harbor a morbid pride over the lean pickings of years past. The piece to the right, for example? This is the fruit of a spree, the likes of which I haven't felt in years. (Age and 9-5's put an end to the sprees pretty effectively, as it turns out.)

In September of 2007, I was but a trainee in my past Air Force life; mind, a trainee who had been in training since Dec '04, with no gaps. I had had me some motherloving training, and more was still en route. This was a shift-work schedule, and more often than not I found myself awake at 3am, high off Prismacolor markers (a fairly expensive drug even now) and whatever crap was on the television at such times. That night was inexplicably "Disney Classics"and the stained glass window from the opening of Beauty and the Beast was GORGEOUS to my glassy eyes. I put my head down and didn't come up until the credits rolled, blue marker staining my fingers and the book I'd been using as a lap-desk, and as I looked upon the finished work and let loose a breath I was unaware I'd been holding, I exhaled a little prayer that this wasn't going to look a hot mess come daylight.

(People who freehand can attest that sometimes this happens- you get so head-down in a project that you lose sight of the whole, and only hours later with fresh eyes do you notice that it's slanted, or if you turn it around and look at it through the light, the whole of it cants, the formerly perfect creation melting into a Sloth-like mess of fetal alcohol syndrome proportions.)

I do not remember the next day, but what does come to mind is the same feeling I get whenever I finish something and am not horrified and ashamed of it a few days later. It was accomplishment, and marker-evidence aside, I felt like a million bucks. I had created. Where only white paper had existed before, there was now a saint! Of something. Possibly listening to iPods. The logic didn't fare as well in the telling light of day as the art.

As I write this now, I realize that maybe it wasn't terribly expensive marker fumes that made my head swell with pride, and it's not some psychosomatic ghost I feel even now; I think the act of finishing something, and having a tangible evidence of such in my fevered little hands, especially in the time of the never-ending training-training-training-it'll-be-years-before-you're-actually-useful morass, literally got me high.

The same sense of accomplishment spikes in sporadically nowadays, be it at the gym when I've performed the ant-like task of hefting any approximation of my body weight around, or pulling an especially delectable broiler plate of chicken thighs from the oven, or even writing these little posts. I felt down when I started writing, and yet now? The crap crap crappity poo day I've had is becoming memory, and in time, the sort of memory I look at, assess the value of, and finally, toss in the trash like a doodle of a parakeet dancing the charleston for an unimpressed Wonder Woman audience.  (Not kidding. I toss memories so completely I've lost whole months from my teen years. Remember, this included the success of  the Macarena, the Thong Song, and other such songs of its ilk, so....)

                                                                 I regret nothing.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading, and trusting me when I say it's the achievement, and not the markers, when you see me smile. :)

In Which I Make Good on those "Art" Claims

I told you kids I art sometimes, right? I do. I art all over any available surface. Comics, paintings, doodles, anything having to do with actual paper and I'm there. (Tablets remain beyond my ken, as I made the rookie mistake of buying a photoshop suite that was amazing and promised me I could create whole worlds but was actually a cruel, cruel joke, swaddled smugly in layers of buttons and options that I am not certain were even in Earthen language. Made an equally amazing coaster, though, so not all's a loss.) Sometimes I have an idea as to what it will be, and in comics, what you see is about 90% of what I originally intended, i.e., me doing something ill-advised and silly and the somehow unpredicted outcome, or, the misadventures I have in the ol' dating game (and if you're getting a feel for what a bundle of sunshine and whee I am, imagine what out there is attracted when I raise my head and let loose my mating call into the Nebraskan tundra.)

Then there's the flash art. I use this term loosely, and I think it can elsewise be called "pin ups" by people who have actually trained or have attended any sort of art class, um, ever.*

*Not me.

For whatever reason, when I start drawing a large picture for a story, it goes all... wandering on me. And what I planned on drawing just won't. goddamn. appear.

FOR EXAMPLE! To your right, note the man in the bathroom. His name is Dutch, and he is attached to a story I'm writing. Said story sprang fully formed as though from a box of instant mix one early morning when I was driving in for a 0500 showtime (so what I say early, we're talking God did not intend man to be awake during these hours early. Those weird and shifty hours that look like the Man Himself had only just roughed out some lines and along you come, barreling through His unfinished work, and what follows is the nagging suspicion that you should not be out here and something much bigger than you is regarding you, and not in a friendly way.

Also, I was SUPER tired, because gearing up a holy pally for PVP is arduous work on Darkspear server, where the ratio of Ally to Horde is 6 to 1.

But there was fog out there, and Nebraska, while home to the squared root of every conceivable nasty form of weather there is and a few there aren't, is not often home to fog. Fog reminded me of the coast where I'd done a goodly bit of two year's tech school, and it was jarring to see past come creeping into now. I passed two people that night-day: one some dumbass chick with her brights on, going the other way, and one can only assume she was only practicing to go into the bright light for when she inevitably crashed for being s-m-r-t about how water and light reflections work... and a dude in a pickup, who turned onto my road and accompanied me for a few miles. Somehow, just seeing that other guy in the other lane made me feel a little better about the creepy night-day thing.

But why? I'm an avid reader of Stephen King and his contemporaries, and this setting is more than likely not "stranger saves day with highbeams" as much as "false sense of security regarding simple-looking blonde men in trucks." And yet, it was a comfort. Maybe it was just seeing another person out and about, like the unofficial military axiom* of "if you're going to be wrong, do it in a group; it's harder to punish everyone if everyone's doing it wrong," or maybe it's the same reason you go into your parents' room when your dreams yield snakes and strange men and not the oft-promised visions of sugar plums. (I'm 28 at the end of the month, and I wouldn't know a sugar plum from a squirrel shitting in a hat at this point. Whoever wrote that damn poem owes me at least 10 of them and a pound of whatever marzipan is. I envision it to be like taffy.) Regardless, I found the company of a stranger almost protective in nature, and the rusty spring of my brain toaster prompty popped up a half-warmed story-tart.

*This axiom being a corollary to the main military law of "if one effs up, EFF UP EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS IN THE MILITARY AT THE SAME TIME," and is much less liked, hence the informal invoking of the corollary in the first place.


And that thing up there is the best I can do for the guy. Whatta ripoff, eh? I've been experimenting with watercolor pencils, trying to get that blendy, faded and yes, watery look to them, but that? That looks like I drew a bathroom, and then dropped this in one. What say the nonexistant peanuts in my gallery? Return with haste to the water-based acrylics of my youth? Keep fighting the fight with my poo-pencils? Or take a damn class? The choice is yours.*


*Not really. Night class art school? I know recreational drug use when I hear it, winking face made of punctuation here.