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Tag Archives: original art
More Bird Art
This morning I gave Bob three choices for dinner tonight. Tacos, chicken simmer or potato leek soup.
He said: It’s Friday. I need one of the meat ones.
I think I wrote earlier that I was going through all my posts and giving them categories or tags or whatever turdpress calls it. I’m also deleting some either because they were accidentally duplicated during the great blogger-hates-you-move your blog debacle of 2010 or because they have nothing to do with anything and aren’t worth saving for historical purposes.
I’m at around 1890 posts for this thing so a special 2000th post celebration should be coming up in 2011.
I’m finding that I’m having good ideas for categories now that I’m in the middle of it. I rarely do a post that fits under one thing. They’re almost always a jumble of things. I made a category called baking disasters but I have a lot of regular kitchen disasters, too. Remember the watermelon waterfall? I also feel like I should have categories called “farking hell” or “fukoladola” because those would be handy when my posts don’t fit under anything else.
I also should have made a category of “organzing” and “I didn’t get anything done” because describing what I didn’t get done seems to be a common thread in these posts I’m re-reading.
You Can Put A Bird On It And Call It Art
I was going to do a whole series of bird art in honor of Portlandia but I ran out of time. Who knew making art took so much time? Possibly more later this week.
Sleepless in Vancouver
Remember when I was learning Illustrator? From this post it looks like it was in 2006. I haven’t improved a bit.
That’s one of the things on my list every weekend, to do a few tutorials and refresh my skills. I never get to it. An experienced Illustrator person could probably have made the above in 3 seconds. It took me about 15 minutes. Not bad.
I didn’t sleep well Sunday or Monday night. Last night my eyes were drooping by 7pm but I bravely kept the light on until 9pm and then passed out the second my head hit the pillow. I still feel sorta wonky.
On Monday one of my headlights went out. My car is an 01 with 85K miles on it and it feels like all the pieces are breaking off. I think the windshield washer fluid thingy is leaking since I’ve never added washer fluid since owning the car and this is the third time the light has come on in three months. I don’t want to spend another day + sitting around with my car in the shop and paying a couple hundred bucks for something stupid.
But I do want to take care of the headlight. I only drive to and from the park and ride which equals about 15 minutes a day but it’s all in the dark
I’m dreading going back to Toyota because I complained about my last service. And my service contact called me about my complaint and he was very nice and apologetic. He also told me that he had zero recollection of my service problem (the one where I dropped off a drive-able car on Tuesday morning and never heard a peep about when it would be done and both me and my husband called them at least twice a day and then they called us Friday at 4pm and told us we could come get it) and they didn’t like to have unhappy customers. Is that supposed to make me feel better?
Lie. Tell me it was miscommunication about the part and they thought they had it but they didn’t and then their phones went out when the space ship landed and they couldn’t call me. And their memories were wiped so they didn’t remember later. I don’t want to go in there and have them be all phony nice about replacing a headlight.
I am not much of a poetry person but I love this poem by Sherman Alexie: Unkissed.
Posted in doing it wrong, sleepless in Vancouver
Tagged original art
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More Artistic Content Than Ever
Lynda.Com because he needed to brush up on an application he was using more.
He gave me CS3 products for my birthday and I’m trying desperately to be worthy. I’ve taken 2 Photoshop classes and one Illustrator class over the past 3 years and I’m not a quick learner. But then, I wasn’t born with a computer in my hands.
I’ve been working my way through the Lynda tutorials. I’m going to learn InDesign, too, eventually, and I’m trying to get a handle on the Bridge and organize my image files which are a disaster especially by my standards.
At first I was being all methodical about starting at the beginning of each class and working through each item. But then I started skipping around to the stuff that looks fun. I never thought I’d be into online learning but I like this a lot.
Above is my latest creation. I call it: Acorn relaxing on an Autumn Day.
On Friday I made my weekend No Knead loaf and I decided to get crazy and throw some olives in there. In my head I remember working them in there better but as you can see here, they’ve all gathered at the edges and as soon as you slice into it, olives fall out everywhere.
I thought maybe I should turn this into a stunt baking blog and bake everything in my Bread Baker’s Apprentice book and document it all. We could laugh at my lumpy loaves and unrisen messes. But then I made these cinnamon rolls that peeled our faces off. And I don’t want to do a stunt because I would try too hard and it would make my life miserble.
Stuck In A Rut
Today’s special feature is original art. I’m still trying to learn Illustrator with more frustration than not. This reminds me of learning to play guitar a long time ago when I was in college. I’m trying, but it’s taking me awhile and the results aren’t much to look at. I’m still having fun, I just wish I could catch on a little easier.
I thought instead of grinding through tutorials I’d make something myself. I find I learn a lot when I have to figure it out rather than the book telling me what to do. Almost two hours later, ta da! I had to abandon my first effort because it got brown and when I shrunk it to proper size it looked turd-like and made me want to stick forks in my eyes.
Aside from Illustrator, I’m stuck in the biggest rut. I can’t seem to move forward on anything. Little piddly chores go ignored. Paper accumulates. Dust bunnies peek out from the corners. Lists get stapled to other lists, or thrown away because that’s easiest.
For example I have a banking matter that’s probably going to involve at least 3 phone calls. All week long I think: Friday I will take care of this. But then Friday rolls around and I take care of a few other things and can’t bear the idea of making numerous phone calls for this matter. So I think, well this week for sure. I will do this on my lunch hour. Or, I’ll definitely take care of it before I go home. Now several weeks have gone by. The matter is unresolved and becoming time sensitive.
Yesterday we took advantage of the sun break to take a wonderful walk. I wish I would have had my camera (and that it worked) so I could have taken a picture of a huge sign someone put on a telephone pole: Jennifer: I LOVED You.
I didn’t want to, but I worked outside and cut down most of the Dahlias and dug a small batch of bulbs, washed them and set them out in the garage to dry. I suppose I should carefully store them today so I don’t run into mass-of-moldy-bulbs next spring.
We’re going to see Demetri Martin tonight. Going out on a Sunday night is something I have a firm policy of never doing. We did last weekend because it was part of our lecture series and other than the biblical downpour when the lecture let out, it wasn’t that bad. Demetri is a comedian from the Daily Show. I loved him the first time I saw him but it still took a bit of convincing before I agreed to it. Since I believe his target demographic is about half my age, you know, people who don’t covet sleep as they should, it’s seems a lot to hope for that I’ll be in bed before 11pm. But maybe.