adventures in spaciousness

This is a placeholder for this month's music mix, or possibly another mix, which with any luck I'll post tomorrow. Right now? I am unpacked on the other side of a four-hour drive and ready for sleep.

You can has music! Selected songs from Blackfire (self-described "Indigenous High-Energy Political Rock/Punk"), Carbon Leaf (pop/folk rock + celtic/bluegrass), Elvenking (a folk/power metal group from Italy that's oddly reminiscent of TSO), and Guiomar Novaes (a Brazilian pianist who may be first among favorites), available for individual download and as a zip.

...It's  actually not as strange of a combination as it sounds. :P

From 4/18:




( From studio time on 4/21: )

( And from 4/22: )

See? Icon. Ta-da.

Found a chapter of this lurking in my gdocs folder; added a bit to it and posted it.

"Garcia, is this room clean?"

She gives him a puzzled look. "It's a little dusty, but--Oh!" Cue embarrassed flush. "I did a bug sweep early yesterday, sir. I thought it was prudent, with Section Chief Strauss out for blood." Aaron gives her a nod.

He (and everyone else) is shocked when Kyy shows up.
For one thing, having a winged serpent show up in your bedroom is slightly unnerving at the best of times. For another - as he keeps insisting - he's not a mage.
That's not keeping the thing from mother-henning him, though, or making it leave. Goddess knows why.
He glares at it where it lays sprawled across his books, and it chuckles in it's peculiar, hissing laugh. "I'm not moving, you know."
Evyren huffs and puts on his most intimidating voice. "I have work to do, you infernal creature!"
Kyy smirks, which is particularly unnerving given the fangs. "That village to the south is imagining things - there's no monster, only a few hungry wolves. That yearmate of yours doesn't turn 15 for another 2 weeks, you have plenty of time to come up with a suitably impressive gift. And as for that origin myth you've been researching, I happen to know where you can find an answer, but I'm not telling you until you've had a break."
"Useless reptile."
"You're of little use sleep-deprived and hungry, and I'm still not moving."
Evyren mutters under his breath and stalks out of the room.
Kyy hears things flying about and crashing into one another in the kitchen - this kid can't do anything the normal way, can he? - and settles down for a satisfied nap. 

I'm swamped with other work, so here, have photos of my midterm project:

  

My professor is always telling us to develop the whole instead of drawing piecemeal, but I think I actually consider the composition more when I do it the other way around. I should fix that.  
This is also the project that surprised her so much - she was actually a little sad that it was "so clean", which is when it sunk in that art is about the imperfections and stylizations. We create, not copy. Artists lie using reality.

The promised disaster from yesterday's art class. I was already frustrated and emotional, and that carried over into studio time.
Points made by my art professor I'd do well to remember:

• My job is not accuracy, but believability, emotion, and movement.
• The struggle is an important part of the process.
• Sometimes you have to go outside and jump up and down and scream. "Sometimes it takes that much."

I did, after trying for the better part of 2 hours to ignore my frustration and keep trying, end up leaving the room for 10 minutes and having a quiet crying spell in the bathroom.  Unsurprisingly, when I went back to work, everything fell into place.

The art homework won't even be started until after midnight, though. Have a few sentences from the fic I've been working on for the past few days instead.  
  

He goes over and over possible escape plans until he works himself into a panic, and then spends a good deal of time examining the rusted ironing board in front of him. There's floral fabric under the grime, and it strikes him as being very out of place. He's been kidnapped by a man who presses his shirts, evidently often enough that his secret lair requires a floral-print ironing board.