Blogiversary

It's my blog's 10th birthday. I made it because someone suggested blogger as an alternative to livejournal, which I still feel fulfilled the true purpose of blogging, which is to showcase narcissism. I used livejournal to do art by the inch, trade cds and keep up with nervousness people.  It's kind of  like how I use facebook almost exclusively to keep up with theologica people. Now art by the inch, nervousness and even mix cds are things of the past sadly. But the blogger blog has lived on. I picked the name because "Hey dooders" is a lame person trying to be cool term and I chose it to be ironic since blogs were the "cool thing" amongst the nerds of the internet. Thus far, it's really been pretty apt though I do think I posted some good theological posts.

Over the years I have kept the blog as I've done everything in my life. By doing whatever I want (or in this case writing about it). So sometimes I posted sad things or rants or pictures of things I'd made or PeTrA or art theory or theology or The Jerk. Or for awhile there, random things to bother mem (that was when I was basically at the apex of my prolificacy).

This looks great. And other than wonky eye, nothing like me. 

Speaking of my narcissism,  I recently posted a great picture of myself on facebook which, as usual, looked nothing like me. James suggested that it was such a nice picture I should make it my fb avatar to which I replied "I have never used a real picture of myself as an avatar in the history of the internets." That's because if I alter them or draw them I can trick people into thinking I'm better looking than I am which totally feeds my narcissistic vanity. And as above, this is what the internet is basically about, more so now than it ever was 10 years ago when you like had conversations about things (remember that? I totally do because I'm all old and crap).



Anyway, in honour of the narcissism I decided to post my last decade in avatars along with the actual pictures so you can see why I never use actual pictures (or as many as I have; one is missing the unretouched photo so obviously I saved over it). Artistic licence is basically the way you make boring crappy things more interesting and palatable. And you know I'm all kreyative.

The first one was actually a drawing that I did with crayola markers then added some filters to but this was the photo I used for the picture. Phil Johnson gave me a chance to do my best Navin Johnson impression because of this picture (yes I do remember all stupid insignificant things but don't ask me if I remembered to add the mag sulph to the mar cause I'll prolly just stare at you like a deer in the headlights). I've found that in any artistic rendering of myself, all I have to do is make sure to include the lines under my eyes and it definitely looks like me. The photo was a little old at the time, taken in 2003.  It's also pretty small because for some reason everything I saved to old discs is really small on this computer, despite the fact that I scanned them in at like 300 ppi. Pheh.

The famous quilt, which I took originally for a blue and red deco. I altered the photo then printed it, painted it and finally made a quilted version. And it represents the only time I ever had a quilt at Houston, cause I'm never going to get anything that matters there.  Took this one in 05, then made the deco and the quilt in the same year.

Took this picture specifically to replace the other. This is when mem discovered my wonky eye which made me cooler than him forever. My skin looks different colours is because at that time in my life, it really was. Taken in 07.

The mucha me is still my google profile and is the only picture I ever painted totally digitally. I hated doing it. I had to try to stylize the actual photo of course so that it resembled Mucha's style and ended up making the wonky eye a little wonky in shape too. 

This btw was the other drawing I made for mucha me but I lost it and stuff so I just did it again. I think I may have loosely based it on the blue and red picture, but of course also from life though I don't do that much because my face is pretty asymmetrical.

I didn't use this one for super long because the altered version didn't really have the line quality I prefer. I think the picture wasn't high enough contrast, but I seem to remember it took a fair bit of work to take the background out so I used it. I think this one was 08.  

This was another one that didn't look the way I wanted exactly, though I liked my expression a lot. This is how I look at my screen when you say ultra stupid things that I can beat you over the head with to win any argument. Not that anyone actually SAYS anything on the internets anymore. This was 09, not long before I started university which aged me about 900 years. I miss you athol house and athol house basement :(

This one was probably one of my favorites ever and I kept it for a number of years. This was during school when getting my hair cut cost too much money (but I still made WAY too much to get a student loan, especially since they expected me to be able to get in a time machine to pay the kind of rent people did in about 1998). This was taken not long after we moved into the crapartment in 2010, which is why I look less miserable than later.

I've decided this is definitely my good side. Well it was before I started getting all jowly.

I think I kept this one for a month or two and only changed from the above picture because it was showing up as an exclamation point in comments (not sure why since it hardly looked like me so definitely WASN'T obscene). I didn't like it because I hadn't put photoshop on the new computer yet so used crappy software. I saved over the original picture but the photo is just another one taken at the same time. I think it was 2012.

This, as you can see, is the current avatar. I took this one before the Junos last year. It's another one of my faves, I'll probably keep it for awhile. 

 One last one: me in dragon form prolly hanging out in crooked lake. I do look better in dragon form, it's true.

Al 2.3 & 2.7 and Bonus Eye

When I made the leetle goatlet for my own fibre fairy, as I have mentioned, I was told that his name was Al. I am going to guess that was an alliteration thing. Anyway Al's owner liked leetle Al very much and back in December she asked if I might make a couple more for her family members who had also admired him.

Oh sure, I said.

I probably should have added something to the effect of it's only going to take me SIX MONTHS to get around to finishing them.

So here six months later are leetle Al 2.3 and 2.7 (O.G Al and my first rendition being Al 1.0 and 2.0 respectively) sitting on one of my grandma's old aprons:


Happy that they are fully covered as they have sat on the computer desk naked since February. Can't you see the joy on their wonky leetle faces?

ETA, speaking of wonky, I just have to post this picture-because for some reason I have always been very proud of the genetic anomaly that caused my wonky eye and love to tell people about it.

I wanted to take a different picture for my avatar-one that would disguise the genetic anomaly that did NOT give me the skinny nose I deserve.
Anyway when I took this picture, the flash made my hair look orange like that flash always does, so I colour corrected it in photoshop-and lo and behold, there is my wonky eye, plain as day. It usually never shows up in pictures.

If you can't tell, my left iris is split in half colourwise. The top of it is green as the other eye but the bottom is brown. Basically I got mama's eye colour gene with a random bit of dad gene attaching itself in there. Now I've met and heard of many people who have two completely different coloured irises, but I've never met anyone (and only ever heard of one other) that had one iris that is split into two definite colours like that.

Oddity being the epitome of coolness, I have always loved my weird eye. I can remember when I was a child my mom was always hoping it would change colour to all green as I got older, while I dreaded that it would.
For some reason though people often think my eyes are brown. Ah no only half of one is...

I secondly think it's hilarious that my infamous grey hair is peeking out. People always seem drawn to pull out that particular grey hair. Often with only the warning "you have a grey hair, let me get it" *Yank*. It survived the last attempt on it's life by a co-worker the other day.
One time I had a resident point it out, and when one of the other girls teased him for being impolite, he protested "But mine are all grey". Ha.

I also have to say that judging by the look on my face in that picture, I think I may have been planning the Knife-stick match of DOOM or wondering how much more I would like the hellions if they were slathered in barbeque sauce. Heheh.

Mucha Me

I finally got a free day! (I just finished working 6 shifts in 5 days, figure that out.) I certainly did not expect to be working so often, though I was warned this could happen. Soon the regular staff members will be back from holidays, so I should be getting fewer call-ins.

Also my brother and his son (Aves who is pictured in the footer of this blog), SIL and the hellions were here on the weekend. Those days never count as "days off". :)

Anyway, instead of being particularly productive on things I should be doing, I made a self portrait in the style of Alphonse Mucha:



I deesigned it on a whim, like everything I do. For whatever reason, I thought I'd digitally colour the original sketch. I have learned that I hate digital painting. My hands are killing me (yeah both of them-I drew on the tablet with my left and moused with my right-what do right handed people do!?) and it took forever! Of course my OCD-like tendencies would not allow me to quit when it was half done. This is why I rarely do large scale works.
I'm surprised at how even with the tablet I had a difficult time with line control. You can see this in the drunken look of the heavier lines. Bah. Still it looks kind of nice, if simpler and messier in general than Mucha's own pieces. The flower...thingy turned out weird though, I might go back to it when my hands are feeling better and I get my next day off, whenever that may be.

Yay Quilts

I've got a quilting bug again lately. This makes me happy, as I had been rather burnt out for about a year, and have done little work. I hate being unproductive!

I finished the Hammerquilt-no pic of it, but man it looks really good, all that lovely silk. I just free motioned all over it, tried to keep it a little dimensional in the center, as the original is.

I then got on a quilt version of the blue and red portrait for the Quilting Arts magazine Creative Self Portrait Challenge:



I swear I am not a narcissist! I just thought it would be fun to enter the challenge, and I really love that red and blue pic mmm redandblue....that combo also describes my temperament quite well, though I made the embroidery messy to represent me a little better. I doubt I will get into the magazine, but I know I won't if I never send. It gave me something to quilt, anyway.

And the newest entry for CIP, Yahweh Love, which is also a small quilt. I had to do at least one piece in fabric, and had decided to make this one a quilt, in the same vein as the Biblica Hebraica pieces. It is off center because there is a one inch-margin on the left side.

Self Portrait in Blue and Red

Another Deco! For a 'true colours' challenge, which stipulates using a very narrow palette-one or two colours. I blurred the image abit to take some of the paint lines off, but it looks a little weird from that, doesn't it?
I was looking over my artwork about a year ago, and noticed how often I used red and blue-I've since tried to move away from it. See the fabric and paper deco for an out-of-comfort-zone colour combination.
However, since these are still my favorite two colours and favorite combination I entered the challenge just for the pleasure of using it again! :)
I used a photo of myself, and altered it to get the high contrast and so on. Then I painted from that with acrylics-went a little wonky though. Ah well, I think it turned out okay-except that my nose doesn't look sausagey enough.



ETA: here is the original picture (yeah I always look weird in pictures) see the distinctly sausage-like quality of my nose-->
short and fat.