Masks and Misc.

Like usual, whenever I finish a big project, I'm a little lost afterwards. It feels freeing at first to not have something you are obligated to work on, but then you're not really sure what it is you want to work on. And none of my currently in-progress projects looked appealing (unfortunately!)

So as a quick little one-off project, I made Barry a kitty bed. He's happily claimed it as his own, and sleeps on it every night. He also has a long thing pillow that I made for him in the window when he naps out there. 

Now this started out as a bit of fun, blow-off-steam sort of project, but I think it's going to lead to something more serious. I've been watching far too much WWE pro-wrestling lately, and yes, I know that makes me a big nerdy 14 year old. But on the positive side, it's gotten me back into working out seriously and made me fascinated with the terrible/awesome outfits wrestlers wear. I decided to, just for fun, pattern out a luchadore-style mask, and after a few drafts, I think I was pretty successful. 

So of course I made up a sample one with the absolute tackiest fabric I can find, a floral crushed velvet that was once an enormous button up shirt. I like to think Macho Man Randy Savage would approve. 

Nothing quite this wonderful and tacky in the WWE right now, sadly.

More of a side view, it makes my already round face look very chubbed out though. Added some gold trim for the finishing touch. 

And, since I've once again caved and bought a moleskine, I can now do some watercolors in my sketchbook! I'm trying to get myself back into working with color a bit more. 

Seamus bought a new JLI trade paperback, and I couldn't help but do some doodles of the gang (and the Creeper) JLI makes me love Mr. Miracle, and now I'm wondering where else to start with his character. 

And to further show my stupid love of the fake wrestling (hey it's good practice for drawing different body types and strange poses, right?) a little bit of Team Hell No (this is a pretty good introduction), and I think that's Del Rio doing a cross-arm breaker on the other side. Cheapy Crayola markers actually work pretty nicely on this paper. 

As an aside, my next post will be my 200th!! I'm thinking of having a little give-away (don't know if I really have enough traffic for one though?) Keep an eye out!

Big Finish

The Lenore Tawney project (aka the reason I've been so absent from the blog) is finally finished, and I'm back again, hopefully with more frequent updates from here on out. I went in today to set it up in the gallery, unfortunately I did not bring my camera with me, but I did snap a picture as I was getting it ready to go.

Obviously the cardboard disk is just there to get things evenly spaced, it was removed after I secured all the strands to the pedestal. I had a difficult time with this project, I made a few miscalculalations early on in the project, and it just turned into a slog by the last third. It was also very difficult to tell what it was going to look like until I got it off the needles, blocked, and then hung up. So the morale was low, and I only jussssst managed to finish it on time. 

Still, it looks better on the pedestal, under tension than it does hear, and I'm okay with it. I'm certainly okay with it being finished. If I had a time machine, it would be half as big around and twice as long, and it was supposed to 'split' again, but time ran out. 

Now that it's done, some small, fast, fun projects are in order to get my enthusiasm back. First up is this pillow for Seamus's dad, only a little late for Christmas...oops. But a neat little patchwork/embroidery project.