dailies week four: tricked by the sun.

despite at the cold-weather imagery that has been showing up in my dailies as of late, i managed to be fooled into going out to run some errands today entirely winter-wear-less: no coat, scarf, not even any sleeves. t-shirt plus skirt = chilly (and dumb) alissandra. i think it's a flaw in my weather evaluation strategy, which basically is just me looking out the window before i leave the house. "what's that, window? the sun is shining all cheeky and warm, you say? must be delightful outside, let's go!" and that is how i end up freezing my ass off.

the primary ass-freezing errand was a three and a half hour date with a giant printer and all 365 of my 2008 dailies. that's right, the work for my upcoming show is 100% printed out.
it's official.
i ordered my postcards.
i made catering arrangements.
t-minus three weeks.
whoa.

dailies week three: back in bmore.

this week was slightly less hiccup-y than the last with the new dailies formatting. all ink is definitely the way to go, i think. next challenge: color? baby steps, friends, baby steps. click for the big version, please!

in other news, i am back in baltimore, and was greeted by gloriously freezing temperatures (unlike usual, there is zero-percent sarcasm in that statement). it's mellowed since my arrival, though i imagine the two things to be unrelated, and now it's sitting nicely in the 30s. i wax poetically about the weather here because, while i imagine arizona has many redeeeming factors, not the least of which is my family that dwells there, the fact that the sun stupidly shines every damn day is not so much one of them. the moral of the story? i'm glad to be back.

practice makes... practice.

with my precious few remaining hours of lazy tv-laden days before i head back to school on thursday, i have been dutifully practicing some inking and basic digital color. these are the product of my efforts: dandy picking flowers in purple socks, book-reading cowgirl-ballerina, and chilly contortionist & friends, with earflaps.

they are nothing fancy, just playing around with colored line. and... i suddenly notice that everyone i draw has bad posture. anyway, i have many things to take care of before i jump on a plane in the wee thursday morning hours, so i'm off to probably ignore them. oh christmas break, you undo all my studious productivity habits.

dailies week two: comment love.

here it is, the first full week. i like this new practice fine i think, but there are some tweaks in the future. likely color (thanks nancy!), maybe not so with the pencil or the toned-ish paper. any thoughts? sorry for the super-small slash sucky image, it gets better if you click it, i swear.


also, i am making a point to be better about responding to comments that you are all so lovely to leave me. i like you i really do! i'm just maybe not so great about showing it sometimes. and, along a not-so-similar vein, i caved and joined twitter today, as you can see by the mild update to the blog, the "there i am too." section, with other places to find me and my things.

mini-sneaky dailies update.

so. limping into the new year with a mega-late first half-week of daily-drawing things. in an effort to stick to the sunday updating, these are the first of them pre-weekly spreads (that kick in tomorrow).

i ran into quite a few hiccups with the new format, aka, i'm very cranky. i've been flexing back and forth between ink and pencil which makes good scans sort of tough, so we'll see how long that lasts. one thing that won't: brush pens have exhausted there last possible appeal and are dead to me.

tomorrow i'll upload the rest of them. hoo-ray.

the end of an era (or a year, whichever).

so i realize that i'm a few days behind on my happy new years sentiments. i got into the sunday-posting habit for my dailies, even though this week not only ended on a wednesday (when my happy new years-ing might've maintained some relevance), but also ended FOREVER. so here's the last of them:
sunday, december 28th: "i will watch anything and everything in marathon format."
monday, december 29th: "man i just love web-design."
tuesday, deceember 30th: "multi-tasking as if i actually needed to economize my time."
wednesday, december 31st: "nice to see you 2008, nice to meet you 2009."

as far as the new dailies are going, i have decided to treat them something like christopher david ryan's daily postings, which are a smorgasbord of illustration, design, photography, collage, etc. rather than choose one specific thing, i am going to do one mystery thing every day, be it a character illustration, a pattern, some hand-lettering, whatever. JUST AS LONG AS I DO SOMETHING. i haven't scanned the first few quite yet, so hold your horses.

only loosely related is the fact that, embracing the 'new' part of the new year, i revamped my website. the changes are largely in the portfolio department with my comics, but also (fingers crossed) in functionality as well. slightly more related is the fact that you will also find the first half of the 2008 dailies project (never before seen!) for those of you dutifully following them week to week, or just for anyone who's curious.

anyway, happy new years and all that. i'm a resolution-making sort of girl, so here's to 2009 being a fruitful one. also of note: the first book i read in the new year was the delightful "i was told there'd be cake" by sloane crosley. a collection of essays that read a little like sedaris channeling dorothy parker, i super-recommend it.