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Below are the 17 most recent journal entries recorded in
Bark Like A Fish, Damnit!'s InsaneJournal:
| Friday, December 11th, 2009 | | 3:52 pm |
Wombat pendants! http://ursulav.livejournal.com/938704.html Nifty thing, new from Foxloft--a hand-carved Tagua pendant, in the form of our very own Red Wombat! Wombat Tagua PendantI've got two of these pendants, one in a wombat and one in a wild boar and they really are cool and very wearable. (Also, Foxfeather is awesome. I've got to scan the walrus-and-radish she drew for me--made the rest of us look like rank amateurs. And she likes musk-oxen. Nobody who loves musk-oxen can be bad.) We'll hopefully have some more pendants available in the future--I'm contemplating doing Biting Pears, although I'll have to tweak the design to go so small, and we're looking at some of the glass-pendant-prints in the near future, involving the Happy Barn Owl and Teeny Lovebird designs. | | 1:38 am |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/938314.html Cannot seem to get into the Christmas spirit this year. I don't know if it's the weather or what. There's just this sense of...Christmas? Yeah, I suppose it's coming. I forget about it almost immediately. Otter, in similar straits, met me at Southpointe mall for lunch. In a last ditch effort to summon Christmas spirit, we put on light-up reindeer antlers and wandered around. Still didn't seem to help. Did Hot Topic, Banana Republic, and Victoria's Secret with antlers. Amusing, certainly proof that I have entered a stage in my life where I have absolutely no fear of making a spectacle of myself, but can't say it got the gingerbread pumping through my veins. Finally went and mocked Christmas ornaments at the Christmas store. Highlights included the angriest baby seal ever, what appeared to be a squirrel being anally violated by a bloody snowman (actually, there were a LOT of terrifying snowbeings) and if I ever want the world's furriest Christmas tree, I know where to go. The lion ringmaster with whips and the pig on the Harley wearing classic sixties-into-bondage-leatherwear were...um...something else all right. I was tempted by the black tree and the black ornaments--a goth Christmas!--but then I saw the price tags. If you think I'm paying 11.99 for a small black flocked box with glittery ribbon, allow me to disabuse you. By that point we'd forgotten about the antlers, and as we bent our heads over something--My Little Pony Christmas or Baby Seal Hitler* or something--they clashed together. There was a pause. "Are you coming on to me?" "I think we're fighting for dominance, actually..." "Oh, well then." If that couldn't get my Christmas spirit flowing, I suppose it won't happen this year. (Maybe I need snow. Living in Minnesota may have fused that switch permanent.) Perhaps next year. *Shape and placement of the dark whisker patch were Highly Unfortunate. | | Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 | | 5:39 pm |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/938044.html Well, shitmuffins. Kevin's contract with the city, which was supposed to go another six months or so, is getting cut as of the 23rd. Leaving aside all concerns of money and everything else--dude, December 23rd is not when you cut people. That's just low. I realize they probably needed it to balance the budget, and they left him on a lot longer than most of the other contractors, but dude, that's kinda Grinch-like. | | Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 | | 8:10 pm |
Last Call http://ursulav.livejournal.com/937756.html Okay, gang, last call for print orders! This is your last chance--get 'em in this week or any hope of Christmas delivery becomes a faint, far-off thing, possibly with feathers. I'm shipping as fast as I'm getting them, but the post office is a beast beyond my control, and we are gettin' down to the wire. And yes, I am a big softy, and if you come to me on the 23rd in a panic and offer to pay the exorbitant overnight fees, I will do my best for you, but it's hard on your wallet and my nerves, so if you've had any thoughts of art for Christmas, I beg of you, do it now! Do not delay! | | 4:40 pm |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/937648.html I put a deck-mounted birdbath out back last Saturday, although I wasn't sure if anything was going to visit it--I've had no luck with birdfeeders in the backyard, so I thought it just wasn't a high-traffic area. Still, open water when it's cold is important to the little birdies. The red-shouldered hawk that I startled out of the birdbath a minute ago offers another possible reason for the lack of small-bird traffic. Goodness! Never got a bird of prey at a birdbath before! I wish I'd caught him drinking, that would have been AWESOME. Well, more awesome. It was pretty damn awesome already. | | Monday, December 7th, 2009 | | 5:12 pm |
| | 2:26 am |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/937208.html So this weekend, in a fit of lunacy, I painted part of the kitchen. There are three walls where the hallway lets into the kitchen--it would normally have been two walls meeting in a corner, but in an effort to soften matters and make space, the corner has been truncated, leaving a narrow diagonal wall in place of said corner. Bored and in the vicinity of Lowes, I picked up a sample can of a warm yellow called "Cantaloupe Smile" and did the narrow diagonal wall with it. It looked pretty good, but after two days of living with it, I decided it was too dark to do the entire kitchen in--I like intense colors, but without another strong color to play off it, it wasn't quite gonna work. (There are solutions. They mostly involve painting all the cabinets, which I should be firmly talked out of. It may happen eventually, but not this year.) So I picked up a can of the next color in the swatch, which was "Whipped Apricot" (a much warmer, more buttery color than the name implies) and did the other two adjoining walls. Wet, it was a trifle insipid, but drying darkened it down a shade, and it's a very good color. It's also a very cheese color. So now a chunk of the kitchen resembles a block of mild cheddar--or possibly an Edam--with a wedge carved off it. It still looks pretty good, though, and although I'd been thinking "accent wall" with the darker, because of the angle of the wall and the way the shadows fall, it's nearly impossible to tell it's a different color unless you know what to look for. It's subtle. Subtle is not something I manage often, except by accident, so it gets to stay for now. It also has the effect of making a ten-year-old-builder-beige wall look much newer and sharper, which is half the battle right there, even if I have to re-paint and touch up some of the baseboard later. I have some other amusing plans for some of the weirder little bits of architecture, but we'll see how it goes... | | Sunday, December 6th, 2009 | | 3:33 pm |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/936890.html My agent wrote to ask what walruses eat. I know better than to read anything into this--she's not the one who buys the books!--but I'm amused that Walrus and Radish aren't dropping immediately into the Ursula's Insane Ideas To Revisit Later When They'll Buy Anything file.* *I know this file exists. | | Friday, December 4th, 2009 | | 4:34 pm |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/936508.html With wonderful timing, just as I finish the print orders--you can still order, but do it now! Next week is last call!--currently on the pile, and am leaning back going "Phew! Sixty some orders, done! I rock!"--my publisher dropped the art edits for Wurstbreath into my in-box. Fortunately there's not many compared to the earlier books, and they're only having to cut and squeeze a little to make the layouts fit--Ninja frogs was heavily squeezed by comparison--so the work will only take a couple of days. (The last month or so, despite being so busy, has felt almost like a vacation, since I've just been waiting to hear back about this and the Batbreath manuscript, and haven't had any Dragonbreath in front of me to work on right this minute. If you were wondering why I was getting all these originals done, that's the reason.) And now, to mail stuff and drop off stuff at the gallery, and then, perchance, to Wurst... | | Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 | | 4:45 pm |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/936433.html Still printing. It's that time of year. PRINTS WITHOUT END! Ironically, I just got the call yesterday that I can drop off matted/bagged prints at the local gallery, too. So I need even MORE prints. But I shall do it! Only a fool passes up the Christmas rush! So today I get to bag prints. Yesterday I alternated between video games, checking the printer, and painting vivid critters. Vivid Fox | | Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | | 4:37 pm |
Digger Christmas Cards! http://ursulav.livejournal.com/936003.html If you're like me, you've completely blown off buying Christmas cards so far this year. (If you're REALLY like me, you have this vague delusion you'll make cards this year, because damnit, you're an artist, and then you don't actually do it and either wind up buying them at the bookstore or, more likely, blow off cards entirely.) However, Sofawolf and Digger have got you covered. We have, for the first time, Digger Christmas cards! so that you, too, can have a very Shadowchild Christmas. | | Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | | 5:51 pm |
D&D Musings... http://ursulav.livejournal.com/935760.html After wrapping up our scorpion battle--including the by-now-familiar Paladin Vicious Mockery, which was somewhat limited this time by the fact that I was insulting scorpions and after "Your mother was a pillbug!" and "I've eaten scarier claws in a seafood restaurant!" I kinda ran out of steam*--and our primal druid turning into ANOTHER scorpion to fight them, for what was either Hot Scorpion-on-Scorpion Action or Really Bugger-All Confusing, depending on who you ask--Kevin and I were lounging around the bedroom watching Top Gear and discussing our upcoming dungeon crawl. KEVIN: I gotta figure out how to do the maps. At this rate, I might have to go to the NetHack model... URSULA: We'll be fighting letters of the alphabet? KEVIN: No, you'd be....hmm, y'know, actually that'd be kinda entertaining, we could do it alphabetically...pity, Beholders are like level 10... URSULA: It could be a baby beholder! With its eyes still shut, like a pinky mouse! KEVIN: ... URSULA: And little wiggly eyestalks! KEVIN: NO. You would keep it as a pet.**URSULA: I will name him Mister Squinty. KEVIN: NO. URSULA: But we'd have to keep him. We couldn't live with ourselves if we killed a little baby beholder! KEVIN: He'd get older. And more belligerent. They're not good pets! URSULA: We'd find him a nice dungeon to live in when he grew up. KEVIN: You'd have to release him into the wild, in a touching scene... URSULA: Go on, Mister Squinty! Run free! Insomuch as you have no legs! KEVIN: And you couldn't just release him into a dungeon, you know. He wouldn't know how to survive in the wild. You'd need to go on a quest to find... monster rehabbers.URSULA: Seriously, if that's not already a campaign somewhere, it totally should be. *Vicious Mockery is a bard power, which my paladin picked up by virtue of being a half-elf. It is his only reliable ranged attack and thus it gets used pretty much every battle, which involves me going off on a minute-long tirade over Ventrilo about the ancestry and sexual habits of the enemy. It's gotten to the point where the GM has started rewarding or punishing my delivery of the mockery--I get extra damage for a really cutting tirade, but I am warned that if I fail to bring my A-game, I will only be doing half damage. No pressure or anything. **The chief piece of advice my last GM gave Kevin was "Never let Ursula's character have any pets." | | 3:09 pm |
General Ramblings and a Reminder http://ursulav.livejournal.com/935645.html Yesterday, I was totally making art. I was ambitious. I Got Stuff Done. I did a Digger, mailed a fat stack of art, hit the bank, did some sketching, fixed the cover for Wurstbreath, and did the Klimt's Owl piece and a wee little quickie for FC, while playing D&D.Today, I do not have to do most of those things, and have a lot more time to draw if I so desire, and instead my brain is congealed into a thin goo at the bottom of my skull and asking if it would be okay if it just played video games for awhile. Apparently I am only productive when I have a lot of other stuff to do. Fortunately, I may yet kickstart myself into productivity, as I have to run a bizillion prints still, to keep up with Christmas orders-- REMINDER: If you want art for Christmas, please try to get your order in this week! You've got a narrow window the week after, if you're in the US, but that involves me staying up late and hooking my veins to the printer when I run out of magenta, and I stop being able to guarantee Christmas delivery outside the country very very soon now! Red Wombat Studio is ready and willing for all your Ursula art needs, but the sooner the better! I've also decided to shut down shipping for the last two weeks of the year--you can still order, but orders won't be filled until after New Years, since I'll be spending much of that in Arizona visiting my dad and showing Kevin the Grand Canyon for the first time. So that'll be cool. And now! To the printer! | | 2:47 am |
| | Monday, November 30th, 2009 | | 2:56 pm |
http://ursulav.livejournal.com/935125.html Well, shit. Robert Holdstock, author of books like The Hollowing and Mythago Wood died this morning. His books were mythic and tricky and difficult to read--he wasn't a comfortable author--and they left me with a nervous queasy unsettlement and fragments of spectacular imagery. The Hollowing was a powerful influence on what eventually became Gearworld. (I bought it probably fifteen years ago because of the John Jude Palencar cover...) If you imagine one of Lovecraft's is-this-really-happening narrators dealing with mythic archetypes instead of Old Ones, that's about as close as I can describe. (I suggest reading one before you go out and buy all of them--if you like it, you'll love it, but it's definitely not for everybody.) My sympathy for his family, and also for all the fans out there who can no longer hope for a return to Mythago Wood. | | Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | | 4:25 pm |
| | Friday, November 27th, 2009 | | 6:18 pm |
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