Monday, May 28, 2012

A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left

 So I've finally gotten out of this stupid art/writing block I've been stuck in since forever, and now I've got ideas galore!

Well, galore-ish. But I am working on a new story involving crime-solving and shapeshifters!

But the most exciting thing is finally getting back into drawing and really enjoying it! For the longest time I've been so frustrated with drawing and hated my art, but I realized that it was because of the silly fake limitations and rules I've thought up -- art doesn't have rules! So from now on I'm going to draw whatever I want and know that there's no set-in-stone way of doing things.

Aren't realizations great? Of course, after the realization there's the whole "wow I have been such an idiot all this time" but that's awesome because it comes with such happiness and freedom.

Anyway, this whole art epiphany has been brought about by this awesome tumblr and the art and musings there.

 

In other news, I'm going to start working on an animation to this song, and with any luck I won't give up on it! Of course, it's the longest song on earth, but what did you expect? The lyrics fit perfectly!

And, a little backstory before the next bit of art spam: I have been watching/obsessed/in love with the BBC show Sherlock since The Richenbach Fall aired here in the US of A a few weeks ago, and awesome shows need fan art. But, since I can't draw humans, I've kind of chicken-ified the cast...

So here's some (older) drawings of chicken Sherlock and chicken John. Or, for those are fans of puns, Shercluck Holmes and John Bokkson.


Look at them, being awesome and stuff. Shercluck's a Sumatra and John is an Orpington, by the way.

And here's another, sillier, scribbly-er one because I actually really like how it came out...


John: Can we please not do this this time?
Sherlock: Do what?
John: You being all mysterious with your - cheekbones. And turning your coat collar up so you look cool.
Sherlock: I don't do that.
John: Yeah you do. 

Ah, gotta love those two.

Anyway...
Happy arting, everyone!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

ALL the pests!

So for a while this spring has been nice -- pest free, full of fruits and vegetables producing way sooner than they should.

Not any more.

Now the mosquitoes are out and the mice are in. And both insects and rodents are very bold.

Also, I think the cat is broken. She spends all her time in the backyard rolling around the catnip that has taken over the lawn and then stumbles around in a drunken haze before falling asleep in her favorite chir. Meanwhile, the mice are getting increasingly bolder, causing me (and I don't even mind mice) to shriek in a surprisingly girly fashion.

I'm really pretty embarrassed by that shriek.

Thankfully, I think we managed to catch the mouse (no help from Zen!) that was responsible for all of this stuff. And even then he was really feisty and almost jumped out of the net he'd ran into. He was like a real life Martin the Warrior.

Unfortunately, our house is not Redwall, so he was relocated to the southwest end of the schoolyard in hopes he could survive off of the scraps dropped by the kids there and stop trying to rid our house of the evil tyrant wildcat Drugaddictcatzenia and her easy-to-surprise human minions.

Out in the garden, the strawberries are REALLY starting to produce. It's awesome. Soon we'll be sitting upstairs round a card table watching TV on Netflix and processing strawberries to freeze. I can't wait! Of course, soon I'll be saying I can't wait for the strawberry harvest to be over, but whatever.

Not much more progress on the rabbit cages, it was rainy yesterday and there's a couple big problems that need to be fixed with the current WIP cage before it can be finished, but maybe tomorrow we'll be able to fix it up.

And art and writing... urgh. I really, really want to write but I have absolutely zero ideas for anything. And drawing, on the other hand, is frustrating as heck because I have no consistent style or good way of doing lineart but I really do have a lot of ideas that I'd like to see drawn and finished. Grahhhh.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Updates and rabbit cage building part one

 So, it's been super busy here for the past few days and I haven't had time to blog for a while. BUT! I promised myself I would and so I will.

 First of all, Sybill's about back to normal now, so whatever it was that was ailing or slowing her down has passed and she's fine now. And it's kind of weird to say, but I'm happy that she's not dead or dying or even just sick or unhappy. I'm glad she's feeling better.

And second of all, there's been a wildfire raging to the northwest for a few days now, over 7000 acres burned and burning so far, I believe, and it's made finding the time to make rabbit cages a hassle since for a couple of days the air quality was too bad to go out in for long.


Here's a picture I took three or four days ago when the smoke was at it's worse. It looked like the freaking apocalypse was coming, but the wind shifted and soon after I took this picture the sky returned to looking fairly normal, or at least less orange and red and end of the world-y and more smoggy and smoky.

I also have a very long list of drawing/comic/animation projects that I want to get to, and me and my dad have finally started working on making the rabbit cages, and the garden has finally started to produce and all that plus the fact that our internet was out for most of the day today, making it impossible for me to blog before now... it's getting pretty busy around here.


 On a nicer, more relaxed and not insanely busy note, we have a yard full of clover and both me and my dad are very good at spotting four leafed ones, so I've started to collect and dry them (I've even found two five-leaf clovers so far, though one unfortunately wilted). My plans are to continue collecting and drying four-leaf clovers throughout the summer and then making cards or something along those lines with the dried plants. If anything, I'll end up with an impressive collection of rare leafy things. It should be fun, and since sometimes all it takes for me is a casual walk past a patch of clover to find a four-leafed one, it's certainly not a time-consuming or expensive hobby.

In other news, the first few strawberries of summer have started to ripen -- and the mosquitoes aren't even out yet! As tedious, annoying, boring and itchy as picking and processing strawberries can be, I'm honestly pretty excited! And of course after eating store-bought strawberries for so long our own amazingly sweet and tender berries taste like concentrated joy. Unfortunately, the robins agree, but Zen's been doing her job and chasing them off with a fair amount of success, so hopefully soon we can get rid of the bird netting without much worry and start harvesting! I'm psyched!


We've also been doing a lot of  herb drying and tea making.
A few days ago I went through one of the strawberry patches (one that sits right next to the raspberry patch and so gets a lot of raspberry runners in it) and ripped out all of the raspberry canes that had snuck into the bed to process and dry for raspberry leaf tea.

I also picked some mint from the herb spiral to dry because I love peppermint tea, and since I noticed that the lemon balm was crowding it (and since we have way too much lemon balm anyway) I ripped a lot of the lemon balm in there out to give the mint space, and since why not, we decided to make use of the plant and dry the lemon balm too.





We managed to process the majority of the stalks before a gigantic, tick-like spider crawled out of the lemon balm and we decided we had processed enough of the leaves anyway, and who needs that much lemon balm tea in the first place, and plus this is just tedious and it's not going to matter in the grand scheme of things if we quit now. So instead we just stopped and dried what we already had.
  
...Which wasn't really that bad of a haul; we had enough lemon balm to, once dried, make at least a few cups of tea. And it was certainly better than letting it go to waste in the compost.

And finally, today, we started on the rabbit cage building! Me and my dad made up a design that would give the rabbits plenty of space and would require minimum wire cutting and crimping. The basic idea was to cut a piece of wire and crease and bend it so that the same piece of wire would make up both ends and the middle divider of a two hole (if that's the right term; and even if it isn't you know I'm going to be using it anyway) cage, without needing to be cut or having sharp edges. The divider (which you can see in the right photo) is a triangle shape, which can, provided the hay/grass can fit through the small quarter-inch mesh (a technicality we didn't think of until it was already cut and bent and decided upon), double as a hay rack. Then, since we trimmed the four-foot-wide strips of wire down to thirty inches wide for the cages (leaving 18 inches of wire left -- the height of the cages) we were able to start making the sides of the cages, using the scrap from the top and ends. Very efficient use of wire, and not at all my idea -- I'm really pretty horrible with building and designing stuff, whereas my dad, who planned this all out, is amazing at it.


 Anyway, the next step for building the cages was more my speed -- crimping the edges down to start to form the cage. Of course, there were technical difficulties. Such as the wire being too small for the "little crimp-y things" (as everyone in our family affectionately calls them, since none knows what they're actually called) to fit through.

So instead we improvised and, wherever we were going to put a "little crimp-y thing" in we (or mostly I, since it was me doing 98% of the crimping) cut out a small cross of wire to in order to fit the "little crimp-y things" and their "little plier-like crimper thing" in to connect the two sides together. It's kind of like magic how, as you crimp and work and slowly connect the two pieces of wire together this heap of messy, unorganized metal mesh starts to take shape and become a well-made, fully-functional and sturdy cage.

Eventually I managed to finish one side of one hole of one two-hole cage (a mouthful and a surprising amount of work for only one side of only one hole), and it took more time and effort than expected -- though it was mainly mental, as lining up the pieces of wire and crimping them together just right is a lot harder than it sounds.

However, that said, even though it's pretty annoying work and not that easy or fast, it's definitely worth it. Since I decided wait to find wire and cages, instead of buying supplies or cages new, and then made the cages at home from scratch, and there's no way I'll be spending more than $90 getting the cage situation set up. Probably won't spend more than $120 dollars total for the whole basic set-up, not counting rabbits and feed and etc.. For comparison, the local rabbit supply guy here sells a 3-stack of cages (smaller than the ones we're building) for maybe $150 dollars (give or take 10 or 20 bucks since my memory's a bit fuzzy). Whereas the $20, 4'x44' roll of wire we got should be enough for three sets of these two-hole cages (if, again, that is the right term) for maybe $60 total if the price of the store-bought, standard, 1''x1/2'' wire we're using for the floor stays the same and we don't have to get more than 12 extra dollars of supplies. So it's definitely a good way to save money, waiting to find cheap or scrap materials, if you have the patience.

That said, I'm still feeling a bit nervous. Worried about if the cages will be good enough, and if they'll hold up well enough, since they're not made with "normal" supplies and to "normal" specifications. The logical and sane part of my brain knows they'll be fine, but of course there's still the small, quiet part of my brain going aahhh! Maybe they're not good enough! Maybe they'll collapse or explode or get ripped to shreds by predators or spontaneously combust! Aahhh!

I just try and ignore that part of my brain and continue crimping wire together.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Sybill's not doing so well

Sybill's been slow and not very lively the past few days, standing around with her feathers fluffed up, not moving much or very fast. She didn't even peck at the camera when I got it close to her.

It sounds silly, and three or four months ago I would've thought I had gone insane if I said I'm feeling sad for her, but it's true. Sure, she used to bully and bother and challenge me and I didn't like to go near her for fear of getting pecked. But eventually I stood up to her and showed her who's boss and  now she doesn't bother me at all. Heck, I've grown to like the scraggly old vulture.

 And now she's slow and tired and not very lively and I'm starting to feel bad for her. I think of all the chickens I've had the most interesting relationship with her. I loved her as a chick, a little fuzz-ball with a bare neck and silly little cap of fluff, but somewhere along the way she grew up and decided to become a bullying asshole of a chicken. She even managed to reach second-place in the flock after Ginny died, and then she started pecking me, too, looking up at me and screeing her harsh little scree "Qyrkk yrk rirkk!" if I got too close to her. She even drew blood a couple of times. Eventually I found a way to tell her, in terms she'd understand, that I was higher-ranking than her and not afraid. A bop on the head every time she threatened me, just like other chickens do, stern enough to feel like a peck from another, dominant bird but softer than the pecks she and most other chickens dished out to subordinate chooks, because, despite her goal of hurting me as much as possible until I ran away, I didn't want to hurt her. Eventually she accepted that I was higher-ranking and stopped bothering me, and in fact we're on pretty good terms now, I think. At least I feel like it. I like her. And it's sad to see her growing old and tired.

I hope she feels better soon. I think the fluctuating temperatures are making her toes hurt.