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I love my local library. Apparently so do a lot of other people. I usually get there just a few minutes before they open, and when I do, there’s usually a line of people waiting to get in. We don’t quite stampede through the front doors when they open, but we do get in pretty fast. The librarian is pretty nimble though, so she usually gets out of the way.
I have no pictures for today’s blog post, because the topic of today’s blog post is too horrifying for pictures.
I’ve started gardening again.
Feel that chill that just ran up and down your spine? That’s the Black Thumb saying, “Hey there!”
Anyway, gardening is one of those thing that I’m doing to take back my life. It lets me spend time outside, gives me plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and it’s good exercise. So about a month ago, I bought some seeds and a couple of those instant green house kits and told myself, “Yeah! I can do this!” Of course, I completely ignored my long history of gardening disasters when I did this. I took my purchase home, set up my little green house, pulled out a notebook and planned my future garden with a little song in my heart.
And after 4 weeks, all I had was four tiny little sprouts. But I was proud of my sprouts, and I tended to them so carefully! When I realized last night it was going to be too cold to keep them on the window sill, I moved them to a SAFE PLACE!! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SAFE!!!!
And when i got up the next morning, I discovered one of the cats had ripped out all four of my babbies by the roots and left them to die in the dirt.
So next week, when it’s warm enough to keep plants outside, I’m going back to the garden store and I’m buying all new seedlings. And then we’ll see how many I can kill off.
The End
A miracle has occurred. I’ve managed to squeeze in about 6 hours of work in the last 3 days! That’s the “might possibly earn me some money” kind of work, not the “I sold my soul to Girl Scouts” kind of work.
I’ve also managed to do some yard work, clean the house a bit, cook a few meals and exercise 3 days in a row! So many miracles! And I am soooooooooooooooooooo tired right now.
But it’s a good kind of tired, because I made a choice about how I wanted to spend my time and I didn’t let myself get derailed by what other folks wanted. Did I mention that I even played video games with the kids this week? Far out, dude!
But back to resurrecting my dead career. My current goals are:
A) Get back on a regular schedule with the webcomic, so that I’m back to putting out a new strip every week.
2) Draw and publish one or two new greeting cards (or mug designs, t-shirts, etc.) each month.
Which brings us to the topic in the headline – Greeting Cards for Goths.
I do not consider myself to be a Goth, though I love to wear black and I celebrate Halloween all year long. I’m more of a general geek, with a sort of minor in punk, zombie, kawaii and Goth interests. In other words, I enjoy lots of different things. One thing I especially enjoy is drawing beautiful but creepy ladies. I get a lot of inspiration for Edward Gorey (who doesn’t?) and Aubrey Beardsley. Combine that with my fondess for twisted humor and you get some very interesting ideas for greeting cards. Like greeting cards you can send to people you don’t like. Greeting cards made for people who despise the mundane world. Greeting cars for people who live in Night Vale. Greeting cards for people who like their humor the way they like their coffee – sweetened with the blood of innocents and the tears of the wretched. In other words, greeting cards for people just like you and me!
So I’ve been working on drawings for these cards. I do this at the local library, where I have the perfect excuse to turn off my phone (if I don’t, the librarians will sacrifice me to their dark gods). I find a nice comfy chair, spend an hour working on the webcomic, and then spend another hour working on the greeting cards. Here’s a peek at what I’ve managed to produce so far this week:
“I’m so gloomily beautiful, I may faint!”
I’m doing the sketch in SketchClub on my iPad. Once I’ve got both the inside and outside artwork sketched out, I’ll import the images into Concepts to ink and color them. Final clean-up and formatting will be done in Corel Draw on my desktop.
I’m very happy with this piece so far. Like I said, I feel like miracles are happening this week. Just making the decision to reduce my volunteer hours has given me a real boost. Hopefully, I’ll get my boundaries between volunteering and work firmly established by the time cookie season comes around again. Because I do not want to get sucked into a black hole of unending burn-out ever again!
I’ll post another update later this week. Until then, have fun!
Hey everyone! I just wanted to post a quick note about April’s theme. I mentioned in my last post that I want to revive my art career. After thinking about it, I decided that I’d label this month’s theme “Bring Out Your DEAD!” Because if this were a Monty Python movie, you just might here my career say, “I’m not dead yet!”
So I will be posting images of artwork in progress for the Zazzle store (I’m working on greeting cards for people you hate!), and just for laughs, I’ll post pictures of my garden in progress. Yes! The Black Thumb rides again! I’ve already successfully grown several seed pots of…. mold. So much for heirloom tomatoes!
I may also pick up a few craft projects that I left languishing in Limbo. Remember the spider web poncho I was working on in October? Yeah, I found that last weekend while I was cleaning up my room. I think I should probably finish that, and maybe a couple other projects that didn’t quite get done.
So that’s what’s going on. And if you have any half-dead projects lying around that you want to revive, let me know! I’d be happy to cheer you on as you finish them, and even post a link to pics or blog posts about your work!
So let’s get cracking! We’ve got dead things to reanimate!