Fabric art!

Hands down, my favorite scrape with death!

I went to a wedding recently. The bride had asked me in advance to use my "artistic skill" to decorate the guest seating chart. I felt enthused. Ever since drawing cats all over my husband's hospital room window, I've had sort of a thing for dry erase markers. This wedding, I guessed, would be a lot more fun than pumping antibiotics through a PICC line; I'd get bunch of free markers, free publicity, free honey-slathered pork loin... oh, and to see people I enjoy, um, being happy. That too.

Being a native west coaster, rather than a midwesterner, it was kind of surreal when the wedding party had to be moved downstairs due to an imminent tornado. As an artist, however, it merely meant a few fun Wizard Of Oz tributes and, well, extra time before the ceremony to do the job right.

I really just kind of went with my gut, which seems to be a really important part of the artistic process. The more I just wildly attack my medium without a smidgen of awareness, the better the actual art is. Whiteboards included.

And in case you didn't know, candicenorcross.net finally got a much-needed revamp. Check it out!

Spunky future chick.

I am planning a storyline set far in the future from my others. On a totally different continent. With totally different cultures. And by "planning" I mean "I have a vague idea of what's going on". It's not nearly to the same grueling extent of R&D I've done for Tab'rin, Mae'houn and the like.

So, I bring you spunky future chick.

This is a borderline Final Fantasy character design, I realize.

Something I am really trying to do is take different skin, facial, hair, and other cultural features and put them in a blender for the races on my planet. I think part of this is because I grew up with a very racist parental figure and resent a lot of the stuff that's been drilled into my head. Why not give people with white skin nappy hair? Why not give people with dark skin big Roman noses? It's fun. And hopefully not too politically incorrect? I am not sure; I've never really talked about this before. Anyway, like I said, it's fun - especially breaking out of common racial archetypes. (Yes, the heroine CAN have dark skin without it being A Thing.)

Fast friends.

Customer service.

I interact with a lot of very interesting folks. The other day, a customer instructed me to pick out a specific quantity of cherries - but only "the good ones" - and said she would come back later to check on my progress.

As you're standing there, alone, putting cherries on a scale one at a time, you can't help but feel like an ass.

We took the boats down to the shadow forest.

One of my many creative friends is a musician. She recently sent me one of her songs, a 6-minute epic. The lyrics were so bizarrely, wonderfully, symbolically parallel to my own epic that I began sketching up a movie trailer of sorts, set to her song. It's a pipe dream, of course, as I've hardly ever animated - and I have learned not to commit myself to massive projects that simply look good in my head - but it's at least fun to visualize.

A bit of trivia that I like to tell people is that movie trailers make me cry. (The E.T. one kills me.) They are just one of those visual media that is potent, intense, and perfectly-crafted to elicit a gut-punch emotional response. Being an empath, I am absurdly vulnerable to such onslaughts. So I dream up my own movie trailers because they are a wonderful imagination exercise, allow me to stretch my emotional muscles, and spark me to daydream of fame and fortune... even though such things would likely make me into the kind of celebrity that gets hooked on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals and tries to assault paparazzi with kitchen utensils.

So I stick to simple sketches. It's safer.

Dress design.

I went to a local fabric store for the first time, and... homygoodness. I knew there were a few projects I wanted to do, but it literally took me two hours to decide what to get. You know, along with the heavy-duty needles, scissors, snap accessories, elastic... of course! So here is something I am going to make: a blueberry dress! Actual fabric enlarged, but awesome at any size.

Gangly creatures = always fun.

Don't ask me why wobbly rear legs, bulbousy snouts, and pokey ribcages on critters appeal to me. They just do. And apparently they just come easier to me. Human anatomy? Nails. Emaciated, classless specimen? Pie.

I think I was channeling that Rite Of Spring segment of Fantasia. DINOSAURS?

Moomin!

Another little Postcrossing doodle. Being my first Moomin, it's hard to loosen up and let the shapes flow.

Political cartoon.

Not my best, but I really just wanted to express this idea. I have actually attended a protest, and been keeping very informed as to what governor Rick Snyder and his supporters want to do in the state of Michigan. Actually, they're already doing it, despite thousands of protestors in the capitol and dozens of protestors following the governor everywhere he goes. The basic gist of it is that education is getting cut by $300-500 per child across the state, the poorest 20% will see a tax increase that is 10 times that of the richest 1%, the earned income tax credit is disappearing, and whenever a municipality enters a "financial emergency" (which they inevitably will, under these conditions) the governor can hand-pick people to replace elected officials. As in, whoever you voted for is gone. These Emergency Financial Managers have no term limits (and a salary cap of $160,000 a year, I hear) and can totally null whatever contracts they want - which is the shrieking pro- or anti- union footnote that's garnered the most attention, unfortunately. Oh, yes, those greedy unionized teachers (?). Meanwhile, businesses see huge - HUGE, as in 80+% - tax cuts. I don't know where these political geniuses think the desperately poor are going to shop, but I don't think the tax cuts will create or support any real, sustainable local jobs, since the poor will only get poorer and have no choice but to sell their souls to Walmart and the like. Cutting taxes to businesses accomplishes nothing unless people have money to spend on said businesses. This, plus the budget being argued about over in D.C. (that I'm too exhausted/cynical to even track anymore) means that it's a popular idea to cut vital services - community health clinics, afterschool programs, and so on - for those who are already un- and under-employed, hungry, struggling in the downturn. How is the workforce of this country supposed to get back on its feet? How do you squeeze blood from a stone? It's an absolutely absurd fever dream of the rich.

Anyway, enjoy the cartoon. I have other ideas for our multi-million dollar CEO Snyder's likeness, considering the fact that he constantly hides from any public debate and rebukes legitimate questions about his policies with quotations like the above, and insinuations of the public's baseless hysteria, immaturity, and ignorance. This is the delivery room into which I bring you my first political cartoon. And it is full of rage.