The Five Stages of Pot Roast Grief

So, because of all this rutting ice and snow and lack of infrastructure-that-deals-with-ice-and-snow, my sleep schedule has gotten all kinds of wonky, and as a result, I slept beatifically for ten hours yesterday (yesterday, not yesternight), and as a result, my poor pot roast died a horrible death.  No one can hear you scream in the Crockpot.

As I sullenly drank my coffee and sulked, I realized that I was working through the five stages of grief.

For a fricking pot roast.  And I present them here for you:

Denial:  No, no, NO, my pot roast isn't dry!  It isn't a hockey puck, it just needs some . . . moisture.

Anger:  Dammit!  How the hell could this have happened?!  Why the hell does no one else in this house have the sense the gods gave a frickin' weevil to know when the frickin' roast is *done*?

Bargaining:  Okay, maybe if I sacrifice somebody's firstborn to Hestia, she'll salvage my pot roast!

Depression:  My pot roast is RUUUIIIIIINNNNNNEDDDD!!!  Why the hell do I even TRY?!

Acceptance:  Okay, pizza rolls sound great.

Okay, to be honest, I didn't try bargaining with Hestia, 'cos I don't think she rolls that way.  But I did try to find ways to salvage the pot roast. 

Meanwhile, for art therapy, I did this for Day Four of thing-a-day:

Forty-five minutes in Autodesk Sketchbook Express, reference from the Livemodel Companion CD.

And those pizza rolls were pretty darned good.

First Thing-a-Day, Ringy-Dingy

So, my first thingy for thing-a-day is up and posted. 

 

Reference courtesy characterdesigns.com. (nudity warning)

There's so much wonderful stuff to see, I can't imagine being able to see all of it.  I think there's over five hundred people signed up for it?  That's like a small village.  And the kind of talent pool available -- I actually wonder if we'd make a viable, real-life village.  I wonder what it would be like to live there.  So long as I didn't have to build my own home -- I'm rubbish at carpentry.

Anyway, I had some fits getting this sketch done.  Couple false starts. Then I relaxed 'cos it's supposed to be fun, and it worked out at that point.  Forty-five minutes in mypaint while listening to a selection of songs from musicals.

SuperDanny!

So.  They've got a new Superman in the works, and a new actor to play the Man of Steel.  Didn't the last Superman movie come out just a few years ago?

Anyway, got to talking with the husband about Superman actors, and he suggested a couple that I thought could be interesting. 

Danny Devito.  I think that would be awesome.  I like Danny Devito.  And they should cast Rhea Perlman as Lois Lane.

Oh gawd.  That would so kick butt.

I even did up a little quick sketch in Autodesk Sketchbook Express with Devito wearing the cape.  Please excuse the uber-crappy quality; I did it in ten minutes.  Very sketchy quality, no thought to composition or color theory, just a quick, quick scrawl to get the idea down.

Then the husband suggested another actor:  John Cleese.

I'd pay twice the going movie ticket prices to see that.

Sorry, Mr. Devito.  We still love you though.

Learning Curves and the Like

I'm currently puttering around on posterous.com in preparation for thing-a-day and right now I'm trying to set things so that they publish to my blog simultaneously.  After all, why go to the trouble of logging into two sites, and futzing with arranging the elements of one's post twice when I can just go whap!pow!zam! and get it all done once?

 

Oh, and abusing colors?  Never gets old.  Until, of course, it does.

 

Meanwhile, this is what I'm up to:

 

 

(reference photo courtesy of atistatplay and can be found here.)

 

I thought I'd revisit this particular piece since it was done over three years ago.  I certainly hope I got better!  This sketch was done in Autodesk Sketchbook Express, which was part of the bundle of software that I got along with my new Intuos.  I'm not quite sure where I'm going to go with this; most likely I'll continue to develop it into a digital painting (probably in the GIMP).

 

One more week to thing-a-day, and I haven't a thing to wear!

 

All I Want for Xmas --

My husband is a mean ol' man. I adore him. And I'd rather draw him a thousand thousand times than keep his photo in my wallet. He's a patient model, and very game for anything.

And did I mention he's a mean ol' man?

He came home from work on the 23rd with a bag from Best Buy which he put under the tree, after informing me that it was for me. I was a little surprised, simply because earlier in the month he'd asked me what I wanted for Xmas, and I told him. As far as I know, downloadable audiobooks don't come in Best Buy bags. I looked askance at the package.

"What is it?" I asked.

He smiled at me brightly. "It's a present!" he replied in a chipper tone designed solely to annoy.

No matter how much wheedling, whining, whinging, asking, prodding, needling, pouting or otherwise making a pest of myself, he remained stalwart and refused to answer my question.

Though he did offer to let me peek. But really, where's the fun in that?

So, I waited (im)patiently, until the husband came home from Midnight Mass, at which time I was permitted to (finally!) open up my gift, which was way cooler than what I got him.

The marvelous bastard got me a Wacom Intuos 4.

Dear Barnes and Noble:

I understand that when I place an order and check on the free shipping thingy that you'll hang on to my order until it's complete.  It's a fact of mail order that I know well.  I can be patient and accept this.  But why must you hold my entire order until the day my pre-order comes in, and then proceed to ship the pre-order separately from the rest of the in-stock items?  You're very silly. 

So far, I have received Donato's very pretty picture book, Stephanie Law's gorgeous instructional book and Jim Butcher's latest oeuvre.  They all arrived yesterday in great condition.  But really, my time could have been better spent in poring over them lovingly these past three weeks while I eagerly await Jim Gurney's Color and Light.

I think it very shameless that you should tease and taunt a poor bibliovore like me.

Yours sincerely,

Pat

Improvement

Just to show how far I've come since May of '09:

(stock courtesy mizzd-stock)

When I did this piece, it was the best thing I'd done to date digitally.  This was done in OpenCanvas 1.1 with a graphics tablet.  I didn't know how to floodfill the canvas in OC, so in order to introduce tone to the canvas I had to ruddy well paint it in.  I did this in a single layer, in one hour.  Even then I was aware that the likeness simply wasn't there, but I was quite happy with it.  It looked sorta-kinda-almost realistic.  Yay me.

Recently I discovered OC's ability to create event files of the paintings one creates in it, so I went back through and watched myself paint.  When I came to this piece though, I was horrified by how bad the initial drawing was.  Was I --?  Did I --?  Eek.

I'd forgotten how that drawing looked since it had gotten painted over in the process.  Compare to the drawing of my recent self-portrait:

Granted, painting the self-portrait took several hours, and as a result, it's a great deal more polished -- but my drawing technique's improved quite a bit. Even now, with my hour-long (not quite) daily sessions of painting, my drawings have more information; are less . . . slapdash.

Thank you, Evil Professor Rex.

(note to self:  must draw a portrait of Evil Professor Rex as the supervillain he is.)