and the results are in…

Tags

drawing, getting creative, summer drawing challenge

The prompt for the first Summer Drawing Challenge entry was illuminated initial. Not sure if anyone has noticed but I put mine in a new header image here. By itself it looks like this…

I’m wondering if I maybe started too hard seeing as only two folks joined me. Tessa made a really cool T and Easy did a particularly nifty combo F/U. Please go check out their drawings, they’re totally cool.

So for next time, which would be June 5, I think we’ll go with something a little less complicated. How about a flower? Yeah, let’s draw a flower.

If you’d like to play along all you need to do is draw your flower, take a pic, post it on your blog, and either link back to this post or leave me a comment with the link. C’mon, it’s fun, you’ll like it!

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summer drawing challenge – week 1

Tags

challenge, drawing, getting creative, summer drawing challenge

Welcome to week one of Mama’s Summer Drawing Challenge! Your prompt for this week is an illuminated initial. It can be your initial, your online persona’s initial, a letter that you think just looks cool. GO!

ready, set, DRAW!

Tags

challenge, drawing, getting creative, summer drawing challenge

Alright kids, it’s time to get y’all ready for a challenge I know I’m going to do, mostly because I need to do it for myself. On May 8th I’m starting Mama’s First Annual Summer Drawing Challenge. Every other Friday I’ll post a prompt of what to draw. You’ll have two weeks to make a drawing and then link back to that post to show off what you’ve done. I have 12 prompts lined up which should get us through until sometime in August. If anyone has a suggestion I’d love to hear it. So get your thinking caps on and sharpen your pencils!

share your world – week 5 PLUS bonus crap you don’t care about anyway

Tags

28 day challenge, anxiety, art, drawing, getting creative, I am a big kid, Lego, money, motivation, no job is worth dying for, projects, share your world, shopping, snow days, work

Here are Cee’s Share Your World questions for week 5:

Do you prefer shopping or going to a park?

It depends. Grocery shopping on a budget sucks, but shopping for craft/art supplies or gifts does not provided you don’t have to stick to a tight budget. Also, I enjoy parks when the weather is nice. The great outdoors isn’t so great here right now.

If you were a shoe, what kind would you be and why?

Oh this is easy! I would be a Birkenstock sandal, purple suede Arizona style to be exact. I wear my Birks as much of the year as possible. Having large wide feet really makes you appreciate a well-made shoe.

What’s the story behind a time when you got locked out?

The one and only time I’ve ever locked myself out of a house was when I lived in my great-grandmother’s house with a roommate. There was a screened in front porch that had a locking storm door that I didn’t realize she had locked. Fortunately the basement had small windows and one of those wasn’t locked. Nothing like crawling in through your own window.

Do you prefer eating foods with nuts or no nuts?

I prefer that Josh keep his pants on while I’m eating. 😉 Again, kind of depends on the food but most of the time I enjoy nuts.

Now for the bonus bits…

While running the errands on Saturday, Josh and I ended up at Target. That place is totally my undoing. Most of what we picked up was stuff we needed, but I just had to check out the Legos in the toy section. And I came home with a mini-fig. Wanna see?

I came across the idea of using mini-figs to hold charging cables on Pinterest. When I opened my pouch and saw this little fellow I knew instantly that he was just the man for the job. I’ve attached him to my desk using poster putty and so far it’s working quite well.

I’ve also been working hard on my 28 day challenge. I was able to finish removing the backgrounds from the remaining designs this morning. I also started two new designs last night after I shut down the electronics. This is what they looked like when I resumed work this morning.

I had originally intended this to be a single design, but I really just don’t think they look like they belong together. So I finished the outlining and then did a scan with no color so that I could play with manipulating them digitally. I’m still going to finish the color by hand with my pencils, which means I’ll have to scan and separate them digitally again, but I want to see if I can get a satisfactory result if I do color through the software.

And lastly…

I am taking a self-proclaimed snow day. We got something like 8″ of snow on top of some freezing rain over the weekend and I just turn into a total bundle of nerves when I have to drive in this shit. I’ve got a fuck-ton of vacation time on the books and nothing scheduled for today, so I’m still sitting here in jammies. I plan to get ahead with my school reading and get a few bonus chores done today on top of coloring the drawings. Since I don’t ever have sick kids to use as an excuse to miss work this is how I make up for it.

shit I just do not understand

Tags

cooking is good for you, don't text and drive kids, drawing, getting creative, shit I don't get, sports fanatics, wherein mama bitches

I need to preface this by saying that if you find yourself doing any of these things or believing them, I’m not judging you. I really just don’t understand. Feel free to (politely) enlighten me. Honestly, that’s cool.

Sports Fanatics

The Super Bowl is this coming Sunday. People here are making a big ass fuss about it. Evidently more than a BILLION chicken wings will be consumed during the game.

SO WHAT? Grown men wearing what amounts to tights chasing each other for a ball – what about that makes sense??? I don’t follow any sport, even though the hockey team here at the university is allegedly quite good. I just don’t give a fuck. I have better things to spend my time and money on, thanks anyway.

Personal Scent Overloading

There’s an older woman who works here who constantly smells like a cheap French whorehouse. I really think she uses perfume like she should use water to wash the shit off with. TOO MUCH! One spritz is usually more than enough for me. And I’ve been with guys who did this, too. They seem to think that if one decent spritzing is good, dumping half the bottle on must certainly be better. And really, the perceived quality of the perfume has nothing to do with it. Too much stink is really just too much stink.

Eating “Out” Food Everyday

Lots of the people I work with do this, as does my sister. The people here tend to go either to the student union and buy something for lunch or go off campus to one of the gazillion restaurants in this area. My sister just rarely cooks, so unless Mom preps something for her, they tend to eat dinner out damn near every night.

WTF?

Don’t people realize how much money you can save by packing a lunch? Not to mention how much healthier you can eat without having to eat shitty health food like kale and mystery ingredient green smoothies?

Seriously, I don’t cook fancy and I prefer recipes that are billed as “one pot” or “30 minutes or less” or “even the dog could cook this and it’s also amazing!” I made a soup last night that was cooked in a single pot, took 30 minutes from start to finish, tasted great, and now today I’m going to eat some of the leftovers for lunch. BOOM!

Texting and Driving

This also includes “anything that’s distracting you from your primary purpose for being behind the wheel of a vehicle which really ought to be fucking DRIVING.” I’ve seen people eating food off plates, reading books while driving on the interstate, drinking liquor straight from the bottle, applying mascara (ffs, I can’t even do that while standing still in the bathroom!), smoking pot, knitting (once), and the ever popular texting and/or screwing around with the phone.

I keep my phone in the little console area of the jeep where it is easily accessible in case Mom needs to CALL me while I’m on the road. Truth be told, I’m not even all that fond of taking calls. But I only do it when necessary. If Josh texts me, I wait until I’m safely stopped at a red light to check it. He knows that if he needs me urgently he’s going to have to dial.

Sorry kids, there’s just nothing so important for me that it can’t wait just a few minutes.

Ok, enough of the bitching, time to show off a little…

I took a break from tech last night and got this finished. Mom picked out the colors since I made it with her in mind. I think it looks phenomenal. I’ll be uploading it to Redbubble and Cafe Press soon. This is my favorite drawing I’ve done so far.

memo to self: don’t eat feta cheese whilst camped out in a small office

Tags

drawing, I may well fart myself to death, limits, motivation, profs are proof of piled higher and deeper, projects, random shit that falls out of my brain, school, skin conditions, stress, the world is full of fucking idiots, work, zentangle experiments

FOR THE LOVE OF CAT, MAKE IT FUCKING STOP!!!

I got to work this morning, precisely on time, and my access card for the parking structure wouldn’t work. I managed to bend it kind of bad awhile ago, but it’s been working just fine. I tried both gates, no luck. So I thought, ya know, if they’ve fired my ass the card won’t work to get into the office suite. I drove around to the small metered lot in front, where were are forbidden to park, and brought my shit in. The bent card worked on the door just fine. But I couldn’t leave my jeep at the meters. The parking nazis start their rounds at 8 and those are hefty tickets.

Long story short, I finally got into the garage at 7:30 because I went and tried again and some nice lady behind me got out of her car and swiped her card so I could get in.

Then I was going to print all of the articles and book chapter shit that I need for the first part of the project that’s due tomorrow and I couldn’t print some of them because the fuckers were password protected. I went back out to the library site and looked everything up again, reopened the files, and picked out the pages I absolutely had to have. I finally got it all typed up, including all 11 of the references I currently have. At that point I went into the online course management server to see if she’d set up a link to turn them in that way – nope – but she did have something for a special grad assignment that I couldn’t find referenced anywhere else. So I sent her an email asking about it because the only sort of reference to a date is that it needs to be done prior to spring break which is mid March. Her reply was to not worry since it hasn’t been assigned yet. Um, yeah, NOT THE FUCKING POINT!!!

Anyway, I did get my first zentangle doodle thingy drawn last night.

It’s not great, but I don’t think it’s too shabby for a first shot. I’m not sure if I’m done adding patterns and pieces but it for sure needs some color. This was what I did last night after I took pills, so there’s two birds. This morning I did the necessary routine for my skin given that I’ve got major activity going on. And, just a few minutes ago I filled out the forms and junk for my student loan stuff. So yay, progress.

As for the title of today’s post – this will likely be TMI, but who cares. I absolutely LOVE feta cheese and I’ve been trying to eat a little healthier lately so I’ve been making myself Greek-inspired salads. So I don’t know for sure that it’s the feta or not, but I’m in my regular office today, the one with the complete lack of ventilation, and I am about to pass out from my own stench.

and then there was the one time when I fell on my ass trying to carry too much to the car and my husband watched and just drove off

Tags

drawing, knitting, my husband the jackass, start of the semester woes

That’s the drawing I’ve been working on. It’s not even that impressive, just larger than what I tend to do. I wanted to work on it more last night but I’m shaking pretty bad these days. Smooth lines are not forthcoming.

So I worked on this instead. It’s the very start of a new knit shrug. I wore an emerald green mohair shrug to work yesterday, 3/4 length sleeves, and decided that I really should make more things I can wear and wear more of the things I’ve made. That shrug should be pretty jewel-tone stripes judging by the way the yarn looks in the ball and is working up so far. I’m not doing anything fancy with the stitches on this, the yarn is plenty pretty enough. The green one has a very subtle bead detail at the cuffs, but I think I’ll leave this one plain.

So anyway, today is the first day of class for me. I had a ton of crap to carry out to the car this morning and I was running late. The running late thing really isn’t my fault anymore, it’s Josh’s. I took my shower last night so my entire “getting ready” time this morning was like 20 minutes. But he parks behind me and can’t be bothered to drag his ass out of bed until the last damn minute anymore. I couldn’t tell you the last time I actually showed up to work on time.

At any rate, I had my backpack, a canvas grocery bag full of supplies, my coat, and my cup of coffee that I was trying to get through the door and then close the door to the house behind me. I didn’t make it. I lost my footing trying to bend back to grab the doorknob and I went down, ass over tea kettle, and twisted my ankle pretty good in the process.

Josh was sitting in the Honda in the driveway with a very clear view of what happened. As I sat there crying he backed out and drove off. Needless to say it has not been a swell day.

And it’s finally gotten busy here, like ridiculously busy. But I guess that’s good. It’s meant that I haven’t had time to lament the fact that there’s no time to smoke or pee.

better late than never

Tags

cartoon craziness challenge, dragon, drawing

That’s the final version of my most recent drawing and the one that I said really needed to get done this week. I finished her last night. And I was able to get this uploaded to Redbubble so it’s now available on damn near everything they sell. I’m contemplating messing with the colors now that I’ve got her scanned, but I’m not sure what other colors would look right. Thoughts?

yeah, I got nothin’…

Tags

drawing

Well, not quite. I do have this…

That is my rendition of a Celtic Green Man. I did a cross stitch of a tonal Green Man pattern 12 years ago and wanted to see if I could draw something similar. This is actually WAY better.

I need to do updates on the visits with T-Bone and shrinky-poo, but my computer curfew is fast approaching. I had homework I had to do tonight, sadly. But hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some time to give y’all the scoop. Things are fine, but holy fucking hell, am I looking forward to being off work next week!

a small update

Tags

art, creativity, drawing, motivation

There are things I’d like to/need to talk about, but I don’t have enough time to do it properly this evening, and there are some bits I’d like to share visually that wouldn’t be appropriate with the rest. So tonight I’m going to put up the picture bits and then hopefully in the next day or so I’ll have enough time to do the big update. We do have the Labor Day holiday this weekend here in the US so I’ll have Monday off work, which should help with time management issues, too. Anyway, here goes…

flower fairy – kid craft project done with the girls last weekend

based on a piece of clip art I found online

because I wanted to draw a fairy that didn’t look like shit (ignore the hands and feet)

cool purple flower earrings I made from a kit that I purchased at least 6 years ago and had never bothered to make until Sunday

my first foray into mixing fine point marker and colored pencil, inspired by the wooden E that Josh helped me decorate

I’ve got another drawing that I started last night but didn’t get finished yet; I’ll share that another time. I am feeling much more confident in my drawing and, as you can see, I’ve been quite creative lately. I’ve also finally started doing homework for my latest class and need to make sure I stay on top of that.

See you again soon…