September update

Another long time between updates. 

Without art to post, there isn't a lot relavant to say on a daily, weekly or bi-monthly basis, I suppose. 

But: 

My IT friend managed to rescue my computer.  It had a corrupt...system file? He fixed it. 

I have started getting freelance done again, though slowly and with my gimpy left hand. 

And

Yesterday I started Occupational Therapy. 

I have actually been given the go-ahead to draw with my right hand by my Ortho specialist and also the therapist, but yesterday was assessment day where the therapist really worked on stressing my poor hand as much as he could, in order to see where the damage was, and so I decided to be smart and NOT try drawing when it was already aching and veiny. 

Instead, I made cookies with a friend and she ended up filming the process and is putting it on the internet.  We will be web sensations. 

But, I have a list of exercises to do -- they are deceptively simple but actually, after 10 reps, I feel them 

And I will, fingers gently crossed, be putting up more art soon. 

Untill next time, avid readers! 

Yeah that last part was a joke.

Halfway Through August and Everything's a Mess

The summer drones on and stores start stocking back to school supplies. Nights are cooler and mornings often require a light cardigan. 

About time. 

In my personal/art life, unfortunately, sailing is still over choppy waters. 

The tendinitis in my hand is almost almost better, thank holy geeze (and if you suffer from the same and/or want to avoid RSIs, check out this great video with simple stretches and a non-native English speaker saying 'physicist' when I'm relatively sure he meant 'physician') and my left-hand control improves daily. 

So I have a new catastrophe to keep me from working. 

The entire Creative Suite on my laptop has stopped working. 

It crashes as soon as I open it. 

So far, I've spoke to Adobe (and been jerked around by Adobe), done two uninstall/reinstalls--one with a through, by-hand cleaning of the registry, and visited my local Lenovo support center (where I was also jerked around).  

My next step is turning my laptop over to a tech-savy friend in hopes he can figure out what the problems is.  Possible culprits at this point range from a virus to a video card problem to a failing hard drive.  

Now, I just want to take a moment to talk about the customer service I have received.

 When I spoke to the the customer support people I did, I spent the time I wasn't just feeling stressed and tearful feeling stupid, due to my general lack of computer knowledge -- which is higher than that of the average Jill off the street, but still leaves me far from tech savvy.  When, after explaining my situation as clearly and with as many pertinent details as I could and then being told I couldn't be helped, I found myself feeling impotently upset but resigned to accept the judgement under the umbrella of 'that's policy'.  I was told repeatedly that I could go check forums if I wanted, and if I had a tech savy friend, that might be my best bet. This seemed really stressful and unsatisfying but I couldn't figure out exactly why. 

Then a friend pinpointed for me the heart of my discontent.  

I KNOW I am not tech savvy enough to handle these problems on my own.  This is why I do things like get extended warranties and so forth on my very expensive hardware and software.  Because I DON'T know how to fix things myself.  I don't even know where to start.  Forums are great, but they generally seem aimed at people more knowledgeable than me, who understand the guts of their computers.  Who are comfortable going into registry editors and dealing with command line tinkering.  I am not.  It would be great if I was, but I know that's just not an area I know what I'm doing.  

So, I have expensive products with protection purchased specifically in order to protect me if everything goes haywire. 

Then, when everything went haywire and I attempted to get help from the companies that should have been fixing me dinner and massaging my feet while fixing my computer, considering what I paid for the tech, I was basically told to sort it out myself.  

I. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. 

Luckily, I have computer geek friends.  But if I didn't, I don't know what I'd do. 

If my friend CAN'T find the source of the problem, I don't know what I'll do.  

So, why do I even pay for extra protection? 

I don't really have a wrap-up here or any kind of resolution.  I just know that I'm incredibly unhappy with the whole darn situation.  

*Edit 11/29/12* 

Just reading over this and laughing at that place where I wrote that my tendinitis was almost better. 

Oh, if only I knew. 

I probably would have stabbed myself in the face. 

Long-overdue Blog Post with lots of text but some pictures at the end

So, as my last post indicated, at the beginning of July I began a 'drawing a day' challenge, and then promised to update with some of my daily drawings. 

I did not do this. 

I got through about a week and a half and then I ran into a problem. 

I draw a lot.  And apparently, human hands aren't designed to make that same motion over and over and over again and sometimes get cranky when you make them. 

I found myself on the very upsetting receiving end of an RSI. 

It seems to be nothing too serious -- tendonitis.  It will heal, though I have to learn to pay proper attention to what my body tells me in the future.  My mind says 'if it's hurting, that means you are working hard and should feel satisfied with your success!'...so now I am trying to accept a new way of thinking that is more along the lines of 'take regular breaks, stretch, and if it starts hurting, stop for a little while, and maybe take an anti-inflammatory and ice that sore puppy'.  

Needless to say, I find this very frustrating. 

Actually, that is a grievous understatement.  

I love art.  It makes me happy.  All I want to do is draw.  I haven't been able to do ANY personal work lately, I've been moving at a snail's pace at work, and I had to put my freelance job on an embarrassing temporary hold. 

I've spend a lot of time upset and depressed. 

I get a knot in my throat when I see great art online, my feelings ranging from jealousy at others' ability to work, to anger over my human limitations to fear that I will never heal and that I will be forced to give up the thing I live for.

In short, July has sucked. 

But there has been some good fallout. 

First.  I love the online art community.  I tear up thinking about it.  Because I got pretty freaked out at first, not knowing what nature of injury I was suffering and whether I was ruined forever and whether I would EVER draw AGAIN--I do get a little histrionic...but I was seriously really upset.  And I posted a couple journals on my Deviant Art and Tumblr accounts, and the outpouring of support I got from the other artists in those communities really...it was what kept me hanging on by a thread for a few days, and it hasn't stopped.  Getting involved in online art communities is seriously one of the things in my life that I am the very most happy that I decided to do.  

Second, my problem has forced me to stretch my personal potential. 

I have spent most of July without the use of my right hand.  

I have always been pretty dominantly right handed, and pretty hopeless with my left. 

Welp. 

Still getting there with the left, but as it has been all I have had to work with this month, I have been learning to use it out necessity. Some of it has been incredibly frustrating, because I just don't have the level of control or muscle memory that I do in my right.  But my BRAIN knows what needs to happen...I just have to get all the systems in line.  

The first night that I stopped using my right in order to let it rest, I started a left-handed sketchbook. I have drawn and written in it almost every night -- the notable exceptions are the evenings when I spend a long day at work doing a lot of drawing.  My left is, obviously, just not as strong as my right, so it tires more easily.  I am doing my best to be conciencious of my own limitations and only do as much as I can...but even so, I spent all of Wednesday painting the background into an in-progress piece for work that is full of running animals (newish subject matter) and nature and light and it was just...it felt so good.  

Art is what makes me happy. 

When I can't do it, I am much less happy. 

Finally, I have installed something called 'WorkRave' on my work computer and will probably be installing it, or something similar, on my laptop as well.  It is a program that sets you timed 'microbreaks' (about 30 seconds, just to rest your hand and stretch a little) and 'rest breaks' (longer breaks at which you are supposed to actually leave your desk and walk around).  It is much less distracting than I feared it would be -- usually the microbreaks are a really good time to lean back and examine what I'm doing and whether it is working.  It has a few problems -- I thought you could schedule your own choice of duration of work and break periods, but have been unable to find a way to do so, and it only wants to let me work 4 hours a day.  That's nice, but my workday is a little longer than that.  

Anyway, in my next post, perhaps I'll scan a few pages from my new leftie sketchbook so you can see my progress.  But for now, here are a few of the (aborted) 30 day challenge pieces I promised to share: 

Day 2: Someone you like (celebrity, significant other or crush) 

Day 3: One, Some or All of your friends 

Day 5: Your Favorite Outfit 

Day 9: Your Favorite Cartoon/Anime Character

Day 10: Something you can't live without

Oh cruel fate...why you gotta play me like that?

30-Day art challenge

So, for July's warm-up art, I have decided to do a 30 day art challenge, which, as July has 31 days and today is the 2nd, works out quite well.  

Today's challenge was "Yourself or your persona"

The anatomy is terrible.  I clearly don't know how hands, legs, arms, feet or anything else works. 

Also, I used a pallet generator to get colors for it, and I'm never sure how I feel about those.  I don't think I'm crazy about these colors.  They came out weird.  I don't know.  

Anyway, I was thinking about posting daily, but I think I'll just keep doing the same sort of 'weekly roundup' that I've been doing to date. However, I WILL be posting daily over on my tumblr, so if you are interested in seeing what I have new each and every day, as well as too many photos of Benedict Cumberbatch, then feel free to head over there. 

What's going on

Pittsburgh has been (along with a lot of the country, I hear) been suffering miserable heat this past few days.  We had a dreadful weekend, the first day of which, my air conditioner simply couldn't even keep up...but even once the temperature had dropped out of the hundreds, the apartment was only just tolerable.  

Hot weather makes drawing not good for my brain. Makes brain not good for drawing?  I don't know...either way, when it's hot, my art suffers a lot.  I am not a happy camper when I'm sweating. 

I worked on some freelance. 

I tried to work on some personal stuff but didn't make a lot of headway. 

I'm in a pretty consistently frustrated place with my art lately.  I feel like I'm going backward.  I don't know if that's true.  I think part of it is just that I haven't really had time for any intensive personal projects lately, so everything I'm posting is quick and dirty, and not much that is thrilling me -- I think I'm doing more 'that's good enough because I want to get this posted' than is maybe good for me.  I feel like I can't draw anatomy but I don't know if that's because I'm actively deteriorating or because I am trying more challenging poses that I'm not quite sure how to tackle.  I like to think the latter, but maybe my brain is broken.  I'm cranky today.  I think I'm tired. I got to bed a little too late last night.  But it's also the weather.  And I need more caffeine and I'm almost out of creamer here at work.  Blarg. 

ANYWAY, here are a couple favorites from last week's warm-ups: 

(the second one came out quite nicely, don't you think?) 

and also a couple smatters of fan art: 

^ a fan art doodle for the awsome and fantastic web series, "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" (a modern vlog adaptation of Pride and Prejudice...MARVELOUS.  Go watch it.)

^This is a bit of Sherlock fanart based on a ficlet by Cara McGee.  I was playing with layout and type, obviously...not an area in which I'm super strong.  

Anyway, not a lot else going on today.  It seems like someone got overzealous with the AC in my office today though.  Brr. (I know, I know....I'm never happy.  Too hot, too cold...)