But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘My art’ Category

Horse Sketches and Fictional Workplace Hijinks

I start off with a plan. “I will practice drawing people today. Because I still can’t draw people. I will not draw horses. Because horses are easy to draw. Seriously, no horses!”

Five minutes later, and I’ve got this. Four quick horse sketches. Because I can’t stop myself. I’ve been drawing horses since I could hold a pencil. People are hard to draw, with their weird round heads and walking on two legs.

Anyway, I’m making this a sketchbook dump Friday and excerpt Friday. Technically, the sequel to The Music of Chaos is about 90-percent done. First draft, anyway. I got stuck on a scene at the end, and then wandered off to two other projects. The problem is, I got two author voices–Hello, Sybil!–the snarky, first person, Mary Sue-ish voice of The Music of Chaos and the third person voice that I use elsewhere. The second voice has been in control lately.

In this bit of dialogue from Chapter One, Hallowbone Holiday (working title), Regan O’Connell leaves work, the day job, early…. (more…)

Fun with Fire

And I didn’t set myself on fire once.

Not even my shoelaces.

Not-so-spontaneous combustion being an occupational hazard of being an artist who works in metal. Welder, plasma torch, grinders, all spiting sparks and fiery bits of metal. Combine that with my spectacular propensity for stupidity, and you’ve got a recipe for flaming artist. And not in a homosexual way, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We at Casa de Kirby being supporters of marriage equality and all that.

 

 

This weekend is the first Art in the Park. Corrales, NM at the lovely La Entrada Park. It runs from 10 am to 4 pm. Entrance is free and there will be activities for the kids, food, music and loads of great artists. Please stop by if you are in the Albuquerque area. I’ll have a few copies of The Music of Chaos on hand as well.

See ya there!

And the Dental Plan Sucks Too

Still busy writing; muse is kicking my ass.

Today’s sketchbook dump is one of several silly variations of “Most dangerous jobs in Middle Earth” that’s been kicking around my head. The most dangerous, of course, being Frodo’s gardener. The plan was to spit this one out in an hour–because wargs and orcs, how hard can they be to draw? Ended up taking at least a couple of hours, plus time in Photoshop to try and hide the fact that it was drawn on the back of an old manuscript. (You could see where the some of the text got scanned too.)

As always, click image for larger (readable) version.

Scars

I still can’t draw people.

Not very well, anyway. I’m starting to think it’s some kind of weird psychological hang-up, because I don’t have the same problem with animals. Human proportions, for some reason, don’t make sense to my artist’s brain. My people always end up with odd anatomy or looking stiff and lifeless.

My current Work in Progress features a scarred, half blind hero and Six:A.M.’s “Skin” is his theme song. One of several angsty-pangsty songs, anyway. He’s wonderfully emo and fun to write. Since I can’t draw people, I opted for another one of my original characters. This is Cheddar the pitbull, from an another unfinished project. Cheddar belongs to one of Regan O’Connell’s  (The Music of Chaos) neighbors and she sometimes dogsits him. He is so named because he once ate a pound of cheddar, including the plastic packaging.

Click on image for a larger version.

Bet Your eBook Can’t Do This!

I’m utterly obsessed with my current WIP. Writing anything else when these damn pushy characters keep demanding time is about impossible. They did let me take a break and do some sketching….

I was thinking about my earlier post regarding my new Kindle and how much I like reading on it. (I do. In fact, I think I would have bailed on the book I’m currently reading–‘nother Twilight clone–if it were in print.) It’s just easier to skim slog through a really bad book on my Kindle.

But then I started thinking about the many uses of print books. Several immediately came to mind, but given my limited drawing skills, I went with four. It’s getting easier to draw people, but it still took at least 30-minutes to draw the ‘toons with people, vs. two-minutes to draw the greyhound.

Middle panel features Regan O’Connell smacking Breas Montrose (The Music of Chaos). I assure you, he deserved it.

Click the image for a full-sized view!

With Apologies to Thelwell

Last week my husband and I watched The Lord of the Rings movies, all three (extended versions), again.  When we got to part where Frodo is stabbed by the Nazgul on Weathertop, my husband wondered, “So if Elrond hadn’t healed him, would he have turned into a Nazgul?”

“Yeah,” I said. “An itty-bitty Nazgul.  On a Shetland pony.”

The idea immediately reminded me of the art of the great cartoonist, Norman Thelwell. Thelwell is famous for his illustrations and cartoons of children, usually little girls, and their ponies. His work captured the nature of the relationship perfectly.  Which is to say, in most of his drawings, the ponies are running amuck, their young riders hanging on for dear life.

Horsey folk already know this. Ponies are evil. Children aren’t given ponies because they, like their riders, are small. No, children learn to ride on ponies because the little mounts have a gift for teaching children that equines are living, breathing creatures with agendas all their own. Ponies delight in inflicting torture on their young riders, bucking, biting and scraping them off on low hanging tree limbs.

If the Witch King of Agmar really wanted to be a bad ass, he would’ve ridden a pissed-off Shetland pony. Against a Lilliputian equine, Eowyn and Merry wouldn’t have stood a chance. (Click cartoon for a larger version.)

Friday Sketch Dump, the Un-original Edition

I haven’t drawn anything in months.

Consequently, a part of my soul is starting to die. Meanwhile, my husband got a request for a gate … a gate featuring ye ole coyote howling at the moon motif. Words cannot express how much I loath that motif. This native southwesterner would rather eat glass than draw a coyote howling at the moon.

My husband’s response? “See it as a challenge.”

So today, I picked up an old sketchbook, one with really cheap paper because southwestern cliches don’t deserve my good sketchbook, and stared at the blank page for several minutes. Finally,  I just gave up, picked up a nearby Design Toscano catalog and started drawing some of the stuff out of there. Medusa was the most fun. I’ve always felt sorry for Medusa, getting a bad rap on account of a bad hair day. I’m telling ya, we women, we just can’t win.

Also, because I’m on a Loki kick–he’s inspired the hero in my latest WIP–I did the Google thing and found a hoard of fan sites with Loki/Tom Hiddleston pics. Apparently, I’m not the only one who preferred Loki to Thor.

(The dragon, the horses, demon-rooster thing, and coyote are mine.) Click on the image for a larger version.

Friday Schmaltz

The sun is shining.

Yeah, I know. This is New Mexico. It does that. Except the weather geeks have been making much a hue and cry over the impending storm. Fortunately, in my little corner of the desert, the wind didn’t blow as predicted and it was a balmy 29-degrees this morning when I took the greyhound for his morning stroll. The weather geeks were going on about how frigid it was. Really? Because it was 19-degrees last week. My maths aren’t so great, but I’m certain 19 is less than 29.

Friday. My mother is visiting this weekend and the house has never been filthier. My only options are hiring a team of maids or moving.

So I said, “Screw it,” and did some sketching. This one is inspired by a quotation I saw in a catalog. (Oh, there’s another thing–we’re drowning in catalogs. Tis the season.) It’s full of errors, but I find I like my raw sketches better than my finished work. This is Regan (from The Music of Chaos) and Talis (also The Music of Chaos, with a bit part in The Canvas Thief.) Both are well over 100, but … semantics. As always, click image for a larger version.

Scrambled Brain and Ham

It’s done. The art show season for 2011 is o-vah. Finis. No mas. Which leaves me loads of time to … finish painting the dining room. Before Christmas.

I need a holiday from the holidays.

As I write this, it doesn’t have a cover image yet (I’ve seen the prelim, but I don’t know if it’s official), but The Canvas Thief is up for pre-order at Amazon. (Also has the author name listed as “Patricia Kirby,” but that should get fixed soon.)

Anyway…I came across this saying by Louisa May Alcott and decided it was the perfect fit for an old drawing on my hard drive. What would we do without books? Face reality?  Shudder. (Click image for larger view.)

Half-Baked Leftovers and a Freebie

Free story. Free!

The problem with being a newbie writer, or even an old-bie writer, isn’t the absence of advice and information. For example, wanna know how to writer better dialogue? There’s a book for that. Or an “app.” Likely several. As well as numerous blog postings and articles available online and free.

Some of the advice out there is good; some possibly cooked up while shooting heroin.  But a bigger problem–for me anyway–was sorting out which of the good advice actually applied to me.

When I started writing my first novel, I was told that in order to break in, find an agent, etc., I had to first publish some short stories. In a rare fit of obedience, I dutifully cranked out a few short stories.

No writing is truly a waste of time. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. But writing short fiction, when short fiction isn’t your thing, is sort of like practicing the mambo when you really would rather dance ballet. It adds to your repertoire and builds skills. But it may ultimately be a distraction from what you should be doing.

So I wrote short stories. Most of them set in the world of The Improbable Child, aka, Regan O’Connell, aka, the milleue of The Music of Chaos. Most are fun, flawed, and not publishable. (I.e., no editor is going to pay me for my efforts.)

“Keep Away from Naked Flame” is in my humble opinion, one of my best stories. In fact, if I just kept waiting, and submitting, it would probably find the right market. But, instead, I’m going to pop it first rights cherry here and post it. It’s a funny story of yet another of Regan’s misadventures in diplomacy, accompanied by her best pal, Talis the dark elf.

Also under the new Extras section on this blog, I posted a couple of outtakes/cut scenes from The Music of Chaos. Both were deleted because they didn’t add much to the story. Think of them as the stuff, back when films were actually on “film,” the bits that ended up on the cutting room floor.