Here is what I did with my memorial day weekend: Work!
I am on a detail (government slang meaning I am on loan) to a separate department and I don't have much time to doodle at work anymore. I did, however, commit to a few things months and months ago which require me to work from home. For free. Ugh. Yeesh. Sigh. Meh. It's only 14 hours of my leisure, right?



Anyhow,

Our new Department Chief picked the title "It's not just the destination, it's the Journey." I know. . . but I wasn't there to influence the decision.

I would have picked "OAMC: Soaring through the Seasons" because our organization has been undergoing numerous changes in leadership as old hats announce their death rehearsal (retirement.) I say retirement is like death rehearsal because in both instances people laugh, cry, reminisce and then forget you ever existed a few weeks later.

As the reader can tell, I did in fact pick my theme, despite the title as shown. Each little seasonal square stands on it's own (I think). I used a lot of painterly brush strokes and textures as opposed to my usual line-work-heavy style.



Life stuff:

I can't find my phone. I ran all over the place getting stuff done on Saturday and lost it in the ruckus. No good deed goes unpunished I suppose.

I hate my blog. Its a jerk. I have some design ideas for it but cannot figure out how to implement them. I try to tell my blog what it should wear, but like a slack-eyed, apathetic teenager it just whispers a "tisk" and spouts something like "whatever, man" in some kind of sloven vernacular foreign to my work-a-day vocabulary. I adjusted the CSS script and html, but the PHP script is trumping my changes and I don't know enough about PHP to do anything about it. Plus nobody is developing this PHP blog anymore so there is no real grass-roots support. Time to make the jump to WordPress. . .

While my blog has a stay of execution until I am no longer busy, I am anxiously awaiting the day when I get to lead it's ancient head between the stocks, hoist the guillotine's blade and let gravity do its thing.

Yes, I just compared my blog to a teenager in one paragraph and an old useless thing in another. It's a metaphoric grab-bag today folks.

Here is a large version for the curious few.

This is my latest Illo.



I tried to create a picture that could be sliced up into lots of little pictures that would stand on their own. I went so far as to give titles to each sub-illo.

The Smokey Loner, The Leader, Primary Feathers, Loverbirds, Birds on a Wire, You've Got Mail, Cat and Grouse, The Blues Brothers . . .

In other news:
It's time for a new blog. This little PHP contraption has gone as far as it's going to go. The visitor count keeps resetting and the features just aren't what I am looking for anymore. A little CSS, A little XHTML, a whole lot of Photoshop and a good solid WP template might do the trick.

When I get time, of course.

I am starting to like these over-saturated muggy color schemes. It's like the neon from blade runner and the grime from 1940's period pieces got together and made a color scheme baby.

Here is a LARGE version for the curious few.

First it was a messy sketch. . .


Then it was non-photo blue pencil work. Then it was 1 pt drafting pen line work. Then I added 5 point and 3 point line weights to various elements. The picture is large, (11 x 14 inches on bristol) so I had to scan it in two parts. Then I cleaned up the line work a bit in photoshop. Then I laid in some basic color work. Still ahead of me are details, textures, shadows, highlights, stars, light, smoke, leaves, bark, and feathers. Lots of feathers. In the scheme of things, I'm just getting started.



It is a lot of work. I've struggled to commit to any given project of late. It is very difficult for me to keep momentum. The value of the piece seems to depreciate the longer I work on it.

I know putting unfinished art up is lame, but I need to get back into the habit of blogging and I needed material.

Life stuff:

I usually improvise a bedtime story for my son. I've sputtered out three stories my son really enjoys. The Crow and the Mouse, The Angry Volcano, and Chilly Mr. Barnabas and the Dragon Cave are all stories he seems to get a kick out of. The frog and the Fly and The Princely Horse don't go over so well, but he tolerates them. I've got a mind to make them into childrens books. Not wildly successful, highly acclaimed childrens books. Just little heirlooms to remember me by.

This year's Manager CPE theme is Embracing Change. The CPE committee wanted to use an old graphic I had created which had a tree growing leaves from every season on it. It was about 5 years old and I told them I would rather create a new one. Here is the logo and poster art I created for the 2009 Manager CPE: Embracing Change. I want to wrap the ends of the poster around decorative dowels and hang it like a scroll. The poster will be 24 inches wide by 33 inches long.

Poster:


Main Logo:


Life stuff:

I am working on an illustration called "For the Birds." It's a rather plain illo with a simplistic style. A victorian-esque house-face with about 50 stylized birds around it. It is already drawn with the primary line work done. I still need to go in and do some heavier secondary lines and then color it.

I am putting together Enchant Studios: Year one through four. It is a book of my art that I will pass around at San Diego Comic Con to try and get some freelance comic book work.

Tomorrow I start a detail to our IT department. It is a few more miles of driving but I should cut down from working 55+ hours a week to a standard 40. The detail lasts 60 days. It is purely PC work as opposed to my current job which is PC work, web design, graphic design and illustration, database design and maintenance and PC functionality coordination.

Lastly, I applied for an illustrator job on Hill Air Force base. I hope I get the chance to show them my portfolio. The application process was heavily bureaucratic and they only let me upload 2mb worth of art. I created a 5 page illustration sampler in PDF. Hopefully they get the idea.

Oh. . . and I am sick. Very sick. But sickness has no meaning anymore. Listen to how sick this is: Friday night, when I realized I was getting my son's cold, I thought to myself "Oh good, I'm getting sick on the weekend. It should be gone by Monday and it won't get in the way of work."

Adulthood eh?