Scanner scores Pyrrhic victory

Where is the rest of my body?
And what is this, a tractor beam?
Ack! Aliens! Saaavee meeee...

Isn't this lame? My scanner broke for real this time. It scans like half of the screen, and burns long rectangles across the page. Total fail. It was thrown in free with a computer purchase 7 years ago and finally gave up the ghost. Why can't things last forever, grumble grumble.

So while I've been beaten back for the moment, and am waving the olde white flag, I'll return to the fray. After doing lots of research on models and finally giving NCIX some of my money. Your scanner recommendations welcome!

Scan Wars: Weapons out

Here are the first drawings from my brand new drawing book. (If someone had told me at the beginning of this adventure that I'd be on my third book 8 months later, I'd have laughed in her face.) Scanning was rough. My finicky machine doesn't like soft watery colours. Well, too bad! The Curves tool in Photoshop is my weapon in the Scan Wars! Take that, foul scanner, and that! Clack, clang ... CRASH! Lia, for the win ;)

September 6, 2011

September 2, 2011

Soft lines and blurry maggots

September 1, 2011

I'm not very focussed on drawing this week (work is really exciting) but the one thing really driving my doodling is softness. The gentle colour and tone of watercolour-style brush markers is so soothing. I don't want any hard edges right now.

I finished Tiny Drawing Book today. It seemed like this day would never come! Tomorrow to start a Moleskine lookalike I bought in the Munich airport: Conceptum by the German company Sigel.

August 30, 2011

In unrelated and kind of pervy news, I came upon a shocking fact while researching fruit fly reproduction today. Why was I performing this research, you ask?

Upon returning from our vacation we discovered our compost bin completely shrink-wrapped and tucked back by the garden shed. Our neighbours informed us that thousands of maggots crawled out the bin and swarmed the entire shared driveway during our absence. Coming home from work at 2 a.m., my neighbour had to cross a carpet of wet, beige larvae. Apparently the smell was somewhere between rotting squirrels remains and eau de sewage treatment plant. (We put cat litter in our bin.)

Hundreds of sheepish apologies later, Jeff and I have been debating whether the small maggots squirming among the larger ones are:

(a) baby regular fly maggots [Dear husband's position], or
(b) fruit fly maggots. [My position]

Today while plumbing for evidence to support my argument, I learned that wheensy little fruit flies have some of the largest sperm in the world. It's many times larger than yours, male human reader, at 1.8 or 5 cm (depending on the news source), and up to twenty times the little critter's own size! (Um, then, where does it come from, Internet? Does he spin it out of ether?) When so inclined, the amorous male fly deposits his sperm in a little coil upon his lover. Apparently it drugs her into submission. Charming!