Eats, shoots, and leaves

True grit: cowboys have it embedded in the seams of their faces.

The cowboys had it right. They were free agents with nothing more to weigh them down than a gun and a (possibly stolen) horse. They weren't burdened with consumerist culture and the accumulations of years of acquisitive tendencies. None of this schizoid postmodern existence. Just the sun on their faces, potentially fatal dehydration, bullets every which way, and the quiet of nature.

Ignoring the deconstructive readings that problematize the lone gunman fantasy with criticisms of the marginalized and mistreated Native Americans, gender politics, general race relations, and the fallout of shootouts and casual mayhem -- the cowboys had it right.

It would be great to go west, where there are no rules. To discover the great untamed land. Walk out of the society that would rather have them working in a store for an honest living. It's an escapist fantasy for people droning in jobs they hate. I can relate. It's all Man vs. Society. Man eats, shoots, and leaves. 

But generations swing like pendulums. Once the tv channels were full of cowboys. Now they're full of cop shows, which tend towards the other side of law and order. But as long as cynicism and darkness are in (see the popularity of the super successful Batman reboot, the popularity of Dexter) the outsiders can do their thing, just in different clothes. Cowboys can't come back in a big way; too many cheesy shows and movies have come and gone.

After all, the wild west is gone. But unexplored territory isn't. 

Now it's time for the wild web?

Tea & Simplicity

If I did a 180, I could see this picture on the wall as I type.

Advice of the day: calm down. Make a pot of tea and relax.

There's too much of this rushing around. Though you may not feel it, there is a mental tax from multitasking. Focus on the present for once. Close the twelve hundred tabs you have crowding your browser. Close your eyes and sip a cup of tea. Maybe mint. But not if you hate mint. Try something herbal, light on the caffeine.

Imagine a plan to throw a tea party with crazy hats and cucumber sandwiches. Explain to a few confused guests that it isn't a political rally. Scratch the whole idea. Who wants to plan things when you're drinking tea? It's a drink of relaxation - unless it tastes of bitter almonds.

Fluffy Dresses vs. Moth Wings

Last time I walked around Barnes and Noble, the cover of every YA chic book had a character in a full ball gown. In many of the getups I saw, it would be awfully hard to break into a jog, let alone a sprint. I prefer my protagonists to take the novel sensibly attired in something that allows mobility. Then they can face the conflicts of the novel at a sprint, or at least a jog. And they can sneak. Every try to move stealthily in a full ball gown? They rustle. A lot. 

Of course, back in the day, I was guilty of drawing all sorts of equally useful fashion designs. These, and especially the central figure, introduce a whole new set of pitfalls in high fashion.

Clearly, I should have my own fashion line.

Forget ballgowns - if people like me ruled the fashion world, everyone and their dog would go around wearing things as useful as an enormous pair of Luna Moth wings. But! If giant moth wings became the fashion standard, it would have several obvious benefits to the economy:

• Doorways would need to be widened for everyday convenience. This would reemploy carpenters and construction workers everywhere and solve the housing crisis. Just think of the industry! Statistics suggest that 99% of houses have doors.
• We would have more manufacturing and tech jobs to allow a fully electrical wardrobe. This would be necessary to give the wearer full control of flapping and potential gliding. 
• A powered wardrobe would necessitate more efficient portable power. This would lead to more efficient solar panels, with perks like ultraconvenient cell phone chargers in your shirt. What could be better?

This is not much better either.
At least she can move her legs.

Better, dare I say, may be something lighter, perhaps with your legs free. I distrust any book with really bulky dresses on the cover. It says to me that the character will be able to leisurely glide through all the problems of the novel. And that's not what I want in a story. You have to find the right outfit for the pace. Whatever she wears on the cover, I picture as she jumps over every obstacle, through every hoop. (Can she even fit through a hoop in those dresses?)


Rule of Hoops: If wearing a hoopskirt doesn't hamper your protagonist, you may need to pick up the pace of the narrative. 

Thrones are lame.

Moonblind Monday: well, sort of.

Oh man, it's Monday already? Lame. I spent all of last week adjusting to a new part-time job that somehow managed to give me a full-time percentage of souldeath and distraction from everything useful, like creating art. But on the plus side, I've been cleaning up my art desk, laughing at old artwork, and trying to clear some space so I'll have room to smack some art into those canvasses. 

So I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss my upcoming art plans for Moonblind. The plan is thus: pictures that are awesome. 

This is not moonblind art.
This is a REALLY OLD PICTURE.

What is necessary for awesome pictures is avoiding boring things. Like thrones. They are inherently flat and lend themselves to crowded and flat compositions. Fortunately, the Moonblind characters are the people doing the grunt work. They are not caught in boring compositions; they are full of action and excitement. 

As you can see in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, Royalty are pretty boring people. They spend all day sitting on thrones, which probably hurts their backs and sitting-pads, and leaves them in dull, static compositions. And as long as they're stuck sitting on a throne, they worry constantly about symmetry, looking impressive, lighting, and whether or not tigers will get hungry before feeding time. It is a dull, hard life, keeping up appearances. 

Also super old. Apparently her throne
is part octopus. Again, not quite Moonblind.

Lessons learned from old art: 
-Royalty is pretty boring. I'm sticking to action-oriented protagonists.
-Sitting is also boring.
- Bright colors are cheery no matter how many skulls you sneak in.
- Thrones are boring to draw.
- Depth is in a static, needlessly detailed picture.
- I wish I had a tiger foot-stool. I guess Comma will do for now.

Art Update

Fig 1. Look to Moonblind Mondays for moar
dragons! Probably with more body mass.

You have have noticed some changes to the blog. Slick new..teal? Turquoise? Blue? (With three faces, two sheep, one dragon/squid - find them all!) Because clearly I need to clash with all the artwork I'm going to be posting. And I am going to be posting artwork. I'm officially making a commitment to...a thing a week. Moonblind Mondays for fantasy art!

Yep. Fall remodeling. As much as I loved staring at that cup-o-joe, it was a stock picture, and really, we can't have that. Dormant-artist-Kat has awoken from a long sleep, and she won't stand for any generic background. I finished two art commissions this week. Now I can fill my car with gas over nine times times! And more importantly, I am back to the hopeless addiction of creating art.

Back to the blog, and the background. I knew I needed a new one. I lazily thought "hey, I'll stick a boring gray rock up! I have one I photographed from the Henchman cover."

! Little did I know that blogspot only took 300k files. And that an 1800x1600 file saved to be 300k is impressively blocky. But this was all learned quickly enough. Thus I turned to tiling as my sole hope of regaining detail.

! Little did I know that I would lose about six hours staring at it, putting puzzle pieces together (amid flashbacks to tessellations in seventh grade geometry), slowly making the tile bigger and bigger, then drawing creepy faces out of the shapes (all in the name of of apophenia!)

By monday I'll have some Moonblind art.

Fig 1. This is my favorite bookmark that I made in the bad old days of my artistic strivings. And yet, like most people who read books, I end up using random scraps of paper instead. A metro card. A movie stub. A tag for some piece of clothing marked down to $9.

I was considering making some artistic new bookmarks. But then, for the moment I've only got an ebook. Does you ever use real paper bookmarks?