On hobbies

On October 13, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek5 Comments

I need a new obsession to keep me busy between now and the election. The way this weekend is going I’m going to have to do a full news/internet blackout in the next couple of weeks if I want to keep my sanity. Anyone want to buy me a lathe or a pottery wheel or, like, an easel and a bunch of those … things … you paint on, that I’ve forgotten the name of for some reason?

Holy shit, I really can’t remember.

Canvases! Anyone want to buy me an easel and some canvases? And I guess some paint?

Got thirty more cards done today. I think that’s my limit before my handwriting falls apart and I start misspelling things at random, as evidenced by the fact that I typed “limmit” just now and it was 100% deliberate and not a slip of the fingers. Either way, that’s a fourth of them done. Not bad.

Maybe I’ll make my son a couple more notebooks. He seemed to enjoy the first one well enough. I’ve got all this bookmaking crap lying around, I may as well use it.

Proof of art

On March 9, 2018March 9, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn art, Photography3 Comments

I didn’t do anything today other than draw and sleep, and … well, I can’t make a post out of what I did while I was sleeping. I’m still not any good at this, really, but I’m enjoying it.

This might be my favorite picture I’ve done so far. The boy’s gotten back into Phineas & Ferb recently and I love Dr. Doofenschmirtz.

A lot of what I’ve been doing lately, when I haven’t been drawing established characters, is just playing with putting different body parts together and seeing what happens. I kinda like this guy but then again when I started drawing him he was supposed to be a woman, so …

This is what happens when I stare at Phineas’ enormous triangle head for a while and wonder what a rectangle head looks like. Answer: terrifying.

Dude on the left is random. The girl on the right started off as just a nose, and her nose was supposed to be the shape of her whole head, and then I decided it was a nose so she ended up oversized.

This was fiddling around, too; keep the same basic head shape and hair and play with the other face parts and see what happens. I kinda like the one with the straight mouth and the frog nose.

Art, again

On February 18, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn artLeave a comment

…okay. I can draw recognizably female human faces. Good, that was worrisome. 🙂

I am sleepy so here is art

On February 17, 2018February 17, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn art1 Comment

So as goofy and simplistic as they are these actually kind of represent some progress; I’m starting to draw original pictures rather than copying something that’s in front of me, and at the suggestion of drawabox.com I’ve switched to working with pens rather than pencils because they force me to stop and think before making a mark on a piece of paper. Sooner or later I will start doing little cartoon dudes with, like, bodies and shit, but I’m not quite there yet. Just faces for right now.

Weird phenomenon: I drew these five faces, and then realized they were all dudes. I mean, I suppose the monkey-thing doesn’t really have to be a dude, but in my head they were all dudes. And then I thought I ought to draw at least one girl to even things out and then panicked because apparently I have no idea how to draw women.

So, uh, I’ll work on that unexpected problem tomorrow, I guess? Sure.

Self-improvement is exhausting

On January 31, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn art3 Comments

I remain fully caught up on the “draw every day” project, if only because I drew two pictures tonight. I am beginning to think that the best use of my time might be to actually find some sort of art tutorial thing rather than constantly drawing from .jpg files of animated characters. I can whip up a Buttercup in a hot second but I’m not convinced that being able to draw Buttercup well is the same thing as being able to draw. I remain vaguely terrified of the idea of drawing something unique for some reason. This is, of course, not why I started this project. Fuck fear. But if I’m going to take this seriously I feel like I ought to try and find some sort of resource more useful than thinking of a kids’ TV show I like and Googling good images of the characters.

Speaking of creativity, I left work today after telling my boss that I was only coming back on Saturday if I’d managed to get some writing done in the next two days. Luckily I have nothing in particular that I need to get done tomorrow or the day after, or at least nothing that I can think of (well, okay, I could use an oil change for my car, and I have to take the boy to school both days; I don’t think either of those really count) and so I won’t have any good excuse to not get something done. Then again, I’m really good at generating excuses.

I’ll finish Fonda Lee’s Jade City tonight, so expect a glowing review in the next couple of days. It’s an early frontrunner for my favorite book of the year, I’ll tell you that. I’m considering spending February only reading books by black authors, so if you have anyone in particular you’d like to recommend, please feel free to chime in in comments and make some suggestions.

Oh man

On January 29, 2018January 29, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I had a dream last night about not being able to sleep, if you’re wondering how the last couple of days have gone. I just haven’t had much to say lately; sorry about that. On the plus side, I’m about halfway through Jade City by Fonda Lee and it is holy shitballs good, especially for a book that I bought effectively at random.

I was about to post a picture of Mojo Jojo that I just drew as penance for my silence, but my phone is in the other room, and oh god is that so far away. So… uh… here’s an actual drawing of Mojo Jojo.

(Also, this is probably obvious, but those of you who have been around long enough to remember that I occasionally liveblog the SOTU: I won’t be watching. I can’t put up with that thing’s voice long enough to watch. Sorry.)

Okay I like this one

On January 18, 2018January 18, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn art3 Comments

I’ve been kinda lethargic and sick-ish all day, and had actually been in bed for about an hour and a half before dragging myself out to draw a picture. I’d previously figured oh to hell with it I’ll do two tomorrow and then got up anyway. This happened; I like it enough to share it:

Important fact: everything I’ve drawn so far has had a reference to it, either a .jpg I Googled somewhere or a photo reference or a still life object on my desk or something. I actually grabbed this from a coloring book website. I’ll let you know when I start doing genuinely original stuff. 🙂

(Also: added an “Art” category, the first new category I’ve added to the blog in years.)

In which fear is stupid

On January 12, 2018January 12, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy10 Comments

Holy cow, that tablecloth has gotten raggedy.

I had an idle thought the other day and put it on Twitter– I wonder what kind of artist I could be if I drew something every day for a year, it said– and now suddenly I own a sketchbook.

Well, “suddenly” if agonized over the idea of spending $5 on a sketchbook for two days counts as “suddenly.” I mean, as projects go, this isn’t much of one, right? I’m not talking about full-blown landscapes or some shit, just, like, a quick sketch every day to elevate my ability to draw from not the worst artist on the planet to maybe somewhere in the top half of humanity. I’m not about to start a webcomic or anything, although I’ll admit thinking about the first Questionable Content vs. how it looks now as a perfect example of what practice can do for someone.

So I own an inexpensive, yet reasonably robust sketchbook, and I bought some new pencils, which probably wasn’t strictly necessary but hey, pencils. And all I have to do is draw something. I don’t even really have to do it every day! Just draw some shit once in a while! Like, I get to set the rules!

And I put the sketchbook down, because I found the idea terrifying, and here I am blogging about it instead of just picking up a pencil and drawing something simple and calling it a day.

It’s so weird how hard I work (we work? It’s not just me, right?) to hold myself back sometimes.

EDIT: Boom. Don’t expect me to post these too frequently, if I even continue with the project (I’d estimate no more than a 50% chance this lasts longer than a few days) but at least I did it once: