apiphile, posts by tag: drawing - LiveJournal

So far Virgin have sent three (3) engineers. The first one (Friday) broke the internet. The second one (Monday) fixed it for an hour or two. The third one (today) didn't actually materialise; we were assured, when Lindsay went to the phone, that they were "outside" doing "external" work, and the customer service person had tried to reach them but their phone was busy. We didn't care because the internet finally started working!

For two hours.

It is now broken again. A fourth (4th) engineer is coming tomorrow, allegedly, to make this problem go away. Lindsay, every time, buys this nonsense. I am almost certain we're going to get a full week of this, minimum.

However, during the brief moments of internet function I managed to upload the art I did over the weekend and a recording for World Poetry Day:

bitcherel by eleanor brown, which I will one day commit to memory so I can fucking recite it on command
art

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Problems I am having a lot:

People keep talking about how "there is no 'it can't happen here', it did in all these places and it will here if we let it" about stuff; they do not give me any examples of places where IT tried to happen and was averted. No examples of places where something worked. All I'm hearing is an endless deluge of "everything is going to be hopeless for you, get out while the getting is good".

The Rest

Finally found a time of the day when the gym isn't heaving.

+ Continued with Couch to 5k
+ Got the hang of the barbell (empty bar; good thing Snorri warned me that was 20kg on its own or I'd be really annoyed with myself) and have figured out what position/bench height etc works for me.
+ Also figured out tricep & bicep extender - absolutely hilarious mismatch between the two: no trouble doing a set of 10 at 39kg triceps but struggle with 14kg on biceps.
+ Got Lindsay to critique my plank form which is largely fine apart from I sit too far forward on my toes habitually, and my press-ups which are ... not good, according to him (but like... "your hands are far apart" yes, because I am working on my chest not my triceps. Leave me alone).
+ Blah blah other machines I have already used before blah, another go on the crosstrainer, spinning until my leg started to cramp up a bit.

Conclusion: 9am is apparently the good time. Also doing 400+ kcal of exercise on 87kcal of fuel makes me feel like I am some kind of very special perpetual motion machine but I suspect in reality just means I have a lot of fat reserves to burn through.

Yes?



Jess and I tried to go to Owen's but it was full because Herself took a small aeon to get ready/out of bed. My chest is still full of goo and when I lie down to sleep I sound like a seal having a fight. Mostly reading about the history of London's underground things still. Lindsay inflicted A Series Of Unfortunate Events on me; I've seen bits of the movie as well and tbh the entire festival of fuck does not appeal to me.

A bunch of other stuff I was meant to do today has been postponed due to brain death and general lack of fucks. Part of me says "edit your book so you at least leave something behind you" (you know, a bunch of crappy novels no one in the dystopian future will be able to read, allowed to read, or fucking want to read) and another part of me says "have as much fun as humanly possible" (before you are electrocuted to death or, in an attempt to conserve resources, merely shoved down a well and left to die). I vacillate, and therefore have neither booked tickets for the Great Gatbsy (I have a feeling I may not want to go after all; Ruthi did not seem enthused either), nor have I resumed work on the book.

I am still plodding gently on with Liza's stupid nonsense story. Perhaps that's my level atm.

What I wouldn't give for a computer that runs Photoshop and also doesn't take until the heat death of the universe to start and constantly have trouble recognising its own battery...

Bad photo editing courtesy of Instagram.









(trying to design a specific set of clothing for one character and lazily using Tom of Finland for pose refs)

Being outside for most of the daylight hours of today has helped, as predicted, in spite of Jess being weirdly argumentative (all our conversations go:

ME: A remark
SHE: Immediate contradiction
ME: No what I meant was --
SHE: [either reiteration of how I'm desperately wrong or "I was agreeing with you" even though that was blatantly not what was happening]

Unless they are me regurgitating her opinions about something I don't know anything about and which I know she likes. This is one-way traffic.)

We went to a nice cafe; I met some fluffy dogs and had a potato scone and slowly managed to edit today's chapter; I also drew in Jess's sketchbook:



Which is less stressful than drawing in my own sketchbook because a) she always carries an enormous quantity of pens and b) it's not my book I'm fucking up with my terrible art, and I'm under no obligation to get it right.

Then I went to the library by myself, shat out another scene for the short story thing, and came home (absolutely fucking freezing).

Brain has taken, despite my best attempts to distract it, to using pretty much any window of opportunity to explain to me how I'm failing at life, how everything will go wrong (today: THE POST OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED AND THEY'LL SEND YOUR PACKAGE BACK AND THEN YOU'LL BE BLAMED FOR WASTING YOUR OWN MONEY), and how absolutely no one gives even the smallest shit about this (just because the people I live with are thoroughly sick of me doesn't mean people who haven't seen me in 3 years are, Jesus Christ). Windows of opportunity include "when I am doing difficult exercises and cannot do anything else at the same time", "while I am walking", and "literally waking me up in the middle of the night and keeping me awake for upwards of two hours for the sole purpose of ensuring that I am miserable, stressed out and sleep-deprived". So that's fun. There's really nothing which is very perspective-getting or comforting at 3.30am when you want to be asleep and ought to be asleep and the person you share a bed with yells at you every time you make any kind of movement or connection to them.

Holly noted my old avatar was beginning to look dated. Possibly because my hair is too long, she said. Also it's too dark in that picture and it was based on a photo of me when I was fifteen.

I've been trying to draw an updated version but I'm having WACOM issues (as in, it won't connect consistently to anything). The desktop gets the best rate of consistent connection but is slow and dying. The laptop can't get it to connect at all. I want it to be the USB cable/old-generation-micro-USB cable but I have a suspicion it's the socket on the WACOM, which means it is pretty much farked.

So I had to HAND DRAW several (with three different pens), then colour them with a FUCKING TRACKPAD, this is horrible.



First: fineliner. No.



Second: Mangaka pen. Not so bad but I wanted to check I could match the style of the original.



Brush pen. I did one in brush pen just before that was such a fucking pathetic mess I didn't want to post it.



The icon itself.

Work week finally over. Therapist drilling holes in my head. Successfully managed at 5am this morning to induce an ecstatic seizure (deliberately), which is good to know and good that I was right about the conditions (it's a pretty specific kind of photosensitivity that's not likely to occur very often so I don't have to worry about it) but WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO EXPERIMENT WITH THIS AT 5AM ON THE WAY HOME YOU RIDICULOUS ASS.

Went into town on Sunday with Fiona, who arrived here after the theatre long after I'd left for work on Saturday night and whom I stepped over on the way to bed at 6am on Sunday; we wandered about a bit until I'd woken up, went into the Earl Street branch of Bolongaro Trevor, which was in the process of shutting down, and one of the shop staff decided to go into raptures about my t-shirt (it's one of the sublab PAOM ones but with a map of the London river tributaries on it - a subtly fannish t-shirt) and after a while I got uncomfortable and pointed out that Fiona had designed the print on one of the t-shirts they were selling so that they all started asking her questions about her internship instead. Cruel but I figured she might benefit from it whereas I'm not exactly looking for nor going to GET design contacts. It is, however, quite nice to have my own clothing choices vindicated by people associated with one of my favourite brands.

And I bought a shirt-hoodie in light khaki because a) it was on sale and b) reread that description and c) it's got MASSIVE pockets and d) it's made of lovely soft jersey.

Had dinner at House of Ho on old Compton Street: sitting in the open window was nice initially (the beef pho was nice all the way down and the dessert was magnificent, I'm really liking this new tradition of "going for noodle soup with Lindsay on the last night of a work shift" that's accidentally grown up) but it got colder and colder and the people in the street kept making fuckwitted remarks about the name of the restaurant and I kept forgetting people could see me checking them out so it occasionally got AWKWARD.

Walked from Soho to work, via a 3.5 mile route that involved a lot of shouting about how both of us were frustrated by how rusty our analytical skills had become and then involved Lindsay sulking because his previous night's dinner was disagreeing with him; sat in the Barbican Centre with a scone and the GLORIOUSLY HORRIBLE book I'm reading at the moment ("The Debt to Pleasure"; the narrator is a proper self-involved arsehole on a level I cannot hope to emulate either in fiction or in life and I love it) and then hit work. Work emptied out around 3am so we could all stand in the street and stare at the blood moon. Pretty impressive sight.

Blogs

Persistence: Only Available At 5am When I Have No Choice

Draws



Anish redsigns



Conclusion of Anish redesigns



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Mad Max was SO GREAT.

I am still shouting at people about it.

So great.

Stuff I've done



(Image links to prints etc)



This is basically masochism. So labour-intensive. So slow. So meditative. I don't need to be meditative I am full of revolting thoughts. Anyway. I want a Zen garden. Or. A garden in general.



I made a necklace. I say "made", it came strung, I just put clips on the ends.

Food



lanyon if you're looking for ideas one of those was a cream cheese and spinach no-crust quiche in a basket made of carrot strips...



Et voila.




Chocolate bread rolls filled with cinnamon and apple, one baked and one steamed, both lovely.



Rose blancmange with flowers in.

Gendercare: Yes we need you to tell us more about your situation before you can have an appointment.
Derek: FIVE HOUR FREAKOUT.

I just don't like having to justify myself to strangers but I'm glad they listened when I said "email not phone".

Recent photos:
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I am working on the assumption that if I constantly distract myself from suicidal despair and pessimism and stop thinking about the thing that is causing it, it will just go away on its own. I would say "and that is why I am not discussing it with the therapist" but he has his own agenda and determination to talk about things related to a specific course of treatment, so I'm not mentioning to him at all.

I also got hit by a car on the way to see said therapist on Thursday and then couldn't be bothered to tell him about that, either. It never seemed like the right moment.

Blogs

Recipe: Cauliflower fritters

It snowed a little:



Drew stuff:

TODAY WE WENT FOR A WALK ALONG A CANAL IT WAS MISTY AND THERE WERE SWANS.

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We finally reach pub (Jess complaining every three feet about being cold and needing the loo, no stamina, these Australians): mulled wine and drawing.



I continue to fail miserably at traditional media, and there are a few more pages to prove it, but I think I'm sticking with the brush pen to fail with.