50... er, 4 Shades of Grey

So photos of the Whale.  This post will have them. 

The Whale as of 5 minutes ago

Today was amazing, I met up with Dory in NYC today.  She took me to the Garment District to find bead stores so that I could color match beads for the Whale project.  Now some of ya'll know that I have been working on this piece for almost a year now.  I started on November 13, 2011, and I took like 6-7 months off from the piece in order to complete some costumes for Otakon and Steampunk Worlds Fair.  Well I want to finish this piece ASAP.  One of the biggest challenges, besides the sheer amount of time it takes to sew down the beads, was that I was unable to find the correct shades of grey for the whale in the local bead shops.

E.L. James aint got nothin'
on my shades of grey 

  Ac Moore and Michaels craft stores have failed to offer more than one shade of grey, so I looked at specialty shops within a reasonable driving distance.  Well out of the four I looked up, only one was still in business, and they sold the grey tones I needed, but not in the quantities I needed to complete this piece.  The dimensions of this piece are 36x24 inches at least.  That's a whole lot of surface area to cover.  Sometimes I look at it and feel like I want to cry.  Now my brain (the one inside my head lol) is running ahead (lol) without me.  I've already prepped 3 more canvases in anticipation of continuing this series of work.  As I've been working on the Whale, I've been thinking about the deeper meanings in the project.  What makes this special to me, and the big question, why did I pick a whale when I've never seen one outside of an aquarium?  So this got me thinking about what the nature of what my art is, in regards to this subject matter.  Have I seen death?  And I came to the conclusion that, yes, I have seen death and it's almost a daily occurrence in the form of road kill.  I live in an area that's suburban, but it backs up onto wooded areas and some farmland.  Unfortunately people can't seem to figure out how to drive, so there's always dead deer, raccoons, squirrels and birds on the side of the road.  So I came to the conclusion that I should make art from what I see.  I see road kill every day, let's make art about it.  Not a terribly original concept, but this and trees are what I see everyday besides the inside of my house.  I looked into what happens to roadkill in NJ and found that most road kill is incinerated/ disposed of or left to rot on the side of the road.  It's not an honorable death and certainly not a pleasant one.  The exception for the rule is deer.  If the deer is freshly dead, there's a number of groups that are licensed to remove the carcass and if it's in good condition are allowed to give the meat to charities/ soup kitchens.  Of course health and safety rules are in place, but the flesh ends up not rotting on the side of the road and is put to good use, but only if someone reports it and it's hauled away within a certain time frame.  So now the art has become almost an effigy for the spirit of the dead animal.

On a lighter note, I'm learning the dainty art of tatting.  No I'm not tattooing people, tatting is a form of lace.

Look at my pretties

These are my samples. I'm very proud of them. This is not an easy process to learn, well, any lace process is not easy to learn. I haven't even begun to attempt bobbin lace, frankly it scares the bejebus out of me. I'm still learning techniques and it'll be a while before I'm making awesome stuff, like doilies.  My great grannies would be proud. 

That's about as much adventure as I can take for now,
See Ya'll Later
~Amy

It's a Whale of a Tale

So I'm battling an epic cold.  it started like a month ago and now it's just gotten worse.... or possibly better?  Either way I'm coughing and there's all kinds of gross bodily fluids involved and yeah.  You all totally needed to know that.
So anyway, I know I posted previously about how I wouldn't post about my job, but right now I'm finding that a difficult promise not to break.  As of today, I'm going on about 4 weeks of no hours.  I work in a women's clothing store, and apparently myself and one other girl who are cashiers, are 'expendable'.  This means that we get like 5 hours a week (off season) on the schedule and then are called the day of and told that our 5 hours for the week have been cut (this has happened 2x in 2 weeks).  Well I hope my manager doesn't expect me to be available the next time she makes a schedule, cause I'm finding a new job.  This happened once after the holiday season from the tail end of January into February, and my manager promised me it was a one time thing.  Load.  Of.  Bullshit.  I've been job hunting since I started working in retail for a full time job, but every time I'm asked if I'm currently employed I have to answer yes.  But I'm in a retail limbo, I'm technically employed, but they won't give me hours so I end up with a 'working status' (according to the unemployment agencies) but I'm really sitting on my ass at home.  This has caused me to loose job opportunities because they don't wanna hear about how I haven't been given hours in over a month.

As a result of my sitting-on-my-ass syndrome, I've been working on my art everyday.  If I didn't work on my art I'd probably go crazy and start watching more "quality" TV shows, like the Jersey Shore.  I'm thinking of going down to the real Jersey shore, ok not Seaside or Point Pleasant, but Sandy Hook beach or Keystone beach.  Sandy Hook Beach is a beautiful nature preserve and there's always shells littering the beach.  Mainly hermit crab and snail shells but I manage to find the occasional conch shell laying around.  The last time I went, I brought home a bucket of shells with the intent of distributing them to all the kids at the studio.  Well I quit working there and I still have a ton of shells sitting in a bucket in my garage.  So I don't want to go back and then bring more shells home, cause I think my mother will have a shit fit.  Well, she has a shit fit over nothing anyway do it's nothing new.  Well back to what I was previously saying, I've been working on my art more.  The Brain is sitting in the corner right now and I'm focusing on getting more work done on the Whale.  I spend hours working on that piece and I'm only managing like a square inch every day, or at least a very small area.  I'm still working with the first color of beads!  I need to find a specialty store and color match the beads to the reference that I'm working with, then buy them in bulk.  I've got another 4.5-5 inches left with this color and I'm hopping that I can finish that section in about 4 days. 
Today's an amazing day, it's sunny but it's also raining on and off, without losing the sunshine and it's breezy.  I had wanted to go into NYC today and job hunt, but I realized that most of the places I want to go to are not open until Monday or Tuesday.  Maybe I can convince Dory to skip out on church to hang out with me on Sunday and walk the Garment District.

So I found some great comics via some friends and also from 'link-hoping'.  First there's Minor Acts of Heroism I love this comic. The humor is believable, the characters are adorable and the plot line is so far really engaging.  It also helps that the artistry is all kinds of awesome.  I've encountered web comics that even with the of best plots, I lose visual interest in because the art work is just not polished enough.  The humor is great, it doesn't sound hookey or campy, it sounds like something myself or a friend would say in an everyday conversation and they have some great one-liners.  I highly recommend this comic to anybody who likes super hero comics.  There are a few panels that may come off as being a little boy love or hinting at a relationship between two male characters, but the overall theme doesn't feel like it's swinging in that direction.  But if you don't like that, read at your own risk.  
Then for those of us that are DC comics fans, there's JL8 by Yale Stewart.  This is an incredibly cute series of comics with the Justice League as Kindergarten kids.  This is just all around cuteness.  It's too freaking cute <3

TCHOO TCHOO!!

Playing Spiderman!!!!  I love the guy who makes these comics!!  The art is like an old comic strip from a news paper and there's even texture added to make the effect believable.  I love the villains too!  There's a great sequence with the Joker and Batman where he's like "c'mon hit me!!"  and I was squeeing so hard for the movie references it comes from.

Now for those of you who like retro stuff (and I think I can thank Marina for this link) read I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space.  (link should take you to vol. 1 cover).  This has a great 1950s feeling to it and it's freaking hilarious.  Basically you meet Susie and she's kidnapped by lesbian space pirates and the crazy adventures that ensue.  The art starts off a little shaky and amateur, but as the comic progresses the art and the plot get better and better.  Of course being a ship full of women, there are lots of shoe jokes, and the ineffectiveness-of-men jokes so all around the humor is pretty good.  The characters are extreme personalities, but that just makes them likeable, but there's no subtlety going on it's all pretty much in your face.  

Well I guess that's all I have to say for today. 
See Ya'll Later!
~Amy