Rob, you’re my muse.

I know I’ve been pretty AWOL around here since that portfolio was finished, and I’m sorry! I’ve got a lot of things on the go, but nothing’s getting done. So I present to you some process work from one of the composition studies I did. A little value here, and hopefully I’ll get you a nice finished version one of these days! Your patience is appreciated.

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2-Point Perspective study and two composition exercises that I sneakily used as an excuse to draw cowboys and rockstars. Yeehaw ^_^

Lomina was never late for school. This was because every morning, about an hour before classes started, her mother would finish reading the paper, climb upstairs and inform Lomina that a late start was a bad start, and Lomina would invariably be in the car in fifteen minutes, and sitting outside her locker waiting for everyone else to arrive at school within another ten. This left over half an hour of alone time every morning, sitting on the tile, agonizing over how embarrassing it was to be there half an hour early every single day of the year. 
This particular morning, Lomina had forgotten her book, and could think of nothing better to do for half an hour than to review her bio notes and draw mountain lions in the margins. She was working on a particularly elaborate pose, the lion reclining across a stairway and staring the viewer in the eye, when she noticed another unfortunate soul wander into the school early. She recognized him from art class; he was in twelfth grade and she suspected he thought of himself as a goth.   Lomina thought of herself every day as a goth, and went to great lengths to make sure her classmates did as well. It had taken most of the earnings of a summer job to afford the boots and the fishnet shirt and tights, and it was yet another point of contention between her and her parents on a daily basis. She was earning her title, she felt. 

This boy, however, was not trying nearly as hard. He wore black, she conceded, almost exclusively, but it was just normal clothes. Black hoodies and black sweaters over black or blue jeans, and black running shoes, sometimes even with white socks, seemed like a pretty poor effort to Lomina. And here he was, on the first day of October, wearing that black hoodie and walking towards her. For a brief moment Lomina thought he was going to talk to her, but they simply traded ‘hello’ nods and he opened a locker, presumably his locker, a mere eight lockers away from Lomina’s own.

His name was Louis, she remembered, and decided that it wasn’t a very gothic name, either. It was the kind of name that sounded like it needed glasses, not that he actually wore glasses. 

She continued with the reclining mountain lion drawing, mostly making it worse, until he closed the locker and sat down in front of it. She could faintly hear white noise coming from his headphones, and was slightly curious about his music choices, but not curious enough to ask him. They both sat there, eight lockers apart, him with his eyes closed leaning back against the locker, tapping a finger now and then to some fuzzy beat. Lomina decided to leave the reclining pose alone for now, and started drawing cat eyes in between test tube diagrams.

The first bell rang, and mercifully he seemed to hear it over his music, and chose to go sit in the classroom and wait the next ten minutes. Lomina did not go to class early – it was bad enough she was at school early. She waited until, just before the last bell, her partner in crime showed up, and they went together to English.

Jessica probably didn’t think of herself as Lomina’s partner in crime, but Lomina didn’t mind. Jessica and Lomina had known each other since grade school, and while Jessica was never going to be a goth, she didn’t mind that Lomina was, and so they continued going to all their joint classes together, even if it meant that Lomina was late because she was waiting for Jessica. Jessica wasn’t always late, but she had cut it pretty close this morning, and Lomina hovered over her while she threw her things in her locker and pulled out her English binder and a copy of Frankenstein.

“Did you eat yet?” Jessica pulled out a ziplock bag with three mini blueberry muffins in it.
“No, my mom was in a rush.”
“You can have a muffin, if you want.”
“Sure.” Lomina let out a breath as Jessica closed her locker and locked it. “Thanks. Ready?”
“Ready.”

School was easy for Lomina. She was a fast reader, a good writer, and could generally go with her gut in math class. She had long ago learned to distract herself in class so she didn’t get bored, but these days she was starting to get resentful of her wasted time at school. Lomina had recently discovered the internet, and there was a lot more to do on the internet than she had originally thought. Currently she was spending every evening on a forum, having much better conversations about Hamlet than she ever expected to have in english class. Sitting beside Jessica, she elbowed her lightly in the ribs and scribbled down important news.

They’re having a get-together before a show next weekend. Jessica read it and looked unimpressed.
Lomina glared at her. Should I go?
Jessica continued to look unimpressed. If you want to, she replied.
Lomina sighed, and stuffed her whole muffin in her mouth.

After class, she brought it up again. 
“If I did go, how would i get downtown?”
Jessica sighed. “I don’t know, you’d have to take the train, probably. Maybe there’s a bus.” 
“I can’t ride a bus downtown alone. My parents would flip.”
“Maybe they’ll drive you?”
“That would be worse!”
Jessica shut her locker. “I don’t know, what are they doing anyways? Going to a bar?”
“Maybe. I think so.”
“Then you couldn’t go anyways. Bars are 19 plus after eight.”
Lomina frowned. She didn’t know that. “I’m sure there are some bars that don’t care.”
“Maybe you should ask them, first.”

There was no way Lomina was posting on the forum that she wasn’t even seventeen yet. It was bad enough when she’d asked what SYL stood for. She didn’t bring up the get-together again.

Last period was art class. Louis sat in a corner with the two other Grade 12 students, one earbud in and one hanging. Jessica didn’t take art anymore, so Lomina sat with two girls she’d known better the previous year. Rebecca and Sonja were still nice, but somehow they didn’t have much to say to Lomina anymore; she didn’t mind that much, as long as they let her sit with them. Now and then they’d ask to borrow her supplies, and sometimes they’d complain about a particularly dumb assignment, but they hadn’t talked about much else since Sonja’d confessed to being smitten with a particularly thick-headed lacrosse player, and Lomina had worried aloud that he’d be boring to hang out with for long.

Louis’ table-mates were Andrew and Kristen, one of those eternal couples that never got sick of touching each other. Lomina felt a little pity for him, having to sit with two people so practiced at public displays of affection, but in a combined class, the grade 12s had to hold their own somehow, and she would have been surprised if he’d moved. 

Lomina had discovered that, if she approached every project in art class as something she could then post on the forum, she tended to work a lot faster. She’d finished the last project, a self-portrait drawing in charcoal, two days ahead of time, impressing her art teacher. Unfortunately she had asked Lomina to stop signing things as petite_morte, which did take some of the fun out of it. The next project was an environment in two-point perspective in gouache, which was a lot harder to work on at home since she had decided to draw the corner of the classroom.

She hadn’t really considered that it would be a problem, staring at that corner all class, until she started making awkward eye contact with Louis. Terrified to think he’d think she was staring at him, she focused on the ceiling tiles until the end of the day.

That night she had to mope through dinner before being allowed to run down to the basement and log on and confirm to her friends that she wouldn’t be meeting them that week. Within minutes, purple_haze and XshallowX had expressed their sadness and condemned the suburbs for being the inescapable gravity well of boringness that Lomina had to admit they were. A bunch of other people had already confirmed, and new to the roster were a few other suburbanites; _ghoul666, beastbabe and pendragon. Pendragon, she noticed, was looking for bus directions from not far from her neighbourhood. She made a note to come back later and see how he was getting downtown. If he was nearby, maybe for the next one she and him could meet up and take a bus in together. He’d seemed nice enough from what posting he’d done so far.

Lomina didn’t know any of these people’s faces beyond the dark photos that showed up as avatars. There were posts specifically for sharing photos on the forum, and rarely did images show up elsewhere, and to be honest, she found looking at pictures of these disembodied people to be really unsettling. On a whim, she took a quick poll through to see if anyone had tagged pendragon anywhere, but it seemed like he’d never been to any events before. She put it aside and revelled in the mourning from her two best forum-friends until it was time for bed.

Painted this for Em, who loves Perttu’s pretty face quite a bit.

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Watercolour on stretched paper, 8″ x 8″

I’m doing these as tests for larger drawings for a series in collaboration with a friend who shoots metal shows. Thoughts?

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This was Rob’s present! I think he liked it. Before it was art, it was “Home Cookin’” by The Creamcheeze Goodtimes Band.

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Gesso and Pen on Vinyl

I want to start this with the disclaimer that 50 000 words is a lot, and I am not pushing myself very hard to get there by the end of November. I think I’ve taken this as an opportunity to take on a novel that I had honestly been meaning to write for several years, and that it would simply be fun to work out this story once given the impetus needed to start in the first place.

Alright.

So! How’s it going, you ask? Well, the word count is small. My character, Lomy, is growing on me – and I’ve made the awkward but exciting descision to give her interior life page room, which is fun. All my author-based character fantasies can still find life in Lomy’s fantasy world, with nothing but adorable consequences. I’m hoping she’s still pretty likeable – I’ve given her a pretty short temper and pretty tall insecurities, but half of the fun is watching her grow out of it.

I have to admit that writing isn’t half as fun to me as drawing, but it is a lot faster, and I suppose I do have the opportunity to take this ‘novel’ and draw it out as a comic later. I simply keep imagining scenes visually, which doesn’t translate well to my word count yet.

I’m also at the point where I have a whole lot of characters to invent, and I can see how authors get confused. I’m already stuck looking up character names and misspelling them half the time. It doesn’t help that most of the cast is going to exist as an online avatar and as a person. I don’t know how Gibson does that so well. Gotta wrap my head around it.

I’m also still mentally struggling with how much to set this in reality. Do I use real metal bands? Do I situate these characters in Toronto? Do they go to real clubs? Do they meet real scene celebs? So much descision-making to do!

Anyways, what I’m trying to say is, it’s a fun challenge, but I don’t have the time to dedicate to it that I wish I did.

I still have to draw the comic for Expozine…

November is going to be a busy month for me, guys. First off, I’ve joined NaNoWriMo! You can follow my progress, or nag me about not making any progress, here.

Secondly, I’m hoping to have a new minicomic ready for Expozine. I went into the studio today to brush up on my drawing skills, but all I brought home from it was this drawing of the Depew Amtrak Station:

Thirdly, I’ve finally started work on a top secret project I’m doing with a friend of mine. Here’s a hint: it combines my two favourite things. Here’s a little idea sketch:

So yeah, stay on me about all this and hopefully I’ll have some fantastic stuff to show in a little while!

As for those thank-you cards, well, they’re taking a long time. As one might expect. I’ll keep you updated.

On the theme of album design, here’s an acrylic painting I did for a friend’s black metal band.  They’re called Detsorgsekalf, and the album is on its way! ON ITS WAY!