Ten years ago, I spent hours and hours, compiling this book for Robert Plant's 50th birthday:
http://www.palemoon.com/thegift/

Ten years? Wow!

These were 100 and some messages from the good old "For Badgeholders Only" mailing list, I am still a member of. One of the mods just reminded me of this. and it's still online!
I got the messages by email, then "enhanced" them in WordArt... :) glued them into a hand made book and sent it to Plant's manager. Yes he got it on the day, I was told he enjoyed it.

Can you see what I stuck to the back cover? Yes that's a card from a painting by John Howe LOL

I had lots of spare time back then :D
oo_missus how come you never sent a message??

Doing nothing... or rather just fooling around with layouts...testing new CSS layouts for my deviantArt journal. No luck so far. Building a few simple webpages for promotion.
And most notably, changed my LJ layout. I needed a change. Simple and swirly, just what I wanted ^^

Back to farniente

Ok. I need to take some distance from this one. So far I mostly hate it, it was such a strugle to get it done without trashing it (again) everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. You know what I said about not always liking what I do?  I am not a big fan of say, Roger Garland, I like some of his works but often I find the colours too bright and flashy... and what do I do? I do exactly that!

Bleh!

I don't usually post much about my opinion on such things. But I was really happy to read about Prince Charles' reaction on GM.
I never cared much for all the negative comments about the man, I'm not british so I don't care about all that aspect. There may be other things to criticise him for, but I just admire his commitement to ecology. Someone has to speak up, who cares if he "ruffled" some feathers? Eventually I'm afraid it will not change things, there's too much money at stake once again. I just hope I won't be around to see the first negative effects on our beloved planet.
I bet it would be a horrible outrage, but I just feel like hugging Prince Charles ^^

Where you can see that I love to work with lots of matter. Watercolour is usually frustrating for me because I like to get "into the matter" and push about something slightly more material.

Anyway here's the finished drawing. Supposed to Elbereth, or Varda, Lady of the Stars.
I'd like to make a proper frame for her, not just a Photoshopped one, see if I have the time.

Well this is after all a blog about my art... so here's a sneak preview into one of my current paintings.
I kind of went "woha, am I channeling John Howe here?" but it's really an accident LOL I just needed a general guideline. The background will be very dark, so the nice blending coulours here will be gone. I took a photo because I liked this random effect. Even more random since I accidentally used a blue pencil that was water soluble... I need more normal pencils.

Pfew that was another busy day! I need a little break.

I've just updated my Etsy shop after leaving it forlorn for a while. I really need to "reap" some money now... for now it's mostly a few of my originals and my series of "Four Seasons" cards.
I am hoping to add some jewellry later on, but I need to actually make some first! ^^  Of course should you absolutely need something for an upcoming birthday, feel free to drop me a line! Check out my deviantArt gallery for samples.

The shop link:

Have I ever told how much I love the Flickr gallery of Mats&Muffi... although nowadays it's not just Mats and his cat Muffi, but at least three other felines!

Muffi disguised as Tiger (his "brother"):



Click on the image to get to the whole gallery!

It's too hot to work today, but I managed to do quite a few things: another day of paper work and such. But I am holding back on some emails now since everyone is on holiday and any mails might be lost in a sea of other mails when people will come back to their offices.

So I'll concentrate on art again for a while. I am hoping to achive two pieces for the John Howe forum but these are very complex endeavours and my muse is also on a holiday as of now :P Both paintings will be outdoor scenes, and I feel a bit lost as to how to build them up. It still feels like a completely impossible task to draw any sort of background... hence a lot of my art being kind of "flat" LOL

Something ursulav  said recently had me thinking again, quoting : I think the problem is that I like my own art fine, but my art is not the kind of art I like. If that makes any sense.
Makes perfect sense to me, I feel the same.

When my muse is busy elsewhere, the best I can do is just doodle. And the perfect occasion to doodle is listening to music. So this is to celebrate Alice Cooper's new album. Hey it's about a killer who cuts his victims legs off... ok I drew hands but it's a sort of recurring subject in my drawings, just as the eyes.

I've been using all my free time for promotion, so no art.

I am looking into what kind of steps I should/can take to go freelance "officially", even if it's still part-time. I've always tried to have my expenses deduced from taxes, but they keep refusing arguing that I can't have two main activities...?

If you look it up online, there's tons of info on how to do this in France, where you can be an illustrator or comic designer as a "real" profession (meaning it's recoginsed as such). Around here: nada. You are a graphic designer that's all... very handy for promotion when people have no idea what you actually do...
I'm seeing a counsellor this afternoon, I hope she can give me some good advice about the legal stuff I need to know.

I am bumping into all kinds of obstacles. A forum like "café salé" is full of good advice... for French people. There are job offers.. for French people... and some posts are horribly discouraging.

What am I even doing here posting when I should work? Computers make us loose a lot of time... but on the other hand I would never have made all these precious contacts if not for forums, blogs, etc... I mean also professional contacts. How much time do I really loose? It helps me to keep sane also, all the support I get is giving me strenght to carry on, so I don't think it's "lost" time.

Life as usual.

Well done Andy!

Here's hoping for all of us!

I don't believe this. About a month ago I posted on the "Nights With Alice Cooper" forums about a quote I wanted from the show and had missed. I just wanted to write it down. And just as I listen to today's show I notice how familiar the chit chat was. And sure enough there it was! My quote!
I just replayed the first one hour and 16 minutes of the show to write down the full quote as I can't rewind it. But I simply had to get it!

The exact quote was: "most artistic people are mental patients...in the closet"

This is so exactly why I love Alice so much. Once I decided it was perfectly ok to be "mad" and that being an artist was really what I wanted it all made so much more sense.

Remember my post about Atara's favourite quote?: ""When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."--Mark Twain"
Same difference...

Isn't it weird how out of all replays they had to choose the one that I needed?

A funny tidbit for Tim Powers fans here. As I listened to this the first time (well really the second time but the first time I heard it was a month ago) I had this weird "bar time" * experience. As Alice was introducing the next song, and saying it was a Led Zeppelin song, I could already hear the first notes in my head before he even said the title. Do you think, my brain had stored the whole thing in a corner and just "took it out of the drawer " then? Talk about "déjà vu"!

* in one of Tim's books the characters sometimes have this state of mind where they know what will happen two seconds from the moment they are at. Which makes them react in advance to noises for instance.

Well this one came kind of first. The idea of these charity drawings came to me during the fabulous Led Zeppelin concert last year, I really hope to do more at some point but I need to move on and try to find some payed jobs too.



This particular Dragon is on his way to make his own life, bye, bye! The Tom Jones one is about to be "sold". I had an offer from a fan in the States. The last one is awaiting his hour.
All in all in was a nice little success, I was very surprised by the response I got. I'll have to do this again next year.

Review behind the cut. Beware of very fangirly talk... well I am and proud to be!

In the mailbox today:
Book four of the Song of Ice and Fire series by grrm YAY!
Wintermaejic and Autumnquest by teriegarrison double YAY!

But first I must finish reading Mage Girl: a friend's first book (hopefull published soon)
http://alanna.morkitu.org/mage_girl/mage_girl.html

I think I am set for a few months now?

Er... by the way, I normally wouldn't do that, but I also enjoy to make gifts on specials occasions so... if you search under my real name on amazon you'll find my wishlist there... just in case you want to send me something for my birthday next month.

If you're a customisation geek like me never install the "stylish" add on on firefox. I've wasted quite a bit of time trying various skins for gmail or facebook... you can even make facebook look like deviantArt (how usueful)
Argh! Really not what I needed to do.

Well not that different but that's all I have in mind at the moment:

Alain Dister, one of the greatest French rock journalists has left us. Without him, being a Led Zeppelin fan wouldn't have been the same, especially in the days before the internet. He gave us dreams to go with our passion. Thank you Alain!

This just a few weeks after Nicola Acin also died, crappy days for rock journalists! 

I have no art to show at the time. I'm working mostly on promotion and looking for new projects, so there's not much to show. You'll have to put up with more of my musings... I was going to blog about how the internet changed my life, but I had this encouter with the Twilight Zone today...

Today I went shopping in one of our main shopping malls. Yes, that one supertantine I never understood why they'd change stuff around all the time (well to make us spend more time looking and hopefully end up buying something we didn't need in the first place) but this is really extreme.

Have you ever had one of these nightmares where you go to a familiar place and it's gone? That's a bit how I felt today. The mall is the same as always, it's even still in the same place (huh, huh!) it's been there for what, 20 years. But the shop itself is completely changed, the usual aisles have gone it's like being in a foreign country.
My brain went into panic mode. As I tried to navigate, the map in my brain didn't match the terrain anymore, it set all sort of alarms off. I was feeling so dizzy, I almost felt sick. Kind of felt like being suddenly blind
What a bizarre experience! I hated it. I'm not sure when I'll dare go back in there again.

I am a creature of habit. I still remember the old shop, way back when it was a different building and it didn't change every other year. I can still tell where what was in that shop and it's been gone 20 years