Category: Freaky Friday

Weekly weirdness posted on Fridays.

No comments

Evil Dreams – The Never-Ending Marathon of DOOOOOOOM!

  By ,

I had a dream last night that I was visiting my aunt in Pennsylvania, but I had to leave because my Girl Scout troop was about to run a marathon all the way back to Virginia. The marathon began in my aunt’s drive way, and the girls had already started running, so I had to race out the door to keep up. We were running up and down in this really hilly neighborhood. I was following the last, youngest girl in the troop when I started to fall behind. She turned a corner and disappeared. When I got there, the road went in two directions, and I saw people running one way, so I followed them, thinking they must be part of the marathon. But the further I ran after these people, the stranger the surroundings got. We left my aunt’s nice suburban neighborhood and entered into a sort of post-apocalyptic landscape that looked like a cross between Mad Max and a camping trip in the Grand Canyon. By that point, I could see that the people running ahead of me weren’t Girl Scouts but senior citizens, which was probably the only reason why I could keep up with them. I realized it was getting colder too, which had to mean we were running north, which was away from Virginia and not towards it. It was getting darker too. As evening fell, the senior citizens arrived at an abandoned recreation center where someone was hosting a holiday party/rest-stop for them. I stumbled in after them, only to be told that I wasn’t allowed to be there. I tried to argue with the hostess, a stern-looking woman in horn-rimmed glasses who looked like a nurse my mom used to work with. If she would just let me use the phone to call my aunt, I knew I’d be okay. But the hostess refused to let me stay and I couldn’t find a phone. I tried stealing a glass of punch and some of the food from the buffet that had been set up, but I think I got caught and was kicked out. I’m not entirely certain though, because at that point, the cats started meowing and they woke me up.

Yes, this is an actual dream I had last night. I have dreams like this every night, and many are even weirder and more detailed than this one. I figured if I shared them here on the blog, you all might get a laugh out of them, or demand I seek psychiatric help. Or both.

No comments

Current Work-In-Progress – Robot Eggs

  By , ,

So I decided to post my current works in progress on Fridays. This year I'm doing a series of robot drawings, one for each month. The eventual goal is to publish a calendar for next year. This is the robot for either March or April. I'm adding another broken egg-bot at the bottom of the page. With cookie sales wrapping up in the next week, we'll have to see how far I get by Friday.

 

2 Comments

Flashback Friday! Weird Alien Vampire Dog-Thingy

  By ,

Not really sure why I drew this. For some reason, when I look at this, I think of that one episode of Star Trek where Kirk gets split into two people during a transporter accident. There was this weird green dog, which I think had a horn, that was also split into two while everyone was trying to figure out what happened to Kirk, so maybe that was the original inspiration for this. I do know it was definitely supposed to be a dog of some kind, very sheep-doggish in nature, but also alien. But that’s all I can tell you.

And look at how yellow that paper is! For once, I didn’t bother to color correct the image before putting it up, just so you could see that this really is from an old, old sketch book of mine.

No comments

Flashback Friday! The Queen

  By ,

I’m still going through the same sketchbook, which I must have used during my early teen years. I’m not sure what inspired this image. She vaguely reminds me of the wicked queen from Disney’s Snow White, but for some reason, I drew her as African American with some sort of basic tribal face markings. It’s a bit odd, and the proportions are all wrong, but I like the drawing. No idea why her eyes are closed, nor why she has that expression.

No comments

Flashback Friday! Merman

  By ,

Welcome back to Flashback Friday! I dug this out of the same sketchbook as the previous two Flashback entries. This is some sore of mer-creature. I’m trying to decide why I thought a mer-creature needed both a blow hole and eyebrows, and why the eyebrows needed to be dark blue. I don’t know. It has sort of a “Land of the Lost” feel to me, and I think that was probably part of the inspiration. I loved the alien creatures in “Land of the Lost,” just as much as I despised the human characters. To this day, Holly and Will just grate on my nerves. But the Sleestak and Altrusians were very cool, in my opinion.

No comments

Freak Friday Flashback Edition! Deer in the Woods

  By ,

Welcome back to Freak Friday Flashback Edition! This sketch is pulled from the same notebook as last week’s, and looking at it gives me a pretty good idea of where both sketches may have been drawn. My dad owned land in Arkansas, and one particular summer in my early teens we went down there to camp for a week or so. I’m pretty certain I did NOT see this deer, but I probably did see the trees and dead logs I drew. I may even have a picture somewhere of me bent very intently over my sketch pad, drawing furiously, probably wishing a real deer would stop by so I could say I drew it.

Let me know what you think of Freak Friday Flashback Edition. Do you think it’s a fun idea, or are you bored to tears with my pathetic teenage artwork? I’ve got some even older stuff, and lots of it, so there’s plenty more I’m going to post, whether you like it or not!

No comments

Freaky Friday! The Flashback Edition

  By ,

I haven’t done a Freaky Friday post in a while, mainly because I haven’t had anything truly freaky to post about that wasn’t already showing up in WIP Wednesday or the Cynical Woman webcomics. However, I think I have finally found a topic freaky enough for all of us to enjoy. Enter…

Freaky Friday Flashbacks!!!!!

Okay, enough with the dramatics. While digging around for some drafting supplies in my art bins, I came across several old sketchbooks, some from waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day. I thought it might be fun to show my really, really old artwork here. And you know, I don’t do nearly enough scanning in of stuff during the week, so why not scan in my old scribbles and doodles? Anyway, here’s the first drawing in one of my oldest sketchbooks.

Freaky, huh? I think I was about twelve when I drew this. Possibly younger, I can’t really say. Obviously I had access to colored pencils and books on druids, because I drew this very colorful shielf with a sickle wrapped in what I think was supposed to be mistle toe, and a bloody sword beneath that. This was pre-Princess Bride, so no, that is not Inago Montoya’s sword. I just came up with something fancy on my own. Or maybe I cribbed this from an old D&D manual. I don’t really know.

I do know I used to want to be a druid because I thought it would be cool to have magic powers. Then as I got older, my philosophy on that changed. First, I came to realize that wishing and casting spells did not make things happen, no matter how badly I wanted them to. Second, I also began to think that magic was cheating in a way. I have talents and abilities that I can use, but I have to work to be good at any of them. But doing that work leads to wonderful things. So why not sweat a little over a drawing or a writing project and earn money by the end results? Because honestly, all waving a magic wand ever got me was in trouble (mainly because I accidentally poked someone in the eye when I did it).

What other horror lie in the pages of my old sketchbooks? You’ll find out next week!

And don’t forget, the Cynical Woman Zazzle store has much more recent art that I worked very hard on, so go visit and see if there’s something there you like!

No comments

Freaky Friday! Steampunk Art Experiment

  By ,

This is a little sample of something that I’m currently playing with. I switched last week from DAZ Studio to Poser Debut for my character renders. DAZ Studio 4, the free version, was so borked when I installed it, I couldn’t even click on the main menu with the mouse and get a response. So I uninstalled, tried re-installing DAZ Studio 3, discovered why I upgraded anyway (because after the last update, DAZ Studio 3 refused to parent props and other items to the character which made posing characters for scenes impossible), and then threw up my hands and said, “Fuck it! I’m going back to Poser!” I dumped Poser a few years ago, of course, because it was so borked I could barely get it to run on my computer. Poser Debut, however…

The beauty, at least right now, of Poser Debut is that it is a stripped down version of the full blown (or should I say ‘bloated’?) program. It lets you do pretty much one thing and one thing only – pose characters and render them. Okay, that’s two things, and apparently Poser Debut will let you do animation as well, but I don’t want to do 3D animation, I just want to pose and render characters for my artwork.

So this is a test run of Poser Debut, featuring a Steampunk art project I’m working on right now. I played around with the render in Photoshop, working to transform it from a basic render to a comic-book style image. It’s far from perfect, but I like the results I’ve got so far. I’ll hopefully finish this project this weekend and you’ll be able to see the end results no later than Sunday evening.

Let me know what you think of this sample so far.

No comments

Freaky Friday! The Cynical Woman Store is Live and Very Scary Comes Back from the Dead

  By ,

I wanted to get some news out today. You may or may not have noticed the tasteful entry in our list of links below the header graphic. It says “Shop” and that’s exactly what it’s for. I set up a Zazzle shop this month and have been slowly adding product to it. Right now, there are only four products up, but I will be expanding on that. I am already working on a zombie Christmas card and have plans for a steampunk holiday card as well.

In addition to the set up of the Zazzle shop, I have also resurrected the Very Scary Art blog. I had only meant to take a little time off from the blog to give me a chance to catch up on other work, but ended up being away for five months instead. That’s five months too long, and I’ve already slapped myself on the hand and cried, “Bad blogger! Bad, bad blogger!” I’m making changes to how I do the blog posts to make it easier for me to continue working on Very Scary. Meanwhile, our first new blog post in months is now up at Very Scary. Go take a look!

And, um, that’s it. That’s all the news I’ve got. I’m getting back into my regular blogging schedule and will be working on writing today at the public library. I have some interesting projects in the works and I will see next week if I can get a WIP Wednesday post up so you can all see what I’m working on.

Now go SHOP!