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Author: Cynical Woman
WIP Wednesday – What’s Missing, continued
“What’s Missing?” Work In Progress by Helen E. H. Madden, 30 March 2011
I haven’t had much time to work on this lately, but I did spend half an hour on it today and got more color down on the background. I’m also playing a bit more with the palette knife, seeing how well it blends the oils together. That may become a key tool in getting this painting to work the way I want it to.
Anyway, I’m still working on this. Hopefully, I’ll get a little more time this week to paint some more.
ACW Episode 108 – I’m So Blue
Oh yes I did. And I’m thinking it’s going to stay this color for a while. Here’s a photo of my new color the day I dyed it. Going to have to do the blue more frequently than the red, since I can only get blue in semi-permanent color, but I really don’t mind that. Actually, what I may do is a combination of blue and red. Just to freak people out.
Although the nuns at Princess’ school seem to be handling my new hair color just fine.
Here’s a couple of pics of my hair right after I dyed it last week…
It’s faded quite a bit since then, leaving me with sky blue streaks everywhere. I’m thinking tomorrow I’ll dye it red again, then this weekend bleach in wider highlights and go for more blue. Because I really like the color!
Move It Mama Monday! Back to Karate!
I finally made it to four hours of karate class last week! Yay me! I know my instructor was happy to see me. I was sore after the first day back, especially around my arms and shoulders. I must have spent an hour just working on one kata alone, and it was one that involved a lot of punching, so I’m not too surprised by the soreness. But by Thursday I was feeling pretty good.
I need to get back to regular practice as well as regular class attendance. That’s something that’s always been a problem for me during cold weather. I will freely admit that I am a wimp when it comes to cold weather. I do not like to get outside and freeze my butt off, so I tend to look for ways to workout inside all winter long. That’s hard to do with karate. I need room to move about, otherwise I might kick a hole in the wall or knock over the furniture. And I can forget doing weapons katas inside. One wrong move and I might shove a bo straight through the TV screen.
I had thought about trying to practice outside, and just layer silk long johns underneath my gi. But if the weather’s been wet and nasty, that makes things difficult. Oh sure, I could tough it out and do kata in the mud, but that’s the point at which I have to ask, is that really the sane thing to do?
The best option I have during the winter is to visit the Y and practice in the inside basketball court. Lots of open space there and a nice clean floor to work on. I suppose I will have to get back to doing that again for at least a few more weeks until it warms up some more.
Here’s the current planned workout schedule:
- Monday – karate practice at the Y
- Tuesday – kobudo and karate classes
- Wednesday – workout at home, elliptical machine and Wii
- Thursday – black belt and regular karate classes
- Friday – swimming and water aerobics
- Saturday – off
- Sunday – workout at home, elliptical machine and Wii
I’m also trying to add in 20 minutes on the elliptical machine in the early mornings, Monday through Friday. It’s not much, but it does make a difference in my endurance and in my weight. I’m getting older, metabolism is slowing down, and I have to work just a bit harder to keep from getting pudgy.
Plus it’s a great excuse to watch FarScape in the mornings…
We’ll see how I do with the schedule this week. See you later!
Sunday Contentments – Getting Back on Track
Well, I’m not entirely recovered from the past six months, but I was able to slow things down a bit this past week and I managed to get a couple more things off my plate. I’m starting to get back to my old routine, mainly attending karate classes and sort of getting a handle on the laundry. Now the plan is to throw myself back into my schedule again and see if I can get the laundry completely under control while I tame the email in my inbox and catch up on blog posts.
But I feel a lot more relaxed today than I did this time last week. And that’s definitely something to be thankful for.
Nothing else to say right now. See you tomorrow!
Freaky Friday! Meet Tiny Medusa
“Tiny Medusa” by Helen E. H. Madden, 25 March 2011
Last week I found a new graphics app for my iPad (did I mention how much I LOVE my iPad?!). The app is InkPad, and it’s a vector graphics app. It’s pretty simple and straightforward. None of the bells and whistles that comes with Adobe Illustrator, but even so, it has all the basic tools I need for drawing on the iPad. And best of all? No tiny size limit on the images. I can draw a full sized image, suitable for printing later, with this program.
I also discovered that I can cartoon with it. I can draw all the black lines in, then email the image (or put it in my DropBox account), take it to my desktop and into Illustrator, and then use a brush stroke for the lines to get a hand-inked effect. I’m very, very, very happy about this because it means I can now start doing large sized comics on the iPad. Just start in InkPad, then export the inked image to Illustrator for a little tweeking, and then it’s over to Photoshop or ArtRage for coloring. This solves so many production problems for me that I almost feel like singing.
But since I’m a far better artist than I am a singer, I will not subject you to that torment.
At least not today.
Rats! Episode 54 – A Simple Rule
When I was a cadet, I got into trouble for a lot of things I didn’t even do. It’s just the way it is sometimes.
‘Nuff said.
WIP Wednesday – What’s Missing, continued
“What’s Missing?” WIP by Helen E. H. Madden, 23 March 2011
I’m still at work on this one, putting down as much paint as I can to cover the canvas. The actual image is VERY large, something like 3000×4000 pixels, which is the largest I think I’ve ever put together. I’m having problems recreating the technique of the artist inspired this painting. This was originally from a tutorial on ArtRage in Digital Artist magazine. I was able to get the drawing down the way I wanted it and the underpainting, but when it came to putting down the oils, I’ve had less that stellar results. The original tutorial showed the brush settings at instant drying, non-cleaning, very low thinners. I’ve had to change that to 50% things, non-instant drying. Plus I can’t use the full metallic effect of the paint. I’ve had to reduce that to 50% as well, otherwise it just get’s overwhelming.
And none of this makes any sense to you if you haven’t used ArtRage before. Suffice to say, ArtRage simulates oil painting and metallic paints, but the tools in the program have a wide variety of settings that will achieve various effects. I’ve been having to play with all of them to get what I’ve got so far. Most of the blending has been achieved with the palette knife tool, which I had hoped to avoid, but hey, it gets me the effect I want, so I won’t cry about it now.
Anyway, I’ll keep working on this one. Wish me luck!
ACW Episode 107 – I’m Not That Hungry!
It’s over, it’s over, it’s over. And I thought cookie season would never end.
I spent 3 days straight last week doing the final accounting. That’s 3 days all day and late into the night tallying up boxes of cookies sold, amount of money collected, divvying up booth sale credits, filling in paperwork, etc. Our troop of Brownies sold 1900 boxes of cookies. The proceeds from those sales filled our bank account fuller than it’s ever been, I think. I know the troop leader was happy about it.
And now I’m happy because I don’t have to deal with cookies for another six months at least. Yeah, there are a few minor details here and there that I need to attend to, but otherwise it’s finally over.
Huzzah!
Move It Mama Monday! Oy, My Blood Pressure!
Finally, finally, finally I am free of cookies and other stressful things. I finished gathering up all my tax stuff for the Hubster yesterday, so now it’s just me and my usual work routine. Sure, the house is a wreck and I’m behind on some stuff, but at least now I have better than a snowball’s chance in Hell of catching up.
And I have plenty of catching up to do in the exercise department. I desperately need to get back to swimming, water aerobics and karate, and it’s not because I’ve gained weight but because my blood pressure has shot up. I’m normally 112/60 or there abouts. On Friday I was 140/72. The nurse who took my blood pressure Assured me that those numbers were still within the normal range, but as I told her, that’s not normal for me. It’s way up, as far as I’m concerned, and I can feel the effects. I’ve been having headaches lately, and I feel tired and irritable and uncomfortable all around.
So it’s time to get back to my regular exercise routine. I got up this morning and did the elliptical machine for 20 minutes. I’ll probably do Wii Fit or Walk It Out this afternoon. And I’ve made the decision to forgo all caffeine until next Sunday. Since my father-in-law’s death, I’ve been downing coffee, tea and soda like nobody’s business. That has to stop now.
Hopefully, by the end of the week my blood pressure will be down. If I can, I’m going to have it checked again and I’ll report back on next Monday what the numbers are.