The Hunt

Over the weekend I started searching around for my stash of glitter so that I can finish the twelve thousand toilet seats that need to be clear-coated. That's right, twelve THOUSAND. You think I'd exaggerate? How dare you!

Anyway, I couldn't find the glitter. Which is annoying, because I know it's around someplace. I can't imagine someone wanting to steal glitter. Just glitter. Well, I suppose you never know, but somehow I doubt it. I'm sure I put it in a Safe Place. You know, that place that's so safe, even you forgot where you put your stuff. I hate it when I do that.

Yesterday I went to get more glitter. A piece of cake, I thought. I'd just go to the local hobby shop and restock allllll of the glitter colors and varieties that I had before. No problem.

Riiiiiight.

I go to the hobby store. First, they've rearranged the layout, so I couldn't even find the damn glitter for fifteen minutes. I just wandered around in over-lit confusion until I found an aisle that had a small selection of feathers, feather boas, masks, and glitter. Apparently the trend in glitter is that loose glitter is passe and glitter glue is all the rage with crafters. Well damn. And the selection of loose glitter is on a scale from middling to pathetic. Double damn. The only cool thing they had were tiny glitter stars in a variety pack of four colors. I grabbed a couple of those and some basic colors of regular glitter and decided to hit a fabric store nearby that also has some craft/hobby type stuff.

A side note: I was on my bicycle for all of this running around. Yesterday was windy, cloudy, and humid as hell. I thought I was breathing underwater it was so damn humid. The wind didn't help matters. I now know what an asthmatic feels like.

So at the fabric store, I find that the property that the store is sitting on has been sold, hence the store is going out of business and isn't selling a wide variety of anything, much less glitter. Jeez, I had no idea that good glitter could be so hard to come by. Why can't I remember the Safe Place that the old stash of glitter is so calmly residing in? I know that as soon as I'm done with the toilet seats with their inferior glitter, I'll find the good stuff. ARGH!

I made do with the just-a-notch-above-middling glitter selection that the fabric store had, but I'm ticked off about it. I have to find another source of glitter. How stoopid is that?!

Below is some more derby artwork. Drawing skates is tedious, but thank goodness for Google when it comes to searching for nice, clear images of skates to trace, and double-thank-goodness for Illustrator for making said tracing not too soul-crushing.

The Morning Rant

I hate getting wound up over stoopid stuff, but today I am just that.

The Art Dept. of the derby league is feeling some growing pains. There was a meeting last week to decide on bout themes for our games. The bout themes and dates would be handed off to individuals for them to design the bout posters for each game. I wasn't at that meeting. Why? Because I thought it was cancelled.

It wasn't.

Dammit.

The list of bout theme ideas consisted of really off-the-wall ideas such as a Halloween theme for October and a Back to School theme for September. Yes, I know...just contain yourselves over the daringness of these ideas. Gosh, who woulda thunk to use those themes for those months? There were other themes listed, but weren't assigned to specific months...like a ninja theme. Um, OK.

So shockingly, the final vote by the league has the Halloween theme for October and Back to School for September.

Ugh.

I'm not volunteering to do the bout posters for those months due to my brain automatically shutting off from boredom. The husband told me that I'm experiencing expectation failure. Damn right I am. It's not as if the Quadfather's Day bout idea was freakin' brilliant, but it wasn't the typical theme one would use. I like putting a twist on stuff; not going for the obvious. This crap that's been decided upon is pathetically obvious.

What can I do about it? Not a damn thing except whine. Whining to the Art Dept. isn't much of a useful option, so I whine here.

Because I can.

At least the latest toilet seat is done except for the clear-coating. This week is clear-coating madness as I have to get a seat or two ready to show at Rollercon. And then I have to sift through my computer files and do some catch-up work there. And then I have more seats to paint. Jeezus, if I only got paid for this stuff!

Last night a freak thunderstorm moved through our area. It was amazing. I was sitting around watching Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle on cable when I hear a loud rumbling. At first I thought there was a very sick plane landing at the local airport two blocks away. But no. I go outside and was treated to a light show of epic proportions that LA usually doesn't get to see. I could smell the ozone from the lightning, and it was wonderful. It reminded me of Texas weather. Rain fell after the thunder and lightning moved on, but only for about five minutes.

A good way to end a weekend.

Art art art

I'm almost done painting a toilet seat that's going into a gallery in October. Now I gotta throw it onto the pile of other seats that are in dire need of clear-coating.

Below is the new Derby Dolls recruitment flyer. The screaming skater is my very own co-captain, Myna Threat. It was taken at the SxSW bout in Austin back in March. She's damn cute:




















I don't know if I mentioned that this week all the teams had "votes of confidence" for their captains and co-captains. It essentially was a way to find out if the teams were happy with their captains and co-captains. Both Myna and I made the grade and we're still in like freakin' Flynn. Which I should take as a compliment, but deep down I know that the reason why I'm captain is because no one else on the team wants to do it.

Anyway, I have tons more art crap to do. I'm feeling very close to being productive or something. How weird is that?!

This is it.

This is the whole one photo I have of myself from Saturday's game. I look cranky, don't I?

I'm going to blaspheme...

Oh yes, yes I am.

Last night I went to see Cars.

And I wasn't impressed.

OK, that's kind of a lie. I loved the backgrounds, especially since I'm a big fan of travelling along Route 66 and recognized a lot of the Mother Road influences in the art direction. But the story? Not so much. I was underwhelmed. One colleague o' mine calls it a "honking turd". I wouldn't go that far...I've seen much worse movie-wise. But it is kinda sad that the best part of Cars was the spoofs of Pixar's own films at the end. That was hilarious!

You know what I liked much more than Cars?

Over the Hedge.

Loved it! Good art direction, voice casting, layout, storyboarding, animation...the whole shebang sat quite well with me. Much more so than Cars. It's about time Dreamworks got its head out of its ass and did something really fun. And so they did.

Next, I have to see Nacho Libre. I hear it's hilarious.

The Other One

Here's the second sticker design for my own nefarious uses that I sent off to Monsterpress. I'd better get something cool back or I'm going to cry like a little baby.




















Now I have to concentrate on getting a recruitment flyer for the Derby Dolls done and sent off to be printed. Things are crazy, plans are changing, nerves are frayed, and I just want to curl up in a hole and whimper quietly to myself until it all blows over.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that my team won on Saturday? The score was 26-13. The lowest scoring game the Dolls have had to date. Mainly because of the heat. Luckily no one got heat stroke or injured...especially since we kinda-sorta forgot to get EMT's for the game.

Ooooooooooops.

My team got to wear our spiffy new uniforms and got to meet our uniform sponsors. At first the sponsors(a husband-wife team)were kinda blase with us...well, OK, with me. I gave them the card that I made as well as other things like a Fight Crew shirt, buttons, Derby Dolls stickers and even a Fight Crew bracelet. They set the package containing the goodies aside when I handed it to them. I left. After the game they were much more enthusiastic about us. Probably because we won. I sure stunk up the uniform, though. The drycleaners are probably having to wear extra-heavy-duty hazmat suits to handle the stench.

Back to work. Someday I want to take a real vacation.

Yay, Monsters!

On one of the sites that I check obsessively throughout the day, one of the printers there was offering an interesting deal. You design a sticker for his business, and he'll print a sticker for your personal use. In other words, a trade.

Below is the sticker design I did for him. I still have to do my own personal design for my own personal stickers. I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out, considering I didn't know what the hell I was doing, as usual:




















I have until Friday to do the other design.

I also have to do a recruitment flyer for the Derby Dolls. I still have a ridiculous amount of painted toilet seats to finish clearcoating, too. Sheesh, for a week off, I'm not getting to take a freakin' break!

Thanks

Here's the thank-you card I made for my team's uniform sponsor. Hopefully the lady who owns the company will like it:













Today I had to ride to the Valley to drop off my freelance work. My god, it was stoopidly hot! And I have to skate in it tomorrow afternoon! Who the hell thought this was a good idea?! It doesn't help that I'm what the league calls a "sweaty betty". It's rather self-explanatory...when I perspire, I essentially turn into a walking Niagra Falls of sweat. My face goes red, too. Highly attractive, I might add. The other sweaty bettys in the league just sweat, they don't have the redness thing going on. Ha! I got them beat!

I'm also PMS'ing like crazy. That just adds a fun layer of snarkiness and uncomfortable-ness to the whole weekend's festivities. The topper would be if I started bleeding during the game. Oh hells yeah, that'd be fun.

I'm looking forward to having next week off for my own fun. I have about six toilet seats to finish up, and I'm thinking of actually doing a painting. A real painting. On canvas. Something which I haven't done since jr. college. Hmmmmmm.

TGIF!

Friday.

Blessed Friday.

I finished my freelance crap at around 1:30 in the am last night/this morning. Ahhhhhh, it feels soooo good to be done with it! I "celebrated" with a apple martini or three which I needed to counteract the Red Bull I knocked back a couple of hours earlier when I was dozing off in my chair. Today my head is fuzzy on the inside.

As usual.

Now I gotta concentrate on this weekend's bout and finding another job next week.

Oh yeah, and I have to make a card for my team's uniform sponsor. The uniforms are gorgeous, so drawing up a card for them ain't no thang. It'll look way better than this squirrel:











For chucks and snicks I went to the animation union blog yesterday and was nosing around there. Ended up making the most idiotic and rambling comment on an entry that was a few days old. This morning I look to see if anyone called me on my crap and found that Geena Davis posted a comment after me. Yeah, that Geena Davis.

She didn't call me on my crap. In fact, she hardly registered its existence.

Probably for the best, really.


There's something so secretive about typing in the tiny font. I like it! Too bad I don't have anything shocking to reveal here.

Bleeding...

Right now I'm in the midst of storyboarding a dippy song for this dippy storyboard on a dippy kids show.

It's awful.

Gawdfreakin' AWFUL.

There's kazoos in the song. It's not good. Especially since it's a song about having good table manners. Kazoos do not belong in songs dealing with that subject manner. End of story.

Pardon me while I pour battery acid in my ears.

Directions

See schedule below.

Click on it to see full-size web version.

Read the dates carefully.

Pull out schedule-planner.

Write down the dates.

Go to the bouts on those dates.

Say "hi" to me.

Yell your lungs out.

Have fun.

Serves as many people as we can cram into one space.

I HATE COMPUTERS

So I try to update my stoopid website with pictures. It shouldn't be a big deal. Open the page, edit the page, save the page, upload the page, look at the results.

However, Dreamweaver doesn't like uploading my pictures. FUXXERS. Whatever text I upload and save is there, but I get little red x's for the pictures. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?! It's pissing me off. BIG TIME.

Anyway, below is the poster I did for the competing roller derby league here in LA. Enjoy its smallness...if my FUXXING website was working I'd post it there. DAMMIT ALL TO HELL.

A Fearless Leader

Since our coach left the Derby Dolls, we've had to put together a training team to run practices. This team consists of the captains, co-captains, and few other badass skaters. So I have to run practices a couple times a month, which I hate doing. With a passion.

It just puts me on the spot. Like I really know what the hell I'm doing. I don't. Really. It's amazing how a loud mouth makes up for a working brain sometimes. Is this how regular teachers feel? I hate it. This "being responsible" sh!t is just buggin'.

It also doesn't help that the day-job freelance is in high gear and I have a derby-related flyer and two posters to complete before the weekend. Oh, and one of the posters I'm doing is for the competing LA league. Yes, that's right, I'm a sellout. A cheap sellout, but a sellout nonetheless. This brings up the issue of league loyalty. As it should.

Artistically, me doing stuff for the other league is like being released from a straightjacket. But skate-wise, uh...they're competition at this point.

Dude.

I'm in wait-and-see mode right now. I like having different approaches to different leagues. It rocks my little pea-brain. I've done artworkfor two other leagues with no moral dilemna. But can I really be an artistic derby slut? Only time will tell, evidentially.

From the Pet Peeve Dept.

I never, ever spell my name with a y.


EVER.

It's too damn hot outside to do anything productive.

I might get some ice cream and take a nap. Freelance work be damned!

Enjoy this sex-ay babe drawing that I did at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. There's something about drawing on butcher paper using a crayon with a tablecloth underneath that makes for some nice work. Not like you can really tell from this crapacious scan, but trust me when I say that it's mind-blowingly amazing:













I've been reading a new blog by artist Eddie Fitzgerald. He's a funny guy and a funny drawer. He's of the type that makes me want to shake my not-nearly-so-talented fists in the air and scream, "Damn you, Eddie Fitzgerald! Damn you for being so damn funny! It's not fair!!!!!!!"

But instead I'll just hole up in my art room and look forlornly out the window. After my nap and ice cream, that is.

Back to Chinatown

Today one of the skaters emailed me some photos from two weeks ago when we set the track back up at our old Chinatown rooftop home:









In case you can't figure out, I'm skating backwards in the first pic. The ridge behind me is the rim of Dodger Stadium. There's nothing more amazing than skating on a rooftop in Chinatown over the July 4 weekend when the fireworks are going off at the stadium. And they say LA doesn't have cool stuff going on.









I love the composition in this second photo. Too bad I wreck it by looking like such a doofus! In my next life I'd like to come back as a truly pretty person. This knuckle-dragging stuff is annoying.

I have actual work to do. Yeah, work-work. Freelance has hit. I haven't even begun to put a dent in the actual art stuff I needed to get done. Ah well, I guess I need to get to know time management better!