It's November 1st!

And that means I went to the Halloween store bright and early and shopped like a fool! On the 1st, everything is 50% off. I got myself probably a dozen pairs of thigh-highs of various styles of crazy stripes and fishnets. Also some matching black lipstick and nailpolish because I was there and it was there and we were both feeling cheap, and one other item I got two of because it was cool and inexpensive and I can give one to Ashy although I'm not sure she'll have any use for it. :) I did not buy the silvery plastic feminine face mask, no matter how sexy it may have seemed. Doesn't go with glasses. *sigh* I suppose I need to get a pair of contacts just for costume times.

Then I stood in line for about an hour next to the Jones'... Or possibly the Jones' neighbors. Whatever. I mean, very cool they were making a haunted house for the neihgborhood kids every year and they were getting stuff for next year, but most of their motivation seemed to be that some neighbor of their had an EVEN BETTER spook house this year and had beat them, so they were going to make sure to outdo her for next year. They were looking at everything in the store in terms of outdoing their neighbor, and making plans for their Christmas scene as well. The bad thing about them was they had no innovation, they wanted to buy everything and make nothing. Even the idea of putting a wad of newspaper or balloon inside a mask to make it stand up was not for them. Styrofoam balls. Freakish. They were the scariest thing in the store.

I just sketched and drew more strangish sci-fi art. Unlike my last piece where I posted every time I made a little progress, I've been sort of background working on a piece for the past couple of days and trying to learn to walk away from it and do something else when I realize I'm starting to take shortcuts. Making for a very slow piece of art, but I'm doing other pieces in the meanwhile. Also, where my last piece was all in photoshop, I'm working this one all in Illustrator BUT I'm doing lots of layering and texturing effects and trying to see if I can create something more photoshop like in Illustrator. Will have to see how things turn out.

Lastly, a shameful confession. Sometimes I'm such a lame-o fangirl. I've been looking around Deviant art and added a few artists that I really liked (whose art was all leagues better than mine) to my watch list. One of the ones I liked the most was Perfect-Clone Anyhow, for some reason, he friended me back (which he hadn't done to everyone that watched his work) I guess, now that I think about it, the automaton I finished recently did have a very similar vibe to his work in terms of mood and general cranial construction (though his is obviously far superiour) Broken masks and androids seem to be a direction my work is heading in for the moment and I'll likely borrow a few of his design elements. Anyhow, being friended really made me squee. Sad, no? Ohwell, anyhow, he's doing charcoal and coloured pencil at large sizes (like 4' wide) I should try that. I love working in charcoal and I have enough space to do a work that size. though I can't imagine how coloured pencil would work with charcoal and I'd probably elect to use chalk pastel or conte.

I think the next big art lesson for me is patience. Also, as a sub-lesson, I realized that I do well doodling for making complex scenes but I hate making them 'finished' pieces, so what I ought to try is working the central image properly but then just doodle directly in the finished media for the background and mise'en'scene. probably be a very good marriage, or at the very least, worth trying. :)