To be honest I'm still trying to figure out where September went. Hell I'm still trying to figure out where JUNE went. And also the entire year of 2008. HOWEVER, since I posted two months ago, and behind this helpful cut to save you all the pain of however long I ramble on, here is the story of my life (abridge, and occasionally with exciting falsehoods added for spice)

( Seriously, its already November?! )

I feel like I accidentally buried myself under personal projects. Doh. Time for some schedule planning and prioritizing. I owe sketches and thumbnails to two long term awesome projects - sorry guys, my attention was stolen by the extremely rapid creation of letterpress cards before vending at an event this coming weekend that I signed up for extra-super-last minute. WEE.

In other news, my sketch blog syndicated feed appears to not be feeding. I uhm...can't fix it so lets all hope internet magic happens and it fixes itself. In the mean time, if you follow the feed - sorry!

First miscellaneous things.

The results of a 2XCreative flash (weekend long) collaboration in which I did art and my partner wrote a story are posted here.

pookaknight, your magical costume accessory prototypes are almost complete. Now I must learn to make molds and casts. I spent a lot of money on shiny supplies and I blame YOU. But I'm writing them off on my taxes anyway.

I am working on redesigning my webpage and re-editing my demo reel. Because its gotten embarrassing.

Back to the subject heading. Today was flea treatment day. Tai, the prissy generally evil princess of the house could care less so long as 1) she does NOT get any in her mouth and 2)you feed her cat treats the whole time.
Jack is the problem child. He is large, strong, and hates flea treatment more then anything else in the entire world. More then shots, more then a huge hollow needle through the skin to give him fluids, these things PALE in comparison to the horror of a TINY puddle of flea treatment on the back of the neck...apparently.
It has been a slow progression. First, whenever I got the treat bag out, he would run away from me. So I started getting everything I needed out and setting it up and giving the treats out last. This time I made the mistake of taking off Tai's collar first, because she was closer. The moment that thing was off Jack panicked and ran away and hid under the sofa. THE OTHER CATS COLLAR. I should have known better. Jack is only ever smart about the things that annoy me. Its a good thing he has a cute pink nose, let me tell you!

Paper clay is....frustrating. It takes a really really long time to dry. Which means I can only work with it in a kind of slow zen process of do one thing A DAY or so. I'd never used it before and was unprepared for this so my ideal finish by Sunday deadline is totally unrealistic. Ah well.

( Progress behind the cut! )

I am in SUCH an art slump this week.  Its driving me nuts.  Work is taking twice as long as it should and afterwards I can't seem to manage anything decent on my own stuff.  Hand-eye-coordination fail or something. 
Maybe playing with power tools this weekend will help.

Just stabbed my left pointer finger with a phillips head screw driver.
The new armature works just like I want.  I will not bother you with more pictures.  I will be remaking this design with slightly nicer materials, more care, and FLAT HEAD SCREWS.  

Yeah that's right, tiny phillips head screws are horrible little things.  Hard to get enough traction to screw in, strip faster, and very small phillips head screw drivers really hurt when you drive them into your left hand finger tip because your screw got stuck.

Also, my wish list for life now includes:

A whole enormous set of tiny drill bits in a wider variety of sizes.  That .25 mm or whatever different MATTERS.

A dremel desktop drill press.  Straight holes do matter.  And my freehand 'straight' ain't that straight.

Bed now.  What I get for playing with tools and tiny screws at 2am.

So...I stared at it.  Realized I had a new and potentially better idea for how to make the entire thing...
So of course...I started over.  And if the new way works, I will not have needed the larger bolts.  OOPS.  I need to cut one more new piece before I can assemble the new version, and some filing may be required, but anyway, I bet you thought there would be something EXCITING to show this weekend didn't you?  And all I have to show is a paint test plate, two half finished armatures and a paper mache ball ;-)  Things always take so much longer then I expect when I'm making the whole thing up as I go!

Anyway when I tried to put the skeleton together, I discovered that my bolts were to short. There you go Myke, my missing thing surfaced ;-) I put the photographed joint together with a much smaller ball, so I could give the general idea, but the range of motion with that little bitty ball is way to limited. Even for still photos. So tomorrow its back to Ace hardware.

PS. Look, robot expression sheet ;-) I'll be making heads now, blasted paper mache...drying...in the window...still.

I have all the supplies I need now!  This weekend, I get to spend it building robot sculptures!

I haven't made a jointed/working puppet in so long, I'm really excited :-)

Pictures will follow the progress.  REC01 comes first, but ideally there will be some time to start on the working christmas-light firefly robot too.

FEEL MY ENTHUSIASM! ;-)

Its not a secret really. At all. Even a little. In fact I think I explained it all a few posts back prettying succinctly.

Sketch, for to go and purchase supplies from. On paper its 'life size'.

Doing a collaboration with someone, and it involves me doing some sculpture stuff. I'm excited.
And the silhouette of a character is a good way to start to gauge a likable character. That and I was sketching detailed pencil things all day for job things and wanted to just smear ink about with a paint brush for a bit ;-)



Right now the bottom version is winning. Kind of a cross between the top and 2nd from the top...Updates will continue as progress is made.

This project shall be code named:

REC01

You will see why later ;-)

Watching True Blood episodes has given me back my southern accent.

If you talk to me in the next few days and I sound like I'm from East TN...consider it an exciting chance you aren't likely to have again ;-)

Second week of June WHAT?
I finally got some time to relax, although I could/should have been doing things. Useful art things. Instead I bought a book and read it. (Don't get excited it was a western from the used book shop)

Things you might be interested in:

- I'm doing Kyle Cassidy's enormous 'collaboration' journal-art-making-thing. I shall keep you updated on the progress, right now it involves building a poseable head swappable robot puppet...

- I found a recipe for chocolate lava cake online that is really incredibly delicious. The only thing you will need that you may not own - are little individual baking cup things. Ramekins they are called apparently. For some reason I had some already. I forget why.

http://www.famousfrenchdesserts.com/chocolate-lava-cake-recipe.html

Maybe my oven is a bit under the weather, but it takes me more like 20 minutes to get a decent firm outside-gooy inside. Put whipped cream on top. Mmmmmm.

- I got a big shiny printer on craigslist, and now my printing process is magically self sufficient. Yay Epson R1800. If you need something printed all archival and awesome, you can do so for the cost of the paper and ink required, just ask :-)

- I have new crochet hooks that are awesome and made by Brittany Needles. This makes me extraordinarily happy.

There, now back to enjoying a little bit more doing nothing.
And maybe strawberry shortcake.

You can now get my sketch blog on LJ thanks to Angie!

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/sarahdungan/

I post a lot of entries when I'm going mad sitting at my computer trying to work so I can go and work on something else that badly needs to be done by roughly the same time. Its like procrastination but if feels useful.

Does anyone know, must you have a paid LJ account to create a feed to which LJ users can subscribe?
My mate Emily did it for the Cephalopod Tea Party, but I've been trying to make one for my sketch blog and...failing. I thought it would be swell if my LJ peeps (outdated slang) could check my art blog from here rather then going to another website.

Taking a break from sculpting tiny robot heads (really, maybe I'll take a photo of rows and rows of disembodies robot heads before they're all...properly attached). I am taking this break to ask:

If you have watches that do not work (non-digital watches...actually...no any watches at all, I can play with electronics too) - mail them to me. I'm embarking (in the next while, rather then immediately, I seem to have filled my calendar until mid June somehow) on a series of robot-mix-media-assemblage sculptures involving all the very tiny watch bits I don't know what else to do with, as many tentacles and small glass vials as I can fit in, one tiny red model train wheel, and whatever else I can find. It will be an exciting excuse to return to the epic Alameda craft fair.

Also...anyone know any good how to articles on silk screen printing on t-shirts? I'm going to do so, and believe I should at least have some vague idea of how it works first ;-)


PS: Try replacing the battery first. I'd feel terribly guilty if I destroyed a perfectly functional watch that just needed a power source.

I was watching some of the original Trek episodes while working today (Go CBS.com and your free star trek online) - and I made an observation. Everyone talks about all Kirk's women but...

The ladies dig Spock.
Seriously, every other episode there's some girl crushing on him on an alien planet, and he flirts shamelessly with them all the while without facial expression ;-)

I felt it needed to be pointed out, carry on.

I've gotten to that point where I want to shop for myself. I do so well for a while and then just sort of find myself really wanting to buy something NOT related to work in some way.
For example, recently I bought myself paper, a desk clamp, a tiny anvil, and brass tubes....but those are all, in fact, tax write offs as supplies. Things I needed, even the anvil and the paper which were things I COULD have managed without but did not wish to. And of course, these things all cost money. Something like $80 in supplies over the last few days, and of course, they make me happy. The desk clamp in particular makes my life a million times easier (I have previously used 3 varying sides of cheap clip style clamps arranged in various awkward ways).

And yet, after this Friday committing to making myself rushed for the rest of the month with work (I had sort of expected to have a week free to prepare for vending at Maker Faire) - I am again looking wistfully at my Etsy favs thinking I deserve a reward for all the hard work I'm about to do ;-)

A Glass Bone


A Decemberists' Gig Poster


A Little Black Dress


A Plaid Purse

So I post this to get it out of my system. ;-)

(PS I like the cheerful kitty emote because it has a flower!)

  I just like the song, really.  That and I felt like my LJ had gotten remarkably bland for lack of philosophy, whining, drama, and general emotional outpouring.  So....take a moment and pretend that I have a boyfriend who is cheating on me so I just left him.

There, now that's out of the way.  The purpose of this whole thing is really because I took a pretty picture of a flower and I wanted to show it to you.

See, a flower.  SAY NOTHING ABOUT THE DIRTY DIRTY WINDOW.  Nothing.  Shhhhh.  Keep thinking about that faux-cheating-beau.  I actually think the dirt makes the image more interesting.

Okay fine I'm doing to clean the window (on the inside, you see the problem really is that I can't reach it from outside and do not own a step ladder.)

(Okay the problem might be that I've never once bothered to wash the outside of any of my windows and don't expect the urge will ever suddenly come upon me to do so.)

The poppies in California are orange.  Anyone who knows me, is aware that this makes me extraordinarily happy.  And they're blooming right now.  I stole this from a neighbor.  Although I suppose you could technically argue that something like six inches on either side of the sidewalk belong to the city - in which case I stole it from the city of Berkeley.

Because this is an imaginary drama post, maybe I should include some meaningful poetry.  You know, to go next to the photo of the flower?  Okay here goes:



There, it was a challenge, but I've successfully written an entire post about absolutely nothing, filled the entire height of the photo, and done something about being extremely restless at 11PM.  No I don't know where that poem came from.  I think it was about something or for something specific...I don't remember what though.  It sure is sappy though isn't it?



(An addition, after preview, to say that LiveJournal's formatting is extremely subpar.  Oh well it looked cool in the Rich text formatting window when I wrote it.)

If google turned evil...we would all be screwed.
Think about it:

Google knows everything on the internet.
Google monitors my website traffic and has all the information relating to that.
Google hosts my blogs...well besides this one...this one is Russian, apparently.
Google reads my email.
Google HAS PHOTOS OF MY HOUSE.

I'm just saying...

;-)