In bordertown. No, not that Bordertown. Yet.

I am leaving this part of the country on Friday. All monsters are packed and the amazing carpet is safely stoved away and will remain so for a while til I find somewhere more permanent to live. I have my books, clothes and some steampunk gear packed in the car and I am bringing approximately 25% of all my drawing supplies. Yes, only a quarter. Yes, it was very hard to choose what to bring. No, I am not finished yet.

I have, as usual when moving, ceremonially decided to never move (this far) again, come hell, high water or an apocalypse. I am really quite finished with moving around and I doubt I’ll change my mind anytime soon.

Now, I have still had time to draw, write and read these past couple of weeks. Thankfully, or I’d have gone insane.

I have written very little of the project I am thinking about making and selling on RPGnow. Put simple, it is a way for me to hopefully spread my work a bit, at the same time giving the opportunity for various smaller RPG companies/people/game masters to use art at a bargain price.

Pen: Parker 51 EF
Ink: J Herbin Perle Noir (not satisfying, too little pigment to make a good black)
Paper: Seawhite of Brighton
Verdict: The idea? Borders. Borders, walls, separators and other stuff to reign in text. B&W linedrawings that work digitally and IRL. Below are drolleries. The finished work will be much more detailed and larger in size. I plan at least seven different themes to begin with. Below are freehand drolleries of the first one and a tiny bit of inspiration for the second.

Please excuse the abhorrent image quality. My scanner is in a box somewhere so I had to use my digital camera and tried somewhat unsucessfully to clean the images up in PhotoShop in various ways too tedious to recount here.

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A tale of a Three-tail’d Dragon

Title: An unfinished Three-tailed dragon.
Size: 18 cm from eartip to end-of-middle-tail (Well, the left-most tail if you follow them closely).
Computer alteration: None.
Paper: Clairefontaine 90 g.
Inspiration: This three-tailed dragon have been giving me the sad eye for several months now, hanging out in the very front of my notebook and making me feel guilty for not completing him. It started with an idea of a faerie-dragon with a plait of three tails (what would YOU do if you had three tails? Plait them, of course!).
Notes: I decided to do things in the proper order and made a graphite sketch (I really, really dislike the word “sketch”. “Graphite” is pretty, though). Filled it out some with the Parker EF (now with J Herbin Perle Noir, which isn’t as black as I’d wish, but annoyingly the first black ink that works very well in the capricious piece of pen). Added the purple (Diamine Damson) shadowing on a (severely misguided) whim. Now I/he is stuck. So, I thought I’d give him some notoriety and see if anything happened.
Upcoming: I am not quite sure. RPGnow-project developing nicely, as is Life in general.

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Sinningia muscicola Rio das Pedras

Another look at the vivarium, now with flowering Sinningia muscicola Rio das Pedras.
This species is one example of a collection of species and hybrids commonly called “micro-mini Sinningias”. The diameter of the plant rosette is about 3 cm (that’d be a little more than an inch). The flowers are about 5 millimeters, pure white except for some vague blue mottling in the throat. My plants really thrive in the humid environment with constant air- and water circulation and good lighting (all these variables are important to avoid molds, algae overgrowth and rot. More on the construction of the vivarium in this post). There are other micromini species and I plan to try them all out. Having a vivarium this small is a bit like having a reverse bonsai, grooming meticulously inwards instead of pruning borders. I am looking forward to continue working with it. I do like the idea of restricting my huge intrest-drive to a smaller space like this. Restriction makes for quality and lots of time for this one structure. This thing is like a tiny green jewel.

There is a lot of information on Sinningia cultivation on the ‘net. A good start is googling “micro-mini sinningia” or visiting the American Gesneried Society homepage. I joined the Swedish Gesneriad Society earlier this year and I am very happy with the magazine and general attitude towards newbies (the homepage is partly in English).

Thanks to my father for taking the very fine photographs!

In other news: two weeks until I move and start working at my new, very exciting place of work. Looking forward to it immensely.
Recently read: I finally got to read Jasper Ffordes Shades of Grey, and oh, was that a great read! The only good thing about putting off reading it for so long may be that the next book in the installment (of three, I believe) comes out later this year. The wait from 2010 would have been long, had I read the first installment earlier. Since I love reading about colour, perception, weird stuff and dystopia-flavoured adventures in mad bureaucracies, this book is just up my alley. The general colourfeeling of this book is a somewhat bleak sepia tone. The constant referencing to colours messes up my synaesthetic book-sense, though (and I am not bothered by that in the least). This book is among getting-in-hardback-for-regular-price-territory for me, which is sort of epic since I am a bit neurotic when it comes to spending money. I have gotten better about that, though. Largely because I like authors getting their due.
Future plans: I wish I could get started making small illustrations related to books I have really enjoyed, to try to capture the vividness of imagery a really well written book creates in my mind. Next blog post is wholly original though, but unfortunately not yet finished (and may never be…).

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