Today's Cat-Toon!
ACEO Cat Monitor (Why CRT Monitors are Better) is posted on eBay, second of my Cat-Toons, suggested by a friend, Peicasa. She mentioned the TV-sitting tail-swishing habit, and I remembered fondly my days of Ari on top of the CRT monitor tail-swishing while I wrote or geeked.
So there's another laugh for cat lovers everywhere... it's obvious. Laptops and flat screen monitors were created as anti-cat measures by dogs or rodents, right? Although the ultimate laptop is a feline draped from knee to knee. Pet your cat.
I'm also jumping the gun and starting my May project early. I did a little under 500 words of intro for my Colored Pencil Realism Workbook which is going to include still lifes, florals, portraits and landscapes, have all the things I wanted to put in the colored pencils book -- but tighter, and laid out in one of those big spiral bound workbook formats that lay flat while you're doing the project. I always liked those and kkitten42 suggested trying that format rather than the oversize-paperback type of thing. Heck, it'll make it easier for people to scan the line drawings for the coloring exercises.
I'm now merrily into the Nth Iteration of a Materials chapter and miracle of miracles, it's running short! I want it short. I want to leave things open for the reader to pick up whatever brand is on sale and try many different brands and papers. So the chapter is more about testing and trying materials easily available than demanding you buy Prismacolors if you live in England or Derwents if you live in the USA. It's fun. I'm enjoying it and getting somewhere - and we will see how it goes, whether I can get it together in a month.
After that, in June there's the SFFmuse Summer Fun Run... a pre-Nanowrimo activity of doing a thousand words a day (or more) for two or three months. I want to write a novel this summer, so I'll start on June 1st and see what happens, just like Nanowrimo. Being me, I might do more than one. We'll see when I get to it. But setting modest goals is helping me enjoy life more and enjoy my writing more than if I set gigantic ones and don't quite make it. I can always up my goal once I reach the first one!
I have no idea what I will actually choose to write come June, but it'll be a novel and it'll be fun. I have several well-ruminated ideas and may think of another one by then. Probably will. But whatever it is, I'll get into it and immerse. If the workbook takes longer, they can overlap.
The main thing with the workbook is for me to do the projects and then change my current habits, instead of posting them at large immediately, keep them under wraps till the book is complete. Some examples will be previous high points, super artworks like Ferns, Moss and Water that I still own and can scan. I might do one new super-realistic big piece by the time I'm done, to have stages and progress on it in depth. Plus several others that are smaller, ACEOs and 5 x 7" pieces. Arlene Steinberg put several smaller Colored Pencil Paintings into her book and it was fine, so that gave me the idea it might not take forever to do this.
I'm having fun and the sun is shining, hope you are too!