For Bill...

Here yah go Bill. Mapel and Cink. Hope you like the concept of the twins.... still a bit sketchy, but I'd like to know what you think of it so far.

Winter Ice

... it was looking a little quiet on here so I thought I'd post my drawing gone awry. I was charged to draw a skinny young adolsecent with dress and sleeves down to the floor and dark hair. It started with long flowing hair... I was supposed to have it about shoulder length... and it was supposed tobe an indoor setting... well it just went from there. Photoshop & Wacom...
also, it took some extra time because I had someone telling me i couldn't use my tablet. Mind the empty shelf, I'm moving this month to Rockyhill.

Scorpion

crappy little scorpion doodle... for a scorpio I know

Big Bad Wolf

Red decided the wolf wasn't so bad after all...
Owwww!

Nightmare

per request. ...and because I love play on words.

there's more to tentacle monster's than porn...

it flies... somehow.

my cousin rob made this. I thought it was kinda neat so I posted it :P It looks like summer.

In other news Jay's gotten a job with travelers, we have to thank josh for his good word and help with that. Now that things are looking up, jay's trying to get me fishing and has us looking for another car, because we'll need it. there's no feasible way we could car pool.

Beauty

better late than never...
My ramblings on beauty: For this subject I had so many ideas, and yet none that I could put into a tangible artwork. Would it be classical beauty in the form of some cloth draped goddess? Some transcendental landscape? Some vague modern piece of elegant, sophisticated architecture? no. I couldn't settle on one work.
Better to choose none perhaps. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say. I say its more like air - tell someone to draw air; to represent it in a painting true to life. Can you really ever portray air? Or can you only show its effect on everything else? Maybe you can only show it how your mind perceives it, somewhat like the way ancient map makers inked a fat-faced cloud blowing curling tendrils of wind to show the currents. Whoa, too vague to draw air. Who does that outside of cartoons and old mapmakers? What about water?
Water is portrayed in some of the most beautiful works you'll ever see - ancient Roman baths where those marble beauties stood, the waterfalls and lakes of those transcendental brushed canvases... oh heck, I've gotta fish tank right next to me. It's a work of modern technology with all its filters and plant fertilizers. Haven't I gotten all three of my prior choices in one?
It occurred to me when the topic first was presented that my home is a beautiful land worth mentioning for this piece. Not my creaking century and a half colonial, nor the wild rocky garden out back with its flowers and koi pond (again with the water) but the defining aspects of the region. For those of you who have not seen New England or western NY, come visit, it's beautiful. I warn you though I'm biased on that.
...but I digress. To my surprise my husband was getting excited earlier this year for the beginning of fishing season. I had NO IDEA that he liked fishing. He only mentioned that he went with his family as a child. Being newly wed, I was amused and humored him. We bought a CT fishing license; borrowed a pole. He searched online for local fishing spots that had trout. I found a net at a tag sale. By June, he had tried the local stocked pond at the state park down the road, other spots outside of town, and a few local woodland creeks and falls with the males of my family.
The vernal falls over rocky hills and cliffs near my house were still flowing steadily in June, creating mossy, ferned woodland pools, flowing to creeks, then to rivers and finally into Long Island Sound in the Atlantic.
I never imagined he'd open my eyes to a beauty I had so often overlooked. The Naugatuck River is a mere few hundred feet down the hill from my house. In winter you can see it through the trees. Jay had gone fishing there. I was surprised - I thought it was dead.
The industrious New Englanders of the past used to put mills on any river that had enough speed to wash down waste and give hydro power. With its steep gradient and even steeper forested valley walls, the Naugatuck was one of these.
The rocky little river that widened as it flowed became so polluted local boards of health had declared it a toxic stew of noxious chemicals nearly a century ago. Most local waterborne creatures steered clear of it for decades. Sure they tried cleaning it a bit here and there from the 70's on, but even as a kid most joked swimming or playing in the water would make you glow. I hadn't realized that somewhere in between my growing up and forgetting about the river outside my door it came back to life.
One Saturday we drove north up the river to look at a few spots for him to fish. I chuckled to myself imagining the odd scrawny fish he might find after a week of trying. Pulling over on the side of a wooded dirt road, and stumbling down some rocks, to my amazement, a school of minnows swam past the shore. I looked upstream, to watch a man and his son fish just below a rapid area of granite boulders. Downstream in my town of Thomaston, an old stone spillway behind an aging long forgotten brownstone mill was the fishing spot of not a man, but a crane, waiting silently and still for the rainbow trout to show. A sign nearby stated the rules of salmon trophy fishing in that area.
"Salmon trophy fishing?" I asked, stunned.
I never realized that little river could be the home of salmon, let alone the trophy variety. Our final spot was near the house, the spot I used to take my dogs walking as a child. A pair of woodland ducks swam by unphased as the hawks circled low. That area is sunny. I assumed not much would be there that afternoon, not like the shaded spots we saw that morning. We climbed down the brush covered bank to a smooth outcropping where the bedrock peaks out of the soil. Sure enough, a school of large carp rested within the deep smooth crevasses of the jetty, not the least bit startled by our jumping rock to rock. The day left me filled with an emotional realization.
I always knew the river flowed and ebbed with the seasons. I knew it carved out the valley my sleepy little town is nestled in. Yet, if you had told me this body of water was teaming with life I would've laughed. I had looked at the delicate flower flourishing in the sidewalk crack as an unsightly weed.
I admonished myself for my folly. All these years, I admired the details of the landscape: the falls, the forest, the ferns, the animals yet ignored the flowing lifeblood that kept it alive and carried it all away on it eternal journey to the sea.
The struggle and rebirth of that which is essential to life returning to its former glory... that it beautiful. Beauty surrounds us all. Like air, we cannot always see it, but every once in a while when we step outside and pay attention, that gentle breeze we feel against our skin reminds us its there. One can look at the same view everyday and not see the loveliness of that spot, then suddenly through another's eyes we are awakened and see it everywhere. Let it be the lesson simply to look for it in all things.

I picked up two old cameras from a tag sale... I love tag sales in summer, never know what you'll find, they cameras an olympus and a sears camera came with telephoto lenses included and camera bag for 10 bucks total, I always wanted to try that sort of thing out... well the guy was honest - he said the olympus might not work, but by a battery and see, he hadn't used it in ages. Sure enough he was right, after two attempts at photos, two rolls of film came out wasted. Too bad really, those rolls would have been forests, waterfalls, and my nephew's prom. Bummer.

Anyhow here are some blatantly stolen pictures from the internet of what I did see... the rest well, local secrets, not all of them can be googled :)

soo....

I used to have a blog on here... I found it, but i couldnt remember a password or login... here's a copy of a post I found amusing.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

The art of the double entendre

DairEl: So, is that on your list now? Like, with guys now, does "compatible" mean "compatible video game system owning?"
DairEl: ;-)
TriumphsEve: lol. and pc with nice hardware of course
TriumphsEve: a girl has to be picky
DairEl: Understandable.
TriumphsEve: hehe im glad.. for a minute i thought that might be too much to ask for
DairEl: Nothing worse than getting back to a guy's apartment and finding out that his hard drive is...undersized.
TriumphsEve: yeah, even worse if thigns slow down because he doesnt have enough ram in his system
DairEl: LOL!
TriumphsEve: lag and a restart is not the way to impress a lady :-)

so uh... why bother to come back? cause I want to be creative somewhere without everyone I know poking there nose in it. Face it, every random highschool acquaintance and cousin who finds my name on myspace or facebook doesn't need to see every doodle or thought, do they? anti-social here I come!! oh but yeah, Creative works is on here and I kinda want another place to collect my art I make. This would be it.

My first work for the site. the subject - growing up.
all pencil and pen