Doing some painting again.

Since today was a painful type of morning for me I decided to paint for a bit.  When I was out with my hubby he got me new paintbrushes so I could do something a bit more detailed.  I think these would have come out better if my wrists weren't aching up a storm but they arent too bad.  The first one here

Now I am not sure if it is good or not here.  I mean with the glare issues of taking the photo that is.

The next thing I worked on was, of course, a new flower.  I mixed up some shades to see if I could make it seem more 3D

Didn't come out too bad I think.  I will be deciding later if i want to add more to this or not.

The final painting was a bit of a test for me.  I had picked up a feather on a walk recently and thought, Hey why don't I try to paint a feather on canvas?  Now it was a bit tricky but here you go.

Did it work?  Good question but i had fun doing it.

Painting on the small or hey this is fun

Now any of you who follow me on facebook know I decided to try my hand at painting this summer.  I have had my successes and my failures of course.  Working with small canvases and acrylic paints I have painted flowers and the moon so far.  Now in no way do I claim to be a talented artist, no more than I think i am the most talented writer but i enjoy doing this.  The canvases I like to work with are both small at 5x7 and cheap.  I can get a three pack of them at the dollar store for a dollar.  This means I can teach myself to paint and not feel like I am wasting money.

Over the past two months I have been experimenting with different techniques using a variety of brushes.  Again the nice part about this is that everything I need comes from the dollar store.  In fact the very first canvas I bought even came with a small table top sized easel.

Okay actually to be honest my hubby started me off.  He bought me my first bottles of paint and brushes.  He was very sweet at this and very patient with my lack of confidence.

This image is the first one I painted and you can see it is bad. 

As you can see I had not learned yet to layer colors.  One of the earliest tricks in painting with acrylics to learn is that you put down one color, then let it dry before putting down the next.  I did better on the next set of paintings.

While they don't look great here they are actually rather nice displayed in my living room.  You can see I have some idea now about how to use the brushes to make petals and to use layers of colors to give depth to the painting.

Not that I haven't had my mistakes.  Yes the first one above was bad but so was this one

This image of death was so bad that I went out to a real craft/painting store and spent money on something called Gesso.  This product allows you to reuse your canvas by covering up your horrible mistakes.  This painting and two others that I don't have pictures of took two coats of Gesso to completely cover up.  Thankfully it is an easy process.

Gesso is a product that looks like think white paint that both covers up your mistakes and adds texture to your canvas.  A lot of painters who stretch their own canvases use it in the prep stage.  I have been lucky in that those cheap little canvases I buy are all ready prepared to paint directly on.

Here are a few more that I have done, just for the fun of painting

The one on the top had my attempt at a signature on it.  I don't know how the real artists sign there work. I really don't.  I think that will be my next thing to learn for sure.

Now these two paintings (final two for now) I actually used for more than just being pretty images on canvas.  The first I have used as a cover for my next Death Walks Through short story.

I have been told it has a nice eerie feel to it.  I hope so.

The next is my attempt at water flowers.  Now these came out so nice that my daughter decided she needed it for the background image in a photo of her latest gundam.  I like it.

Now I have a few others in the works.  I have started a sun to match the woman in the moon above and I have a canvas painted black as a background to what I hope will be a really nice feather painting.  Wish me luck!

Dragons, inspiration, magic or just a really cool toy?

Yup yesterday I said I would put up pics of my dragons but not just any of them.  These photos are of a line of kids toys known as megablock dragons.  They are snap together creatures with fun colors and poseability.  My sweet hubby got these for me a while ago.  Now they are getting hard to get since the company has stopped making them.  Figures right?  The fun thing with them is you have the big ones that look great and then you have the little ones that you can use in all kinds of fun little dioramas.  I have set them up from time to time attacking my hubby's Kreo transformers and next I plan to set them up in little battles with my SD gundams.  Here are some of the ones I have.

These guys are fun as you can see.  I have an army of yellow dragons and a scattering of other colors.  Of course my current favorite is the bottom image.  He is a draco lich...a skeleton dragon.  Unlike the ones above him he had a ton of parts.  It took me most of an hour to put him together.  He was filled with blue crystal lego pieces.  The others are a body, arms and legs, head and tail and wings and you are done. While I have them set up in various ways right now once I get the gundams built (and my daughter goes back to school!) I can play around and make little battles with them.  I may be almost old I am still a kid at heart and these are fun.

While I write a lot of interesting tales I don't put all my crazy creativity into my stories.  Sometimes you have to get out your toys and just play right?  Besides there is only so much I can do with my dragon characters (so far)

Getting interested in your spouse's hobby can be fun

Anyone who knows me knows that my hubby is a builder.  I don't mean actual buildings but models.  His favorite to build are of course gundams. Now if you don't know what they are I can show you easy enough.  They are robots from a japanese animation series.  This is one of the long running ones.  According to my hubby it has been out over 30 years!

As a fan of the show he of course knows every season and series of model.  Me, I find the anime a wee bit tiresome and well filled with old cliches but I admit the models are cool.

Now being a good wifey (yes no laughing here I am a good one!!) I said I would like to learn how to do the models.  The fancy HUGE ones he had are way too hard for a beginner but this little series of SD or super deformed ones seemed easy enough.  And to be honest there is a series of 12 minutes episodes that go with them and the story while a wee bit over the top is fun, funny and beautiful at the same time.

Now back to the models.  The first one he had me put together was of a horse.  Yes a horse,  If you know me you know I adore the image of horses.  The strength, the look as they run and their liquid soft eyes.  My first book that I owed as my very own was Black Beauty, so starting me with a horse made sense.

Another reason it did was well it was an easy kit.  This was considered a level two kit.  Simple and easy to put together so i did it.

As you can see he is a robot horse.  Now this was only partially done.  We decided to remove the stickers on his hooves and eyes and actually paint him.  He now is chrome and is really cool!

The second kit was a tad more difficult.  Still done in the SD size he had a lot more parts.  I can't remember his real name but I call him Mister Sticky stabby.  You can see why here:

Yes he has a ton of weapons.  What I hadn't realized when we got this kit is that he is a convertible kit.  Yes like the transformers that my hubby has this is a robot with a disguise...okay just another bigger form

Once I finished this one well I just had to do another one.  My third kit is Ryubi and he is still an SD gundam but he is a mega sized kit.  Now that confused me quite a bit but when I opened the box it made sense.  He is bigger than mr stabby but he is still that fun shape as you can see

We had to use the big stand for him but he was so cool and he has more accessories than Paris Hilton!

Now we have plans to black wash this.  Black washing or panel lining is a technique that helps bring out all the molded details on these plastic kits.  It was a lot easier than  I expected and I plan on doing him up this weekend.  After that we or more I will be using the hubby's airbrush (eekk) and putting a clear coat finish on the model.  See the foily stickers will peel up if not coated down.  A new thing for me to learn.

I had so much fun with these that I now have a bunch more to build.  Now the artwork on these boxes is quite good.  As you can see from these photos.

 These kits go from extremely simple (the first one) to really complex (the second kit) So I will be having fun and playing with these guys over the next few weeks.  I will post up more images as i work on my little friends.  And cooler still is that my hubby is planning on building me a shelf for my little guys and they come with enough friends that I can use my daughters legos, build castles and then make fun scenes with my dragons.  Tomorrow I think i will post up images of my megablocks dragons.  They are silly too but fun!

Writers reading stories written by writers about a story about a writer

Okay was that confusing enough?  Everyone knows I am a huge fan of tv/movies/books and music right?  One of the shows I watch faithfully is Castle.  I started watching of course because of Nathan Fillion.  Who wouldn't?  He is funny, handsome and a very talented actor.  But a funny thing happened.  The show turned out to be a lot deeper and a lot better than I expected.  So I kept watching.  The fact that he is playing an author on the show was in no small part why this show grabbed me.

They would mention his different books and then go on to work on what ever murder they had to solve that week.  Fun and fluff all at the same time right?  Well recently on a goof I decided to go to amazon and see if they actually put out any of the books that Richard Castle refers to.  And wouldn't you know it they did!

Yes I have complained about famous people getting all the notice because of their name but I thought hey this is a fictional book by a fictional character.  Lets see if they actually got a good writer or if one of the many talented script writers tried their hand at writing a novel.  Yes folks these are two very different skill sets.  I am a short story and novel writer, I have never even tried to do a script and I hold those who do in high regard but that isn't what this is about.

The first Nikki Heat book started out a bit rough, kind of what I expect but then I got sucked in.  I could see where the fictional Richard Castle had included himself and the fictional Kate Beckett in the stories but it was fun and lighter than a lot of the murder mystery/cop thriller books out there are.  So I decided to go ahead and read the rest. 

Let me tell you I can't wait for the fifth book!  They are slowly getting much better.  The writer (who every he or she is) has managed to catch the flavor of the fictional Richard Castle  and made the books fun and worth reading.  By ending the books with a cliff hanger of sorts it makes you want to read the next.

Just on a hoot I went and looked up Richard Castle on Wiki and whoa.  A very well done page with lots of books that you can actually download.  Amazing.  I wish I had such a nice page.  I decided right then that I might as well read the read of the so called Richard Castle books.  I have read four of the Derrick Storm books and they are the typical spy book with a bit of tongue in cheek and attitude.  Again a fun and fast read for a voracious reader like myself.

It was hysterical last night that they broadcast an episode with the fictional character who was the basis for Richard Castle's fictional female spy.  The episode was a lot of fun, actually had the same flavor as both of the series and of course had a dramatic cliff hanger at the end!  Yes these are reruns so I am lucky enough to be able to see the second part tonight but it was just pure unadulterated fun.

As a writer I dream of someday seeing my work in other forms.  I would love to see things like Guardians of the Gate city made into a short series.  The Saga of Loralil Greyfox made into an anime and even maybe my Death Walks Through tales made into a manga.   We all dream these things, wel don't dare hope but we dream.  Right now I will admit I just want to find a few (thousand) readers who love my tales and will read them and comment on them to me and the world.  I have a few fans who I adore having and I will continue to write what I can till the day I can't.

So as you can see my blog title is weird but it is accurate.  I am a writer who reads books about writers who write books about a writer in their books...confusing but fun and that is what reading and writing is all about to me.  Confusion and fun and maybe the ability to open up the mind of a reader to something they never thought of before.

Making book covers on your own

As a independent writer I have to do a lot of what publishers used to do.  Years ago a writer got to just do the writing.  Editing, marketing and things like book covers and even book trailers was done by your publisher.  People who have read my posts in other places know that the two small press publishers I have did none of that for me.

The editing and marketing parts bothered me quite a bit as I can only do so much editing on my own and well marketing is a skill, a well paid one.  I have little to no idea how to market my work and I am very glad to those who have taken the plug to read my work.

Even more I have a huge thanks for those who have beta read some of my work and have pointed out where I need to fix something.  When you are a starting writer with no money you have to hope to have wonderful friends who can help you.

But one thing I have enjoyed is making covers for my work.  Many of the covers have come out of my photography hobby.  When you have a few thousand nature shots it is easy to find something that will work.  I keep searching the web for fun fonts and play around in photoshop to make them better.  While most of my covers don't have half naked images I think they are okay.

Now that I have started trying to do painting I thought I would try doing one of my short story covers as a painting.  I wrote a short called The Pest House, which is a Death Walks Through short story.  It is based out of a story I read on the Nashua, NH facebook group.  Pest houses were the places that people with contagious diseases were taken to back in the 1830s.  Most of them were places for them to go and die.  So it fit perfectly in my series.

Going through my little paintings (yes I do small paintings) I decided this painting just might work well for the cover for this tale of a ghost

So should I use this or not?  Any suggestions?

Media in other forms or hey anime shorts on YouTube

Okay I blog about a lot of things.  On wordpress you can find my blogs and the perils of writing, examples of my writing, a cooking blog and a photography one.  But like everyone else under the age of 90 I am a fan of lots of media.

I watch tv, movies, listen to music, read books and even browse around on youtube.  Something cool that my hubby found yesterday for the family to watch was an anime series of very short eps based on the SD gundam.  As I have been learning to build these fun little guys I wanted to see the series that they are based on.

Of the first 6 or so eps I have watched I find it both funny and actually pretty good at the same time.  Yes it has a lot of the typical anime bits.  Three heroes who combine for a bigger, stronger fighter.  Bad dialog from the villains and the token female (this is for the male audience) character.  But the best part is this little series is great for the entire family.  Titled Brave Battle Warriors (I know but that is what it translates to) this is something that both parents and kids could sit down and watch.  Each episode is about 12 minutes long  and while there is a lot of cliche here, it is pure fun.  Fun in the old style of fun from when we adults were kids.

Anime has come a long way since I was first intriduced to it way back in the 60s.  Back then it was Speed Racer and Kimba the white lion.  Now you get the redux of Ghost in the Shell and the soon to be released Captain Harlock in CG.  Just pulling out my old VHS tapes of things like Wedding Peach or Bastard can send me back in time yet inspire me to new views of the world.

Japan has given the world a lot of amazing artwork over the years with mangas like Mushishi and Far, Far Away.  They have given us things like DragonBall Z (the never ending) and now they have given us a world stuffed full of tiny little robot warriors who are living out ancient legends.  Retelling stories that are a part of their cultural heritage while putting those tales into a format that the current crop of kids will enjoy.  That is both smart marketing (IE the model kits) and smart teaching.

As a writer I try to tell my tales in a way that will catch an audience and I have been known to take an existing legend and twist it around to fit my story.  I like that they have taken cultural history tales and twisted the characters to fit the story.  Try looking this up on YouTube.  I bet you will want to watch them all.