Updates, and Ink and Fairydust

I thought I would let you know the results of those tests I kept talking about- I have carpal tunnel and nerve damage in both hands and elbows. Excellent news for an artist right? Oh well. Thankfully, my left hand is the worst, which is good because I am right handed. Will my right hand get worse? Probably. It's already given me issues for a long time, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. God has taken care of me thus far- I don't see any reason to doubt Him now.

Also, the next Ink & Fairydust is out! Featuring a lovely cover by Mary MacArthur. There are a couple drawings inside done by yours truly that I have already posted on this blog.

I have a crazy month art-wise ahead of me. I have another commission, my Arthouse Sketchbook Project, and the next issue of Ink & Fairydust to illustrate before the end of the month. I work best under pressure, so in some ways I am excited, just as long as I get it done in the end! Time for the montage music.

I hope you all are having a blessed Good Friday, one of my favorite days of the year, and that you have a lovely Easter!

God bless and happy Easter!

One Lost Chord Divine

I am back! And with a painting. This one is a commission for a lovely friend who has managed to get two pieces out of me, which is quite an accomplishment actually. I jest of course. A little bit.

Anyway, enough nonsense, here it is. She hasn't actually seen it or okayed it yet, but I wanted you to see what I am working on none the less:

This is a mix of ink and watercolor. Mostly watercolor.

It is based off this poem:

A Lost Chord

Seated one day at the Organ,

I was weary and ill at ease,

And my fingers wandered idly

Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,

Or what I was dreaming then ;

But I struck one chord of music,

Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,

Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,

And it lay on my fevered spirit

With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,

Like love overcoming strife ;

It seemed the harmonious echo

From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexéd meanings

Into one perfect peace,

And trembled away into silence

As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,

That one lost chord divine,

Which came from the soul of the Organ,

And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel

Will speak in that chord again,

It may be that only in Heaven

I shall hear that grand Amen. 

-Adelaide A. Procter

Alice and Snowflakes

       Well, I did it. I gutted out a drawing late last night. Heh, you guys are so good. Yesterday, starting in the morning and lasting all day, different people, both friends and complete strangers, encouraged me in one way or another to keep drawing, just do it, etc. That did more than you know. Even the tiniest bit of encouragement can go a long long way, which I need to learn from myself.
        These are two more pages, done once again with my trusty Bic Atlantis pen, for my Arthouse Sketchbook Project book, which is due in less than a month, and I am no where NEAR finished. Grrr. Need to gut out some more drawings!

“Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about — whenever the wind blows — oh, that’s very pretty!” cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. “And I do so wish it was true! I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.” -Lewis Carol, Through the Looking Glass


      Tomorrow I get the results back from some tests, and find out if I need surgery, or if they even found anything wrong, etc. So, again, prayers would be awesome. I am actually more afraid that they didn't find anything than if I need surgery. I have been through this before, and I hope they actually find something wrong this time. Can't fix the problem until you know what it is you know. 


One of the lovely people who helped me yesterday sent me this:

       Thank you, lovely little person you. 

Just so You Know...

        I am alive. But not so well. Thus so much.... inactivity. I have my own health difficulties, someone else in the family is sick, I am still wrestling with school issues, etc- so, not much priority has been given to blogging, unfortunately. Or drawing, which I hate like I hate very few things. I am actually having difficulty with my hands, which is NOT ideal for an artist. So, if you could say a little prayer for that, that would be amazing. So far it's mostly my left hand, which is good for a right-hander like me, but if the right hand gets bad, well, I suppose I'll deal with that if and when it comes.
      I hope you are having a good Lent. I think I have. I never really know for sure, for better or worse.

God bless! 

'When it is all over you will not regret having suffered; rather you will regret having suffered so little, and suffered that little so badly.'
-St. Sebastian Valfre

‎"The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man." -Fyodor Dostoevsky

Men say the sun was darkened: yet I had
Thought it beat brightly, even on—Calvary:
And He that hung upon the Torturing Tree
Heard all the crickets singing, and was glad.
          -GK Chesterton

“From one thing, know ten thousand things” -Miyamoto Musashi

“Under the sword lifted high, There is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, And you have the land of bliss.” -Miyamoto Musashi

Now, just why am I quoting an ancient martial arts master? Because the next article I have to illustrate for Ink and Fairydust Magazine is about weapons. And, well, because any excuse to quote Miyamoto Musashi is good enough for me. 

I fancy I am the middle one...

“Do not sleep under a roof. Carry no money or food. Go alone to places frightening to the common brand of men. Become a criminal of purpose. Be put in jail, and extricate yourself by your own wisdom.” -Miyamoto Musashi (just because it sounded cool?)

More such quotes by him:

“The only reason a warrior is alive is to fight, and the only reason a warrior fights is to win” 

“When you decide to attack, keep calm and dash in quickly, forestalling the enemy...attack with a feeling of constantly crushing the enemy, from first to last.” 

“Perception is strong and sight weak."

“To become the enemy, see yourself as the enemy of the enemy” 

I had fun with this drawing. 

Dianthe Illustration

Here is another illustration for Ink and Fairydust Magazine. Well, I haven't actually heard if they will use this drawing particularly, but I thought I'd show you what I have been working on allllllll day. This is the second version- the first had an ink splatter on her nose.

This was a mix of ink, watercolor, and touch-up with Corel Painter X.

This coming issue is on mythology. This drawing was for a retelling. Shew. Now I have to do an illustration about weapons! Hopefully I won't splatter ink on this one, and take all day doing it.

Dear Beatrice,

“I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the Theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”

                        —Lemony Snicket

And that was the BEST thing ever.