So I did something to my back, and I am in a lot of pain. The doctor gave me anti-anxiety meds instead of regular muscle relaxers, which are supposed to to the same thing… but don’t. And, because of the opioide epidemic, they are reluctant to give out good pain meds. So I am on regular Tylenol… which is not helping. So, I may not post much for a day or two. Unless I get better meds… than… watch out.
We went and visited our friends and the new twins! They were still at the hospital.
My daughter, Mollie, has my way with babies… and she now has pink and purple hair.
But is there any feeling in the world like holding a new baby?
Yes, my little buddy, Olivia, is now a big sister. We are going to go meet the babies soon.
And there is our friend, Joey, who will probably never sleep again. HA!
You know, because editing two novels and preparing them for self-publication, designing covers for the books, beginning work on a new novel, getting a kid ready to go away to college, working two part-time jobs, all while trying to send off samples of my books to literary agents in the hopes that I get picked up by an actual publisher… oh, and having the transmission in my car crap out… wasn’t keeping me busy enough.
The thing is… (hey, a thing, we haven’t had a thing for a long time)… I do my art, whether writing a song, or painting or drawing, or doing a book, or even a blog post, only when I feel the art calling me. I am all-art-side-of-the-brain. Besides making it hard for me to market my stuff, it means that I am at the whim of my muses.
Like most tikis, this one started off looking more like a log than a work of art. But inside every log is a person, waiting to come out.
My original plan was to make the new tiki look like this one, the very first one I ever did… which is now rotting and being eaten by bugs. Unfortunately, art does not work to plans, not for me, and that isn’t the face I found inside this particular log.
That’s okay. You can’t make a log be somebody different than it is, any more than you can a person. On an interesting note, this is the first time I am using an actual log that is often used by actual tiki-carvers. Long story short: One of my part-time jobs is managing four little bungalow apartments down at the beach, here in San Diego. And I met a guy down at the beach who carves tikis. He had a couple of big palm logs on the side of his house and gave them to me. I think they are Mexican Queen palms, but I might be wrong about that. Either way, it is a kind of wood used for some tikis. Most of the logs I get are just discarded firewood or trimmed-tree parts. I never do anything the normal way. That would be too easy. This wood is sort of fibrous, which is a challenge, but at least it is soft.
But we will see where this new tiki takes us. I need to work on the tiki that looks like me, too. I really should finish that one.
Well, this one has more princess, which I like. And I darkened up the foliage a little. Is that still too cluttered?
Another quick layout idea for the cover art for the new book. This one has the princess… AKA my daughter, Mollie… I like the grey background better than the white, but I still think it needs some foliage. And yes, I will remember to make the jacket and helmet look more fantasy world than Army surplus store.
Feedback?
This is about as simple an idea for a book cover as you could possibly come up with. A plain, white background. I like the font. But I miss the princess. I want to come up with a way to incorporate the image of my daughter as Princess Hildy, but without filling the entire background. I will get back to you with some ideas for that.
Pouring My Art Out by Arthur H. Browne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at https://pouringmyartout.wordpress.com/.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
