Yeah, why not? Some of you are probably wondering what to do with all those lovely Christmas greens you've accumulated over this jolly time of year. Specifically, what do you do with that tree? Ah, the Christmas Tree. We got our lovely Silver Blue Balsam the weekend after Thanksgiving (unusually early) and she was still looking okay... Until the week of Christmas when almost a month of heavy ornaments, moisture-sapping lights, and "hey, did you remember to water the tree" caught up with her and she started shedding needles like a fiend. So, naturally, the weekend after Christmas we stripped her of ornaments and lights, cut off all her branches, and used those branches as "free" mulch: You may have heard this suggestion before in gardening literature. I'm posting about it now because this is only the second time I thought to do this and it's the first time it actually worked. Our city has a tree-mulching program but why let some random person keep our Christmas Tree forever? Plus, we needed the mulch sooner than I thought. We were in for a hell of a snowstorm. Which is good, at least on an aesthetic level. Hopefully, those branches will protect the new bulbs. Remember them from October? ---- FEEDERWATCH FRIDAY!!! Red-Tailed Hawk - 1 (OMG!!!)
Rock Pigeon - 4
Mourning Dove - 1
Blue Jay - 2
Black-capped Chickadee - 3
White-breasted Nuthatch - 2
House Sparrow - 15
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Sketch of the Day! This one has a reoccurring character in it!
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Next week is Movie Week, where I'll be posting long reviews of the three most memorable movies I saw over the holidays. On that note, I might have to suck it up and invest in a Blu-Ray player. Because...
As you'll see, this also serves as kind of a "2009 wrap-up" post. Some of these will demand longer posts later on after I've watched/read/played with them: I got the collection of Chuck Jones' "Tom and Jerry" cartoons on DVD. I know these shorts have their detractors, but I like them. I haven't watched this yet but it looks like it may be similar to the excellent "Droopy" collection they put out last year (well, LAST last year). I also got the four-disk Blu-ray edition of "Up". "But Trish, you don't have a Blu-ray player!" You're right but Disney has decided to do something neat to wean people onto the new format: regular DVDs come packaged with the movie and not a whole lot else but the Blu-ray DVDs come with the movie (both on Blu-ray and unleaded DVD format) and a whole lot of goodies.
Wait, did I say neat? What I meant was unnecessarily confusing.
Anyway, as you know I enjoyed "Up" and the disk is very nice. Man, I can NOT wait to plow through these! I've thumbed through these books and they all look to be amazing. The two-volume Drawn To Life books are about as daunting as the Greg S. Paul textbook I unwittingly got a while back, but I think I can take my medicine. The Goldberg and the Gurney (I have started in on the latter and it may be the best "how to paint" book I've ever read) are shorter but very nice and packed with rare artwork. These are a little more personal/in-jokey, but I had to share how awesome my sister is. She made a lovely photo album of our family reunion. My godfather gave me the cookbook, knowing I've started getting serious about expanding beyond my "heat up a can of Cream of Mushroom soup, cook frozen spinach, mix and dump in some spaghetti" repertoire. The random loose photographs are from my participation in LAST last year's Comicazi.con. I also got a copy of Inventory (not pictured but very nice and funny as to be expected from The Onion), and Obligatory (but useful) Gift Cards to GameStop - destined to take a chunk off the cost of "Soul Silver" (if it has the more interesting version exclusives) - and to the Apple store. Hmmm... why would I need that? For my new toy badass art-making machine, of course. I am... REALLY excited to start playing with this. I shall gush when she's fully set up. Here's today's Sketch of the Day (or Whatever)!
Not sure what part of the creative process this gives insight into but that rabiescorn may need to be colored in soon.
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Oh gosh I just learned -like, literally just learned- that Arisia is this weekend! I don't know much beyond the fact that this is a huge sci-fi/fantasy convention in Cambridge, MA, they will be showing "Zombieland" and "Moon" among other films, and I missed the registration deadline. Wah. (To be fair, spring tends to be the start of convention season around here. Oh well.) Still, this may be a fun time for those of you in the general MIT vicinity.
On today's episode of Stuff That Demands Elaboration:
While hunting around for "Banjo the Woodpile Cat" clips, I came upon this piece (embedding wasn't allowed; it's definitely and almost aggressively weird in a distinctly Don Bluthy way, but it's also safe for work and for kids): Don Bluth's "Jawbreaker"
I need to know more about this right freakin' now. Anyone out there have any idea what the story is behind this? Bluth himself posted the video and he was pretty cryptic in his description. I got a definite "Rock and Rule" / good parts of "The Pagemaster" feel from it.
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The animation world lost a very unique person this past weekend. Art Clokey, best known for "Gumby" and "Davey and Goliath", will be sorely missed. Here is "Gumbasia", the short film that helped him sell the "Gumby" concept to television producers. Enjoy the three and a half minutes of pure 😵:
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As I said last week, it is technically still Christmastime (according to some calendars; see Wikipedia). That means it's not too late to enjoy the South Fla. Sun-Sentinel's annual Bad Santa Photo gallery. They're up to 350 snapshots of little kids having their minimal but still pretty reliable understanding of reality ripped out from under them. Now there's gotta be something like this for costumed characters at Disney World, ect.
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One of my New Year's Resolutions is to (a) try to fill one Sketchbook page per day and (b) share more of my own art, good bad and indifferent, on this blog. To that end, here is the first Sketch of the Day Whatever Length of Time! This one actually is a scan of an entire Sketchbook page, so click for the larger version: Now while I am adding a background color for clarity, these sketches are as-scanned and pretty much exactly how they look on the page, warts and coffee stains and all. I'll still be sharing more polished pieces, but I like giving a little insight into the smudgy, brain-farty part of the creative process. Not sure what kind of insight this particular sketch gives but...
