I’ve been in a strange mood over the last few days. I know a lot of it has to do with being turned down for the arts grant, which I know shouldn’t get me down, but it did, although at the same time it’s pissed me off and I’ve done nothing but work on canvases ever since.

ART

On Thursday I started the process of making backgrounds for 4 different paintings that will be a series and as of today, I’m finished, and now it’s time to work on the girls that will make up the 6th layer and this is all I’m going to tell  you about them:

• One will be a ballerina on a metallic pink, white and silver background with silver sparkles.
• One will be a princess on a light metallic blue, white and silver background with silver sparkles.
• One will be a flower girl on a metallic white, regular white and silver background with clear, iridescent sparkles.
• One will be a cheerleader on a metallic red, white and gold background with gold and red sparkles.

They are all of these things, but with a twist that I can’t tell you about. It’s a surprise and one that I think the majority of you, especially some of the ladies who come to this site, will really appreciate. ;o) Here are pictures of the backgrounds I took this morning, although I didn’t bother taking one of the flower girl background because the metallic white and sparkles don’t show up until it’s varnished so I didn’t see the point:

These paintings always take me forever because there are literally 5 layers that go into the backgrounds and as a result, there is a lot of waiting around for things to dry, particularly with the 4th layer, the splatter layer, because you wet the canvas down with a spray bottle of water, then you do your splatters on top of the water so they’ll sort of “melt” onto the canvas and you don’t get any hard edges and then you spray it down again to soften the edges of the splatters even more, so by the time you’re done, there’s about 2mm of water sitting on top of the canvas that has to dry naturally (meaning no hair dryer). That can take anywhere from overnight to dry, if I put them in front of the furnace, to 2 days or more to dry if it’s in the middle of the summer and humid.

So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. I’m not going to do all 4 at the same time from here on out because…well because I only have one pad of watercolour paper and each piece of paper yields 2 girls, so I have to finish the first 2 girls before I start the next 2 and if I’m going to finish the first 2, I might as well gel them onto the canvas and just finish the first two paintings before moving on to the next, especially since I have to flatten the girls with books as they dry on the canvas, so while that’s happening, I can work on the next 2 girls. It’s a process y’see.

CAMMITYJANE

I am aware of the fact that this project has yet to begin publicly. No one’s been bugging me about starting or anything, I just kind of had my own deadline as to when it should begin and I’m behind schedule. I wanted a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at what had been posted in 2006, so Blake photocopied my hard copy and we mailed it to my friend Marylin in Hamilton, who is also a writer. She should get it in a few days, then it’ll take her a few days to read it, I’m guessing and then it’ll take me a day or two to fill her in on the ending Blake helped me hammer out last weekend and then she can better give advice as to what should take place in the middle, which is what I’m stuck on.

Anyway, the way I see it is, this extra time gives you all a chance to sign up for Live Journal and add CammityJane as a friend for when the whole thing begins. If you’re unsure as to what CammityJane is, read the user info. It’s just this silly bit of fiction that I started working on in 2006 and I’ve decided to start working on again. You don’t really need a Live Journal to follow it, but it does make things easier.

PIXEL CAT

Sunday night Pixel Cat came home after being “missing” for 5 or 6 days. By “missing” I mean, we knew exactly where she was, she never leaves the boundaries of our yard and the neighbour’s yard and when she disappears for days at a time, she sleeps in these old sheds 2 doors down in the side yard of a condemned house. Now, she’s only disappeared for days at a time for one reason: Lucky. Specifically, Lucky wearing the cone of shame. I think it scares her.

Every other night or so that she was “missing” she’d run across the roof of my office and perch on the fence that’s off to the side of our patio stones, rubbing her cheek against the corner of the roof and generally doing that squirrely, loving cat thing. But of course when I came near her, she’d either climb back on the roof or jump down and run across the yard. She’s definitely a cat who will come in when she wants to.

So I figured whatever, she’ll come home when she gets hungry enough and Sunday night she pretty much did. She was on the fence doing the squirrely kitty act and I wasn’t buying it. I kept calling her, trying to coax her down, but she, being the princess type she is, decided to ignore me and when I took a step forward she jumped down and returned to doing the squirrely kitty thing next to the fence, well out of my reach.

Hoover Dog was standing behind me (I was half in the house and half outside the door), so I said, “Hoover, go bring her in,” and let him out. He walked out and she immediately scrambled to his side, rubbing up against his legs because the two of them truly are buddies. She even continued this while he took a whizz haha

When he was finished, I called him over to me and Pixel trotted along behind him, so then it was just a matter of picking her up, which I did and I carried her back in the house where she immediately scrambled out of my arms and into the kitchen where her food is.

I think she only came in because she was hungry and she’d used her kitty senses to know that it was going to know 3 inches the next day.

Anyway, she’s been sleeping practically constantly ever since, usually on my desk, well away from Lucky and his scary cone of shame:

HYPERCUBE

So, tomorrow (I think) I find out if I’ve made the top 500 in the contest who get to use a blank canvas on the hypercube website to garner your votes and be judged by…well, a panel of judges. And let me tell you, I AM NERVOUS. At first I felt fairly confident that I could make the top 500, but during the past week or so two things have happened:

1. The @hypercube lady has pretty much started to ignore me. :o( (To be fair, she has about 1800 people to keep track of on Twitter.)
2. People have been making crazy videos and animations and stuff that is completely outside of my skill set. I can’t compete with that.
3. I seem to be on the older end of the contestant pool and I get the feeling they want younger people driving these Cubes.

Thus, I’m nervous. :o/ Then again, I’m a paranoid person who’s not comfortable with surprises and “the unknown” so I’m just going to swallow these feelings and keep on keepin’ on, cross my fingers and see what happens.

In the meantime, here’s the second last batch of fansigns:

Moriah from the US <3s me and wants me to have a Cube.

So does Marylin from Hamilton.

And Rob from Toronto-ish.

And last but certainly not least:

Erica is a giant nerd. :oD

So that’s it for this post I think. Time to find food and veg out for the rest of the day (yeah like that’ll happen). And with that, I leave you with some Pixies: