Quickie sketch of Doug Walker, aka the Nostalgia Critic, which I did for a warmup drawing.  I’ve been so fucking busy this month that I have barely had enough time for Garanos, to the misfortune of all other artwork at the moment.

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The baby lettuces are here!  These pictures were taken last night, 8 days after planting.  So far, 4 Caesar, 1 Salad Bowl, 3 Simpson, and 4 Little Gem have sprouted, so that’s only 4 bad cells in this planting.  I’m disappointed that more Salad Bowl hasn’t sprouted, so I hope to get a better yield from them the next time I start seedlings.

There was a small mold problem afflicting the exposed edges of the pots early last week, but I consulted the gardening subreddit, and it appeared to be due to over-watering.  I let the seedlings dry out a bit and it cleared right up, so I’m happy about that. ^_^

Meanwhile, the sunflowers have gone INSANE and grown to about 4 inches high.  I transplanted them to a self-watering pop bottle planter several days ago, when I discovered their roots were poking through the bottom of the pot they were in before.  I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too soon, since the seedling wasn’t very big yet, but they, um, appear to be doing okay.  ^_^;

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A pretty nice sketch I did in the break room at work last week.  I don’t know if I’ll color it or not, because I really like it as a sketch!

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During my neighborhood walks the past few days, I’ve been taking my camera with me to collect textures and references, and this photo stood out as rather lovely. ^_^

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As the first bit of art I actually got done after my Week of Rest, I’m really happy with how this cover turned out.  I’d had thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook done that never really captured the gestures and mood I wanted, but when I actually sat down with the full sheet of paper to attempt a final drawing, it came out pretty easily, and on the first try, no less!

I wanted to attempt some more interesting lighting than I usually use, so I went for an extreme-overhead light source, which I think also helps with the overall mood of this piece.

The color-shifting effect is a seperate layer with the Blending Mode set to Color, with rust red, purple, and blue painted in by hand with a soft brush.  It’s set to about 45% opacity, so the ‘natural’ colors are just tinted a bit, rather than have them be very very saturated with the color overlay.  It produced a very nice effect that I really like with the symbolism of Ethre, Gara, and Styx’s respective colors.  She has this choice between the two men presented before her, and yet both are equally a part of her, and important to her in many distinct ways.

All in all, very evocative, and I’m proud to have this as the cover for the final chapter of Garanos.

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I planted my lettuce last night!  Since the seedlings will take 7-10 days to emerge, I wanted to time it so it would more or less fit around the Martini Party next weekend.

I actually picked up a 4th type of lettuce from another Target I visited this week: Little Gem lettuce.  Isn’t the name just sickeningly adorable?  So I have 4 cells for each lettuce type here to start out.  Depending on how well the seedlings go, I might have a large number of extra plants, but we’ll see what happens.

Above them is my grow light, which I got from Garden Indoors.

Here is my current setup.  I had the blue wire shelves just lying around, since when I bought my black wire shelves for my Artist Alley table, I picked up a second set for backup, but then it turned out I mistakenly chose a blue shelf.  Of course, the reciept was long gone by the time I figured it out, so I just kept it and was using the blue connectors as spares.  So I put together this little shelf.

When the seedlings actually go into the bucket, I’m going to remove the shelf in the middle and make a little apparatus so I can raise and lower the light to the right height.

These two little pots are a couple of mini grow kits from the Target dollar section.  The round pot has clovers (which are already starting to peek out through the soil) and the square pot is sunflowers.  ^_^  I don’t have the special little pot for the sunflowers because I accidentally dropped it and broke it when I got it home. :<

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I have a dream… of lettuce.

This all started the other night when I came across an article on dumpster diving.  I first read a particular article on the subject two or three years ago, in which an adult couple decided to go dumpster diving to supplement their store-bought groceries, and they got their spending down quite a bit by doing so.  (Try as I might, I cannot find that article again to link to it, but I would.)  That’s what first piqued my interest, anyway, and maybe every few months or so, another article mentioning dumpster diving would crop up in the myriad of frugality blogs I read.

But for whatever reason, the other night I was scouring the internet in a caffeine-induced haze, searching for accounts of dumpster diving like they were porn.  However, when I brought the subject up with Chris, he kind of put his foot down.

No dumpsters for me in the immediate future.

However, my manic energy has now turned to container gardening.

I hate buying produce with a passion.  I almost never eat it fast enough to get through it before it spoils, unless I buy for a specific meal I have in mind, like curry.  I inevitably have a horribly balanced diet with very few vegetables, because I just avoid the veg-angst and don’t buy produce at all.  But mostly, I hate having to buy lettuce whenever I want a decent goddamn sandwich.

Sandwiches without lettuce suck my will to live.

So I’m going to grow me some lettuce.

This is my setup, pre-potting.  I’m repurposing this blue bucket for a planter, and I got the seeds and seedling pots from Target, as well as a bag of potting soil.  The empty ice cream tub is my new container for used coffee grounds.  I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to get holes drilled in the bucket for drainage or just use some gravel.  I feel like it would be a better idea to drill holes in the bucket, but to do that I have to find a friend with a drill they could lend me.

I’m starting out with three types of lettuce.  The Giant Caesar lettuce has a harvest time of 70 days, but the Black-seeded Simpson and Salad Bowl are both just 45 days, so I’m hoping to have baby lettuce leaves after about 4 weeks.

The only thing I still need is a grow light, so that’s going to be my next scavenger hunt before I start the seedlings.

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Of The Office fame, among other roles, it’s BJ Novak.  He has a very fun face to draw.

Oh Ryan, how the mighty have fallen again and again.

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Today’s caricature is fellow ISCA member Eddie Uresti.  He reminded me of those old Lemon Heads candies.

You know.  These!

Thus is the last of the caricature sketches I’ve been hoarding for rainy days.  Guess I better get to drawing some more of them.

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I worked a couple of cashier shifts at Tarjay last week, and noticed all the boxes of valentines for kids, which made me a little nostalgic for the days when you could give out little cards with corny phrases and Power Rangers on them, and be all set for V Day.  I know I had all sorts of various valentines sets throughout my elementary school years, but the only one that comes to mind is the Lisa Frank set I probably had in 2nd or 3rd grade.

Oh, and I gave my friends Lord of the Rings valentines when I was a senior in high school, just for laughs.

So I got the idea to make some Garanos valentines.  I couldn’t think of very many plot-relevant corny phrases, so I just have these three.

The 4th valentine concept, which I didn’t get to, was Gharsena running away from a fireball with the caption “Hope your Valentine’s Day is a BLAST!”  Hurr hurr.

It was a good excuse to draw both Maryoku and Geilen’s red lacy outfit again.  I’m also in love with the expressions in the second valentine. XD  I didn’t go too crazy with shading on these, since they were just for fun, but I’m learning lately that I generally don’t need to go too crazy with the shading in regular comics anyway.

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