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robertsloan2 — Cheetah circa 1990
Published: 2005-09-25 21:34:21 +0000 UTC; Views: 1958; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 73
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4 x 6" oval, Derwent drawing pencils and nonphoto blue Prismacolor on paper, xeroxed.This is all that I have left of the best artwork I did in the 1990s. I had the original matted and framed in a 4 x 6" oval opening mat, a good three layer mat with a lot of fancy cuts, and along with two other framed pictures it was stolen during a move in the early 1990s. I saw them go into the truck. I saw them come out of the truck and get stacked by the curb. When all my stuff got into the apartment they were nowhere to be found. I was so angry, but I never knew who took this or Dinosaur Guernica or a large framed watercolor painting a Chicago friend gave me. But I was so happy to find the xerox I had made of it when I went looking in my portfolio for knotwork pieces that I had to scan the xerox and post it. This drawing was one of those moments of finite perfection, serendipity far beyond what I was doing at the time. It taught me how to get fur and eye textures. I understand more some of the reasons it worked as well as it did now fifteen years later, but this was one of the pieces I showed the poster shop in New Orleans when I sold the first poster.
It meant a lot to me. It was definitely Not For Sale no matter how broke I got, but a thief got it. And now I plan on reconstructing it -- I finally replaced my Derwent drawing pencils too, so I have the full range. My first idea was and is to reconstruct it on illustration board as carefully as possible, as if copying a historical work. But I'm also now tempted to do some variations using the xerox as a sketch. It's too bad the black and white can't convey the eye colors, I managed to get very subtle greens using the nonphoto blue with brown ochre. I'm as proud of this as the morning after I did it.
This piece also represents the longest workday of my life: 48 hours. I went to work at 7am, worked round the clock, worked round the clock again because the shop was in a "crunch" and had been backed up for a week. I just kept going and every hour or so I had about ten minutes to draw when the phototypesetter printed out my work. So I started the cat from a postage-stamp sized reference on a National Wildlife Foundation brochure that I no longer own (or I'd be reconstructing with the reference as a guide too) and finished around the time my boss came in on the second day and dazedly wobbled and told him "Man, I know it's seven in the morning and the day's just starting but you think I could just go home now? I didn't want to leave till you got back here." He was so boggled. He did not expect me to be there. It was trippy. It also led to the biggest weekly paycheck of my life, over $700 even after withholding. So I felt justified in keeping this cat Not For Sale no matter what.
And I'm going to draw him again because I miss him.
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Comments: 85
Man that is a gorgeous drawing. The fur is amazing, and the eyes & facial expression look really real. And you drew it from a tiny picture reference. Wow!
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I was really fried and really bored. When the shop closed up it got very quiet and dull and was hard to stay awake without getting all involved with the cat. This is one of the things that may make it hard to copy.
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Beautiful! I love the texture of its fur, and the depth of the eye...The eye looks extremely realistic, and emotive, too.
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Thank you! I wish I still had the color version, the eyes were so alive and full of intense emotion. I loved this piece and need to have it back again -- this is the first time I've tried anything like this, copying something that was lost.
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As I read the words describing your trials and tribulations I thought "true dedication to his art". This is just beautiful from his eyes to the stokes of his hair. Just lovely
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Purr thanks!
I don't know if it was dedication to art so much as what art always is to me -- what I do to fight stress. Pieces like this are what come out when life's gotten that rough and I need to hang onto something other than what else I'm going through, whether it's a pain day in a doctor's waiting room or a 48 hour workday that was pretty much a crazy stunt I pulled for a boss who'd become a friend. I have a dedication to my writing that borders on obsession. It's less obsessive now that I don't get blocked as often and now that I've had more success with it.
Art's different, it's something I do to step back from all the stress and trouble in life. More of a retreat than a dedication. It's very much like looking at nature, except it's there even if it's dark out and I can't go looking at nature.
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No cannot really be classed as an obsession it's more aptly described (I feel) as a passion. Something within you that is released to sooth away the daily grinds. How lucky some of us are to have that release that also brings a visual joy to others.
I have refound my passion in photography and can combine it with something I have always respected, Nature. I also dabble a bit at writing poetry. Who knows I may put words against one of my photographs one day.
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That would be so cool. With how beautiful your photos are, poetry with them would turn them into these fantastic posters.
I have a lot of passions, pretty much anything creative becomes a passion of mine. When I get writing block I need to recharge with other creative activity, most of all anything that hasn't got much stress or pressure riding on whether it comes out well. I have a lot of internal pressure to write well, and I post all the time when I'm not writing something pro. There's a big line between writing and everything else because writing is a life's goal, a center to my identity. Being a writer is what I hang onto in order to get through hard times. I wanted it that much and I learned how to do it and I reached a point where I could do it well.
Art was and is always playtime, the thing I do when I'm slobbing off not doing the things I'm supposed to. lol
A break in the day, a break from doctor appointments, something beautiful when I have to deal with things that are ugly or harsh or challenging. Art feels like luxury and is a way for me to relax and gather strength for a struggle I'm winning, a challenge that's one of the good things to do with a life. When I get writing blocked I relax by drawing and then I get story ideas from the sketches.
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I just may try. You have inspired me with your words, your encouragement.
I didn't think a passion could be awoken in me again. I used to be a semi professional actress after I had worked a full day till I too suffered from burnout. Took me a while to really realise that a small camera held in my hand, pointed at the beauty of the world around me, could stimulate once more a dormant passion.
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How neat! I'm a ham actor who jumps in and volunteers anytime there's amateur theatre within my reach. Most recently that was Shakespeare at Pennsic, but I've done some other things that were a lot of fun. I do bit parts with few lines but good lines, that's about the level I get into it. Sometimes multiple bit parts.
Sometimes I think all the arts flow into each other and that learning any of them starts opening all of them just for learning the skills -- and then they enrich everything else. I center in my writing but my acting gave my characters good body language in detail and facial expressions more complex than "He smiled," my portraits gave characters thick eyebrows or narrow lips or crooked noses and round or square or long faces, instead of hair-eye-skin color and if it's not mentioned character must be vaguely goodlooking.
But being a writer makes my drawings very narrative and these dragons keep flying into them.
Your acting experience probably gave you an eye for the drama in all these scenes from the point you even started. They are always so dramatic and eyecatching.
I think it's human to be creative, and that most people learn not to be sometime in grade school. Believe the idea that it belongs only to some few god-gifted superstars and no one else should dare try lest they fall on their face and actually produce beginner level quality.
One of the neat things about the 21st century is that a lot of creative things that used to be very difficult to get the means at all are easy for amateurs, and I think there may be a Renaissance going on that people hardly notice because while it's going on it's not labeled as such. dA has over a million members! A lot of them are digital artists. Digital does not take running out to Hobby Lobby or doing Blick orders, it can be done for free after getting the computer by downloading Gimp. We're Deviants, a million strong, and if what's weird is what the common ground is, a million plus people is a real big chunk -- it's a major city?
And that tells me a lot more people are getting into it who otherwise might not, and getting better at it and losing the 'ordinary people can't do this' myth.
Nanowrimo is the annual National Novel Writing Month -- it got started in San Francisco with forty odd writers trying to finish a novel within a month and had a website, and last year over 40,000 novelists signed up and jumped in and tried or finished a 50,000 word book during November. I've been doing it since 2001, it's my annual excuse to sweep everything else off my desk and write a novel. Usually after months of rewrites and moving and dealing with medical guff and the rest, I need that month of "my novel is the most important thing in my life."
But it's made what used to be a weird lonely thing hardly anybody did into a big public online event that everyone blogs and makes friends at and socializes in forums after the day's words are done. I always socialize after the day's words, unless I'm having trouble getting them and surf the forums to get going. It is more fun, one time a year I not only do what I do but get surrounded by lots of other people also doing it. *FantasyWritersUnited is gearing up for Nanowrimo.
Artistic passions are not the same thing as everyday things that get intense. They become enduring achievements. They spark off everything else in life -- they force attention to things that go beyond getting through a day at a time into the things that you and you alone are responsible for. The arts are freedom and they do a lot to renew the soul.
And this site does a lot to waken those passions. I joined last December on my birthday after lurking a couple of times, and since then have done a whole lot more drawing and painting without really writing less -- the main factor that cut my writing production this year has been medical and it rates middling for 'years medical crud interfered.' Nowhere near as bad as those two years in subsidized housing in New York or the year in Texas. I've enjoyed art more than I have in a long time.
You're a great photographer. An art photographer who could do a gallery career or do coffee table books or otherwise go pro with it -- if you wanted to. Just take that for the compliment it is, not as advice on what to do with your life. Your Deviations are a tremendous source of inspiration and every time I find them, they wake me up and make me reach for my keyboard or my pencils. I'm so glad you did find a new passion, and all those wilderness areas that fill my eyes with joy.
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Oh my goodness you are a Sagittarean also? Mine is the 13th of December and 13 is, what I consider to be, my lucky number.
Sometimes I look at some of my photographs and wonder if I should at some point venture on with them into some other area i.e. your suggestion as creating a visual book. This will take many more years and a much better camera to produce but it will not be shelved and I think it WILL happen.
My acting was basically English comedy. The Brits are bar none the best writers of comedy. I find American comedy pale in comparrison. (sorry lol). In the later years of my stage career I was always the female lead. Some of the lines I had would bring the house down. Nothing was more pleasurable then bringing joy to others for two precious hours a night. But that is in my past experiences of life. Something I won't venture into again. Although it was a passion to feel the adrenalin pulsing in my veins as I waited in the wings to make my entrance (after spending several minutes in the bathroom prior to that hahahahahaha). Being British I was brought up with Chaucer, Shakespear, Dickens and read poets works which were so prolific in England. Lucky to have been brought up in such a diverse and historically literary country. Gosh am going to start singing "Rule Britannia" soon heaven help us. Hahahahahahaha
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LOL -- I wouldn't begin to argue British comedy vs. American comedy. There's some good American comedy, there would be in any culture, but the British lead the world in good comedy. I have to say there are exceptions, because I write humor sometimes. Hmm. It can stand till I've done a play and been that proud of it. lol
British comedy is fast-paced and makes you think in ways that don't immediately depress you, it isn't as censored. If there is anything specific that hobbles American comedy, it's censorship. Not just the official sort where you couldn't put Monty Python on with the kids because of the drag races, but the unofficial sort where some ideas are considered way too unthinkable to laugh about.
I've got one author to put in a category with Dickens and so on, and Mark Twain gets banned now because he uses the "n" word in an unforgivably old book where everyone, bigots and the sympathetic alike, used a racial slur as a common mode of address for black people. Both Twain and Dickens were unforgivably popular with regular people reading their books so don't get treated as serious in school either compared to some approved classics that tended to inspire five thousand word rants against the author and everything he stood for when I was stuck as a kid having to comment on it.
I think it's mostly here rather than England that people actually get up and publically object that J. K. Rowling is teaching witchcraft or advocating witchcraft. I got the first book and read it eagerly looking for something that might be a great popular children's book with Wiccan themes. I mean, I'm pagan, I'd love to see children's books with a nice spot of religious instruction in if it's not too heavy-handed. No Wicca, no religion really, British school satire with some lovely funny cinematic-style magic, storybook stuff but British storybook with wit. I'm a Harry Potter addict. A Terry Pratchett addict. And so influenced I would not be surprised if sometime I popped off a comedy that sold to a British publisher but wouldn't hit print in the USA.
British culture meets tragedy by laughing at it. US culture meets tragedy by going "this can't be happening." Most of it anyway. Varies. I would lay odds that New Orleanians are joking about Hurricane Katrina because New Orleans is a bit like a cross between Paris and its host country. I'm not sure the city actually understood or believed the Louisiana Purchase.
I'm a major Anglophile when it comes to reading, grew up on Shakespeare, Dickens and Chaucer by way of outside reading as a kid and being able to get away with reading them a little easier than other, less respectable favorites like H. P. Lovecraft or Kafka. I love the English language and actually picked up the clue in its label as to where it came from. Someone mentioned Roald Dahl in a review of J. K. Rowling so I found a Roald Dahl book and it was funny.
I think if I sold British rights to any of my books I'd feel thrilled and honored.
When there is good American comedy, like Mel Brooks films, they get butchered. Did you ever see Blazing Saddles? I loved it. All the Mel Brooks films are great. Eventually it was old enough to wash up on television. Eagerly I waited for the hour and turned it on, waited for my favorite scenes and one by one saw them mangled to incomprehensibility. "One move and the N----- gets it." This immortal line in a gag making fun of racists got butchered and chopped out along with about half the gags in the film because they'd be offensive. Censorship is not limited to flaming bigots of the right wing.
I'm so glad you like the idea of doing a visual book. It'd take better equipment than you've currently got, but you already have the skill to do one so wonderful I'd probably buy it hardback.
Hehehe, I thought of 13 as a lucky number too. Cool birthday! I'm not much into astrology though.
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I think one of the cleverist American modern comedies was Airplane 1. The visuals were first rate and I would never watch it on TV due to censorship. That's what I like about England they CAN use words and NOT be censored. I pay for a channel here called BBC in Canada and it's wonderful. Canada is also no where near as bad as our neighbours to the south and give us far more programs which are void of bleeps and huge cuts throughout. We are deemed as adults and have screening with our cable services where we can prevent minors from watching certain shows. One can follow a plot instead of guessing at it lol.
Who knows one day you may write a novel of any genre that will get British recognition. Good luck!!!
You really appreciate science fiction (which believe it or not I do too). Am asking you which film you really enjoyed (out of several I am sure). My favourite without a doubt was Close Encounters which lost a lot of box office support due to Star Wars being released at the same time. Many others I have enjoyed as well. You like Ray Bradbury I too enjoy many of his works. Isaac Asimov wrote incredible Sci Fi and some of his short stories I read over and over again. One failing I have is the inability to remember titles of books I have read. I remember the plots. Sometimes I even forget the authors as well (sorry so bad of me). John Wyndham's works I love. (You see I do remember some lol). One Ray Bradbury short story that still haunts me today is "Summer in a Day". It had such an impact on me .... it may have been that I read it when it was pouring with rain outside hahahahahaha.
Oh dear am going on and on again. But it's just that you stir things inside me which I have to reply to and no, this is not a complaint. LOL
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Hmm... It's hard to pick favorites sometimes, because I like most good science fiction movies. I even like a number of bad science fiction movies because they're fun and have looser standards for good science fiction in movies. I will enjoy a bad one with good special effects. lol
But overall I'd have to say Bladerunner. It was well written, it had depth and characterization, it had wonderful mood and a good sound track, it had plausible backstory and an interesting premise. It grabbed me with a number of themes and was so good that I saw it again many times. It's also one of the few movies from science fiction stories where I saw the movie, had forgotten about the story, reread the story and realized that the movie was better than the story. The story was preachy and the movie wasn't. The story had a great title though: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
All the authors you mentioned are very familiar to me, and I like fantasy too. What leaps to mind for me when I think of Canadian authors is Charles de Lint. I liked Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid. I liked Arthur C. Clarke. I devoured Asimov. I like most SF and have hit a point where due to being broke between 1990 and last summer, was mostly getting very old books rather than reading new authors so I'm now catching up. David Brin is good. Julian May is good. Neither are that new. Connie Willis is good. Both Jack Haldeman and Joe Haldeman are good. Joe Haldeman is famous and did The Forever War. Jack Haldeman published a dozen books and was less famous than his brother but just as good a writer, he broke my heart with some of his novels and he was a good friend whom I met in person at a Florida science fiction convention. I miss him a lot and it frustrates me that I didn't sell a pro science fiction novel while he was alive so that I could celebrate with him, since he mentored me and taught me a lot about writing and life. Think of an old hippie Dumbledore who always had matches and coached any new writers out in the smoking area late at night at science fiction conventions.
I've got a miserably shrunken library from too little money and too many moves, during which expensive reference books were more likely to survive than paperback fiction. I counted it up after I made a big Amazon order with nine books and was shocked to find I had only 168 books total. Several hundred would be more of a comfort level for a non-collector, but I live in a hippie-fannish household with one serious collector and several semi-collectors for comparison -- my third floor neighbor probably has several thousand and hasn't read them all. With a good SFF used bookstore in the area that housemates visit often, it's likely I'll manage to improve my own library gradually this year -- though Amazon is still easier and doesn't involve going out.
I was pretty sick yesterday and was only awake for about three hours after which I realized I'd forgotten to take meds. Then realized I was falling asleep again, so went back to bed and feel a lot better now. I was starting to drift into foggy old chewed-over grief over thinking of my family and trying over and over again to explain that I'm miserably ashamed of them and it's one of those things in life that is completely out of my control. It hurts less to say that now that I've had more sleep and taken my pain pills: I'm too embarrassed about them and about being in any way connected with them to want to write about my otherwise unremarkable rotten childhood. It's a lot easier to write about other people's rotten childhoods and draw a portrait of abuse patterns from a thousand sources that's true fiction.
So much worse happened to so many people I knew that I tend to put that challenge into a category rather than think that in some way I got singled out. It's like having a hurricane story from New Orleans, when I look at what happened so much of it was just the same as anyone else who had a bad childhood. Except the writing bit. That is the only specific thing that was any different, the coincidence that all the people around me while I grew up were that dead set against it each for their own reasons that were valid to them. About half of them were well meant and their reasons seemed valid to me given their perspective. Others were just petty.
Nasty, but pretty minor compared to the things that turned my stomach when friends told me their stories. One weird thing about my life if I look back at most of the adversity, childhood included, is that the only thing that was different was that sometimes what I did wasn't the usual reaction. I honestly think reading a lot made a difference and that Ray Bradbury did a lot to help at the time -- and show ways of looking at life that led me to become a writer instead of doing something self destructive, obvious and expected.
I've got a story to do this week. There's an anthology to benefit Katrina survivors that I want to contribute to, it won't matter that I send out a short story because I won't have to juggle payment against SSI -- so I need to do one themed on and set in New Orleans. I loved the city. I'm passionate about it. I'm having trouble thinking of the starting point and doing the story so I've been a bit knotted up over that for the past couple of weeks... it's running close now, I need to have it in final form and send it in by the 30th. So I'll be trying again today to break that block. Wish me luck on it!
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Am so pleased you are feeling better. I do wish you luck on your story. But as you love the city I know the inspirations will come flowing from you. I do hope I will get the privaledge of reading it when finished. So, buckle up .......... close your eyes ....... dream .... visualize. Voila the birth of your story. Good luck again my dear
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I'm trying. One of the logistic problems is that it takes a lot of that premeditation to come up with a story and when it isn't ready to come, it's hard to rush it. I wind up coming out with nothing or crud. I've learned to stop being depressed about that, the problem with short stories is that it takes the same long preparation but does not give me much time riding the wordstream, an hour or two and it's over. Thanks. I may make it. I think that if I stress less about the deadline the odds go up.
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Of course. Stress only bars your brain from other thoughts. It's funny I find that the less I panic over something not being done it eventually all comes together. It's like that piece of jigsaw missing when you have painstakingly devoted x number of hours in completing it only to find it is sitting under the box lid. (This is said from experience hahahahahaha).
You know, inwardly, it will come to you. Something will trigger a memory which will make you merrily write word after word. I am not a writer persay but have many "unfinished" short stories that I go to now and then to add another paragraph or to reword a previous part. How wonderful a brain is yet how frustrating it is at times
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Yeah. I'm getting close to it. Last time I slept, I dreamed about it and got some loose elements that may come into it -- the only thing about it is that it doesn't connect with most of the known tourist attractions of the city, it has more to do with sides of it that are little known. But that may be cool. I'm pretty sure the Irish pubs will reopen.
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Am so pleased. Am waiting to read the final draft.
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So am I, lol. That's what's so frustrating. I may get the rough done today though, I'm much closer to it. I will not be posting it at dA. I'm submitting it to an anthology if I manage to do it by Friday, but may be posting it at SFFmuse. Anything I post at dA loses its First Electronic Rights and counts as previously published, so prose won't appear here very often. I have one story up because I wrote it for the *FantasyWritersUnited "Modern Magic" contest specifically. If I do other dA contests I'll post stories.
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Thank you and I will remember that.
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It's not the same for art. I don't think First Rights are a big deal for artworks. Not sure about photography but I know that journalistic photos sometimes show up in a dozen places at once, so they can't be that tight about who gets it first, it's more of a big deal to do something that's specifically exclusive. But on fiction it is the difference between getting paid full price or reprint rate, which is half price or less. Things are just different for art, I guess.
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I understand. I know when a puplishing company picks up the rights of a book it cannot be reproduced anywhere else without prior consent from both the author and publishing company. But, question, if a hard covered book is also printed as a paper back can another publisher claim rights or would it be a subsidary branch of the first publishing company ?
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Sometimes the rights revert back to the author after its hardcover distribution. Sometimes the paperback is produced by another subsidiary of the same publisher. Sometimes after paperback distribution rights revert and it comes out paperback somewhere else because the author resold it. Sometime around there a book club like Science Fiction Book Club may pick it up. Selling reprints is good sense for authors.
But whether you can is this complicated contract negotiation every single time and this is why many authors like getting agents, this is why agents are worth their 15% -- they can keep something in print collecting royalties after its first run.
Very often though the first paperback distribution is part of that first contract, an option the first publisher picks up if it's at all successful.
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Thank you for the clarification. In that case it sounds like an agent is well worth the small percentage they pocket for their promotions.
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Oh definitely. They can earn a writer a lot more than their small percentage. Some authors prefer to do their own marketing though, it's about fifty fifty. For me, even though I'm not bad at negotiation, I'd rather have an agent because the stress would cause too many symptoms and cut into my working time at actual writing. I was unsure, but I'll probably get one as soon as I sell the first book.
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Purr thanks! I thought it would be impossible, but with this xerox, it's not. And I might have fun doing variations in different media.
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Replicating a drawing is still tough, though. I've tried to do it once, and it is a PAINSTAKING process.
In this case it was a drawing of a man who passed away, and I gave the original to his family. That's the only time I've EVER parted with an original. It was for a very good reason, but I found myself really missing the original...so I have a place in my sketchbook where I'm trying to duplicate it. It's not something I get much time for, though.
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Oh, I can understand why you gave it away -- and why you want to replicate it. Luck with it. This may be a slow project for me too! Though I might start with one of the variations rather than the tough task of the replication, considering just doing a quick tracing with Art Stix could come out very striking anyway.
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I don't imagine I'll be able to have it finished before graduation.
But...it's put me into a little bind. My mother really loved that drawing, and she has no idea I gave it away. Thankfully she seems to have forgotten about it for now...but eventually I'm going to have to get it finished so that if she ever bugs me again to get it framed, it will be there. It's been so long since she's seen it that she ought not notice the difference.
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I would think that she'd understand if she found out why you gave it away and to whom. And trust they did frame it and are treating it with respect. At least I hope she would.
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Personally I'd just as soon not discuss the subject with her. It's not something I want to have to answer questions about--it would be too awkward.
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Yeah. I can see why. That makes sense.
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