Ontario Tornado Warnings!

We had a pretty impressive storm roll through last night! Dan and I were pretty jittery before the storm. We put all our emergency supplies together and once we heard there was a tornado warning, we grabbed the cat and rabbit and fled to the basement. Our poor kitty (Doom) was not happy about going in the basement, it's an unfamiliar place to her. Her tail was all puffy and she was clinging to me so hard! Once we were down there though, the mood changed....call us weird but we actually kind of enjoyed it (even though we were in a 4'x4' room with a toilet and a lotta spiders). The kitty was a useful barometer, if she started freaking out we knew we would need to stay down there...either that or she needs the litter box.

Ball of ants

No, I'm not going to talk about all the ants invading my kitchen right now.

Do you ever talk to someone really high up in their league and get a little nervous?

I know I do. I was laying in bed thinking about this, and it was kind of a trippy thought...but this is how I get rid of that fear: I think of the earth, the big gorgeous ball slowly rotating in space, glimmering with beauty , and then I think of humans as ants or tiny specs, and I think of myself HUGE hugging that ball with ants on it...and whoever I'm talking to is obviously one of those ants. It's funny, but when I think of people in that way, all connected, all ONE, I really don't feel too scared anymore. Life when you think about it is kind of pointless, but that's why theres no real reason to fear. Love that little ball of ants, they need it, they're a ball of ants for gods sake!

Nosebleed!

Today I had the biggest nosebleed I've ever had in my life! A friend suggested what I do to get rid of it via Facebook. Bring your head forward and plug your nose for about 5 minutes. I did that, but I think I did it wrong because soon afterward I felt like blacking out! It was WEIRD! I jus sat in my chair with a cold sweat and dizziness to the EXTREME! I could taste the blood trickling down my throat which made me feel sick...ECK!

So that's what happened to me today.

it sucked.

A few things

Now that I've added a few gadgets to the Slimecat blog, I feel like I need to post something new...

hmmmm...something new...

Ah! Here's a MAJOR thing! :

Have a look at Tentacle Tarte Studios I've started with my friend Amanda Nightingale-Terwoord!

Being the ditz I am sometimes... I didn't really update about the business on the Slimecat Blog.

Tentacle Tarte is our name and we do Graphic design, Illustration, Toy design, and even some baking!

At the moment I'm working to get a logo finished and sharp looking for Yggdrasil's Child.

Yggdrasil's Child, "Natural handmade soaps, candles, body products, and hemp jewellery"

I haven't tried any of the products yet, but one of my friends says they're spectacular. Her name is Sarah Paulette Bongers, she's a journalist, and she kindly wrote a review for Yggdrasil's Child.

Getting back to Tentacle Tarte, we have a show coming up in Kitchener, April 16th, called the Bloomin' Earth Festival, located at the Kitchener Market! There'll be tonnes of local handmade artisans selling their goods. Being a market day, we're anticipating a packed festival. Let's all hope for a nice sunny day!

We're focusing on toys at the festival, here's a picture of our handmade toys called Dinosquares :D

There's kind of a funny story behind this picture^^^^

Back to work now!

Slime Cat has a Friend!

We've moved! We have a Kitty too! Her name is Doom. She's a cute little black cat with adorable yellow moon eyes and a small tuft of white on her chest (kinda like an opening on a tux). Here are some photos of her:

Doom was adopted at the Humane Society in Kitchener. She was the last kitty of her family to be adopted...I guess everyone in Kitchener is superstitious or something. Doom was also born on site (which is apparently rare). Her name at the shelter was Tinkerbell... yeah, no comment there. They gave her that name so people would adopt her, but luckily they had no luck until we came! We immediately changed her name as soon as we saw her.

She's a happy little thing now.

Packing and more Packing

A few more weeks to go until Dan and I are settled in our new apartment. We'll have a large portion for a studio, a good sized dining room (no more eating while sitting on the floor), an upstairs with a bedroom and a quirky closet, a living room with a glass door; it leads out to a fair sized balcony which overlooks a HUGE backyard with a fire pit...the list goes on! Best part is that it's inexpensive. All inclusive and only $1100 a month.

Until then, we're dealing with the constant haywire of strangers eye-balling our current home. We're hoping for someone to take over for us, but damn it's a pain in the ass cleaning just about every day to show off the place. The landlord lets us know a few hours in advance that someone will be coming to look at our place, I scramble to clean, the people look...and the cycle continues.

As far as packing goes... it's convenient living next to a large appliance store, just today I was digging through their dumpster to look for some jumbo sized boxes :D Bit by bit we're getting outta here!

So on another topic, my friend and I decided to gang up and start a graphic design/illustration/toy business together. By the *end of October we'll have our website up. We're in the midst of coming up with a business name so we can register that title to the Small Business Centre. We're both working on a few projects as I speak:

- Dinosquare toy tag (including the product name and our website)

- Our website

- The first design in our NEW toy series.

- Ordering eyeballs for the toys

- A tag design for LoopClothing

I had planned to make a new website for just myself, but this way it'll be a little cheaper, also stronger with both our voices in the mix.

I'm off to pack some more.

-Heather

*The website will be up depending on how busy we are with the move

Fruit for thought

So a friend of mine requested that I design her next tattoo.

Botanical illustration with watercolour first came to mind when I thought of what she was explaining to me. She told me she wanted something "girly and pretty" with some "realism" in there.

After the strawberry design, I couldn't help but start on some new projects. So I did a few Raspberries...

These were a lot of fun to make, so the next project I thought could be a warmup for a large illustration I'm planning. Here's a little breakdown on the development:

I darkened this a bit in photoshop so you guys can actually see it.

So in that image I'm drawing a basic outline for the layout.

Next the underpainting is applied. This makes all the finishing colours more rich in appearance.

This is when I start to apply the next layer. The greens, and some of the shadows are being formed. It's important to keep the highlights nice and crisp until you know what effect you want. In this case, blueberries have a matte texture to their skin, which means light doesn't bounce off to make them shiny in appearance. In the raspberry and strawberry painting, I had to reserve the whites with masking fluid because they do have a shiny look.

Next I establish the heavier colours and also make some layout decisions (the bottom-most green berry was added to balance the image better). Some of the veins in the leaf take form.

The final layer of colour is applied, some late layout decisions are made (third from the bottom green berry) This is when the blueberries take on their true colour from all those purple tints in the previous stages.

Inking is a little tricky. There was a phrase in Doug Chiang's book "Mechanika - Creating the Art of Science Fiction" that basically explained the process of inking. Carefully choose what you want to ink and leave the rest for the audience to build in their minds. It makes for a more attractive piece of art in the end.

I've still got shit tonnes to learn about watercolour. I wanted to use it for the first time when I saw a friend's work, Oswald Kenneth Schenk. An AWESOME watercolourist/graphic designer. He's dead now...but he was a real character apparently, that's what my mom tells me. He wanted to marry my grandma originally.

anyway, that's all for now