Under a Dead Star

Wow, I've been quiet here (and pretty much everywhere) for longer than I would have liked.  I still feel like its a bit of a time portal theme, where one moment it's mid-July, and you look up and you are over half way through August.

I normally love August.  Its the 'wander to Autumn' month that has me and the brain-pony doing berserk-running-circles like a cat that just used the litter-box.

That's probably not the best comparison.  But the point is that it's the final gasp of summer's brutal grip into the calmer days of autumn.  Its the countdown to pumpkin-spiced things and wearing sweaters while walking.  Its the count-down to spooky things.  All which get me in a more creative mood.

This year, however.  Good lord..

Autumn, so far, has been a string of days that haven't seen temps dip much below 28, save the days that are overcast and so muggy you can fill a water-jug with a swipe through the air.  It has been hot, and there's been nearly no rain at all save a sputtering for a few brief moments.

I live in a city so trash that even the rain doesn't want to come here.  I don't blame it, but I wish it would go slumming once in a while.  The lawn is nearly dead.

This also translates into my having about thirty minutes, to an hour in the early mornings after I get my father prepped and sent off to his 'Dracula school' to do an art dash.  Literally turn the desktop on long enough to get some sketching done, until it heats the room up, and then I'm done.  Who knew having a machine so good a dissipating heat would spit it out into the room and create an oven (I clocked it at around 34.8C in the room).

Just part of the joy of having a house insulated for colder and winter climes.

I used to cheat the heat by staying up to 4 or 5am and drawing then.  Sadly this isn't sustainable for a couple reasons now.  1) I'm old.  I can't fuel up on caffeine to just stay awake into the early hours.  2) I have a 'day job' that I have to be alert for.  Another human depends on me in a big way now.

Smile Son, You're on Fire!

Okay, so it's not all doom though.  I have slowly been getting some sketchwork done.  I figure I can start posting bits of it in the coming couple weeks.  I'm getting encouraged by seeing the very first few yellow leaves on the ground everywhere I go (Hello LEEF!).  And outside the fact that the next ten days(!) are supposed to be in the 30's range, the nights are getting cooler, giving me a bit more breathing room in the mornings to get sketch-stuff done.

I'm also starting to save towards what I hope can be a 'backup tablet' to use in the much cooler basement of this house.  My current Cintiq would probably fuse my spine together if I tried to lug it down two flights of stairs, so I'll be going with a non-screen tablet I can just use to paint along with on the monitor.  I luckily still have my old production box that was supposed to be serving as a 'running games' rig down there.

I have a lot of autumn themed stuff swimming around in my head, and despite having a severe disconnect with Felwroth as a world, I've been forcing myself to record the scattered pieces of it that I still remember into a program over the last few days.

"Look Toby, its covered in pins!"

A tiny slice of what is probably going to be a lot of work that nobody will see, but it will at least give me some context and archive to go back to when my brain is able to conceive of the place.  I already at least have ideas of where to draw some art inspiration from.

I have a lot of things to catch up on again, but I'm starting to get that done little by little.  I hope to have pumpkins and small things that love them posted soon.

-T.J.