/karen/

Heh! No, I think Kathleen is beating me on that score! ;P

I can tell you where that 3.5 hours goes Karen. You watch more DVDs and movies in a week than the average person watches in 2 years. Add it up.

How did people used to cope? I think a large part of people getting up early was because work was done in the cool of the morning and you went to bed early because it was dark. Now we can stay up comfortably because we have light and warmth and I never do any manual labour so the term “the heat of the day” is largely lost on me.

I guess I am a computer geek. My brain also comes alive at midnight, I stay awake and then feel lousy in the morning so repeat the pattern. But when I can be bothered to get out of bed early, go for a walk around Centennial, I have a productive day and feel wonderful (and then crash early that night). Now just to motivate myself to put down the laptop before bed and get out of bed the next morning before 10am!

Is it out of the question to sell a lot of books and use the library system? I’m not a big fan of ownership, it ties me to a place and since I move at least once a year its not fun to own anything much.

Oh, undoubtedly The problem will be where to put all the bookshelves ...

Heheh. I have a gorillapod but want something a bit more traditional that I can just set up and take reference photos with without having to resort to unlikely structures of books & chairs or co-opt housemates to take photos of me in awkward positions.

Put shoes on while filing.
Learn to write with your non-dominant hand (I can’t write two different things at once but I am learning to write two copies of the same thing).
Write while watching needful things.
Make phone calls while walking home.

:(
I will miss your house.
Will the bookshelves in the new place still have hidden depths?

I still think it is possible to over-schedule, over-plan, over-budget. I find I get more done if I don’t try to break it down exactly (but that’s just me, and I have been known to put one shoe on and then start filing things before finding the other shoe)

Whenever I think about curved needles I see that illustration in The Magician’s Nephew of Diggory’s aunt mending a mattress.

The drugs knock me out, but I do a very productive 9 hours! Just finished Heifer http://www.heiferhk.org

A MonsterPod?

Oh, I ended up buying some. But we haven’t gotten to that part of the Story yet

Kathleen, what do you mean by ‘multitask’? Sleep and shower? Shower and drive? ;P

Philip, how do you manage to squeeze 11 hours of sleep into your day?

sleep 11 hours, write software 9 hours, remainder 4 for everything else.

Yes, it’s very dramatic. I expect to hear violins playing tragically

The shawl, of course, is lovely.

That looks great - the cover is gorgeous!

And what? No curved needles?

K.

The first photo (which is cute) reminds me I could use a tripod.

Multitask. More hours in the day. Less ability to concentrate but, you know, sacrifices have to be made

Ooh...you could make artwork of your favourite album covers. But that could be breaching copyright. I’d love to have the cover of Blur’s best of album on something…

Hurray for dorky poses...heheheh…

Apologising for posting in your own blog?! Your blog, you’re the boss (I suppose you’re more considerate of your readers than I would be ).

Book looks great.

What a good idea!

Hey, lets visit the Guylian Belgian Chocolate Café before we see Katie Noonan

We signed it a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks for the tip, Jan! Ooh, more things to knit ...

Hi Karen,
Almost totally off topic, but here’s a blink back at you!  Hippocampus mittens.

http://www.theinsideloop.com/Issue4/Patterns/hippocampus.html

I like some of the other patterns there too.  I’ve made a couple of things from their summer edition and they turned out well.  This is a UK production.

Any word on the contract?

Bravo Karen. Superb writing and illustration (especially the high contrast frames).

And yes I noticed the transformers poster on the last page! Nice

Thanks Bec!

Good job, all of you!  It looks fantastic!

Heheheh ... Hello Kitty is my muse!

See! I told you they were cute stick-figures - especially when they’re angry!

Kawaiiiiii!

Heheheh ... H, it’s never going to happen! Carpe diem!

Kere: Yes, I own all three of Scott McCloud’s books on comics, but I’ve found Making Comics hard to get through—I guess because, as you say, his primary target audience is artists. But it’s very interesting and helpful all the same.

Very nice

I’ll put this, too, on my list of things to do when I have more time…

Any discussion of the purpose of art is going to huge and unwieldy. And in the end, I suppose, my question would be whether or not it truly matters or if it can be defined in a way that truly encompasses, rather than limiting, the possibilities of art and the roles of the artist. In the end, I don’t have to write (there is no compulsion) but nor do I write for any end purpose (which to me would still involve some form of compulsion). I write because it’s part of who I am, because I love it and would rather do it than not. The process is enough for me, is the enjoyment. It’s not the story or the characters or the theme or message - all of that is about the end product - but the work itself, the way it happens, the word choice and the way its chosen, the way each part works together and how I’m making that happen. It’s said that a work of art is never completed only abandoned and I think that’s true and that this is why: art is about the creation, not about the product.

But that’s just my point-of-view - it’s the importance of art for me - and there are no ends of artists and critics who would disagree with me and do so strenuously. And I don’t know that there is a right or wrong here. For me the end product is… very nice and I’m happy to do something with it. I’d like to think it can express something important to other people and that that message should be to God’s greater glory. Which, as you’ve pointed out, it cannot help but be. But for me it’s about the process which is, to some extent, a view of art for art’s sake.

Well, that was convoluted. I’m planning a wedding! I have an excuse! ;p Hope that made some sense. ^-^

Hihi. The book Jon recommended to me when I started my graphic novel is Scott McCloud’s ‘Making Comics’. I found it quite useful, though a lot of the stuff it says are things you would think of yourself given the moment to do so and he’s very much coming from an artist’s point-of-view and seems to assume that the drawing comes before the writing. Still, he had some interesting things to say and in an interesting manner.

I’m very glad you’ve done some drawing for this. I found it interesting to think in the right way for this kind of static visual form, unlike a form like film which is… *tries to find the word* based in action rather than having all the action happening between images. (Why sue one word when ten will do?! ;p ) It takes some getting used to, though I’ve been doing layouts as I write which helped no end.

Anyway, this is alll shiny. ^-^

Good discussion and reminder, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of this series

It’s something I think about from time to time, and should probably devote a bit more thought to, although I’m approaching art from the point of view of a profession/vocation more than as a vital form of self-expression. But I will often be among people who do, so shouldn’t ignore that aspect.

I wonder if there’s a name for that kind of creative/artistic circularity ...