But I have worked on some art here and there, and here’s one piece in progress:

This marks a broad departure from a lot of my work in the last decade because it’s traditional physical media and not digital. Acrylic on gessoed board, to be precise. It’s kinda weird getting used to physical artifacts of art again. Getting used to there being no control+z, no zooming in. I forgot that the hairs on the brush can tweak off at the last second, spoiling your perfectly curving stroke, or sometimes creating a happy accident.

Thing about sketching in public that I forget is that you have a lot of people either not noticing you at all, and standing RIGHT BETWEEN you and the thing you are sketching OR you have people peering over your shoulder and asking questions. Also, it is hard to sketch when your subjects keep swimming around, and when small children insist on banging on the glass and disturbing them. All in all, it’s a bit tricky. One feels best off just getting basic shapes and form, or concentrating on one section of the animal rather than getting a full view.

The octopus in particular is very popular, so it’s probably best to take reference photos, and let it go.

Just a little mascot I made for one of my websites.

I’m kinda not very happy with the anatomy though. So I wonder if I’ve been futilely re-inking something I should get some reference for. I think I’ll take some shots to see about getting the arms (length STILL too long) and hips right.

The original was here: http://art.lismitchell.net/?p=120

- Design One or More of the Khemethar envoy, based upon one of the Egyptian Gods (ie, Aten-Ra, Isis, Osiris, Set, etc)

- You do not have to depict them as the Egyptians did - think of interesting things that they might have had/worn that might have been interpreted the way they were by the egyptians either for symbolic reasons, or simply because it was the closest thing that it looked like, not having the same technology/clothing available to them.

I was going to start with Seshet, Mistress of Books, for obvious reasons. But I got diverted by the design possibilities of Heptet and her snake form, and the atef crown she wears. The atef crown will actually be a sort of glass encased electrokinetic matrix where she keeps a copy Osiris’s memories. She and Isis are escorting the Osiris biopod/saracophagus, and will “resurrect” and reactivate Osiris so that he may commence his studies. They aren’t towing him precisely–those are more like bio-leashes, which will keep Osiris alive by drawing from their bodies if his power cells give out while he is in his pod. I’m also thinking that the strips on her snake hood are actually special bio-engineered information collecting cells. When Osiris is present but not conscious, he needs somebody to collect memories for him, and that’s part of what Heptet is doing while she escorts him around.

Keep in mind this is pretty rough–there’s a lot of things I’d fix before moving ahead with this. The length of her forearms–too long–and the length of her legs–possibly too short. And the overlapping legs. Meh.

Here’s what I turned into ChoW:

San Francisco: A laid-back city where you can remove the masks you wear. Kind of a techno-pagan. She’s got a long history and a history of activism and culture. She’s friendly to artists and crazy people. She’s environmentally friendly (and while you can’t tell, her clothes are probably made of all-natural hemp.) Of course, every so often she throws a tantrum, and you end up with a major earthquake, but most of the time, she’s just chilling, making her own beat.

Annotations to the symbols: gold dust (for the gold rush), heart-in-a-cage tattoo (double duty for Alcatraz and "I Left My Heart In San Francisco"), goggles (technologically inclined), marijuana leaf border on her tank top, sash turning to fog, djembes (Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park), rainbow peeps (gay pride), Chinatown, the railroad (railroad barons built SF), the Golden Gate bridge, cracked ground (earthquakes), portrait of Emperor Norton (the most famous craaaazy person in SF history), Chinese coin, and a parrot from Telegraph Hill.