After all that has happened over the past few months, its been hard to visit the little universe I've carved from the Ether. I haven't much felt like being my wallaby self lately, I guess. A long time ago, I wrote a little story, about a little kangaroo family going for a trip to the beach, and all the things that happened that day. From the two main characters in that short story, Wendolene and her older brother Willem were born. Those two eventually went on to become a regular book. Then another, and another. there are, as of now, five books starring the brother and sister duo. Five books no one has ever seen, or read.

I've spent a long time making and remaking them, and far too little time letting them go out into the world. For a little while (7 years), I stopped drawing altogether. Everything fell to dust. Forgotten and discarded like an old childhood toy, left behind for greater things.

But one day, I happened upon this place.

So, just to say G'day, I made a little sketch of Willem, the character I identify most with, looking very much the way I feel whenever I meet someone new: as a toddler, feeling very much like he would like to hide behind himself, embarrassed for being out in the open air. Pushed out into the light for all to see.

Willem Wallaby would just like to say: Thanks for all the hugs I've gotten since then.

More art soon.

I really need to get a new service provider at home. Things are pretty shitty right now, but they are bound to look up soon… right? I've begun finishing up a whole host of projects that have fallen down around my ears over the past few years. I've tired of not finishing things.

I haven't forgotten your commission drawing, Xavie, I just haven't been happy with my color studies of late. Its hard to make things adorable when your entire palette is covered in different shades of black. I'll make it up to you, promise. Finished work will be coming soon.

Still no joy on making a new account for my saved work. Those bits wont be back up here until then. I've no desire for my publishers to stumble upon it.

Meanwhile, I'm occupying myself with my kayak building exploits. Lots of wood, lots of glue, some blood. I'm hoping to get it in the water yet before the end of the year. I suppose it depends on whether or not I cover the top deck with fancy designs and whatnot. Right now, I'm excited about doing an Otter and Kelp theme in wood across the top deck, which would be cool, but labor intensive. the other half just wants to get the damn thing in the water so I can paddle off to parts unknown. Wallabies and Kelp? We'll see what the sketches bring. Just need to keep sane right now. The use of hand tools helps, though I did manage to plane off a fingernail the other day during a moment of inattention and fatigue. The temperature under the tarp I'm forced to work under is about 95 degrees most of the time, but at least my dog and macaw aren't trying to eat my work when my back is turned.

God, I love hand tools. I fall asleep with a Lie-nielsen 102 low angle bronze block plane in my paw every night. I really love that thing.

Given the relative lack of inquiries, I have begun to think that most of you don't know that I am open for commissions!

I charge $20 for full color badge art, such as the one I did for Bloo Roo here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3477017/

I can also do traditional illustration, and I've been waiting for someone to ask…

My regular traditional medium is pen and ink, with watercolor.

I prefer to do clean work. But send along any ideas you might have, regardless, and we can discuss…

I've deleted my previous post, not because I feel any differently, because I will from now on, and forevermore. Every single person I meet, when the topic of conversation comes up, will hear about the experience I had with our first responders, and the others involved. This will continue as long as I continue to draw breath. But this will be the last I speak of it up here.

The matter has been resolved, and the investigation dropped, at the behest of the medical examiner. Turns out my father's body was being held up due to the BS, which was to be expected, I guess. My opinions of the reporting process remain the same, and I will always remember the unnecessary trauma these people inflicted upon my family during one of the most trying periods of our lives. So, to the First Responders involved in filing the accusations against my mother and I, I close with this simple message:

EAT MY DICK.

Thank you.

It looks as if I am going to lose my father, possibly today. Thats… All I have to say right now. :(

I scraped together a couple painting jobs last month to keep the Verizon wolves at bay, so it looks like I'm not going away any time soon. Also, I decided I need the internet for more than entertainment these days, having set up a subscription account at Gnomon for my online courses and tutorials. Digital artist, you know… So the bottom line is, I've ulterior motives. Maybe I'll get inspired to put some more "serious" work up here. Darkness, brooding, dramatic Lovecraftian atmospheres…

Looks like this is the end… for now. The Verizon website is broken, I can 't get in to pay the bill, and the service is about 2 months behind, now. The last phone message said they wanted $500 to keep the service going, and if that's what they want to keep me on the 'net, they can suck it. The cost of data access is ridiculous, and we made the mistake of signing on to one of their damn "bundles", so the telephone is going to take a shit as well. So its back to the dark ages for this little 'roo. I remember getting a hell of a lot more work done before the distractions of the internet anyway, so it will be interesting to see how this goes. I can't afford to pay for it anymore- the mortgage awaits, and I have to buy supplies. I'll be able to service this account from work, but those times will be few and far between. My email address will probably die fairly quickly after the disconnect, so I'll try and find a free one, maybe. For now, I'll be out there, wandering in the cold. Maybe I'll stop in to grab a cookie or two once in a while…

I am an artist, and a lover of tools. Kind of a bad combination, though I'd say those two come with the whole arts package. We are collectors. Whether its art books, equipment, supplies… I pick up most anything that makes me feel it will offer additional inspiration, or simply looks interesting. Eventually that results in… A lot of stuff.

So I've decided to sell my new Cintiq tablet. I'll eventually get another, probably bigger Cintiq, but I'm using my old tablet still, and I need the money. I put it up on Ebay this morning, so wish me luck!

Just returned from my Bahamas cruise with my family on an unnamed cruise ship. Actually, the whole thing went pretty well for everyone, with the exception of my brother in law and my sister, whose room began to fill with RAW SEWAGE a few hours after we arrived in the Bahamas. I don't ask much from a cruise line- I just sit up on deck somewhere quiet and grow large with tasty tasty food. The thing about Carnival is their food is just too damn good. Royal Caribbean tries to keep everyone's diets on track by making beautiful looking food that just tastes so-so, and its not quite so accessible as Carnival. On Carnival, all you have to do is pick up the phone, or turn around, and crap!… there's more food! Somehow, I don't think 5 or 6 meals- full meals- per day for a week, is very good. Fitting into the slim jeans is but a fading memory for this wallaby.

Of course, this marsupial comes nowhere near the magnificent size of some of the Elephant seals I saw browsing the buffets surrounding the pools/ mating areas. Sorry ladies, but… Damn. The image of these creatures will forever be burned into this fragile mind.

Having said all that, I'm already getting booked for the next one. Need to lose about 20 pounds though. I find that there isn't nearly as much distance between my hops as I would like to think I had before…

Didn't know these things appear on the front page. Move to the back, long post!

I have never written in one of these things before, so bear with me, watchers, if this thing seems a bit unkempt, or rambles off at times. I don't generally write autobiographical stuff, so journals haven't been part of my practice at all.

First off, congrats and thanks to Bloo Roo for being my first commissioner! I'm hoping to hear from him sometime soon to see when he wants me to send him his badge, which, I believe, is finished barring any last minute tweaks he might request. Anyone else who is interested in commissions would do well to get in early, as I am planning on handing out some bonus artwork to the first 5 clients in the future. For the time being, the cost for a show badge is $20, I'm still working out the details on how to print them out and provide them to their owners. I'm assuming the majority of people just want the digital file, as most of us have our own printers. But I'm new to this, so I'm willing to hear suggestions.


I have been working in digital exclusively these days, which is unusual for me, as I have always been very much a traditional artist, working with pen and ink/ watercolor. The one thing I really enjoy about the digital workflow, is that I can maintain the line quality I used to lose with the pen and ink. I prefer very rough paper for my watercolors, and trying to get an expressive line on a small piece often resulted in the destruction of my paper or quills. Non destructive editing is a huge plus as well. I am not yet as far along in Photoshop as I would like to be, but in the last week, I have gotten a whole lot better, thanks to Lar DeSousa. Man, I can't thank this guy enough for the art show he did last week on Ustream.

Any photoshop painters out there would do well to look him up, and don't miss his shows on Friday nights, when you can talk directly to him via chat while he works. I really should make something for him to take to Megacon next month. He's not a furry artist per se, but then, neither am I. I don't like to be pigeonholed that way, though my works are typically of an anthropomorphic nature, more often than not.

To anyone who might ask: Why do i not use Painter? I used painter for a long time after I graduated from Ringling. I have to say, its one of the reasons I never viewed digital art as a viable medium. I could acheive the same results in traditional media, in one third the time, and without the system bombs. I have owned every version of Painter ever released, all the way back to when it came on about a dozen floppy disks, delivered in an actual paint can. As of Painter 9, I have officially given up on it. It crashes, it throws palettes all over the place, it doesn't remember your settings. And God help you if you put your computer to sleep and leave it for a few days without quitting Painter first. It used to be only marginally buggy, but now, its a constantly ticking bomb on your desktop. Maybe after all this bitching I'll click on that icon in my Dock one last time. I haven't had to do a hard system PRAM reset for 3 years… The last time i used Painter.

For my sketching needs, I use Alias Sketchbook Pro. Absolutely love that drawing program. It does just the basics, although it also has Layers, similar to Photoshop, which I use very occasionally. Primarily I use it to produce my rough line drawings, which I then import into PS CS4, where they are inked and colored. I have yet to have Photoshop lock up or crash on me since I installed the latest version about a year ago. Absolutely tits.

Heading out of town for the weekend starting Friday morning, 2/19, and I will likely be incommunicado, unless the cruise ship has wifi I can hop on to. When I'm not drinking, I will probably be working on art.

What is it about artists that cause us to always have problems with our teeth? Quite often I see someone or another looking for donations to pay for what undoubtedly is major reconstruction. I can only imagine what the beautiful people think of us- Shambling hobos scratching our living out in the dirt. But are we eating ROCKS or something?

As for me, I went to the tooth chiseler yesterday, who advised me that I was going to need something on the order of 4 root canals in addition to the surgery I was receiving that day. The bill: $20,000. My parents bought their first house for that, and it was a BIG house. On 2 acres. Overlooking the Mississippi. Too bad I don't have any insurance. I brush, I floss, my teeth still break. I often look at sharks jealously.

I was barely able to avoid a root canal yesterday- the old (Mercury!) filling had done what they always do in the end: It had cracked the tooth in half. So every time I took a drink of that delicious Red Bull, it went straight inside, to the waiting nerve. I waited two weeks to get a spot, subsisting on a diet based mostly on Advil and whatever sustenance i was able glean from the pollen and mould spores I inhaled. So after receiving a pay advance from the boss, I shambled down to the dentist(who is really quite good). She told me, after scooping out the filling, that she was able to see down into the steaming core of my tooth, and that I would more than likely need a root canal on that one too. We went ahead and filled the tooth, and prepared it for a crown- no root canal. They wished me luck, and wrote a prescription for pain killers, and sent me on my way, with the advisement that, if it started to hurt badly, I needed to come in for an emergency root canal.

The pharmacy was right next door, in the grocery store, so I went in to fill my tabs. 15 minutes later, the pills were ready, and the Novacaine had already begun to wear off. 5 minutes later I experienced- well, it can only be described as:
A CARNIVAL OF PAIN
The nerves, waking from a slumber induced by (7!) shots, began to cry out in anguish. I headed back to work! When I arrived, the world was skewed. I drifted in through the door, literally drunk on endorphins, at something like a sideways 45 degree angle, mumbling softly as I made my way to my work bench and drawing table. I downed two Advils and a Red Bull, shambled over to the silkscreening machine, and lay face down on the table while I set the guides. Fortunately, the Advils began to work, and I felt the swelling going down as I concentrated on not getting Epoxy ink all over myself. After that, I was in pretty good shape. Wheeee!