So I was thinking about doing some caricature work to polish those skills. I've never been really good at it, and with the popularity of the ToonMe images I've been doing, I thought it might be time to fix that.

So I Googled "Celebrity" because I wanted a pseudo random selection of famous faces to pick from to get started.

I looked through the results and finally found a link to People magazine about half way down the front page. I assumed everything before that (which I didn't recognize) was a bunch of garbage sites.

So I went to People and looked at their 'celebrity' page. I thought that should cover it.

I didn't recognize a single celebrity until about 3/4 of the way down the page.

My first thought was "Jesus, I'm really out of touch."

My second thought was "I'm just fine with that."

I think I consumed too much coffee today.
I'm all over the place.

So I think I'll post this here and think about it for a while, get some feedback, and come back to it later.

Anyway - here's what I'm currently thinking about (well, one of the things I'm thinking about in a steady stream of rapid/random thoughts and ideas):

In addition to my paid illustration work and the free portraits that I've been doing, I think that this year I want to take part in both Inktober and NaNoWriMo. The one would feed into the other.

I want to work out an outline for a Patch story I've got floating in my head - specifically how a young Patch becomes a vigilante and choses to continue down that path as a means of releasing the Beast while reducing the damage that causes to innocents. I would work out that outline in the next week or so.

That, in turn, would give me a list of locations and characters in the book. Which I could then draw for Inktober.

Then, I could write the book in November as part of NaNoWriMo. As I'm writing, I would post to dragonbones.net and it would be available for everyone to read - in its alpha form. Then, if I'm smart and still have enough drive/sanity left, I could edit in December and be ready to publish (likely self published) in January.

Yeah, it sounds crazy ambitious to me too.

It sounds downright naive, in fact.

I still wanna do it.

Heya folks. Just wanted to jot a quick note to let everyone know that NeverMet is having a pretty huge sale for Black Friday through Cyber Monday. If there's someone on your list that is in need of some inspired RPG materials, I highly recommend checking it out.

Just wanted to post something real quick to let everyone know that I'm participating in NanoWriMo again this year along with kar0na. I'm doing things a little differently though - I'm writing posts that I will later convert into a book about drawing/illustration. I've wanted to write such a book for years, and I'm using Nano as the kick in the pants to get the content created. Well - the writing content. I would imagine I'm going to have a lot of drawing to do to 'flesh out' the articles and I'm assuming that I won't have nearly enough time to do all that plus the writing in a single month. We'll see what I can get done and I'll keep you updated here.

I'd love to get your help! If there's any art related topic you would like to know more about, please feel free to comment and let me know - either here or over at Dragonbones. Please note: it doesn't even have to be a topic that you think I'm personally good at/know much about. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from this exercise, and I won't be upset if you help me stretch my mental/artistic muscles.

Lastly - please understand that Nano is a huge time killer, so please - if I seem a bit 'absent' this month - do not take it personally. I promise that I'm going to be a bit on the quiet side with my nose buried in my keyboard.

Here we go...

Edited to add: I've got my first post up for NaNo over at Dragonbones here.

So a while back, I did some 3 minute portraits for fun. I have an idea for a project / exercise that would have me doing a lot more of them. I love doing these partly because it appeals to my ADD nature by changing the subject matter (at least) every three minutes.

As I want to improve my portraiture skills as fast as I can during this exercise, I was thinking that I would start out with the most recognizable subjects. I also would like to get people involved with the project on some level right from the get-go.

So here we are.

Who among the public figures that you are familiar with, do you think has the most recognizable physical traits? Or put a bit more simply - who do you think I should start drawing first? Feel free to leave more than one response. :)

I really do want to be better about posting more often, and one way I can do that is by posting about my weekends. There's not a lot of 'Matt Stuff' during the week most weeks. It's paying the bills, doing what needs to be done, and keeping myself sane. So the stuff that's likely to be more interesting to all three of you my dear readers, and to my future self, are these weekend highlights.

Of course, that still would require me to post the information in the first place.

Here goes a speedy recap of the past two weekends:

Friday Feb 4th
Dinner w/ Jill at the Indian Grille. Love that place. We had a good night. A really good night. It still hurt to not be a couple, but that seemed like the first time post break up that things felt otherwise 'right'. I didn't feel like I was treading on egg shells. We talked a lot, and it was the kind (and quality) of talking that I miss terribly. 

That was pretty much it, if memory serves. I believe I headed to 1100 after that and just chilled (probably had an adult beverage or 17 and watching some Netflix or something equally productive).

Saturday Feb 5th
All morning / early afternoon, I spent working as an extra during the filming of Cheap Seats. It's the newest web based comedy series by the guys who brought you the League, the Clink, and others. The weather was a bit brutal, but that crew is a lot of fun, and it was good to do something new and completely different.

Sunday Feb 6th
I'm not a sports guy - not by a long shot. I do, however, enjoy the commercials during the Superb Owl. When some friends invited Jill and I to watch the commercials with them (and get up to get more food when the game was on) we both jumped at the chance. We also brought our friend BrianSansLJ along. Some of you may have already met B, or seen/heard some of the music/awesomeness which he is famous for (like All Night Long (I Wanna Do My Taxes with You)). B is so totally our people, and it was awesome having him there. It didn't hurt that he brought a deep fryer and fried up things like oreos, twinkies, and just about anything else he could get his hands on. Dude seriously brings the awesome.

Monday Feb 7th
Yeah - I know - I said I was going to highlight the weekend stuff, and for the most part, that's true. This event's pretty awesome Matt Stuff though. Basically, every first and third Monday night, the Delaware Art Museum hosts an Open Figure Drawing Studio. This is perfect for me. It's been too long since I got to do some drawing work based on live models, and having it so close, without obligation (no class to sign up for), and so cheap ($5 / 2hr. session) is perfect. As an additional note, I walked to the Museum this time from work on the Riverfront (with a brief stop at 1100). It took about an hour total, wasn't bad, and felt good. Jill dropped the car off at the Museum while I was inside, so I even had the convenience of a ride back to Mark's afterward.

Friday Feb 8th
Stopped to get my hair cut before picking Jill up. The place I normally go is cheap and usually very fast while doing a reasonable job. (It's kinda hard to mess up my haircut - I keep it as simple as I can.) On this particular occasion? 1.25 hours. To cut my hair. I don't have that much hair left. In addition to that? It made me late picking Jill up. Little known secret about mrlich ? I hate being the limiting factor in anything. Hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Bad start to the night.

Then, we got to see a bunch of really great folks at Bobby B's Birthday Bonanza. Ok - so maybe it wasn't a Bonanza per se, and maybe I just like alliteration a bit too much. Point is: I hadn't seen a number of these folks since the big break, and it really did me some good to 'touch base'.

When we got back, and I dropped xtingu  off, we had a slight disagreement which made it clear to me that we're both a little on edge because of the break. We're both nitpicking a bit at things that shouldn't be an issue. Things are generally awesome between us, but when they head south I get annoyed because it's stuff that doesn't feel like it would matter if we were 'under normal circumstances'. We'll get there.

Saturday Feb 9th
More shooting for Cheap Seats in the morning. I just can not wait to see these webisodes. It's sure to be funny as hell if it's got even a pinch of how much fun it was to film.

After Cheap Seats, I headed up to Philly to hang out with jeremym , boutell , and LauraSansLJ. We watched Pulp Fiction. We ate Capriotti's Bobbies. There was a Dog. Life was good. I lerv my peeps.

I passed on going to Dr. Sketchy's. This pained me just slightly to do, but I was really enjoying myself with the peeps, and I didn't want to get up half way through the movie and go. Besides - there will be more of them. Did any of you go?

Sunday Feb 10th
Had brunch with Jill this morning and then we hit Target. That second part was a mistake. We both left the chaos of that place ready to destroy all human life. Neither of us does super well in crowds. When those crowds are made up of the completely ignorant? Our respective patience levels drop rapidly.  Dropped Jill off and hung out briefly while she waited for a caffein freak out or blood sugar thing to abate. Now I'm back at 1100.

I'm trying to get a couple odds and ends wrapped up here this afternoon before I head up to the LV to look into an auto loan / the purchase of a 2000 Honda Civic so that I can hand off the car to Jill and get her some mobility, and myself a little sanity. I took off tomorrow to deal with car stuff.

All in all, I'd say that the last couple of weekends have been pretty good / productive.

My friend Amy is offering a new product on her Etsy page - custome Cameo Portraits. These are original paintings created just for you at an unbelievably reasonable price.

I would just like to point out here that the holidays will be apon us before you know it. This would make a great gift for people you care about.

Just sayin'.

Been thinking about creating a buyable sketchbook in time for the holliday gift-buying season. I don't exactly have hoards of adoring fans that are demanding such a thing, but I thought "What the hell? Why not?" I figure that the experience of setting it up alone will be worth it.

I'm not yet sure what route I will use to publish it, nor just what exactly will be in it, or even how big it will be (though I'll want to keep the price reasonable, which implies a small(er) book). For this same reason, it will be greyscale only (aside from possibly a color cover).

There's a lot ramping up right now for Nevermet Press, so I'm going to assume that my time will be pretty heavilly restricted for a bit which is why I'm thinking about this now. Both the 'I have no time, so NOW is when my mind gets most creative.' and the 'I had best think about this LONG before I would need to put it together if I want to pull it off.'  mindsets are starting to creep in.

My question for you dear friends/family: What would YOU like to see in it? I'm assuming that I will be including my personal favorite works for the last year or two, but what about you? Want more fantasy? More sci-fi? Horror? Is there something specific? A certain character from a movie that you really like? A superhero that you've always been a fan of?

I make no promises, but I can't put it in there if I don't know you want it, so speak up damn you!

Oh - and what about a name for the book? I have a couple of ideas, but I'm curious what you guys think. If I use your idea, I'll give you a free copy. :)