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.

1. My site is currently hosted by some clearly unprofessional hacks
2. They just received a large payment for my hosting fees. This despite the fact that I have decided to switch hosting over to a much better service as quickly as I am able to get the new revision of my site built for upload.
3. They shut off my site due to a billing error which I have since fixed.
4. When my site didn't come back up, I tried to call my current host's 800 number only to find it disconnected.
5. It's been several days and my site has not come up, and their phone is still disconnected.

I've logged a trouble ticket in the remote hopes that maybe they're still functioning on some level. Their fax machine still appears to be working (found through a quick whois lookup). I'll also try email, though I'm not holding my breathe for any of these to garner a response.

I would be fine with all of this except for the large payment they just received (>$100). That annoys me. A lot.

So during 'Creativity Night' with xtingu and shellefly the topic of bios came up. I hate writing them, and have had to write a number of them for the different websites that I'm on. I'm really awful at writing about myself for promotional purposes and I need to do it for both myself and for some others.

I've done the obvious Google searches, but I just thought that I would turn this little dilemma out to you oh wizards of teh intarwebs. Do any of you know of a place with a good bit on writing artist related bios?

Since my desktop has been down for a while now, I have been unable to finish the portraits I promised. Don't worry though - they're on their way. I've been spending the last several hours reformatting my desktop and installing fresh new XP stuff. I'm having a bit of a problem getting the sound to work, but I'll get there.

In the meantime, I've been drawing. I set up the drivers for my tablet on this laptop, and while it's not going to break any records for 'efficient use of resources', it will suffice to do a moderately small (read as: 'not print quality') image. Thus we have the thumbnail on the right. I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say about it. This may be the front page of the new version of my website. If so, it will likely have mouse-over effects etc for the different portions of the image (which would then link to different areas of the site).