Kathryn Downing

Friday, October 10, 2008

Time Wasters: October

For those of you that know me well, I tend to have an almost obsessive tendency to burn through things that peak my interest. For example, I’ll get a video game and play it non-stop for a weekend until I beat it. I may not play another game for months, but for that weekend I’m glued to the console and am only pried away by pleas to feed my family or some emergency yard cleanup when the dog finally catches the squirrel he’s been after for days. So I thought I’d start a series of blog posts describing how I’ve spent my time being non-productive (but having fun!).

1: World of Warcraft
I had stopped playing for over a year, but for my son’s birthday he asked if he could start playing WOW and I said yes. We set him up with an account and I reactivated mine. I spent a couple of weeks getting my character up to level 70, but it hasn’t been a lot of fun playing when everyone else knows exactly where everything is and what gear to have. It’s hard to get a group going to do quests when everyone else has finished them months ago. So I’ve taken a break for a while, but may start back up again when Wrath of the Lich King comes out. Everyone will be new to the 71-80 content, so I may have a better chance of not feeling like a complete newb.

2: Rock Band 2
I can kind of justify the time I waste on this one because we play together as a family and it’s fun. We usually play a set or two a couple of nights a week. I put the years of violin lessons to use playing guitar, Troy plays bass, and Tobias rocks the microphone. We have the drum set, but none of us have wanted to put in the practice needed to be any good at it, so it sits in the corner and gathers dust.

3: True Blood and the Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries
True Blood is a new series on HBO about vampires. I was a Buffy fan and tend to enjoy watching vampire movies (Dawn Until Dusk, Underworld, etc.), so when I saw the show on HBO OnDemand I decided to give it a try. After watching the first episode, I started watching all the extra features and learned that the series is based on books by Charlaine Harris. I went to the bookstore and got the first book which didn’t take me long to finish. Over the course of a week, I had read through the entire series (8 books) and can’t wait to read the next one which doesn’t come out until May.

The main character of the book is a waitress in a bar named Sookie who can read peoples minds. She lives in modern day society where vampires live out in the open. This is made possible by the Japanese invention of synthetic blood that supposedly fills their nutritional needs and makes it possible for vampires to “live” without feeding on humans. Sookie meets a local vampire who is trying to “mainstream” and live among humans. She’s attracted to him because she can’t read his mind and they eventually fall in love. How sweet, right? Not really. Vampire Bill is a suspect in a series of local murders, and Sookie’s woman-crazy brother is also added to the list of suspects leading her to start using her ability to try and glean from people’s minds who the real murderer is.

Through the course of the books, Sookie gets involved in a series of events and relationships where she learns there’s a lot more out there in the world of the supernatural than just vampires. The books are funny, romantic (a little graphic at points), violent and have a lot of plot twists and turns. The TV show is turning out to be pretty good as well. There are a lot of scenes in the show that aren’t in the book, but I enjoy seeing the extra things that could have been happening but weren’t described in the books. True Blood seems to be following the main plot points, so it’s nice to have some surprises thrown in for those that think they already know what’s going to happen. If any of you are following the show or reading the books, please let me know. Despite my nagging encouragement, Troy’s not interested in the show or the books and I’m looking for someone to discuss it with.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

One Lump or Two?

These monsters are taking a break from destroying Tokyo to have a little tea party. Who doesn’t have time for cupcakes?

This is my first real attempt at drawing with a tablet. I got in a hurry with the little monster portraits on the wall and drew those by hand. Overall, I like the control over the line points by drawing digitally and it’s nice to be able to move things around and re-color them easily. Unfortunately, I have the tendency to keep messing and tweaking and eating up the hours!

This will be printed at 3’x3’ for the upcoming Paintpushers show, but I also thought it fit this week’s Illustration Friday word—sugary. 

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

ARGHHH! - A Monstrous Art Exhbition

The Fitch Gallery in downtown Des Moines, will present “ARGHHH!” an exhibition of paintings by the Paintpushers group. The exhibition will open on October 18 and continue through October 31, 2008.

“ARGHHH!” will feature artistic interpretations of the idea of monsters. Inspiration for the work has come from sources as varied as B movies, mythology, childhood fears, criminals, crypto zoology and world domination.

Fitch Gallery is located at 15th & Walnut in downtown Des Moines. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9am until 4pm and Saturday, November 3, from noon until 4pm. An opening reception will be held Saturday, October 25, from 5 until 9pm. Costumes are encouraged. Admission is free. For further information about Fitch Gallery call 515-770-3810.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Homage to Sawyer

I spent all day yesterday disassembling and re-canvassing some old crappy paintings and boy are my hands sore. I decided I should finish this little painting that I’ve had in the works for a while.The Illustration Friday theme this week is “Sour” so I figured this was a good fit too. More photos can be seen on my Flickr page:

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

What to do when you’re stuck at home after surgery

Maybe I should title this “what not to do"… Everything went well with the surgery and the hospital stay was pretty uneventful. Let me just say how much I don’t like the clear liquid diet. It consists of broth, hot tea and sugar water in various different forms— fruit juice, Italian ice, jello, etc. Don’t get me wrong — I like a little sugar every now and then, but when that’s all you’re eating it’s overkill. Especially if you have dry mouth, you forgot to pack your toothbrush and you’re stuck using one of those wimpy hospital toothbrushes with bristles as hard as limp noodles.

I got my staples removed yesterday and according to my doctor, I’m not supposed to drive for two weeks. I’m not really sure why because I’m not in much pain at all. We took the bus downtown for the Art Festival on Sunday and I managed to walk around (although I was pretty sore by the time we left). The pain hasn’t been nearly as bad as I had expected (thank goodness!). I sat on the side and watched Tobias and Troy do Tae Kwon Do on Thursday and felt like a bit of a loser. Here I was sitting there, looking completely normal and everyone kept asking me why I was sitting out. I didn’t want to go into the details of my reproductive system or show off my incision or anything so I just said I had surgery. I was feeling a bit rebellious (and bored) so I drove to the Paintpushers meeting this evening. Don’t worry — I made sure I didn’t take any pills all day so it wouldn’t affect my driving.

Before surgery, we took a trip to the Apple store and I picked up a MacBook. The idea was that I could sit wherever (in bed) and still check my emails and stay connected with work while I’m recuperating. While I have been on iChat frequently, the main thing that’s been getting used is Sporktris (a free Tetris game). How lame is that? Maybe I should have just bought another DS. Just kidding. At least I’m using it to type this entry. Plus, now I don’t have to borrow Troy’s laptop when I’m doing a demo for someone. And if I start doing art shows again, I could always have it display a slideshow of my artwork. Who knows? Theoretically, I could use it to have customers pay through PayPal, but in reality who’s going to be comfortable typing their personal information into someone else’s computer? I wouldn’t be. Hmmm… what else could I use it for… A portable DVD/CD player? I’ll definitely have to come up with more ways to get my money’s worth out of it.

Another thing I’m doing to pass the time is reading some books. I just finished A Good and Happy Child. Next up, I think I’ll read Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story. Then either Then We Came to the End: a Novel or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for a well-designed/illustrated cover. That and an interesting description on the back of the book are about all I need.

Of course, there’s always TV to eat up the hours. It’s starting to amaze me how many crime and forensics shows are on during the day. I can’t stand watching the court shows like Judge Judy or Joe Brown because the people on them are so stupid, but I admit I enjoy watching American Justice and Cold Case Files. I’m also a Law and Order fan although that’s kind of a bust because they’re all re-runs. I did get sucked into watching a marathon of the First 48 yesterday. If you combine all those with shows like Dateline NBC and Primetime:Crime in the evenings it gets to be a bit much, so I even it out with Ace of Cakes and Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network. No wonder I’m not getting anything productive done!