Kathryn Downing

Friday, October 17, 2008

Not in Kansas Anymore

I barely finished this one in time. In fact, the clear finish is drying as we speak. I had a million ideas floating around in my head and none of them really seemed good enough. Every time I sat down to sketch an idea, I hated the drawing and gave up. We were sitting at Aguila Real eating Mexican food and I just decided to doodle a Sasquatch and this is the result.

I’m really liking the subdued color palette and I got to use my silver paint which had been sitting around for months. At the end, the patterns in the background seemed to start overwhelming Mr. Bigfoot, so I decided to paint over it all with the silver again.

Maybe I just have werewolves on the brain after finishing the Mercy Thompson series, but I had the temptation to add wolf ears to him at the end. Maybe I’ll have to do another one.

Geometric Animism

This is “painting” number two for the Paintpushers show, although I’m not really sure I should call it a painting since it’s digital. This one is a more doodle-based approach. I started by sketching a lot of different shapes and then giving them a little life by adding features and limbs. The end result is way different than what I’ve done in the past, but it was fun to do. The challenge for me is to stop adding details until it loses its simplicity.

I ordered the digital prints of this and “One Lump or Two?” and received them on Monday. They look awesome and I’m really impressed with the quality of the wrapping. The front of the canvasses were wrapped in glassine paper and a piece of cardboard was placed outside the paper. This was all inside a bubble-wrap envelope. Both canvases were shipped in the same box. For once it was nice to not have to wire them for hanging because it was all done (with D-rings and even the little bumper dots on the corners). I’ll definitely be doing more digital prints in the future, but might try paper next time. 

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!

Friday, June 20, 2008

Under the Knife

So life’s thrown me for another loop. I have surgery on Tuesday to remove an ovarian cyst. Unfortunately, it’s too large to do a minimally invasive surgery, so the procedure will be somewhat similar to a c-section. It may have been close to eleven years ago, but I remember exactly how painful that is so I’m definitely NOT looking forward to it.

Call me a nerd, but part of what bothers me the most is that all my hard work doing sit-ups, leg-lifts and cannonballs for Tae Kwon Do will be lost and I’ll have to build my abdominal muscles back up from scratch. I don’t think push-ups will work either. My surgeon said I can walk, but that’s it for exercise until my checkup 4–6 weeks after surgery. That means I also miss the next TKD test and I’ll have to repeat my current rank for another 10 weeks. Bummer. If I work hard, I should be back up to speed in no time and on my way to making black belt before I turn 33.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Adventures in Home Owning: Part 2

About a month ago, we decided it was time for our 10-year-old to start having more responsibilities around the house. Doing the dishes seemed like a good place to start. The first few days, I stood over his shoulder and nitpicked at him how to load the dishwasher, clean the sink, wipe the counters, etc. Then I figured he could handle it on his own. If he needed help, he’d ask me, right?

Last night, I walk into the kitchen to wash my hands and see ants crawling around on the sink. Growing up, we had ants around the dog food, but I don’t remember them crawling around on the kitchen counter. Of course, I look around and see why. Dirty dishes in the sink and on the counter. The stove top hasn’t been cleaned in a few weeks. There are empty pizza boxes on the counter. I don’t remember the last time the floor was scrubbed (I’m guessing at least a month since I’m the only one that does it). Tobias goes to bed. Troy takes the pizza boxes out to the trash and I spend the next 3-4 hours cleaning the kitchen alone while he plays Grand Theft Auto. In the immortal words of Charlie Brown… “Arrrgghhhh!”

I got some Terro over my lunch break and put it out, but I didn’t see any ants crawling around. Hopefully there isn’t a huge colony in the house. I’m praying they’re only there because the ground outside is too wet. Needless to say, we need to keep the house cleaner.

Adventures in Home Owning: Part 1

We’ve been getting a lot of rain around here and our basement started leaking sometime on Thursday. It started with damp carpet and water seeping through small cracks in the laundry room floor. We thought the water was coming mostly from one side of the house and was due to clogged gutters. Obviously, everyone in town was thinking the same thing because we called a few gutter cleaners and have yet to hear back from any of them.

So instead of relaxing on Saturday, I get up and go to Tae Kwon Do at 8:30. After a stop at Village Inn for breakfast with Tobias (Troy slept in), we came home while Troy took his crutches Home Depot to buy an extension for the hose. The gutters were too clogged for that to work, so I got out the ladder and spent the next few hours elbow deep in decomposing leaves getting sunburned while Troy watched and moved the hose around for me. Then I got to shovel out the leaves, dirt and muck on and in the back stairs leading down to the basement and the drain. I tried to pretend that the huge worms were cool to Tobias, but I was kind of grossed out. Even though I was wearing nitrile gloves, it felt like I was touching them with my bare hands. After that lovely bit of fun, we spent the rest of the day with the wet vac trying to keep the carpet as dry as we could.

There were more thunderstorms Saturday night and I got woken up on Sunday to find even more water in the basment. The drain by the back basement door was backed up and water was flowing under the door. The carpet was completely soaked. After cutting off his cast with my kitchen shears (grumble), he left on a day-long journey to try to find a store with a sump pump, buying a second shop vac instead, taking another trip to find an attachment for it, going back to the store to get the cap he left, then finally driving to his parents’ house to borrow a pump from their pond. I spent the day moving everything out of the basement except for the pool table and the huge block of wood we call an entertainment center. I think I got the short end of the stick. Troy redeemed himself by helping cut and carry out all the carpet and padding.

We’re still waiting for the floor to dry out. Rain is forcasted every day this week. Still, I think we’re lucky.

Monday, June 09, 2008

The Best Intentions

I’m beginning to think I may never have the time to do this site justice. So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and just start blogging already even if the design (if you want to call it that) sucks. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m really not giving up. I’m committed to having a new design implemented by then end of June. I’m just not sure how fancy it will be at this point. Every time I think I have spare time, fate intervenes with some new obstacle.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Bear With Me

I recently moved my web site to a new server. I decided to do an overhaul on the design and content as well. Please ignore the ugly default template.