Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

So, this is definitely a creature I want to put on Zazzle merch over at my store (Chimer(i)gons), but as I said on Thursday, I didn't think he was ready for prime time... Scanners being what they are, and computers not seeing outlines the way the human eye does, it was difficult to scan the image I'd drawn and make it clear, rather than muddy, and distinguished from the background.

So I went over it again, in pencil, and fiddled and filled in blank spots, and got the whole thing generally darker and heavier. Then, after that redone image was scanned, I selectively deleted all the bits I saw as background, and then added highlights with my photo editor's "Brush" feature, and then, lightened the whole thing up again, and was finally satisfied with this:



Then, I noticed my photo editing program had a "colorize" feature, so I decided to experiment with that, too.

( Two more versions of the image: 'fully' colorized, and 'partly' colorized )

Cross-posted from the Na'Ar'Ma'Mo Community, again:

Same monster as yesterday -- what it's like when it's on the move. I fear it's one of those poor, tragic, creatures doomed to be "cute when angry"...

This is a further exploration of an idea that I played with last year: "Make Room for Monsters!" A fuller description of the image is up at the flick'r page:



---
(this is what I left out of today's posting in naarmamo:

Honestly? I'm really working on a big, multiple day project (which is kinda-sorta against the rules -- Shh! Don't tell anyone) but it's a project that I just don't have the spoons to work on in one session without sleep-waking cycles to break it up. So I've figured out different parts of the whole that could exist on their own, if they wanted, and posting each part as it's own na'art...

So... yeah...

hooray! We are underway! A loose doodle of a little bit of everything,
to get myself warmed up...


( under a cut for bigness* )

*Not sure, yet, how to put posted images under a cut, via DreamWidth's new email picture-posting, which will eventually become their own version of a scrapbook... so I will edit as soon after posting as I can...

Also, just realized I have to make this public, if I want folks in naarmamo to be able to see it...

ETA (cross-posted from my comment on naarmamo): Okay, I can see the picture in both my journal and here, but others are telling me they cannot. I could see it immediately on Google Chrome, but I could not see it in either place on AOL (Internet Explorer) -- until I logged into my LiveJournal account, on AOL. Which just strikes me as strange.

In the meantime, I'll use Flick'r... give me a moment...

Okay, here it is on Flick'r: Can you see this?

naarmamo is a comm started by jekesta ... six years ago, now ??

Anyway, it's loosely modeled after National Novel-Writing Month. Only instead of creating one long piece of writing, the goal is to create one small piece of art each day... so at the end of the month, you will have 31 new pieces of art to your name that didn't exist before.

And "Art" here is defined as loosely as possible -- seriously.

In the past, we've had:

People doodling designs in the soap suds while they took a bath, or
Artfully arranging the jars of jelly they just made,
Full-blown, carefully painted landscapes,
Journal (100 pixel square) Icons
Brief pieces of composed ditties...

And everything in between.

Anyway, participating in this, for me, has been a way to lift my spirits through the hump that is the summer doldrums. So you can be damned sure I'll be doing this again. I thought, here, that I'd like to make a list of things I'd like to try, this year. So if I get stumped, mid-month, I can come back and remind myself of ideas I've had (not necessarily in this order):

A hand-drawn sketch of my own, bare, feet (they are the part of my body I am least comfortable with, and I want to get more comfortable with them) Problem: Getting a way so I can actually see them while in a position to draw them...

Another facial portrait (I've done one every year, it's a thing)

Make a video response to Vi Hart's Squiggle Inception (specifically ~ 3 1/2 minute mark)

More monsters -- this time, ones that are explicitly disabled -- perhaps after a run-in with a knight. Although... my "monster on wheels" is disabled... I drew another adult version who was able-bodied -- with eight tentacle legs, instead of four...

Some three-dimensional art... tactile.

Write a song -- maybe my own version of a Geek pride song.

And ...other stuff...

EDIT: Argh! premature post -- all because I accidentally hit the [Enter] key, instead of [Tab]

I've always loved monsters, for nearly as long as I can remember.

Actually, I should qualify that: I'm not fond, at all, of the "Hollywood monsters," such as zombies, or "The Thing from the Black Lagoon" or "The Blob" -- which are, imnsho, blatant representations of abject fear-without-thought, and show up in stories to justify unjustifiable bigotry. But I've always loved the heraldic monsters:

Unicorns (Note Well: they are not just sparkly ponies with a horn. And they do not poop rainbows), Dragons, &hearts Gryphons &hearts, Greenmen, and of course, the monster of my Astrological Sun-sign: Sea-goats

For most of that time, I just thought they were nifty because they were -- "fancy" (?), and they represent the "magical impossible," and are manifestations of the imagination, and creativity... All good stuff. But I never gave them much more thought beyond: "Nifty, Neat-O! Keen!"

Then, a few years ago, for naarmamo, I was overcome with a desire to draw new monsters of my own invention, several days in a row... like some sort of biological urge, or something.

And the geeky part of my brain thought: "WTF is up?! What is a monster, anyway? What, after all, is the basic definition?" And that's when I found the etymology, of "monster" being a "creature, human or livestock, with birth defects, and seen as a bad omen, and sign that the gods were angry."

And from that point on, monsters became a political statement for me, representing Disability Pride, Culture, and History, and the fight against Ableism/Disablism -- on top of being a manifestation of creativity and imagination. ... And here, I could mount an argument that creativity and the use of the imagination is an essential part of Disability Culture, because when Society makes a concerted effort to deny you access (because it views you as a monster) you have to be creative, to make a way of living for yourself where none is given to you.

(but really, that's for another post).

Then, the other day, when I posted the newest image of my newest monster,* pebblerocker commented that she loved the "joins" -- where feather meets fur and fur meets scales. And there was the "ding-ding-ding!" of realization, and third leg in the three-legged stool of my monster-love popped into place.

Back in my first years of my college education, I took a literary survey course called "Comedy, Wit, and Humor" (it was awesome; it was once a week, three hours long, and we got to watch Richard Pryor videos and tell dirty jokes in class). And the one thing from that class which has stuck with me over the last 30 years is this:

The punchlines of jokes work because the human mind can only follow one line of logic at a time. The main "body" of the joke tells a story along a certain line of logic, and in standard narrative fashion, the emotional tension builds to a climax. Then, the "punch" line comes in, from a completely different logical direction and knocks that emotional tension "ass-over-teakettle," revealing all our fears and worries to be nonsensical. And in that release of tension, we laugh. (And that may be why so many people say a compatible sense of humor is the most important trait in life partners -- your sense of humor reveals how you are likely to respond to life's ambiguities. Personally, I will never trust anyone whose humor tends toward causing pain or belittling another's intelligence).

( The joke that was given as a model of this formula (as I remember it), was this: )

Anyway, pebblerocker's comment flicked on the light bulb that monsters do this, too. The point where the goat's front half grows from the fish's back half, or the Green Man's beard grows as foliage instead of hair, is like the punchline of a joke: the moment when the logic of the world-as-we-know-it gets turned on its head.

This can be the moment of terror (especially if you are the Archbishop of Seville, and all the comfort and power in your life is built on the world-as-we-know-it), but it can also be the moment of laughter (which Jim Henson, in his genius, understood instinctively, if not intellectually).

And that's why I Heart Monsters: In one package, they represent:

1) The sublime reaches of Human Creativity
2) Righteous Anger against human cruelty
3) The ultimate life-saving power of the Absurd

*( it's here, behind the cut )

So -- that picture of Baba Yaga's house, that I posted, the other day?

A ballpoint pen and pencil sketch of a small house with a crooked chimney walking on a pair of giant chicken legs -- After the witch "Baba Yaga's" house from traditional Russian folklore.


I have plans-not-ready-to-discuss for it, I think. Anyway, that meant a little Web-surfing to refresh my memory of the Baba Yaga's stories, and the House's role in them, in particular.

And I came upon this page: Baba Yaga Stories, by Susun Weed (Samhain, '08). And this is how the article about her begins:

(Quote)
Who is Baba Yaga? She is the Goddess, she is the Witch, she is the Wise Woman, she is the Crone, she is aged Artemis.

Baba is Grandmother. In Tibet, fierce demons are Yagas. So she is the Grandmother Demon, Grandmother Dragon, the fearsome, the fierce.
(Unquote)

And I don't know... But, today, at least, that just rubs me the wrong way. It's as if a figure from legend and folklore isn't worth thinking, (talking, or learning) about until we turn that figure into some archetype we can admire, regardless of how that figure was actually thought about by the people who originally told those stories. It makes me feel a bit like I do when someone says to me:

"I admire you So Much! When I see you, I don't see a person with a disability, at all!" which (they think) they mean as a compliment, but which I hear as: "Disability is so repulsive to me that I can't think of you as a person unless I pretend that half of your life doesn't exist." So much of New Age Paganism (not all, but a lot of it) has a similar impulse to erase the lived, cultural, experiences of the people to whom these stories first belonged -- especially if that experience doesn't sit well with our twentieth/twenty-first century mores.

Though, actually, no. Now that I've copy-pasted that bit in isolation, and started writing my response to it, I see what else bothers me about that. The author so blithely and easily conflates Slavic folklore with ancient Greek, and also Tibetan -- simply because of the sound of her name -- regardless of what her name actually means, in Russian.

That said... I still want to take the house out of its cultural context and put it in a story of my own, because I think it's nifty... People in Chicken-legged houses shouldn't ... ?? play marbles ???

But at least I'm not trying to pass my nonsense off as Truth and Scholarly Understanding. So maybe I can be forgiven?

So I didn't want to waste the first time I've felt alert all day by going to sleep. I will go to sleep right after this post, though.

Because it's been so hot, and my computer is so old, I turned off my computer and tried to do something unplugged with my time.

And lo! I drew things:

( Here, there be monsters )

I may be asking for name suggestions in the not too distant future...

Despite being at the level of "Why Aren't You in Bed?!" sick, since Sunday,* I spent Monday and yesterday making the fifth video of my "Monster Challenges" poems.

I've also been unsure what to write in the description/explanation section, so that bit's been rather uneven in each video. But today, I think I figured it out. Now, all of the videos have the same description/explanation, except that I include the original text version of each poem at the end. That way, if someone comes upon these videos out of order ('cause, really? YouTube's "Related Videos" algorithm is kinda wacky), they won't have to watch the whole playlist to figure out WTF they're watching (also figured I should (and how to) credit the student whose Master's Thesis inspired me).



( What I now have in the 'Information' section )

I'm also going to make a Photo Set on Flick'r for these poems, with the pencil sketches/illustrations I've put with each (every poem has at least one hand-drawn/written element so it's not all computer-generated fonts and animation.





*I actually thought I was over it, by last night but the really weird Fever Dream I woke up from this morning let me know that, no, actually, we're not yet back to "Situation Normal" -- it was a "Psychedelic Flower Garden w/ Random temperature gauges and pipes emitting blasts of steam" dream, and not a "Being trapped in a Burning Building" dream, so I don't think my body is overly concerned.

Confession: it wasn't meant to be silent. I spent most of the afternoon and more of the evening composing a simple music line to go with this -- matching up the timing of the different "chapters," and everything.

But although I had good luck with the first on-line MIDI-to-Mp3 converter I tried (the tune came out sounding exactly like it went in), every time I've tried it since the MP3 results sound nothing like the tune I wrote: making the overtones louder than the actual notes, and the incorrect balance of the overtones, too, so it comes out in an entirely different, discordant, key.

So then, I decided to try AudioSwapping from YouTube's library. But that means they stick an ad on your video. I wouldn't even have minded that if the ad came up when the video first starts. But no. It had to pop up and cover the bottom of the image just at the point where the creature's feet get filled in.

So back to silence it went.


(PS: the first dozen views are all me, checking back to see if my changes had taken effect yet, and figure out Why T.F. the music I'd chosen played sometimes, and not others...).
:-/

[ETA: I found the decent converter! So here's a link to the video with its intended music: http://youtu.be/-1uNuDcGI0w

I tried to upload it as a response to the first one, but it won't show up until I, as owner of the first one approve it. But there is no notice anywhere on YouTube that I've received a video response -- so I can't approve it. :-/]