It started to head in that direction, and suddenly I was thrust back into my desperate love of Art Nouveau.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/14066495/

I’ve been balking at trying real media A.N. just because it’s so…y’know…geometric and crisp and all those things that are great on the computer but get squishified and wobbly in real media. I don’t want to be left jiggering a compass and erasing and measuring and breaking my skull against it…and that doesn’t even START on the issues of inking. Honestly, if anybody has any ideas there, I’d love to hear ’em. I suppose I could Photoshop, print, and project–given that I use heavy board or watercolor blocks, light tabling s’not an option, and I’ve never yet figured out how to get the dealy with the pencil transfers to work. (Me competent artist! Really! Ungh!) But generally that’s good just for getting a shaky loose sketch in the vaguely correct proportions, and then I spend an hour or two cleaning it all up. And still doesn’t address the matter of crisp linework. I might be reduced to stencils. God help us all.

But limited swirlies I can do. And now have a twitchy desire to do. Curse you, Alphonse Mucha! Curse you and your spectacular swirly organic style that I cannot resist! *sob* I want a Job cigarette. And maybe a bicycle.

And hey, on a purely mercenary note, da mousies sell. (Sold!)

Starting to get a little more interest in the Gearworld stuff. Slathered on a little burnt umber, a little Payne’s Gray. I don’t know. It’s still not there yet. It’s a little discouraging. I absolutely shouldn’t force it. If I force it, death. At least I’ve got one big one done and one teeny one done, and one medium one two thirds done–there are three started, but I’m stalled out. I suspect that getting the requisite number of pieces may take longer than I suspected. I don’t know how I feel about that. It feels sort of like failure, not being able to just do it on command, but at the same time, I’m not all that surprised. Painting mice and bunnies and lizards is easy–I know exactly how to start. Gearworld is hard and vague–if I could just apply some sort of pressure, somewhere, it’s like it would pop into place, like it’s a pipe (probably a rusted pipe) that’s shut off. If I could find the valve, it’d be like a fire hose. But I don’t know where the valve is, or if there’s a valve, so I’m left trying to pick it up a drip at a time–and I drained the murky little puddle dry, and now I’m waiting impatiently for it to fill up again. It’s not like block, it’s like…like…I dunno what it’s like.

Or possibly I just painted too much bloody concrete too fast and can’t stand the thought of painting more for awhile.