Tag Archives: Valentine’s Day

Love Bites : : playing with the Harmony Drawing Tool

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love bites furry monster

Came across Mr. Doob’s Harmony Drawing Tool via the Drawing Pins blog. There’s no way to undo or erase a mark (other than to start over) but he’s got a fantastic set of brushes. This is the brush/mark-maker called ‘fur’. I could play with Harmony all day. Pretty addictive! (But it’s such a pain in the ass to draw with the Macbook’s track pad. I should really get a mouse)

What is this post? This is nothing. Just playing around, mindless doodling on Harmony, a bit of fluff because I didn’t do anything special today (other than turn 38, which is not something I like to dwell on.)

BUT can you imagine a drawing such as this one made with the fur brush, interpreted in stitch? It starts to look like something, doesn’t it? Suddenly, hmm, there’s potential here, something to explore, to push, corners to tug at, a little seed of a seed of a seed of something…ideas, ideas, ideas, I shit ‘em. LOL

Go make a furry Valentine for someone. Harmony also has “long fur”, for those who like their doodles (or Valentines) REALLY hairy.

bite me

all pinked out…

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…February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring…
—excerpt from February by Margaret Atwood

It’s actually been gray and sunless long enough to starve our solar panels, which in turn has left our bank of 12-volt batteries flat. I’m under strict orders not to use my laptop for more than an hour…and only during the ‘day,’ when there is presumably more light in the sky than during the ‘night,’ though some days I can’t tell which way is up, and neither can the sulphur-crested cockatoos, who snooze in the mangroves until something like half-past-eight in the morning. I think hunger probably wakes them up, more than the sun.

I’m happy that my time on the macbook has been curtailed, though I miss the music more than anything—I just got Keith Jarrett‘s spontaneous jazz piano piece Köln, January 24, 1975, Pt. II C before all the weather started, and I haven’t been able to listen to it properly yet! Still, it’s not going anywhere; nice to have something to anticipate hungrily.

I had a brief Valentine’s Day rash, a week back, where I painted up some cases in pink and went wild with the hearts and doilies and lace and poetry and whatnot. Owls, did I really do owls?! I think I’m over it now, thank you, (I AM doing just one more, for my friend Miss Hurro Kitty, because she said pretty please) feeling much more like myself again…don’t know what came over me.

But it was a good rash, because I sold the first two of these journals right away, there’s just the last one left…it started with the needle in the upper left corner of the back cover, and before I knew what was happening, I’d added in a whole bunch of needleworking accessories. So it has become A Valentine for an Embroiderer (or Needlewoman, at any rate)

Day? Night? Dude (aka Pink Bumhole) doesn’t care…it’s all just “weather for sleeping” to him. He’s found a new spot this week, too…next to the flat 12-volt batteries.

Yay! Fun!

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Och! I am having so much fun, holed up all the rainy weekend in this little floating room, it almost feels reprehensible. The little last bits of hesitation have disintegrated, and I am fully engaged in this playful creativity now. The characters walk in unbidden—barn owls and lacy underwear, heart-shaped doilies and stripey socks—and all I have to do is find a spot and draw them in. This is always a fantastic place to be, and I am savouring every minute of it.

Doodling doilies…

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The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.

—Jalal al din Rumi, ca. 13th century

Give me some white encre de Chine ink and a dip pen with a fine steel mapping nib; pour me a cup of black coffee (*thank you, my darling*), then shut the door to my studio softly…and I will very happily doodle bits of lace and doily loveliness for the rest of the day. I love this sort of mindless doodling…a dozen loops, a picot, a scallop or three…

I can still sort of remember how to crochet, but don’t feel the urge to take it up again—it never really made an impression on me; I love the look and feel of doilies and crocheted lace, though, as love drawing these bits of fiddly finery.

This is a ‘case’…a made-up pair of covers for a hardbound, flat-backed book…minus the book. Just a little something Valentine-ey to brighten (i.e. to em-Pink-en) my etsy and Madeit shops soon. The lines are from a short poem by the incomparable Sufi mystic, Rumi (transl. Coleman Barks)…the most beautifully ecstatic and mystic poet I know, and, hands-down, my absolute personal favorite.

P.S. The beautiful drop cap ‘G’ above is from Jessica Hische’s amazing Daily Drop Cap project…you really have to go over there and see! The equivalent of 12 alphabets of quirky, classic, showy, modern, eye-catching drop caps—each one such an individual, with a character all its own— are available free for personal use, to jazz up your blog posts. It’s incredibly generous of her to share these typographical works of art with everyone, when people of much less talent are so grinchy about everything they post on the internet, don’t you think?