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[twenty twenty-four day one three nine]: there’s nothing so confused as a vegan at a vegan restaurant

Published May 18, 2024 by centaur
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A brief one, as I have Silicon Valley Open Studios AND consulting work to do today, but a comment one of my wife's friends made once was "there's nothing so confused as a vegan at a vegan restaurant" ... because normally they have NO options or ONE option, but now have ALL the options.

I dunno, to me, it seems like a good place to be.

-the Centaur

Pictured: My wife at Craft Roots, a vegan bar and grill in Morgan Hill that we love a lot.

Not pictured: the meal, other than the buffalo cauliflower - I forgot to let my phone eat first.

Also not pictured: the dog which came BARRELLING past us, tied to a clanging metal chair that was chasing it down the street (AAA! AAA! Angry metal thing is following me AND I CAN'T GET AWAY!) I caught her by the leash (just as unleashed a load of pee, how fun) and my wife grabbed her and calmed her down until the owners, panting, ran up - apparently the male owner had tied the dog's leash to his chair, but the chair moved or fell over when he stood up, and the dog, scared, took off, the chair in hot pursuit.

Good doggie, though. Reminded me of my old dog Lady, from back in the days we didn't have portable phones capable of taking frequent pet pictures.

Silicon Valley Open Studios is Here!

Published May 18, 2024 by centaur
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Cue "It's Happening" meme: Silicon Valley Open Studios is this weekend, May 18th and 19th, where my wife Sandi Billingsley will be showing off both her paintings and mixed media including furniture!

Our friend Diane, a glass artist, dropped in to help us manage the day, bringing snacks and champagne!

Sandi has a lot of artwork and furniture on display today, including some very nice large-format art. Above you can see "Kirsten Piig" and "Jim Dairy" from Sandi's "Animals are People Too" series, and one of the geode tables (along with Diane on the left, Sandi on the right, and my toe at the bottom); on the other side is "Missy Elephant" and several of Sandi's other pieces with custom art boards made to look like stone:

Another room has more pieces and some works in progress:

Below you can see "Collie Parton", "Yeti White" and another striking geode table:

This is an open studio, so several of Sandi's in-process pieces are prominently on display, like this bar and chairs set (and also the finished art "Moo Paul" and "Mllama"):

In the back room, this enormous piece is going to be a conch-shaped day bed:

It is so big that Sandi's actually going to partially take it apart and make the top into a removable cabinet:

Not because it can't fit through the door or anything. Not at all. Sandi also let me have a space to display my books, since we needed to find a place to put that bookcase (which I designed and built, I'm proud to say). The giant egg creature is actually one of Sandi's furniture pieces - a hat cabinet!

At the back there is the final geode table, which I think I showed yesterday ... oh, no I didn't, here you go:

We will be here working on art today and tomorrow from 11-5, so please come on by!

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one three nine]: a larger viewfinder

Published May 18, 2024 by centaur
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Day 139, still going through Goldman's drawing techniques section. Again I appear to have hit the (admittedly foreshortened, yet barely visible) thumb with a hammer. But, it's a good exercise. For example, the texturing technique I used for the grey background got a little misaligned in the bottom middle, creating an apparent discontinuity where it should be continuous (and making the pipe or stick the back hand is resting on less visible in my drawing, though it wasn't too easy to see in the original).

Drawing on average every day; scheduling posts to go up once a day if I can.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one three eight]: one day to go for realz yo

Published May 17, 2024 by centaur
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Contrary to yesterday's post, which was done after midnight so it fooled me about what day it was, TODAY is one day left to Silicon Valley Open Studios, where my wife Sandi Billingsley will be showing off both her paintings and mixed media including furniture, like the geode table above.

Below is one of my wife's pieces, Marylin Thumbtoe, from a series combining animals and celebrities into surreal combinations, like ... Marilyn Thumbtoe.

Perhaps the work should speak for itself.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Yes, I know, after midnight is the next day according to the calendar, but I count days as over when I go to bed, unless for some reason I pull an all nighter, so a 1am post is technically the previous day. I don't always hold to that, but for the purposes of the blog series, that makes the most sense.

[drawing every day 2024 post one three eight]: strange solutions

Published May 17, 2024 by centaur
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More sketches from Wizard - How To Draw: Basic Training. I was curious about what happened to Wizard, and it apparently imploded with the big move to the Internet - just like many Internet publications imploded with the move to regurgitated garbage hidden behind sociopathic paywalls. But I'm not bitter.

Drawing, on average, every day.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one three seven]: two days to go

Published May 17, 2024 by centaur
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Just two more days to Silicon Valley Open Studios where my wife Sandi Billingsley will be showing off both her paintings and mixed media including furniture. Can't photo yet, we are currently scrambling to get the place fixed up, so let me present representative samples from South Carolina (not on display here).

These three, however, will definitely be on display!

Most of this art, even the large furniture pieces, are made from recycled materials such as paper and reclaimed wood, which I think is very cool.

Please come check it out!

-the Centaur

Pictured: One of the frames I helped assemble today, and some of Sandi's furniture.

[drawing every day 2024 post one three seven]: viewfinder one

Published May 16, 2024 by centaur
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Even thought this illustration in Goldman was designed to show off the viewfinder idea, it is useful for my "drawing every day" purposes because it has an unchosen subject that requires new rendering techniques. Getting the texture of the viewfinder right is tedious, and it looks like I took a hammer to this guy's thumb on the left. But it came out kinda nice regardless, and stretched my drawing muscles.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day placeholder for 2024 day one three six]: zoom zoom

Published May 15, 2024 by centaur
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Drawing for 2024 Day 136

In case I don't get internet access in time to post the cleaned version, here's a peek at Drawing Every Day 2024 number 136:

The picture plane

Yes, I am literally drawing every coherent illustration in the Goldman book, even if they are not intended as drawing exercises. This forces me to stretch with more complex compositions, and broadens the drawing eye.

Drawing every day, posting when I have Internet.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one three six]: zoom zoom

Published May 15, 2024 by centaur
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One Flew South sushi and cocktail

On my way to Silicon Valley Open Studios to help my wife with her art show this weekend - both paintings and mixed media, including furniture:

Geode-like furniture by Sandi Billingsley

Short layover, hit publish, please attend!

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one three five]: it’s late and i’m tired …

Published May 15, 2024 by centaur
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... so here's a sunset dinner from a month or two ago that I thought was beautiful. Enjoy!

-the Centaur

Pictured: the patio of La Parrilla restaurant in Greenville at sunset, along with one of their excellent La Parrilla house margaritas - the best drink on the menu, actually, even though it is the house drink.

[twenty twenty-four day one three four]: victory condition

Published May 13, 2024 by centaur
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Wow, the Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter not only got funded, we reached our first stretch goal - bookmarks!

We had hoped to reach postcards or even the audiobook, but this was a great achievement, and I'll take it. Not only did we take in almost $9K to help pay our authors and defray other costs in the book, but also a hundred and eighty people backed and another hundred bookmarked the campaign. Which means that over two hundred fifty people liked it ... and probably ten times as many looked at it. Mission accomplished!

Next up, finishing the ARC (the preliminary version of the book for industry and sensitivity reader review).

Onward!

Pictured: Graphics from the Kickstarter, which were not only fun to do but taught me a lot, and an Old Fashioned from Select restaurant in Greer.

[drawing every day 2024 post one three three]: surface of the sole

Published May 12, 2024 by centaur
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More Goldman studies. Starting to feel a little three-dimensionality to the shapes; I should start leaning into that, as I think that's a limitation of both my drawing and my viewing eye.

Drawing every day (on average).

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one three three]: don’t do this

Published May 12, 2024 by centaur
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Okay, I understand that many restaurants serve tomahawk chops like this because they're not really a meal for one, but actually a for-the-table sharing dish. But, for the love of Julia Child, please, don't do this.

You have here a steak cooled ON its long, frenched bone for its beautiful Fred Flintstone-cut appearance. But your kitchen has proceeded to cut if OFF the bone before the diner ever sees it.

And you have a THICK-CUT steak designed to retain both its juice and heat. Then your kitchen has proceeded to THIN-SLICE it before the diner can even take a bite.

In sum, don't slice your tomahawks.

-the Centaur

Pictured: a doubly ruined steak: first, because they cut it up, and second, because I ill-advisedly tried it blackened. Unfortunately, the already charred nature of a tomahawk doesn't go with blackening, so I cannot recommend this to you. Yes, I threw my body on that grenade for you. You're welcome.

P.S. This was supposed to be my celebration steak for funding our Kickstarter, which funded yesterday, but still has a day to go. I suppose I jumped the gun here and paid the price.

[twenty twenty-four day one three two]: what?!

Published May 11, 2024 by centaur
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There's an ongoing debate over whether human emotions are universal: I, like many researchers, think that there was solid work done by Ekman back in the day that demonstrated this pretty conclusively with tribes with little Western contact, but some people seem determined to try to pretend that evidence can be made not to exist once it's been collected, if you just argue loudly enough about how you think it's wrong.

(The evidence is wrong?)

Yet my cat can look surprised, or scared, or angry, or alarmed, or content, or curious. It's fairly well established that some emotions, like the self-conscious ones of shame or pride, have highly variable, culturally-determined expressions (if they have consistent expressions at all). But when animals very different from us can still communicate emotions, it's hard to believe none of it is universal.

(The evidence is wrong? What's wrong with you people?)

-the Centaur

P.S. If you subscribe to the anthropic fallacy fallacy, please do not bother to tell me that I'm falling into the anthropic fallacy, because you're the one trapped in a fallacy - sometimes surprise is just surprise, just like a heart is still a heart when that heart is found an animal, and not a "deceptively heart-like blood pump."

Pictured: Loki, saying, "What, you expect me to do something? I'm a cat. I was busy, sleeping!"

[drawing every day post one three two]: twist and shout two

Published May 11, 2024 by centaur
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More from Wizard How to Draw. These stick figure exercises are starting to prove very effective in helping me break down human figures so I can draw them more accurately, so I guess I'll keep doing them.

Drawing, on average, every day.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one three one]: celebration!

Published May 10, 2024 by centaur
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Yay! The Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter funded, with two and a half days to go! And it has been amazing, after a month of slow but steady growth, that the Kickstarter continues to now rapidly fund even as we're trying to publicize it! A shoutout to Cat Rambo, who graciously let us do that guest blogpost! Let me shout back, with the story card we came up with for Cat's story, "Scary Monsters, Super Creeps"!

Now that we've met our funding goal, we've announced our stretch goals, which include cool things like bookmarks and postcards and, if we really stretch, an audiobook of the anthology.

But we've also been posting about our process, talking about how we selected our stories for the anthology and how we organized them into our current table of contents - which required setting up a Kanban board in Airtable to help us organize it quickly, efficiently, and, most of all, understandably.

Airtable is a system that looks a lot like a spreadsheet, except it's actually a database under the hood, enabling you to build different views of the same data; a Kanban board is one such view, with rows turned into "cards" organized into "stacks" by a given field - and as you move cards about in the stacks, the field changes with it. This helps visualize the flow of, well, many things - including stories in the editing pipeline, or stories in the table of contents; I'm even using it for tracking the writing of new stories. But for now, the most important thing is that it enabled us to put together this:

We're proud of the table of contents - but also, pleased with the process that got us there, and hope other people find it as useful as we did.

So please, go check those posts out, and maybe even help spread the word so we reach our stretch goals!

-the Centaur