Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Page 2 of 4

Sketch / Digital: My Ballerina with a touch of colour.

Published on May 22, 2009 in Digital, Plain Paper, Portraits and Sketch. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .
Kat Johnston Sketch: A touch of colour on one of my previous sketches... because I can't scan anything in today!

So right now the printer/scanner/copier isn’t yet set up in our ‘new’ computer room, while the rumpus dries out. I honestly think that the flooding downstairs has somewhat killed both my husband’s and my desire to have things down in that room now – at least within reach of possible flooding… again. That, and it smells like mildew. Eww!

So instead of a ‘new’ sketch today, you’re getting one of my older ones with a touch of colour! This was started a little while back, and since I have it handy, it can go up for today’s sketchy offering. I’d go a little further on it, but surprise surprise… the wacom hasn’t made it upstairs again either! Ah well. Things should get back to normal soon, I guess.

Happy weekend, guys! Aren’t you glad it has arrived?

Sketch / Photo: Flooding in Brisbane prevents my posting yesterday.

Published on May 21, 2009 in Cartoon, Plain Paper, Portraits, Sketch and Sketch-Book. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .
Kat Johnston Sketch: Yes... this is what I planned to post yesterday. That didn't freakin happen though...

Yesterday I planned on posting an image, this sketch I had created moments before scanning it in. However, no sooner than I had uploaded it to Flickr and was preparing to write my post today, that the incredible occurred. My rumpus room flooded.

It has been steadily raining here over the past few days, and of course, we had to get flooded. The room went from dry to having a third of it covered in water in about two minutes flat. Now here’s the thing – this didn’t have to happen. There was no reason for this to happen – it was preventable! Our lounge had been flooded before, and there was ample opportunities for the owners of this place to fix the problem – in fact, I think they even filed an insurance claim over it. Did they fix the seal that allowed our rented property to flood though? No. They decided in their infinite wisdom that it ‘wouldn’t happen again’. It was very obviously a problem with dodgy construction, but they decided that rather than caring about the well-being of their tenants, they’d just let it slide and get the carpets cleaned.

I’ve been absolutely fuming over this, mainly because it was only by sheer luck that I was downstairs at the time this occurred to whisk all of our electronics equipment up from their places before they were drowned. It doesn’t do anything to help that the owners violated the residential tenancies act and had builders over to our place twice without any notice whatsoever either, twice in two weeks. Once this week, at 7:30 in the morning!

I’m telling you, if we didn’t need a place to live right now, I would be shooting daggers at people and glaring very very angrily. There might just be the use of flame-throwers too. I am not currently a happy camper.

Anyhow, hardly anything we can do about it now… so here’s a photo! Welcome to our new indoor swimming pool, courtesy of fools who would rather get annoyed tenants and carpet cleaned after the fact rather than fix the problem in the first place.

Kat Johnston: Flooding in Brisbane... why'd it have to be us?

Sketch: It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.

Published on May 19, 2009 in Plain Paper, Portraits, Sketch and Sketch-Book. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
Kat Johnston - wavy hair... what an inspired name, huh?

It’s been raining today – a lovely light mist of grey, shrouding the world in a cool, damp glow. Mmmm… very nice – when you’re happily rugged up inside, anyhow. Then again, I have been known to go outside to dance in the rain, just because it is raining!

I can’t do that today though. It seems that my knee is acting up for some reason or another, although against the urging of my wonderful radiographer friend, I’m leaving it a couple more days before heading to the docs… It doesn’t really hurt – just seems a bit ‘off’, if ya get what I mean. Damn knees. Damn knees and their damn aching.

My apologies for not having today’s image up a few days ago – I know I’ve skipped too many days recently. It’s so cyclical though – you don’t post one day, for one reason or another, then the next day you go ‘but I feel guilty about not posting yesterday, ohhhh, I don’t want to do today’, and then it gets to that special three day mark where you go ‘yeep, I’ve left it so long… I almost feel guilty going back, especially when I haven’t got something to show that will make up for not posting in the past few days’ and so on and so forth until you finally come to the forgone conclusion that you’re overthinking, and should just post a damn picture.

Thus, you’re getting just another silly picture. Phew! Yay! Have a great day, everyone… I’m going to listen to some music and smile and enjoy the rest of my evening.

Painting: Some more of my bunny in progress.

Published on May 13, 2009 in Bunnies, Canvas and painting. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be...

A little further along, I’m continuing with the progress shots of the other day. I’ve been doing a bit more work on my bunny here and there, and thought I’d better put up a couple more pictures! In this particular one, the bunny has become a bit more refined and I’ve done some rough sketching of the viney curly things for the background. When I do this, I do it in water-colour pencils, so that I can easily remove and rearrange the marks as I need to. I find this, for me, to be a better way of doing it than lead pencil, or pastel, which seem to be a bit harder to remove completely, especially from darker surfaces. Water-colour pencils in a light shade provide enough of a mark without any view to permanency that might occur with other mediums. A simple smudge of the finger or a tiny bit of water and a smudge, and the marks disappear. Perfect for sketching straight onto a canvas… and we all know how I like to sketch!

Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: cute cute bunnies, just as cute as can be.

And now a little further along again – I’ve used a fine brush to describe the curling vine-like growths behind the bunny here with a darkish shade. The painting is not yet done – the curling viney thingies are far too precise around the edges – very sharp. I’m thinking that I need some purple, some orange, some vibrancy… I still need to lift out pieces here and there, and, well, I dunno! I’m still working it out. In other words, stay tuned! There is more to come.

Update/Sketch: Bite me. Oh, and I’ve done some flickr updating too.

Published on May 12, 2009 in Announcements, Bunnies, Cartoon, Humerous, Plain Paper, Sketch and Update. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Kat Johnston: There are some bunnies that are cute and cuddly - others just say 'bite me'.

Phew… done… at least for now. I’ve been working studiously away today, trying to get a good amount of the sketches here up onto my Flickr account so that it doesn’t go un-used. As a visual artist, it seems silly not to take advantage of Flickr for all that it’s worth. Although I haven’t gone through and tagged them all or sorted out proper descriptions, at least I’ve now got a good amount of pictures up with links back to the site.

I’ve also installed a new little filtery thingie, to hopefully stop so much spam getting through to be caught by Akismet. I hate to think of legitimate comments getting caught by the spam filter, so I do also go through them by hand just to make sure. With upwards of 100 comments within 24 hours getting into the spam queue though, it’s getting a mite ridiculous. Here’s to hoping that this reduces it by a little. If not, it’s time to move onto the next attempt at a solution.

Some of you may have noticed that the gallery has been taken down from here for a while – the tab is still up, but there is nothing in it in the way of, uhhh, pictures! Never fear – I’ve been looking into new gallery systems to improve upon the one I had up. The one I had up had no option for nested galleries and seemed to error when pictures were not utilizing a specific sizing system. Therefore, it was doubtless time for a change. When it is back up and running (hopefully soon), I will let you know!

Thanks for sticking around and seeing what I’ve got going on here, guys. Please never hesitate to let me know about any improvements you would like to see happen with the site, either in the comments of a post or by utilizing the contact form.