Tag: Interesting Links

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Kat Johnston Sketch – just another quick little sketch to fill in the time… see! A sketch today! Not a photo from SL!

Look, look, a sketch! Not a picture from Second Life showing my 1337 SL jewelry making skills. Another random title to do with fish… I don’t get it, but I like it anyway. Yay for fish. Fish are good. Even Babelfish.

No real rhyme or reason behind the picture today, other than the fact that I had both black and red biros sitting in front of me saying ‘you need to do a sketch today: go on, be a rebel, use both of us… at once!’ So I did, and this little lady is the result. I’m actually thinking that perhaps the title of this post is in reference to her? Not so much because she might have a secret fetish for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and more to do with the fact that she’s now been turned into a bloodthirsty (yet still adorable) vampire.

Vampires apparently have no need to eat… and perhaps she used to love fish and chips so much that she ate it for dinner every night. Or maybe she had a rare disease that required her to eat gigantic amounts of fish to balance out some vitamin deficiency and she really actually hates fish, so being bitten and turned into a vampire corrects that issue since she’s no longer… well… alive. Vampires have no need for fish. She’s just being ironic. Who knows… it’s fun to ponder though, isn’t it?

On a related note (this may just go to explain why my mind is skipping here and there and I am raving like a lunatic), I had a nap yesterday afternoon which threw everything out of kilter and resulted in me being awake the entire night long. I dragged myself up to bed soon after daybreak and laid down as the hubby was getting ready for work. You know you love your husband (or you are exceedingly lazy) when he pulls the blind open, putting you in the path of direct, glarey sunlight first thing in the morning and then goes ‘huh… I’ll try a stake next time’… and it doesn’t result in giving him the noogeying of a lifetime.

I’m so tired today… but to avoid another vamp-night, I think I’d best just suck it up (pun sorta intended) and stay awake for the rest of the day. Wish me luck. Those blankets are looking mighty tempting right now.

Edit: Just for those interested… after writing this post, I came across an interesting article talking about the role of vampires and the undead in current popular media offerings here and thought I might come back and add it in. Rather interesting!

October 8, 2008
Another little dandelion day-dream.

Just a little picture drawn quickly to get something up by early afternoon. I’ve been doing a lot of dandelions recently, for some reason. I think I’m going to make them the little ‘symbol’ for Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia, a fear of imperfect creative activity on paper. When you can’t think of something to draw, you might as well draw dandelions, yes? Ahh, my ‘fear of drawing on an empty page’ phobia is getting a little life of its own here… but I’m going with it.

I think it would actually be a great name for an exhibition: a showing of sketchbooks, of works on paper, the great and brilliant pieces mixed in with the ones that probably get overlooked even by the artist themselves… in other words, pointing out the fact that each and every thing drawn, painted and roughed out is important in its own right. Each one is a step forward, each failure a step closer to an even better failure; sometimes success.

How would we polish our skills without trying things and seeing if they work? How are we ever going to advance ourselves and challenge the boundaries of what we do if we don’t give it a go? If you never reach for the stars, then there is no chance that you are ever going to reach them unless you ride on the coattails of someone who can. A song comes to mind, actually – They All Laughed, a great Gershwin song from 1937.

I can’t count the number of things that I have just stumbled upon by simply giving it a go, trying something new and often stepping back afterwards and going ‘oh my god… that’s horrible’. The fun thing with that though is that we know what not to do next time. That said, I admit I’ll often try it over, because you never know quite when the first time was just a fluke. Find glory in the failures, fail in style and never forget that not ever failure is quite what it seems from the outset. Accidental discoveries such as silly putty would never have happened without it! Yes, there are more significant discoveries than silly putty, but hey, its so funnnnnn!

Just a little note saying thank you also to QUT’s Artisan newsletter for including a link to the site – I had a whooping 194 visits to the site yesterday, with five more wonderful responses to the survey. Thank you QUT, thanks to those who visited and to those who have yet to visit but probably will.

September 30, 2008
Another day, another sketch.

Another random sketch and one I do not yet think is complete. She’s telling me she wants more and I’m telling her ‘later’ because I need to throw something up onto the site now! So I will throw up a ‘completed’ one later, if a completed one later happens to exist. It started off with the face, and then the curves down below… then things sort of started growing from there. Where it will go… I actually have an inkling or two, but I’m going to keep them to myself and leave it as a surprise when you see more of her.

A little interesting link today, because I know how much I love finding these little gems of the internet: One Mile Scroll, which I discovered through my twitter feed thanks to @caroline, another twitter user. It turns one whole mile into a scrollable webpage, complete with the option to contribute height markers along the way to make the scroll more interesting. A novel way to deliver little factoids alongside transforming “virtual space into an actual, physical distance”.

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting Twitter to be of much ‘use’ to me when I started playing around with it, but I have actually been finding it incredibly fun to get involved with it. Yay Twitter! Oh, if you happen to want to join me on twitter, the username is KatJohnston (original I know), or you can just click here to see my Twitter profile. An incentive for joining me there? I send out an update on Twitter automatically each time I post a new entry on here – so you can be the first to know when something goes up!

Edit: just adding in another interesting little link because I am sure that some others would enjoy it as much as I do. Before I die I want to… is a project that takes snapshots of people with polaroid cameras (who have stopped producing their materials and is thus ‘dying’ in its own right) with their hand-written statement of what they want to do before they die on their photograph. The site then states that it wants to go back and actually find out if people have done what they have set out to do after a good period of time has elapsed. I love the concept behind this, and the execution is also just great. Well worth a look. Uhh, and if anyone happens to have a polaroid camera and some film in Brisbane and doesn’t mind taking a shot of me, I’d love to have my picture up there too! Can anyone hook me up?

September 24, 2008
Buttons. His name is Buttons.

Today’s littlest sketch-book page. His name is Buttons. I have no idea why. Cute little mite, isn’t he?

Only read on if you want to be bored with my ranting… I’m in a ranting mood today.

So, I am all alone at home today, kept company only by my two self-serving cats who are quite happy to ignore me all day, so long as I’m not walking to the kitchen (Oh my, she means food doesn’t she? Dinner time? Now? Now!) or laying down somewhere. Apparently I make an excellent cat-cushion. Lolita is the worst of the two in that way – if I’ve popped upstairs to shut my eyes for a few moments, she’s often only a few seconds behind me. She waits until I am nice and settled, drifting off into blessed unconsciousness, before bouncing up, purring like a mack truck, and batting my nose with a paw to get pettings. Cheeky little wench.

Penny, meanwhile, has set up camp in the closet for the day, making entirely sure that all my black clothing (which accounts for most of my clothing, by the way) is suitably exposed to as much of her cream-coloured cat fur as possible. Isn’t she sweet? I think I’d better put another lint-brush on the shopping list

Darling hubby is away for a few days doing something or other. Him calling home to say ‘oh sweetie, I have to bring you here, the beach is just beautiful!’ isn’t helping either. I’m seriously considering glaring at him from here with my laser-eyes-of-doom and seeing what affect it has on him. Meanwhile, I’m stuck writing assignments and glancing wistfully towards my bed, counting down the hours until I can retire to it without feeling incredibly guilty that I haven’t gotten more work done during the day.

Just on a side-note, I’ve just joined Digg (about time!) and discovered this when browsing through some of the items on there. I laughed out loud. I think you might also. So check it out, safe for work, I promise!

Please feel free to Digg any of my posts, just click to enter into the post itself and down the bottom is a ‘share this’ button. Click, and go to town!

September 15, 2008
Sorry I’m late…

Sorry my post is late today! Here is a sketch done a few days back as the first sketch in a new little sketchbook. I tend to collect the things – small, large, spiral-bound or otherwise… this one is really only a few inches high and a couple wide, so not a huge amount of space to work with… but perfect pocket size.

And, because I was in riots of laughter over it last night… I present to you Hallmarks of Felinity.

Ok… more tomorrow!

September 7, 2008