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If only I wasn't obligated to finish this jacket for my brother.  It's somehow turned into a massive mental roadblock... stopping me from working seriously on anything else, but not engaging enough to entice me into working on it.

This week, instead of sucking it up and making the be-damned jacket already (or sewing anything else for that matter), I mostly just read library books.  On Monday I got together with Gill for a night of jewelry-making, and as all the earrings I possess can fit neatly into a small, shallow bowl, I made myself a couple of pairs.

The filigree pieces on these were originally the center part of some odd decorative corner things... I could never quite figure out what they were exactly meant to be, so I just broke off the ends and attached the middle section to some jump rings and beads.

 
For this pair, I took tiny clusters of fake flowers and coated them in black tool dip.  The tool dip went on pretty thickly, and took about twenty minutes to dry enough to continue working.  The clusters were then strung onto a connecting wire, and irregular pearls dangle inside.


As you can see, even with two new pairs, I really don't own many earrings... these are all that I have in the whole world.  Still, I've only had my ears pierced for about a year, so it's not that odd that I don't own oodles more.

Today I sorted through all my papers and reference images and bits and bobs from my old studio space while listening to the audiobook of the first volume of the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy.

I first read this book a couple of years ago and had totally forgotten how incredibly good it was.  The language (and the world being described) is so incredibly visual and rich.  Just hearing the story is enough to fill your mind with images and characters far more vibrant than any movie.  Not to mention the plot, which is thoroughly engaging, and manages to avoid falling into the many cliches that a young-orphan-making-his-way-in-a-fantastical-world type of story typically holds.  I also love the fact that the author, D. M. Cornish, worked as an illustrator for many years before writing the book, and did all the illustrations (which are wonderful) for it himself.  The second book, Lamplighter, is just as good, and I am eagerly looking forward to the publication of the third.

More than anything else, I found the book to be inspiring... I not only want to make nearly every single piece of clothing described, I want to paint all of the characters, and, for that matter, paint all sorts of other things as well that have nothing to do with Rossamund and the Half-Continent.

This evening after dinner, I sat down, with Foundling for company, and got back to basics.

I hadn't really drawn ANYTHING since April, and since I've recently been brewing up some ideas for paintings, it seemed prudent to get back into the "art" mindset with some straightforward figure drawing.  I want to do a bunch more simple drawings like this in my sketchbook before picking up the brush again.