I’ve been slowly working on illustrating my own Tarot deck about black cats.
I have a long way to go, but I’m nearly done with the major arcana.
Here are some of my favorites:
I set myself a design challenge (as I often do). I wanted to limit the color palette and the brush styles to create a very consistent look.
And since each card focuses on black cats, it forces me to think deeply about symbolism and design to make sure the meaning of each card is clear and each design is unique.
But there’s still a lot of variety coming through. It’s not all class, or all silliness - just like cats
I have a forearm tattoo of the cats in this one ☝️
I’m so happy with how both of these two managed to feel dark, but adorable at the same time.
And then there’s this one absolute diva:
Most of these used my own feline friends for reference.
There are more but I don’t know yet how many I want to share online. If I can actually complete the entire deck I would love to have it made. But I have a ways to go, so for now I continue to chip away, one card at a time.
The Hanged Man as a lad who has ascended a curtain for a better view. 10/10
Too much movement makes your joints hurt and too little movement also makes your joints hurt. This would imply that there’s an optimal amount of movement that allows your joints to not hurt. This is a lie.
We laugh at how The Art of War is basically just, “An army can’t fight if the soldiers aren’t eating,” but I’m reading this document about conservation of ancient yew trees and it legitimately says, “You should never fill the center of a hollow yew with concrete,” so I think that probably making blatantly obvious statements is just the bane of being a specialist in anything
I love the orchestra trying and failing to maintain a straight face throughout
Exactly. These people had to rehearse at least a few times all at once yet when it’s nkt their turn to play they still look at that guy with the typewriter as if he was the most fascinating thing they have ever seen.
My husband’s wind ensemble played this song when he was in high school! you can do it with normal auxillery percussion, but it’s so much more fun if you do it with a real typewriter
now that is a writing mood
they were really like, the only reasonable approach to this piece is to insert a clown at the center of the orchestra
If you’re not playing Leroy Anderson’s 1953 classic “The Typewriter” with an actual typewriter on stage… why would you even BOTHER?
From wiki
According to the composer himself, as well as other musicians, the typewriter part is difficult because of how fast the typing speed is: even professional stenographers cannot do it, and only professional drummers have the necessary wrist flexibility
mastering ancient breathing techniques in the mountains of china to control my heart rate finely enough to jam out a sick tune on the hospital’s heart monitor
I live by the motto, “if you can’t buy what you want, make it.” And this motto came to life recently in the form of a floral mosaic dining table for my back deck.
Our deck table had been showing its age already when the wind caught the umbrella and cracked it. I wanted to replace it with a mosaic table because I’d been enjoying that art form recently. But I couldn’t get one the size I wanted so I got creative.
I spent a few weeks looking for tile and figuring out a very loose design concept. I started by picking a limited set of tile shapes and a color palette.
Once the tiles arrived I had a piece of cement board cut to size for the base and I experimented with different motifs until I settled on a selection of floral shapes that gave me plenty of variety to fill space without locking me into one repeating pattern.
And then I was off! I basically doodled my way around the table, attaching tiles and rocking out to the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack.
Once the florals were done it was time for the background…
Over 3,800 1cm glass tiles make up the not-design part of the design. It went pretty quickly though because I just had to fill the space, leaving room for grout.
Once I had the tile done, my husband assisted with disassembly and reassembly. We used the legs off the original table for this one (waste not).
One huge bucket of black grout later…
She is finished.
I enjoyed making it and just looking at it makes me so happy - I can’t wait for all the dinners we’ll have around this table 🌼❤️
So going by the older calendar this week was actually New Years for Wales and we had a party. I was...disappointed not in the event but over the fact that I was literally the ONLY faculty member to show up. At least I was well received. For that matter neither did any of our students. The only rep my school had was the Welsh liasion, two of our success coaches, the choir director, me and two faculty from Buckeye Hills (does the more certificate type jobs). Got to mess about the with mari lywd and then got roped into the twmpath dances. It's a lot like square dancing. My knee was going What the Actual Fuck Dana? We're only a month from the 5 year anniversary of being broken. You wanna revisit that? Stop jumping around one m.
Nope, knee, suck it up. Dance baby dance. Are we good? fuck no. Was it fun? Yes. I also got to make a little puppet mari lwyd. Why? because NO ONE brought their kids. If there wasn't the 20 Welsh students here on tour (your parents let you come to America?!?) there would be just like 6 of us. I wish it had been better attended but it was fun.
Now I FINALLY got my lab fixed. Registrar is like you never sent the paperwork. Oh really? Found it, the email it was in etc etc. Yeah I did. Eye roll
I have a story for today. It'll be chapter one of a long fix-it (or maybe more correctly S3 speculation). I'm only posting it here because it's not quite ready to go to AO3 mostly because I have one WIP right now and I don't want two right now. It's pretty much where I want it to be though.
Title: I Need to Go Home (And Salvage What's Left of My Soul)
Summary: Angel has thrown himself to the wolves and refuses to go back to the hell, sinking deeper into addiction and hell with Valentino. Husk and the others will not let him be destroyed there. They will get him home and they have from an unexpected source.
Rating: teen
Notes:Written for Spikesgirl58’s 6 words and the six words were Skillful, Answer, Decide, Extra- small, Plucky, & Husheda and for the allbingo prompt of Madam Satan and the lyrical titles bingo prompt of Chart Topper. I chose Lost All Control by Seether. ( story under here )
You have about 48 hours, as of this post, before both signups and nominations close on Sunday, January 18 @ 11:59pm Eastern Standard time (Countdown).
As you finalize or submit your signup, remember to check out Uncategorized Fandoms for crossovers and other fandoms you might have missed! Here's the requests app that may be easier to browse than AO3.
As usual, there will be a 12-hour grace period after signups close during which you can ask us to add tags to your requests/offers.
Ruminating on Magiamachy, my sketch for a knockoff Fate/Stay night ttrpg. It's gotta be pvp, or it just won't work, but I also want to provide some kind of alternative win condition that isn't just "play a different game now."
So:
When players are eliminated, they're assigned a new playbook that represents an additional threat disrupting the Magiamachy, like "the Order of Magi wants to shut down the ritual" or "yeah it's aliens." Each of these will either alter some of the fundamental rules, making cracks to allow alternative win conditions, or they'll just straight-up have defined wincons on them.
The initial rules of the Magiamachy look like there's only one way for things to end, but as those rules are broken, new possibilities appear. plus this lets players keep playing even after their character is gone
The pink peony is open under the fly-through feeder. I might call this flower style semi-double. When fully open, a large mass of bright yellow stamens dance in the breeze. The fully-double white ones don't really show the center. It was the first time I got a pink peony to bloom. \o/
In other news, my nephew and I keep texting each other "wtf?" about everything the Mets have done (or not done) this offseason. Today we were just like, "Wtf?" The Mets now have like 17 second basemen. Hopefully at least one can pitch and one can play left field, because those are the spots they needed to fill. Now they are going to put Bichette at third and Baty in left? What is happening!?! Also, have an obligatory fuck the Dodgers!
Meanwhile, the Rangers' sell-off begins. It's the right thing but ugh, it's going to be hard if Panarin goes to Florida. I can and do root for Detroit and Dallas, but I cannot root for Florida. I guess we'll see what happens. Maybe they'll be able to foist Miller off on someone else too. *crosses fingers*