User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-22 11:03
	Subject:	DAR! Jackasses
	Security:	Public

http://www.DARcomic.com

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-19 20:46
	Subject:	Medusa
	Security:	Public

Last post for today, I promise!

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-19 19:46
	Subject:	Tentacle Bouquets
	Security:	Public

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-19 15:47
	Subject:	Daily Drawing: Six Geese a'Laying
	Security:	Public

For Sale on Etsy

	User:	tinkbell
	Date:	2009-12-15 23:50
	Subject:	paper disease
	Security:	Public

I still have 81 notebooks and sketchbooks, after getting rid of more than 10 of them tonight so far, that I have carried around with every move for the last 15 years. Counting them might be the first step to a cure.

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-15 15:14
	Subject:	The End of DAR!
	Security:	Public

I know, I know, this isn't new news, but here is my official announcement:

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-15 12:19
	Subject:	DAR! Fetish
	Security:	Public

http://www.DARcomic.com

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-14 12:14
	Subject:	<:D
	Security:	Public

	User:	tinkbell
	Date:	2009-12-14 00:17
	Subject:	she said destroy
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	regressing

(-death in june)
(her face to the storm...turning and turning...bells tinkle)

(People who hide are afraid! -Anonymity is the best disguise -You are afraid
...The crack of the neck
The gut shriek of thunder
The blood call of lightning
She said destroy in black New York...
Into that darkness
Into that darkness
Like jackals howling
Like flowers unfolding.)
***

Thanks to getting back online, Fujichia and Mangenerated:
http://fujichia.com/page/1
http://www.mangenerated.com/blog/
***

In general, I'm doing very well. In certain moments, both missing my best friend and getting ready to leave so much I care about at the same time can grind into the heart, and at these moments, I might be tempted, if some poor ghost wanted to take over my body for the next week so I could sleep through it, but still I know that I would not want to feel anything else than the whole, or risk that the ghost would not give my body back.

	User:	tinkbell
	Date:	2009-12-13 18:30
	Subject:	cheating
	Security:	Public

The kinds of things you think of when trying to do research at night on a weekend:

I saw a random comment last night about drawing from photographs, with the opinion that it's copying. In illustration for stories, I do research and some of that is visual, for photographs to learn about the situations, and a fun part of that work is to encounter new things. I don't always draw directly from them, but sometimes; I don't want people in stories to all look like myself or whoever I could make hold still. At this point I can do fairly realistic faces from imagination but I've drawn from live models since I was 15 and from magazines long before that (like a series on Perry Farrell's face), with a drive to draw as well as possible, whatever that meant to be then and does now. I still need to look at a person or thing to get something that comes closer to how I want the image to look, and a photo or photos are often a good source of information, though drawing straight from a photo is never too satisfying because it's such a paltry experience compared to drawing from life, and the composition needs to be your own. I have done some photorealistic drawings I've from my own photos, but those seem to me to combine the two areas, principles of both photography and drawing, and which are not as frustrating and a very different thing that from photo-reference for illustrations because the composition is my own, it was from a scene from my own experience, and I can change what I like or not, if I have a reason. I've still had a lot of mixed feelings about those, though they are works that other people have liked. Those are never illustrations and they take a long time, but have taught me things, like patience.

My reactions to the comment were positive in the sense that someone has a sense of value about art, but also came with the sense of loneliness, in that drawing is the hardest thing that I know and few people know the experience exactly. Using photos does help make things a little easier, sometimes, but only if you can use them right, as any tool. Besides the rare photorealistic work (and I wish I could do more only in the sense that I've sold almost every one of them I've done except one that I love), I work from observation or from my head for "fun" or "practice". Neither word is exactly right, but in anything related to illustration, or some project directed by a subject or idea, I use some reference. Not for the composition, which I do think would be copying if not from a frame I chose in a shot, but to catch some detail that I can't make up but want to be convincing to the eye. Anyway, the fact that drawing is something I've spent so much time at is not that important, it's a personal thing; but drawing from photographs for an illustration is not easy either. Hunting down a piece of photo reference that is what you're trying to look for is time-consuming, but also of value in itself. You are looking for something special and find things you don't expect. So other than the annoyance of the time spent searching, I forgot that it's seen as a negative thing.

I have thought of photos as cheating before - I've thought a lot about this. In general, in life, I've caught myself in wanting to cheat or make things easy in different ways, but just the knowledge that you have a choice forces the choice, or so I believe now. You have to live up to your decisions and to be honest with yourself or some other part of the world will bite you on the ass and you have to admit that you were wrong and that will last longer than any momentary ease or satisfaction. And they will bite you even if you're not. I don't think for a second that I'm wrong to use photos (nor do I feel bitten, exactly) but still am reminded about privacy; that maybe your practices, especially on something that you feel very personal about, should not be open to the public. Of course, I'm writing about this now, so whatever.

	User:	tinkbell
	Date:	2009-12-13 18:07
	Subject:	living restaurants and graves
	Security:	Public

The first Dirt Palace brunches were to raise money for Books Through Bars, when I was coordinating that, but Sasha and the rest of the DP organized that. Chris Mulligan cooked for the first one and probably another, and for a BthB benefit bake sale at a show.

More recently the DP has done brunches to raise money for the house, very fun, with printed menus and picture-pancakes. Tom and Walker have done a secret restaurant at their apartment, and Chris M. did one last night, where the ginger-cardamom homemade soda and beer he made were $1 and $2 but everything else was by donation. That was chaotic but great, and he's the most obsessed cook of anyone I know; and also a great friend, though I don't see him that often. Exactly the person I needed to talk to today, about possessions and attached emotional states and about how a sense of meaning can disappear from what it was attached to in words.

I unconsciously tried to lose all my possessions today and instead only managed my phone. Natalie and Jessica took me to Calla Street for a breakfast that actually went on until dusk. I talked to Chris and Emily later by the fire, about similar things, and then walked outside to the lake behind Calla Street and Roger Williams Park with Jessica. I hadn't been to the graveyard, which Jess suggested. We were mostly quiet, coming away from an intense discussion at the house about who was what icon from food marketing. (I got to be the Vermont Maid from maple syrup, though that was a last-minute guess, and Jessica the Braggs lady - whatever.)

One corner of the graveyard has recent residents of the area, where they are many recent immigrant families and almost all of the new graves have Spanish names; some are from the islands (Dominican Republic, especially) and many are probably Catholic, which could be a link to the black-and-white photos on graves in the French-speaking part of Belgium, the only place I remember seeing those. Otherwise they were similar to what was known as the Pauper's Graveyard in New Orleans; I don't know the other name for that one. I don't know if it's there anymore. I went in August of 2005, a month before Katrina. This one had an entrance from Broad Street made from a chain-link fence, and is called "Oakland Cemetery." There were homemade crosses and many stuffed animals, brightly colored fake flowers and figurines, garden-fences around the graves, often with a real stone (unlike in the Pauper's Graveyard) but also homemade crosses. One was for a seven-year-old boy with a carved styrofoam cross, many toys and a little glass box, shaped like a house, on top of a metal post with lit candles. Other graves were obviously visited on holidays, with pumpkins, christmas decorations and a "happy birthday" balloon. They had been a lot of activity, and it felt more like a loving, sad party.

Leaving in a week.

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-11 16:48
	Subject:	Underground Issue 2
	Security:	Public

Underground Issue 2
Originally uploaded by Erika Moen.

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-10 20:57
	Subject:	Sculptings
	Security:	Public

	User:	tinkbell
	Date:	2009-12-10 18:07
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

One of the main things I've learned from the last ten or twelve years is how to look at creative work as a collaboration. Not exclusively, or necessarily; it's just taken a long time to understand that aspect. I remember figuring out, when I was around 19, that people followed both their own line of thinking and that of everyone else, an outside world. Or I figured out that I was developing that - I had just started to talk to people - and a new friend said, when I managed to say this to her, "doesn't everyone?" I like the quote somewhere about life being a long lesson in humility. But sometimes I love my teenage self in memory, in a sense of ferality, not knowing how to be anything more than what I had always been.

	User:	erikamoen
	Date:	2009-12-08 18:28
	Subject:	DAR! Queer Marriage
	Security:	Public

http://www.DARcomic.com