So, I'm not feeling "Christmassy" this year, at all. But I do wish everyone a peaceful day and a peaceful season. Whatever you celebrate. (I was raised Catholic, I've been pagan, now I'm atheist, and I have friends all across the spectrum.)

dragonyphoenix asked me a while back to do some graphics for part 3 of her buffyverse/potterverse crossover fic "The Letters" (Severus Snape/Anya, Cordelia). It was the first time I've been commissioned to make fanart without having read the story first.  Dragony told me exactly what text she wanted to see on the graphics, including the brilliantly funny RSVP from Cordy.

sparrow2000 posted an amazing end-of-the-year fic rec list; some I've enjoyed, a good many others I've missed and must make amends for that. Because all the stories sound wonderful (and she hasn't steered me wrong yet.) She was also kind enough to name-check me and my artwork on the list! Thank you very much, I'm honored!

I will end up doing a recap of the year here in fandom in the near future but I want to say "THANK YOU" to the folks who have been so incredibly supportive of me in my growth and struggles this year. Special thanks and love to velvetwhip for her guidance, friendship and for being in my corner.

I have to admit I'm glad 2015 is almost over.

And finally - I've read issue 22 of the season 10 comics and I have one thing to say, one really essential thing that NO ONE is talking about - WILLOW DOES NOT HAVE BLUE EYES, PEOPLE!

*Actually, Buffy's eyes also look suspiciously sort-kinda blue on page 23, which is weird because they were green in the rest of the story. But the color is just muddy enough that I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But Willow's eyes are absolutely blue - clear, beautiful, unmistakeable blue. The first issue that actually features Willow in any significant way this season and they can't get that one basic thing right. *le sigh*

HERE at ficamix, inspired by Megan's own artwork. I can't say I'm entirely pleased but I hope it would have pleased her.

Please visit the "virtual memorial" created by velvetwhip and angelus2hot and share your thoughts, feelings and memories if you haven't had a chance already. The door is always open and a nice cuppa will always be waiting there.

I had two specific avatars for this last "photoshoot" in Providence - two of the dearest people in the world to me, as it happens, and two incredibly talented  and compassionate human beings.  The incredible velvetwhip, of course, who has encouraged me to show off my photos and so I wondered "what would Gabrielle like to see?" every time I raised my camera.  "How can I convey my love for this city in images, rather than words?"  In the process of trying to describe what I love, I fell in love with Providence all over again.

My other avatar was my dear friend Kendra L. Saunders, also incredible as a person and a writer (full disclosure: I was a beta for her novel Inanimate Objects and her current work in progress is the most sophisticated thing she's ever written. Gabrielle and Kendra have very different styles as authors but both are skilled at blending humor and darkness, capturing eroticism and undercurrents of danger with surprising warmth and compassion for their motley array of characters. I have excellent taste in literature - and in friends, don't you agree?)

Kendra asked me to stop at the Biltmore Hotel when I went to Providence because she had happy memories of her stay there on her first trip to the city last year, abd she thought I'd appreciate it's art deco lobby, originally built in 1922 and renovated in 1979. I went one better and took a few snaps for her enjoyment, and yours.

 

There are cases in the lobby filled with historic postcards of the hotel, but I couldn't resist making one of my own from the photo below.  I lightened and cropped the original in ipiccy, then applied Photobucket's desaturated filters and the postcard frame.

  

The glass elevator was locked, durn it.  And I couldn't figure out how to get to that upper courtyard "balcony" to see the painting at upper left, or get a closer view of the ceiling.

Very art deco - or rather, American deco eclectic; a combination of real F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Baz Luhrmann pastiche version; but in person it's very elegant nonetheless, but also surprisingly comfortable and I dare say private in feel. And no one tried to stop the crazy lady me running around the lobby with a camera.



Detail of ceiling taken from a distance, the best I could get with my Nikkon. I had to lighten the image considerably; as dimly lit as the lobby was I'm pleased I got anything at all. And I brightened and warmed the color a bit to emphasize detail.

A prezzie for snogged, who mentioned on my journal the other day that Barney/Robin are her "BROtp", but also dedicated to bangel_4e, kikimay, beer_good_foamy, ever_neutral, ruuger, punch_kicker15, all the (pissed off) Barney/Robin shippers in the house, and pretty much anyone with half a brain or less because it only takes about 2 brain cells in total to understand that Ted/Robin as the endgame sucked rotten ostrich eggs and was a horrible idea 17 ways to Sunday.

Such as, posted your Spike icons for Round 3 of btvsats20in20 like rua1412 did and made the rest of us (read: me) look like slackers, put together your entries for slayerstillness, otherworldlyric and/or btvs_hush; posted the lasted chaper of your newest masterpiece in fanfiction (such as velvetwhip's Blindfold; completed various and sundry errands while making it all look easy or just been generally useful and constructive in your use of time.....instead of putzing around making Buffy Summers fanart out of cloudscapes you shot out of the car window in Vermont....



...then clearly you are not me. Congratulations for your wise and sensible choices!

Yes of course I have variations; I can't decide what I like best. Are you mad? I can't even decide what I want to do for Round 3 of btvsats20in20 and am this close to putting it up a poll.(I could have used the icon above as my starting point - and then decided that I really wanted it for me, right NOW.)






I've been wanting to put together this image of Buffy from the Gift with a cloudscape ever since I worked on "Scroll Fragment 1" a couple of weeks ago, and started really playing with layers, textures and filtes. I did the layers and major grunge or bloom textures in ipiccy, then finished off with my signature, text, San Carmen filter (see #2), frames and minor adjustments etc in Photobucket.

Trailing Clouds of Glory Series -  Click on all images for full-size  versions.  

# 2




# 3


I love the way the clouds look like a classical wreath or tiara around her head. Willow gets the title "goddess" in canon but Buffy's my queen (kikimay will understand) and I loved the feeling in these images of Buffy as a benvolent sky goddess - perhaps a more upbeat interpretation of the events of "The Gift". (The irony of my use of the word "glory" in the title did not escape my notice.) Granted, a goddess who will come down and get medieval on your ass if you cross Mama.

# 4


# 5

Her expression is the epitome of what we call a "Mona Lisa smile" - caught halfway between a smile and a frown (it could go either way when I played with the image, depending on the level of contrast), tinged with irony, poignancy and a certain resignation.

# 6

# 7-9

Click on images for full-sized versions.
ETA: A couple more variations at my Scrapbook here (f'riends only) .

And yes I really did take the cloudscape out the car window - whilst my sweetie was driving - on macro/food setting. Proof-positive that my Nikon digital camera is absolutely idiot-proof.

Click image for full-size (it's reallly pretty! If I do say so myself. This reminds me of a cloud study by Constable or Corot, which only prooves what great artists they were.) Cropped and sharpened ever-so-slightly in Photobucket or ipiccy. I can't remember which.


On the upside, I completed a job application to a big box retailer today.  Cheese on a cracker but those online personality tests are insane.


Now to figure out what to do for the 20in20. (Amends? Sleeper? Tara? Willow/Tara? Joyce? The Summers women? *ponders*)

bangel_4e very kindly extended Round 1 of btvsats20in20 from June 4th to June 7th (midnight our time respective time zones).

Thank goodness, because I need 20 icons....I have about 69. Not counting the 40 or so I already deleted or moved to another folder. I completely scrapped the blending ones I did yesterday due to extreme suckage (and not the fun kind either.) My "smile" icon also sucks goose eggs and needs to be scrapped. In fact, I suddenly loathe a whole bunch of them because all I can see is the flaws. I know this because I've been staring at them - too long. And too closely.  (I'm pretty sure staring at the icons with my eyeball about an inch or two away from this little screen would explain my headache. Or it could be martians changing the radio frequency, but whateve.)But my ladylove took the wireless keyboard to work and left me with her older, slower "hey honey I don't think you've got enough files crammed on this thing" laptop instead. Which is slower and harder on my eyes, and doesn't allow me the same control that I'm used to in terms of the "mousepad" vs the mouse. (I can see why some people get those stylus pads that allow them to "draw".) And she's got it set up so the menu bar at the top plays "peek a boo" with me.

In fact, PB won't even show the image when I try to crop it. It won't let me do much of anything today. But I don't know if it's PB or if it's the laptop....*le sigh*

Sure, take away my french easel and my 100% Kolinsky sable hair size 1 brush with a brass ferrule and leave me with a used card table and the cheapest brush in the craft store. Take away my Corvette and leave me with a Datsun. Then take away the Datsun and leave me with a horse-drawn wagon - and then take away the darn horses. Eh, thanks anyway, I'll walk instead.

Also, I haven't kept up with any other icontest challenges currently, and I'm woefully behind in wishing angearia, teragramm, chic_c and leni_ba very, very happy birthdays.


I'm also woefully behind in in posting my own icons from recent challenges; in keeping up with the latest challenges; thanking everyone who voted my This Year's Girl icon "Best Crop" in slayerstillness challenge #24, in thanking tempertemper for the marvelously electrifying - pun completely intended - banner; and in giving a shout out to all the other winners as well as few personal faves. What a marvelous batch of entries.

*guilt sets in*

Tomorrow my sweetie and I are going to NYC - she wants to see the 100th Armory Show on the Westside; stay two nights at the Pod 39 Hotel; then we'll hopefully go to Chinatown, and then Friday spend the day at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. including the Elizabeth Sackler Gallery of Feminist Art on the 4th floor featuring Judy Chicago's installation The Dinner Party (1982) which I've always wanted to see. (Never mind the concept of a separate gallery for "feminist" art as opposed to the presumably "regular" art. Baby steps, baby steps, bitty blah.)  I wll have many things to report, hopefully.

Then when I come back we are packing and (supposedly) moving back into the old apartment; the renovation is nearly done!  We saw it the other day - my sweetie's bedroom has been totally redone, new walls, flooring, windows, new moldings everywhere, paint and light fixtures, etc. they even took up two layers of ugly old linoleum and black glue in the kitchen to expose the original wood flooring. Beautiful job.

Which also means we'll finally be getting away from the people below us in the apartment we're in now and its worth anything just for that because SWEET MOTHER OF MOSES THESE PEOPLE DO NOT SHUT UP EVER. *ugh*

Ergo, if I don't get back to you anytime immediately or post a lot the next couple of weeks, you know why. I'll try to keep up with the macros, icons and suchlike - that shouldn't be hard, I've got 600 or so buffyverse icons sitting in my Photobucket. No lie.

In the meantime, eilowyn said not long ago that she loved "fluffy stories" about my sweetie and I; which of course meant I stopped telling them. ("But - we're not fluffy people, we argue a lot!" my brain protested.) Just like when someone paid for me to have a free account and velvetwhip said she looked forward to a "tsunami of polls" and I said "Me too!"  And then have done maybe two since then. Or when my mom asked "What do you want for Christmas?" and I said "I don't know." EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I absolutely shut down. (My sweetie gets the same damn answer to the same question btw. My brain hasn't changed in 40-plus years.)



But last week we were in one of those big-box retail stores, the kind we drag ourselves into because we really need something and even then only upon pain of death, and I told her I felt a little light-headed. I think y'all know I have epilepsy and it's pretty well controlled on medication but those sorts of stores are not good for me: too brightly light, buzzing light fixtures, too much noise, too much sensory overload, etc.

So I said to my sweetie "Keep talking."

"Oh NO, don't you go letting your mind wander off!" (Having a seizure feels at first like you're going into a spell or trance, like a daydream.)

"That's why I need you to keep talking, because it helps ground me and keep focused on where I am. We talk, you annoy the hell out of me, I want to strangle you, it keeps me grounded. See how that works?"

She laughed.

And all I could think right was how much I love this woman, and how lucky was (am) to have her in my life after all these years.

Which is a good thing, because an hour or so later we wanted to strangle each other again.

Love isn't ribbons and bows, kids.