Right after that, I ran my bike off a cliff because I wasn’t paying attention. Next thing I know, my bike is exploding, I’m flying through the air, and the cat shows up to inexplicably save me with its magic powers. I thought maybe I was crazy when he first started talking to me, but that all changed when I discovered my own latent magic powers. We flew off into the sunset and that was the beginning of our fantastic hijinks.

Actually, I was a chicken and I didn’t go back to check if it was a magic cat. I was also rather intent on getting that ice cream. I’m pretty sure it was a magical cat though. I stared at him, he stared at me. We had a moment. If I see him again, I’ll know for sure.

I decided the other day that for each new project or craft I want to start, I have to make some sort of blog post first. Later that evening (as I’m working on a project I grandfathered in) I was struck with the inspiration to do a series of little comics illustrating brief moments of life in Japan. And I had a perfect idea for the first comic. It simply and brilliantly conveyed the quirkiness and charm of my everyday life here. I thought to myself, “Geez, I’m ingenious! I sure won’t forget this.”

Famous last words.

In between having this inspiration, and walking upstairs to write it down, the idea completely evaporated, leaving just the barest hint of what it might have been. I had been so pleased with the idea, that I’ve tried all week to recall it. It remains infuriatingly elusive. So instead I made a comic about losing my mind.

On an unrelated note, my apologies to anyone who has tried to comment in the past few months. My notifications system was broken and I didn’t realize it until today. I wasn’t just ignoring you, I promise.

]]> https://jefita.com/2014/04/22/the-approaching-madness/ https://jefita.com/2014/04/22/the-approaching-madness/#comments Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:14:17 +0000 http://jefita.com/blog/?p=888

I’m just going to say it now: things are probably going to get more erratic from here on out. And there will probably be some ranting and raving. Hopefully I will make it out the other side with some semblance of sanity.

Now that I have a definite date, I can feel the stress of the move building. Everyday the vague sense of doom gets just a little stronger. It lurks at the back of my mind and in unguarded moments I have flickers of panic. At some point I am sure it will devolve into full blown panic.

I’ve done big stressful moves before. I moved across the country to live in sin with the Boy-who-became-Mister, and I had no idea if it would work out or not. This is much worse. Moving across a huge ocean to an entirely different continent? Where I don’t even speak the language? With two cats? And I agreed to this because I wanted to do this? I might have been misguided.

Okay, I’m back! I spent last week down visiting the storied Grandma, down in North Carolina. I thought I’d be able to wrangle out a post while I was there, but as is often the case, my ambition and reality didn’t align. C’est la vie.

While I didn’t get any writing done, I did do a lot of plotting…nefarious plotting.The Mister and I have decided to turn to a part-time life of villainy (this may or may not coincide with a pubcrawl next week). As most of our dastardly plans revolve around making a public spectacle of ourselves (such is the wont of supervillains) we find ourselves in need of some dramatic costumes. Otherwise people might mistake us for regular villains. Or drunken louts. One of the two. Maybe both.

Designing a villainous costume is certainly fun, but it is also more challenging than one might think. You have to strike a careful balance between menace, flair, and utility. There are many important practical considerations that are often overlooked. I tried to address these questions while designing our outfits:

• Will I freeze my a$$ off in this outfit? (or alternatively, overheat?)
• Am I going to lose any parts of my outfit?
• Can I make most of this out of bargain fabrics and cereal boxes?

And perhaps most relevant in this case:

• Can I comfortably drink in this outfit?

After a week of plotting, I think I’ve hit most of the important elements. Of course a super villain is nothing without minions, so I didn’t forget about properly attiring my underlings either. The state of dress of a henchman says a lot about you as an overlord.

So I’ve got my concepts down. What now? Stay tuned for next week when I realize my drawings!

]]> https://jefita.com/2014/03/26/fashion-tips-for-supervillains-part-1/feed/ 1 https://jefita.com/2014/03/12/how-to-enjoy-spring/ https://jefita.com/2014/03/12/how-to-enjoy-spring/#comments Wed, 12 Mar 2014 20:04:59 +0000 http://jefita.com/blog/?p=857 By popular demand, more comics! Pretend it’s on time.

Ahh, the sun is out, the birds are singing, and the daffodils are starting to push their way up. Spring must finally be on the way right? Hahaha, just kidding, it’s just a tease. A cruel, cruel tease.

I’m going to be honest, I’m pretty close to full blown grumpus. If the weather doesn’t stop toying with me soon, I might lose it. I want sunshine. I want to go barefooted. I want to stop wearing pants. Right now it’s a pleasant 65F outside. I can hear gobs of birds warbling and crooning. It smells like spring. Unfortunately, I’ve already checked the weather, and it’s going to be back down to freezing with 25 mph winds tomorrow. Oh what fun! I think I’ll start working on my blanket nest now.

Grump, grump, grump.

True story. Except in reality I spit all over my keyboard. It was kind of gross. This wasn’t my first near-bug-eating experience, but at least I didn’t find out what the bug tasted like this time. (If anybody needs to know what a stinkbug tastes like, I got ya covered. Hint: it’s a lot like they smell.)

Moral of the story? Oreo’s are terrible and you shouldn’t eat them. I knew this already, but now I have a traumatic experience to help me remember.

Also, if you half-ass re-sealing the package, there is a non-zero chance you will end up licking a bug.

In light of approaching Valentine’s Day, here is a short story of love…and betrayal! Because that’s more exciting.

The other day I unearthed my box of colored pencils, and was struck by a poignant sense of guilt. For more than a year they had sat alone in the dark, unused and unloved. I had abandoned them. How could I be so cold?

But we were so good together!

Once upon a time, I deeply loved my colored pencils. This love affair started when I was quite young. My grandmother had a set of Prismacolor colored pencils that she would let me play with. Having already been bitterly betrayed by watercolor, their soft and rich consistency instantly won me over. Over several years, I carefully built up a beautiful collection of my own, pencil by pencil. (At $2-3 a pop, the box above represents a lot of money invested in colorful little wooden sticks.) I lavished them with attention and adoration. I made wonderful pictures with them. They were my favorite. They were the best…until fate crushed our love.

One day a set of fancy Copic markers came along and swayed my heart. These markers fulfilled my unrequited desire for watercolor that my pencils could not touch. A new love blossomed and I cruelly left my old love by the wayside with nary a look back. Oh, how my heart is fickle!

All those broken leads are rough on a girl’s heart.

It’s okay, my pencils, you will always have a special place in my heart. You’re still just as lovely and vibrant and I miss your warm cedar smell. Let’s just say I was the one who changed. Someday I will bring you out and we will do beautiful things again. Maybe you and the markers can learn to be friends. Sure, I’m trying to assuage my guilt a bit, but I really do feel bad about neglecting you.

Other people empathize with their art supplies, right? Right?

It seems like everybody is getting sick lately. Despite my efforts to avoid it, Mr. Boy managed to give me his head cold, icky crud. It’s that lame kind of in-between sick where you feel like crap, but not bad enough to stop you from feeling guilty about taking a day off. I feel like I should be working, but my brain feels all blurry and my face is full of mucus. I finally decided I probably shouldn’t work, because I don’t really want to make germ filled plushies. I just imagined my innocent little creatures going out into the world like so many tiny small pox blankets.

My guilt being assuaged, I decided to fill the gaps between napping sessions by continuing to fill my moleskine sketchbook. Since my attention span is a bit short right now, I’m filling a page with tiny little 2.25″ square drawings. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I am still quite in love with my new markers. It doesn’t take much encouragement for me to break them out and doodle. Even if I don’t feel like doing anything else.

Anyways, Mr. Boy said something about a “chibi Hellboy” and somehow I ended up with Hellboy chumming it up with an octopus. I’ll pretend it’s because I’m sick. Then I tried a self-portrait. I didn’t mean for it to look like I was disgusted at the mushy cephalopod friendship above. It turns out it’s somewhat difficult to draw yourself disapproving of your own hair cut. (I got pissed off at my bangs the other day and because I’m a cheapskate, I trimmed them myself. I have sort of “seventies, Farrah Fawcett” bangs as my friends kindly informed me. I suppose it could have turned out worse. I could have ended up with a Flock of Seagulls do.)

Now I have four more little squares to fill up. Instead of coming up with the rest of them on my own, I’m offering up some little mini commissions.  Judging by the duration of Mr. Boy’s illness, I’m going to be at this for a couple of more days at least.  So for the low, low price of only $5 you can tell me what to draw in my little book for the rest of the week. If you are interested you know where to find me.

I think it’s about time I go back to sleep on the cat. And I swear the next post won’t have anything to do with markers. For reals.

Farmer Green had enough of Bert’s attitude. There was something unsettling about that chicken. It was always strutting around like it owned the place, putting on airs and looking down on everyone. It never associated with any of the other chickens. It turned it’s beak up at worms and never once had he seen it fly. It just wasn’t right a chicken acting that superior. He was in charge of his farm and no chicken of his was going to get away with that sort of nonsense. Bert was going to learn to fly or die trying.

Bert (who was actually Betty–Farmer Green wasn’t really a very smart farmer) actually did think she owned the place. From the moment she hatched, she had been secretly coddled by the farmer’s daughter. She was hand fed, petted and groomed daily, and carried around like a princess in a basket. It was perfectly obvious to Betty that she was a superior creature. All that scratching around in the dirt was beneath her. That flying business was just undignified. As if she should propel herself somewhere! So it happened that Betty was most unpleasantly surprised the day she found herself tossed out of the hayloft into the empty air. With sudden clarity, and much flapping about, she realized she was in fact, just a chicken.

I am still quite in love with my new markers. So in love with them that I’ve actually been drawing on a regular basis. I even attempted to participate in Illustration Friday, which I’ve been following for years, hence the chicken themed picture.  Of course to actually participate I should have submitted it yesterday, but I was terribly busy drinking beer and meeting lots of cool new people.

I just couldn’t help myself when the theme was “chicken”.  I have a long history with chickens. I had chickens for most of my childhood and for the most part I think of them rather fondly.  They are very silly, and not terribly smart creatures, but I still like them. I liked them so much as a small child, that  I even decided I was going to be a chicken farmer.  Other children wanted to be firefighters or monster trucks, but I was going to raise chickens.  Like other children though, I grew up and I abandoned my dreams.

Years later my friends and I are relating our childhood aspirations.  I shared my chicken farmer dreams because I thought it was amusing.  Apparently my friends thought it was even funnier.  Embarrassingly funny.  To them it was a hilarious indication that I was from a rural area. In fact they started calling me Chicken Farmer and every birthday and Christmas I recieved a slew of chicken themed gifts.  I have chicken clocks, chicken lamps, chicken plushies, chicken dishes, etc.  Eventually I gave up and accepted my new title.  It took going to college and making new friends to acquire a new nickname.  Even so, I still occasionally get chicken gifts from my oldest friends.  Moral of the story?  Don’t tell your friends about your childhood.  Even if you don’t think it’s embarrassing at the time.

Now I wish I could have chickens again.

Courageous Tillie and his faithful steed George set off to seek adventure. Who knew what exciting foreign lands and heroic deeds lay before them? They would cross the treacherous River of Eels, slay the terrible monster of Gila, and they would rescue fair Hilda. Songs would be written about them, they would be showered with untold riches, and they would get to have tea with the Queen. All the neighbors would be envious. And as long as they were back by dinner, Tillie’s mom promised they could both have cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles for dessert.

Do you remember being a kid and you just got a brand new set of markers (or colored pencils, or crayons) and you were consumed by a need to use all of them, at once, on one glorious picture?  This happened to me rather frequently.  Just seeing the huge rainbow mega packs in the store would make my eyes glaze over with longing.  This did happen to other children, right?  Well, I never grew out of it.  Every time I go into an art store, the panoply of  color still calls out to me and I am overwhelmed by a irrational need to own all of them, even the colors I don’t really like.  I guess it’s not all that surprising that I ended where I am today.

Anyways, the point of this story is that I got a set of markers for Christmas.  Fancy grown-up artist markers.  I have been lusting after a set of Copic art markers for several years now, but I was too cheap (broke) to ever invest in a set.  At $4-6 bucks a pop, they get expensive very quickly, and I was worried that I might not like them after blowing all that money.  At some point in the past I tried out some Prismacolor markers and it felt like I was coloring with very expensive Sharpies that were half dried up.  Sure, I do have a beloved rainbow set of Sharpies, but I don’t use them for artistic masterpieces.  On the other hand, I have only ever heard good things about Copic markers, and I like the look of artwork produced using them.  I really wanted to give them a try.  I was so excited when I finally got them, that I think I squealed when I opened the package.

Needless to say, I’ve been avidly tooling around with them in my spare time since then.  The illustration above pretty much sums up my childlike glee.  I am extremely pleased with them.  They are everything I wanted them to be.  They are double ended, with a wonderful brush tip on one side.  The color flows smoothly from both ends.  You can layer and blend, and there is no icky smell–the whole experience is very similar to using watercolors.  I’ve been pretending for years that painting with watercolors was an enjoyable, not time intensive, finicky, often frustrating experience.  This is really what I wanted all along.  Double plus bonus, I have also discovered that they work well on fabric which opens up all sorts of new possibilities for my sewing.  I didn’t even consider this use until after I got them.

So if you have ever considered trying out art markers, I would definitely recommend them.  About the only drawbacks in my mind are the expense, and the fact that they bleed through nearly any paper.  The expense is worth it, especially considering that they are refillable, and as long as you remember to put down a blotter sheet, the other part isn’t a problem either.  There are a few different styles available, but I found this to be a pretty helpful breakdown of each:  Copic, Sketch, Ciao, or Wide.  If you are wondering, I have the 36 B set of the Ciaos.

Now that I have this wonderful set, I am struck with a new dilemma–I only have 36 out of the hundreds of colors.  It seems like such a paltry number all of a sudden.  I need all the colors.  It’s like Pokemon, you gotta catch them all.  I suppose if you aren’t into Pokemon or obsessed with art supplies, you don’t understand.  I see you start to back away slowly with a concerned look on your face.  It’s okay, I understand.  It’s not for you.  Just enjoy the pictures and I promise I won’t tell you anything about how awesome my Charizard is.