Random Friday

Total randomness today. Wednesday was a hot and damp morning at 8am already and when I got on the bus to work, my legs started itching – darn tiger mosquitoes that had spared me all summer had had a feast on my legs while I waited for the bus! When I got to the office I threw cold water on both my legs and the itching eased a little. I have learned by now not to touch those mosquito bites or they become biiiiig red patches – still yesterday morning I could count them as they started itching again: 8 on the right leg, 2 on the left leg (some of each were brand new…ARGH!). Sigh. Will have to ignore them, but that’s another reason to hate the summer!

Before leaving for my vacation (I’ll be flying to NY tomorrow) I watched KANK again after a few years. That was my first Bollywood love, but busy discovering new titles, I hadn’t watched it in a while. But I remembered it being set in NY, so I decided it was worth another look. So, the rediscovery of KANK: oooh, at least 2 songs from other Karan Johar movies I hadn’t noticed when I first saw it (until I bought those movies, that is, LOL)! Oooh, Arjun Rampal – how could I NOT notice hottie him? OK, maybe I noticed him, but the appearance was too short to look up his name! And John Abraham and Kajol as guests!  I’m not saying it was a different movie, but it was kinda fun rediscovering it!

Now, I know I said I’d put the artworks on DeviantART from now on, but as this latest Caran d’Ache took me 4 hours (the longest in ages), I thought I’d parade it here. I usually do these in a couple of hours, depending on the size. But in this case I spent over one hour on the shirt and it took me way longer than usual to do the rest as well – because of those two details that never come out right because I never really learned to draw them: ears and teeth. Meh.

Anyway, I thought I’d reach the 100 “deviations” before my b-day, so I added a few more drawings. I put the illustrations I did for BoI – Air (most of which ended up in the book trailer) and tried to find recent works that fit the bill. I mean, some of those portraits are 30 years old, some took me way more than 4 hours (this was my record, 13 hours in 1985), and I put them there only in the hope of selling the art book. But I’d rather upload more recent works (new millennium).

Now I might add a few more when I get back, but I thought it was a little early to start showing off my science fantasy characters. I was thinking of using a cover artist, but maybe the project is going another way, so those drawings might be needed as covers – useless to show them off too early, know what I mean? So I added portraits just to reach that nice number 100. More illustrations to come before the end of the year!

One last bit – a post on piracy. OK, this refers to video games, but it applies to books and e-books as well. That’s why I don’t think piracy is a big problem. Whoever pirates everything would never pay for it and like Justin says, whoever does this is a thief, not a pirate.  Same for those who download free e-books, they’re not readers, they’re downloaders, hence the uselessness of too many free titles. They won’t bring you readers and attract the wrong kind of people…

I’m off for a couple of weeks, so replies to comments will be discontinued… don’t forget to check back on Sunday when I have a guest and a giveaway (I’ll try to moderate the comments while I’m away) and I hope next Friday to be able to do a post live from Chicon7! Have a great weekend!