Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
Hey folks, this is a reminder that we still have a Kickstarter going for The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters! While the campaign is running, you can reach it at neurodiversiverse.com or by searching on Kickstarter. This hopeful, empowering anthology explores neurodiverse encounters with aliens, and we'd love your help paying our authors more money (and, if we reach stretch goals, doing an audiobook or even a sequel)!
Please check us out, like, back and share!
-the Centaur
Drawn aaalmost completely from memory ... I could see a blurry image of the previous day's drawing through the previous sheet in my notebook ... but this time, with construction lines to help guide me.
I think it turned out far better than the previous effort, even though elements of the previous drawing were more accurate to the original photograph.
You start off drawing what you think you see, then move to drawing what's there. But at some point you should transition beyond that to drawing what will make the viewer see what you saw, which is not necessarily the same as replicating what a camera would have seen in the place of your two eyes.
Drawing every day, even when flying.
-the Centaur
Mostly flying back from Clockwork Alchemy today (and catching up on wordcount on CITADEL OF GLASS, which I am now thinking is going to be titled THE WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY).
A long day. Regular posts resume tomorrow.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Artwork in the Greenville airport, and a glass of iced tea from One Flew South.
As it says on the tin (well, in the title, and in the word balloon): we went hiking, and now we're heading out for date night. You get a real drawing tomorrow.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Likely out all day today hiking with my wife, so just a quick post for you.
I missed the big dance show at Clockwork Alchemy because I was, frankly, exhausted after the Author Guest of Honor events (and the de-briefing that my co-editor and I had after the con where we tried to figure out what went wrong, what went right, and what to do next). But even then, late late late Saturday night, there were still music acts going - I believe this was Unwoman, who has definitely still got it.
-the Centaur
Pictured: um, I said it, the dance floor at Clockwork Alchemy Saturday night at something like 11:45 pm. In previous years it's been more hopping super late, but now the concerts start earlier at 6:30.
Crashed out after finishing my Camp Nano wordcount for today; full debrief on Clockwork tomorrow. Zzz....
-the Centaur
Pictured: A crow, or perhaps raven, or just a sculptural cartoon average of the two, which is supposed to be a lampholder, instead serving as a book card holder, because his little light was too darn bright.
Woke up at 2:45 am realizing I hadn't drawn today. Same idea as two days ago, informed by the comic-book style from one day ago, but done in a consciously cartoony style that abstracts away the details, like a Bill Holbrook drawing. I like how it turned out, though it isn't a substitute for planning for success.
The drawing at the top took not much longer than the drawing at the bottom left, even though it looks way more like the drawing at the bottom right.
Drawing every day, even if I've forgotten to.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Cinnamon. It took about as long to draw this one
Friday was slow, but Saturday was a pretty damn good day at Clockwork Alchemy. I have wordcount on Camp Nano and a late night event to attend, so I'll give a fuller update tomorrow.
-the Centaur
Pictured: the "Louie", a very nice variant of an Old Fashioned unique to the San Mateo Marriott "Craft / Code" bar, which is going out of business next week as the hotel is closing.
Technically, still a quick sketch, but this shows the difference between drawing in the late evening at a leisurely pace set by the drawing, and drawing at 2am at a pace set by exhaustion.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Literally fell asleep twice trying to finish the blogging today before I got to the drawing, here's as fast a sketch as I could do of Cinnamon, goodnight.
-the Centaur
So we had a great first day at Clockwork Alchemy! I got a great Guest of Honor banner for my table, and we had a delightful Tea with the Author Guest of Honor in the con's amazing Tea Room!
My co-editor for The Neurodiversiverse, Liza Olmsted (far left on the picture below), was on an #ownvoices panel, which was very informative! I particularly liked her quote:
The world is so much more beautiful with intersectionality ... everything is so much more nuanced."
Liza Olmsted
"Intersectionality" is a funky word for the simple concept that people aren't a single attribute, like "black" or "women" or "gay" but that each person is a combination of all these things - and discrimination isn't just additive, but can compound in interesting ways. In one famous court case, for example, a court ruled that a group of black women weren't discriminated against because the company had hired a lot of black men (in a factory setting) and a lot of white women (in an office setting) thus improving the percentage of blacks in the factory and women in the office - but the point was, the women were being discriminated against for being black and women at the same time, and the court was essentially arguing you couldn't be one or the other. But, if you acknowledge that people can be more than one thing, you can take their distinctive appearances into account into how you treat them, rather than sweeping it under the rug.
Neurodiversiverse author Clara Ward dropped by and left us a few of her new book, "Be the Sea", which is (as I gathered from discussions) a climatepunk story featuring neurodiverse and nonbinary characters. I worked with Clara before on Doorways to Extra Time and we're excited to have her back for this one!
We hope to see you tomorrow at the con! Next up, Steampunk Vehicles, Bringing Anthologies to Life, and the world premiere reading of "Jeremiah Willstone and the Choir of Demons"!
-the Centaur
Super quick sketch since Clockwork Alchemy is tomorrow.
Drawing every day, even if I don't have time to.
-the Centaur
Pictured: super quick sketch of Jeremiah.
Clockwork Alchemy is tomorrow, but my wife and I took the evening off to go to our favorite vegan restaurant (and best restaurant in the Bay Area) Millennium.
It's great, but we hung out there so long we closed the place out almost!
See y'all at the con tomorrow. And please back our Kickstarter!
-the Centaur
Woohoo! We're well on our way, and only a few days in! Like, share and back us, folks, so we can bring this project to life and maybe even reach our stretch goals to do a second anthology!
-the Centaur
Got interrupted twice when finishing this drawing - once when I tried to finish it before the trip, and the second time when the plane landed and I had to pack up. So, it is what it is. Might tackle this one again.
Drawing every day is a discipline. I wish I was better at that.
-the Centaur
Not much time to post today - flying out to Clockwork Alchemy, where I am the Author Guest of Honor. But, it's still Camp Nanowrimo, and I had wordcount to get in on Jeremiah Willstone #2, THE CITADEL OF GLASS. And, yes, I do count it as word count if I'm futzing around in the appendix reviewing the characters and revisiting ideas for the title, but the bulk of today's word count was in the climax, which I had sketched out earlier (almost a decade ago!) and am now adjusting to fit the new ideas in the fleshed out plot ... so I can in turn reverse-engineer how that plot shall proceed to reach that climax. Very ouroboros.
-the Centaur
Pictured: A title brainstorming session for CITADEL OF GLASS.
"Off we go towards Clockwork Alchemy ... there we'll have tea with all of our fans." I'd say "sung to the theme of 'Wild Blue Yonder'" but I actually don't remember the words to that other than the first line - and it's relatively hard to parody something you don't know all that well.
Regardless, we'll have books, and panels, and the debut of Jeremiah Willstone and the Choir of Demons!
-the Centaur
Pictured: an accidentally blurred shot of my book stock, and a fortuitous super closeup of the books that I had taken pictures of at the Kickstarter.
SO! Our Kickstarter for the Neurodiversiverse is live at neurodiversiverse.com (which just links through to the Kickstarter page for the duration of the campaign). And I'm proud to say that we are number one of projects if you search for neurodivergence!
For this project I had to create about fifty images in Photoshop - mostly by remixing other imagery we had, admittedly, but sometimes it took a bit of cleverness to make everything work out, as in this physical picture of most of our books and flash fiction postcards - not all of which I had on hand for the picture, and some of which don't even physically exist yet, like the softback of The Neurodiversiverse:
Liza and I (with the help of Betsy and Keiko) put a lot of time into this and I'm proud of the result:
So, please check it out and back us ... we have reward tiers everything from $1 for token support, to early bird ebooks at a discount, to the book and the ebook themselves, all the way up to getting your name listed in the acknowledgements at the back of the book:
And, while I hope to get in some real drawing today, I am unabashedly using this as my Drawing Every Day post, because I spent hours and hours on art today and that should count, dang it.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Aaalmost there ... the NDV Kickstarter will soon be live, reachable via a redirect at neurodiversiverse.com.
-the Centaur
Pictured: A set of print items in one of our reward tiers.
More stick figure studies from "Wizard: How to Draw". They look simple, but part of "planning for success" in drawing is creating rough sketches to help find the right composition of the piece - and you can't do that if you have to do a full drawing every time, or if you don't know how to draw a simplified sketch.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
