Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
Well, Dragon Con 2021 was a resounding success. I have a page full of notes to transcribe here, but just wanted to put a stake in the ground, now that the move and the con are over, so I can get back to blogging and drawing and posting drawings every day.
-the Centaur
Pictured: The bus stop, after all the busses stopped.
Well, we're back at a con at last! And as usual, I'm posting my schedule at the last minute. At least I got the chance to see some people I haven't seen in person for two full years!
And here is my schedule:
Title: Star Trek Essays
Description: There are thousands of worlds within Star Trek, & thousands of topics to talk about. Where do we start? Join a panel of published writers & producers to discuss what's worth discussing in Trek essays, articles, & videos.
Time: Fri 11:30 am Location: Galleria 2-3 - Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Kyle Mackenzie Sullivan, R Alan Siler, Anthony Francis)-------------------
Title: Teaching Robots to Learn
Description: When you tell a machine to learn, all bets are off on what it will learn to do. In this panel, we'll discuss techniques used today to teach robots to recognize objects, to grasp them, to navigate autonomously around people, & even to imagine the future.
Time: Fri 04:00 pm Location: Atlanta - Sheraton (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Anthony Francis)-------------------
Title: To Series or to Stand-Alone?
Description: Fantasy readers fall in love with the characters & worlds we build. How do you sustain the interest in a series--or would this idea work better as a stand-alone?
Time: Sat 10:00 am Location: Embassy EF - Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Anthony Francis, Moderator: Nancy Knight, A. J. Hartley, J. Gregory Keyes, Seressia Glass, Dakota Krout)-------------------
Title: Author Signings:
Time: Sun 01:00 pm Location: International Hall South 1-3 - Marriott (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Clay Gilbert, Patricia L. Briggs, Anthony Francis)
-------------------
Title: Dead at the Keyboard
Description: Panelists discuss strategies to combat writers' block, stress, fatigue, boredom, insecurity, & deadline anxiety.
Time: Mon 11:30 am Location: Embassy EF - Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists:Moderator: Nancy Knight, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Anthony Francis, Peter David, Trisha J. Wooldridge)-------------------
Title: My Favorite Author, Book, Series, Character...
Description: Authors discuss their favorites among their own works & offer insights into their favorites in other authors' writing.
Time: Mon 01:00 pm Location: Embassy EF - Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Anthony Francis, Moderator: Bill Fawcett, Trisha J. Wooldridge, James R. Tuck)
Hope to see you there!
-the Centaur
P.S. I have been drawing more or less every day, but I have also been moving, so you get a drawing another time.
Day 206, a sketch of Montgomery Scott from Star Trek:
How ddid I do? Still can't seem to draw a correctly tilted head, and face to hair proportions continue to be off:
Day 207, Nyota Uhura:
Umn, well, it is the same person, sort of, but she's looking down, and the original, up:
So, no real way to make these line up, but it isn't totally terrible:
Day 208, Hikaru Sulu:
Again, more or less the same person, but I made him look down, and what happened to his chin?
Overall comparison cannot be made to line up:
Day 209, Pavel Chekhov. I don't have the original reference on this computer, but I'm sure a comparison would be equally terrible to all the others, if not worsee.
Drawing every day, posting when i get to it.
-the Centaur
The back of Cinnamon Frost, after a painting by my wife. Drawing every day, even if I wasn't posting.
-the Centaur 
Day 203: Damnit, Jim, I'm a sketch, not a headshot!
Let's see how I did:
Huh ... not entirely terrible, though it needed stretching horizontally.
What about Day 204? A quick sketch of Dakota Frost:
Day 205 apparently hasn't been cleaned up, so we'll return to that.
Drawing every day, posting when I get to it.
-the Centaur
Day 200 - Khaaan! Let's see how I did:
Meh. Head not wide enough.
Day 201 - Khan, the man himself:
Day 202 - Spooock!
Let's see how I did:
As I recall, there was no good way to line up the face and the hair.
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur 
It's not that I've not been drawing every day. But my marriage is more important than drawing every day, and my job is more important than my posting every day, and just from the perspective of posting, while we're on that subject, site maintenance is more important than all of that, since I couldn't post.
However, taking a shotgun to all of my plugins (except the Classic Editor, which WordPress Gutenberg can pry out of my COLD DEAD HANDS) and running all available updates got the site back to life. Still not sure what precisely went wrong here, as the failure wasn't correlated with any detectable change.
SO anyway, drawing hasn't stopped, but posting of them will resume when I get the huge box of stereo wires detangled so the site is smooth again. Pictured: me, having a drink with my wife, spending a wonderful afternoon and evening together, most of which did NOT involve any form of drawing.
-the Centaur
UPDATE: The problem was the Jetpack plugin, and it persists even if the plugin is reinstalled from scratch. This has some precedent, as I see other users with the same problem, though I haven't dug deeply enough to understand what is going on in my case.
Day 196: Quick sharpie sketch of Janeway, from the below image.
The comparison is not great - the face is way too long compared to the original:
Day 197, Sharpie over non-repro blue roughs, from the same image:
Slightly better comparison this time, though still not perfect:
Day 198 was Richard Branson ... in spaaace:
That's from this fisheye lens image ... while it isn't perfect, it captures a lot of energy. I particularly like the smile in the reflection (in both my drawing, and in Branson's window - he's having fun!). No comparison this time; this exercise was in capturing the feel more than the precise lineup.
Day 199 was Martin Sheen from The West Wing:
Not an entirely terrible likeness ...
... but my perennial problem of having a face out of proportion to the head continues.
Look at that hair, man. You can make the eyes and mouth line up, but that hair, man.
Still, drawing every day.
-the Centaur
Congratulations, Sir Richard Branson, on your successful space flight! (Yes, yes, I *know* it's technically just upper atmosphere, I *know* there's no path to orbit (yet) but can we give the man some credit for an awesome achievement?) And I look forward to Jeff Bezos making a similar flight later this month.
Now, I stand by my earlier statement: the way you guys are doing this, a race, is going to get someone killed, perhaps one of you guys. A rocketship is not a racecar, and moves into realms of physics where we do not have good human intuition. Please, all y'all, take it easy, and get it right.
That being said, congratulations on being the first human being to put themselves into space as part of a rocket program that they themselves set in motion. That's an amazing achievement, no-one can ever take that away from you, and maybe that's why you look so damn happy. Enjoy it!
-the Centaur
P.S. And day 198, though I'll do an analysis of the drawing at a later time. 
