Eeeeeeeeeee it is here! My precious beasty beast. It is soooo shiny and FAST and super awesome.
It arrived yesterday just a little after 5pm after the delivery man almost sent my dreams dashing to the concrete by having a little trip on the front step! Yikes! I saw that box wobble and images flashed in front of my eyes of the little Apple logo laying forlornly amongst shattered glass and broken LED chips. Oh noes!!!!!
Never fear! The boxes made it inside where I immediately ripped them open and started to assemble my machine. Meanwhile you can imagine the fun the kitties had with the massive boxes! What is it with kitties and their insatiable love for cardboard and paper products?
My only small setback was having to install my Airport Express card (essential for geeking it up online), which is a task usually assigned to a qualified Apple tech as it requires delving into the guts of your computer. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard – if you’ve ever installed some RAM it’s not much more tricky than that. Handy to have small fingers as there is some serious fiddling involved trying to get these itty bitty cables to clip into their spots. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to put one in while keeping the frustration at bay.
After that I was good to go! Hook up all the cables in their appropriate places and turn it ON.
Behold, the SHINY:
(and my swanky office chair. Cool huh?)
(ugh cables)
Yaaaaaaaaaay!
And its sooooo FAST I just can’t believe it. I can power up Photoshop CS4 in three seconds flat (yes I counted)!!! That’s about 20 times faster than my MacPro at work – however that is bloated with 3D software and a virtual machine to run Windoze. But STILL.
Oh and I have named him Erebus – the Greek god of darkness and shadow, son of Chaos. See, I have this habit of naming my computers after Greek legends. Always loved the stories as a child and the names sound so cool. My work computer is called Icarus and the old Macbook Pro lappy is Prometheus.
But I have to go off to Tassie this weekend so I won’t get a chance to test out it’s prowess when it comes to actual work. When I get back I will get right onto that little test let me assure you.
Well I am off to pack for the trip. Early night tonight! Gotta be up at 3am. Eep.
Bya!
Hiiii!!
Finally I think I can show you this! I’ve been working on this for a lovely client and while it has gone through a COMPLETE redesign I think it has turned out well. The redesign being completely my own idea. It’s totally not ’standard procedure’ to completely start again and do something entirely new for a customer when they haven’t suggested it – but in this case I wasn’t overly happy with the way the other drawing was going and some random sketching brought about a new look which we now both agree looks better.
This is for her business card as she is a makeup artist and wanted a pretty girl with some flowing hair and makeup on.
I had a lot of fun doing the hair and thankfully my other client also specified flowing hair – YAY. So much fun I am going to get cracking and finish that one off too.
Other news….I just got back from a fantastic afternoon tea with some awesome bloggers…Get ready for the link love…I got to meet: Violet LeBeaux and her beau Jimmy, Super Kawaii Mama (squee! Starstruck!), Esme & the Laneway (omg too!), Nicole from Circa Vintage, Celeste (she has many many blogs!) and Natalie/Briar Rose. We went to the Cristina Re Where a Girl Goes store in Collingwood where we indulged in delicious sandwiches, quiche, macarons, cupcakes and chocolates. Oh, and TEA of course. Even though I’m not normally a tea drinker, I really enjoyed the different varieties they had on offer. Yum!!
Everything in that store is so ridiculously awesome and they even gave us some gift bags to take away with us. They have a bunch of pretty papers in them which I think I might use in some drawings. Yay! Everyone was dressed so impeccably too and the company was just fabulous. I shall have some photos for you in a future post.
Right now I have to get back to finishing a ConceptArt.org CHOW entry I started. The theme is The Magus…This is the brief:
The Magus
London, England 1907. Cyril Grey is the leader of the ‘Order of Shining Starres’, an occult organisation that aims to become the most dominant in Britain. Grey has access to some of the darkest forces of the astral realm, and demands complete devotion from his acolytes. He is a man obsessed and committed to the promulgation of his black bible, the Book of Regulation, or Liber Ordinatio said to have been dictated to him by a messenger from the gods that provided to him his magical motto, Sit Vis Vobiscum. He has inherited wealth, independence, and apparent youth; appearing little over 35. But there is talk that he is older and uses a ‘glamour’ to fool his followers. There is also talk of the wealth running out, and debts beginning to mount up; of pretenders to his position, and of… murder. Dark murder, as prominent figures in the occult underworld start to… go missing…
Design Grey in his ceremonial robes of office. Consider the historical period (Edwardian) and setting. Also consider his apparent age and powerful persona, and try to present that in your design.
Interesting! I stared it on a whim – just from a sketch of his face….which turned out alright. Hopefully things keep running smoothly and I can finish on time and still like the drawings. Expect more soon!
You know how I’ve been whining about needing a new computer??? Well I finally bit the bullet and am in the process of buying the ultimate beast of all the Apple products….
Nooo I didn’t go with the new iMac as there’s some issues with the 27″ Intel7 ones….And I can’t wait 3 weeks plus for delivery. Impatient lass here.
So MacPro it is with the shiny new-fangled LED monitor. Not cheap. I’ll be paying for this for a while but I definitely need it – I’ll be able to draw with lots of layers now! And use large brushes without any lag. Yay!!!
Pretty:
Powwwa!! It’s gonna dominate my desk. Yeeeh. Can’t wait to get it. Photos to come of course.
Meanwhile – I’m doin some drawing. Will show you all soon when I get the go ahead from my client
Byeee!!
Just a quick post today to say…I WON SOMETHING!!!!!
Eeeeeeee!!!
A lovely blog that I read, by Twila at The Mysterious Life of a Metropolitan Housewife recently had a competition to celebrate her first blogging anniversary. The prize was a gorgeous aqua repro 50’s dress by Shristi Studio on Etsy. And as with many contests, I enter and then promptly forget about it….but today I saw on Twila’s blog that I had WON. Woooo!!!
So without furher ado, here is my prize…picture courtesty of Twila & Shristi Studio of course.
Finally! I have something to show you. Yes – I’m back from my lazy hiatus. Picking up the drawing again.
This time it’s a sketch for ConceptArt’s Team CHOW competition…The theme is Tarot and you must team up with another person from the forums with 2 to 4 people per team. Then you pick two tarot cards to draw, one from the major arcana and one from the lesser. So my team is called “Oh Bother” and we’re a duo…my teammate is from the UK where our timezones are a bit more compatible. We picked The Star, The Empress as the major arcana and Two of Swords and King of Swords for the lesser. Yay! We’ve got all of January to work on them so busy busy. Slow start but kind of picking up now. Here is my initial sketch for The Star. Nothing too flash just trying to get my skills up to an acceptable level again.
Other news: We finally have some KITTIES!! I am officially a crazy cat lady now. Hehe. Last Sunday we went to the Lost Dogs Home and rescued two adult kitties.
Here is Boof:
He is 3 years old and was in the shelter for quite a while. He’s the fluffiest cat I have EVER seen! Seriously! His tail is so floofy that when he walks, the hairs on it swoosh and sway in the breeze. Awww. And look at those eyes!
Jonny’s cat we’ve called Puss:
She is one year old and much smaller than Boof. She’s uber-friendly and loves to get in your face for a pat. Literally! She will cram her head into your nose to get some pats. And she’s really spritely and active and cute.
So they’re our new babies. I am so happy to have kitties finally and happy that our landlords allow them. The good thing with adult cats is you don’t need to train them as they already know where to go. They are both so friendly too. Yay!
Anyways, back to regular posting from herein. And happy 2010!
I got my new diary today. The very pretty Moleskine 2010 Daily 12 Colours Diary from Notemaker. Yay!
I *could* get a free diary from work but they’re those boring officey type diaries. Yawn! Nothing beats a Moleskine!
So here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:
These are a fraction smaller pics. My Flickr Uploader wasn’t working very well today. Boo.
Each month is a separate coloured little book. Small and neat to fit in your bag but looks pretty all together as a display also.
I’m glad February is red (my birthday month)
Pretty!
And here’s some recent sketches.
I might colour these…
That’s all for today. Now I really gotta get crackin with my commission drawing. Eeeeep.
Ciao!
Well I’m not drawing anything that is worth showing just yet….Not drawing anything that I can reveal anyway. There is stuff in the works.
So I thought I’d show you my desk…Since we moved house I’ve got a lot more room. That is to say – I have room full stop…where I never used to. The laptop was used true to function – on my lap. Lol.
Now I have a nice big desk and so I spread out my junk. This is about as clean as it gets. I am no organisational nazi – as long as I know where everything is then I’m happy. As you can see, I’m in severe need of some book shelves of some sort. Small, desktop ones for all those books. And some drawers would be nice to stuff my million pens and pencils in. What you see here is just a fraction of the stuff I’ve got. Most of it still resides in the garage!
Okay to start with – this is the Macbook Pro and my Wacom Intuos3 tablet. A little bit of an uncomfortable setup – the keyboard is too far from the tablet which means I have to lean over to see what I’m doing. NEED A DESKTOP COMPUTER. So drooling over one of those pretty new iMacs. One day it shall be mine.
Sorry about the grainy photos too. I suck with the camera.
The general crap next to the laptop…iPhone, pencils, scanner, disused Nintendo, business cards…and if you’re wondering what the hell that big white thing is (cos everyone who sees it asks) – its the subwoofer thingy for my speaker system.
Some magazines and the pencils I dragged up from the garage today. Intend to put them to use soon. oooh and see the metal ruler stolen from my high school. Dragged that all the way from Tassie. Heh.
Some anatomy and drawing books. Yay!
My sketchbooks. A selection of what I’m using right now. I have about 5 on the go. Seriously. Picked up some more today…Notemaker were having a sale just a few blocks from our place so we bought up big. Heaps of O-Check, Rhodia and Moleskin stationary on sale. Sweeeet. I got some coloured drawing paper and that nice sketchbook on the top of the pile there. Mmmm paper.
And finally, the view from the desk…Because my photos suck I’ll explain it a bit….The study is on the mezzanine level so it looks over the lounge and kitchen. Out those windows (which reach to the ground and are the doors to the courtyard) is the street behind our place. There’s a pretty tree currently full of bright purple flowers. Nice and relaxing to look at. And yeh, our house is pretty freakin’ awesome! Love the exposed brick and the excellent lighting. The building used to be a cable tram engine house and the architects preserved the outer shell. The whole complex is amazing and won a heritage renovation award of some such. Noice.
So there you have it! My work space….still needs a few things…I want a new chair too. But I’m happy I got so much room to spread out. Yay!
Oh and that pic on my computer is what I’m working on at the moment. It wont stay black and white either.
As you can see, I’m in severe need of some book shelves of some sort. Small, desktop ones for all those books. And some drawers would be nice to stuff my million pens and pencils in. What you see here is just a fraction of the stuff I’ve got. Most of it still resides in the garage!
Meg's Makeup
