I know I said I probably wouldn’t write a day 3 post, but…my final art purchase from the con — a commission from Ashley A. Woods — is so gorgeous I had to make time to write about it and the rest of the day.
This is a picture I never thought I would get. I had an impossible time reducing Ruth from “Roundup” in Rough Passages to a proper artist’s reference full of physical details. She’s o full of anger, love and patience…but what did she look like? Errrm. I never felt the recitation of dry facts (gray hair, older woman’s body and skin…) did her justice.
I knew I liked this artist’s work — check out Niobe: She Is Life from Stranger Comics, or Millenia Wars if you can find it — and knew she did an incredible job capturing personality in lines. So. I happened past her table and was looking at prints, and when I saw she was sketching, I gathered up ALL MY NERVES and asked if she did commissions.
Yes? YES?! W00T! I babbled various bits of description, she jotted notes, and this is the result. Ruth at the end of the story after her powers roll in, surveying her new land.
Oh. Yass.
I got to watch the the last bit of marker work, and it was astonishing. It’s a craft I know takes hours & hours of practice, concentration, and effort, and it’s all the more amazing to watch because of that.
Other notes from Sunday? I picked up tea for myself and a friend, grabbed a print of Stitch wearing the Hogwarts Sorting hat and being sorted into Hufflepuff (Yes, he is so right for it, FIGHT ME) and generally enjoyed walking the aisles and seeing the things I missed because Saturday was so danged busy.
Next year, looking at the likelihood I still won’t be working a booth, I might devote all of Saturday to attending panels & not even go onto the vendor’s floor. There are so MANY folks who only come for that one day that even the super-wide aisles get crushingly crowded.
Crowds are not my thing. So. Very Much. NOT.
Happy note, though: I did not ever lose my con buddies. I remembered to memorize their clothes once we got to the con floor, and they made sure to wave to me when I got out of range (at 2-3 feet distance, I rely more on clothes/motion than faces) So, yay, no panicky moments at all for once.
Rainy Sunday meant by the time we left the show we were all tremendously tired, footsore and achy. Came home, got all the stuff unpacked before exhaustion crashed in, and thanked past-me for making sure the house was in order because I was in no emotional state to deal with disorder.
Then came the dilemma of dinner. Neither I nor Spouseman could face cooking or even the work of deciding from a menu and speaking to a delivery person, but all ended well. Leftovers to the rescue. Dove into the freezer and pulled out hearty soup, applesauce, & bread for toast.
Lots of work to do in the weeks ahead: scan in art, do lots of writing, buy some food, start the next round of leftovers creation, laundry (AAAGGHHHH SO MUCH LAUNDRY) a couple of house projects, more authoring responsibilities, and a long, long list of other Usual Life Things, but…
This is all the all there is for now. Ta!