CrashOctopus Blog

My short absence has not been idle - I was on beer vacation! It was planned as a regular family reunion, but unexpectedly turned into a beer vacation, which is perfectly fine with me.

Day 1: Meet with Casey Klahn of The Colorist, who has the most beautiful backyard ever. Got to see some of his originals and his awesome new studio-in-progress. He has cute kids and gave me beer. Thumbs up!

Walnut Brewery Old Elk Brown Ale: a nice red beer, tastier by far than Killian’s. Ratings for a non-dark beer… M: 7 N: 6.5

Day 2: Family reunion in beautiful Leavenworth, WA. Found out that I have the same birthday as this handsome fellow, my great-great-grandfather the horse-wrangler.

Also found out that I’m related to an excellent botanical artist, Catherine Watters. My family rocks.

Leavenworth is a Bavarian Village, and has tons of good beer on tap. Here’s what we drank:

Big Sky Brewery Moose Drool Brown Ale: chocolatey, mild, complex, and dark for an ale. On tap at Gustav’s, which makes kick-ass cheeseburgers. Non-dark beer ratings… M: 9 N: 8.5

Boundary Bay Imperial Oatmeal Stout: served room temp, it’s dessert-sweet and rich, like a mild black russian. On tap at Ducks and Drakes. M: 9 N: 9

Elysian Perseus Porter: complex, better than Guinness. On tap at I forget which beer garden. M: 7 N: 7.5

Hales Brewery Sleeping Maiden Porter: deep, rich, tasty. On tap at, and made exclusively for, Gustav’s. M: 7.5 N: 7

Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter: smooth and mild, a typical porter. On tap at Gustav’s. M: 8 N: 7

Day 3: Drove to Dayton, WA to visit my grandmother, a 96-year-old firecracker with a 20-year-old sense of humor. Visit Palouse Falls. Successfully take photos without falling in.

Day 4: Visited Little Goose Dam and its fish ladder. I’ve never seen salmon so big.

Day 5: Dinner at Skye Book & Brew in Dayton. It’s an awesome little mix of cafe, coffee shop, and bookstore. Their brewmaster makes excellent beer that is only available on tap at this restaurant. They have $1 pints on Monday night. ONE DOLLAR. I love this place.

S. McTaggart Scottish Ale: dark, complex, and earthy with a hint of cocoa. Non-dark beer ratings… M: 9 N:9

Pataha Creek Porter: light for a porter, smooth, complex, and bitter. M: 7.5 N: 7

Tucannon Honey Wheat: not dark beer at all, but Grandmother liked it, so I had to try. Sweet and tasty.

Startin Starveout Stout: I had this on my last trip to Dayton, and it was delicious. They aren’t making it right now. Shame.

Day 6: Pick wild blackberries. Dinner at the Weinhard Cafe. Awesome food.

Deschutes Brewery Obsidian Stout: full, smooth, thick, nutty, and sweet. M: 9 N: 8.5

Day 7: Had beer on tap at Squatters Pub Brewery in the Salt Lake City airport while waiting on a layover.

Squatters Polygamy Porter: mild, smooth, with a small bite. M: 7 N: 5

Squatters Captain Bastard’s Oatmeal Stout: complex but verrry bitter and sour, smells like coffee. M: 6  N: 5

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed my beer vacation as much as I did.

Magic 8-Ball Snail by Meg Lyman

Pencil on card-stock

$25 - e-mail to buy

I don’t know where my brain gets this stuff. I go do something practical for a while, and when I sit down to draw with a clear head and cheery disposition, it spits out this kind of thing. I kinda like him.

Just a quick post this weekend - I’m on the road. It’s tough to be productive with art while traveling, but here are a few items that help me:

• Clipboard
• Small sketchbook (big ones are heavy, and you’ll need it in your carry-on bag for those long airport waits)
• Mechanical pencil
• Click eraser (pencil-shaped)
• Small ruler
• Heavy paper or card stock
• Folder of ref photos

That’s it! Back with more art this week.

Nibbler by Meg Lyman

ACEO with Brush Pens

$10 blog special - e-mail to buy

I got a pack of blank ACEOs (2.5×3.5″ cards) and wanted to try out this textured one. I looked around my desk for something to draw, and my Nibbler doll stared back at me. It’s a still life of a copyrighted character. Anyone have advice about whether it’s OK to sell or not? I don’t want 20th Century Fox to come after me…

Hey, did I mention this is on cradled Gessobord? Did I mention that washes get easier if you layer them?

Once I got the background finished, I started on the octopus. First I painted the darks. I used a reddish-purple for the core shadows and a bluish-purple for the rest of the darks. I am probably not done with the darks yet; I’ll come back to them later to make sure everything balances out.

Next: Create the orange practice cone and flag, and lay in the middle tones on the ball. I’ll probably leave the white for the lightest areas.

Next: Paint the middle tones on the arms and eye, and some grass on the arms to integrate octopus and foreground. Notice the big difference the lighting makes in the color of the photograph - this was in daylight, the others were under halogen bulbs.

My boyfriend told me the eye wasn’t focal enough, and he couldn’t tell the little guy was supposed to be sleeping. So I used The Gimp to try a few different eyes.

Sarcastic:

Angry:

Finally, I ended up with this: sad. Maybe they lost the game… or maybe he’s just sad that everyone keeps kicking him around. I added highlights and little details. It’s color-corrected and done!

Critiques and comments welcome!

This week’s beer is only available on tap, I believe. It was also a limited local run, and I don’t know if it’s still available. But we rated it, dammit, so I’m reviewing it, even if it’s obsolete. They might bring it back, you never know.

Sweetwater is a local Georgia brewery. I love their Sweet Georgia Brown, even though it isn’t dark. So I gladly tried Happy Ending Stout when I saw it on tap at a local tavern. It’s a high-gravity beer, which usually earns points in my book. However, this one’s taste left something to be desired.

It’s light & spicy at first. The second taste is very bitter and leaves you with a strong aftertaste. One acquaintance gave it a 6 and says it looks like Guinness but tastes more like a light beer. An astute and accurate observation.

Ratings:
M: 5
N: 5

Golfvark by Meg Lyman

5×7″ gouache on paper

$35 Blog Special! - e-mail to buy

I have four of these little aardvarks done already. I think I’ll make two more, and offer a set of six as notecard prints. What do you think?

Don’t miss the Socctopus WIP post that I just bumped out of the way.

Next in my ambitious lineup of sports squids, I present… The Socctopus!

(OK, it’s not a squid, but the pun worked better this way.)

This is a another WIP showing my process from start to finish, but with paint instead of pencil. The whole thing is already posted on the WetCanvas gouache board, in case you can’t wait to see the conclusion.

Start: I made many many sketches and doodles, trying to decide 1) content 2) positioning 3) composition and 4) value.

Next: Value study. I was on lunch break at work and had only a sharpie and a blue highlighter, which work well for a 3-value study.

Then: In pencil, I sketched out the composition full-sized. This is on cheap typing paper and is 8×10″.

The colors I planned to use: Prussian Blue, Cadmium Green, Alizarin Crimson, and Lemon Yellow, all Holbein. I’ll also use white for highlights, but only at the end. The big “X” on the cad green means it can cause cancer if inhaled, so avoid licking it.

I transferred the paper sketch onto Cradled Gessobord, using the same carbon-paper method that I used for the Chiroopractor. The pencil lines transferred very light, so I washed in the dark areas (black sharpie in value sketch) with blue to help me keep my bearings along the way.

Next: background. I have been told that it is a good idea to do the background first. I am not exactly sure why, but I suspect it has to do with 1) integrating subject and background and 2) getting bored and lazy and deciding the subject looks fine without a background.

For the grass, I did a light wash of cadmium green (a great color for bright grass). I then mixed two greens - light and dark - and made the grass blades with a 3/0 brush. Once I had the area around the socctopus filled in, I ditched the teeny brush for a fan, and finished the background grass with it. I’ll add blades of grass on top of the octopus’ arms later, to integrate him with his surroundings.

That’s it for now. Conclusion: next week!

Imported from Jamaica, Dragon Stout is one of our favorites. I’d give you a link, but all my googling was in vain - I can’t find them on the web!

Dragon Stout comes in fairly small bottles - less than half a pint. It is smooth and slightly sweet, with the interesting characteristic that retains the same slight sweetness even after eating something sweet (like, say, chocolate). It goes down easy, like lighter beers, but with lots of flavor, like heavier beers. It has a hint of caramel flavor, and is full, rich, and savory.

Ratings:
M: 9.5
N: 9.5

Just a quick one today - Señor Damselfly here was very fun to photograph. The only reason he is fairly sharp is a) it was really bright out and b) I used my tripod. Notice the verrrrrrry narrow depth-of-field when using an extreme macro focus. I didn’t get him quite in the middle of the field.
Also, here’s a photo of RAGBRAI in Laurens. That’s it for now!