Being ill stinks. It takes so long to recover and while you are recovering you don’t feel like doing anything and can’t really concentrate. Which can kill a good work groove and it seems like motivation and productivity take a running jump right out the window. I am still trying to round them up again. They are not cooperating very well.
What that means is that as much as I wanted to work on rigging Sticks, I didn’t even get started on it. I haven’t gotten back to Bernice either. The only thing I managed one evening was a little time working on the guitar piece. It’s still got a ways to go. And a little more on that in a moment.
I did manage to get something in the sketchbook each day which made me happy. First up is a little guy that may not be so little and I think might be a bit of a mischief maker. I actually woke up from a nap on Sunday with this image in my head, in color even. It was still hanging around on Monday so I decided it wanted out. I really like it and think it might be another one of those fun to develop type of things.
Next up is this lovely Lady Bug, or Lady Bird as some call it.
I forgot what I started out thinking I was going to draw here. Whatever it was, I ended up with an earbud. It’s not exactly like the ones I have. Still I was keeping those a in mind as I was drawing this one. Personally, I love my earbuds.
I decided I would make another attempt at drawing a tree from imagination with no reference. I feel like this came out better than the last one. As you might guess, this is a climbing tree. We had one of these in a couple of places that we lived when I was a kid, though we didn’t nail a wood ladder to it.
For this one, I was thinking of the bat version of Dracula in Hotel Transylvania and tried to create a creature a little like that. It didn’t go quite as I had hoped. I got the snout wrong for it to be bat like and so it came out a little disturbing. Guess that makes bats another creature I need to practice drawing.
And that was the sketching. I thought I might get a rare Saturday sketch in but I got busy doing chores before I could put pencil to paper.
Among those chores were errands. One of which was to find frames, and mattes, for the pumpkin piece, which is already complete, and the guitar piece I’m still working on. I was partially successful in this venture. I found a great frame and a matte for the pumpkin piece. I’ve already put them together and it looks awesome. 
I ran into trouble with finding the right size for the guitar piece and I don’t understand why. The pumpkin piece was fairly easy at 11 inches by 14 inches. The guitar piece is 14 inches by 17 inches. I couldn’t find anything with a aperture of that size. Not even close. I guess I will have to make a trek to the art supply store and hope they have what I need. If not I have an option of cropping it down to a 11 inche by 14 inche size though I will lose some of the work behind the matte. To do it I will have to trim the board down. I’m not sure I like that part, though I kind of like the idea of basically cropping it to the smaller size. I think it will make a bigger impact than trying to keep it the full size. Still, I want to make sure that I can’t find something to fit the full size. It looks like next weekend will involve and excursion.
Now that I’m feeling better I expect to get back to working on things. Sticks still needs to be rigged, the guitar piece needs to be worked on, and then there are all the other projects to work on. I wonder what will get done this next week. Check back and find out.