I've Moved! Follow Me Elsewhere!

If you haven't noticed, I haven't posted here in a while. Thanks to a random e-mail from blogger, I remembered that once upon a time I ambitiously thought that I could keep up with a blog regularly. Alas, as you can see that clearly isn't so.

To catch up anyone who for whatever reason might still be following this blog, I've illustrated a couple of books, worked a few odd jobs, and am amazingly still living off a bit of savings left over from teaching. I have done a number of conventions and am fairly active on more widely traficked social media.

Here are a few of the places you can find me. A follow, like, or comment always helps me out and is appreciated, so if you have a second to spare, check me out at the following:

Instagram     Twitter    Facebook     Twitch     YouTube    ArtStation   

You can also do me a favor and check out my Patreon page that I launched a few months ago. It's a great way to let me reward you if you become a patron at a variety of tier levels.



Here's an image from a book I worked on last year called WaryTales by China DeSpain to bid you a fond farewell with. :) Thanks for checking out my blog, feel free to hit me up on any of the above places if you want to keep up with what I'm doing.

<3

~Kasey

Holiday Travel Craziness

Hello everyone! Sorry for the (again) late post, I've been a little crazy with holidays and everything lately, so hopefully you can cut me a little slack. I'm going to try to get on a schedule with posting here so it will be more regular.

Thanksgiving was kind of a whirlwind, but good. Got to spend lots of time with friends and family down south. The journey was a bit of a story though, so that is what I will share this evening.

Here was the plan:
Wed 18th - drive to Texas
Thurs 19th - recover
Fri 20th - get up early to drive with Vanessa down to San Antonio for a baby shower I was helping put on
Sat 21st - Baby shower
Mon 23rd - Catch plane back to DFW
Tues 24th - recover
Wed 25th - get up early and drive to Oklahoma
Sun 29th - drive back to Colorado from Oklahoma

Sounds crazy, I know. Welcome to my life.

So. Knowing that I had a 12 hour drive ahead of me, I set my alarm for 5 and went to bed really early on Tuesday the 17th. Unfortunately, this same night there was a really strong wind. Which, of course, would be no big deal...except I found out that night that apparently my bedroom window likes to scream with excitement during these bursts of wind speed. I'm talking an incredibly loud, high-pitched whistling howl that fills my bedroom every 30 seconds or so. This went on from about the time I laid down until 3 AM, at which point I finally entered the sweet, sweet embrace of slumber.

Needless to say, I was pretty delirious when I dragged myself out of bed two hours later to put in my contacts and load up my car. Eventually I got on the road around 6:30 (after quadruple checking that I had remembered to pack the favors for the shower) and began my journey south, glad to have timed it so that I missed all of Denver's morning traffic. See, the winds were still very strong and I passed a number of semis that had been pushed over by them..which of course caused tons of back up going north into Denver.

I got about an hour out of Denver when I realized I had, in my tired haze, left my glasses back at my apartment. For those of you who don't know, I have terrible, terrible vision. Things get blurry about six inches past my nose. I didn't want to have to turn back so I pulled over to double check that I had my spare pair of contacts that I always keep in my toiletries bag just in case. If something happened to the pair I was wearing then at least I would have a replacement and that would be enough to get me through the two weeks and the long drive back.

After a very thorough and increasingly desperate search, I came to the conclusion that I had, for whatever reason, taken them out that morning to make room for other things with the intention of sticking them in my suitcase with my glasses...which I now concluded were both sitting patiently back in my apartment on the bathroom counter waiting to be brought along.

...so. I begrudgingly and very resentfully turned around and began the drive back into Denver. And proceeded to sit in rush hour traffic both ways for the next two hours. Ugh. Don't worry, I spent most of that time giving myself a stern talking to.

Amazingly, I managed to stay awake the entire trip down and finally pulled into my parents' driveway just before 11 pm. Made it about as far as the living room before all of the tired my body had been storing up fell out of the sky and landed on my eyelids. I slept for almost 12 hours.

The rest of the trip went by pretty much according to plan. A few of my friends dropped by on Thursday to catch up, drove with V for 4 hours on Friday to San Antonio, whirlwind weekend of shower and hanging out with people, went to the San Antonio Zoo on Monday then caught the plane back that evening, spent Tuesday gathering and sorting items I had left in Keller, left bright and early Wednesday following Mom to Oklahoma, ate lots of food for four days with extended family, and drove back up to Colorado on Sunday morning.

All in all it was a good, but rather exhausting trip. It took me a few days of essentially lounging around my apartment and napping constantly to recover. Pretty much all I accomplished upon my return was cleaning and restoring rest equilibrium.

A shot of my family doing what we always do when we meet up for Thanksgiving...manual labor! We are fixing the barn roof by bending the metal and cutting/nailing it into place. 

Next up: Christmas. D:

~K

Success!

Sorry for the late follow up to my previous post but, in case you were wondering, my show at RMC last weekend went pretty well, I think!

Though I realized when it was all over that I forgot to take a camera and therefore really don't have any good pictures from during the show other than a set-up shot I snapped with my camera. I guess I can show you this image of some of the work I had for sale that I took while cleaning up after the show:

Since I was stuck sitting there all day I decided to bust out the watercolor and do some small pop culture paintings while I was sitting there, hence Batman. They actually sold surprisingly well! Those three are all that was left.

I ended up making back double what the table cost me, which was enough to cover prints and travel expenses as well. Considering that a lot of the people at the tables around me were calling it a small, slow show and complaining that they didn't make their table back...I'm dubbing it a successful first!

One big thing I learned for next time is to BRING A TABLE BUDDY. You don't realize how important potty breaks are until you can't have one for 12 hours. I was having flash backs to teaching with no breaks between classes all day and no one nearby to cover for me. Except worse.

Part of it though is that I still don't really know anyone in the area. At least not well enough to ask them to go with me to one of these and watch my money box. The couple I do know in Denver I didn't think would be interested in coming...and honestly didn't realize how big of a deal it would be to have two people at the table instead of one.

I did manage to pass out quite a few business cards though. I know it probably doesn't look like a lot, but the stack on the left is how tall the other two were to start with as well. All I know is I was constantly refilling the business card basket, so that's good.

Granted, I probably would've made an even bigger dent in these stacks had I been able to walk around during the show and talk to other artists/vendors/etc. Again. Gotta bring a buddy next time.

Speaking of next time, there is a pretty big one in Dallas I am thinking of attending in February. Reason being that the networking in DFW is actually pretty huge in this industry and it would be an excuse to visit friends/family while attending...not to mention I wouldn't have to pay for a hotel. There are three more shows coming up in the spring in the southern part of Colorado, but the drive is just far enough that It'd be smarter to find a hotel. Plus, snow can be a pretty big deal in the spring around here, or so I've heard, and I'd hate to get caught going back and forth on bad roads.

All of that aside, I am going to try my best to get a spot at Denver ComicCon in June. The tables are more expensive but they had an attendance of 60,000 last year...! So surely I'd find some people to buy some of my stuff. Right? Maybe...? I'll just have to bring more comic-oriented stuff to make sure I break even.

And now it's off to go enjoy the rest of this snowy evening and pack for thanksgiving. One of the cool things about where I live is that I get to watch the snow clouds roll in from the mountains.

'til next time!

~K

Lots of Projects in the Works

So. It turns out blogs are a harder thing to keep up with than I initially realized. I should probably be better about this, sorry to those of you trying to keep up. :)

In my defense, I have been really busy the past couple of weeks. Volunteer trail building and various efforts to find community aside, I decided to get a table at a local convention in early November so I can network and get my feet wet at this whole marketing thing. I've been getting business cards, prints, banners, buttons, stickers, etc ready for the big day and it has absorbed a lot of my time! 

I will update these images when the actual products arrive, but for now, here are some of the images I'm using for promotional materials:

Other than that, I've got a number of personal projects going on in the background. A series on mythological creatures and a comic, to name a few. Maybe I'll post some sneak previews of these here sometime. 

I've been spending a lot of time in between projects painting outdoors and drawing from life. This is such an important area to work on for any artist and I have sorely neglected the practice for years, I must admit. Unless you count the occasional trip to the zoo to sketch, I really haven't dedicated the kind of time to observation that I should have...so needless to say I've got a lot of catching up to do.

'til next time!

~Kasey

In which I get lost in the mountains...sort of.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, my internet has been uncooperative for the past week or so and I've had trouble getting any kind of connection.

That being said, I've had a number of adventures in my time away from the world wide web. One that stands out as a tale I should recount is the time I went for a walk that turned into an all day hike because I got a bit lost trying to get up a mountain. Yep.

Allow me to explain.

There is a large mountain in Golden with a giant "M" on the side for the School of Mines. This mountain is located maybe a mile from my apartment and so I made it a goal to hike up to the "M" someday. But not this day. This day, my intention was to go for a short walk to the base of the mountain in order to locate the trail head so I could ascend some other time. It was already 10:30 by the time I started walking, which is way too late to try to hike and expect to get back at a reasonable time. So I grabbed my half-full water bottle and headed out, pretty sure the whole excursion wouldn't take more than 30 minutes to an hour. Hah.

Mountain in Question/Object of Desire

So I walked along the creek for a while toward the mountain, trying to figure out how to get to the trail marked on my map. I crossed the river going left with the mountain on my right and walked for a while with an interstate between me and the mountain, watching for a place to cross. Eventually I had walked the length of the mountain and it was now behind me and I thought, "well that's not right." So I turned around and back tracked across the length of the mountain again and tried continuing up along the creek with the mountain now on my left looking for a way up on the other side.

Eventually the mountain was, again, behind me and I thought, "well that's not right either!" So I wandered around the creek bed until I found a small bridge that looked like it had a trail on the other side that went straight up the mountain. Perfect!

Or so I thought.

The trail turned out to be for climbers--in other words people with fancy things like ropes and gear and upper body strength. Hmm.

Once I'd gotten as high as I could I looked around and spotted what almost looked like an animal trail off to the left. I was pretty sure it wouldn't go anywhere but at this point I'd already been at it for about 2 hours trying to achieve my goal of locating a trail head. I couldn't just give up without finding something. So on I went.

I walked for about 10 minutes on this trail when, suddenly, I was walking on the top of a concrete wall. I mean, one second it's dirt and rocks and grass, and the next step I'm standing on the rim of a very tall wall with a sheer drop to the left.

There was a kind of gully I could have walked along to the right to stay off of the edge of this slightly precarious path, but it looked pretty likely to hide snakes and muddy patches. So I took my chances on the wall. It was about two and a half feet wide and there was no wind on this side of the mountain, so I felt pretty safe...though I was not very sure that I was allowed to be there.

So I strolled along the crest of this (increasingly tall) barricade for about a quarter of an hour as it wrapped back around the front of the mountain. The awareness that I had now walked the length of the front side of this mountain three times did not escape me. If anything I was more determined to figure out where the legitimate path was so I could get home.

Eventually the wall ended as abruptly as it began and I was again on a dirt path. This one appeared to be made of wheel ruts, reinforcing my belief that I was in some sort of construction or service road area and I hastily made my way. Trespassing was not something on my list of things to do within my first couple of weeks here.

The path I was on intersected another coming up from the left and suddenly people! Everywhere!

From where I stood, the mountain top looked to be maybe only another 20-30 minute hike to the summit. And since I'd come so far and spent so much of my day already, I figured I might as well go see the "M" and check that off my list. I needed to use the bathroom but because there were SO many people I couldn't find a private spot off the trail. I'd heard there was a bathroom at the top anyway and figured I could hold it, so off I went.

Well, it took a little longer than I thought as the trail deceptively curved off to the left and around a valley. So a little over an hour and many switchbacks later, I finally made it to the top. The view was beautiful!

Windy Saddle overlook (at least that's what I have deduced it is called from various maps)

The picturesque scenery was, sadly, marred by a terrible stench. Apparently a maintenance crew had started cleaning the one and only port-a-potty right as I got there. At this point I was in desperate need of a latrine. And to top it all off, the trail to go see the giant "M" was blocked! :( I was so sad, after all that had been the whole point of this expedition. The sign said it was closed for re-vegetation, meaning that it could be years before they open it to the public again. Sad day!

While standing there taking pictures, someone nearby told me that if I continued on up the trail to the left I would get to the top of lookout mountain where the nature center stood, complete with plumbing! This sounded like a great plan, and the top of the mountain really did not look far at all. I could see the roof of the nature center from where I stood. It couldn't have been more than 500 feet higher than where I was currently standing. I guesstimated 15 minutes if I hustled. So off I went.

Based on how this hike had gone so far I should've known better than to be so optimistic.

The trail up to Lookout Mountain from the saddle between the two summits.

45 minutes, what seemed like a hundred switchbacks, and a random guitar & amp toting hippie in flip flops later (a story for another day), I finally saw the nature center parking lot. At this point I was just shy of a dead sprint to the bathroom. I should also mention that it was now around 2:30.

Urgent business taken care of, I asked the woman at the desk if there was a faster way down on foot. She shook her head to the negative. Ugh. It had taken me 4 hours to get up here, so I knew it would take at least half that to get back. I was feeling a bit light headed and went to go sit outside for a bit, afraid I had a touch of altitude sickness from not having enough water on what had turned into a relatively strenuous hike. I looked despondently at my empty water bottle as I ate a tiny granola bar I had found crammed in the bottom of my day pack. I waited for my stomach to settle and definitely did not feel up to the long walk ahead of me.

I eventually accepted the fact that I would have to start the long trek back before it got even later and steeled myself for a tiring journey. Upon exiting the nature center I came across a group of retirees trying to get a group photo. I offered to help and as I did so we got to talking. It turned out they were a bunch of retired teachers having a reunion. They had all been first year teachers together in JeffCo, the district Golden is in. I told them I had also been a teacher and they asked about what I was doing in Golden. Eventually they found out that I was about to hike back to the city from the top of Lookout Mountain and they offered to drive me back. Needless to say, I was happy to accept!

We made a few stops down the mountain for more pictures and scenic overlooks and it still took only a fraction of the time it would've taken me to walk all that way back. Good thing I like hiking, otherwise that reality would've struck me as frustrating. They had some gluten-free crackers they let me snack on and were even nice enough to drop me off at my apartment! I am so grateful I met them up there and hope they had a good reunion week. Apparently one of them used to work at a middle school that is now the Mountaineering museum. It's only a block from my apartment and I need to check it out sometime, the building looks very historic and interesting from the outside.

If all of that was too long for you to read, enjoy this hastily drawn visual representation of what happened:

Half mile ruler only applicable to path, not mountain doodle height...also it's just a guess, but you get the idea. ;)

Moral of the story: If you live around mountains, just expect that every walk will turn into a hike and bring a full water bottle. Always.

Other moral of the story: Teachers are awesome.

Thanks to Jane Corkern for sending the pictures!

Let There Be Art!

Finally settled into my new place and have had some time to make some drawings. Mostly digital, some on my chalkboard wall, a few in my sketchbook...it's all practice either way. :) Here are some little snapshots of the things I'm working on:

Yes, I know...too many animals, not enough people. There's a little boy in the bottom left corner of that last picture if you look really closely!!...okay, it probably doesn't count. But hey, I'll get there, don't worry!

As for a mini life update, I've officially changed my address, registered to vote, successfully met most of my neighbors, and explored a lot of Golden at this point. Still haven't made it up the third mountain, but I plan to tackle it either tomorrow or Saturday. Expect more pictures of nature soon! The only other big things left on my to do list are to register my car here and get a Colorado driver's license...I expect that to be about as much fun as it was when I was 16. :/

Hope you all are having a great September!

Getting Settled

So, it's been one week, give or take a Labor Day trip to Kansas, since I moved to Colorado. Since I got back on Monday I have accomplished the following:

-installed lots of shelving

-unpacked and organized everything

-built a computer

-hiked two nearby plateaus

-met lots of neighbors

-got a library card

-covered a wall with chalkboard paint

...notice something missing from this list? 

No? The answer is art. Art is missing. 

Drawing time has been sort of squished in between all of these other things all week. I suppose that's to be expected when you first move someplace, but it is making me feel somewhat unproductive. Part of the problem is that I don't have Photoshop on my new computer yet despite having spent hours trying to get my files transferred over and programs installed across a very shaky internet connection. What little I've done can hardly be called drawings, more like sketchbook scribbles really. 

I suppose I could have drawn instead of hiking yesterday and today but...I really needed to get out of the apartment! I had been bottled up inside for days trying to sort things out/do various projects and was succumbing to a bit of cabin fever. Plus, both hikes left me feeling super refreshed and inspired. To able to walk less than a mile from my apartment and see things like this is just awesome:

However! I have now gotten most of the apartment set-up things off of my to-do list and the new computer is up and running fantastically, so it's time to knuckle down and get some work done. You should start seeing more art posts here very soon. :)

Also, for those of you interested in more pictures/doodles, check out my Instagram. It's a lot easier for me to post images quickly from my phone there.