tealin | Variations on the Theme of Madness (Reply)

Today was a first-pass-animation day at work which meant no listening to anything while I was working ... in the last couple hours, though, I was doing some relatively technical stuff and my brain started gnawing on itself so I popped in some Clockwork Quartet, and a few minutes later decided this was the day I was going to draw something from their music. A number of thumbnails turned out less successfully than I hoped, but I was quite pleased with this sketch of the doctor. I keep trying the watchmaker's apprentice but whenever I draw him he turns out looking like one of the PAs. Maybe tomorrow will be the lucky day for an illustration.

I am not one to spend much time or energy on my appearance, but I have a strategy when it comes to hair: it gets cut short in the fall, usually just after Halloween (for which I often need it long), because it's much easier to deal with that way, but I let it grow long for the summer so that I can put it up when it's hot (which is most of the time, down here). It's never fancy or really all that attractive, but it stays off my neck and out of my eyes, which is what counts.

I started doing this a few years ago, and for a couple of summers it was relatively successful, but towards the end of last year and the handful of times I've tried it this spring, my hair has been increasingly uncooperative, sliding out of the pins, looping whichever way it wants to, sticking up in big arcs that can be most accurately compared to those plasma jets on the surface of the sun, and generally being a nuisance. It was not sloppy in a jaunty, sporty way, but was, in short, turning into Mad Scientist Hair. So this summer I said 'FINE, you want to be difficult? Off you go!' and broke with tradition by getting it hacked off in May. But now I'm starting to wonder ... have I simply set it loose to go truly insane? And does this have anything to do with the twitchy eyelid or the uncharacteristically impulsive and extravagant travel plans I have just made? How long before I am booked, cackling, into some secure institution? My only solace is that I cannot fulfill my projected illustration because in spite of the best efforts of Warner Bros and Guy Ritchie, little round black sunglasses are still impossible to find in the shops.

It's true, by the way ... Tombow pencils are magic.