The Annual Gap

This gap between Christmas and New Year’s is always a weird kinda time. I often have to work but I admit it is very half-hearted. Family time and new things are calling my attention away and that is a good thing. Ms Lugs gave me a book on Pigeons for Christmas. Who knew that they would be such interesting creatures? Not I, that’s for sure. I haven’t read a book in ages but it was super today to just curl up on the couch for a few hours and read. My thoughts of work were fleeting and rare. Not so tomorrow, though. I have to get back to it then... but today was a nice break.

It’s not the work you remember but the other stuff

One of the things that bugs me is that during the busy times, the work gobbles up all available time. It chews up all the time that would be given over to doing the fun stuff with family, reading books, seeing movies, things like that. Look back on that time and all you’ll see is a big hole in your life because I don’t think you remember the work. Sure, you remember the resulting image. As an illustrator, if I like it enough I’ll stick it up on the wall and probably look at it almost every day at some point in later months, years. I forget the amount of work that it took to get there, but I know I am missing the memories of the time I could have been spending during that period doing the fun stuff I listed earlier. Well, I guess I’ll never know.

First day back

First day back after the Christmas break and I am feeling a little sluggish. Plenty of issues to deal with. There are the usual issues: Too many thing to do, not enough time in which to do them. A list of things to do that resides entirely in my head and the ever present fear that if I write it down it will get bigger. Add to these all the holiday related issues: the holiday was so good I have a hard time remembering what I do for a living. Having a hard time focusing, that sort of thing and I think this "working-during-the-holidays-when-everyone-else-is-off" is a recipe for disaster. So, I am going to make a very specific list of the things I want to do this afternoon. Just the key things and I am going to make sure that I accomplish them at the very least. Yes, that's what I am going to do. Just watch me.

Winter festival scene done, on to the next

In the run up to the holidays things have gotten pretty sluggish in the blogging department That’s not to say we have been idle in Studio Lugs. Quite the contrary. We’ve have been very busy. So busy, in fact, we even had to miss a Seasonal Party or two. The icon project continues sporadically and the series of four illustrations we were engaged to produce has occupied this illustrator's every waking moment practically. The results have been great though. Here’s a portion of the winter festival scene we have been working on lately. It is a massive image and this bit is just a very small part of it. The full image is out pending client final approval approval.

This is bugging me

The Lugs family had been to the cottage for the weekend. Upon our return Ms Lugs found a suspicious 3mm long "creature" attached to the top of our dog Nuala's head. It looked as though it had burrowed in partly under the skin. (sorry for the details there) Nuala was taken to the vet where the tick (for so it was) got to be extracted and sent away for testing to see if it carried Lyme Disease.

Two days later Ms Lugs was stroking Nuala and she found ANOTHER tick near the site of the first one. I looked at it and tried pulling it out. It relinquished Naula's scalp with a large clicking sound. For some reason that sound really grossed me out. On closer inspection I found yet another but considerably smaller tick at the same site. He wasn't trying to dig in but was just ambling around instead. He too was removed and put into a sealed container.

Later, Ms Lugs called me from the Jeep with what has to be the funniest call I have had in ages. She said "I can't believe I am driving a tick and his little buddy to the vet today!" That might have sounded good as a tweet.