November 11, 2021

Sketchbook Snapshot: Children’s Book Characters

angelleconant Art, Sketchbook Snapshot art, children's book, sketchbook, sketchbook snapshot, watercolor 1 Comment

Got to do a couple more character drawings from some children’s books that my kiddo and I have been reading lately. Both books were a lovely read. <3

Image on left is a small child with curly hair, rosy cheeks and a green jacket looking up. Image on the right is a blond baby with a pink sweater with polka dots, orange and yellow striped tights, and a red ribbon in her hair lifting her arms up in excitement. — Drawn on an **XP PEN Drawing Tablet** using **Rebelle 4**. Books are *The Book of Mistakes* by Corinna Luyken and *Orange Juice Peas* by Lari Don.

November 4, 2021

Comic #4: COVID-19 Vaccines

angelleconant Art, Comics, Family art, comics, covid-19, crying, rebelle 4, watercolor, webcomic 0 Comments

I’ve been *sob* waiting so long *sob sob sob* to be able to post this *sob sob sob.*

4 panel comic titled COVID-19 Vaccines. Panel 1: an excited smiley face with the words "After reading that scientists were developing a COVID-19 vaccine..."Panel 2: an excited smiley face with the words "After my older & immunocompromised friends & family were vaccinated..."Panel 3: an excited smiley face with the words "After my husband & I and adult family & friends were vaccinated..."Panel 4: a sobbing face that's saying "I'm *sob* so *sob* HAPPY!" with the words "After my kiddo was vaccinated..." — So grateful to be able to get my young kiddo vaccinated. *sob sob sob*

November 2, 2021

Comic #3: Kids COVID-19 Vaccine Approval

angelleconant Art, Comics, Parenting art, comics, covid-19, parenting, vaccines, watercolor, webcomic 0 Comments

Me, this morning, realizing that the CDC is meeting today to (hopefully) approve Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccines for the 5-11 age group. The vote is scheduled for 4:15pm ET/3:15pm CT and I am literally counting down the hours.

Two panel comic. Panel 1: A man and woman are sleeping in bed when their alarm goes off at 7am. Panel 2: The woman is awake right away and says to her bewildered and wide eyed husband "Wake up honey! It's CDC day!" — Happy CDC Day to you!

October 2, 2021

Comic #2: Happy October

angelleconant Art, Comics art, comics, dad jokes, halloween, october, rebelle 4, watercolor, webcomic 0 Comments

A little girl in a pickle costume carrying a jack-o-lantern bucket stands in front of her dad. He is wearing a purple shirt that says "best dad" and khaki cargo shorts. They are standing on the sidewalk in front of some bushes. He says "Looks like you've gotten yourself into quite the...pickle." — Gotta love those dad jokes. Happy October y’all.

September 23, 2021

Sketchbook Snapshot: Newt Scamander

angelleconant Art, Sketchbook Snapshot, Words art, newt scamander, practice, quotes, sketchbook, sketchbook snapshot, watercolor 0 Comments

I’ve been wanting to do this drawing and accompanying quote since the first Fantastic Beasts movie came out. YEARS later and I’m finally getting to it. XD It was great for practicing shadows, my lines, and just getting used to all the tools on Rebelle 4.

A watercolor painting with black ink lines of Newt Scamander from the Fantastic Beasts movie. He has brown hair, brown eyes, light skin and a gray jacket with the collar popped. He also has a navy bowtie, white button up shirt and a tan vest over his shirt. There are words in cursive that say "My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice. - Newt Scamander" — Made on Rebelle 4 with watercolor, pastels, airbrush, ink, and acrylic. And the glorious Undo button. 😉

September 21, 2021

Sketchbook Snapshot: Rebelle 4 Practice

angelleconant Art, Sketchbook Snapshot art, children's book, digital art, highlights, practice, rebelle 4, sketchbook, watercolor 3 Comments

I’ve really been enjoying my new digital art software, Rebelle 4 (updated since Rebelle 3), and have been practicing on it quite a bit. As I learn the software more, I’m actually starting to enjoy working in Rebelle vs Traditional Pen and Paper MORE (which came as a shock to me) because of all the amazing digital tools that make it easier to make mistakes and fix them quickly. 😉

Here are a few of the things I created while I was practicing with my new tools:

A digital drawing of a little boy in a blue long sleeve shirt and maroon pants is running with a white string that seems to be attached to an unseen kite. The sky is many shades of purple and blue. — Me trying to get the hang of drawing children for the children’s book I eventually want to do. This is a background character from the wonderful book, **The Magical Yet**.

A digital watercolor drawing of a white woman with red glasses, a red headband with bow, a pearl necklace and a turquoise A-line dress. There is a red belt around her waist that also has a red bow on it. Her shoulders are raised and her arms are up in the air as if she is shrugging. — My confused girl. Working on using watercolor in Rebelle and also learning how to do highlights from light.

A digital watercolor drawing of fish with a large purple eye in blue water. The fish is many shades of pink and purple swirled together. — Playing around with watercolor to create a happy little fish. 🙂

September 9, 2021

Sketchbook Snapshot: Leveling Up

angelleconant Art, Sketchbook Snapshot art, leveling up, pencil, shadows, sketch, sketchbook, sketchbook snapshot 0 Comments

So I’m trying to ‘level up’ my art skills and I’ve been working on shadows and highlights, proportions and just other basic art fundamentals that I never took the time to learn. I have been watching SO MANY art YouTube videos. I can already see a big difference in my drawings. Here are a few things I’ve drawn this week as practice.

This is from a **‘Complete This Drawing’ book from Picadilly** that I’ve had for a while now. It’s great for when I want to draw but I’m too tired to start from scratch.
I’m not sure why she ended up looking like Angelina Jolie.

Chris Hemsworth as **Thor** and Jodie Whittaker as **The Doctor**.

May 18, 2021

Selling Our Home to Opendoor: UPDATE

angelleconant Home, Living home selling, moving, Opendoor 3 Comments

Our old home is finally up on Opendoor’s website! And it’s currently listed for $26,000 MORE than they paid us for it. And I don’t care! lol I’m out of that house and so happy with my new home and still very happy to have sold it to them at the price we did. In addition, just because they list it for that amount, doesn’t mean they’ll actually get it – it does seem overpriced for the area.

If you missed the first post about selling to Opendoor, GO HERE.

As far as the updates completed (or not) this is what I noticed from the limited pictures:

repainted all interior walls from very bright and colorful to gray (including over the vents and one fire alarm)
it seems like the also repainted all the trim white but it’s hard to tell from the photos
they put the unfinished cabinet doors back up in the kitchen on top of the sanded and stripped cabinet casing – they did not repaint or refinish these cabinets so 1/3 of the kitchen is white from when I was painting it and 2/3 are still the old brown with the old hardware and 1/4 of the cabinet box is sanded
they put back up two white cabinet doors but did not have the new hardware (because they told me not to leave it) so two of the white cabinet doors have the old hardware
surprisingly, they left the fridge! Many of the Opendoor houses we viewed were missing the fridge, washer and dryer (I don’t know about the washer and dryer as they weren’t included in the pics)
They removed and closed up the dog door as well as replaced about 2 feet of missing trim
They put the bathroom linen closet and 3rd bedroom closet doors back in (we left those)
strangely, they removed all the blinds and curtain rods
they did nothing to the floors and it was clear in some of the pics that the floor is still beat up in some places (we didn’t know how to take care of wood floors at the time)
They left the 3/4 painted turquoise chandelier in the dining room
they didn’t even remove the baby lock attachments which are on the outside of the cabinet doors in the guest bathroom
~~they did however, remove the wallpaper in two of the bathrooms and repaint~~ upon closer inspection, they did NOT remove the wallpaper in the downstairs half bath, but simply painted over it. So I suspect they did the same in the upstairs guest bath
they also removed all the shower rods
In terms of the exterior, I didn’t see any new landscaping and we had painted the outside and replaced the roof only a year ago so they didn’t repaint or re-roof
they did replace a few fence boards that were in desperate need of replacing
and they, sadly, removed the 3 rain barrels we had installed but they did not then redo the gutters to reach the ground again, so the gutters end about 4.5 feet off the ground

And that’s it! I am happy to close this chapter and go enjoy my new house – au revoir old house!

May 13, 2021

New Desk Tour

angelleconant Creativity, Home, Living art, desk, doctor who, graphics drawing tablet, markers 0 Comments

After years of using our old IKEA kitchen table as my desk (you served valiantly table), I finally have a new, real desk with drawers and my daughter gets the old table as her craft table. Here is a tour of my new desk (with only a small amount of clutter removed for pictures).

The full view. Desk and ladder shelves from Amazon. Chair from a friend who was getting rid of it. Painting was a gift.

‘Hidden’ shelf under the desk. My legs are short so I don’t hit it at all.

And that’s all folks! I love my new desk and am enjoying having drawers very much.

April 29, 2021

On Becoming an Atheist During the Pandemic

angelleconant Living, Words anxiety, atheist, covid-19, pandemic, science, self-isolation 0 Comments

I’ve gone through quite a large paradigm shift during the pandemic – I no longer believe in a higher power or afterlife.

Time in the pandemic is strange and bendy, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was about four months after self-isolation began in mid-March 2020. I just turned to my husband and said “I think…I don’t believe in a higher power anymore.” It was not something I agonized over or researched extensively although I think I’ve been inching towards this conclusion for years now.

I’m not sure what caused the final push exactly but I would conjecture that the pandemic laid the truth of the situation out so clearly in front of me that I could no longer ignore it. I’ve never experienced something that was so completely out of my control and endangered my life and the lives of my loved ones on such an ongoing basis. Normally, if I’m in a situation that is dangerous, I’ll leave (I am aware of the privilege here). There is no leaving this pandemic; there is no ignoring it or pretending it will go away if I just live my life and ‘trust god’. The science is clear and unwavering on this.

I think many people, when faced with that lack of control, chose to lean towards their faith and belief in a higher power. For me, it was quite different – I leaned more towards science and released my belief in a higher power. And I would guess that the hordes of people blatantly ignoring the science during a pandemic to go on and endanger others while saying “god will protect us” probably contributed a bit to my choice.

At the same time, I also realized that I no longer believed in many of the pseudosciences I had previously advocated for and enthusiastically partaken in or even studied. When faced with Covid-19, these pseudosciences could do nothing and it was dangerous to think that an unproven herbal supplement would protect me.

These realizations were quite a monumental shift for me and it caused me great anxiety for about two months. Many of the tools that I had used to comfort myself emotionally were gone. I was raised Catholic and was quite devout in high school and early college, even going so far as to attend a Catholic university to study theology while simultaneously becoming a youth minister at my local church. There were even many months that I wondered if I was being ‘called’ to become a nun. Then I realized that the patriarchal and homophobic mentality of the Catholic Church no longer fit for me (the big pedophilia story hadn’t come out yet). So I spent the next many years drifting from one Pagan-esque, New Age idea to the next, even ignorantly dabbling in some cultural appropriation (I’m so sorry) but then eventually settling on the idea of the ‘Divine’ and ‘Energy’ and using tarot cards once in a while. This was my vague belief in the ‘divine’ until…one day, it wasn’t. After the two painful months of adjusting, it was actually incredibly freeing to release this belief that had comforted me over the years.

Then, to my surprise, I realized that, overall, I was actually LESS anxious. Releasing my belief in a higher power and pseudosciences had released an entire layer of worry and stress that I had been carrying around. No longer did I wonder: “Am I doing the ‘right’ thing?” “Is this fulfilling my life’s purpose?” “Is there a dark spirit in that closet or is it just drafty?” “Will holding onto this anger give me cancer?” “Am I on the right ‘path’?” “Should I be getting Reiki treatments?” “Are my dead grandparents’ spirits watching me when I have sex?” I had freed myself from imaginary monsters and ailments and could deal with the world as it was, real and present in front of me, with science by my side. Instead of trying to treat my seasonal allergies with herbs and honey (neither of which have been scientifically proven to help), I took cetirizine hydrochloride (as my doctor had suggested) and found out that I wasn’t actually tired all the time – it was just untreated allergies! And my sinus issues not only never developed into something more serious but went away because I was actually treating my allergies now. And I no longer see “sending healing energy” as a viable response to a crisis or a problem; scientifically proven action is now my go-to response.

So now I’m many months into being an atheist although I’ve only recently embraced the term, preferring agnostic until I was able to accept that I am in, in fact, an atheist. Atheists are a minority in the U.S. and so many people wonder how we find meaning in our lives without a higher power. The truth is, I make my own meaning and I am now free to choose how I want to live my life instead of adhering to what I think a higher power wants me to do. And I feel even MORE compelled to live my life to the fullest and effect positive change in this world. There is no longer this ‘afterlife’ that would allow me to continue living. THIS IS IT. There is no do over for me. There is no extra time with my family in a heavenly abode. There is no ‘more’ and there is no guarantee. Because I no longer believe a higher power is protecting me or my family, I know this life or theirs can be taken away from me at any moment. So I’m living it as best as I can and as fully as I can because I now see clearly that I only get this one shot and I’m sure as science not gonna waste one second of it.