Pumpkin Cat

Just a few more days of Horrordailies, but I think I've finally found my calling. Absolutely nothing to do with horror, but these are fun!

Also, I still can't draw a pumpkin. Why is it so hard? The ivy brush is my salvation.

Let's move on to the more important things...

Foster Kitten Updates

I took Bagheeri, Spanner, Sabot, Sir Humphrey Grumpybutt, and Harrison Ford the Explorer back to the shelter for surgery and adoption.

Spanner

Harrison

Sabot

Bagheeri

Sir Humphrey

In an illustration of foster kitten math, I had 12 fosters, I took five back to the shelter, and now I have 14 fosters.

This mom is not feral, so that should make some things easier. The whole group has an upper respiratory infection, so I'll be watching the babies' weights carefully.

Cauldron

Sure, it's Horrordailies, but how about we just go with Halloween-inspired images instead?

I'm getting a little better at creating new objects from scratch, but that's not saying much.

Foster Kitten Updates

Poor baby Frito is still snotty. The shelter's foster coordinator is back tomorrow, so we'll probably get the kitten started on meds.

Bailey Potato is 600 grams today. She was 600 grams two weeks ago. In between, she went up to 640 and then dropped to 585 for a bit. There's no way she'll be 680 grams (1.5 pounds, the cutoff for surgery) by tomorrow, so she'll be staying. But I need to take five graduation photos tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Back to Nature

Did you know that there are only five more days of Horrordailies? I'm having a good time messing around with this stuff, though I seem to have left the horror intent behind at some point.

Anyhow, Taylor was a little dog that I transported from my local shelter to another shelter that had more room and resources. (I do more transports like this during the winter when I don't have a zillion kittens.) She was a cute little dog and I forgive her for all the bodily fluids that came out during our ninety minute drive. (Note to self: puppies need to go for a potty walk if they've just been fed. Also, bring towels in case they get car sick.)

All the textures I added are from photos I've taken in my neighborhood.

Here's the original:

I've been accused of going full Lisa Frank in my backgrounds and I don't deny anything.

Foster Kitten Update

Baby Frito is still snotty, but seems okay otherwise. Elisabeth came over today to help socialize kittens and even Sir Humphrey Grumpybutt played with her.

Other Stuff

I went to the vet hospital open house and won the raffle for a cat cave bed and some toys! Pictures tomorrow when I pick everything up.

Crystal Ball

It's not quite what I envisioned, but it's fun. I think the foster here is Big Chungus, but I'm really bad at labeling photos so...

I'm actually kind of impressed with my attempt at a wooden base. Sure, it's way larger than it should be, but it looks like it has wood grain. Go me.

Foster Kitten Updates

Frito, the orange baby, is sneezing and congested. I don't think it's a big deal because he's still eating and playing, but this whole "oh, fostering a group of kittens along with their feral mom is low stress!" thing is wishful thinking.

I warned the foster coordinator that Bailey might not be big enough for surgery on Wednesday, and she confirmed that the other three kittens in the group can still go. With most fosters I'd try hard to keep them as a group, but Bailey is mostly fixated on me, so I can integrate her into another group without her feeling left out.

Other stuff

During my 40-minute run-walk last night, I actually lost track of time and was surprised when it chimed at the end. So that's good. I may end up doing the 10k as a run-walk, which would be okay because it's just as fast as jogging the whole way.

I took a nap this afternoon. It was nice.

Witch's Hat

It's day 24 of Horrordailies and yes, I have given up on horror and being spooky. It's just not me. I'm more of a cute kitten sort of person and that's absolutely fine.

I will say, it's harder to draw a hat than I thought it would be. Who knew?

I like it.

Foster Kitten Updates

Nothing new, which is a good thing.

Oh wait! There is something new: Sir Humphrey Grumpybutt purred for me today! He has been here over two weeks and this is the first time he's purred for me.

Kahlua Foliage

I saw a book cover with the silhouette of a woman's profile formed from a tree. That's beyond my skill level, but I thought I might be able to create something similar.

This is from a picture of Kahlua, an older foster cat who stayed with me for a few months early in the year. He was a favorite on the kitten cam because there's something relaxing about watching a cat sleep the entire day.

I kinda like how it turned out.

Foster Kitten Updates

Everybody is fine, though I'm starting to have doubts that Spanner and Bailey Potato will be big enough for surgery next week. They seem healthy and active, but they both need to gain fifty grams. That should be no problem, and yet...

Other Stuff

I worked on the knitted dragon again today, and I may be almost done with that last stupid wing panel. But I've thought that before, so who knows?

Barrier

Yesterday I stuck to the theme in an obvious way with a spiderweb. Today, the 22nd day of Horrordailies, I am being less literal, but I promise the theme applies.

That black band in the middle started out as a fingerprint. And then I added ivy on a glowing ball and it reminded me of a virus. So all the stuff on the bottom are pathogens trying to get through your fingers into your body. That's the stuff of horror, right there.

Don't forget to wash your hands after you come home.

Foster Kitten Updates

The five baby snacks (Frito, Cheese Puff, and three other names I can't remember at the moment) had their first big kid shots today. Sir Humphrey Grumpybutt and Harrison Ford the Explorer also had the next round of vaccines. The shelter vet checked out Humphrey's eye and I get to continue debriding his cornea with a cotton swab twice daily, which thrills us both.

The foster coordinator asked if I'd be willing to take home two additional kittens who needed nutritional support if they didn't find another foster by the end of the day — because 12 fosters isn't enough — so I put off the long-delayed task of cleaning and disinfecting the front bathroom. Luckily, the shelter found another foster, so I'm off the hook and the bathroom is ready for the next batch.

A funny thing: I checked the shelter adoption site to see if Herbie Lovebug was there yet, and Herbie was there, but the photo was different. Turned out to be a different (slightly older) orange tabby. But that one was adopted this afternoon, so there's no more confusion.

Web

Look at me, 21 days into Horrordailies and I'm back to something that is seasonally appropriate!

I wanted to get better at using the path tool. Hence, the spiderweb. By the time I got to the end, I had figured out how to do multiple segments of the path without it smoothing everything in weird ways. I also added some wind blurring to give it that jagged effect, and then brought back some bokeh with the lights.

As a composition, it fails because there's nothing to draw the eye, but as a technical challenge, I'm happy with it.

There's still something not right about the web blurring, but it's fine for now.

Foster Kitten Updates

Herbie Lovebug has gone back to the shelter for neuter and adoption. He is a very social cat — with me, when there weren't other cats around, and with the other fosters when he was allowed. I'm sure he'll have no trouble finding a home.

Couldn't pick the best graduation photo, so here are two:

Gross info ahead: Spanner and Sabot had tapeworm segments show up in their poop this morning, which explains why those two sisters have diarrhea and the other two in the room (who are unrelated) don't. Fingers crossed it all clears up quickly now!

Other Stuff

Finally updated my author website with the book that came out last week. Sure, I'm totally on top of things!

Patterns

It's day 20 of Horrordailies and I'm pretty much tapped out. After much screwing around and deleting things, I have come up with this, which seemed like a vaguely horror-ish background.

It's even less impressive at a small size. Oh well. Some results are just like that.

Foster Kitten Updates

Herbie Lovebug is returning to the shelter tomorrow for neuter & adoption. That means I need to take a graduation picture — except my usual picture spot is my bed, and the feral mom (Popcorn) and the babies are in there. I guess I'll throw the blue sheets around in the spare room and try to get a few pictures of Herbie without the other two in the frame.

The babies are doing well. I saw one climb onto the carrier where Popcorn was taking a break from them — poor mom can't get away.

Other Stuff

I think the outline for the next Penelope Standing book is ready to go. Sort of. I'm really bad at outlining before I write. Maybe it will all come to me during my run tonight.

Kitten in the Smoke

It's day 19 of Horrordailies. I've run out of spooky tutorials. Today I was going to practice using my Huion pen tablet, but I haven't been able to get it to work since I upgraded my operating system a few major releases ago. Theoretically, they support this version, but... I tried reinstalling the drivers and rebooting, but I can't get it to connect. Oh well.

So I just screwed around and made this. This former foster kitten is Sabrett.

I was having a hard time isolating the cat from the background cleanly, but I think having the extra cruft around the edges actually helps bring out the cat image. It's a feature, not a bug.

Foster Kitten Updates

Nothing new. I'm trying to figure out the best way to prop open the dog crate door such that the kittens can walk through but the feral mom can't force it open AND I can easily open it so I can clean the litter box. Maybe inspiration will strike tomorrow.

Other Stuff

I'm watching Maigret on PBS and I wish they wouldn't start/end the episodes with scenes that are in the next installment. But the show itself is okay, though it's right on the edge of my ability to put up with a moody male main character. What I'm saying is: I'd rather have another season of Annika.

Bokeh

It is day 18 of Horrordailies and I learned a new term: bokeh, which, according to Wikipedia, "is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image, whether foreground or background or both. It is created by using a wide aperture lens."

I was sort of following this tutorial, but I used bats instead of spheres, so... I probably could have placed the bats in a better pattern. But the whole thing was kind of interesting so I'm leaving it.

Foster Kitten Update

Spanner and Sabot have poop that is no longer the platonic ideal (callback to something I said while cleaning the litter boxes a few weeks ago), but I think it can wait until Monday. I have a full bag of LRS if they seem dehydrated. Everybody else seems fine.

Other Stuff

Random notes from the day: Even in my fairly small town, we had a rainbow unicorn at our protest. It was a hit. I think I managed not to get sunburned. There have been a lot of old people at these protests, and today was no exception. The cybertruck that drove by had a No Kings sign, which is exceedingly weird but people are full on contradictions...

Oh, and I sent out my author newsletter this morning. If you're someone who hates signing up for stuff, you can still see the October newsletter here.

Boo(p)

It's day 17 of Horrordailies, and today I did something that could have been scary under other circumstances!

Trying to learn more about channels, I made an attempt to follow this tutorial, which was created 14 years ago. It's hard to believe, but videos are actually holding up better than still screenshots — why do we have full-screen shots of a stylized control key? I'm pretty sure that's an html remnant that has moved along in the past decade.

But anyhow, I had a picture of a kitten that was doing the ghost pose, so I used that. I like the effect of using the intersection of RGB channels to create the image.

It would have been better if I'd had a haunted house background, but I was feeling cheap, so I made do with what I had.

It's ridiculous, but it was mostly an exercise in using channels.

Foster Kitten Updates

I let the three boys in the spare bedroom hang out together today, which means nobody in there is confined to a wire crate. They are all very happy about that and seem to be getting along okay. (They've had a 10-day quarantine. It should be fine.)

The five babies are doing great (knock on wood). Their mom used to be able to get some along time by lying behind the box, but lately the babies have been climbing out and climbing on top of her, so I took the box out. That way I'm not blindly reaching over to grab a baby when I need to weigh them.

Other Stuff

The newsletter is all ready to go out tomorrow morning. We shall see if my attempt to entice people to click on something in order to improve my sendability every works. Probably I should follow the advice to clean my list, but that sounds like work.

It's 6pm and I still haven't decided what to put on a sign for tomorrow. Every time I'm at a rally, I wish I had come up with a better sign, but every time I fail to prepare any better. Oh well.

Falling

This is possibly the funniest of the series. The kitten is Elmer, a former foster.

Mostly I was playing around with the different blurring abilities, though it's not really obvious in the finished picture. 

I should probably invest in some pictures of cliffs and water if I'm going to make things like this.

(In case you're worried about Elmer, he was just sitting in my lap yelling, as he often did. I have a whole series of pictures like this.)

Foster Kitten Updates

Everyone seems stable, I think. One of the (gray) kittens was perched on top of the (gray) mom, behind a box, and I reached back to grab the kitten and accidentally grabbed mom. There was much hissing, but that was as far as it went.

We have surgery dates for 5 of my current 13 fosters. Progress!

Signs of October

After yesterday's stoned tree (thanks, Richard!), I went with something a little less pharmaceutical today.

Basically, I learned how the Hue-Saturation feature works. It lets you change everything that is one color (or close to that color) to a different hue/saturation/lightness. Definitely helpful if you're aiming for an autumn feel.

For my test image, I started with this pile of leaves that I photographed a while back:

With the help of the clone tool, I made the shape more pumpkin-like. I added some lines to help with the illusion, and then went overboard with Hue-Saturation to produce this:

Maybe I shouldn't have made the stem orange. Whatever. It makes me happy.

Foster Kitten Updates

Sir Humphrey Grumpybutt actually put up with the debridement of his cornea better than I thought he would. We're probably not going to be friends any time soon, though.

The babies with the feral mom seem to have stopped vomiting (whew!). One had diarrhea, and a different one lost a bit more weight, but they seem active. Fingers crossed they're on an upswing.

The office kittens got dewormed and vaccinated today, so they're sleeping deeply now. It's weird — I can walk in and out of my office without needing to foil escape attempts. That will only last another couple hours.

Other Stuff

Just remembered I have a newsletter to put together before Saturday. Oops. I should get on that.

Beware the Trees!

I was aiming for spooky this time, but shot past the mark to land squarely on unintentionally hilarious. Feel free to laugh with me!

Foster Kitten Updates

Spent a couple hours at the shelter today for vet appointments. Some/all of the five remaining babies have been vomiting milk. They tested negative for parvo, so for now I'll just be giving them fluids to keep them hydrated.

One of my other fosters, Sir Humphrey Grumpybutt, has a corneal ulcer due to an upper respiratory infection. Now I'm supposed to numb his eye and then debride it — basically rub it with a dry, sterile cotton swab — twice a day. I'm sure this will be super easy without anyone to help hold the kitten...

A Little Fun

It's day 13 of Horrordailies, and this is officially a new record for my participation in the event.

Today, I followed this simple tutorial to create a ghost because it was an excuse to use the paths tool. GIMP has channels and paths and I've never used them — I should probably investigate those a little more, because they could be useful.

I had some weirdness happen around the head that created unerasable pixels — still not sure what I did wrong (though I suspect I ran into a GIMP bug), so I copied all the visible layers into a new layer and edited that.

Foster Kitten Updates

I think all is going well — the babies all gained weight overnight. The feral mom acts like she'd be happy to ditch her kids completely, but there's not enough space in the crate for that.

Herbie Lovebug got kinda upset when it rained. Not sure what that was about, but he calmed down when I closed the window.

Other Stuff

Dragon Fortune comes out tomorrow! I finally loaded the paperback today, and I sent a free download link to the people who were reading it on Kindle Vella when the platform went away before I'd finished the story. I really hope they enjoy the ending after waiting for so long.

Now I just need to finish that AITA post for my Patreon members and I'll be mostly caught up.

I did a 30-minute run/walk this morning and didn't die. I'll have to be content with that. I wish I lived someplace with some hills. Literally the only elevation change within two miles is the freeway overpass. Hiking up a hill sounds like a more fun way to get some exercise.

Your Guess Is as Good as Mine

It's day 12 of Horrordailies! Do I know what is going on in this image? No, I do not. But it's scary if you're scared of heights or green lights glowing in the misty darkness. So...

The kitten picture and the lichen-covered stick he is on are both my pictures. Everything else is drawn or otherwise created in GIMP.

Foster Kitten Updates

Everything was very calm today, which was nice. My friend Elisabeth came over to socialize kittens, her superpower. Garage kittens Spanner and Sabot were quickly won over with Churu. Bagheeri and Bailey Potato paused in playing to come over to say hello. Humphrey Grumpybutt ate some Churu for her. Harrison Ford the Explorer did not, but there's always next time. Herbie Lovebug made air biscuits when she held him, which is... 

[brief intermission for me to catch the four kittens who escaped the office while my attention was elsewhere]

Okay, where was I? Oh, yes, Herbie was his usual adorable self. We decided mom and the kittens will be named after snacks, but didn't get more specific. The kittens were on the bed between us and they spent all their energy attempting to make suicidal leaps off the edge. No sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

Other Stuff

I realized this morning that I was out of paper plates to feed kittens on (which reduces cross-contamination and also means that I don't have to constantly wash dishes). I find Costco exhausting and generally avoid it until I run out of Diet Coke, but this was an emergency. So I went and found out that the onion soup is back! (It's a seasonal item.)

Light and Shadows

It's day 11 of Horrordailies, and while I've pretty much given up on the horror, I'm still here for the daily!

It turns out I like playing with purple, so I indulged myself for another day. This time I took inspiration from an image from The Art of Evelyne Schulz (the search was random, but I really like her art). The image in question has a person silhouetted by a night sky, with a bunch of little fantasy additions.

I'm not that skilled or patient, and 99.9% of my images are of cats, so my results bear no resemblance to the original. I still like mine, though, and I did get that haloed silhouette effect I was aiming for.

I really need to get my drawing tablet out and figure out why it stopped working with my computer. That's a goal for another day.

Foster Kitten Updates

It turns out I was not being paranoid about that one kitten. He crashed yesterday evening and was gone less than two hours later. This part of fostering sucks and I'm exhausted today from taking him to the emergency vet and also worrying about the remaining kittens. They seem fine at the moment, but everything can change so rapidly that I will remain worried until they grow up and leave for adoption.

In happier news, the kittens I found in my garage have finished their two-week quarantine, so Spanner and Sabot are now running around in my office playing with Bagheeri and Bailey Potato and the whole area is chaos.

Other Stuff

I need to replace the flapper on one toilet and I thought this would be simple, but the company no longer makes that part, and the replacement for that discontinued part has been discontinued, and the replacement for the replacement for the part has been discontinued and...

I think I've figured out what info I need to buy the correct thing, but this feels far more complicated than it needs to be. I'm really not cut out for home ownership.

Purple Skies

It's day 10 of Horrordailies! Today's picture is just random stuff I put together. It has a bat; ergo, it's spooktacular.

Gaussian blur was my friend.

Foster Kitten Updates, or Why I Am So Tired Today

Warning: The sarcastic "Fostering is so glamorous!" applies here.

The semi-feral mom has been eating a ton of food, but her poop has been somewhat unformed. And late last night when I was scooping, I found this long tapeworm in the mess. So then (of course) I mentioned this to my fellow foster-parent Jennifer, and she wanted a picture. (I love that my friends are the type that hear stuff like this and immediately demand pictures.)

This is what gloves are for.

Anyhow, I found the tapeworm, rinsed it off, and then photographed it next to a tape measure. It was over seven inches! Disgusting, yet fascinating!

Today I mixed anti-parasitics that treat tapeworms into mom cat's food and she ate it, so hopefully there will be no new gross surprises.

Mom has occasionally been hissing and swatting at the babies, and I'm not sure if it's because they are nursing with teeth or if she's got mastitis. There's really no way for me to safely get close enough to check. One baby hasn't gained weight, so I'm keeping a close eye on their weights. Hopefully I'm being paranoid, but I don't think I am. 

Things I've Read Recently

I finished listening to Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. It's a murder mystery about a herd of Irish sheep, translated from the German. It's delightfully weird, but I didn't like the ending. Or, put another way, it was a very German ending, and I can say that as someone who has a minor in German literature.

Endings are a theme here — I also finished A Feast of Phantoms (Book one of Lingua Magika) by Kat Ross and I really enjoyed it. The genre is sort of steampunk fantasy western? There are different grades of demon-like creatures that can be harnessed to do things. Each type is commanded in a different language, so the powerful people are the ones who can speak multiple languages. My only real complaints are

1)  One character I thought was somewhere in the 40-60 year-old range is revealed to be 24 years old at the end — I think he's being set up as a possible love interest, so that threw me off. I was picking up mentor/father-figure vibes. (The age confusion could be lazy reading on my part, but I think I just interpreted vague clues differently than I was meant to.) 

2) The book just sort of ends. I guess it wraps up some things, but the main quest isn't resolved. Far be it from me to tell other people how to structure books, but it felt unfinished. Then again... all three books in the series are published and they're in Kobo Plus, so I can treat this as the first third of the story.

I already have the next book loaded on my ereader.

Shane Peers Through from the Other Side

It's day 9 of Horrordailies, though you wouldn't know it by looking at what I'm posting. You could be forgiven for asking what this has to do with horror or Halloween. It's purple! And it has a cat! That's good enough, right?

The window grate is from my own photo. I thought it would be a breeze to remove from the background, but I was smoking the crack, as they say. I ended up finding the ivy brush to fix my slapdash isolation from the background. Whatever works is my motto.

I could probably do a better job with the window by adding some shadows, but I have a critique meeting in an hour and I have cats to feed. Speaking of which...

Foster Kitten Updates

A bunch of the hoarder-case kittens have bad diseases, so I took in a semi-feral mom and her kittens that didn't come from that area so they would be less likely to contract something horrible. The kittens are about three weeks old and mom is doing a great job with them, so my role is just to make sure the kittens continue to gain weight and also handle them enough that they're used to people.

When the kittens are weaned, mom will be spayed and returned to the area where she was found. The kittens will be adopted through the shelter.

So... yeah, I currently have 14 foster cats/kittens. That's probably frightening enough to count as horror.

Ronan Runs Off with the Fae

Today, I wanted to play around with photos that I've taken. I'm a pretty terrible photographer, but every once in a while I come across something (moss, leaves, tree bark, etc.) that looks cool and I remember to take a picture of it. Sometimes I even remember to load it to the directory I created for just those sorts of things.

So here we go:

That includes "moss1", "Ronan", "curved_branch", and "bricks_wavy2". I like how it turned out.

It may not be spooky, but it has a touch of the uncanny.

Foster Kitten Updates

Everybody gained weight today, which seems like it should be a regular occurrence, but... Bagheeri has started running around the office, which I'm taking as a sign she's feeling good. The three new fosters are doing well — one has an eye that looks pretty ouchy, but hopefully that will resolve.

There was a hoarding case in my town today, so we got an email looking for fosters and it sounds like a bunch of cats that are in bad shape. If I didn't already have seven foster kittens, I would take a litter, but I don't have a separate room to hold panleuk or calici kittens, and both those diseases are easily transmissible. Some days I just have to remember that I cannot save them all and it makes me sad.

Just Pretend it's Spooky

It's day 7 of Horrordailies. I was rushing around this afternoon (see below) so I'm tired and I decided to do something simple.

This is a picture of a tree that I took. I added the background and then threw in some lightning. Is it artistic? Meh. It's 8:45 pm and I have other things to do.

Foster Kitten Updates

Orla, Shane, Ronan, and Finn all went back to the shelter for their regular 2-week appointment and they stayed for surgery and adoption. Yay! That is the goal.

Finn

Ronan

Shane

Orla

Then I came home with three new snotty kittens. They're all older and seem pretty stable, so they aren't a ton of work on their own, but...

I had to break down Finn's playpen, clean that area, set up a new playpen and move Bailey into my office, clean up the spare room where Orla, Shane, and Ronan were, set up the shelter's dog crate for two of the new kittens, clean my own dog crate (which was still in the garage from the feral mom using it last week), set that crate up in the spare room for the other new kitten, and then weigh/examine/medicate/feed the new kittens.

(There are two crates in the room because two of the kittens came from one place and one came from another, and they need to be quarantined from each other and also all the other kittens. Ideally, they might be in completely different rooms, but this minimizes germ transfer and they're all on the same upper respiratory meds, so it will be fine.)

It was a few hours of cleaning and moving stuff around that had to get done while the new kittens were waiting in their carriers. Luckily, all three of the new kittens seem very sweet.

Other Updates

Decided on my run this morning that I need to cut back to two runs per week and lengthen the training schedule. My body just can't handle three times per week. I had come to this conclusion five years ago and forgot.

I still need to write up that critique. Also, I need to come up with a Patreon digital bonus in the next week. No problem.

October Butterfly

Maria pointed out yesterday that butterflies are creepier than bats. And she's right. Maybe this stems back to a story I read where the butterflies are actually small fae and attack people? I've read a lot of stories during my lifetime, and I think they're all back there percolating and exchanging DNA.

Anyhow, I was having a hard time finding a tutorial, so I just started playing around, with this butterfly (the Glanville fritillary) as my starting point.

Is it spooky? No. But we knew my dedication to the task wouldn't last long. It has some orange in it and that's going to have to be good enough for today.

Foster Kitten Updates

Bagheeri is doing well and gaining weight. Three of the kittens (Spanner, Sabot, and Bailey) have decided they'd like to remain around 500 grams forever, which is not okay. In Bailey's case, it's because she's meat nursing — I have to believe she'll figure it out at some point. I think Spanner and Sabot have plateaued because they're holding out for more Churu.

Other Stuff

I have finished the 381 page novel I need to critique by Thursday. Now I just need to write up something helpful. 

Spooky Tree

It's day 5 of Horrordailies. Spooky and interesting GIMP tutorials are getting thin on the ground, but I found this one and followed some of it. I added bats instead of a child on a swing because bats are just better.

I need to look up how the dynamics on a brush work — sometimes I would like it to change the size but not the angle, and it's not obvious to me how one would do that. I suspect there is a way, though.

(I looked and indeed there is a dockable dialogue that lets you edit what things are affected.)

Thing I learned: Creating a cliff edge adds tension to the image. That might be useful in book covers.

Anyhow, this art speedrun used these components:

Sky image: https://www.deviantart.com/andahliasaur/art/Sky-41-194225713

Tree image: https://clipart-library.com/clipart/yikrL966T.htm

Bats brush: https://www.deviantart.com/kencho/art/Bats-brushes-27854473

Foster Kitten Updates

Everyone seems to be doing pretty well. I've set up a 2-week recheck/vaccine appoint on Tuesday for Finn, Orla, Shane, and Ronan. They might keep the latter three there for surgery and adoption (depending on the surgery schedule), so I should take graduation photos tomorrow. Spanner and Sabot now sit in the doorway crying for me to give them Churu, so I would say socialization has been a success.

Other Stuff

This was the end of week 3 of the 10k training schedule, so I ran an "easy" 3 mile run this morning. My knees have been bothering me since Thursday's 30-minute run/walk so I was literally jogging an 18-minute mile this morning. That's walking pace. But I still ran the whole distance and my knees seem no worse this evening. (I pushed the pace a little hard on Thursday's run/walk and the asphalt was slippery because it had just rained. Live and learn.)

191 pages (of 381) in this manuscript I'm critiquing. Sarah J Maas has a lot to answer for.

Bats!

Day 4 of Horrordailies and I'm still mostly sticking to the scary theme. Amazing. This may be the longest I've ever followed any directions.

Today I went with this tutorial to make a Halloween background. Most of what was covered I already knew how to do, but I did have to take a detour to figure out how to make an animated brush. (There are four bat brushes; the animated brush cycles through them so you don't have to selected each one manually.)

In fact, the majority of this is done with custom brushes (the bats, the grunge marks on the paper), which is great, but the brushes aren't licensed for commercial use, so... I definitely appreciate artists making stuff like this available, but I also need to be careful not to use these on a book cover.

Anyhow, here we are:

Bats brushes by =Kencho on deviantART

grunge.28 by ~ShadyMedusa-stock on deviantART

Font is (once again) Rubik Glitch because I'm too lazy to find something more legible. It doesn't look as bad on this one.

Foster Kitten Updates

Bagheeri is brighter today, so let's hear it for azithromycin, fluids, famciclovir, and time! Fingers crossed she continues to improve.

The two garage kittens, Spanner and Sabot, are getting friendlier by the day. Spanner enjoys "helping" me clean her litter box. She is what Jennifer calls a "scoopervisor".

Bailey Potato keeps meat nursing instead of actually eating the food, so we are working on that.

Finn eats well but believes he must bathe in the food for maximal effect. He needs a bath.

The other three foster kittens (Ronan, Orla, and Shane) are doing great. They're big enough to have surgery and find their permanent homes. Which reminds me — I need to set up recheck appointments for them next week.

Other Stuff

I am currently on page 77 of a 381 page manuscript that I need to read and critique by Thursday. Clearly I need to get my butt in gear.

Ominous Sky

It's day 3 of Horrordailies and I'm still here!

Today's tutorial, recorded 15 years ago, changes an image from a bright day to more ominous skies.

I started with this picture, which is ominous enough even with a blue sky:

(Some houses burned down near my neighborhood.)

And I ended up with this:

I practiced using the fuzzy select tool, which I haven't really used before, so that was good.

As usual, I changed a few things...

• Getting the blue background out of leafy trees is nearly impossible, so I just wiped most of them out. The tree I left in probably should have come out as well since I tried to reconstruct it and failed.
• I didn't have an orange sky image, so I used a gradient. That was mostly successful.
• I didn't have a cloud image, so I used solid noise. It was a little less successful.

The whole thing turned out a little too dark, but that might partially be a problem with the original image. It definitely does make the whole thing kind of spooky, though, so I'll count it as a win.

Other things I did today

Foster kitten Bagheeri went from snotty-but-active yesterday to more-snotty-and-sleeping today, so she had a quick recheck at the shelter. She's on slightly different antibiotics. Fingers crossed she bounces back quickly.

I formatted and loaded the Dragon Fortune ebook to all the retailers. It would be nice if that stemmed the tide of "You only have X days to load your manuscript!" emails, but they send them whether you have a file loaded or not. Anyhow, October 14th! https://books.tmbaumgartner.com/DragonFortune

What's Spookier Than a Kitten?

It's day 2 of Horrordailies, and I'm already having a difficult time finding spooky tutorials that aren't of the "Load the picture and select this special script."

Am I just jealous because there are a bazillion Photoshop scripts and I am using GIMP? Possibly. But also, where's the fun in that?

Anyhow, after some random searches, I found this tutorial which boils down to "create a ghost by setting the layer mode to grain extract." Sometimes simplicity is called for.

I didn't have a picture of a person I wanted to turn into a ghost, but I do have a lot of kitten pictures! And what's spookier than a ghost kitten?

This is the picture I started with:

The Aristocats, former fosters. Look how cute they are!

My original plan was to use all four kittens, but after two failed attempts to use the Scissors Select Tool, I finally looked up the instructions (after you click a million times to create an outline, click inside the form to make the selection). By that point, I was too lazy to do it all again, so just the kitten on the left (Marie) got selected. It probably turned out better that way anyhow.

I added the kitten to yesterday's image with the mode set to Grain Extract, masked some of the harder edges so the kitten looked less pasted in, and voila!

It might be worth trying this with a kitten that doesn't have black on her face, but I thought this was kind of fun.

Welcome to Horrordailies!

It's October, and Zenzalei reminded me that means it's time for Horrordailies, in which I post something sort of spooky every day. Last month, I made it 11 days before giving up. (I thought I'd made it through the entire month, but Blogger tells me otherwise.)

Confession: I'm not really into horror or spooky things. I'm not even a pumpkin spice girlie.

(Tangent: Okay, I can't even say girlie with a straight face. I'm 56. It just sounds like Steve Buscemi saying "How do you do, fellow kids?")

(Tangent to the tangent: I'm going to be sad when the internet goes away because I was able to search for "Joe Pesci Hello fellow kids" and it gave me the actual reference.)

ANYHOW... Maybe if I use this as an excuse to do tutorials to learn new things, I will get beyond 11 days this year. No promises.

After much screwing around, I followed parts of this tutorial.

Welcome to Horrordailies.

Details:

The font is Rubik Glitch. If I did it again, I might use something else because some of the letters are hard to read.

GIMP modifications: I used Filter->Render->Noise->Solid Noise instead of Cloud Noise and the mode was "Dodge" instead of "Color Dodge".

When it rains...

I foster kittens for the county shelter.

Last Saturday, I offered to take in another sick kitten. At the time, I had four healthy fosters in the spare room (mode: easy) and one kitten with a mild upper respiratory infection in my office. The new kitten had a more severe upper respiratory infection, so the plan was to keep her in my bedroom. No problem.

I went to my detached garage to get in my car to drive to the shelter. And kittens skittered out of the way. Not my kittens. Just... kittens. In the half-second I had to see them, they looked young enough to still be socialized.

So I went to the shelter to pick up the sick kitten, and the foster coordinator agreed to add the garage kittens to their program if I was willing to foster them. Then I came home and set up a trap.

Ninety minutes later there were two cats in the trap — a kitten and the kitten's mom. That mom turned out to be the cat that my neighbor has been trying to trap since April. I didn't want to just release her, because she clearly needs to be spayed, but the first rule of managing a cat colony is "Don't trap cats unless you have a plan." I didn't have a plan for this cat.

My county is kind of terrible for dealing with feral spay/neuters. The surrounding counties all have programs, and we have to scramble for limited surgery spots there. The only place that doesn't book things a month in advance opens up ten slots every night at 10pm. If you can get one of those slots, you bring the cat in a trap at 7am. But they don't do Sundays and I couldn't leave the mom cat in the trap until Monday (or later). Plus, I needed the trap to get the other kitten(s).

Anyhow, that's why I have an adult feral in a dog crate in my bedroom, two not-yet-socialized kittens in the tub, two kittens with upper respiratory infections in my office, and four healthy kittens in the spare bedroom. And there may be a third kitten out in the garage or somewhere nearby.

The good news is that I managed to snag a spot to get the feral mom spayed Tuesday morning. All I have to do is get her from the dog crate into the trap again so I can drive her an hour away to the SPCA. This ought to be fun!

Say hello to these spicy sisters...

Cover Stuff (part 2)

(Part one here)

I messed with dragons and couldn't get the colors right. So this is what I'm going with at the moment. But I reserve the right to change my mind...

Book 1:

Book 2:

I need to go back and mess with the typography a bit more. I've moved from Adobe InDesign to Affinity Publisher in between these covers, and things are a bit different. Also, I need to make it say book two somewhere on the cover. But still. It's a start.

Cover Stuff

Warning: I'm going to ramble as I think through this problem.

I have a novel coming out Real Soon Now that is book two of The Dragons of Harbor Crag series. The book is written. It's with my proofreader (Hi, Eric!). But I need a cover...

Book One

The first book, Dragon Freehold, started out as a Kindle Vella (RIP) serial. Using one of my three hundred credits on DepositPhotos, I purchased this image (a 3D render by an account called digitalstorm):

I liked the vibe (though it would have been better if she wasn't wearing lingerie, *big sigh about the clothing available for renders*). A little editing and I came up with this:

It's a serviceable cover — nothing that's going to take the world by storm, but it's fine. It's pretty clearly a fantasy book with a woman as the main character, and that's really all that needs to be conveyed. And it no longer looks like she's running around in lingerie.

Don't be like Theresa. Plan ahead.

A lesson I should have learned earlier than I did, was that one image is great, but if you're planning a series, you should probably check that there are a few more. 

In this case, digitalstorm has one other image with this 3D model.

This one is a little harder to work with as a cover image — even ignoring the lingerie, she's obviously looking downward, which means that I'll have to put something else on the cover for her to be looking at. Sounds easy, but once you start messing with covers, you realize how little real estate there is for the image. 

I think I'll have to cut out the background, crop the image and maybe rotate it counterclockwise a bit. It would be easier if she were looking into the sky, because I could put a dragon up there to give her something to look at. If wishes were horses and all that.

The Options aren't Great

The best thing, of course, would be to do my own render of this 3D model in Daz Studio. (Note: this would also solve the problem I'm currently ignoring of what the heck is going on the cover of book three whenever I get around to writing it, ha ha ha.) However, I don't know what model and hair were used, and I can't figure out a way to determine that info.

My second best option would be to contact digitalstorm and see if they would be willing to render another image or just tell me what assets were used in this one, but there's no way to contact the image creator through DepositPhotos or any of the other image sites.

So... my image manipulation skills are going to get a workout this week. This may answer the question of how much fog I can add to a cover before it looks ridiculous. Wish me luck!