My son (and to a lesser degree I) make plushes. We're kinda bat focused at the moment. You can see our stuff here and buy them here.

If you want to see my guitar builds and other woodwork stuff, check this out!

I do woodwork a lot more than art, lately. I am open to commissions, though, I don't do carving type work very often. if you are interested in seeing some of the work, here's a link to a small album of what I've been up to https://photos.app.goo.gl/UQute4O4SkdsjaEe2

If you want to see what I currently have for sale, check this out https://www.etsy.com/shop/LunarQuar.....hopheader-name

I'm opening up for commissions but am only taking them via my commiss.io site. The page will be filled more in the upcoming days. Right now, all I have listed is my full color work and shaded black and white.

https://www.patreon.com/pyromancy <-- Check it out. Got a freebie up and one that is patrons only. Will be adding more soon. You'll be able to see unreleased sketches and rough cuts that never got posted anywhere.

I've been up to some wood turning, recently. If anybody is interested in some of my wands or goblets or bowls or other wood working projects, check it out at http://lunarquarryandforge.etsy.com

The reason for that is that I have been doing other things. I would love to do more digital art but I don't have the ability to take time from the stuff that I can make money off of.

If you guys want to see more art from me, that's awesome. To that end, I have decided to take the plunge and start a Patreon. It's kinda sparse, right now, but I promise that if I make $35 in a month, I will post either a comic strip or a full color piece of art. I'm new to the idea, so I'm not sure what to do with it, yet, but I hope we can figure something out.

To start with, I'll be posting higher resolution images available for patrons.

https://www.patreon.com/pyromancy

Thanks for reading.

Been a while since I did a review but I had quite the experience watching Man of Steel on Saturday.

Firstly, there’s the movie. Zack Snyder has his shortcomings as a director. He really likes to make uncomfortable moments last a long time. He never blows up a car when he can blow up a city block. He really is plugged into a mindset that is unfriendly to strong women. That said, he also knows how to pace a story. He has his hand on the pulse of what excites the masses.
Man of Steel took ownership of an old property that should have been tired and sad, completely bereft of vitality, by this point. I don’t think I’m giving up any spoilers by saying that, for the first time in ages, Lex Luthor wasn’t the major antagonist of a Superman movie. Snyder really went back to formula with the character and he’s given us the strangest of all things in a Superman movie: something new. At every point where things slowed down enough to be uninteresting, he would cut to a different flashback or relevant moment. The casting was good, the acting was good, the direction was good and the pacing was amazing.
Now, having gotten the movie part out of the way, I can get to the rest of my movie going experience. Firstly, when we arrived, they sold us tickets to the wrong showing. We had to go back and get new tickets so we didn’t have to arm wrestle people for seats. Once we got seated, the real fun began.There was a guy in front of me who thought that it wasn’t a problem to check his email, his text message and has facebook updates. Thing is, I’m a white dude, living in the South and he was a black dude. This normally isn’t a problem, anywhere I’ve lived except the South. Every time a white dude bitches about a black person down here, at least, every time that I’ve seen, the white dude gets treated like a racist prick and blamed for the incident. I left the dude alone and just ADD-ed like a mofo whenever his little screen was on. My kid was pissed. She started thumping the back of his seat. It didn’t work and after a few minutes, his wife started doing the same thing. Hooray!
Also, being that we went to a relatively early show, a bunch of people brought their toddlers to see the movie. Halfway through the movie, some little kind starts yelling, “WHAT!?” over and over until I was ready to find and murder her and her parents. Then some other kid starts shouting at ear-split levels, “I wanna go!!!” at minutely intervals.
It wasn’t all horror, though. As we have all learned from the Marvel movies, you don’t walk out until the credits end. So we were sitting, about a quarter of the theater, waiting for the credits to end, (spoilers: there’s nothing after the credits.) when one of the guys who’s supposed to be cleaning the theater starts nerding the place up, talking, loudly,about how the movies that show things after the credits are “just pandering” to the audience. Now, this guy was a good thirty feet away from us and I couldn’t hear the conversation I was having with my wife, sitting next to me, over the guy just being a negative dick. He was feckin’ irritaing and that’s when my favorite part of Man of Steel happened: My wife sits up and makes eye contact with the guy and says, loud enough for him to hear over his complaining, “Would you shut up!? If you need to just keep making noise, take it outside. We don’t want to fucking hear you!” The asshole falls silent. The theater falls silent and we sit in peace. A glance around shows the entire theater looking at my wife, the guy or the floor. On the way out, there were a shitload of smiles directed my wife’s way and ultimately, this was my best movie experience in a while.

Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel? Thumbs up. My wife? All mine, folks.

I have been reading about a series of banned books that school districts, etc. have been removing to avoid making parents uncomfortable. Some of these books contain not only hours of entertainment and thought provoking conflicts, but also the hints and allegations of life lessons which the sheltered youth of today might, otherwise, not encounter. One of the books (series, really) I was surprised to find on the list was Harry Potter. I can't think of a single thing that, as a work of fiction, anyone could find objectionable about the series. Though, having noted where the majority of these bannings have taken place, I have come up with a solution. I have already dispatched a missive to J.K. Rowling with the suggested title for a revisitation of the Harry Potter series entitled, "Harry Potter and the Perils of Blind Fundamentalism." On page one, Harry is burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft and the rest of the book is simply transcripts of televangelist sermons and excerpts from Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of (paste inane location here). I am eagerly awaiting her response.

Closed minds are not becoming, people, nor is hypocrisy. I remember reading somewhere, in a book that has also not always been well received, that people were granted free will to make of their lives what they would and that the key to prosperity was being true to who you are. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but if I am to be judged, and I think I can speak for authors and other creatives quite well, I would prefer for it to be by a power higher than someone who is offended by my choice of wording or subject matter.

I am not an atheist due to my failure to believe.
I am an atheist due to your failure to convince me to believe.

When you made your attempts, you tried allegory with no proof. When that failed, you
threatened my immortal soul. When that failed, you attempted peer pressure. When that failed,
you attempted social threats and bullying; you would shun me or harm me. Now that these have
all failed, your numerous attempts to barter, confuse, cajole and intimidate me, you shake your
head and still attempt to lay the blame on me. If your argument were more convincing, any of
those approaches might have worked. Since they didn't, you see fit to blame me?

The burden of proof lies on the party that is trying to convince or, in this case convert, the other.
I don't care what, or if, you think or believe, as long as your ignorance or lack of belief
don't directly harm me. I have done nothing wrong. I'm not trying to make you give up your beliefs.
This is not a war. I have bigger concerns than what you do with your weekends.

Learn your craft. Have better arguments. Present something like proof. If all you can bring is
conjecture and aggression, you will fail to convince me. If all you can bring is derision and false
pity, you will fail to convince me. If all you can bring is unsupported data, you will fail to convince
me. I know this because it's what you've brought to this debate and it has never shifted my beliefs.

I am not an atheist due to my failure to believe.
I am an atheist due to your failure to convince me to believe.

I don't want or need your prayers. You should reserve your prayers for yourself.

The failure, here, isn't mine.

I know very few people read this, but I have some things on my mind and I need to say them somewhere that someone other than me might read them.

Once again, the Republican Party, or more like its puppeteers in the Christian Right or the Religious Right or whatever they are calling themselves nowadays, have tried to drag America back to the "Good Ol' Days" of rich white men running everything and nobody else ever getting a say-so in any matter of any import. The new item that they want to impose is an amendment to the new "Obamacare" health care program to allow employers to decide whether or not women who work for them can receive insurance coverage for birth control. You read that right, just in case you have been totally ignoring the news lately, the employers have the right to impose their own religious ideologies on their employees, but only the female ones. Isn't this covered in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? As in, "An employer can't use an employee's race, color, religion, sex or national origin to determine his or her pay, fringe benefits, retirement plans or disability leave." This can't be law, it's federally already illegal. It's also illegal to impose your religious strictures on people who work for you based on the very same law, stated thusly: "An employer can't make hiring decisions based on an applicant's color, race, religion, sex or national origin. An employer can't discriminate based on these factors when recruiting job candidates, advertising for a job or testing applicants," and, "An employer can't decide whether or not to promote a worker, or fire one, based on the employee's color, race, religion, sex or national origin. He or she can't use this information when classifying or assigning workers."

This is bullshit and these fuckers know it. There isn't a war on religion in this country, there's a war on personal freedom to determine your own religion and fate. If you want to believe in a god or a supreme being or an alien overlord or even a plate of anti-gravity, hyperintelligent pasta, that's your right. What is not your right, as covered in the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution, is to legally require me to belong to your religion in order to be employed. This is not even to mention that the decision is being given to men to make for women. If men can decide whether or not women are allowed to use birth control, women should be equally allowed to vote on whether or not the men voting get neutered. This isn't about morals or some antiquated idea that ignoring sex will make it go away. This is about religious bigots making decisions for people who don't share their views in an effort to "bring everyone into the fold."

Speaking on behalf of free thinkers everywhere, we don't want your religious ideals. We don't want you making decisions on how to live based on a several millenia old rulebook that has been poorly translated to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. We don't want money to be the deciding factor in what rights a person has and, more than that, we simply don't want you. If we wanted to live in a zombie-like cult state, we would have worked to establish one. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have a right to be heard. Freedom of religion means that you don't have a right to impose your religion on someone else, any more than they have the same right to do it to you, and freedom, ultimately, means the ability and power to make your own decisions, own mistakes and own way in the world.

If you Religious Right assholes and your backward friends in the GOP want to live in a country with a state religion, might I suggest Iran. I hear they were quite progressive before the radical Muslim takeover in the 1970s and see how that turned out. See you guys in about fifty years when we show up to kick your ass for trying to wipe out Spaghettopia, the ancestral lands of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

"What do you think about gay marriage?"
"God says--"
"I didn't ask what god says."
"The bible states--"
"Lemme clear that up. I didn't ask what the bible says."
"I think that god would--"
"You presume to know the mind of a being who you say was deep enough to develop mitochondria, quasars, the platypus and the concept of gravity? This meeting is over."

Take responsibility for your bigotry or shut the fuck up. It isn't okay, just because some guy said something about it a few thousand years ago. Have an opinion of your own or have no opinion. Stop being a second hand asshole.

Hey, guys! I don't say a lot so I dunno if anyone's actually gonna read this but I want to put it out there. I started up an art blog that gives some insight into my art.
I am trying to get it out there and get it followed by as many people as possible. It's new so it doesn't have much to it, yet.

Asinine Artistic Ambition! Come check me out.

There's a new author around these parts and he's doing something original that steps in new directions.

You can find his novel Shattered Delusions on smashwords.com.

I've read it and I find it awesome. Also, I did the cover.

Good reading!

http://27.media.tumblr.com/ulD4H8vX.....Qn7NRQ_500.gif

Enjoy.

Blessed is the mother.
Upon her hands is the weight of Toil.
Upon her heart is the weight of Dynasty.
Upon her head is the weight of Legacy.
With grace she bears them and with humility passes them along when it is time.
If there is a word for God in the heart of a child, surely it is "Mother."

Thor was two hours of exposition with brief intervals of action that didn’t make sense, keep me occupied or further the plot in any way. The movie is chock-full of well known and accomplished actors and an award winning director and yet still manages to not tell a story, have any decent acting, any character development or any rationale to try to compress thirty years worth of comics into two hours.

For anyone who is even a tangent fan of the Mighty Thor, don’t see it. The idea that Asgardians are gods is done away with. The idea that Odin is really actually powerful is done away with. The idea that the rainbow bridge is actually a rainbow bridge is done away with. This is really just an answer to the question of what if a guy dressed like marvel comics’ Thor had been on the last season of Stargate SG-1.

The acting was non-existent. The “characters” were really just character names with costumes hung on them. The less fortunate ones were really just costumes with a couple of lines of dialogue hung on them. The only way the acting resources involved in this movie could have been more poorly employed was if this movie had had the same cast and been a remake of a Three Stooges short.
I could go into more specifics, but that would require me to try to remember yet another movie that pissed on my childhood because it could get away with it.

If you’re a fan of the good old days when Marvel Comics could tell a story, stay home, read your comics and maybe watch Iron Man again. If you’re a fan of big special effects with no real rationale, Thor is the movie for you, but then you’d be equally impressed with a big hand coming down out of the sky with a big set of keys, saying, “Look at the shiny-shiny!!”

I am working on the rest of the story for which The Calling was a prologue. I am in need of piles of anthro bird reference so I can compare my technique (still pretty crappy) with some more established anthro bird artists. Any suggestions?

So, I saw SuckerPunch last night.
It was directed by Zack Snyder, who you would know from 300 and the Watchmen. I have to say, before I get into any deeper of a review, that this was a smart movie. This had plot twists and mapped a thought process for the duration of the movie.
The look of the thing was, if possible, a little grimier than the world in which The Watchmen was set. The production designer deserves large gifts and a standing ovation. Something about it was hyper realistic, evoking an image from the deepest OCD neurosis of, “No matter how much I scrub this, it will never be clean.” Dirt speckled everything in the film, except for the main characters, and it lent it an emotional weight that declared that the movie was not likely to have a happy ending.
The characterization was pretty flat but there were at least seven characters receiving one degree of focus or another. It’s really hard, in under two hours, to give good character development and tell a complete story. That said, Snyder seemed to be trying to render the characters as archetypes, so-as to keep the audience from needing to decode the subtle character traits. The personality of the character was written large on their faces and costumes.
The story takes place on multiple layers and evinces more than a passing familiarity with director David Fincher’s work on Fight Club and probably Chris Nolan’s work on Memento. I saw many of the same scene transitions borrowed from both of those movies but applied tastefully and effectively. Snyder really seemed to own the techniques. The multiple layers seemed to be imaginary layers of a narrative used by the central character, Babydoll’s, mind to put her hands within reach of a way of controlling her chaotic environment. There were scenes ranging from a burlesque style strip club stage to a mash-up sci-fi/fantasy world where people fought what appeared to be goblins and dragons with machineguns.
This was a far reaching over-arching plotline that dealt with the main character’s unfortunate wicked stepfather issues, tackling them from as many angles as were available. Sometimes in order to reach outward, we must first reach inward. This movie embraces the psychology of symbolism and the symbology of psychology and it does it well.
Sadly, I doubt there will be a lot more of this kind of movie, because it obviously had a massive budget and was a smart movie. In this era, if you want to make a smart movie, you have to tart it up with beautiful young women (this movie has a lot), huge amounts of over the top violence (parts of this movie couldn’t decide if they were a chop-socky flick or an epic World War I science fiction reimagining), explosions (boy howdy), and an effects budget slightly larger than then annual income of most developing nations (it was so pretty). Producers have no incentive to make good movies when you could take the smart out of a movie and as long as it had the rest of those characteristics, it would get made.
The sound track was incredibly well executed and integrated, including remakes of many, many songs. They were pleasant discoveries. There were two versions of Bjork’s Army of Me in the movie, both by the original artist. One of which stretched to the duration of a five minute battle sequence.
I say it’s a smart movie because, here I sit, the morning after having seen it and I’m still just absorbing some of the cross links between the beginning of the movie and subsequent scenes. Inception claimed to be the big psychological thriller because of an unresolved cliffhanger ending that forced you to decide what the real ending was. Bad story telling should never be mistaken for suspense. SuckerPunch far outstrips Inception on that score, simply because, at the end of it, even with all the information on the table, it forces you to read larger implications and choose which path to follow. The end of this movie doesn’t come until after you have walked out of the theater as your brain will continue to digest the whole thing for hours, possibly days.
This movie is striking in its beauty, inspiring with its soundtrack and, most importantly, a well told story that grabs you by your viscera and holds you out of your seat almost right from the beginning of the movie. If you have the chance to see it on the big screen, it works so well there. If not, Well, I, for one, am going to own it on Blu-Ray the day it comes out.

I'm doing full color Offscreen Apocalypse avatars for $5 each or three for $12. I need to raise money for a side project of mine.

Be the first of your friends to witness the OFFSCREEN APOCALYPSE, now!

Limited time offer!

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5232763
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5239251
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5239261
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5240232

if you are going to search the terms "sly old woman" in google image, turn on the maximum possible safe search options. You have been warned. I must now go apply nuclear bleach to my eyes.

So, I have noticed this more than I wanted to over the last several months/years. What possesses a person to ask an opinion on an open forum and then to tell people that their opinion was hurtful?

Example:
Person 1: "What don't people like about my art?"
Person 2: "Well, you could branch out a bit more and grow in new directions, maybe, if I'm expected to answer."
Person 1: "How could you say that!? Why would you even be so mean!?"
Person 2: "...I was just answering your question."
Person 1: "Oh my god! People are so heartless. I was obviously feeling down and needed some support and all you could do was say mean things."

I have to stop this example right here, before I make an attempt to kick my own ass. First, let me start off by saying, if you need validation so badly, ask someone who has a stake in your feelings. If you ask someone you could deprive of sex for the foreseeable future, they are way more likely to try to answer the, "does this outfit make my ass look fat," question tactfully.

Secondly, if you ask a question and get answers you don't like, don't ask the question. If you keep asking things and the answers you get are "mean," then you are either asking the wrong people or the people who are answering are trying to be honest. If you can't handle honesty or frankness, move to fucking Sesame Street where everyone is special.

Thirdly, if you ask a question on the web and you get any answer that isn't some troll trying to get you to commit suicide, you should thank whatever you hold holy that this is the case, not berate them for not answering your every self serving self conscious question with a verbal blow job. If you can't handle scary answers don't ask questions for which they are possible. If you can't avoid asking them, either man up and take whatever answers come or take your meds that prevent whiney, entitled, emo headcase from escaping the confines of your mouth.

Fuck, am I tired of dealing with thin skinned babies who've had one too many pats on the back or one too many times being ignored by mommy and daddy, on the net. If you can't handle being even in the virtual presence of other human beings, maybe you should stop interacting with humanity entirely. When a socially retarded person like me is calling you on outrageous asshattery, you need to take stock.

Next time I see an honest answer responded to with whiny, egocentric self pity, I'm gonna break my virtual foot off in someone's virtual ass.

Some people can't play well with others. Other people just can't be played with, no matter how careful you are. Either way, I think it's time the chronic, "why does everyone hate me!?" crowd to take a big fat SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP pill.

Yeah. I think I'm done.

I am finding my footing in art again. I am sorry if you've watched me or faved a pic any time in the last few months and I didn't respond. I have been seriously disillusioned with the art communities I belong to. I'm trying to get back on the horse,so be kind.

I welcome any of my new watchers and thank anybody who still pays attention.

A while back I did a bunch of commissions for  universallord on his fictional species, the Chi'Trah. I designed them from scratch, based on UL's descriptions. They're bat-like subterranean people. I just spotted THIS on deviantart. Startling. I doubt the design was lifted from me, but it's still funny.