In other news, cats are really hard to paint.

Just a short entry today, I’m afraid. I went to Chelsea’s funeral. It was a good funeral, as they go. I’m not blogging about it or anything. But it looks like some other people who knew Chelsea (and don’t know me) found my blog entry about her last week, and appreciated it. They are glad it exists, so I feel it’s justified even if it makes me sound weepy in a way I’m usually not.

I’m in a bit of a rush today because it’s July 1 and that’s my self-imposed deadline for a work project. I’m ghostwriting a book for somebody! It’s lots of fun, and it’s going really well.

On a vaguely related note, here’s a painting I did for Johanna, my Rae cosplayer/cover model. She just graduated from college with her B.A., so as her graduation present I’m turning her into a Masks character. She picked out the name (amusing, considering what I’m doing this week), and asked that her beloved cat Tasha be included as her character’s sidekick. You’ll be seeing more of this character eventually; once I finish the story for Johanna (which will probably be called "Ghost and the Machine"), I’ll hold onto it for a few months and then release it to y’all as a freebie. It started life as a short story but will probably be a novella before I’m done.

"She's called Ghost. She has a cat like Tasha.
And her costume is purple, blue, and maybe brown."

And yeah, turns out I suck at painting cats. Or drawing them. As a kid, I was a fan of the celebrated children’s illustrator Wesley Dennis (if you’ve ever read a Marguerite Henry horse book, chances are he illustrated it), and the whole time I was trying to paint Ghost’s cat, I kept thinking of how Dennis complained about having to illustrate Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin. He hated to draw cats; “They have no bones,” he said.

I totally get that now. Stupid cats! So fluffy and internet-friendly, so bloody impossible to paint.