Last stretch

I've been very busy these past few days, as I have been preparing to leave for the States while still trying to balance out some pre-Christmas visits with my friends and pseudo-family*. As of right now, I still have stuff all over my bed to be packed up or put away. I took my blind neighbor shopping for her Christmas presents** which was a nice day out. I collapsed my mini studio to store while I'm away ( sad!), and things are slowly but surely getting done. Tomorrow is going to be especially busy, as I have to clean the house, bring the chickens to my neighbor's barn, study, visit Willie, deliver some presents, go to a friend's Christmas party, pack, and some smaller chores as well.
Le sigh...
Obviously, I won't be updating regularly until I return from the motherland, but I will come back. I need to. I am addicted to this Island.

Pictures!

You can never challenge this cat to a race. Why? Cos he's a cheetah. HAH HAH HAH. :(

This chunky horse remains one of my favorites. He also won me an iPod, so brownie points for him, I guess.

Completely out of proportion, but I'm liking the shading style here.

Yellow face. I need to get back to drawing faces like this again.

Joey the camel. Having never drawn a camel until this point, I'd say he turned out quite nicely.

 Night y'all.



*I tend to get adopted by people. This is not a bad thing, but I've yet to figure out why this happens everywhere I go. I swear I have my own room in at least 5 different houses.
** She bought me about 10 pounds of candy for being a good farmhand. Awwww! :3

It's not last night anymore...

...Oops. Heh.
Anyway, I'm posting in the wee hours today because I was thinking about going to bed early for once when I was suddenly struck with a massive art attack. I simply could not ignore it, so I quickly got to work. Indeed, it has been the most productive art day ever, and by that I mean "two paintings, a large scale oil pastel picture, bunch of sketches, two comics pages, and some writing all done in a period of 3 hours" productive.
Oh, yeah, and I finished my current sketchbook. YEAH! I still have quite a ways to go before I'll be posting that one here, but it will surely make an appearance sooner or later.

Okay, pictures!

Experimenting with pastel. Even now, I have quite a ways to go before I can say that I'm comfortable using them.

Guys are actually really difficult for me to draw. I think it's because their jaws are squarier... Yeah.

FANART. :3  Axl's such a doof. There are numerous things I would change now, but I think this was a fair attempt at a "group photo" for the time.

Charcoal horse. I'm quite fond of this one. I don't use charcoal very often, but it is quite fun when I get around to it. :)

My morning face. watchulookinat?!

Depending on whether I'm still super sore/tired/cold tomorrow, I might go riding. There's supposed to be a high temp of -1 C tomorrow, which really isn't that bad, but the weather this week has been changing rapidly, so it may be too soon to tell what tomorrow holds. If I do end up being stuck inside all day, I will likely crack open my new-to-me encyclopedia from the 1920s to get a peek at what was common knowledge back then. I love stuff like that. If I could have one extra room in my house, I would have a library/study. Dreams, dreams...

MOAR

Nice walk with Willie in the freakin' cold today. My only complaint about him is that he was kind of nippy today. We'll set that straight.

Also, no update last night because I went bowling in the afternoon (2 hours for free!) and then I went to my friend's house for gingerbread house decorating.
Now, you have to understand that "bowling for two hours" = "fun" = "OH GOD THE PAIN" the next day. Man, I'm out of shape. I did discover that I, a righty, actually bowl better with my left arm than my right. Weird, huh?
Anyway, after this bowling adventure I went to my friend's house, where I decorated with lots of candy. Sorry, did I say "decorated with lots of candy?" I meant to say "consumed a lot of candy."
Actually: "Ate so much candy/cookies/holiday cheer that when I woke up this morning I was suffering hangover-like symptoms."
I also have a sore throat from spending 4 hours telling/reenacting ridiculous stories to a unwilling audience. Heh heh. 












... Looking at this now, I realize that moving to Canada has turned me into a wimp. GAH.

Okay, pictures:

Trying for realism. You can see here a common flaw seen in many teenagers' art: the eyes. There is a tendency of teenagers to put extra emphasis on the eyes. This has been the case even before the introduction of manga/anime to the West. Pretty interesting, eh?

Unusual, but neat. This was based off of a picture of a Saddle Seat rider.

Horse on steroids, based off of one of my favorite horse models.

Accel. This picture is simple in composition, but the colors play off of each other well.  APPROVAL!

Dear god, Please never allow a horse that looks like this to walk this earth. Love, Artiste!

That is all for now. Please excuse me while I crawl up the stairs to my room in a most pitiful manner.


... Who the HELL gets this messed up from bowling and gingerbread?

Second Post!

I figure that if I continue to read 20 pages of the textbook everyday, I will complete the entire semester's worth of reading in another 8 days or less. In a way, getting locked out of that final has been a blessing, but I want to sincerely thank my prof for allowing me to write the exam when I return from the US.

I haven't scanned in any pictures of my art-attack yesterday because I am too lazy to walk up the stairs to use my scanner... and my dad wants me to stay from stairs because of my apparent tendency to take a tumble every once in a while. I think my pain reaction of laughing unnerves him, but that could just be me.

Anyway...

Coupla crew parents chumming it up at the NJ crew meet. Additionally, I really loved crayons in 2008.

Hoss, hoss, hoss. Done with sumi ink and a brush.

One of the ugliest concepts for Accel's armor. I am SO glad this one didn't last for very long :<

I'm pretty sure this was the first time I drew Zero in his MMZ armor. Considering that graphite is one of my least favorite mediums, I think this turned out pretty well...

She actually has a forked tongue. There is also a caption at the bottom of the picture that reads "The Face of Insanity." Nuff said.

Now I have to start painting some Christmas presents. Painting is actually not something I will willingly do unless I am in the mood to paint. It's tricky like that. :/

Two posts today!

I just leave this one here and write the other one when I'm done studying. If this is annoying, I apologize.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h0IpjnByfs

At this point in my "career" I was still very hesitant about using colored pencils. You'll notice that the pictures gradually got darker as I got more comfortable. Argh. Crooked eye here!

This is one of my personal favorites. I did this using a quill pen and brush, which allowed me to fill in "blocky" details without actually drawing everything out.

This dragon is actually coated in sparkle nail-polish to make it look scaly. Pretty nifty!

This is actually an attempt to draw some characters that I had created when I first started drawing people. I then colored it in as badly as possible. Why? Moment of insanity, I guess!

I did this on a greyhound bus headed to New Jersey for a crew race. Despite only having a ball-point pen and pack of 8 Crayola crayons, this turned out really well. This is a horse I used to ride, named Prince. I still really miss him :(

Expect the next post in a few hours!

Good Ride

Today was pretty relaxing. I'm making good time studying for my "new" Biology final, which is very encouraging. I got to go take the wee-man (Willie) for a walk. He was very good, like usual.

Awww! *insert baby talk*

I then took my friend's new horse for a spin. Poor little me, I failed completely at mounting up. You know what's harder to fail at? Dismounting. Yup, failed that too XD   I had a nice ride, though. It definitely made me realize how spoiled I'm becoming by riding Dama (the Icelandic Horse). You know what? Have a picture of her too.

I'm feeling generous today!

The weather quickly turned from overcast to snowing to crap, so here I am, tucked away in my little corner trying to stay warm and avoid any semblance of "work".

Whatever the weather, I am devoting tomorrow morning to art. I might share some of my art-attack with you, if I'm not feeling to lazy to scan in some stuff.

Pictures:

Rather unfortunately, it seems that my scanner particularly dislikes colored pencil :(  The colors of this floaty-head thing are much more vivid in person.

Edward Elric, from Full Metal Alchemist. The proportions of the face are off a bit, but when I remember how proud I was of this picture, the feeling stays and my criticism flies out the window.

I have to do some more of these chaos pages. I find that they are a very nice exercise for refining ideas. Even the doodles help!

The inner-workings of the human ear, because I was a very strange 15 year-old.

Ouroboros. Wondering what's in the center? Call me when you find out; I'd like to know too!

That's it for tonight. I'll have to scan in a surplus of pictures so I can continue to update when I head to the States.

Green Sketchbook

Howdy y'all. Tonight we start my "official" 2008 sketchbook. I got this from a friend because she said she'd come to my birthday and never did. She also bought me some very nice colored pencils (or "pencil crayons" for my silly Canadians :p ), so I suppose all is forgiven.
See, I have the "forgive" part down. Now I have to learn the "forget" part of that deal.
Lesson here: Don't put yourself in a position where you have to be forgiven. I have Irish Alzheimers.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite sketchbooks, simply because of the color variety and the fact that I really started to branch out into different mediums on these pages. This was also the year that I started working as an elevator operator (more on that another time), so I had plenty of Saturday hours to pour into this thing. I also just realized now that the sketchbook that I just finished posting probably came after this one, so adjust your internal timelines accordingly.
I am so going to regret drinking an entire pot of tea before bed...

Okay, pictures!

Bucephalus graces the first page of this book. You are going to see a lot of horses.

My profile "style." I think it is a nice and simple concept. I'm digging the gradient in the background!

This one did not scan so well. This was done in watercolor pencil.

Leopard. I'd like this one more if I didn't have the random creepers in the background D:

Drawing a staircase from the top step is far more difficult than it should be.

There are a lot of pictures in this sketchbook. If I post 5/day everyday, it will take appx. 20 days to post it all. Just a friendly warning!

Quick post!

Today in summary:
Angry morning (GO TO WORK!)
Sulking at noon
Chase the chickens
+ Bill gets stuck in a bush
   - Hilarious "I think he's dead... Mmm. Dinner," moment.
Visit Willie
+ Wants to eat grass so badly that he lies down to eat so I can't move him
+ Feel much better after horse-walk
Dinner/chat with pseudo-grandparents
Read entire chapter of Bio
Another dinner, this time with dad
Waste time on internet
Writing blog post

Fun with date-stamps. I like the textures here.

MMXCM version. I always meant to color this, but once I'm finished with a sketchbook, I never mess with any of the pictures.

Axl being badass. Looks like he's going to pull some kind of Matrix stunt.

The neck. Oh god, the neck.

This is definitely one of my favorites. Sometimes a very simple composition is the best way to do a subject justice.

This finishes the upside-down sketchbook! No worries; there is more to be had. :3

Time off

I've only had one day of freedom so far, and I already feel like I'm going to go nuts if I don't find something to do. I suppose it's because my time was being taken up by schoolwork, as well as art in my free time. Now I have all sorts of great ideas and no way to work out a schedule because I'm not in school. I'll sit down to paint, and I'll suddenly go into panic-mode because I feel like I have assignments to do. Argh! I hope I get this nonsense settled before my vacation is over...

On another note, today I fell down the stairs and whacked my elbow really hard. It's been about 8 hours now, and the side of my hand is still tingly. I have some bruises on my back and my tailbone is a little sore, but I still start laughing like a maniac when I remember WHY I fell down the stairs.
I fell down the stairs because I was having a Science! day (basically my excuse for wearing a lab coat around the house) and I discovered that if you stick your earbuds in your nostrils and open your mouth you get an awesome stereo.
Please don't ask me how I figured that out...
Anyway, I figured that sharing is caring so I went downstairs to share my groundbreaking discovery with my dad when I lost my footing and slipped down the stairs (See: http://www.youtube.com/user/DudeCrushClaws?feature=guide#p/f/29/KedGncdV-T4 ). I then proceeded to laugh my ass off, scaring the hell out of my very concerned father, and making me laugh even harder.

I can't laugh at his reaction too much, though. I blacked out the last time I fell down a staircase. I couldn't see or hear anything, but my body picked itself up (and I think was muttering to my dad and my sister) and continued walking towards the next flight of stairs. Luckily, my hearing started coming back and I could vaguely hear people yelling my name and a really loud ringing; my eyesight also started coming back, first in gray-scale, then slowly filtering in as color bubbles. Very luckily, this happened just as I as put one foot down on the next step, thus preventing another fall down another flight of stairs. In conclusion, I am very grateful that my dad is a concerned parent and I try very hard not to scare him.
I could tell a bunch of other fun stories, but this is not "Crazy Ass Injuries and Stuff," so I will leave it be for now. :p

These pictures are from 2008, which would put me at 14-15 years old. This is still the upside-down sketchbook, but I guess I was having another one of my "Holy crap! What year is it?!" moments when I started this thing because some earlier pages say Nov. 2007, but the rest say Nov. 2008. Derp.

Everyone has a bad day!

MegaMan looks like a turtle, IMO. A cute turtle, nonetheless.

A drawing of InuYasha from memory. Possibly one of my favorites in this book.

Quite a difference from the first one, eh?

My least-favorite-navigator, Pallette. The bird in her hair is a nice touch!

Teapot. This was likely a teapot belonging to one of the studio's members who left it lying around.

IT CAN SEE INTO YOUR SOUL!

Enjoy!

I'm Incredibly Busy.

HA! Fooled you >:D
My vacation has officially started. I've been chowing down on Sour Patch Kids (100 candy box? Challenge accepted.), painting (I don't even feel like painting usually), taking Willie for a walk (best tiny horse EVER), reading, watching youtube videos, sleeping like a fiend, and... studying.
Yep, that's right folks. My last exam was yesterday.
Supposedly. >:(
   I got stuck behind a tractor hauling hay on the way to campus, and hit every single red light on my way to town. I parked the car at 2:00, got to the building at 2:05 exactly, and no one would let me into the gym. So I left as a wreck, and wrote my prof an email explaining what happened. I now am going to write the exam the day after I return from the US. *le sigh*

I need to write a thank you card for this person:
   Before I went to the library, I went to the student building to sit alone and calm down for a bit. However, there was a little table set up, and the lady manning the table offered me a free coffee. I normally despise coffee, but they had run out of tea, and if I didn't get something into my systems, I was going to... I don't know. But anyway, the lady made the mistake of asking how my day was. I told her. Normally I try not to get other people down, but I felt compelled to tell her what happened, so I did. She felt so bad for me that she bought me a cinnamon roll to go with the coffee and talked to me for a little bit to try and cheer me up.
   Coffee-lady, if I ever find you I will give you a better thank-you than a sniffle and nod. I promise.
... the coffee was delicious, too. Thank you for your kindness! ;_;

Pictures for today:

This sketchbook had a bunch of helmetless Reploids. I was trying to get comfortable with that idea, but fortunately it didn't stick!

Someday I will find the original picture of her. This is Phix. She was my very first MM fan-character, and still a favorite of mine.

Hoss hoss hoss

I want this. If any mechanical engineers are reading this, please build me one for Christmas, okay?

This one actually looks a lot better in person. It's still charming, though.

This sketchbook was the earnest start of coloring in marker for me. Before, I viewed markers as childish, but actually playing with them again completely changed my mind. In fact, the only reason that I was excited at all to go to University this year was because my mom bought me a 90 pack of Crayola markers. Aww yeah.