Some random sketches. Trying to loosen up some more!

Life drawing from last week. Got there late and missed the first few sets of quick poses. :(

And finally, going to start playing D&D soon! Still very new to it (and a bit afraid) but it seems like a lot of fun, and I'm so excited to get started (plus I totally feel like I levelled up my geek)! Here's an attempt at designing my character, who is going to be a Sylvan elf.

Summer kind of feels like it's floating away. I'm going to New York city in a couple of weeks, as a sort of college graduation celebration and one last adventure before my two bros move away. SIGH, but that's how life works I suppose. :')

Finished my last exam ever at CCNB today - SO HAPPY. We still have a lot of work to do to get ready for our exhibition's opening night, which is Thursday, but no more schoolwork yaaaaay! It's almost weird though...

I was also very pleased with today's weather - I got to go jogging this morning, then had my coffee outside... then cleaned the kitchen because I was just in that much of a good mood. C:

Gestures in black pen. And hands because hands hands HANDS. Still not gonna be able to go to life drawing for a while, siiiiiigh this summer I really need to buckle down! 

Original characters! 

Another sticker for the con - VOCALOID Rin Kagamine. I'm soooooo behind schedule, but things have just been insane these past two months! I'll finish Vocaloids for sure and maybe do some Dragon Age 2 characters then re-touch my Eeveelutions, but I think that'll be it. I'm almost tempted to do some A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones characters just to feed my fandom needs but I don't think Animaritime has the right audience for it...

Still alive, but barely! I've come down with a monster cold/laryngitis type thing that has basically kept me in bed and unable to speak since yesterday afternoon. It's 8pm and I am finally able to get out of bed without dizzy spells-- yay for progress!

Good news: I got accepted to do my internship at Gogii games!! THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY I wish I had the energy (or voice) to celebrate but keyboard smashing and smiling like an idiot will have to do for now: zhjagfjsdhgkjdfzhgfkADgdahfgzridhlf'l;l;kj!!

...So, before attacking the massive mountain of work I need to get done (gotta love finals!), I thought I would update with the very little sketches I have accumulated in the last week:

Some handssss

Some headsssss

Sketch for a painting I want to start soon.Will involve jellyfishes and pretty colors. I really need to re-unite with my tablet and painting, I'm missing it so much! :c

Finally here's something I painted for a huge "self-promotion" project about a month ago. I went with a knight theme as a general idea for all my promotional tools, because well I'm just geeky like that and it makes me happy. 8D I also made an online portfolio through DeviantArt! (Not a fan of how little freedom there is with the template, but very nice looking and super simple to make nevertheless.)

This past month has just been insane. I'm finally poking my head out of the workload, and the end is in sight! We're getting ready for our end of the year exhibition and internships, which is super exciting!

Also spring weather: you can come out anytime now?? We had a random abnormal heatwave last week, let's just say I got to take out my flip flops out of the closet for a day or so - now I'm back to my winter coat and boots. :( waaahhh

I finally got to sit down and do a study, very speedy but HEY not my fault days only have 24 hours. I don't think I'll be able to go to life drawing for a little bit, so I'm totally going to kick myself into doing more studies on my own (I got lazy relying on it all the time!).

Approx. 2 hours

Study of woman with a quirky pose and a really long forehead. Also very detailed jewelry ahahaha

To finish off - I got tagged by Pauline @ Journal Illustrations and Musings to answer some questions! ;)

1. Favorite ice cream flavor?

Hmmmmmm. Cookie dough! 

2. Favorite book (or movie)?

Right now I'm really into the A Song of Ice and Fire book series. But Harry Potter will always have a special place in my heart. ;) Movies: pretty much anything classic Disney and... Mean Girls. hahaha

3. One thing that you love? (thing, not person) :-)

My laptop! C:

4. What makes you smile?

Many things! Funny cat videos, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and coffee, to name a few.

5. Where was your best vacation?

I loved my trips to Florida and Paris, but they were dance trips - not really a vacation. ;) So I'm going to say my backyard.

6. What color is your car (if you have one) or your bike?

I don't have my own car, but I drive my mom's a lot. It's black!

7. If money was no object, what is the ONE thing you would do?

Travel!

8. Where do you feel most at home or ‘connected’ to the world?

... Probably at home! 

9. high heels or flip flops?

Flip flops all the way. I love heels, but I love being comfortable a lot more.

10. If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?

Hmmm, I wish I were more assertive sometimes... 

11.What are you most proud of?

Ahhh what a question! Actually, I'm really proud of my mom for kicking her smoking habit. 5 months and she's still going strong. :)

Wowwww what a long post. Next one will hopefully have more art. 

It's March Break for me, yaaaay! Though it hasn't really felt that way at all... for one, I've been going to college anyway to work on my things so I don't fall behind, and life-wise things haven't exactly been going well! My mom got a cyst in her ankle removed a few weeks ago, and though there were no problems during the operation, her recovery has just been for the worst. Turns out her foot is super infected and she's been in and out of the hospital all week/hooked on a portable IV at home. :( Not exactly the best winter we've ever had, with her shoulder injury before Christmas (today was the 5th time I've had to drive her to the emergency room since fall) and our whole basement flood ordeal. BUT at least the weather hasn't been so bad?

On a lighter note, I officially have a spot at Animaritime 2012's Artist Alley again! C: The tables were all filled up in the span of a day, which is like, insane. TIME TO GET CRACKIN'

Life drawing this week went okay for me, not my best but not my worst either. We didn't do a lot of short poses, and the ones I do have didn't turn out that great. SO here's the longer stuff:

10 minutes - super classy pose!

10 minutes

20 minutes - creative pose ;)

Here's something I painted on a complete I'm-tired-of-working-on-my-resume whim earlier this week, but I'm really fond of it for some reason. Funny how that works...

Approx. 3 hours

Finally, I contacted VanArts today to find out when I could start applying for the Sept. 2013 session, since I'm planning to take care of that this summer. Apparently I can apply anytime and they've already accepted some people? ...I'm worried. 8| 

Smaller update today! I've decided to put original stuff and big paintings on the back burner for now, and focus on doing studies and prepping for the con. Gotta learn my stufffffff and improve!

Two studies I did this week:

A tiger! Animals totally elude me. So here we go. I'm kind of experimenting with new ways to paint and render, and different brushes and stuff. It's... supposed to be running but you can't really tell lololol

It looks nice if you squint I guess??

Also worked a lot on my Astrid cosplay this week! The shoulder armor is finally done :)

I'm sooooo proud of myself! I can actually be good at making things when it's for a hobby, it seems. 8D;

Busy busy busyyyy, but it could be a lot worse! One of my resolutions for this last trimester of college was to not totally die of stress (like I was doing a few months ago). So far so good, but things are far from over. :P

Life drawing again this week! Didn't feel like it went that great but whateverrr we all get off-days I suppose.

30 second poses

5 minutes

20 minutes

I watched Mulan the other night. Yeahhhh 

A larger scale painting I've been working on for a few weeks! Daenerys Targaryen from A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. I'm really into this series right now, was feeling very inspired. C: Tried a bunch of new things in this painting too, like painting dragons (wtf), actually sketching out a few compositions before jumping into Photoshop, and a new blending tool. 

(this also got featured on the Daenerys Facebook fanpage! Yaaaaaaayyyy <3 )

And finally, started working on stickers for Animaritime! Here's Miku. ;) 

Stuff's been piling up, tiiiime to update!

My exciting news of the week: on Monday, my mom and I went home for lunch and found our basement almost completely flooded! Turns out a pipe from our hot water tank busted in the morning. :( All of the flooring, which my dad had just recently finished installing, was ruined. Our insurance is covering most of it though, and they hired a company to come and replace it for us, which is great. And thankfully we caught it early on, the water hadn't gotten to the corner with all the electronics yet, although there was some humidity. Could have been a lot worse, but it's still totally a buzzkill. :C

Onto more positive things! Went to life drawing this week--

30 seconds

5 minutes I think!

10 minutes? I thought switching color scheme for each set would make me remember the time more... I guess not hahaha

A few face studies

Some original stuff! I'm really into nordic/wilder designs lately, not sure why, probably all the Skyrim/A Song of Ice and Fire (reading book 3, totally amazing, ah ma gawd).

For a weekly art challenge on Tumblr: create a character of an ethnic group you're not used to drawing. So, I chose a native american! Decided to draw him in a modern setting, with some traditional elements incorporated. Very fun challenge, might render this some more eventually. C:

Working on a larger scale painting right now, gonna try to stick to it for once! also I am sooooo tired blah

A painting I started over break and finished today. Comfort-zone material, but I experimented with a light-source I'm not used to, at least! The character is an original character or mine, Azure Caelum, who's been around since pretty much forever. I'm not really aiming to go anywhere with these characters, they just give me something to draw and work on. :)

(this painting wasn't intended as a remake, but I also painted her in September of 2010! It was fun to compare anyway)

I'm being pretty active with this blog as of late, hopefully I'll be keeping it that way for a while! gotta keep drawing~

A painting I started over the weekend and finished yesterday. An effort to practice my environments a bit more and actually add characters (sort of!) to them. Here we have a dog waiting for its master in this creepy foggy cave. I'm kind of getting a piratey/shipwrecked feeling to this for some reason.

I'm gonna finish another original painting I started during break, then I may be doing some fanart/stickers for a little bit to get in the groove of con prepping. Still early but I don't caaaare @w@

Merry Christmas to everyone! :)

Really enjoying my vacation so far! Skyrim is amaaaaaazing, playing it is pretty much all I've been doing so far, but I'll get some drawing done soon! 

I might be sticking to traditional stuff for a while, because my laptop's trackpad has been acting up ever since I cleaned it and the cursor won't stop moving on its own/clicking everywhere. :| It went completely psycho yesterday, I had to reboot it a few times, and it's been more or less okay since then (occasionally it'll jump around for a few seconds but that's all). So using Photoshop is a tad more complicated since it keeps right-clicking and opening windows for nothing. I'm probably gonna have to get it fixed, but everyone's closed for the holidays! :C

Two paintings!

Started this as a speedpaint last week and decided to polish it a bit more the other night. Original concept, cause I just felt like it. C:

We had a art-gift exchange between the two graphic design classes this week, here's what I did! I ended up getting the girl sitting next to me, who is a huge fan of Tim Burton. :) 

(I actually painted this about a month ago... didn't want to post it in case she saw it!)

Male study time! Something I've been working on/off for the last week or so. I might rework it in the future, but for now it's finished.

... He kinda ended up looking a bit like Dexter? A more muscular Dexter anyway. 

I need to paint more! @w@ And speaking of, I purchased an Adobe CS5 package with an incredibly sweet student discount, so now I finally have a completely legit paid-for copy of Photoshop! Yaaaaay hopefully it'll stop crashing when my files are too big. (I also got a pile of other Adobe products in this package, such as Illustrator, In-Design and Flash to name a few... BEST DEAL EVER)

I actually cannot believe we're already halfway through November! The freakishly warm weather isn't helping, but hey no complaints.

Sooooo still not much from me, I am very blah in the non-college-related art department these days, I've caught my first cold of the season (which is odd because usually I get them in September, without fail), and it's hit me hard! I had a fever for the first time in years, was literally unable to speak for a day, I still sound like a 12-year old boy going through puberty, and I am sooooo run down. Whenever I have free time I just want to spend it sitting around aimlessly and not do anything with my life. Or sleep. ;w; Beautiful, beautiful sleep.

I did push myself to do some (very very) quick sketches. That's pretty much all I have the energy and time to do these days...

blablabla naked people

Max looking at a sword(?), Kyte and Ve'yan being cold because I was cold, two mystery chicks. I don't really know where I'm going with my style anymore, it's like half of me draws realism then the other is like anime? cartoons? ok, but somehow I just don't really care anymore. :|

This is actually a remake of an old sketch I used to really like, from a few years ago. Still experimenting with the colors, but I think I might paint this soon! Also, digital linearting: you are not nearly as terrible as I remembered. 

Just a speedpaint I did a few days ago. (without a reference picture! which I almost always need when doing these! level upppp)

I'm going through a bit of a stressful time... hoping I can make it until Christmas, then I may need to drop a few things before it hacks away at my health too much. :s I've never had stress-related problems to this extent before, and for the first time in my life, drawing isn't making me feel better.

... on the plus side, I finally got to download Storytime by Nightwish, and I think I've listened to it over 50 times today. I don't want to spoil the rest of the album before I buy my copy, but January is so far away!!

Finished painting, yay!

Anders from Dragon Age 2 -

I have been working on this for toooo long, painting time is rare nowadays! But this was a personal challenge, and I'm glad I saw it through to the end-- I never paint dudes, or actual scenes, or anything with more than one character in it. TA-DAAAA~

(I really want to play the new DLC: Mark of the Assassin! Christmas break come sooooooner lolol)

And finished! In a timely manner too, usually detailed paintings take me foreeeeeever... I need to work on my speed and stop obsessing over small details. I totally threw in the background at the absolute last minute, because I always throw in super plain brush stroke-type backgrounds for full-bodies.  

So, yes, this is an original character of mine: Isis Kel. C: 

(All the awesome artists have fancy signatures with their blog/DA/site etc on their pictures... so I'm hopping on the bandwagon. May or may not elaborate something prettier in vector tomorrow at college.)