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. ;) 

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@

So this is my last day at college for 2011! I came early to finish up everything and prepare for my *last* presentation this afternoon, but now I'm left with two hours to kill (can't remember the last time that's happened to me). I've been seeing everyone do this everywhere on DA and Tumblr, and I did it last year, so here's my art summary for the year. :)

January - March: This has probably been the worst art period of the year. I was in a relationship at the time, so between that and college and work and dance I literally drew maybe once a week? And forget painting (I painted nothing during February, the only thing I'd been working on was a comic thing, which I totally gave up on anyway). When I look back on it, I'm not sure how I managed to forget about everything I like doing for that long!

April - June: Things definitely got better, though I was still very busy! I pushed myself to paint different things during this period.

July - September: Probably my most productive time of the year-- summer is awesome for that. C: After Animaritime I was super motivated (funny that a whole weekend spent drawing only made me want to draw more), and it stayed that way for most of the season.

October - December: I've definitely slowed down because of college, but I've also been a little art-blocked. However I've been getting through that by doing more studies, which was totally worth it, and now I am feeling very inspired. :)

So, overall, it's been a pretty good year! I think the improvement is more obvious in the second half, when I really kicked things into gear and pushed myself to paint things I didn't normally paint (like actual backgrounds trololol), and experimented with techniques and settings.

2012 will be about studies, studies and more studies, since I need to have a portfolio by the end of summer! And prepping for the con begins like NOW so I am not stuck doing everything 3 days before again. ahhhhhhhh

... in other news I am so close to freedom I can almost taste it and tomorrow I am going to sleep all day oh my gooooood @w@

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)

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)

Some more realism, this time it's Jessica from True Blood. :)

Done on Photoshop CS4 + wacom tablet - ref'd from a photo.

I actually learned a lot from this! I compared it to the last painting I did of this kind, and I'm very pleased with the improvement. :')

I am currently working on some (more) dragon age 2 fanart, derp, but I'm thinking of painting something from Game of Thrones soon... I need to finish the 2nd book before season 2 airs omggggg

(I know I totally said I would slack on the fanart, but paintings like this are also studies!)

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.)

Nothing much this week! I've been pretty lazy in my time off. Finally finished my second Dragon Age 2 playthrough and I now totally want to play the DLC Legacy, but college is so soon, hnnnnnnnnng. D: I'd start a 3rd playthrough, but I finished pretty much all the quests available (other than two of them that were glitched), so there's not much point other than to romance the rest of the characters/try the warrior class.

Random sketches:

So I totally re-watched episodes of Card Captor Sakura in french to relive my childhood this week. It is ridiculously hard to find the episodes, but I found an amazing french site that streamed them all... too bad after ep20 the links are broken. ;_; I might re-read the manga, but it's not quite the same...

Life drawing has been moved to sunday afternoons, which means I may not be able to go to it anymore, I am saaaaaaaaaaad. It's all going to depend on what my schedule is going to be like! I've been trying to do more studies at home instead of always relying on going to the sessions. So have a Rihanna.

Finally, another reason I've been sketching less, is because I've been working on this! Basically what I posted in my last update, but actually painted. I'm unsure about her anatomy though... still a lot of tweaking left to do. 

College starts wednesday, heeeeere we go again...  but I'm actually starting to look forward to it now. C:

Painted this today because... I just wanted to. So... comfort zone anyone?? :D

It was my birthday this weekend, I turned 19! So I can officially legally drink and smoke and gamble and go to clubs and etc. YAY. ... in Canada, anyway!

Also, off for 5 days SWEET BABY JESUS, tomorrow I will most likely scan the sketches I've got piling up... I was going to do it today, but I guess I painted this instead.

Another finished painting-- I'm on a roll!

This time it's Merrill from Dragon Age 2. 8D ... I'm going to stop obsessing over this game soon,  I swear. I don't keep Merrill much in my party (I alwaysalwaysalways have Anders for the heals, either Fenris or Aveline as my tank, and then I alternate between Isabela, Varric and Merril for the other character... depending on the quest!), but I love her character! Especially the party banter dialogue she has, so precious. :)

Got some sketches piling up from life drawing, but I might wait until next week's session to scan them so I can put together a big anatomy sketch dump.

Here's a painting I finished yesterday. :)

Really didn't do much in the last few days. I was off, so I spent some time at the family cottage. I have a love-hate relationship with that place... peaceful country feel vs. no internet. >:|  It does however help me concentrate and draw more, since I don't get distracted. So I finished this painting I had started a few months ago and totally forgot about, in which I had an urge to paint something all fantasy and pretty.

On another note, I started reading A Song of Ice and Fire... epic stuff, and I'm only halfway through the first book! It's pretty much all I've been doing at the cottage, other than drawing and getting oddly placed sunburns. I also found the time to actually come up with some sort of plot for my storyline, so it's not just a line anymore it kinda has a STORY. HAHAHA GET IT LOL i should really go sleep. Maybe I'll ramble about it sometime.

Here's a commission I finished last week, but kinda forgot I did. xD

'tis toon Link! This guy wanted a similar style to my Medli painting. 

Playing Dragon Age 2 again... so here's my new rogue. :D

This is my witty Hawke! I'm always too afraid to pick risky dialogue options on my first playthrough. xD; Anyway, this is pretty much a speedpaint because (I'm totally procrastinating) I just felt like it. Also, sharpen filter! Kind of experimenting with it, so far it's pretty sweet.

My tablet randomly stopped working the other night, while I was at the family cottage... I think I saw my life flash before my eyes. 8'C Thankfully, I had a one-year warranty on it, and it hadn't been a year yet, so I got a new one for free! The exact same too! AND IT ONLY TOOK LIKE 5 MINS NO HASSLE NO BEGGING. FUTURE SHOP IS AWESOME.

A Fenris painting, because he is awesome.

But speaking of DA2, I really liked Varric and Merrill too. May paint them sometime. And Anders, I want to romance him on my new rogue~