Many Lines

Scary things happen in the dark :
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Burning sun and a chilly cold wind... that's the way all of summer should be.

I thought I'd do my best to step outside the ole comfort zone and draw something with thin sexy lines... and boy did it fail. Repeatedly.
Then I remembered one time I'd done lineart for one picture in painstaking Opacity-Sensitive pens... you can get a really feathered, delicate effect that way.

Well, yeah, no. And the SAI line vectors weren't my friends today either... so I switched in the end to what I do best, or at least most comfortably. Pixels.

Pixels are so, so so sexy.

And suddenly every line had meaning, and a weight that made sense, an angle that worked. I got bold, let them cross each other and leave shapes unclosed, and it all felt right. I guess it's either bulky thick lines or pixels for me, still. :/

By the way in my spare time, usually to cheer myself up out of ruts, I go on fanart hunts. I collect arts for my art folder that excite me either as a fan or an artist, usually both, and looking at these makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. ...sometimes they're shipping, mostly they're not though. This is a side hobby of mine that extends many years back... and I must say I'm quite the consummate seeker. This is the one thing that makes me as happy as drawing, or close to (when it goes according to plan, anyway).

Since I'm playing the old Ruby so much these days, struggling five steps into Victory Road, I thought I'd put up a list of what's in my PKMN folder at the moment. Of course, Pixiv is also an awesome resource. :>

• Memo
• Hai Aka Murasaki Yes red purple..?
• PTK

Not many eh? Seeing as these old-school gems also have Links pages, I recommend you check those out and flush through them thoroughly for hours of artfix. :>

Self-righteous Suicide

Hmm man. With the turn in cool weather I thought I'd be doing tons of art shiznit... but I haven't felt like anything. It's funny how when you finish some pictures you feel like "Yeah that's right", everything is sweet and you can't wait to chillax basking in the glory of your upleveled skillzors.
And others you feel all empty inside, like it just took a whole lot out of you just to colour & polish off that biatch and then... nothing.

Times like this you pray to the gods of the Internet for some pointless, timewastingly hilarious youtube video or image edit or obscure historical event to keep you occupied until sleep. And the internet shall always provide...
Protest Signs of 2009
Google Autocomplete Fun



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Also I discovered the story of Yume Nikki the other day. It's amazing how people are just MAKING stuff these days... like Vocaloid. Back in 2005 some guy used RPGMaker to make a game about a hikikomori girl stuck in her unexitable room, whose dreams you get to navigate.
I haven't played it but it sounds surreal. I then spent an hour browsing dedicated imageboards and reading mile-long fanwank theories as to all the deep and significant things every smallest aspect of that expansive dreamworld was supposed to stand for in the ruined life of the protagonist.

Read about it here.

Planner Uploads

Better original, or redrawn? :/


Soo! It's a happy new year. For the duration of sailing regattas at the local yacht club, our house and fridge is overrun with sailors and both my bosses are busy getting bruised and salt-pickled every day (and nicely toasted every night.)

So there's no work, the days are hot and long and there's not a single cloud in the sky. Besides perfecting my scrambled eggs on toast and iced coffee, I've decided to go through my old planner of 2009 and upload anything and everything of note that I've drawn there.

...but it feels kind of silly to just dump it all... so I'll do it in pieces.

To start with, currently I'm playing a lot of Pokemon again... as I finished Apollo Justice and Hotel Dusk, and Castlevania Eclessia got too depressing (and hard XD.)
So this is to commemorate.

AND I've finally gotten the blogger CSS to do what I want in terms of post width... so there's no reason to keep trying things with Wordpress. I moved this blog there for a little while but it didn't quite work out... a person that makes a living doing CSS doesn't like to be told they have to pay to edit some.


Is it worth going over them or not? I'm quite fond of pen....
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Also: it seems the entire city of Melbourne is completely fresh out of Moleskine planners. Everybody wants one and the only thing left in 6 separate bookshops I've gone to (for different reasons, of course) are tiny and obscure notebooks like for musical notation or with grid paper.... I've watched less crowd-savvy shoppers whine to the floorstaff about the lack of Moleskine planners specifically. Why must it be this way?
I know they're all fantastically stylish and all the rage, but they also happen to be durable and comfortable to bend at the spine which is why I've loved mine for a good 1.5 years with no problems. So disregarding how allergic I am to wanting what everyone else wants, I'm going to have to track one down. :/

Walkabouts

Bins Behaving Badly Series.

Some of the images for my 2nd photography project. Once I get to scanning the 1st photography projects for my visual diary, you'll get to see those too.

2 more weeks & 4 more projects

...and then I'm home free!

Thanks largely to money issues, I won't be going to Japan this year over summer holidays though I haven't ruled out going SOMEWHERE. Another reason was I thought I'd spend a bit of time getting creative and buffing up my portfolio and skills base.

To that end, ever since the weekend of October 9th (when I went to SemiPermanent) I've tried to draw something each day, and keep that drawing for refinement into a little book which should be filled up in a month's time (I guess.)

I've so far refined 2 drawings and collected 8 that roughly correspond to the output of these past 8 days.


To the left, the final refinement of October 9. To the right, October 15th.

The corner of my desk belonging to crafty things.



Two uni projects in progress.

I got to make a lot of very traditional books these last few weeks and it's been tons of fun. Now there's 2 weeks with 4 deadlines to meet (one of them tomorrow), so we'll see how it all works out. As long as I keep my D average I'm a happy girl. :)

Heroes in Casual Clothes

A bit of red-pen drawing got done. :)

I'm trying to find a really efficient way to drop out red underlines in photoshop... I know selecting colour range isn't the way. Finished that beast of an illustration project with some tacky "deep" linear burn filters for a little extra intensity.... might put the underlying portrait here, providing it doesn't look dreadful on closer examination.

It seems a lot more gets done on all those projects when there aren't silly classes to get in the way.

Whoah.

I read & loved Banana Fish over last weekend, look forward to hearing more from me on that. Been chasing the government, my potential exchange university, teachers and students while assignments have been chasing me.

So!



View out of my grubby window. The neighbour's front yard is how I tell the time of day & seasons while staying in bed.

Some of my workspace. Stuff piles organically here. I swear off coffee and drink tea when I want to get down to hours of serious work (for the lesser caffeine hit.)

Book Leather, Mull & Endpaper arrives.

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The last one was for a project in which I made... a book. It didn't turn out as neat as I imagined, more like saturated in PVA and sticking precariously out of the spine.

Illustration just ain't coming to me... *sigh*

Creativity =/= fun?

Creativity used to be a fun hobby.

But being creative full-time, under the restraint of briefs and everchanging teachers' opinions; being forced to create in a certain way, at certain angles, about certain things irrespective of your own strengths and interests, can get very draining very quickly.
Ambition and novelty can get you through the first semester, but they won't carry you for three years.
So you tend to be drained at the end of a day and not even remotely interested in pursuing all those things you thought you were put on this earth to pursue.
So you either find your own way and cling to it in every brief, or get by until the holidays. Something about it all though, makes me desperate to assert my own hobbies and passtimes on a schedule that can't really bear it, because expert validation in this world is a long, long way away.

AKA I'm beginning to once again get frustrated and bored out of my socks by coursework! When will it all end?
When can I stop having dreams about amazing rivers I've never known and crews I've never worked with, about white soft powdery snow up to the waist on a special black run off the piste that I practically grew up on these past few years?


Anyway. Either I'll get the better of this or it'll get the better of me. There's always deferral as an option...

She's a Flapper

In a vintage fashion magazine.

A big red sore nose

The symptoms of a cold changing every day is definitely a good sign. Certainly it's evolving... I like to think it's being thwarted daily in its attempts to conquer me and forced to new and exciting frontiers of battle in its futile struggle for existence.

That's what I LIKE to think.


The Secret Project.

Also I'm binding little bits of paper within metcards, in order to test out different methods of bookbinding and which of these will best serve me in an upcoming brief.


Little books.

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Tomorrow: 2 x A2 cardboard papers for my little lantern, and scouting some materials for the cover of my (upcoming) book. Whichever method I use to attach the pages in this volume, I ideally want to make a cover out of a nice thick tactile cloth. Either I buy this, or cut up an old pair of jeans that lives on my shelf in unceasing hopes of one day being properly repaired (I botched it once with non-stretch patches...)

AHH if only we had a sewing machine that wasn't foot-operated!

Something Funny

The Beatles's "When I'm 64" to the image of a septuagenarian Kurt Cobain & Courtney Love in a nursing home. Drinking tea. :)

Planning my amazing route of activity across the span of the city after classes, culminating in the presentation of photography assignment 1 (of 2). Conversely, I will now only be able to play the DS while in transit.

Amateur Photographer

Spring is in the air... as the weather finally fines up (for the most part).


A quaint little mailbox.


The mysterious workings of the tree doctor...


Powerlines and Trees,


A lovingly framed Cherub, and


An abandoned block of land.

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All from my Lettersearching homework this week. When I find the entire alphabet I'll be sure to tell you all about it.

Spending time drawing on the theme of "I don't draw much anymore..."
One day I might just share it with you!

The Asexual Being.

He lives, absolutely disinterested in and unneeding of sexual gratification. But that means he doesn't touch people, ever. It's an excellent thing to be, except for when it's not. I guess?

I liked his posture.

He is now the signature image up in the ^ sidebar up there, hovering.

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It's peaceful, flicking through the CSS and tinkering to make the page look how I want it.

That's 5 years of assistant webbuilding experience for you. Why couldn't I have been a waitress?

Identity Theft

Makes sense, right?

Photo Processing

Question: why do they call it photo processing in 2 hours when in practice everywhere you go they tell you to come back in 2 days? I asked if that was as fast as they could do it, because I needed it in time for class... he gave me this look and "cut me a deal" to closing time the day before. Thank you, artsy monsieur. :/

The teacher sprung a get-quality-lab-prints day on us and there's no way I can take those photos and have them developed in time. Not to mention I can't really afford to buy film, use film and then have 2-3 rolls of it developed every week. I just ain't rolling in it. :/ :/

OH GOD I wish I didn't need money for everything.

....at least the vodka was duty-free.