Figure drawing duuumppp (as usual XD) . I'm at this point where I manage to fall in love with about fifteen percent of the marks I put down, then going "uh... what is this mush? D: " on the rest. But... that's just learning a process, right? P: In five years I'll hopefully have a better idea of how to approach whatever my process will become.

Selected works from my "for studies" sketchbook. The top is a more slowly painted out-ish pumpkin because I noted that I haven't done any slower traditional painting stuff in a while. The rest are quicker, looser stuff. My favorite of the bunch I put up is the man with the suitcase. I saw him while I was in the library, leaning against his bags looking out the window and it just struck to me as a beautiful scene that could have easily been the start of some great movie. (My brain likes to think like that. P : )

Some doodle studies I did last week. The bottom was a lighting study, so I tried to render/detail out stuff as little as possible. For some reason - it looks like as if the apple is my thought bubble with the way it's placed. Teehee...

A doodle assignment. The teacher wants us to make scribbles, then create stuff out of scribbles weekly so that we get to use our imagination to make cool things. I over-did it and spent a long time picking which silhouette scribbles I liked, gathered references, etc... One and a half hour fun homework has now turned longer. Ooops. XD haha... 

 

I also re-learned tonight that I tend to become bulimic under stressful situations. Good thing I usually don't get into drama, otherwise I think this may turn into a need-to-get-it-checked-out problem. XD I'm like more or less shaking in my systems from puking all the food I had today out and too scared to eat anything since I think I might end up puking it out. O_o My friend thinks I'm sick, and everyone hopefully only thinks it as me feeling sick. 

 

I decided to settle with this color for Cilff's skin better. A bit more yellow-ish, but I like that direction a bit more. 

I decided to draw an apple that I had packed for lunch today. I held it in my hands and painted (mainly the apple in) and rushed through my hand because I didn't want to hold the apple anymore since the club meeting for my major was about to start. Looking at it again, I think I should have played down the saturation of the hand and put more of the apple's tone into the hands to emphasize the apple s'more. The bottom is the apple again, except I ripped at and chewed it. I also smashed the apple a bit so that I could practice drawing small indents into skin and such, but I didn't have time to do that and I ate too much of that apple already. >__> Hehe... next time? 

Since I was doing so many studies and in serious sleep debt lately (D : ), I gave myself a break and doodled something random. I plopped in a silhouette that looked like a bug and I worked off of it. I scrapped the first look and drew in some human feet then put a bird's body with a bug's head in the end. My friend thought it looked "cute" since it "looks like a bedbug! ". Not sure how that's cute... but... okay... it's apparently cute. XD Maybe I should paint like a swarm of these just acting like pigeons. =B 

Sketchies. Still working around with a more crystalized feel for Cliff and working around with what I like for coloring and some minor small details like Bonnie's eyebrows. P : Heh... expect some more work on that. And me working with more color swatches on this. Hehe...

Character design stuff I did for my storytelling class. We were told that our finals (or as close as we'd ever come to one in this class XD ) was to make an animatic out of a folk tale about a person learning the lesson of valuing what you have, no matter how meager it is. The story given to us basically goes as an person is sad that his only possessions barely fit into this one sack that he carries. The person he is speaking to steals the bag from him and lays it at the end of the road for the person to find so that person can learn how important even the smallest of things are after losing it.

The teacher told us that we had free range over a lot of it. Like, we could change the setting, the character's age/gender/ethnicity, etc... as long as the main story's point and general plot is followed.

In my variation, I added a third character who is a thief who steals the child's belongings. The knight-like character is supposed to take back what was stolen from the child, and when the child receives it they appreciate the sack a bit more than they originally did. I added a third character into the story despite the fact that it may be extra work for me to board and plan how to fit three characters into panels and such... I just thought it was what I needed to make the story easier to tell. I'm usually the type of person who muddles around with details, so I had to do something to prevent that and make sure everything could be clear cut. Hence the reason why the thief is just a one-dimensional jerkwad who would steal from a vulnerable child. >__>

I'm going to re-design the thief character for the final animatic because I asked my teacher for a personal critique after class, and she mentioned that the thief character was a bit strange because of the fact that he was the only character who did not really resemble a human. I'll probably post more details on the characters and my character design thoughts later~.

After looking at my other blog, I noted that there were a few things I forgot to put in this blog. P: This blog is my more personal (as in I ramble all the time... =__= ) blog, so I think I forgot to post them earlier because I had a long, long thing to say that I never got around to writing. >__>

The very top drawing is of a blobfish with an afro. Two of my co-workers were joking about how our store mascot should be a blobfish after commenting it was rated among the most ugliest animal by many. The afro addition is because one of our other co-workers has an afro and so it became this sort of running joke to just mention his afro. My co-workers were pleasantly amused with it and joked about putting up signs with the fish all over the store. It's a dollar store and most people don't seem to understand the pricing system... so I made it wave a little flag with the price for most things in the store. XD That was my own joke... Though, I admit it makes it look like the fish is worth $1.50 without context.

The second and third one is of Marc and Ark (I draw a loooot of Ark... ) . They're two characters I'd love to ship, and even though I'm the one who made up these characters I can't ever see these two characters really being able to romantically get together. I think it's because they both ultimately want different things out of life. That, and Ark is gay -but, I feel like he's had a fully romantic feeling towards Marc before, though (zero sexual attraction in that feeling, though, since he finds males sexually attractive) P: . But, I think they ultimately enjoy this close as almost-siblings sort of thing with each other.
SO ANYWAYS... the top drawing is the two characters messing around with bandannas on each other. The second one is Marc offering a bite of some sort of snack to Ark. I wanted their combined silhouette to resemble a heart shape, but I broke that silhouette a bit because I wanted more flow out of Ark's body and that leg just seemed better that way... I know what it's supposed to be, so... fun for me and me alone, I guess. ; w ;

The third is an attempt at a sketch-up, ideation thing of a grown-up version of the little girl that I drew in the corner of an earlier picture post. P : Not sure if that's what I'm sticking with color-wise - but I do quite like the concept of her looking like a dancer of some sort. XD I called her "Feleena" for now because I was listening to "El Paso" while sketching a grown up version of her.

The bottom are some sketches that I did of some desert canyon-y type landscapes that I did based off of some photos that I saved to my computer and my phone so that I could keep doing studies even when my as of late spotting internet gets all weird. I'm thinking of doing more day-time canyon studies then moving onto trying to do some night time desert studies because I stopped and realized that I had no idea how to even pretend to paint a night time desert scene.

Wordy, Rambly, Nervous Posting

I admit that I haven't been as active on this blog this semester is mainly because I've felt like as if a lot of what I've done isn't worth sharing. I'm in this weird state of mind where I keep forgetting what this blog is for, but remember it at random times. I post a lot of my studies, whether or not I think they're super great. But for some reason, I feel a strong inkling of nervousness to post my more completed things. Strange sense of nerves I got...

I've also been whirring around with general feelings of anxieties for the past months, too. I'm in one of the best states of mind I can remember myself being in. The last few months alone, I've been less prone to being late to my appointments, arranging more time to really get into my studies, and finally getting to a point in my confidence level where I can see that my stuff DOES have potential to go somewhere!

BUT.. that entire mindset is coming with the idea that I DO have potential and always did, but I've been squandering it so I need to HAUL ASS RIGHT NOW. It's also coming with the mindset that I'll be able to really find somewhere to be in life as long as I don't mess up like I have been doing for my life up until recently. I want this to be a long lifetime mindset instead of being like that temporary stroke of obsessiveness I had when I was told my figure drawings were plain awful by a person from my dream school on National Portfolio Day four years ago (how time flies~ O__O ).

Despite my better mindset, I've found myself being very prone to break downs and freakouts whenever something small occurs to challenge and put a wrinkle in my new mindset. I was throwing a fit all over the place last week when I couldn't find where I put my easel. XD I solved it by getting a studio easel because my old one wasn't even strong enough to hold my art board in the first place. >__>;

I digress... back to my main point... I'm still working on throwing that negative "my stuff is not worth sharing..." sort of mindset out of the window because this blog should be for me to track my progress and share it with others as well. It's poison for me to think that my things aren't good enough to share because I've drawn things that I felt were "kinda cool", but my nerves once again, got the better of me and I decided against doing anything about it but deleting it or archiving it away in my computer to collect digital dust.

So, anyways... I'm going to try to be better about that and find some time to post more of my things, specifically some stuff I did for class. I've been taking a storytelling class this semester and my teacher gave us mainly storyboarding and character design assignments. I keep feeling like as if my storyboard skills are poor, so I always get nervous about even thinking about posting them... But that's art, right? Gotta show it off~ I mean, my classmates saw it, so what harm is there for me to post it on here?

So, I'll try to post more often. And expect some more dumpage soon~ : )

I had an art epiphany on Thursday. O : I don't know how it happened, but it did! After talking about how my gestures have a lack of super tight construction which makes all of my long poses fall apart, I somehow snapped together and did construction on my long poses that day. D:

I was doing the gestures (the 2nd picture) while talking with my teacher about how my gestures are good but they miserably fall apart on long poses due to not having good construction. For some reason SOMETHING in my brain might have clicked after and I finally managed to do actual construction for a long pose.

I've been taking figure drawing lessons for five years (yikes!) and there were times when I DID use construction correctly, however, those times were super far in between. And I think they were flukes at that time because I was never told how to properly construct a figure. Well... That's a bit of a lie, I suppose... But there s nonetheless something that wasn't making sense in my mind or plain out managed to forget...  I researched that myself and had holes in my knowledge of things like bony landmarks and such. I amazed myself with that epiphany, so I'm hoping that was something I truly learned vs. a fluke that happened that one day. O_o;

The third thing is a b/w photo study for class.

A random giraffe with glasses doodle that I drew for my friend. He said he was conflicted with drawing a giraffe with glasses or a Halloween picture. I liked the idea of a giraffe with glasses, so I just drew it out and showed him. XD Teehee.

I've also been playing around a lot with the smudge tool. I've been on a row of epiphanies lately. I used it and was all "HARK, this tool be Godsent! ;A ; " 

Will play with that tool s'more~