Tribute

Yesterday, I learned that my friend and former boss Robert McCurry was killed in a car accident on Thursday while leaving his apartment to attend college classes. His memorial service was today, but I was unable to make it thanks to the eight hour drive between me and the Houston area.

I couldn't even think about going through the day without acknowledging him in some way, so I decided just to write some things that I remembered.

-Robert gave me my first job and was a unique boss. He valued my opinion in Gamestop goings-on and seemed to appreciate my blunt honesty. He never made me do work that was uncomfortable for me, like excessive dealing with customers, and instead let me do the work I was good at and enjoyed. He would never curse in front of me or the other female employees because he considered it rude. He treated us with respect that most people don't even consider.

-I picked up some strange food habits from him that I still can't break. To this day, I can't eat an untoasted sandwich and I love Little Caesar's pepperoni and jalapeno pizza with buffalo sauce mixed with the marinara.

-I remember once while I was training a new employee, someone sneaked around behind the register and snagged some merchandise while my back was turned. Robert chased him down and asked him if he'd stolen anything from us (his pants were obviously full of something) to which the guy replied that it was "just" his weed. It wasn't "just" weed, he was arrested for theft AND possession, and I still laugh while picturing the look on Robert's face when the guy told him it was marijuana.

-He introduced me to the only two American bands that I still enjoy -- Breaking Benjamin and Evans Blue/Parabelle.

-He texted me randomly about six months after I'd quit just to say "OMG I can't stop hiccuping. Seriously, I've had the hiccups for two days." At first, I was really confused, but it was so funny.

-When someone was hitting on me at work and making me angry, he told them I was jail bait (even though I was 18) to get them to leave me alone.

-He's responsible for my manga addiction. He'd let me take home leftover Shonen Jump magazines every month when the new ones came in, which made me fall in love with Bleach.

I guess I could go on and on, but I feel satisfied now. Today, I'm going to go order a Robert pizza from Caesar's and listen to some K-Mat Evans Blue. Please say a prayer for the comfort of his family.

Quick arts give me a break from real arts. PS comic!

Stuff is crazy. Can't keep up. So here's the art!

1) Most have seen it by now, but I painted a portrait of Tarja Turunen to commemorate both her birthday and her upcoming new album, What Lies Beneath. It was quick by painting standards: it only took about 10 hours XD

Leather was fun to paint. I'd never done it before.

I actually colored her eyes for effect (she has pretty eyes) but I didn't take into account that they're light blueish-grey so it barely shows D:

2) Even quicker than that (taking a monumental hour and a half) is a new comic! I know, right? I don't even remember how to do comics. But everyone seems to love the ones I do, so I thought what the heck?

I've been playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion again. I go through phases where I play for a month or so, then don't, then start playing again and so forth. I just felt like making a comic about the funniness of the guards and the game's ridiculous crime engine.

You'll have to click to view the whole thing.

That's it! I'll try to finish up some more serious arts...

Driving Rant

I rarely use this blog for personal stuff anymore, but I have to rant or I might kick a puppy.

My general dislike of people in general is never helped by driving. I can't comprehend how some people are still on the road. Still alive, even. It makes no conceivable sense.

Therefore, I have compiled a list of the top 5 groups of people who should not drive.

5) Chit-chatters
- Talking, either on the phone or to someone in the car, is distracting, but most people seem to do ok with it. However, you do not have to stay focused on someone to talk. Stop looking at them and watch the road, for crying out load.

4) The elderly
- I'm not saying all elderly people can't drive, only that most of them can't. In the last few days alone, I almost got into a several car pileup because an old lady was going 25 MPH in a 45 MPH minimum zone. She was completely unaware that everyone was swerving around her and almost crashing. This happens to me at least once on a weekly basis, sometimes more. There was an old man straddling lanes just 30 minutes ago that almost caused a wreck. And he didn't even know.

3) Texters
- Teenagers are idiots in general (no offense) but this is mostly enhanced by their OCT, or obsessive compulsive texting. You are a new driver and are statistically more likely to have a wreck anyway. Your friends are, like, going to be a lot more depressed if you, like, die than if you don't immediately respond to their "lol" message, ya know? Probably.

2) Drunks
- Insert obvious comment here

And the #1 group of people who shouldn't drive: Narcoleptics
- Anyone prone to randomly fall asleep at any given moment shouldn't walk, let alone drive. Sorry, Narcoleptics. I know you can't help it, but we don't want to die. Stay off the road, yes?

Basics of Sketching

Since Blogger chose now to be an idiot and tell me that my .jpg files were not .jpg's, I had to come up with another way to post my lessons. So here you have it!

Beginner's Guide to Sketching Part 1: Basics of Sketching

 View full by clicking the "download" option on the right side of the image.

Part 1 contains the first 3 lessons.

It'll be several weeks before I finish Part 2: Facial Features because I want to spend at least one more week on eyes, preferably with a way to show them directly instead of just making a print out. So if anyone knows of a free screen capture program, plz to let me know?

I'm not dead.

I'm just crazy, insanely, overwhelmingly swamped. I haven't even touched my tablet in over a week.  That kind of sucks because I have multiple projects due AND lessons to scratch up for my students.

I have begun to prioritize:

1) Portrait commission #1
2) Art lesson reference pages. You can find the completed ones here, as you probably noticed. When I'm finished with actually "teaching" with the stuff, I'm going to combine the pages into one book and post it for download on DA.
3) FE collab pieces that are due in September.
4) My manga.
5) Another quick comic or two.
6) SilentReaper's StupidFox contest. I want a StupidFox plushie :O
7) Portrait commission #2
8) The artwork that I actually WANT to work on :|

So as you can see, I am quite busy. And all that is NOT including work, my classes, and piano lessons. Fortunately, piano is taking a two week break so I can catch up a little.

As much as I like taking breaks over the weekend, though, I hate having the 5000+ messages I get when I log back on.

Before I took a break, I did do a bit of quick concept art for the manga... I guess I'll post it so I don't look entirely hopeless.

I'm still here! Change in Showcase, as well

I haven't made a post in awhile, but I haven't finished any projects lately. I took the weekend early this week and started on Friday to give myself a three day weekend. As you may recall, I take my weekends off quite seriously. I don't do anything brain related, and that includes art.

I mostly play the Sims. Yes, I love the Sims. It gives me insight into how God must feel when we do things that make no sense and ruin our own lives in ten seconds or less. Well... that and they just make me laugh.

Although, when my first chapter of my manga is finished, you can thank the Sims for knocking me out of my writer's block. While playing through as the characters of the story, the Sims' utter lack of common sense gave me some hysterical ideas. PS, I will include the manga in both traditional Japanese AND English reading formats for my less manga-experienced peeps.

So I guess technically you can call it research?

Christine is worried that her dress makes her butt look big.

Melody can't figure out why there's no ceiling in an underground room (walls down lol)

Ok, I'll stop nerding myself out.

Well, except for this: While Onemanga closed its scans for good, other manga hosting sites are still going strong. So if you want to keep reading your manga, check out mangastream.com and bleachexile.com -- we've still got them, at least for now.

Ok, now I'm done nerding.

I don't know when I'll get to work on my own stuff, though. I have several portrait commissions that I need to start on, which is cool. Also, my art classes start tomorrow. I need to get some material drafted up for the first class. I have to cover a lot in just one hour because I really want to get the technical stuff out of the way as quickly as possible so they can start playing with their own creativity. Art is 15% technique and 85% practice.

Which reminds me -- I'll be picking up my Showcase posts again next Saturday, but instead of using pro artists, I'm going to be posting my students' work. I will still post pro's work if I run across something that inspires me, but I really want to give my kids the affirmation of getting their work published. It'll be on my deviantART, as well, so you can't really miss it.

I'm also not going to the convention this year. Too much overhead needed and not enough time to get it all together AND get enough art done to make it worth it. So I'll try again next year! Plus, it would be cool to be able to sell my first self-published manga volume there as well. If I could do one chapter a month, that would be awesome.

I had the mother of all headaches on Saturday. I don't know why I'm telling you that :|

Maybe cause I'm out of stuff to say.

That's all, folks!

Nobody loves me

After talking to my printer and having a minor heart attack over the cost of going to the convention, I decided I needed to do something to bolster my available capital. So I offered art classes, starting next week, to the large homeschool group in the area.

Nobody has signed up so far. Which especially sucks because I am the ONLY person who offers art classes other than one lady who charges $120 per lesson. Maybe I should charge that much to seem more legit? XD

Course, I still have a week left before I wanted classes to start, so maybe if I put out another email, I'll get some students. If not, though, I'm not going to be able to afford the convention this year.

PS I don't care what Metal Magazine says, Tarja is metal queen, NOT Sharon den Adel. Sharon only won because Within Temptation spent the past week badgering their Facebook fans to vote for Sharon. Epica did the same for Simone Simmons, but she got third.

Tarja was 200 votes off winning and she never asked for votes. So there! *ignore*

Neither did Nightwish and poor Anette got stomped 0.o Of course, they're probably too busy fishing to remember the contest XD

Why is the type so big? I have no idea.