I have been working on a lot of art

... But you won't get to see any of it :D

I've been having a bit of trouble with the Drop of Sunlight painting I was working on. For some reason, I just can't seem to get the facial features right. I've started and restarted the skin five times now. It's beginning to feel a lot like my book series... So I think I'm going to take a siesta from that one and do something else. If you don't feel it, you just don't feel it.

I've also been working on a notebook cover for my new school class, but have taken a break from THAT one to do a computer wallpaper for my brother for his birthday. But since he's usually lurking in my room, I can only work at it late at night. Which is why I'm writing this at 2:30 AM.

Then I have to write the lessons for my students and that requires a lot of time because I'm nitpicky. But they're all available on my DA page and also on the group I created for my students. They post their work there, so drop by from time to time to check them out.

OH! My portrait of Tarja Turunen was part of a Member Feature on DeviantArt. I was really surprised, since that's a fairly old painting and I can see a lot of mistakes on it now...

... That's really it. You can't see any of my new stuff yet. I'll post the wallpaper after my bro's b-day since I know of at least several people who will appreciate it, but of course I can't until then or he might see it.

In the meantime, here's a speedpaint of a butterfly. I'm getting better at speedpainting and I really enjoy it.

Just a sketch

I have had almost no time to do anything lately, but I did throw down some quick character sketches from that series I've been trying to write for over half my life. For the series' latest development, I altered the timeline a bit - it now takes place in a society on the brink of industry. I have no idea why I thought it would be a good idea to switch it, but it actually gives it a less cliche period dynamic.

Anyway, to see if I could work with the concept change, I did a few quick character sketches and thought I might as well post them for no reason.

That's that.

Drop of Sunlight WIP - basic coloring and some shading begun

I'm much faster than I used to be. Half a year ago, this would have taken me at least three days. I can already see one serious problem that I am going to obsess over for at least that much time, though: The nose. I am abysmal at noses. They're so weird looking. But anyway, here's the update.

Also, random tip: If you ever want to color anything black or white, DO NOT actually use black or white! Your blacks should really be dark blues, purples, browns, etc depending on your work. Your whites should reflect the color of your light source in very light yellows, blues, pinks, etc (unless they're in the shadows, in which case they should reflect your shadow colors).

Of course, that doesn't apply if you're actually doing a black and white picture.

New WIP - Drop of Sunlight

Just a line concept sketch I did a few weeks ago. Decided to go with non-character based, marketable artwork for once. I'm also going to turn it into a digital painting tutorial now that I'm good enough to give legitimate advice, so I'm screenshotting basically everything, but I won't snowball you.

I don't know when I'll have a chance to work on it since things have been so crazy, but I'll do my best.

I've been reconnecting with my roots, so this is a Gothic type concept. Where most people use umbrellas to stay out of the rain, we tend to use them to stay out of the sun. Pretty simple, really. I think it will be fun.

I don't know that I'm going to go so fullbody. I may cut it down to just the top right quarter. But I really like drawing clothing and ours can be so beautiful, I'm a bit conflicted. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens XD

But anyway, there you have it! My new work in progress, Drop of Sunlight. Simple, but hopefully it will be elegant. And marketable. I want to be as good as Dianae.

Finished!

I don't even want to talk about how long this stupid thing took. It makes me sad. So here it is:

Click to fullview, of course.

YES I fudged out on the background. I got completely sick of it. I would paint, erase, paint, erase and six months later I still wasn't finished. So I did this. If you complain, I will probably grant you a very painful and slow death.

So that's it!

A fun thing: I love watching it evolve XD

Some rocks

I painted them.

After about a month and a half of doing no art at all, I painted rocks. Fascinating.

In my defense, I am rather busy with music related tripe. In the next few months, I'm going to go bother the Lubbock Theater until they eventually hire me. I'm just happy I can sing again. If I can sing as a career, all the crap from the last few years will be totally worth it.

Anyway, here's the rocks. And my random floating lightsource.

No, they don't have texture yet. No, the ones on the right and left are not curved the way they should be. But I'm not finished! Clearly.

Chaos WIP - The beginning of refinement and the conquering of Gilbert

That's kind of an epic title for a pointless update. Well, it's not pointless to ME - I need these to chronicle my improvement XD

Speaking of improvement, I'm afraid I hit a snag. I spent most of the day repainting the dress because of weird off-color marks that would suddenly become massively visible blights if I tried to add any advanced shading or highlights. Not just little spots either - the entire left sleeve was ripe with them. It looked like it had the plague.

This was caused by poor color blending. I had stretched and blotted the color pigments in such a way that it created a whole new blueish-greyish-reddish color somehow that would NOT disappear no matter how many times I colored it with another color. I'll call this color Gilbert because I hate that name so much (sorry, Gilberts). Anyway, anytime I would try to add shadows or color variations, Gilbert would be like LOOK AT ME NOW! So I had to redo it.

The problem was that when I started this before Christmas, my blending style consisted of circles, blots, and strokes. Messy messy. However, when I started working on the prize for my Christmas raffle winner, I noticed how horrendous Kisuke's jacket looked with this technique. No matter how many times I tried to refine it and make it look smooth, Gilbert would not go away.

See what I mean?

So I refined my stroking style to this, using lighter strokes going all one direction instead of just blots:

Smooth!

I hope all of that made even a bit of sense XD It's all rather important. Well, if you care about it anyway. If you don't, I just wasted five minutes of your life.

But don't worry, I'll make it up to you. Here's the actual update:

NO GILBERTS! :D

Did some skin refinement, too, so here's a detail shot:

Hair is looking kind of kooky now, but that's what I'm working on tomorrow.

I guess as far as problems go, having to repaint something because you got better is a good one to have.

Chaos WIP - epic scythe pwnage

HA! I finished it finally! Just the scythe, I mean. I still have a lot of work to do on the whole thing.

Next on my project list is to repaint the sleeves of the dress. They are bugging me. I tried to fix the left one and only made it worse -_- So that's the next thing. It shouldn't take too long though. Hopefully. I also need to add textures and lighting effects throughout, since I had decided halfway through the scythe that I wanted to have more intense light than I had originally planned for. That won't be too hard, either. All I have to do is add stronger highlights and darken the shadows a bit.

And of course, finish the background, add a foreground, and create the light that is invisibly making everything brighter at the moment. And add effects. I've spent so much time on this now that I might as well go all the way :|

Estimate of when will I finish it? Never.

Chaos WIP update like... 80000. I've lost count

I'm really starting to get tired of this picture. I can't imagine how YOU feel. But tough it out. I'm sort of almost finished. Unless I start adding unnecessary chains and such in places people wouldn't even notice anyways. And that is always likely.

I'm telling you, when I'm finished with this scythe, I am going to kill myself with it.

In my reluctant defense, I did take the last five days off. Friday was Rukia from Bleach's birthday and I received a random outcry of requests for me to do some artwork for her. So I did. I'm such a pushover XD

I had wanted to do a painting, but I only had two days and that wasn't enough time. So I did a comic.

Yay!

I need some help on this one

Determined to take a break from the scythe, I started fussing around with the background. I'm never happy with backgrounds. I always start thinking along the lines of "Now why would someone be standing there posing? It makes no sense" and never get anything done.I guess I should start doing paintings of characters interacting with the surroundings to avoid this problem, but I sometimes change my mind about what I want the background to be, or sometimes it just doesn't work. That's me being a n00b.

My relaxing break from the Scythe of Doom wound up being a failure. I went from just losing my soul to intimidation to something along these lines:

Of course, that's only in theory, because in reality, I never get off my butt.

Uh... Anyway, I need help picking a background. So which is your favorite?

This is the initial one, chiseled out a little bit more.

I hate this one the most. That column would have to be scrapped and redone from scratch.

Rock over the sea kind of thing. I actually like this one the best, but it would require massive amounts of hair re-painting, and I'm afraid I just didn't do the initial painting with outdoor light in mind v.v I wish I had. The scythe looks like the moon against that sky.

So give me your opinion! I can't promise it will affect mine, but I'd like to know what you think. Oh dear... now you won't answer, will you D:

Another self-gratifying scythe detail pic:

Remember this?

You should. I was updating it a lot before Christmas. I decided to finish it before I start anything else since I've already spent so much of my time - and yours - on it. But of course, my time is all that really matters. I just added you to make you feel important :D

For today's update, I have but one thing to say.

Scythe.

The time I've spent on it so far is not even funny.

I changed the entire design on a whim, just like I did with the belt. And, like the belt, it's working out for the better. It's taking me forever because my base tone for it is browner than I had intended it to be. I had wanted it to be a bronze scythe, but it was looking like wood. So I spent half the day messing with texture brushes to add a bronzy look to it. Looks better in photoshop since the metallic part actually shines... :|

And still so much to do. Plus the background. I'm feeling quite intimidated again. It's been awhile since this happened. And yet, I enjoy myself so thoroughly that I can't stop even though I'm overwhelmed.

The Christmas Raffle prize!

I finished the prize for my Christmas raffle winner today! I realize it's a bit late, but I didn't want to rush.

For his prize, he requested I paint Urahara Kisuke from Bleach. So I did. And here it is!

I am quite frustrated with the jpg file. There is this weird grouping of pixels right there to the right of the jacket AND the two greens of his jacket and shirt are all meshed up. The psd file is flawless, if I do say so myself, so I cannot understand why there is such a problem with the jpg. Considering all the work I put into it, I find it rather insulting. But alas... Spit happens.

A secret picture and an update

Two arts today! Sort of.

First is my Secret Santa present to a fellow member of DA's Fire Emblem Fan Club. I didn't post WIP updates and am not posting my receiver's name in the random off chance that they see this XD

I got it finished and THEN found out that I can't submit it to DA until the 19th. Oops. For the first time in my life, I am actually ahead of my work, albeit unintentionally.

I was going to do a winter scene for the background, but there were so many autumn colors that I couldn't resist.

Second art is just a WIP update. Started blobbing on a vague background.

I have one more gift art to do for my DA Christmas raffle winner. He opted for me not to post updates, so you'll have to wait. I'm sure your life is over.

Chaos WIP update 6 and a sketch

Redid most of her hair since it was way too poofy before. Technically, her hair style is a large bun ponytail kind of thing, but you can't see it from that angle, so it just looked poofy. Sometimes perspective has to take precedent over canon XD

... That's pretty much all I did for today on this one.

Today was my art class and I had to draw up a lesson for my students. I couldn't fudge by printing a reference sheet this time because I had to explain to them about value sketching (sketching without lines). So I spent 30 min sketching this as an example of the benefits of lineless sketching:

The problem is, a lineless sketch should only take about 10 minutes at the max. I got a little carried away :| Oh well.

Chaos WIP update 4

I went a little crazy today. Added an unholy amount of detail-necessary work, so now it's officially taking  me longer than it should. And yet, I'm staying focused. Who knows?

Unnecessary detail is unnecessary. I'll probably have to spend another day or two on the belt alone. I just thought the dress looked so plain. I needed to add something to add visual interest. Plus, it was Soren's idea and he would have never let me get over it if I hadn't listened to him.

Boots are fixed, too. Getting close to the homestretch! Then I get to start the fun part: Cleanup. Yaaaaaay.

Chaos WIP update 3

Got some more done. Removed the sketch for now, but I'll need it again when I start the scythe.

Before I go any further, I'm going to completely redo the left foot since it's making me sick. I also have to skew the pattern on the dress to make it bend into the clothing folds, but that will be done last. I think I'll change the belt (again), too.

Detail shots:

Chaos update

Too tired to think clearly. Picture WIP only. Bye-bye.

Detail shot

A sketch and the secret of my bad blogging

I was writing a detailed profile of one of my characters as an exercise after a few days of prodding by Soren when I thought, "I'm an artist! I can procrastinate writing this by painting a picture of the character and it will still count to Soren!" So I spent more hours than necessary looking for a pose reference, then another 20 min or so sketching it out.

Ta-da!

Soreana (pronounced sur-AH-na - get it right!), the Chaos Priestess of my mythology. I'm going to completely re-vamp the dress design because I hate it, but I'm too tired right now. Decided to draw her in my own style instead of fussing over realism. The scythe is my favorite part of her design XD

No, I have not finished my previous WIPs. Leaving so much unfinished may seem a bit weird, but I've only just begun to show you all of my WIPs. My "unfinished" folder is 3x as large as my finished. I usually work on something else and then go back to the previous ones. This should be a fast one, so we'll see.

ONWARD!

I deleted my other blog. Yeah. Kind of sad, right? I just thought it was pointless since I never updated it. I finally figured out why I'm such a bad personal blogger: I simply don't like writing personal things. I cut my facebook friends from 200-something down to like 26 because I didn't like the feeling that I was being watched. So enjoy the mystery of me, because this is all you get XD

The most frustrating WIP update ever

Though it might look much improved, I actually worked on this for an additional four hours that achieved nothing. Why? Because Photoshop decided that it didn't want to stay open for longer than five minutes without immediately crashing. So I'd opencloseopencloseopenclose for hours and hours until I had to go beat the metal door at work to death to keep from throwing my computer across the room. The problem was that the image itself was so large, any additional color or effort to work would cause it to crash. So after fighting it, I finally managed to slowly resize it one piece at a time, saving in between to circumnavigate the crashes, until I got it scaled 50% and made it workable again. Then I got busy.

Although, in order to make this work, I had to completely flatten the sketch from 12 layers to 1. So I have to paint directly on top of it, thus causing the weird look it has now. But I'll adjust that as I go.

After that, I went home and brutalized my way through several armies in Fire Emblem and felt much better.

Conflict of Interest WIP updates and a new doodle

I have been lazy with this painting. I can thank various wikias for that. They will suck the soul out of you. That and this one isn't as interesting to me for some reason. I've lost a lot of motivation XD I still fiddle with it for awhile occasionally, though, but not enough to make noticeable differences.

It's getting there. Slowly. I still have to paint the complete other side and the background, though. I'm starting to think that I'll split it into two corresponding paintings instead of just one large one. That'll make the lighting differences on the two characters a little easier to manage. Still need to paint John (the skull) and a few other bits, but it's coming along.

My lack of interest (or is it intimidation?) of that painting, coupled with the fact that I'm replaying Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn led me to doodle out a new WIP. Several of the characters in the game, particularly Leanne and Volug, speak almost exclusively in the "ancient tongue" which is displayed in-game as a curly font that can't be read without a key, so the player will be just as confused as the other characters when these two are speaking. However, typical to myself, I had to go and look up translations. I must say, if you've played the game through at least once, you need to do this. Both of them are ridiculously funny. Leanne especially is downright hysterical at times since she's rather snarky when she thinks no one can understand her.

Wasn't there supposed to be art back there? Oh yeah. Here you go.

FE's heron princess Leanne and raven king Naesala. Leanne's official art for RD was pathetic, so I drew her the way I thought she should be :< I'll probably bloody Naesala up a little bit just because I can and I'm feeling violent. Yay violence!