THIS IS A SERIOUSFACE FOR SERIOUS ARTISTS

I have only made 4 art posts since the start of the year. Including a schoolwork one. That is less than one a month! Dayum, that's slack.




20 seconds:




1 minute


5 minutes


20 minutes


There was some charcoal stuff from another session too but it's way too big to scan and too crumpled to make a decent photo because I had to fold it up into my sketchbook for submission. I gotta do moar life drawin'! I never thought that $15 a week would be so hard to come by though. Maybe if I'm careful I can go every fortnight?

Here is a Badfu to tide you over from the seriousfaceart:

I think he'll make an okay practice digital painting.




Next time, less serious arts and more demons frolicking in meadows! Well, not so much meadows OR frolicking, but maybe at least one demon. I already have enough for another post scanned and cleaned so I have NO EXCUSE.

As with almost (almost) every Pixar release, every artist on my f-list is just bursting with praise for Up. Well, screw you distributors because I will be hearing about how great it is until freakin' September when I will finally be able to see it. Pirating it isn't even really an option cause it won't look nearly as good on the small screen. Bah. And Coraline. Coraline! SIGH.

Star Trek was good. I enjoyed it.

Argh, gotta do more art. I could post some stuff from school but that's, eh, I'm really over last semester's work, I guess. I'll get around to it eventually. Maybe.

SMASH! is in August but I can't go. :( I expect school to get really busy for me right about then so I can't really justify spending all that money to go to Sydney AND jeopardising precious schooltime. If it was one of the other, certainly! I am willing to make sacrifices. xD

I'm sure there is a better way to photograph glass. Natural lighting would help a lot, for one. Unfortunately, I am a night owl. Even when I am exhausted and have more important things to work on.



Contact stencils all cut and ready to go. :D




One of Ath running along the side of the glass, trailing flowers and love and sharks! I hope you can make the more complicated stuff out. :/ This one had a lot of fine cutting in it that went down surprisingly well. Not 100% well though. Learning experience.


And Ferend/Ignatius. :D I like the way his wings turned out. There's some small details and lines that didn't turn out so well though. I dunno, sometimes these things seem to turn out perfectly and other times...not so hot. It's got to do with judging how rigid the contact is and whether the etching cream will manage to seep under. I'm a slacker and tend to go for it and hope for the best instead of redoing bad bits.

Four more glasses in this series of 6 to go! I'm doing the six DnD player characters in one of the first games I ever played. Nostalgia. <3 Not-so-important that all the trial and error going on will be bad but important enough that I actually care to finish them all. So. Hooray. :D Dunno what I'm going to do with the set when it's done.



As you can see in that first picture, I also tried etching some jolteons on a yellow glass but due to the way the glass had been treated (colour was accomplished through a film and not colouring the glass itself) it didn't turn out at all. :( All the cutting for nothing. The designs weren't bad though. I'll try something similar again in the future when I get nicer glass.

Speaking of nicer glass, Joey's sister gave me a very pretty little red glass sort of candy-bowl-jar thing. I have NO IDEA what to etch on it. It has to be nice! I guess fudogs is always a good choice? But then I think a gold trim would look great with fudogs and I haven't a clue in hell how to do THAT lol. Shmans, I'll keep thinking. I've also got to work out a way to seal it nicely as the lid doesn't shut properly right now. :( I'm thinking some sort of rubber addition.

I'll try to take better photos another time. Maybe there is tutorials on the net out there for it. I'll take photos and scans of life drawings and new sketches while I'm at it, too.

Whose printer just shat itself? Why, my printer just shat itself!

Handed in my "Communication" essay about an hour before it was due today. Probably the crappiest essay I have written in my life but it should still get an okay mark just because it fulfills most of the referencing/layout/grammar criteria. Seriously though, I have never argued a point so badly, hahaha. It's hard to argue a point that is obviously wrong wrong wrong. Alas, that was probably the point of the exercise.

I cleaned my room. omgosh so exciting. Also my office. Now I get to work on my resume maybe! These things are only exciting to me because they are a trillion percents better than writing bad essays.

Had a drawing assignment due last week that I think went pretty okay. With the exception of the last two tasks. I swear whoever planned out the assignment was like "Let's combine the two things Sam is worst at - perspective and vehicles, muahahahaha!" .



Organic life drawing. Eh. A big storm started while I was out at the Parklands trying to do this one.


Portrait. I think the actor is Christopher Walken? You probably already knew that though, I am the only one who doesn't recognise these people.


Still life. Of course I saw the roboraptor sitting on my shelf and though "Why, yes, it would be out of character of me not to attempt something overly complex". Would've taken half the time if I'd just drawn a bloody fruit bowl.

Also had to do some character designs based on fish and a couple vehicles but they are boring and sucky! The fish weren't tooooo bad actually but I'd definitely polish them before I used them for anything. As for the vehicles. Well. Rest assured I will be a-practicin'.




Also had life drawing on Monday which was pretty cool. I kinda like working with charcoal cause it forces me to work with form and shapes instead of just lines like I tend to do with pencils... I might post those up later if I can get decent photos.

Internet Censorship is Retarded

Wikileaks is a site for whistleblowers to anonymously report stuff. Recently the ACMA blacklist that is going to be used in the compulsory Australian internet filter our government is planning was leaked on the site. It listed about 1300 sites, including a few that really shouldn't have been on there (Wikipedia pages and a dentist's office site??). Wikileaks stated their position: that the information needs to be public knowledge because such systems are known to become corrupt over time.

The government responded by adding Wikileaks to the blacklist.

...Nice.

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. (via rosek)

1. Traditional Media
Yeah, I'm a traditional media person. FOR REALS. Paper, ink, paints, clay, I love em all! This is probably a result of going to an after-school art class as a child with a particularly inventive teacher lady who let us mess with anything and everything in her studio - oils, canvas, earth clay, whatever was there. I've been working with these materials since I was, like, ten or something as a result. Traditional media does not daunt me.

2. pokemans
I love pokemon. <3 The first episode of the anime I saw was the one with the Gastly and the lighthouse. It was so different to anything I'd seen before! I think I got the game after that and I totally loved that too. omg pogemans! I even have the pokemon N64. I actually made my own pokemon card game! I wonder where those cards went...

3. indie
This would be about indie comics. You know, I don't consider myself very "indie" but my boyfriend makes fun of me for being indie all the time so MAYBE I AM. 90% of indie stuff is shit but maybe 2% of it is BRILLIANT so for that 2% of indie creators I am full on gungho with my support. I can't really consider myself a creator until I properly create something though. U_U I guess that makes me 50% indie or something? That is still more than average. xD

4. Talk like a Pirate Day
Funnily enough I have never remembered to participate in Talk Like A Pirate Day! I always mark it on my calenders and stuff but I am failsauce and never look at my calender on the morning of the day in question apparently! Ugh, maybe this year. I better start practicin', aarrrrrr.

5. Gamer
I am sooo a gamer but I have so much trouble finishing stuff. I used to be able to focus on one game at oncee and finish it and BE DONE but at the moment I am partially through: Frozen Throne, FFXII, Okami, WoW, GW, HeroesV, JakII, +more. I guess I have sort of given up on JakII though cause I have no idea where I am at in that game. 75% through or something? :/ I have totals given up on Harvest Moon DS and Lost Magic too. The last HeroesV mission is a bitch so I've been putting it off. I'm really looking forward to Aion at the end of 2009 (hopefully). An MMORPG with flying and unprecedented amounts of character customisation (body proportions!) and really pretty looking art deserves support.

REVELATIONS

Man, so I started at QANTM yesterday and, uh, the "communication design" subject? This is exactly what it's like. Tru fax! I completely understand the use of the subject but, really, I can already write essays. I SWEARS.


Something more fun:



I've been adjusting my tablet settings and side button functions and stuff. Suddenly everything is so much easier!






Messing around in CS3 courtesy of Ignatius here. I really felt like doing stuff in colour today, which is amazing cause it's the step I normally dread. Especially on the computer. ESPECIALLY in Photoshop. Today: painless.

The magic eraser tool is really cool btw, I can't believe I'd never used it before. It's kind of made useless for my purposes thanks to Multiply but still - what a neat tool! The lasso function has really evolved over the years.


OH YEAH, that Batman 2.0 thing. I totally forgot to submit on time (realised like the day after). Even had the date marked on my calender, would you believe it. Buh. Anyway, yes, Bat-Nightwing-man has a more helmety helmet built into the suit because as I recall he likes to ride a motorbike around the place. The suit's more streamlined as well to match Nightwing's generally more streamlined look. Tried to minimise the Utility belt usage - stuff is stored all over his body now. Like the knife and bomb compartments in the boots. Hush, I know putting bombs in your boots is a bad idea. There's some other stuff written there, try reading it? :B


One DnD thing I missed last time round. Uuum, this is Nerak the Tiefling rogue. She was pretty fun to draw for the short time she was around.




In more DnD related news, I ran the first session of my first campaign as a DM last night! So that was exciting. I did surprisingly well. Then I spent too many hours today putting together the campaign wiki and writing up half a session summary over at Obsidian Portal. I called my Campaign DRAGONOPOLIS, subtitle: Actual Dragons Not Included. I am sick of dragons, there will be no dragons anywere ever. There WILL be stupidly long character descriptions and pictures plastered everywhere though. It's kind of fun just filling out an entire wiki fantasy-stream-of-consciousness-style. But I'm sure I'll get sick of it fast.

First Artdump of 2009

I haven't posted art since October! What is wrong with me? Here's the first of probably several art dumps! D:


Flea, doing that ridiculous swagger that you occasionally see on people.




Oh hay, those look suspiciously like WoW night elves! Huuuuh.


Okay, so a surprising number of people (read:100%) at the Wrath of the Lich King midnight launch could not identify the above as a half-transformed night elf druid. I know there's some WoW players on my flist... Guys, is it really not obvious? :(

...Okay, so it may be evident at this point that I started playing WoW. I've got a lvl 68 human warlock named Segue. Yes, Segue. :P Demonology spec. Finally ready for Northrend once Joey starts playing again! I swear WoW is not the reason I haven't been posting art! I actually find that playing a month on and then a month off works pretty well for me in terms of having time to get stuff done. I accomplish that by subscribing for a month and then cancelling my sub after a week or two. :P So I'm also getting the subscription pricing. :D

I'm on Lightbringer if anyone wants to play with me. My (teeny) guild's recruiting too. So. Yeah! Alliance side, obviously. I would have gone Horde if left to my own devices but everyone I know was on Alliance already. :( I'm off again this month though so don't bother trying to find me until March some time, I guess.

Right, anyway, one more WoW thing:


A pretty elf. /boring :| I was doing a troll companion sketch too but it's only half done.


A DnD sketch! No- no, you knew it was coming. Stop it, stop crying. This is Faust, an NPC we saved from certain undeath as the vessel of a lich princess. Hence the tiara on his head which is a bit difficult to make out. The EVIL tiara.


I hope everyone had a good Chinese New Year! I didn't! I was going to go to Chinatown for stuff but then everyone bailed out on me! But I have this fudog drawing to cheer me up. Good fudog. Gonna colour him so he'll be even MORE fun.


Keepin' up the fu theme. Aren't these guys cuute? :D Gonna tidy up the top two and stick them on my new resume. SURELY I WILL GET HIRED AT THE BEST JOB EVER??


Some sort of Shinto priest kitsune thing going on here. I wonked up his eyes! Oh well. Expect to be seeing more of him in the future, possibly. And his friends! He will have so many friends.


Oh yeah, here's somthing from xmas. I'll try this idea again next year, but cuter and maybe with flat colours.


Aaaaand last thing for now. This is sort of a coat-of-arms tshirt design? Like, for an artist society of people who are sick of friends asking them to design wolf logos or paint dead ducks' portraits. You know. I know you know. I wonder if that slogan is coming off a little too acidic though. Feedback appreciated.




I'll have more when I can get a couple hours to myself to fix up some other stuff and get it all scanned in. Artdump #2, coming soon.

Oh, and I did end up making my own calender. Let's just say that next year I will be buying a calender.

I find myself looking at the prices of 2009 calendars and thinking "fuck if I'm going to pay $30 for one giant sheet of paper with lines on it."

I think that bit of A2 bristol card I bought for $2 the other day is about to dicover its true calling.