Blather, rinse, repeat

Blake on American Idol is slaughtering one of my alltime favorite songs evereverever: Mack The Knife. Why is this happening? Simon's going to slap him down.

So I've been drawing a while, right, because I haven't felt like writing in the last few days, and when I don't feel like writing but am still into my own little world, I do rappy drawings. I haven't done crappy drawings in maybe a year or so though, and I forgot how I ever did it. But here's the thing I'm noticing, though. I decided to paint it, as I always do, using OpenCanvas. As I'm painting, I realize I've got the shade drawn, the light in front of me off, the lights behind me on, and the screen turned all the way down so I'm almost looking over the top of it. I can't see the screen otherwise. I've got my glasses off because I have to get close to reduce the glare, but then when I back away I have to put them back on in order to see anything. Then when I turn the screen back up and turn the light on, the colors and depth both look totally different from what it just looked like. And I start to think, you know, all these times when people look at my computer paintings and tell me they're overpainted or underpainted or the colors and shadows are weird, I wonder, is this because I can't frigging see?

Just some mana'o.

WHY is Simon not slapping Blake down for massacring this song? WTF? And dude, Phil Stacey just OWNED. And the judges didn't like it? What's going on here? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Oh! My friend asked me to dance at a party a week from Friday. Whoa, Hula season is starting early this year. I wonder what I'll dance? :) Yay for parties. Yay for people allowing me to dance at them.

I have to go download "I Who Have Nothing" by Jordan Sparks and make it my new song along with "I'm Not That Girl."

Fairly normal Friday, except for one of the shadow kids keeling over in surgery today. (The shadow kids, as I call them, are high school kids that come by to shadow the vets, for career day or something.) Most of the kids get queasy or fainty when they see surgery for the first time, but this one actually hit the floor. It was my friend's boyfriend, too, a real cutie. I felt kind of bad for him. (And it's weird calling them "kids" when they are taller than I am. Aren't "kids" supposed to be little?)

Hula is cancelled for tomorrow, so I can sleep in a bit, then hit Kung Fu. Then home to clean the house, for TRICIA is up for the weekend and is coming to visit! So it's going to be Tricia, Kim and I, just like old times (and by old times I mean, like, a few months ago, before she moved away.)

Oh, so, yay for me, I got Advent Children yesterday. I promised myself I'd get to bed early last night, and that I'd just watch a bit, honestly, just, like, the deleted scenes, and then hit the hay. Oh yeah, right. I forgot how much I am in love with this movie. I sat there by myself, on my sofa with some pudding, just fanpoodling over Cloud. The dubbed voices are not as bad as I thought they were going to be. Steve Burton does all right by Cloud, I guess, and even Mena Suvari isn't as awful as I thought she was going to be (read: as awful as she is in KH2.) I couldn't believe my ears when they actually had Barett saying "foo'" a few times. Your'e kidding me! "Foo'"?! After all these years of trying to pretend that he was not, in fact, supposed to be Mr. T.? But what kills me is what they did to Cid. It's just plain awful. Cait Sith's accent was, uhh, confusing (Scotland? In Midgar?) but Cid's voice is just bad and wrong. In fact, it's badong.

In other geek news, the new Nintendo game system--you know, you thought it was going to be Revolution?--is now Wii. Pronounced "we," or, hell, let's be honest: "wee." Oh, this is going to be swell, when I am forced to buy Twilight Princess on the new system because of the SUPER SPESHUL extra features, and I have to tell my friends, "Don't call me, I'm playing with my Wii." Because, you know, geeks are too popular as it is, and they need something to make them less socially acceptable. WTF?

And speaking of WTF, I'm trying to post a drawing, and photobucket is down. I'm using the LJ scrapbook, but you know what, I'm not wild about it. I'll try photobucket again in a while. Ahh, here we are. ( Picture here if anyone wants to take a peek at it. )
That's just the original sketch. I thought that the Calabi Yau space was going to be a bitch to draw, but it wasn't that bad. Admittedly, I traced some of it. Although if I could draw a Calabi Yau on my own, I'd probably be getting pretty good at drawing dimensions--pun more or less intended. I colored this, or began to, anyway, in hopes that colors would make it look cool and mysterious and whatnot. As it happens, it looks like he's standing in front of a screensaver.

And I think he looks a little too feminine for my taste. Proportions seem wrong, too.

However, this is one of the only drawings I've done that I've deliberately named, as opposed to just thinking of any old thing because I had to call it something. This one is called "Can I get the door for you?" We'll see how it turns out if and when I finish it.

Well, I just watched an episode of Buffy ("Go Fish,) the one with the swim team,) and now maybe I'll head off to bed.

"Wii" indeed. >_>

ETA: David Byrne's journal. Interesting.

Preliminary sketch, the first of a series I hope to actually finish someday. For those of you who are just vomiting over the idea that I might be posting another pointless character sketch and have already decided that you're not even going to look at it (most of you, I suspect,) well, this is different.

( Remind me to never take on a task like this again anytime soon. What was I thinking? )

He's not supposed to be an anthro either, for godsakes. More like a spirit, like you might see in PetShop of Horrors. I was chatting with my Mom last night and I said that I'd been thinking about drawing all of my animals as a kind of fanciful spirit, like Count D would see. My Mom was all about the idea and thought it was pretty cool.

I've been staring at this thing with all the vines and lines for like two hours and I can hardly even see it anymore, so I'm not even sure if I like it yet. All I know is that it was complicated as hell to do all of this stuff.

Preview:




I redid that sketchydoodle I posted about last week (jaysus, what does a girl have to do to get people to even look at a crappy picture? Circle jerk with everyone on Elfwood? No thanks.) Anyway, I liked it in some ways, but found it kind of washed out looking. So I re-drew a few things and darkened a few things and added some lines. It's not bad, you know? I like this one. This is the uncolored version which I think I like better.

( Clicky for drawing. )

And because I can never leave things alone, I wanted to try to color it. My first attempt was a disaster. The second attempt, even worse. But finally I managed to get something I sorta like. It has that same washed out, pale look that I didn't like in the first version. But if I try to deepen the colors, then they tend to be too dark and bleed together, so that you can't tell black from brown from dark blue, and I don't like that look. 'Course, these things look dramatically different depending on which way I look at the screen, too. So it's not until I tilt my computer screen all the way down and look at it almost from the top that I can see the contrast. Maybe that's why I kept this one colored lightly.

Incidentally, that big old blob in the foreground is supposed to be a boulder. O_o I know, right?

( Clickitywhee for the colored version. )

And I have to admit, I feel kind of foolish posting drawings of the same damn characters that I've drawn for, what, three years now? And no one has read a word on them yet, or if they have, it was from the old stories. This is Jin. Does anyone still enjoy Jin? I still do. He crazy boy, cut you all up in the name of love and safety, smiling all the while, vanquish his wild worries, then watch the moon rise.

Not Sahrek Tamret, he registered numbly, but Jin Sehashi. He had a dagger in one hand, and curved blade that seemed to rest on the back of his other hand. He took a step towards Andolin, and Andolin involuntarily took a step back. He felt as if something had pushed him. Something cold and awful.
"You should never have come here," the man said in a surprisingly gentle tone. "You had so many opportunities to leave. Andolin Gaspare, why didn't you take them?"
Andolin tried to make some sort of answer, but couldn't. He didn't have an answer anyway; he couldn't even process the question. The words were so much noise in a room full of corpses and blood in unlikely places. He couldn't get past the fact that the killer had done it all so quickly. He had ripped all of these men apart *so quickly.*
The killer closed his eyes as if he were tired, or perhaps thoughtful. He kept them closed for a long enough time that it would have been possible for Andolin to use the dagger that he still had in his hand--even for him to throw it--but he didn't bother. The idea did occur to him, but so did the knowledge that he would miss. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. He felt that he was in the slow-moving reality of a dream.
"You should never have involved yourself with my brother," the killer said. He opened his eyes, and in them, Andolin saw almost childlike resentment. "What you do with Sahrek or anyone else, I suppose, is your own business. But why would you ask for death by threatening my brother? Why would you do that?" He suddenly ran his hands up his face and through his hair in a gesture of frustration, and laughed as if he simply could not believe the situation. The bloody knife on his hand left a streak of blood in his hair. "I don't understand it, Gaspare. Why would anyone do that?"


Jin!

I did this actually last night and colored it. Then I hated the way it looked colored, I noticed a bunch of mistakes, and I just sort of finished re-did it tonight.

I'm happy with the way I did the bamboo, and I sort of like his "Omigosh I am going to watch you die, how interesting," expression. I like the guy's hand. Also, wow, I like the angle. And the hair.

In fact, ( I would like this sketch totally if he didn't look quite so femmy. )

( Colored sketchydoodle, Leonard Cohen. )

I think you'd have to be really obtuse not to get that picture. The symbolism is so obvious that it's not even symbolism anymore. ;D


( It was nicer before I painted it, as usual. )

I am such a nerd. A nerd who can't draw hands. ^_^

Today I cleaned house and found I was pretty bored after that, so I decided to color that sketch that I did yesterday. It was kind of fun, and I colored it in two different ways.

( First try )

I felt the colors looked washed out, his eyes didn't look right, and his hair was too whispy. Everything ever written about James Hook has made the point, repeatedly, that he had really thick hair.

Then I doodled with it some more, and came up with ( this one: )

I darkened it up and added the stars. I highlighted the Lyra constellation because it is significant in JV Hart's novel, although I think it might have been cheesy of me to point it out like that. I wonder if anyone might have gotten it otherwise, though.

Also, I added the red in his eyes, though I don't think you can see it.

I still can't draw pants and probably will never be able to. Also, the guillotine looks like something out of an Escher painting. Sad to say, that was not my intention. I just have no sense of space or perspective.

Oh, the scene is when he's baiting Arthur Darling to follow him during their duel, and then leads him to the guillotine. I won't give away what happens next, but I know that I didn't capture the scene at all. James is out of his mind in this one scene and totally enjoying it. In my drawing he is far too calm. I meant for him to be beckoning his opponent to follow him, but instead it looks like he's just pointing to the sky. I guess that's all right, but it wasn't my intention.

As for his clothes, I just didn't know what to do. From what I could remember of the story (and I could have checked, but I didn't, sorry,) he would still be wearing the clothes he filched from the sailor, which I imagined were pretty plain. Plus I just didn't want to dress him like an Eton boy. Too complicated. ^_^

That guillotine is really messed up, isn't it? But I don't feel like fixing it.

( Quickie sketch of one of my favorite parts of the Capt. Hook novel. Spoiler free. )

I might color it, but that's going to be a good excuse not to write pain.

I realized when I didn't know which folder to stick this in, that this is the first time in over a year that I've drawn something that wasn't from my own crappy books. Maybe that's why no one cares! ;) Anyway, this is a well known character, an actual scene from a real, published book.

I guess the reason I usually only draw my own characters is because I have such a limited amount of talent and patience, and as no one else will draw what's in my head, I have to use every last ounce of said meager talent and patience to do my own stuff. But young, arrogant Jas. Hook inspired me and I couldn't resist.

Actually, this isn't my favorite scene, not by far. But I don't have the skill I need to draw what is my favorite scene from the book, so I will hope that some other obsessed fanartist who actually does have the talent will do it one day.

People who have talent take it for granted, and that's all there is to it.

Yesterday, when I put up that link to a file and impertently demanded that everyone in the world download it? Uhh, yeah, I actually made a huge mistake in that video clip. I left out a section of it and I didn't realize it until today when I looked at the folder and saw that one little left out clip hanging out. Uhhh, duh!

I know that two of you took the time to download and watch it already, and I so appreciate it. It's not a huge difference; just 49 extra frames that I did a few months ago and forgot I had. It's neat, but I used it in the other silly video clip I did.

I tried to get the music to match up on this one, but even though it worked just fine on MovieMaker as I was doing it, the timing actually got frigged up when I saved it. WTF, I ask you.

But anyway, give it a whirl if you haven't already.

Incidentally, there are two hidden messages in this that I forgot I put in there, and then consequently forgot to take out. How moronic. But now I think it's kind of neat. One of them is behind Sahrek when his necklace swings, and one of them is in Krislar's window towards the end.

You guys who downloaded this, thanks again. ^_^ That meant a lot to me.

( Majatsub4dom click4pics )

These things look so much darker and muddier on a web page than they do in my painting programs and on my desktop. Why is that?