Who knows when the next time I sign on, so happy thanksgiving to my anonymous watchers. And some not.

Okay. WELL! It’s week 12. OMIGAWD. That’s three more weeks… D: Semester ends December 19. Crazy. I’ve been ripping out my hair this entire semester, but a little reticent about moving on because I will be going back up to San Francisco after this. :O *gasp* Yeah. I’m looking forward to my astronomy class I signed up for. And it will be at night. I hope my pepper spray hasn’t expired yet. Hahaha…

So I’m moving on to acrylic painting, using it like watercolor. It’s actually harder for me because I screw up a lot. Acrylic is more permanent. :\ Hmm. I was going to take a picture of my own cockatiel, but this photo was nicer so, I’d more or less capture him because he doesn’t let people come near. It’s sad, and I’ve tried to reach out before, but it’s annoying that he keeps hissing at me. He’s funny as heck though.

Also finished the destroying New York comic page. I don’t feel like I’ve improved much with my clothed figure drawing because all my efforts go into my two other studio classes. Hmm… Kinda feel bad about that.

I did a scratchboard art, and it’s pretty fun. I had the Ampersand clayboard kind, and I used my leftover india black ink by Higgins and coated a black layer on top. And using some sharp tools, I scratched the surface away. If you happen to mess up, you can reapply ink or white gouache, when it’s dried. It’s pretty darn messy, I’d get some newspaper and put it underneath with all the dust that comes off. I copied and printed onto a watercolor paper, but I don’t think the laser inkjet was very good because I lost detail and also it started to turn greyish. :\ Well, I had fun with it anyway. I’ll probably do more scratchboard art when I have time….

For the last two weeks, I’ve been working on an illustration for Beauty and the Beast. The classic version is found here. I also researched apparently it was a story about losing your innocence. Of course it can’t be summed up like that, but Beast is sort of like the choice for Beauty to make. In some countries, Beast is depicted as a snake, but mostly he isn’t described and is left entirely up to the reader. My Beast came from that information and Bahamuth, so he is a beast-dragon. I left the horns on. Beast in Disney is kind of like some kind of Bull.

I think that my comic instructor is predjudice against anime/comic style.  Doesn’t like reducing people’s features to exaggerated shapes, likes squares and circles. Even the module said that it’s okay to have to go toward that style. Ugh… I’m a little iffy now, standard is what everyone goes for, but eccentric styling is not. I now realize, that I could be at odds with what that means…. I find it a little disconcerting that my pencil has to match exactly what a pen is suppose to do. If you’re going to erase the pencils, then the style should be how it is drawn. I kind of regret taking this class, but if I hadn’t taken it, I would not have been made to see things this way before. How disappointing.

Some of my watecolor labs from the past weeks. Illustration 2 is so hectic.. it sucks. :[ Work is neverending!

Been getting kind of lazy with updating this…. :\ Oops. Well, I am a major procrastinator, so I am constantly working to keep up. And also, if I stopped working for two days, it makes the work pile up more. So it sucks right now having 3 studio classes. On the other hand, I’m gdtting better at sketching people in public. I try not to attract attention so they don’t think I’m staring at them so intently — that is really hard. It makes me feel awkward and just don’t want a repeat of the same the thing 3 weeks ago.

Well, in this installment, been practicing with painting portraits with watercolor. I chose Natalie Portman to practice on. I finished the Ben and Jerry tshirt promo design last last week. The cherry is probably the prettiest part… haha.. And drawing people at the Temecula Promenade Mall. And a two page comic to practice inking. The comic was suppose to be from week 2, but I didn’t get a good grade on it because it wasn’t finished enough and I made the ending anticlimatic by showing the scarecrow too soon. Well, I fixed it before I inked in the words. Writing was never my forte. But using the ames lettering guide for the first time was interesting! I liked it. It was given to me, but I thought it was for making circles. Haha… well, now, I know why there were so many holes.

New Berserk chapter makes me curious about upcoming fight. I read Kentaro Miura’s interviews and it got me thinking about my own work schedule. He takes forever to release a new chapter and it’s been 10 years, but he’s got about 33-34 volumes out. Apparently, inking takes him a long time. I can believe that, I think pens are cool, but the amount of time for all that detail he does, yup, it’s going to take forever.. haha. But I think that if I am at a decent working place and I’ve got my own graphic novel going, I was born to be a comic artist.. haha I can really imagine myself committing to a story I’ve made. I don’t want to think of it as work anymore, because work, no matter what you do, that word takes the fun out of a hobby. So it is my career, yes, but I’m going to put that thought aside and pretend that’s something enjoyable and fun. Instead of tedious, harsh, and unthankful. (Well, maybe not the last one.)

Week three works. Sigh… I’m tired of the constant work… so very tired. It must be why I have a headache. My ice cream design color roughs need to be redone because its dull, but I got a good grade… it just needs more work… Blargh… 24 Hour Comics Day seems out of reach now. Now I know how Cinderella feels about completing all her chores. If it weren’t for a jury duty call, I wouldn’t be thinking too much about all the work. Stupid… -__-

As for the comic page, I didn’t know what my teacher meant by “Ningia” in the assignment: “A Motley Band of Gladiators Fighting the Vatican’s Secret ‘Ningia’ Army!” Someone comment and thought it might have been the Swiss Army that is the Vatican’s official army and goes back a long while. They’re garb is a little outdated, it’s way too colorful…

But everyone got a different genre, I’m glad I didn’t get the armed cheerleaders one…

Well, I’ve decided to do a magazine. I wonder how it would go? I’m really wanting it to succeed, in the sense that I and a group of people collaborated and did one. I’m not promising though, that it is going to great, just that we made a magazine together. I think some people miss the point sometimes when I ask to do group collaborations and give me excuses as if they cannot do a thing in the world when that’s entirely not true. The only reason starwardblocraft.com is dying right now is because of a lack of direction and leadership. But I’m not the peoples in charge and it’s not like I can say much to convince them. I think that everyone does have some time. I have time… I just waste it on playing games like Typing Mania, which I’ll have to say is improving my DVORAK typing abilities. That’s a productive and useful skill to have anyways, so I don’t think it’s a bad investment this time around… haha… I’m hoping to find more artists for the collab since I have found 4 writers and then myself that is 5. I am thinking, the more the merrier, for such a project. I feel quite passionate about it, I feel like I have to get it done, and I want to take people with me. I realized that I won that $5k scholarship 2 years ago because I had put in the commitment and effort. It also wasn’t coincidence that exactly 8 of us wrote the same ideas as each other because there were hundreds of people who applied to it. I’ve always been very lucky and thanking God for all of the things I’ve been given even if the first years of my life didn’t exactly have good experiences, but they were things I learned from none-the-less. Apparently, Oprah has had worse problems having been raped and miscarried, but she’s now living a luxury life. I always feel so otherworldly while everyone else is standing on the other side of a plane,  I suppose it’s time for me to cross that border.

In the coming week, I’d like to do these:

1. Finish painting my canvas bag
2. start learning Indesign
3. Finish scripting LM
4. attempt 24 hr comic day, but only if I have allowance time for it.
5. write a short story
6. start learning dreamweaver
7. read

And also, my memoir draft sux….

If I had known that wordpress how the gallery button worked on workdpress, I would have done this sooner instead of manually putting them in… sigh… Anyway, this week’s works. The skateboard images were due last night, unfortunately, I got a 503 error in my browser while trying to log in because too much traffic going in? That sucked… I would have made it… 11:35pm, I had 25 minutes to upload, such ample time too. So sad. I try not to make excuses when I turn in late things because of opportunities and chances. I suppose this answers one of my old questions about letting opportunity pass. But still, I think that some opportunities are facades that are truly out of reach. The supposed “missed opportunities” are more like lessons we learn about how to get the next opportunity that comes along. There will always be something to counter an excuse anyway, such as mine, what is the counter? “You had ample time, an entire week to do it. Spend time wisely.” Etc. I can’t say much about that because that’s mostly my inner voice chiding me about how I like to waste time by reading online comics and playing time-waste games like bejeweled. Even thinking about it makes me want to play….

Well, this week, I’m a little more ready to face my assignments. I’ve a real fear of failure so when I feel like the teacher could be mean and bot-like, it makes me not want to come to class and avoid it altogether…. Which I feel like is my illustration class, perhaps the teacher needs some warming up to. :\

So, it turns out that the website admins noted all the teachers that there was problems with logging in at 11:15pm to 12:15, so we got an extension of time. Whee! So there wasn’t much to worry about. I wasn’t worried, but I was resolved to my fate….

Watercolour properties chart. What is this for? It is to figure out how your watercolour paints (in the tube, not the palette) well react. How lightfast it is, transparent, or how it stains. I learned a lot doing this, it was tiring though. This was also my first time knowing that you had to stretch watercolour paper. I never knew! I always bought the packs, but it the paper buckles when wet.

For those of us not in the know, to stretch watercolour paper, you need an art board made for stretching watercolour paper, special craft tape (gummed brown tape) or staples (they are less pretty), and watercolour paper that is under 260 lbs. You wet the paper in cold water, never warm, front and back, place it onto the art board and tape or staple all the sides down. Any other tape other than the above won’t work because it the adhesive can’t stick, I know because I did it with my drafting tape… -_- When I stapled, it created indents, so if you can’t get tape, I suggest cutting a large piece and then either cut off all sides or hide the ugliness under a mat, if you plan to do that.

The above comics were for my comics class. It’s anecdote from when I was 6 years old. I had met a cat that hung around my grandma’s place and I was always curious about it. One day, I came upon it and then sat next to it. I noticed it had a scar, and I wondered if it hurt, so I tried to touch it. It didn’t hurt, but I imagined that it was painful, and I felt very bad. He was a very good kitty though… very nice. I remember it to this day.

Well, I’m getting an itch to really do a playing card deck, but I have no other artist friends to collaborate with. It’s just a project that keeps coming into my mind. I know I’m doing an android girl series, but I’m also thinking about doing a fairy-tale kind of deck from all the folklores in the world. So it’d be nice to know people are interested in it. I just want to see it come to fruition within a year instead of yearsss.

I’ve been having this lapse in judgment lately as to whether I should pick up an mmorpg game or something. It’s not that I’m bored, but I have this urge to play a game. I don’t want to get into WoW, it seems like that’s what most people are doing. It’s probably the very top picked mmo, this is opinion, but also because I’ve been looking at a variety of mmos to play, and this one seems to always show up at the top of the list. I’m not surprised because Blizzard is probably a multi-million dollar company now. $15 x 8 million (plus) players, that’s a lot of revenue per month. The next choices are perhaps Eve or Final Fantasy XI, some others that I cannot remember… Guild Wars is cheap since you only pay once with no monthly fees. I am thinking about paying the $20 bucks, but of course there are expansions to consider…. Maplestory is old news and too much grinding. All the other free mmos seem cheap and graphics are second rate… hahaha… Yeah, I don’t know what I would choose. Although the Shin Megami Tensei has a free mmorpg but even if I wanted to play any of these games, I’d have to install windows xp or vista in and dual boot. Agh… I’m feeling lazy about that. And another neg point to Macs.

And I also realize I’m just neglecting my blog for a little bit. My sister just got married this weekend. Whoo~ I had to dress up all pretty and wear dresses. Getting in touch with my more feminine side… since I have neglected it for so long.

I’ve also spent about $400 in art supplies this semester. The list gets longer, and the expenses more costly. I should not have to buy anything anymore! Unless I run out… I have so much extra stuff like paints, pigment liners, pens and nibs, inks, notebooks, pencils, canvas, paper pads, newsprint, and the list goes on. I hope I can take a majority of this up to SF because it would suck to have to pay for it twice. I also really don’t like the shoppers at Art Supply Warehouse in Orange County. Like, they’re so disrespectful and retarded. I never meet or see them, but they leave their carbon footprint behind. (Figuratively speaking). I just bought a bristol vellum 11×17 comics pad that was suppose to have 24 pages but some fucker ripped out a page and one of the corners was torn. So basically, I didn’t check the quality and they couldn’t do a return because (I was too truthful and) it was no longer sellable. #$%! I should have lied and got my money back…. I didn’t even need it. But I have been honest for so long in my life that it feels crappy to lie. I can’t help it, even though I got the short end of the stick. And other examples include opened containers and used looking containers. Like, wtf, you SOB, think about the next person who’s gonna buy it or maybe even the store.

But I can’t say that I haven’t ever returned a borrowed item in worse condition. The hardest to keep new is a new book being tossed around in a backpack. You’d have to put it in a saran wrap or something to keep the scratches on the surface. There was a girl who I lent one of my books to, and it came back to me really worn… Most of my books are in “like new” or almost new condition, but this one was just so crappy. I stopped letting people borrow my things…. This brings me back to memories in elementary, middle school, and high school where I lent some girls my markers, crayons, color pencils, anything to color with. It went kind of like this:

Nowadays, I just let people use my cheap stuff like the tempera paint and those watercolors in a box thing. I do get annoyed when my dad randomly takes my good staedtler pencils and uses them to write with…. Problems like this, only artists can understand each other… Sigh.

I really like these “Wow! brushes” I got from the text book, but I barely read the book… well, it’s useful, and simulates real brushes.

This reminds me, it takes about half of your hair to tie it up into a bun. Sailormoon has tons of hair. I would also like to comment that Sailor Chibi should also be even longer because her hair is a cone thing… but one never discusses this aspect in anime. It doesn’t matter… haha…

It seems that the people whom I comment on livejournal always ends up removing the OpenID and thus, people who don’t have livejournal can’t comment. What is up with that? Do I bite? Do they think I spam? WTF, that makes me question if I should care about people who don’t really care about others. When you go over to someone else’s blog, unless it is a flame comment, then the commenter is trying to be friendly. So by doing that, that person from another blog, like wordpress, or even blogger will feel excluded. And thus, making them angry. I wouldn’t bother returning at all.