(Source: immiqrant, via deartrickster)
Happy New Year~!
(my resolutions: lose weight and update Tumblr often. Don’t know if those two goals are really compatible with one another, but we’ll see. =D )
Still Alive!
Well, I had written out a lengthy post when my browser just decided to stop typing in the dialogue box, and one tap of the backspace key lost everything except the title. Uuuuugh. Well, here’s a quick, un-fun version of what I had posted, broken up into jot notes for your eye-consuming pleasure:
- Moving to Barrie. Crazy circumstances:
- Kevbutt’s mum got an offer on a house that she couldn’t refuse in the middle-of-nowhere.
- Kevbutt was laid off his job because the lumber yard literally ran out of work. Thanks, after-effects of the recession!
- I have a full-time salary job with at least a bit of security to it.
- Hence, we’re going to live in Barrie because it’s affordable and Kev can find plenty of different full-time jobs to try out until he finds something he likes. He’s currently working in landscaping, despite being allergic to everything outdoors.
So, that’s the jot note experience. I’ve been caught in a wave of finding a place, signing the lease for a place, getting all the hydro/water/gas/cable etc. accounts set up for said new place, renting a U-Haul truck (very concerned about this, know many people who’ve been screwed over by U-Haul…) etc. etc. etc..
So now we’re in a flurry of packing, where I’m beginning to realize that living in the same room for over 14 years has equaled out to me having a large amount of crap I’d forgotten about stashed away. I typically purge my room every couple of years, but there’s definitely stuff that managed to escape an eternal hell in a landfill.
It’s going to be an insane week, and having to spend Tuesday night trapped at the registration desk for my work’s film premiere is not helpful time-wise. Don’t get me wrong— I’m very proud of the accomplishment that the documentary truly is, but holy crap is it ever just bad timing for me. Taking time for this update is like a sanity break for me before the storm approached. Friday evening is when the move begins, and Saturday is when we officially have the house, so it’s just going to be a pile of madness until probably a few weeks after the move. I’ll do my best to update and keep a record of how the move goes. I have many friends who have recently dealt with this same stress of moving, so I know that Kevbutt and I are not alone in this chaos. Wish me luuuuck~~
I am soooo lazy. I distinctly remember setting up a schedule to get this one done in a matter of just a few hours… Spend an hour one night doing the sketch/digital line drawing, then an hour the next night filling in solids and choosing shader colours… Then the next night shading. Two months later, it’s finally done! Got a whole pile of these on the “to draw” list… Should really get to work on that. Lazylazylazy.
Yesterday was a day with both beginnings and endings, happiness and sadness. After four years of furiously writing papers and reading until my eyes stopped functioning, I finally graduated university and obtained my Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English. However, it’s hard to celebrate after waking up to melancholy events.
At 7am, the phone abruptly woke me up. Dad had called to let me know that my old, stroked-out hamster, Squeebz McGee, was not doing so well. As I’d mentioned several weeks ago, at some point a few months ago Squeebz had a stroke after attempting to hibernate on one particularly chilly night. So, when Dad called, I assumed that it was a similar situation. I had moved the cage downstairs the night before because we were insecticiding the hall upstairs, where Squeebz was originally located. He didn’t seem to mind the change in locale— probably because it’s impossible for him to see outside of his massive cage. By the time I got to him in the morning after Dad called, he was inside of his house laying still with his back legs in a strange, uncomfortable-looking sideways pose. He was still breathing, and his eyes were occasionally opening and closing, similar to how he was when he tried to hibernate. So I took him out of the cage, wrapped in a towel Dad had left downstairs for him, and sat with him while he warmed up. As I held him and pet him, he’d occasionally move his front paws or open his eyes, but it was like he was struggling to fall asleep rather than to stay awake. After sitting with him for an hour it was pretty clear that he wasn’t hibernating. His eyes, which were normally black with a slight red tint, had become tinged with grey in the center, and his whiskers had stopped twitching. At that point, Mom and I moved his cage into the living room, where it was warm, and I set him down in the cage wrapped up in the towel with his nose peeking out, in case there was still some life left in him.
By the time I left for convocation I knew he had died, but these things are just hard to come to terms with in such an unexpected timeframe. While he had been slowing down over the past few weeks, he never seemed sickly or near death— he just seemed to be out of energy, despite his determination to go on his wheel or climb about his cage. It was clear that he was frustrated by the results of his stroke, where he couldn’t coordinate his movements properly, but he never seemed like he was suffering. He just seemed like typical Squeebz, lazily flopping onto the wheel and then relocating his food all around the cage. He was the same hamster that I had spotted three years ago in the pet store with Kev, huddled up in a ball in a room filled with screaming birds and children eager to poke and prod. He was the same rodent that bit me multiple times, yet eventually calmed down when he realized that I was the bringer of food and the outside world.
I didn’t even think about it until I got home from grad, when I was able to creep up to the cage and touch him, all curled up with his eyes shut and the towel still wrapped around him, exactly as he was when I had left that morning. After three years of antics, escapes, and a slowly-forged friendship, he was gone.
When Dad got home he offered to bury Squeebz for me, so I followed him outside holding onto the towel with Squeebz wrapped up tightly inside. At nearly twenty-three years old, I was sobbing like a ten-year-old, not wanting to let go of my tiny pet. But it was over, and all I have now are a few photos and memories of a friend who can never be replaced.
Separation Anxiety
School is over. Over. Done. Gone. So last week.
So… Errr…. Now what? Oh dear, oh dear.
It’s been less than a week since I submitted my final paper, and already I’ve run out of things to do. I’ve been drawing, playing some games, and spending time with the boyfriendular, but this apathy is starting to sink in. As of next week I’ll be working full-time at the office, so savouring what little time I get to myself during this week is at the top of my priorities. My job is great and all, but I work with my mother, and while I do love her dearly, there’s only so much time one should spend with their own mother in a workplace setting. Sooo, I will be there while I’m needed for a few months during the summer, and then I shall start my frantic job search in a locale that Squirrelly and I will decide upon at a later date.
ANYHOO. My to-do list for the rest of this year so far:
- Work. Workworkwork. Get money. Saaaaaaaave.
- Attend graduation. Weep with my university friends, even though I know I will see them all again because they’re awesome and I’m not going to lose touch with them. Not this time.
- Take and pass my G license test. Not looking forward to this, but my current license expires in August, so it must be done.
- Get a new job in decided-upon locale. Not looking forward to this, either.
- Move ooooout. Locale is in the air at the moment: Aurora, Stouffville, Newmarket, or Barrie. It all depends on if the Squirrel is eventually willing to change jobs. My current vote is Barrie. Despite the ongoing battle it has been to start driving and whatnot, I would gladly switch to public transit once my car dies (or when gas finally bankrupts me), and I desire a locale that will allow me to make this switch.
- Get in shape. Currently in love with Wii Fit, but work schedule means it will be replaced with walks. POWER WALKS. To that tune from Rocky (the instrumental one, not Eye of the Tiger. Although I will load that one onto my iPod as well, as backup).
- Do NaNoWriMo. I WILL FINALLY BEAT YOU, NOVEL MONTH. YOU WILL BE MINE.
The rest is still open, but those are my main goals. Time to move forward, even if it’s only an inch at a time.
I am having some serious fun with both Paint Tool SAI and this new style. After sifting through a bajillion styles of chibi-styled manga art on both DeviantArt and Google, I’ve drafted up this style that sort of involves a circle, a bean-like triangle, and pointy legs (which are pulled from my old doodles of my fictional minion, the zombie sheep). Having found the marker tool in Paint Tool SAI has also led to piles of fun. I’ve got some more sketches in this style on the go, where I’m playing with the addition of hands because, while I love the pointy feet, I’m not keen on the flipper-like arms.
Beware- friends may soon find themselves done up in this style, because I’m not going to give up on it until I’ve got it the way I like, and that means I’m on the lookout for subjects xD
On another note, I am now freeeeee from university, and will hopefully be holding my undergraduate degree at some point next month. I will be working full-time this summer at my current job, but hopefully by the end of the summer my boyfriendular and I will will relocate and I can find something elsewhere (that isn’t a McPukes or minimum wage retail wench job, but I know I may be asking too much at that x_x). Busybusybusy!
A History of Doodling…
Today’s been a very ponderous sort of day. This morning, while doing my daily routine of checking a handful of sites for updates, I noticed that a friend of mine had put up a journal entry on her deviantart page about the frustration that comes with trying to keep drawing as a hobby while life is ridiculously busy, namely any time after high school. So, right from the start of the day I’ve been thinking about my own views on art as a hobby. Then, while on the phone with my boyfriendular, he got me to order the new Wacom Bamboo pen+touch tablet for him because it was on sale for a pretty sweet price, so the train only continued from there on out. And now we’re here.
Drawing is one of the few things in life I have never fully let go of, although at times I’ll admit I’ve tried. I don’t mean drawing in the kiddy sense of scribbling and tossing it up onto the fridge for all to see as a glorious beacon of creativity- rather, the type of drawing where every piece attempts to be a step toward improvement. A daring, carefully planned sort of drawing, where the end goal is to able to pull whatever is in my head out into a form where I can show other people and they’ll actually understand what everything is, for the most part. While I still feel that I’m quite early on in my adventure of art, I think it’s time for me to reflect on exactly what the journey to get here has been like.
My first really memorable foray into trying to improve me ability to draw was when I was quite young, probably around 6 or 7. I was disturbingly obsessed with the piss-poor dubs of Sailor Moon that aired on one of the dozen or so channels the tv at my parent’s old farmhouse got, and this is what really sent me into a frenzy of tracing and trying to duplicate every little bit of what I saw on the screen. A friend of mine at the time appeared to have a natural knack for drawing the characters. I remember my jealousy vividly. So, the fight began, and my uphill battle became very steep and much more tremendous than anticipated very quickly.
As I made my way into high school, I began to take my art more seriously, even though I knew I still really sucked at it. My drawings were boxy, far from clean, and ridiculously basic. I could see what I wanted to draw perfectly in my mind, but my hand would always lock up and everything would just dim out as soon as pencil touched paper. The frustration was reaching the level of stressful, but I hadn’t given up yet. Two things happened in my first year of high school that really serve as pivotal moments of how my own art has developed to this day: I met several other very passionate artists who were in the same boat as I was, and I also tragically dated a very narcissistic, selfish boy who put down any of my attempts at art in a way that made his own bland work seem better to himself. It was his belittling of my art that drove me to my first attempt to walk away from the world of drawing entirely. Once he was out of the picture, I credit my handful of wonderfully artistic friends as the only reason I had to get back into art. My dear friend Skye even has several of her own webcomics and is working toward getting into the comic industry, which is where she truly belongs (see her stuff here).
My first tentative steps back into art involved a lot of technology that hadn’t been at my disposal beforehand. My grandparents gave me my first Wacom tablet (graphire3, so old now!) for my sixteenth birthday, during a time when I was on my hiatus from the art world, so when I got back into the swing of things I became hooked on the ability to make digital drawings. This is an era where I still have most of my old drawings backed-up- sadly, not much is still left from any time before this. Once I started into digital art, I began working on my anatomy skills and basic perspective knowledge (which both are still in beginning stages to this day, sadly), and so it’s been a steady climb in the same direction ever since.
After high school, I began to take an interest in non-anime formats, mostly because I had become a constant creeper of ConceptArt.org’s forums. With anime and manga style still very dear to my heart, my works have started taking a turn for a more mixed approach that is still in a very confused state. Most of my finished works certainly fit into the category of anime/manga, but a lot of my sketches are something with hints that range outside of those styles. I’ve since gotten a new tablet, the 2nd generation Wacom Bamboo Fun medium (the thing is huge), so everything’s changing at this point in time for my art. With university coming to an end I’m more and more aware that I’ll have time to actually work on my art skills, and perhaps become more serious in what I draw rather than just drawing as a hobby. I want to make my own comics, or even just illustrations for the stories I write, and take it to that next level.
Well, that’s the dream at least xD Sorry to bore anyone with such a long post- it’s more for reference for my future-self, really.
I will be doing a Tumblr giveaway for my upcoming art book, “Etchings”! The giveaway will end on April 1st, which is also when the pre-order period for the book ends.
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To enter into the draw, just reblog this post! But please do NOT edit out any of the information here.
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I will take down the list of rebloggers and pick two randomly. The winners will receive a free copy of “Etchings” when it is released this summer. Shipping to anywhere in the world will be paid for.
I will be contacting the winners through their Ask box for their shipping info. If I don’t get a reply within 24 hours, I will draw a new winner. If the winner has already pre-ordered the book and made the payment, you can either receive a second copy for free or I will refund your original payment through Paypal.
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If you are also interested in pre-ordering the book, here is the pre-order information post.
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Good luck and have fun! ヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ”
(Source: myrollingstar)
