Nautilus and Ragdoll

Whooo. Concept for "creature" turned out well. I picked the naiad (or nyad) character from the book The Lightning Thief. I did like 10 different ideas, only one had tentacles....and the class liked that best. Works for me. I actually visualize the character to be more bubblely and part of the water but this was more fun. So here's the turnaround character sheet:

See it bigger and better here.

I based her on a Nautilus, and it was quite fun. This is what they really look like:



They are awesome. Funfact: they can live to like 20 years. Poor octopi only usually live about 3 years.

Annnnd here is the color final. Haven't had a crit on her yet, but I'm pretty happy with it so far:


Bigger and better here.

For my children's book class I'm doing an information book on squids and octopi. So far turning out well, have one finished spot illustration, and it look nice. Might have a scan of that up soon.

Oh yeah. Halloween costume turned out well:


Cheapest halloween ever. Dress was like 2 dollars at the salvation army, and most of the fabric my roommate let me have for everything else. And I handmade the doll. Her name is Susan. :P



Bleh. Slow day in Sr Illustration. I'm ready to go onto learning about the new project, but yeah....this class is rarely on schedule. Lunch time though! Es-cap-e!

My Concept of Hades.

I have realized, from my eating habits, that once I am extremely poor and managing my budget like Scudge McDuck (except I won't have enough money to step into, let alone swim in) that living off of $1 lunch meat and noodles in various incarnations will not be hard for me. Today I had a small bag chips for lunch (at work, around 2) and some nacho chips with what was left of some cheese in a jar. Of course, I had massive amounts of caffeine throughout the day, I should take that into my expense account once I start paying off loans.

Anyway. My concept class is going well, now that we are onto character designs and not buildings. Out of my drawings Hades was chosen, so here is my Hades (from the book The Lightning Thief) character sheet.



Novak wanted us to play with dressing our gods in modern and Greek cloths, so Hades here is wearing a toga like shirt and business pants and shoes. And he has gauges in his ears, and two rings (one wedding ring, one just for bling) and black nail polish for some more goth. :P We only needed 5 full figure images, but I threw in the bust shot because I was having too much fun.



Novak really liked it, but we have to take a full figure image to color, so he choose this one:



The Lightning Thief Hades is described in the book much like how I would describe my boyfriend (well, besides the cruelty). So guess who was my model? :P It was a fun photo shoot, he's a good model, and only laughed hysterically a couple times while I tried to get him to pose like he was angry.

In other news my Halloween costume is underway. Still need some more supplies, but everything is planned out, and my dress is cut up correctly. It should turn out well. :D

Oh, bought this bizarreity today:



He's so....freakin' weird. He's a neopet, and for the record, I think neopets are dumb, and making stuffed animals of your fake online pets that you'll just neglect in a month is really dumb. But...he was just too weird to not like. You can never have too many funky stuffed animals, right?

Children's Theater Pamphlets

So here are the finals from my illustration studio class. My favorites is Red, but I like Aladdin as well. Watercolor and some gauche.






Even though I wasn't too happy with being one of the students stuck with Raggedy Anne and Andy (no one wanted to really do that one), I think mine turned out well. Bob liked the concept a lot. Plus, it gave me the idea for my Halloween costume. :D Going to be a rag doll, and haven't decided how beat up it's going to look. Or how bloody. Went to the Salvation Army and bought a good dress to start messing with.

Anyway, these watercolors, along with the rest of the classes, are being sent to a theater and they will pick 11 to use for their pamphlets. Not getting my hopes up, but I'm feeling mine are just as likely as anyones else's to be chosen. We may know by Friday....

It's OCTOBER! And Here's A New Vector.

I like Halloween, to put it mildly.

Working on lots of watercolor stuff for school, but made a vector on my own, since Charlie was so fond of my other ones. Some day I will have two portfolios, one for the vectors, one for the traditional watercolor. For now I have to concentrate on one area. Curses. So I'm doing vectors in my spare time (Read as "at 2 AM").

And now I have this:


Which came from this doodled in a notebook while working on my Red Riding Hood watercolor school piece:



This is about the same size as the original doodle.

The wolf idea came from various sources, some personal, but one inspired by the 10th Kingdom miniseries where the wolf is mostly human.

I always feel disappointed seeing my vectors not in an ai file. No matter what I do they are distorted in some way. Sigh. Here the colors are a bit off. The colors are more vibrant here: http://roguehobbit.deviantart.com/art/Red-99563189 though more likely to be ripped off so thus the giant watermark on the full size version. You can also see the full thing there.

But I'm pretty happy with the final ai file. I had a lot of fun with shapes and colors and flatness of perspective which I just can't capture with watercolor. Hopefully I'll have more vector ideas and time to do them. Must work on Halloween costume as well though...

Tapping into something greater and more terrifying.

This blog had deteriorated from professional to personal awhile ago, so I don't see a problem with smacking the shit out of my brain and letting whatever falls out land here.

We were discussing muses in Mythology the other day. Teacher asked if we believed that whatever we created, if it came from us. I said "There's inspiration" and he asked me what I thought that was. I said well according to the handout, that inspiration was the muses. The question then came to what we ourselves believed. I've thought about it. I think it's pretty egotisitical too assume there's nothing out there to tap into, that it all comes from our pitiful minds and greedy aspirations. But as to what....fuck if I know.

I get into "funks", where I just want to DO and be and run around. In those funks I'm restless and prone to freak outs. I want out and in and away. I want to talk about shit that actually matters, with people that actually think beyond their petty problems and insecurities and hobbies (I'm not throwing stones, I have my own load of insecurities and problems but sometimes they fade into the gray and other things become more relevant). Jason's the only one to witness or hear about these, as he was in the position of trust. He doesn't understand them though and I just confuse him.

It's hard to function as a human when you get into those "moods". No one gets you, and that they don't frustrates you to no end. You're just moody and emo to them. I adjust and hide behind a facade. I only know of one person years ago that had these depressed epiphanies, and he wasn't able to explain fully to me either what was wrong when I pleaded to know. Wrong with him, me, everyone. And then, I wasn't able to understand. I think I asked "How can you live like this?"

Heh.

Well, you don't. I pass in and out, and when I'm in I press my headphones so close to me and paint. Sometimes you need the music not just loud but so close to your brain that it's raping your eardrums and you and it are the only things that matter. It's not even the music, the music is a gateway, or an exit. And that's what matters. A way to block out the dribble and inane conversations around you and just think.

I'm guessing this is why I have my love of graveyards, and just sitting there for hours. If the people around you are still thinking, you can bet it's about more profound things then you'll ever be able to tap into.

This probably makes no sense. But it needed out.

Hey, look at that. It's already passing out of my mental system.

Maybe some new art next time kids.

The 1st 95 pages of Twilight: A Review.

And you thought the next post would be about art. :P Oh you sillies.

Warning: Lots of run-on sentences, Bold text, and parenthesis.
____

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

...

Ugh.

When I first heard about this book, and it's sequels, it was through my little sister. She wanted me to read them, but as I was busy with school finals the copy she lent me ending up being buried under my homework (literally and figuratively). Then I went on to read other things and forgot about it. Until I joined a Facebook application called "Flair".



In case you don't know what Flair is, I will explain. It's basically a cork board for your Facebook profile page, where you add pins with witty phrases or lolcats to it. Or whatever else you desire. You can even make your own "Flair" and submit it so other people can add it to their boards. I found Flair to be pretty enjoyable until the shear number of inane Twilight flair on EVERY page nearly drove me insane.

Because the people who post Twilight Flair are not the most intelligent of the human species they mostly revolved around the apparent gorgeousness of the book's male characters. Because of the obsession of apparently every preteen girl in existence who had access to Facebook I am sad to say I started to judge the book by it's fans. This happened to me with Harry Potter as well, which I eventually got over and read, and while I don't find to it to be the best children's/young adult series, it is enjoyable. But I digress.

Because I knew nothing of the book's characters besides what was spewed on the digital pins I began to form my own idea of what the characters must be like. Edward Cullen's fans made Flair that mostly revolved around his looks and politeness, that he owns a Volvo (Mmkay), prefers brunettes and pwns Jacob Black (whoever that may be). Also, he sparkles. So the obvious conclusion I came to was the Ed must be a very handsome gay vampire. Seriously. The only males I know that have ever sparkled were/are gay. I dare you to find a straight male that sparkles.

For Bella the only conclusions I could come to were that she was clumsy, a Virgo (like myself), and she had a penchant for punching werewolves in the face. All well and good I guess. For Jacob Black all I could imagine was that he must be some sort of wimpy asshole, since nearly EVERYONE seemed to hate him, except a few very lonely pro-Black Flair pin makers. "Wimpy" because evidently a gay sparkly guy seemed to be able to own him, over and over. Or maybe the two were in a S&M type relationship.

The only other character I saw I pin for was Alice Cullen, and the pin said "Alice Cullen is my best friend". So I guess that makes her an all around friendly good type of person, at least to the creator of the pin.

But now I must re-advise my views of some of these characters, based on what I have read so far. Why am I reading the book that the fans of made me hate, you may ask. Well dear reader I entered an agreement with one of my friends to read them, if she read Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy (my favorite Fantasy books). In order to spread the awesome-ness of Nix, I will read as much swill as is necessary (plus, I ran out of new books to read, had already re-read Sabriel, and Twilight was just sitting around glowering at me)

I have only read up to 95 pages of Twilight and thus can only change my views on several characters. I do realize that if the book has any character growth at all (doubtful) my judgments so far are not quite fair, but don't worry, I will re-advise my opinion later if it becomes necessary. Onward!

Edward Cullen: I find him really, really annoying. If I met this person in real life I would probably end up smacking him. (Or at least avoiding him as much as possible, since smacking a vampire is not the best idea. Especially one that runs around in the daylight and has legions of fangirls to do his dirty work). His smugness bothers the hell out of me, and his obvious enjoyment of Bella's obsession with him makes me wish the romantic lead was one of the dim witted non-mythical species of males that populate Forks' high school. I don't care if you're the reincarnation of Adonis, being handsome is no excuse for being an ass. I prefer my original take on him.

Bella Swan: is basically a Mary-Sue. If you are unfamiliar to the term then you haven't read enough fan fiction (I used to write fan fiction. Shuddup). A Mary-Sue is an original character that some geeky writer makes up to inhabit the world of his or her obsession (be it Lord of the Rings or X-Men: Evolution). A Mary Sue is usually a wonderfully intelligent (or at least what the writer perceives as intelligent), beautiful girl with a couple odd quirks/features. And most importantly: Every male in the story falls in love with her.

This is Bella. Her odd quirks are that she is weirdly pale (even growing up under insane sunlight for most of her life has done nothing to darken her skin) and seems to not quite fit in with her peers. Also, she is adorably clumsy. But she is obviously beautiful because as of page 95 FOUR males have shown interest in her, and three have asked her to the school dance. Yes, I am counting. Considering the four males are the only males that have been introduced to the reader and talked to Bella, that's a lot of males considering this isn't a fan fiction, and is a book you're supposed to consider seriously. Well, as serious as you can take any book about hot teenage vampires. But as Mary-Sue's go, Bella isn't really a pain to read about.

Jacob Black: Haven't encountered him yet. So I must continue considering him a wimpy asshole until he is proven otherwise.

Alice Cullen: So far all I have read of her is that she is tiny with black spiky hair, and she looked on disapprovingly as Ed saved Bella from being crushed by a mini van. Well. Doesn't seem to0 friendly, but you never know. Maybe she just doesn't like Mary-Sues.

All the other characters at this point have only been named and not met by Bella OR are not vampires or werewolves or are not the main female character and so do not matter at all.

Alright, now that we have the characters established thus far, I can move on to the book overall. It pretty much reads like it was written for 16 year old girls (and younger) by a verbose 16 year old girl, who has a slightly above the average teenage intelligence.

Well there you have it, my opinion of Twilight thus far. I may continue my review if I am annoyed enough. See ya.

Erm. Yeah. Vectors!

Like all my "journals" throughout my life, my updating has been random, with bouts of renewed interest. Lately whenever I've felt like maybe posting something (like more art, imagine that) or ranting about This, That and the Other I've been dissuaded by the fact that I doubted anyone actually read this, besides one person who I would rather didn't know any more about my daily life. Also, I'm lazy.

But apparently I'm interesting enough to have VerveEarth e-mail me. Of course they want me to advertise for them, which I have (look at the widget. Look at it!). But if this gets my blog any more attention so much the better, because maybe some day someone will see some actual art and want to hire me. So on the off chance of that happening, I'm willing to add a widget for the chance of more (positive, not creepy thank you very much) attention.

It's summer, whoo. All jr.s have to have a "mentorship" over the course of the summer, and I pestered Jack Unruh to be my mentor (http://www.jackunruh.com/home.html) and he agreed. The poor man. So I'm working on that currently, we have to complete at least one project under our mentor's tutorledge. If I don't frick up it should turn out pretty awesomely. As soon as I scan in and send in the sketch to Jack I'll....I was about to lie. I may or may not put in extra effort and post it here. Ooooh, suspense. Will she or won't she?

Alright, some arting. Besides the mentorship and some emo-ness, I've been making happy vectors.







The pandas are from my Maya class, we had to design a room, and make some art using an Adobe product to put on the wall. Bleh. I like my octopus. If you want to see these bigger, and some other stuff, go here: http://roguehobbit.deviantart.com/ Maybe I'll get around to posting some of the watercolors I did at the end of the year. Mm. I should. I want to do a giant acrylic painting of the octopus vector, I think it would just be cool to have that on a wall and have it attack some poor smuck's eyeballs upon entering the apartment. Perhaps after the mentorship is over.

Currently I'm watching a group of young 19-20 year old males play Pixel Junk Monster. It's rather amusing. Watching them gathered around the tv on the floor playing a cute game while cursing at towers and insulting each other, I mean. Though the game is fun too (dancing on towers I can do). My amusement may be due to the fact that it's 6:30 in the morning, but hey.

Oh, I caved and am whoring some vectors on cafepress merchandise. Care to buy a button or t-shirt and help me buy more supplies? :D? http://www.cafepress.com/roguehobbit

Alright, I'm finished blabbing for now. Laters (but how much later no one knows...do doo doooo).

Snow Day

What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die from?


You will be smothered under a rug. You're a little anti-social, and may want to start gaining new social skills by making prank phone calls.
Take this quiz!

Rugs are fun.

Woke up this morning and checked if my school was open, since it was supposed to be pretty bad out today. It was closed. I blinked at it, and then called the school to be sure. WGAL wasn't lying. So I told Trisha school was closed, and then I went back to bed. Weird dreams, and at one point I woke up trying to breathe. Ug, I hate being sick and stuffy. I read my Edward Gorey book. Quite depressing, but loved the illustrations. I want to doodle some of his creatures he put in this one ("The Hapless Child").

Inspired by this guy's work :http://michaelpaulus.com/gallery/v/character-Skeletons/ I've started drawing monster skeletons. I love bones. Soon as I have more of a collection I'll try and put some up here. Been thinking of getting a smaller sketch book, since I like to work small with ink. Have work tomorrow, but I'll get to sleep in. I like sleep. I had sleep today but it still feels like I need more. Always. It's like I'm in a constant state of sleep depervation. After work I think I may get my ears pierced, if I'm not too out of it. I've never had my cartilage pierced, and I've heard varying accounts of if it's painful or not. Let's help I'm not queasy.

AWOL Teachers and A Small Encouragement

Quote of the day so far: "16 grand a year and I can't get a thumb tack?" A classmate ranting about this school's lack of supplies.

There is some nice things about snow. Sneakers make a satisfying "cruunch" noise when walking on the snow, and sneakers usually only squeak. But it's cold. Boots, some gloves that actually have fingers and another layer were my consensus to the weather today, but I should have included ear muffs. Anywho.

Our teacher didn't show up today. Can't chalk up too much sympathy for the man, who is sick, because I'm sick. But him not being here is kinda a good thing. My class all wanted to run away when we discovered he wasn't showing up, but our "clients" are here to check our sketches. Our assignment is to do a cover for PENNAG's magazine. Yay. Agriculture. Barns are so fun to draw. :/ Even knowing that a lot of people wanted to leave. You can tell our dedication to this project is high. But we trooped up to the other illustration class, and we had our sketches reviewed by the representatives. I would like to leave now. But I think Ellen, the other classes teacher is going to tell us what we should have for next week, and then my class can skedaddle. Hopefully.

I was walking down the hall and noticed a piece from my Alternative Illustration class on the wall. Then I noticed another wall that had maybe 5 more pieces from the class. Since Freshmen year I haven't had anything put on the wall, as an example of the work from the class. It's really rather depressing, and always seems to happen fro random reasons. Like a portrait project in Anatomy. He only had so much room to display, and sine mine and one other classmate did portraits of people other then ourselves, our two weren't displayed. Or I do a great job on a project that isn't picked to showcase at all. Over and over again things like that happen and after 2 years of it it begins to feel like a conspiracy. Or I just suck. That's the one I lean to. But this time mine was up there, and say haff of the classes weren't. So mine was one picked to showcase. Yay Spielberg. Drawing and painting you has payed off. It's a bit depressing that this made me as happy as it did, considering most people have their work all over the school, for every project. Bleh. Sam's made it up too, but I just realized it was on the edge and I didn't get it in this shot. <.<

We're supposed to stay with the other class. Yeah. Right. My classmates are so going to do that, when all we had to do was sign in for Fowler to establish that we came. The reps liked one of my pieces:



And they didn't say to change anything. The sketch is done, I'm not working on it anymore, besides maybe adding a plate. Moving onto final sized sketch, and color comps. Screw tweaking. They liked it.

I want to get my ears pierced, upper cartilage. Hm. Maybe today, maybe this weekend. Maybe next year.

Brandywine Trip, Spielberg, and Missing Friends

By God it's cold. There was one short day of wonderful weather, and it's been freezing since. Random snow, and even though I do enjoy looking out the window and imagining ash is raining down on Pompeii, I am wishing for some warmer weather. Heating costs a lot, and my apartment building is skimpy in that area. So is Jason now that he found out how much the heating bill was.

Been some time since I updated. 18 credits is a lot to juggle and try to have a social life at the same time. Jason and I are back together, since early January. I have doubts and hopes at the same time, and I tend to experience extreme highs and lows in this relationship. We shall see. So far I've been able to handle the school work with only some slight losses (skimping on my Ethics homework, sorry Achtermann, the art classes tend to take more precedence then Kant or Plato). I'm the only one I know that still has 18 credits, and it's kinda daunting that everyone else is dropping a class. I'm not the best at time management, and work's hours have been cut, but once they pick up I may have more of a problem.

On Tuesday my History of Illustration class went to the Brandywine River Museum. Saw some great stuff, and some things that didn't really interest me, though they were like the best of American illustration. Saw a Nancy Ekholm Burkert piece, of the evil stepmother having created the poison apple. It was watercolor and colored inks and I loved it, I want to try out the technique. Example of her work, but not as detailed as the piece I saw:



Trisha made an improvised bento boxes for herself, me, and Christine (Christine drove us, thus we were able to go). They were nom nom indeed, though my onigiri tended to fall apart while I was eating it. We went to McDonalds and Christine and I bought Shamrock shakes to go with the bento. :D


I bought an Edward Gorey book in the gift shop, and I'm savoring it. :x I may have found a new artist to add to my favorites, who I learned about today, Paul Klee. My favorite piece of his is called "The Twittering Machine" thus far. The simpleness but creepiness explains my interest there. :P

Art wise I haven't been very good at scanning or photographing much. But I did have to scan in a project for Alternative Illustration to put it on the school's server, and now I can show it here:



Yay Steven Spielberg. He's part of two projects of mine, so I've been drawing him a lot, and have various watercolor paintings of him. I should get around to putting them on here. This is a collage, using ripped up magazines, acrylic paint, and pen, and printouts of info on movies he did. There's about 10 hidden images in his shirt and coat and glasses, but it's very hard to see here, but ah well.

I'm going through bouts of lonely-ness, considering my best friend since high school is currently in Budapest, and is a horrible e-mail correspondent. I've also just managed to lose a friend, over reasons I'm not entirely clear on. There seems to be a habit of people coming into my life, establishing themselves as people who are planning on sticking around, of being there for me, and then they leave, either physically or just never talking to me again. I'm sick of this occuring but can't ever seem to stop it from happening even though I take precautions. :/ I've written to my friend, apologizing for what I can, and asking questions. I knew it was possible he wouldn't respond and said I'd leave him alone if if he didn't. He hasn't so far, and I fear that he'll never talk to me again. Not sure that there's anything else I can do except accept that the friendship is over. Meh. Still have hope.

I'm currently at Jason's and he and Chris are giggling over a Ghosthunters episode. Been missing most of the show, since I needed to update this. Guess I'll tune in now, since somehow I managed to get the homework done for tomorrow all ready. Yay cable I can not afford.

Oh yeah. Should say I didn't fail my portfolio review. Got chewed up pretty well, and some of my favorite pieces apparently suck according to some teachers, but hey. Can't please everyone. :/ Right?