I colored this guy up while I was at Matsuricon. I'm currently behind my table still coloring, haha. It's a fun con so far. :)



( Full View Under Cut )

Those are supposed to be stripes on his wings, not some sort of bizarre highlighting system. Haha.

Computer Paranoia
I think that these last few months have made me irreversibly paranoid. I now maintain 4 external harddrives... One for the Mac as an automatic time machine backup... One for the mac as a backup that's me just dragging files into it as an archive. One for the PC as an automatic (but difficult to access without a "full install" of the entire archive) backup, one for the PC as an easily accessable file archive.

What's horrible is that I'm considering getting a Carbonite subscription to boot... to have my files stored online so if the house burns down I still have them. I suppose I could back everything up on DVDs and send a set of them to my parents. I know it's silly to worry about things that are backed up on multiple machines, but when both your Desktop and your laptop fail on you and the only thing that saved your butt was your external HDs... that's kinda scary. The external HD can fail too! It makes me think that frequent DVD backup may be something I should begin again.

Digital art is great, but so much can go wrong with computers that the thought of losing hours and hours of work is a little scary. (Especially when some of that work is for a 800+ illustration count book that hasn't been sent off yet.) I can't imagine what I'd do if I had lost everything and my deadline was borked.

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Faerie Art Club Promotion
I know a lot of people watch me for the dragons, but one of my favorite things to draw was (and still is) faeries. I thought I'd mention a Livejournal community that I've been a member of for several years now. Faerie_Art_Club is a community where artists can share their faerie/mermaid/nymph artwork with others.

They're really a fabulous group but in recent years the club has had less and less frequent posts to it. I thought I'd give it a bit of linkage just in case there are faery lovers who are watching my LJ who were unaware about this Livejournal community.

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Art Trade
My long overdue half of a sketch trade for Kiliara from two years ago. Haha. Oh boy. My busy schedule is the reason why trades are currently closed. I *DO* love drawing other peoples characters and creatures, so I hope that in the future this changes. But I can't let myself get into the same mess as I did previously. It's utterly unacceptable and very rude to the person you've traded with.

Click for full view.

I'll be streaming LIVE for a couple of hours tonight.

If you miss the stream I should have a couple segments recorded and available on demand in the livestream channel itself :-)

Here's a little something I sketched up this afternoon. There's a unit in the next book on two legged dino/ostritch dragon leg construction and how you need to balance such creatures with a very upright position or a long heavy tail and such. I'd imagine that this guy walks on his wings a little bit when he's idle :-)

Oh yeah, and he's on fire.

Its amazing how many drawing issues you will notice if you leave a piece of artwork alone for a night and return to it with a fresh perspective.

I do love zombie dragons :-)
Right Click ---- View Image to see Full Size


I'm still at Ikasucon this weekend. This will be the first show in several years that we're going to leave in the red. We didn't even break even, let alone cover our hotel expenses. I feel a little bit upset, as the convention staff we talked to promised an attendance that was larger (though still quite small at 1300-1500) then what really happened (700ish? They're rather elusive when you ask how many people actually came.) the problem with this attendance is that between three nights of hotel expenses, our table and badge expenses, gas, and food, not to mention restocking what was sold (when we sell something, only a small amount of it is actually profit. We have to restock the item for the next show, so if we sell a $17 pillow, we really only "made" $6, as the pillow itself cost us $11 to make.) we are going to end up a couple hundred in the hole.

I'm glad I don't do conventions for a living, but still, it's pretty discouraging. Staff really needs to be more honest with artists and dealers about what attendance they've had in the past and expect for the future. Many of us make our convention choices based on attendance... because it usually directly correlates with what we will do in sales. We EXPECTED this to be a break-even or make-next-to-nothing after expenses based on the low attendance figures of 1300-1500, but wanted to come anyway because working artists alleys at conventions is fun! When you end up in the red due to misinformation... it's problematic.

Oh well. Live and learn I suppose!

On the positive side, the environment, our artist alley neighbors, the staff, and the people I have met have all been very nice. I did have fun this weekend.

Leopard dragon, haha. He/She was sorta long the same lines as tiger dragon, so I decided to keep the big cat markings



In less fun news, both of my computers are down. The laptop has been sent off to some third party repair place, and the desktop cannot load windows. I talked to Gateway about the desktop, and they told me that the errors I was encountering meant I needed to use their utility to burn repair discs that would wipe the system and make the computer as it was when i got it from them. I did so, and it didn't work. To boot, it didn't work AND now windows doesn't have all its files, and the discs I burned can only be launched FROM the gateway utility inside windows.

All in all, its a ridiculously stupid utility. Every computer should come with boot discs or at least the vista discs and driver discs so you can wipe it yourself.

I had to pay $25 for my boot discs to be sent via snail mail. They will arrive in 3-8 business days, but I don't think they're going to get here before Ikasucon this weekend. Fortunately Alex bailed me out again, and I finished this dragon on and am now typing from his spare 5 year old laptop. All my illustrations are due very very soon, and I can't have downtime right now.

Anyway, I may be online less frequently and there will be no streams for a time. My apologies. When my laptop gets back from the shop OR I receive my boot discs, I should be able to resume as per usual.

All of my website work and World of Warcraft my addiction are on my desktop, so in a way having it down has actually been very good for making me productive. Those that watch my streams know that I'm a nocturnal creature, and in the wee hours of the morning there's not much to do at this point BUT listen to audio books and draw! I finished the 10th and am halfway through the most current Dresden Files audio books. I forgot how entertaining they are. Harry is just about the best.

Some of the dragons from my livestream sessions. :-) It's crunch time, so I'm going to be cranking out spot illustrations like a madwoman. Haha





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I'm drawing up a new eastern dragon right now. The last three or 4 dragons I've done I've just had a blast just sketching. I love the drawing part of my artwork, the creating of something from nothing. I noticed how much fun I was having when I was geeking out over something as silly as a double chin. "Drawing overlapping muscle and fat is fun!!!"

I joke on livestream and such about how watching me sketch is painful, but it's really my favorite part. I'm just self-concious when people see how often I change my mind or rotate, resize, and tweak things after I've gotten the initial sketch out. I feel silly letting people see my mistakes. I need to get over myself. I've never been an especially confident person.

The thing is, working out a drawing, trying to get a pose to look correct, a creature to look real, or putting a detail on... is so enjoyable. Without an audience to make me feel self-concious, I LOVE making mistakes and then solving them :-) Drawing is a puzzle!

Then, after the joy of drawing for 20 minutes to an hour... I have to do what I always do. Painstakingly ink it with good line quality. Fill in base colors just so, leaving no gaps. Tweaking the base colors. Apply gradients. Adjust hues. Build a shadow layer. Build a highlight layer. Apply a background before or after these steps, or not at all.

The way I work has gotten incredibly systematic past the sketching stage. It's not really art at that point. It's simply a process and I'm going through the motions.

What's frustrating is, is the fact that I can't break out of the system just yet. I wanted -and still want- for my third book to have a consistent style throughout, and for that, I need this process to keep the art similar. But a part of me is very very tired of slugging through this A to B to C method of finishing my work. I want to experiement with painting styles. I want to try more rendered, super tight things. I want to try something that looks like oils. I want to try some really quick sketchlike things. I want to try playing with textures more. I would like to try and paint things with obvious brushstrokes. I would like to try working traditionally as well.

I want something that's NOT a system. Something that's a puzzle. Something that's "art" as corney as that sounds coming from a girl who thinks "ZOMG MONSTERS" is "art".

I can't do that just yet... I have to finish what I started.

(Mind you, I still like the art I'm creating now. In fact, I'm incredibly happy and proud that I've found my own style of creating art after all these years. I like how my art is "finished". I like cartoons, I like the cel style, I like the detail that I put in despite the previous two things. I like my muted colors. I like the end result very much! I like the style.

Liking my style doesn't mean I don't want to seek improvement. I recognize that I have a long ways to go in regards to anatomy, composition, and lighting. I'm just at a place where I'm happy with my digital finishing style, and feel that I've made something recognizable, distinctly my own, that is time-efficient, attractive, and something that appeals to my artistic sensibilities in particular.

Despite liking my digital painting style, After a year of having to finish everything in this very systematic way, art has become... work. A chore. Aside from the drawing, there is no "art" in it. It's just a set of skills and techniques that I connect the dots to and have a finished piece.

I want art to be something fun for me again. I want my puzzle back.

Perhaps after I finish this book I should take a break and just concentrate on drawing a bunch of sketches that I will never finish. I would LOVE the chance to start trying to improve my drawing again. For the past year I have not sketched for the heck of it, or drawn from life, or even done some for-education-only reference photo eyeballs***.

(for the record, eyeballing photos to learn anatomy is very helpful! I'm not endorsing you to completely eyeball a photo and then go "look guys my own original art!" I'm saying that it's a helpful way to learn things that you can file away and then have that anatomy, lighting, texture, and whatnot at your disposal for your own original stories, creatures, compositions, and settings!) I feel it neccessary to clarify this, because so often I see people completely rip off art or photography and then attempt to pass it off as their own. I've seen so many poorly done tracings and heavy referencing without credit that it makes me sick.

I also want to try out some painting tutorials I've seen on DA, to see if trying a new technique can help give me a larger skillset to play with. I want to try playing on conceptart.org and actively seeking self-betterment for MORE THAN A WEEK. (which is how long it has taken me the handful of times I've been there to fizzle out.)

This ramble has gone on long enough. Haha. I don't know how to end this. It's 9AM and I still havn't gone to bed. That's also a problem I should seek to correct. Being nocturnal is great for productivity (Having nothing around BUT the computer makes staying at the computer and working very attractive) but it's killing my social life. I want some sunshine.

Edit 3: This is what happens when I second guess my colors. Ahhhhhh. RAINBOW EVERYWHERE. This is probably the final colors. Time to shade this guy.



( Lots or rambling and images cut because my constant editing of the colors on the dragon ended up being spammy to friends pages. These images are in reverse, so the bottom one is actually the first one if you're interested in seeing my bizarre color choosing process. )

I started on something new since I'm not keen on immediately redoing PCRaven's corrupted commission. I'm still rather bitter that the entire file was lost due to a crash during a save.

For this guy I was trying to draw a dragon that runs lower to the ground and very solid. He can barely glide, let alone fly :-) After I finished inking the body sans scales and small details I was all like "YAY ITS SO NEAT AND DIFFERENT AND ORIGINAL" and then 5 minutes into putting the scales I'm like "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- This looks suspiciously built like Lizardus" Oh well. I guess he's a cool critter anyway. :-/

I was surfing icanhascheezeburger today and ran across this ad:


Ads like this is why there's anorexia. To imply that the first body is fat or unhealthy is ridiculous. A little bit of body fat is normal and healthy. Stuff like this really makes me angry. They also misspelled "ancient".

I'll be streaming for a couple hours tonight starting at 4:30AM EST.

Click the banner above if you'd like to visit the ustream page itself. It also has a chat box :-) If you simply want to watch, there's also this cool LJ embed thingie:

Some sketch stuff that will probably go nowhere, haha. It was fun to take a quick break from the massive amount of dragons I have to draw. These are pretty rough and have lots of anatomy issues. D=