2012 wall: March Update

Here's a quick look at my 2012 wall for March, curtsy of my web cam. The quality is rotten, but there is hope. Soon, very soon, I shall be in possession of a digital SLR. Then, my life will magically become beautiful and picturesque, like the way it is on other people's blogs!

Yeah, I know it's not actually that easy, but let me have my fantasy.

sincerely,

me

Film Festival Fridays: Birds of a Feather

Are you in need of some visual sugar this morning? If so, you're in luck. Today's film is pure, comma inducing cuteness. It's an AniBOOM film called Birds of a Feather by Kelli Davis. AniBoom, as it turns out, is an online animation studio, rather than a physical building, that is made up of animators from all over the globe. (Ah, the things you can learn from Wikipedia.)

Enjoy! ^_^

sincerely,

me

These are a few of my favorite things:March

With March nearly over, I thought it would be nice to do another "These are a few of my favorite things" post. However, I do want to apologize in advance for the photo quality. As you know, my camera decided to sail off to the electronic afterlife before I'd saved enough to get a new one, leaving me cameraless. Yesterday, I came up with the "brilliant" idea of taking pictures with my netbook's web cam. Needless to say, what I ended up with isn't exactly National Geographic quality, but it will suffice.

So, here are a few of my favorite things!

Swiss Miss Chocolate Pudding. This stuff is the most delicious pudding ever and relates to the next favorite thing........

................Avatar: the Last Airbender. How does this relate to Chocolate pudding, you ask? Because Jon and I spent a good many evenings this March eating Swiss Miss pudding and watching Avatar. It was pretty epic. Anyway, if your unfamiliar with the show, Avatar: the Last Airbender is an Nickelodeon cartoon that borrows heavily from Japanese animation styles. It's "technically" a kid's show, but the characters, plot and art style are so good, it transcends it's appointed genera and appeals to any age. 

 Pinterest. I finally joined the newest online obsession. Thus far, I've managed to keep myself from getting too addicted. We'll see how long that lasts though. ^_^

Library sales!!! I totally lucked out this month; there were two different library sales that took place in the same week! I bought plenty of lovely books without spending opulent sums of money. Win-win situation.

Garden prep. I had my first garden last year and became officially converted. This year I'm going to expand a little and try starting from seeds. (Which is waaaay cheaper than buying plants.) I even decided to keep a garden journal so that I can document the successes, (and miserable failures) of this year's garden.

And last, but not least, these shoes. They've been my new favorite pair for awhile. I love that they look a little like old man shoes. ^_^ Not to mention, I got them from the thrift store for $5. 

sincerely,

me

Film Festival Fridays: Evergreen

Happy Friday and welcome to Spring! (Although it's kind of felt like spring all winter.) Today's film is Evergreen directed by Yoann Lemione seems appropriate in light of the changing season. It has a fairly straight forward environmentalist message, but actually I have a fondness for that sort of thing. I wouldn't describe myself as an extremest, but looking after the natural world is something that's always been important to me.

sincerely,

me

Muscle studies

If your grossed out by depictions of the human body, you might want to skip this post. For some reason, I find anatomical drawings of muscles extremely interesting. Something about the  shapes and lines strikes me as really beautiful. In college, I even incorporated muscle studies into one of my paintings.

Anyway, here are a few muscle drawings I did yesterday and today.

sincerely,

me

More illustration practice

Nothing too fancy planed for today, just a few character drawings.

Mrs. Bigbody. Don't know much about her yet; the name sort of just came to me while I was drawing. I'm curious to see if she'll get herself into any interesting adventures.

I am supremely pleased with Tiger man's expression. 

  

That's it for now. Happy Spring!

sincerely,

me

Film Festival Fridays: Le lac gele

It' Friday, you know the drill. Actually, I'm slightly impressed with myself for being this consistent. Yeah, me! Anyway, onward to the film.

Le lac gele is another short film from Goeblins, the studio that made last weeks film. This one isn't based on anything I know of, but it's still really pretty in a slightly surreal, thoughtful kind of way. I like that much of the background behind the story is unknown; the viewer can fill in the details for themselves.

sincerely,

me

My attempts at Illustration

I've been spending some time this week working on my illustration skills. As you may have noticed, while my ability to render things from life it ok, my stylized drawings could use practice. My goal is to eventually be able to either draw whatever I want the way I picture it, or at least develop a flexible style that I feel confident in controlling. (Pretty sure the second option is going to be the more attainable one.) Thus far, all my attempts have been to awful to post, but I draw this today.

He's a tad grumpy, I'll admit. Still, for someone lacking in illustration experience especially when it comes to males, it's not to shabby. I've got to start somewhere, right?

sincerely,

me

Portrait of my Grandparents

Jon and I are back from Virginia. It was really great to spend time with my family; they are totally the best! The dinner party we had for my grandparents went really well. Since my grandparent's wedding anniversary and both their birthdays are in March, we celebrated everything together. My Grandpa turned 90, my Grandma will turn 87 and they've been married for 60 years!

In honor of so many milestones, I painted this portrait of them. I've actually had it done for awhile, but decided not to post about it till after I'd given the picture to them, so it could stay a surprise.

I'm highly pleased with how it turned out!

I feel soooooo much better after having come back from this mini vacation! It feels like I'm finally out of the art doldrums and ready to start exploring some new ideas. Plus, there are two library sales going on this week! Can life get any better? I submit that it can not!!! 

sincerely,

me

Film Festival Fridays: Fenrir

Happy Friday once again! Jon and I will be leaving for Virginia soon. We're celebrating my Grandpa's 90th Birthday and my Grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary!! It shall be fun times for sure!!!

Before I continue packing and pretravel prep, I wanted to post Friday's film, Fenrir. Created by the Gobelins School of Image, this film references the mythological Norse wolf Fenrir, who was destined to escape his bondage and destroy the chef god Odin during the catastrophic, world ending event Ragnarok. During this same event, Fenrir's son Skoll (or in some versions, Fenrir himself) will swallow the sun. (You didn't know you were getting a mini lesson in Norse mythology today, did you? ^_^)

sincerely,

me

Greetings. I feel like it's been awhile since I posted.

Sadly, I'm still in an artistic dry spot. It's been nearly a month since I've had any big projects to work on, which has resulted in the evaporation of much of my artistic inspiration and motivation. It also makes it kind of hard to know what to say in blog posts because I feel like the purpose of this blog is primarily to share my art. I have been working on a few small things, but unfortunately, my camera finally decided this week was it's time to go. I've known it was on it's last legs for awhile; it was 8 years old and it ate through batteries like a freshman guy eats through Ramen. Still, because it chose this particular week begin it's journey to the nether world of the technological after life, I'm going to be without a camera till I get enough money saved up for a digital SLR. Hopefully this will happen in a month or so, but till then, I'm limited to a scanner and the power of my words, (which are probably not all that powerful.)

Despite the sufferings of the visual half of my artistic soul, the literary half has been doing pretty well. I've been making good progress on a short story that's been in the works for awhile. I've spent a good chunk of time brainstorming for some future ideas. I'm still in the midst of the collaborative writing project with my friends from college. So yeah, I have been doing creative stuff; it's just not pretty to look at and I'm not sure how to share it with you all on this blog. Actually, if anyone has some advice/insight into how to share your writing on the internet without getting it plagiarized, I'd love to hear it.

So that is my life thus far. Sorry it's kind of boring and unpretty. I guess even art blogs have their visually blah days.

sincerely.
me

Film Festival Fridays: Codehunters

Happy Friday everyone! So the last two films I posted were the mellow, artsy type. This one has more action/adventure to it, although the animation style is still super fun. It's called Codehunters by Ben Hibon who, according to Wikipedia, has worked an a few video games as well as help direct the short film The Tale of the Three Brothers from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1.

There, how that for an epic start to your weekend!

sincerely,

me