First of all, here’s to a happy, albeit late, 2012 greeting. I hope everyone who reads and glances through this blog, their 2012 has been a productive and interesting one so far. For me, it’s been pretty good, nothing much to complain about, health is going well(and it better continue that way!). In terms of artistic plans for 2012, I have one big plan, and I might as well come clean about it. If you look through all the entries for the past two and a half to three years, you might have noticed many works in progress and livestream videos(usually fanart), but never any mention of the finished results. There is a specific reason for that. And that reason is…I want to get all these fanart pictures printed and sold at conventions around town. I hope I’m not jinxing myself but I have my sights set on the artist allies of three conventions this year(which I’ll post more about here and on the front page of my site), Anime North, Ochiba-con and Dot-con. As a result of preparing for these events, pretty much all my drawing time has been devoted to finishing up the fanart, and getting it ready to be printed hopefully sometime next month. Here’s a video of me colouring that on of my convention works in progress. So there, I’ve come clean! For those of you following me on facebook, there’s the explanation of convention related questions and polls. Also, with that in mind, what sort of conventions do you hope to attend this year?

And this would be my last fanart print, because no print set is complete without a little Yousuke Hanamura…none!

A little something I started inking in December of last year. Nothing more welcoming on a deviantArt page, like a glaring charicature!

I definitely intend to update this blog more frequently throughout this year. Wish me luck…I’ll need it! In the mean time, you can see my sketches and doodles on my tumblr and finished and more polished looking work on deviantArt, as I put the finishing touches on the ol’ homepage.

Well my site revamp is about three quarters of the way done. All that’s left is to draw something for the about/profile page and of course to upload everything. Still very much in love with the whole damask pattern for layouts. And some how it gives the whole website a sort of “classier” look to things. Not that I haven’t seen classy looking artsites that use solid or vibrant colours.

Came across this entry on deviantArt challenging people to redraw whatever they used to draw when they first started out in art. For me, it was trees in the sun/ So of course this calls for….VECTOR TRESS AND SUNS WHOOOO! Now just to find a way to not make it look like every other abstract nature scene out there.

So my computer has decided to really act up when it comes to turning on and off. As written on my tumblr, I’ve had an electrician look at the outlet my pc and other things have been plugged into and even went so far as to have the outlet fixed. That lasted about a day and then it just wouldn’t turn on at all. Opting to borrow a laptop, that had its own annoying results…Technology why must you fail me at the most in opportune of times? Surprisingly, since writing the draft up for this entry on the 15th, my pc has been behaving itself a little more and being more stable when it comes to turning on and off. Though I still want to replace the power source. At least it’s co-operating enough that I can ink a little bit. Now keep co-operating.

I swear I saw the viking guy at AN this year!

Finally finished the lineart for this on Thursday night and flat coloured it. Was all gung-ho on Friday about about colouring this, or at least making a start on the background but, as fate would have it, it seems allergy season has sprung up a little early and my eyes refused to stop watering, so background painting will have to wait for another day.

And last but not least…totally unrelated to art but…NEVER SAY NO TO PANDA…EVAR!

Another entry, another work in progress! Once again I took a few shortcuts with inking parts here and there, thanks to Photoshop’s lovely pentool! Seeing as we have Jack and Black Frost from the Persona games here…I wonder if this can be considered anthro artwork? As for ol’ Adell he’s almost done being inked. Actually if I wasn’t dealing with some wicked neck pain, it probably would have been completely inked and on to the flat colouring/shading stage, but it never hurts to take some time off for one’s health.

Two linearts in the works. One as part of the super secret, vaguely explained art project, and the other as part of my website revamp. I don’t know what happened

So while working on ol’ Adell here, I noticed something was a tad bit off, the onigiri he’s supposed to be chowing down on looks more like it’s floating in front of his face as a opposed to hanging from his mouth. The solution? Draw a dang mouth! Now just a matter of tweaking the collar and continue the inking session.

A continuation of my P4 Teddie work in progress, still having an insane amount of fun colouring this. While the stream was being recorded, I had the radio on to listen to coverage of the EPIC SNOWSTORM that supposed to hit Toronto at any moment now! So far, when glancing through the window, I have yet to see an actual snowflake, let alone the blizzard that everyone is claiming will destroy the city. And in the off chance that the weather predictions are right, and the roads are a mess for most of the day…I’ll have art to finish and sketches to ink, so it’s a win-win situation!

Been playing around with this little program called screenr that takes screen captures while you work, game, whatever! Unlike youtube and livestreaming, there’s no editing or configuring a program, just log in with your twitter account and you can make videos that are up to 5 minutes long. Amazing how many little applications want to work with twitter, but then all the cool kids are using twitter, so why not?

So while inking that picture I was blasting away May’n(as Macross Frontier’s Sheryl Nome) music. Always been a strong believer in having really upbeat, fast paced music when you’re doing particularly tedious work as DIGITAL INKING CERTAINLY IS AAAAAHHH…it takes a while. And here’s a personal favourite.

Tried adding a bunch of Macross Frontier songs to the iPod and still it doesn’t want to snyc properly…why iPod why? On the bright side, I was able to replace my keyboard and mouse, only after finding out from Logitech that they don’t make parts for the broken keyboard set. Of course they would have to stop making parts the very moment you need to replace things. I hate you Murphy’s Law!

Now with this lineart, there was a a little bit of cheating, just a little. See those tv’s? Photoshop pen tool. Even used it on the zipper part of Teddie’s bear suit. Now if I could figure out Paint Tool Sai’s vector tools, then there’d be no switching from program to program during the inking process. Must add that to the artistic to do list.

o1. So my 3 year old iPod had been giving me trouble since about October, November of last year. I wouldn’t be able to hear out of both sides of my headphones or earbuds and chalked it up to the normal wear and tear when it comes to audio wear. Over the holidays I went out of my way to buy a nice pair of earbuds to wear with earmuffs and still couldn’t enjoy my music properly. I decided that I would visit an Apple store and see if the ol’ iPod just needed small repairs and hoped that things would be back in order. So yesterday evening, I decide that I want to start building up my music library, see if I can actually go past the 720+ songs that I currently had. Big mistake. First it was that iTunes would sync every song save for one, no matter what I did, including uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes, rebuilding my playlists and all that, the song wouldn’t sync. I added 200-300 or so songs, iTunes just wouldn’t sync. So it’s safe to say this thing is on it’s last legs. Real shame, I wanted to add the Macross Frontier OST’s and the recently released Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt one. Guess I gotta save up…

o2. While taking a short break(for anime) from fighting with my iPod and iTunes, I noticed that my beautiful wireless keyboard and mouse set wasn’t working just right. So I fiddle with the little connect button, next thing I know, the actually button gets shoved inside the receiver, and I’m franticly trying to fish it out with a safety pin. Now I don’t know if I might have scrapped something with the pin or the receiver just conked out with age. What I do know is that the mouse and keyboard are currently useless…good thing I kept the original wired keyboard and mouse that came with the computer. Luckily, Logitech claims that you can order a replacement receiver. Here’s hoping what is essentially a USB flashdrive doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

o3. My bluetooth headset for my phone just didn’t want to turn on today. Turns out the battery was dead *facepalm*

I get the strange feeling that technology just isn’t my friend this week. Also using a wired keyboard after 10+ years of being spoiled with wireless ones is AWKWARD!

I know it’s sort of early to do one of those “year in review” type posts but with Christmas around the corner, who has time for blogging? So…this year art wise, somewhat prolific, but I can thank all the vague, secret art work I’ve been drawing for that! Hopefully in the coming year I’ll be able to draw more original stuff and keep the site updated more regularly. Just a matter of putting one’s mind to it I guess. To any of the artists on the big, wide internets, do you have any special plans for the year? Do you want to start a webcomic or perhaps launch an online art portfolio? Or perhaps you want to try selling your work online or at conventions? Whatever your plan is, I’d love to hear! Lastly, I’ve learned yesterday that the pentool is your friend!

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