Not dead yet

Yes, I only come here once in every few months, it seems. Truth to be told, my friendship deteriorated with most of the people who used to follow/view this blog years ago, so I'm not so enthusiastic about updating any longer. Plus I forgot how to draw. :B

And I also got myself a twitter account in March. I've been uploading the few things I'm working on there. However, I think I'll still keep this blog. It's a nice archive for myself. Better than twitter because I can actually find things I posted months or years ago.

This was the first sketch I posted on twitter. I also coloured and posted it on dA, but I still prefer the sketch. I don't like how the coloured version turned out.

Sinbad is my big obsession, I still haven't stopped doing countless little sketches of him. And I wanted to draw an angry Sinbad for once. I find him very attractive when he's angry/serious.

Not sure if I should finish this. It's a random VinceAda thing I did based on a photo. I suck at drawing long hair, uuugh.

I drew this for the 69 minutes challenge on twitter. I'm amazed I managed to draw it in only 69 minutes, though I had the concept and reference ready before I actually started drawing it. (Even just planning a drawing can take long. If I don't have an actual idea, I can spend 20 minutes staring into the void and drawing random lines that make no sense before giving up.)

This was drawn after the last PH chapter came out. Just a warm-up practice thingy of Vincent.

Little Lacie dancing in the blood of her enemies. I originally wanted to draw Jack all beaten up but then I drew Lacie. Her legs may be too short, idk.

My next PH Tarot card, I'm working on this right now. I did the characters separately and randomly inserted them on my template and I was surprised how well they fit. The background is too gaudy at the moment, I'll probably tone down the pinks later. I had a lot of issues with this card because I wanted to come up with some super cool symbolic concept and all but nothing I could do looked good enough, so I had to resort to something simple.

The sparrows are so annoying today, I can't concentrate on drawing because of them. This year we even have woodpeckers, Eurasian jays and doves.

And we also have a cheeky chickadee. We feed them walnuts besides the sunflower seeds. They love walnuts. Yesterday morning I wasn't feeling well (I often have stomachaches lately) and lied down on my bed for a bit. I opened my window because most "unwanted" birds (pigeons, jays, etc.) are afraid of an open window and won't dare to eat the chickadees' food while it's open. However, there weren't any walnuts left in their feeder, just the ones my mother had cut up and put on the table earlier.
So our favourite cheeky chickadee comes. She (I assume it's a female) doesn't find any nut pieces in their basket left, starts searching and jumps on the inner frame of the window. She looks around for a bit, then comes in and flies on the table. She found the freaking nuts my mom put there for me to put in their feeder later. So she walked there, picked up a piece of nut, knocked another piece off in the process, then I think she jumped on my armchair with it and finally flew out the window. SO CUTE.
I watched the whole thing from the back of the room from my bed. It's a shame I didn't have my camera with me, I could have filmed it.
Last summer they came in to the kitchen by accident all the time, but this one bird seems to be way too brave and intelligent. She's also that kind of bird who comes as soon as we open the window. She sits there and waits for us to put food in their basket. Then she starts eating while we are still standing there in the open window close enough to reach her. A few days ago I tried offering her nuts from my hand and even though she was too wary to actually touch my hand, she seemed very tempted and didn't fly away.

I want new music to listen to. I discovered the album The 1975 by The 1975 a couple of months ago and still love it. I used to listen to their songs "Me" and "Fallingforyou" on tumblr a lot and then I finally got their album. My favourites are "Heart Out" and "Robbers".

Okay, I guess I rambled enough for now. Back to drawing VinceAda~

Last post of 2014: VinceAda Hell

Long time no post again. To be honest, I haven't been drawing much. I'd thought I'd be able to draw so much in December, but I failed. orz I'm trying to draw for at least 1 hour every day, though. But it seems I'm only getting worse and worse... ;___;

This is a scribble I did for Halloween. It wasn't turning out well, so I never finished it.

Very quick draft for a big picture I'd like to draw one day. Knowing myself I'll never draw it in the end, but I'm posting this here as a reminder because I may end up commissioning someone to draw it for me.

I was tagged with a kiss meme on deviantART a long time ago and this sketch was done for that meme. It's "kiss on the shoulder" VinceAda style.

More VinceAda. This is almost finished, though still needs a lot of tweaking and amending. Whyisitsobrightasdds... I originally did the base scribble of this in October and it wasn't refined or anything, just two stick figures facing each other, but I saved it for some reason. So I opened the file a few days ago and turned them into Vincent and Ada. I hope I can post this somewhere today.

That's all I have to post for now. I don't even know what I'm doing but I somehow manage to waste my time pretty effectively... I guess I spent a lot of time on tumblr this year. I also keep watching anime and reading manga and talking to people on deviantART. I also started playing some computer games again. For example, I downloaded The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection when it was available to download for free during summer. I only started playing it in October, but Sims games were always somewhat addictive for me.

I love the evil snowmen grouchy sims build, lol. I think I've tried out all the expansion packs I never had (I only had the base game). The Pets expansion is probably the least fun for me even though I'd expected to like that one. But I really enjoy the addition of changing seasons, the new romantic interactions and I like sending my teenagers to university. And I suck at managing stores with Open for Business, lol. Anyway, now I don't know how I was able to play The Sims 2 without any expansions. One thing I don't like is how the game handles the personality points of sims who are born ingame. I usually get hyperactive hyper grouchy sims.

Another issue is the first serious glitch I've experienced. My teenage boy got 7,000 Simoleons of scholarship (+500 when I moved him in), all of his skills were at least level 8. But for some reason, there was a "cap" placed on the class performance meter thingy below the line and it stayed in the red zone no matter how many homeworks or essays he did. This means he cannot complete even the first semester and he'll eventually be kicked out and sent back to the main neighbourhood. Apparently, this glitch occurs if you put several valuable objects in your teen's inventory before sending them to university. (Since you can't give them money from their home household, giving them objects is the only way to raise their scholarship and allow them to buy better household items.) But if you move them to a dorm instead of a house, the class performance cap thingy doesn't appear.

Anyway, it seems I'm cursed with Sims glitches, haha. Or it's just that the game doesn't like what I want to do with it.

I don't think anybody is reading this blog anymore, but Happy New Year to everyone! I'll definitely try to do unproductive things less and draw more in 2015.

I'm drawing I'm drawing

Working on a bunch of things at the same time. I'm planning on drawing all afternoon today because of reasons.

I drew this in a rush yesterday evening when I realized that Vincent's birthday is on the 23rd. I drew him with a random flower crown last year and I went with the flower crown idea again. I originally drew little Vincent with his arms down but it looked weird (especially cropped - it would have been just his head lol), so I tried to draw him arms and hands hoping it wouldn't turn out like crap...

Retrace 97 killed me because of various reasons, one of them was Noise. I'm posting this drawing here because I'm not sure I'll manage to finish it by tomorrow.

I posted a rougher version of this last time. I'm still struggling with the umbrella tbh. XD;;; Also, I forgot to mention last time that the inspiration for this was this freaky rainy weather we had last summer and in September too. I don't remember another humid and rainy summer like this. We were often woken up in the middle of the night to thunderstorms. It rained and rained sometimes for 24 hours or more without break.

We had really beautiful weather in the past few days, though. It was that pleasant late summer weather. Still warm enough yet not hot. And everything is still so green and beautiful because it rained all summer. There were only a few days of really hot dry weather during all summer. So instead of the usual yellow dried out grass strands, there's beautiful green grass and little flowers everywhere. It's amazing.

This is my Sinbad/Kougyoku kiss picture I drew back in May. I had this idea to take a screencap from the anime and try to paint it as background. Holy shit, it's so hard. I'm switching between Photoshop and Sai using the screencap as reference and it has already taken me hours to paint this much. As you can see I'm not even doing the parts that will be covered by the characters, but it's still really time-consuming.

Anyway, the finished version will probably look like the cheesiest romance novel cover ever. XD;;;

I've also been working on this waka!Sinbad sketch and I must say I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out. I refined his right arm so it doesn't look so big anymore and added a lot of details on his outfit.

Speaking of Sinbad and Magi... there are two fanartists on pixiv who keep destroying me with their drawings. Every time they upload a new art log, I feel like a little child getting a box of candy. One of them is 何某 and the other is 襲釗. I'm completely in love with 何某's art style and I love most of 襲釗's ideas. *A*

Okay, I think that's all I wanted to ramble about for now. I'll try to finish that little Vince + Noise sketch today~ 2-3 hours after lunch should be enough if I can manage to not get distracted...

A small update

Heyyy. I haven't updated in a while again. It's because all I've been doing lately are the palette requests on tumblr. (I've done 12 so far!) Plus one commission.

The birds are still coming. They even fly into the apartment through the window sometimes. It's crazy. I guess mom turned this place into a paradise for the chickadees.

Anyway, let's post some shit I forgot to post last time:

Actually, this was the very first colour palette thingy I've done. Gil in palette #7.

So this is how the full version of this Oz drawing is supposed to look. It's still a wip of course and I've changed his face again since I saved this, so it doesn't look like this anymore. No, I haven't given up on the Tarot idea yet. Actually, the person I originally got the idea from put Oz as the Death card and young Vincent was The Fool, but I went with beginning-of-the-series Oz as The Fool. It's just more fitting for me than young Vincent since Oz is the main character and the series is about his journey and all.

The initial sketch for this is OVER ONE YEAR OLD and the idea itself is even older. This is a huge drawing and the border alone has taken me hours to draw so far (I drew most elements by hand and then did lots of copy-pasting. I created the chains from scratch too, they are not a brush). I want to finish this simply because I've already worked on it for too long to abandon and scrap.

I haven't posted this last time either. My byoootifoool Sinbad. I ruined him by turning half of him into cursed Focalor, hahah. (I still have the normal version underneath the Focalor layers tho.) Pretty much everyone who has seen the normal version so far told me he was gorgeous. I'll probably finish it up but I haven't touched this since I started doing the palette meme thingy.

I should be working on 6743534 other drawings instead. Go away Sinbad.
Doodle inspired by a "waistcoats are God's gift to all women" post on tumblr and Ohtaka's recent artworks of Sinbad and Alibaba in suits. Sinbad is totally the type who doesn't understand neckties and can't button his shirt all the way up.

And this is a little Ja'far doodle based on 3cloudy doujin circle's stuff. I was very unhappy with the Ja'far drawing I did for the palette challenge, so I'm now trying to find my own style for drawing him. This involves copying how others draw him. Maybe I should just learn how Ohtaka draws him, though...

I guess that's all I wanted to post now. I downloaded The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection last week because EA made it available to download for free. But I can't really seem to get into that game anymore (despite all the expansion and stuff packs I'd never had before), which is a good thing.

I've been listening to the Miracles album by Two Steps from Hell a lot lately. It might be my favourite TSFH album so far (but I love Skyworld too). Lots of songs with female vocals, they even included some older songs I love, such as Eria and Wind Queen (though the ending of this one really annoys me because they cut the last few epic riffs from the original version and I keep anticipating them every time). "Compass" is simply amazing, both the instrumental and the vocal version.

This track is not from Miracles, but it might be the most inspiring instrumental song I've ever heard:

Some PH and lotsa Sinbad

Ok, I promised some sketches, so let's post some sketches!

One day I will draw a beautiful Oz. Today is not the day.

I've been wanting to draw a sleepy Gil ever since I saw that still in one anime DVD extra. Gil is just... the cutest thing. Also, I'm not making my sketches gray, Blogger does that to them when they get uploaded.

This wasn't gray'd because of the black, ha. Daily Sinbad doodle. The full thing is bigger, but I cropped the hands because they were super sketchy and shitty.

Wow look, it's a Magi character but not Sinbad! Hot little Solomon this time. I actually changed the eyes a little and coloured this, but I'm too lazy to save and post the updated version. I think Solomon is the prettiest guy in Magi. Although there are lots of pretty boys (and girls) in Magi. And no, I'm not "cheating on" Sinbad. XD But you know, Sinbad has a different kind of charm, you can't really mistake him for a woman.

Continuing the sleepy theme, here's a messy little sketch of Sinbad sleeping. Sinbad is like the sweetest baby when he's asleep except that babies don't snore. He is the kind of guy who can be hot even when he's drunk and passed out, though. Sleeping people are diffucult to draw because I suck at horizontal poses (hahaha) plus I can never get the angle of their face right for some reason. :B

I haven't posted this wip yet, have I? Young Sinbad is a babe. Not that the older one isn't, but this hairstyle and this freaking outfit is amazing. Too bad I haven't finished drawing it yet...

I don't know what to say about this. I don't know what happened to my style while I was drawing this, all I can tell is that the fangirlism is strong on this one and I was listening to Defying Gravity while I was drawing it. I originally wanted to make it cursed Sinbad, this is why I did the 2nd wip, but I'm not sure I want to ruin his byoootiful faisu with the shitty chocolate thing. I was also thinking of turning him half Focalor on the cursed side. Idk what I'll do with it, but I should do something with this...

I saved this for last because I want to ramble about this pairing a little. I drew like 2 pics of these two together and they weren't even particularly shippy pics, the 2nd one wasn't even meant to be shippy at all. Yet there were a few people who found me because of those fanarts and even asked me to draw more.

But there are lots of people who dislike this pairing and it's a big NOTP for them and I can see why. I cannot see it working either. Kougyoku's crush on Sinbad is very cute, but Sinbad doesn't care for her. At first, he saw her as someone he could use for settling things in Balbadd, then he sees her as one of his pawns he can use against Kou. And that's it. That's all there is to them. Period.
(However, because I'm a twisted evil person... I LIKE THIS.)
Kougyoku is the character Ohtaka often uses in the later chapters for bringing out Sinbad's "dark" side. His charming smiles and gentle words to her are the most obviously fake and manipulative interactions we've ever seen from Sinbad. He tests her, he plays with her and secretly puts her under the spell of one of his djinns and we still don't know what kind of consequences this will have later on in the story. Of course Sinbad wouldn't want Kougyoku to get hurt. But if he had to choose between Kougyoku or his country, he wouldn't hesitate. (Though he'd probably try protecting both.)
I could actually see Kougyoku on Sinbad's side as a great queen, but she deserves better. Someone who would love and cherish her. I honestly don't think she could be happy with Sinbad.

Still, I guess the little devious fangirl in me ships it. Because it's wrong, yeah.

PSA: I know it's utterly ridiculous but I don't think I can stop drawing Sinbad. Kill me plz... *submerges into fangirl hell*

Just a quick post

I hope I can finish writing this before I have to go.

I still don't have much to post, but I somehow found the motivation to work on my semi-realistic Echo pic some more:

My mother said she looked like a boy, so I completely repainted her nose and made her more doll-faced. I still don't like it, but I may finish it anyway.

Fast scribble of Mu from Magi. I know his eyes are off. Muscular pretty boys are fun to draw.

I just wanted to draw a girl. Somehow she reminds me of Morgiana. I may turn her into Morgiana when I draw her clothes. IF I draw her clothes...

Scribbled this after listening to the newest Pandora Hearts drama CD. It's so cute. XDD Some lighthearted interactions with the Sablier characters are so nice aaa~ If I wasn't such a loser, I'd draw something better. It was so nice to hear Lacie and Levi "talk", haha. Also, Taniyama Kishou (Oswald) finally had more than like two lines. Hanazawa Kana forgot how to Sharon, though. I loved her as Sharon because she used to sound different, more "aunty-like" as Sharon, but now she sounds just like every other character she voices. Lacie sounds almost exactly like Alice, Kawasumi-san doesn't differentiate much between them. I'm happy that Sakurai Takahiro got Levi's role because some of my earliest memories of Japanese voices actors are connected to him. He played Cloud Strife in every spinoff/movie/anime of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy was my first obsession and fandom.

This is a freaking ugly scribble I did yesterday night. I'm posting it to prove how I'm just getting worse and worse... orz I've been wanting to draw a corny couple pic like this, but I have no idea how to do the poses, the angle and everything. I stopped sketching this because I don't know where to put their arms and how to draw their bodies. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is for me to draw even a simple composition like this. And it's only getting harder, it's crazy. It's like... the more I draw, the harder it gets.

 Here's a random screenshot featuring more sketches. Damn you Sin, stop hitting on girls.

Finally, have a preview of this huge-ass Sinbad drawing. It's 3000 pixels tall. :B This is the reason why I was rambling so much about BaalSin's design in my previous post. It just doesn't want to get finished, I often just open it, stare at it for long minutes and close. I prefer this cropped version because his hands are shitty, lol. Anyway, I should finish it because it's the only decent thing I've drawn lately. (Though I started drawing it half a year ago...)

Ok, that's all folks. I finished in time. I dunno when I come home, but I'll try to draw some more when I do.

Salalala 131211

I should have made a sketch today. Simply because it would have been funny to have a file name with 131211 in it, haha. But I had a busy day today...

Here's what I've been up to:
- I've been working.
- I've been studying.
- I have little time to go online and when I do, it's usually while I'm eating lunch/supper at home or something.
- I've been browsing tumblr instead of drawing.
- I've been still doing a few sketches and working on things here and there, but nothing finished enough / worth to post.
- I still don't have a social life.
- I'm still into Magi, but I'm not caught up with the manga and I'm downloading the anime episodes, but haven't had time to watch them lately, so I'm about 3 episodes behind. However, I keep seeing all the gifs on tumblr and I read the spoilers all the time. (It's faster to read the quick translations and stuff, so yeah.) I'm aware of what's going on. 8D

Pandora Hearts is on hiatus this month. TT___TT
Magi is also on hiatus this week (I think?).
*cold unpleasant wind of despair and solitude blowing*

Anyhow, I haven't done much in December regarding drawing yet.

I started colouring this one I drew back in July, but his face is freaking ugly. Damn you, Oz, why are you so bloody difficult to draw? DX I wanted this to be good, but it's not turning out the way I wanted and I'm not sure if I should waste more time and energy on it...

I started drawing this in November as a random headshot doodle. Then I got carried away.
I actually like this BaalSin more than my first BaalSin. I'm not sure about the designs, though. Ohtaka is the most inconsistent mangaka when it comes to different designs, so trying to figure out how the djinn equips work can cause major headaches. I tried to make his waist more skinny here because Ohtaka sometimes draws so skinny waists it looks almost unhealthy. The anime sort of corrected the weird shoulder-waist proportions and the characters look less anorexic, lol. You can say Sinbad is a relatively big muscular dude, but there are a lot of even bigger dudes in Magi. :B

Ok, I wanted to ramble some more, but I should go to sleep now. I have school tomorrow.

Figures and stuff

Eeep! Despite working full time, I must say I had a good week. I even managed to impress some people at work with my English. :D

Also, both packages I was waiting for arrived. The special edition of PH volume 20 with the chibi Gil figurine was delivered to me on Tuesday (November 12) and the Magi strap was delivered on Wednesday (November 13 - my "nameday" XD). Kyaaa~ Apparently, both were posted on November 1, so it took 11-12 days in total. Gil came from Ireland, Sinbad came from Canada. I honestly wasn't expecting the one from Canada to get here so soon, but it looks like Sinbad wanted to be on time for my nameday. XD

I took these photos with my cell phone after taking them out of the envelope and removing the transparent nylon wrap thing that was holding them together. Gil has a huge box for a 6 cm tall figurine, but I guess they had to make the box the same size as the manga volume.

Oh yeah, this limited special edition was my prize for winning a contest on tumblr with this.

Pandora Hearts volume 20 is actually one of my favourite PH volumes. Starting with a touching scene of Gilbert and Vincent and ending with a heart-wrenching scene... TT___TT It's the latest volume released in Japan, though volume 21 should come out sometime soon now. I'm so happy I have this volume, I usually just dream about owning such things, since I don't want to waste money on buying them for myself. Btw the full volume is a bit over 200 pages long including the extras.

Gil still in his box. I'm always too scared to take my precious figurines out of their packages at first, lol.

After I finally took him out. He's so cute. And I'm glad he's so tiny, I actually thought he'd be a bit bigger. There are a few small mistakes on him, for example he seems to have some barely noticeable scratch on his face, but otherwise he's the awesomest badass chibi Gil.

And here's my Sinbad strap/keychain. It was extremely difficult to get a decent shot of him, I might try again tomorrow when I can take photos in natural daylight.
This figure has a long story. Somebody I follow on tumblr was selling Magi merchandise and doujins to be able to pay for her dog's surgery and I've been considering getting another Magi charm since I won the Alibaba one back in February (it's really adorable in person, the photos don't look nearly as good as the actual thing). I originally wanted a Morgiana to accompany my Alibaba charm, but there are only Aladdin (derpy chibi version), Sinbad, Ja'far, Masrur and Sharrkan in this set of figurine straps. At first I didn't think of buying anything, but then I randomly checked my PayPal and I realized I had enough "leftover" money from commissions to buy one of these (+ shipping cost). So I was like I HAVE MONEYZ!! LET'S SPEND IT!! and that was it. Haha. Btw, Ja'far looked really cute too, but he was sold by the time I checked again. XD;
So yeah, I'm not regretting buying him because he's really adorable and very detailed for a tiny figurine. He's a higher quality figure than the ones of the series my Alibaba is from. Alibaba is more chibi and the seam line on his head bothers me, but they did the seaming on this Sinbad in a clever way and it's not that noticeable. There are some small mistakes in the painting, but this is pretty much unavoidable with such a tiny figure.
My family thought he was a girl, lol. Mom loves him more than Gil and Alibaba.
The only issue I have with this Sinbad is that I'd expected some fancier package after the Alibaba one being in the same kind of protective package my big Squall was in (plus a bag). Sinbad came with only a small transparent plastic bag and he was taken out of even that, wrapped in some paper instead.

And now a corner of my desk looks like this. XD The big Squall was a birthday present in 2009. This photo somehow turned out decent, I guess.

Umm... yeah. I wrote about my figures because I have no drawings to post, hahah... The only decent sketch I've done so far in November is a sketch of Kouen from Magi.

It's still unfinished and inaccurate. I've been working on this before going to work in the mornings. XD
This is Kouen's Astaroth djinn equip. I actually haven't seen too many fanarts of him in this form, not even on pixiv, even though I think it looks so good. It's kinda like a cross between Sin's Focalor and Baal and his element is fire, hnnng. Kouen's a beast.

I have no energy/time to draw, heeelp... X___x

Photos and some stupid things

Ok, so I decided to log in here again and ramble about stupid things nobody cares about. 8D My birthday was yesterday, it wasn't anything special, I got some money from relatives I'm not gonna spend on anything like always and I also got a new coat from mom. I finally uploaded the photos from my digital camera to the computer, so let's post a few things here...

I finally have a new keyboard. My old one was so old you couldn't read the letters and numbers on it any longer. I got this one in August as some kind of early b-day present, lol. It's fluorescent too.

 This is my 'monster' orchid. It was originally a birthday present for my grandmother, but it's in my room now. It's 4 years old now and it blooms from around April to September. When you see these in stores, they usually have about 3-6 flowers, but this one had TWELVE this year.

And these are my mother's violets. I have no clue what kind of positive energies the plants must be receiving in our apartment, but these babies just keep blooming non-stop. XD

The cherry trees were all cut out in September, though. *sad*

NOW THEN... let's post some sketches as well~

Waka!Sin + child!Ja'far sketchy from the end of September. Apparently, I have a fetish for these two. I actually prefer drawing them together like that instead of their adult versions. They are cuter, hahah~
This was a super fast sketch, but I thought it turned out okay for a super fast sketch.

This was my sketchy wip for this. I made a few changes in the process, but not that much. This contest was a good excuse for me to finally draw fanart for the Gilbert in Wonderland omake. :D

Doodle of some of my favourite guys~ I sort of copied these from official artworks and manga panels because I wanted to stick to the original styles. Magi is not as ugly as I first thought... FMA is still uglier... XD; Also, Roy and Sinbad are the same age, but Sinbad is like 10 cm taller, hahaha, shorty Roy~

EWWW, this is crap, don't look. I doodled this last week, it was originally Sin sitting with some drink in his hand, but I couldn't get his hand right and then somehow it turned into this. I can't anatomy, so blehheghugh. But I love this guy because he's totally in character even if you don't draw him clothes.

I'm gonna die tomorrow. Or not. But then I'm gonna die next week. X___x

Also, I'm randomly addicted to this song:

Oh yeah, and there's been too much Sinbad on this blog lately. I'll now write a small rant on this matter and I'm putting it under a cut for reasons...