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~

Magi scribbles and The Sims 2 8D

Happy New Year! 8D I know it's super late, but this is my first post in 2015, haha.

I still haven't managed to draw much since last time. I got inspired once and managed to draw a sketch every day for 4-5 days in a row, but then I gave up and started watching anime and play The Sims 2 instead. The recent Levi drawing I posted on tumblr is from that random inspired time.

I did several practice doodles of Ja'far when I wanted to draw him for a friend's birthday in the beginning of February. Ja'far is her favourite from Magi and I dislike Nanatsu no Taizai, so Ja'far was the obvious choice for me, lol. Maybe I should have finished this one instead of the one I ended up finishing, but I didn't like how his face turned out here.

This is an OC doodle that somehow happened. I created this character many years ago after waking up from a movie-like dream. My OCs always change a lot in my head and I keep changing even basic stuff like their names, but I guess "Darshana" finally got stuck as this girl's name.

This is her old outfit which I don't really like anymore. :/ She had straight hair on my first designs of her because it took me forever to learn how to draw this wavy "flowy" hair. I wanted to make her feminine in appearance but masculine in personality. I often try to imagine her actions and interactions with other characters while imagining how an outgoing charismatic and overconfident male character would act. And I like it. XD I just had to create a male attendant for her who balances her out a little, he becomes nervous, embarrassed or worries in her place and makes her stop when she goes overboard. I'll draw him too one day.

Obligatory Sinbad scribbles, duh. I'm still so addicted to drawing him, I hate him so much ugh...

Really quick doodle I did after one of the recent Sinbad no Bouken chapters. OMG my baby is growing facial hair already?! XDD He's growing up so fast, jeez.

Aaand this is not my art. It's a birthday present I finally got recently. My favourite PH boys wishing me a happy birthday, yay~ <3 I'm posting it here because having it here may be safer than having it on my PC or my external HDD. (I apparently lost two or three months worth of old photos thanks to my external HDD - some of them were important personal memories.)

Okay, I guess that's all the unfinished stuff I wanted to post for now. (I have some more messy scribbles, but they are too shitty to post even here.) I'd like to finish at least one of my old Sinbad drawings this weekend. I'll pray to the animu gods to give me patience and inspiration, haha.

One of the many times the Reaper came

Oh yeah, and I wanted to write about a funny story that happened in my The Sims 2 game (I shouldn't have downloaded it last year when EA made it downloadable for free. X'D).
One of my favourite sims refuses to die. XD
He's a guy with romance aspiration and pleasure secondary aspiration. I created him as a university student sometime last year. He's now an elder who reached the end of his life (he lived a great happy life fulfilling his lifetime wants twice - reaching the top of the Athletics career and WooHooing with 20 sims), but when the Grim Reaper comes at 6 pm, he throws himself on his knees and begs for his life. Then the Grim Reaper offers to play a guessing game and my sim always wins. XDD If he keeps this up, he's gonna live forever, lol.

Wife crying on the right, but he won

Eventually, he managed to outlive his wife who was actually a couple of days younger than him (she died normally like every other sim). I also realized this is probably not a glitch. I saved the game before 6 pm and kept reloading a few times and one time my sim ended up choosing the Reaper's wrong hand during the game and died. But I didn't save the game when that happened, so he's still alive and keeps messing with the Grim Reaper every day, hahaha. After losing the game, the Reaper leaves and my sim doesn't get a day older. 8D
Update:
I finally figured out why he didn't die! Back when he was still in college, he randomly got a magic lamp and one of the wishes he made was being able to trick the Grim Reaper. I didn't consider this possibility at first because I thought the effect of this wish would "wear off", but apparently it didn't. Anyway, after losing to the Grim Reaper twice in a row, I saved the game and let him go. He was a fun sim to play, may his 4 children prove to be just as fun. RIP. XD

Okay, I'll shut up now. I also wanna ramble about anime/manga and the latest PH chapter (I'd like to draw Aliceee and Ozzz), but I'll do that on deviantART eventually. Now I'll go and work on the drawings I want to finish. Bye for now~

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 few rough scribbles

Hello again my personal blog. Thing is, I'm jobless again at the moment, which means I have a lot of free time when I'm not too busy worrying about my future... But still, I'm not too inspired to draw. I finished the palette challenge I was doing on tumblr and now I'm like "NOW WHAT?". I have ideas, but... shit, I'm only getting worse. I find myself looking for references even when I want to draw the simplest things. orz

Here's a scribble I did after first seeing Pandora Hearts Retrace 97 (mannn that Retrace was the best thing). I drew this in a few minutes before we went to watch the fireworks and I haven't touched it since then. I may or may not do something with it later.

Sinbad is a compulsory addition in all of my entries lately. -___- Maybe I should do some decent finished work of him. Perhaps then I would be satisfied and stop getting these urges to draw him.

Today's scribble. I've had this idea since I first saw the "Special Feeling" meme. (That was quite a long while ago, yep.) Riza and Roy in the rain instead of snow. I kinda sorta gave up on this because I have no idea how to draw a frigging umbrella. Refs don't help. *sob*

Okay, that is all for now. I'm still pretty uninspired and I seem to give up working on everything faster and faster... I'll try to draw every day now that I have time.

I don't have any new music to listen to either. I'm currently listening to old anime songs I downloaded years ago.

Oh well, hope next time I can post better things~

Happy Belated Birthday to Me XD

Ok, so I decided to create another post just because. I managed to take some better photos of my new figurines last weekend. My camera really does work a lot better when there's enough natural light. O___o

It's Gilly. I just love his "Tell me where Oz is or I'll shoot you!" expression, haha. And I didn't even notice he had some blue in his hair at first.

Look at this little bastard, he's so smug. He's all "I'm cute and I know it." XD

Group photo! You know what I'm missing? Some Fullmetal Alchemist thing. Yes. Now I have merchandise of Final Fantasy, Pandora Hearts and Magi, but still nothing of FMA.

I still have no new drawings to upload here, so I decided to upload some drawings I got for my birthday instead. Because the creators sent them to me only in private. I'm not going to name any names, but I'd like to keep these somewhere I can easily find them again. (Obviously, I have them saved on my computer, but it's often easier for me to find stuff on this blog. XD; )

Pandora Heaaarts. Mah beloved Nightray brothers, I still adore them. Both of them, oh my gosh and this drawing is just sooo cute I can't. <3

Um... what can I say to this one? It's byoootttiiifffoool. Like some wise person said somewhere else "One of these days, I'm going to have something like this in my bed". XD I make my friends draw fanart for fandoms they don't even know/like, hahaha. Sin, I know you're a shameless whore, but I love you anyway.

And I also got this one yesterday. So pretty. <3 Dangit, you guys draw my own characters more than I do, pffft. XD;;;;;

I might be getting one more, but these were my b-day giftarts for this year.

I should go draw now, but my fingers hurt... TT___TT It's unpleasant to type too, so I'm gonna end this post now.

Recent song obsession:

Some Vince/Gil and Shindobaddo

Oy. New post on the first day of the month, wow. I didn't post a single artwork on neither deviantART nor my tumblr in July. This has never happened before. Even when my grandmother passed away 4 years ago and I was feeling really down, I was still able to produce one or two finished drawings in a month. It seems the older I get, the more I feel like giving up. Drawing is children's play to most people who don't end up becoming artists and they normally give up when they finish school and start working and it seems like I'm finally starting to grow out of it too. The sad thing is I can't even say it's because I have a life now, because I don't. My work has ended at the place I used to work at and now I'm jobless again. :|

Anyway, I'm still doing sketches and doodles, but nothing turns out good enough.

This is a crappy Gil doodle I did the other day. I really don't like how his face came out, but I have no idea how to fix it. I think it's too long or something...

Random quick messy sketch of Vincent molesting Gilbert. :P
Gilbert is wondering what kind of terrible crime he must have committed against the world to deserve this.

Another quick messy sketch, this one is Sinbad. Lately, I do a random sketch of Sin whenever I'm feeling uninspired and unmotivated. Thing is, I'm feeling like that a lot...
The rest of this post is going to be about Sinbad. :B

Inspired by a cosplay photo. Lying poses are really hard to draw. Bleh.

Hmm, this one is not so bad. Maybe. His arms are probably off, though.

Baal!Sin. I guess I made this a little similar to my Amon!Ali. I had so much trouble with his arms and hands. OTL I'd like to finish this.
While everybody is raving about the swimming anime, I'm still fixated on Sinbad's abs... -___-

Sin stop being so fun to draw uguuu~~ I drew this just a few hours ago. Maybe I should post it at least on my tumblr. I guess he should have bigger eyes and a smaller nose or something, but I like how he turned out here. Better than my first Gilbert doodle. :B

That's it for now. I draw Sinbad too much. I keep telling myself I'm not obsessed with him, but I'm not sure any longer... It's not normal for me to draw a random anime/manga character so much. FFFUUUUU... The funny thing is that my mother likes him, she says he's very good-looking. XDD She also liked Gilbert when I drew him for the very first time years ago, but then I kept drawing him so much she began hating him, lolz.

Ok, enough of me and my embarrassing fangirl idiocy for now.

I listened to the "Walking with Strangers" album by The Birthday Massacre today and I liked it a lot. I already listened to several songs from this album years ago, but the entire album is pretty good.

Here's one of my fave TBM songs:

Some PH and Magi

Ok, I compiled some sketches I should upload here again.
Let's start with Pandora Hearts:

 I really wanted to draw something with Oz. I know this sucks, but this is the best I could do. The left one is the quick initial sketch, the right one is the lineart. I changed a lot of things, yet I'm still not happy with this. :\

Here's a Vincent scribble. The pose was actually inspired by a drawing of Gil in a similar pose. I wanted to draw Vince crying because I'm a terrible person.

And now some Magi:

Scribble of Aladdin I did today. I swear this took me about 2 minutes. I always have trouble drawing eyes if the character has too big eyes, but I actually like drawing Aladdin more than I'd thought I would. :O

My first drawing of Ren Kouen. The recent chapters made me interested in him, though the more I know about him, the more I'm convinced he's gonna be Sinbad's opponent eventually (it was pretty obvious from the first time he was introduced, but yeah...). He cares for his siblings and his people, but he seems to be somewhat aggressive and hungry for power.
I don't really like how his face turned out here plus I can't draw his outfit, but I wanted to colour something with warm tones.

Are you cheating on me with Kouen? XDDD
I usually draw Sinbad smiling, but this time I went for a different kind of expression. I really love it when he makes angry/serious/menacing faces. So hot, lol!

Younger Sinbad because I'm in love with his outfit. Though this was only a headshot at first. And then I sketched him a body. Don't do this, children! Only bad artists do that. I also cropped his right hand because it sucked. Also, he looks high or something here.

More Sin. What is anatomy?? His hair looks odd here too. I didn't know what outfit to draw him, but then I realized this was Sinbad, which means you can just draw him naked and it will be totally in-character.
OMG THIS ONE IS SO SHITTY, but I felt like posting it for some reason.

This is actually from the waka!Sin + ko!Ja'far scribble dump I did in March. I just did some quick lines and slapped some colours on this one recently. I still think it's kind of cute. These two are so precious aaaaaAAAAAaaaaa...
Sleeping characters are so hard to draw. Everything is hard for me but yeah... Also, Sin might be the worst sleeping partner ever; he probably tosses and turns a lot plus he snores, lol.

Wow, that was quite a lot of Sinbad. I have an OC commission sketch too, but I don't wanna post that one here. :B

I felt so good today, the weather was also good, not too hot. The blackbirds stopped singing some time ago, but the chickadees, green-finches and sparrows still keep coming to my window to eat. There's a chickadee that comes to wake me up at 4:45 every morning. XD This reminds me I should probably go to bed now, haha.

 I'll just post my current song obsession:

Failed attempts

Hey~ Sorry for not posting much here. "Failed attempts" is probably the most appropriate description of the past 1,5 months regarding my art. Let me show you some sketches...

This is a really crappy quick doodle of Vincent from PH. I was trying to draw in a different style, but I didn't like how this sketch was turning out, so I stopped working on it.

Scribble of young Rufus Barma inspired by the latest PH chapter. This is pretty ugly too...

Two drawings of my character, Alec. You can tell I have a really bad art block when I keep doing small doodles of this guy. The first one on the left is ugly, the newer one is better.

More quick OC doodles. Self-explanatory, lol~

Random background attempt. This is just an initial sketch, I ended up using a part of it as the background of this picture.

Djinn equip Alibaba from Magi. I have NO CLUE how his design works because it's so hard to make out from the manga panels plus Ohtaka's art can be pretty inconsistent anyway, but I tried to draw my interpretation of it. I think he's similar to Focalor, except that he has flames instead of feathers and no body markings. I made his waist a bit shorter on the lineart because I tend to make people's bodies too long. I'm doing the colouring in a different way and I kinda like how his hair turned out. 8D Anatomy is wonky as always, but I can't do better.

Saving the best for last - here's a Sinbad again. I started pointlessly doodling 2 days ago while I was waiting for Kasia's reply on Facebook and then it turned into this. I don't have much to say about this, except that I clearly enjoy drawing this dude way more than I should. Though I haven't drawn his metal vessels properly because I was too lazy to look up decent references of them.

Ok, that's it for now. I'll try to finish that Alibaba one and maybe Sinbad as well, but I posted the others just to show you I've been trying to draw things, I just have an attention span that probably equals the memory of a goldfish in capacity...

Btw, I was listening to the first Shingeki no Kyojin OST in the past few days and it's pretty good, but in my opinion, the Guilty Crown OST was a lot better.