So it was a hummingbird all along 8D

Yeah, I can finally see more of the little stylized images on the sides of my blog theme because I set my screen to a bit larger resolution after upgrading to Windows 7 in the end of December. In other words, I haven't updated this blog in exactly 3 months. I simply didn't have anything to post. orz

I actually had (and still have) some issues with my tablet settings after installing Win7. The lines are much thicker than they used to be. Even using only a few pixels big brush results in thick lines. Both in Sai and in PS. I tried changing the pressure sensitivity and all, but it didn't work. Oh well, I guess I'd better get used to it.

This is an example of how I entertain myself when I want to draw, but can't come up with anything decent. Some really bad hand scribbles that took me only a few seconds to draw. I normally don't save these, I just wanted to show you something crappy like this.

Little Sinbad sketch I did in January. He totally took over the "character I like to draw the most" title from... Gilbert Nightray (??).

Why Sinbad?
You should know that almost every womanizer character is an instant favourite for me, I love it when a male character loves women and knows how to deal with them. Or it's just funny.
His personality. Sinbad is so happy-go-lucky and laid-back it makes me happy. He's friendly and kind and charismatic and cute. He smiles and laughs a lot. He's also gentle and polite with everyone (maybe except for his mortal enemies lol). Despite his dignity as a king, he has this dorky side which makes him adorable and he often doesn't act how a king should.
He's a bit of a bad boy as well. He is halfway fallen (which actually makes him even more powerful) and he's a manipulative bastard. He doesn't let personal feelings interfere with greater goals and he isn't afraid to dirty his hands for his country. This is also something I love about him, yep.

Plus he's attractive. He has a cute face, pretty eyes and thick eyebrows, which bring out his eyes. He is quite tall, muscular and he has broad shoulders. He's manly enough to not look like a girl, but he isn't way too macho either. XD Plus it often seems like his clothes are about to fall off... XDD

So yeah, even if there are many things I don't like about Magi, I'm still in love with this character.

This is another derpy Oz I drew when I had a high fever. Happy Oz to make me feel better. I keep trying to draw Oz because I know I suck at drawing him. I doubt I'll do anything else with this, though I wanted to colour it at first.

Sinbad and Kougyoku. I left this sketchy because I was too lazy to look up references of their clothes and stuff. Also, they don't look like themselves.

Do I ship this? Maybe. I guess I usually just pick a guy and then ship him with the female character he interacts with the most. :B This pairing is wrong on many levels, but I like it because of the wrongness. It has absolutely no chance of becoming canon, though.

 More Sinbad and Kougyoku - this time it's a little AU where Kougyoku is a mermaid, who saved Sinbad, the sailor from drowning. :B I don't think I'll do anything else with this sketchy sketch, it's kind of shitty and stupid.

Another Sinbad sketchy, I told you... he's my favourite thing to draw lately... He looks so good in this outfit and I prefer his hair like this. Maybe I should finish this pic, but I can't draw hands on hips, haha... orz

Btw the Sinbad no Bouken anime is coming soon, but I have to admit I don't like the kid Sinbad that much. He lacks almost everything I like in the older Sinbad. He's just another random teenage shounen hero. Sort of an "Alibaba number two", but unlike Alibaba, he lacks the lovable idiot qualities and he's just a Gary Stu.

And this was an attempt at a semi-realistic Echo, it's still pretty rough, but I don't like how her face turned out, so I gave up working on it. Maybe I'll redraw it one day...

Ok, I guess that's all for now. I have a few more sketches, but they are kinda like my shitty hand doodles, I don't consider them worthy to post.

In other news, after over a month and a half, I can finally say I'm healed (maybe). (I still had fever last week, tho.) I discovered I was actually allergic to certain types of medicine and pills and they made me feel worse instead of making me feel better... :| But I do hope it's over for now and I'll be okay for some time.

As for music inspiration, I found some good albums in the past few months including "Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die!" by Panic at the Disco and "Halcyon Days" by Ellie Goulding. I also realized I really like listening to this "ambient" kind of music while drawing, I find it very relaxing and it helps me concentrate on drawing. For example the album "Songs of Distant Earth" by Mike Oldfield. Enigma and Deep Forest are kinda like that too.
And I discovered IAMX thanks to some fan soundtracks and stuff. (I found IAMX songs in connection with Sinbad, Jack Vessalius and maybe even Vincent Nightray.) I really love the songs "Animal Impulses", "I come with Knives", "Ghosts of Utopia", "Volatile Times" and many more.
And I also listened to the OST of Noragami. It's an okay album, but the only song I really like is Noratan.

Alright, I'll stop rambling now. Here's "Land of Broken Promises" by IAMX:

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:

Ideas, OCs and Magi

Ideas and stuff

• Magi Tarot - I want to do something like this with Pandora Hearts characters. I'm not kidding. I had this idea for a Tarot fanart series like... a year ago. I don't think I'll ever be good, patient and persistent enough to realize it, but maybe I'll try one day.
• Ideas for stupid crossovers:
  Neon Genesis Evangelion x Pandora Hearts
  Ouran High School Host Club x Pandora Hearts
  Magi x Fullmetal Alchemist
  Pandora Hearts x Fullmetal Alchemist x Magi
• Do a short comic thing of Vincent and Gil from Pandora Hearts. I have an idea for a pretty cute (?) short story of them and my dream is to turn it into a short doujinshi one day, but I need to learn how to draw comic pages first.

I just wrote this down as a reminder to myself. All of these would be pretty big challenging projects and knowing myself, I won't even attempt working on them. Though some of the crossover fanarts would be relatively easy.

I did a quick sketch of an old girl character of mine a couple of days ago. Holy crap... I've improved. My style changed so much and my anatomy is better, though it still needs work. But making things like these help me feel that I'm getting somewhere. Really slowly, but steadily. Lately I draw other ppl's characters a lot and I'm beginning to miss drawing my own characters. I created this character many years ago after having a strange dream. She is a pretty girl with dark skin, but she has a boyish attitude. She likes to fight and compete with others and she's very outgoing and friendly. She is the only daughter of a rich merchant family. I thought of naming her Darya or making it more masculine and name her Daryl, but then I found this Indian name Darshana which would also fit her somehow. :B

I just made up another character, her attendant. He is a couple of years younger than her. He is a good-natured but slightly wimpy guy. He truly admires his lady and would do anything for her, though he constantly worries about her and has a hard time having to put up with her antics. She likes to tease him.

And now I have a bunch of stories about them in my head... O___o

I drew this unfinished portrait thing in March and thought it was bad. I was experimenting with stuff. Like mixing my sketchy sketch style with semi-realism and pastel colours. Now I think it didn't turn out that bad after all. Also, is it just me or does he really look kinda like Jack Vessalius??

Here's a random doodle of waka!Sinbad. When I'm feeling uninspired, I do a quick sketch of Sinbad. :B Actually, this "version" of Sinbad doesn't even exist in the canon Magi story aside from a few flashback panels and I'm not sure if there is a detailed official design for him. But I really love this outfit because it totally looks like something I would design. I'm a little obsessed with short jacket-things and all. XD;

Fast scribble of Alibaba and Morgiana. HOW DO HANDS WORK??! JESUS CHRIST. I think this is one of those scribbles that will never be finished because I just can't get the poses/expressions right. Too bad because I love these two. :(

And another waka!Sinbad just because. I even slapped some colours on this. I guess waka!Sin can be any age between 14 and 28 (though it probably took him a couple of years to establish Sindria and get it work as a country). I usually try to make waka!Sin appear more like a teen because he's cuter than that dirty lewd old guy he is in Magi (XD), but I don't really like how he turned out here. I know I draw him too much lately, but there's something in him I love. To tell the truth, he reminds me of an old OC very much.

Oh yeah, and apparently, we're gonna get a new manga series featuring shota Sinbad as protagonist starting in May. I'm a little skeptical and afraid the young Sinbad will be kinda like "Alibaba 2.0" since there are so many parallels between them, but I'm looking forward to it.

AAAH I'VE BEEN OBSESSED WITH MAGI FOR ALMOST HALF A YEAR NOW AND DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT. DX I was hoping it would be like my random Tiger & Bunny obsession which pretty much faded away when the anime ended and I didn't end up drawing any T&B fanart, but I think my Magi obsession is just getting worse. I've been sketching the characters quite a lot. I don't know what the heck is in that series that turns me into a pile of fangirling mush, because it isn't even good. It's mediocre at best. I blame the fandom. Yes, it's because of the fandom, I guess.
Magi fandom > actual series.
I actually got into Magi last November when there were only 3-4 episodes of the anime. I started watching it and I was hooked right after the first episode. This rarely happens to me, almost never. I just found the characters adorable, it was funny, it was silly, it had adventure and action and the magical world of Arabian Nights was very enticing too. In fact, I found the beginning of the series very good and compared to the good start, it can get a little boring later on.
Here's a video with scenes of the first episode + opening:

Magi will disappoint you if you expect random adventures and adorable silliness. While it continues to provide a few humourous and random bits here and there, Magi turns into something more serious pretty soon with long story arcs, political debates, economic, moral and ethnic issues and wars. However, despite trying to bring up more serious themes, Magi is still a mainstream battle shounen at its core, which means we get plenty of battles, power-ups, friendship speeches and the main characters wanting to get stronger. And despite the good build-up, conflicts tend to get solved ridiculously easily. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad. Though there are a few characters with some pleasant moral ambiguity to them. (No, not Sinbad, though he does look deliciously evil at times.)

All in all, Magi isn't something I'd definitely recommend because it's just another battle shounen with plenty of flaws. :B

Some awesome sketch logs by awesome people:

• http://drawr.net/syobobobon - Mostly Kuroko no Basuke, but plenty of Magi stuff too along with fanarts of other series.
• http://drawr.net/moratorian81 - This artist draws mostly Fate/Zero and Magi. I actually love Fate/Zero too, though F/Z yaoi is not really to my liking. :I
• http://microcrack.blog99.fc2.com/ - AAAAA THIS ARTIIIST. I've seen so many of her (I assume it's a she?) drawings on tumblr, but she was never credited, but then I finally managed to find a post where they linked to her blog. I'm so happy now. I looove that little sketch series where everybody is kissing Sinbad. XDD
• http://dan.er.ro/ - I don't even know what language this blog is (Korean??), but adorable little Magi doodles everywhere~ Yes, it's Korean. I copypasted the 2nd row into Google translate and got this: "Sinbad the center of all the logs. Sometimes comes up in other genres." XD

MAKE ME STOP FINDING THESE, lol...
Btw, I did a search on some Japanese site some time ago and got these results for fan sites about Magi characters:
Aladdin - 78
Alibaba - 168
Morgiana - 51
Sinbad - 289
Ja'far - 225
Judal - 143
Masrur - 44
Ren Hakuryuu - 44
Ren Kougyoku - 20
Kassim - 24
XDDD I guess this sort of proves the theory that Magi fandom = SinJa fandom.

Ok, I'll stop now. Here, have a Code Geass song because I finally got the OST today. Despite being a Code Geass fan for about 4 years now, I never listened to the OST until today. It's not the best ever, but pretty good with classic tunes and some calming songs featuring vocals.

More Winter in Spring

So the extreme cold weather stayed and it looks like Santa will be bringing the Easter eggs instead of the rabbit, haha~ I just need to write about this in my blog because such a thing has never occurred in my life so far and I want to remember this extreme cold spring.

Yesterday.

Today.

It was snowing all day today. I didn't need my boots during all last winter, but I had to wear them today. We never had this much snow last winter. It's crazy. @___@ What's going to happen to all those tiny little leaves and flowers that were already out? Most of them probably froze. Poor things...

Another view. It looks like this in summer.

I've been pretty busy this week and haven't had much time to draw. But I had an appointment on Monday and had a bit of time before I had to go, so I decided to doodle some stupid random things while waiting for time to pass.

I was high on some sickeningly sweet waka!Sinbad + child!Ja'far doujinshis, so I ended up doing an entire sketchdump of them. They are all very fast scribbly things, though. I thought child Ja'far would be really difficult to draw, but he emotes so well. XD There's only like 4 years of age difference between these two, but it usually seems to be more on fanarts. Ja'far is so small and baby-faced.

And now I promise myself that I will draw tomorrow. MUST WORK ON COMMISSIONS or do Pandora Hearts fanart. I really should finish something worth to submit to my deviantART gallery...

Small rant and some PH drawings

So today I finally ate some of the Milka chocolate rabbit I got for Easter from my aunt last year. Its "best before" date was August 31, 2011. But it still tastes good even if it spent almost a whole year sitting on my table untouched, ahaha... After not eating anything at all for a day, I felt like eating some chocolate.
Oh yeah, 2 days ago, at about 6:30 pm, I felt really sick. Jesus Christ, I felt terrible. I suddenly had a very intense pain in my stomach, I felt dizzy and I was shivering. I tried to lie down, but after a short while, I had to run to the toilet and ended up throwing up twice. I have no clue wtf was wrong with me, I didn't even eat anything I don't usually eat and I never eat too much. I thought I might end up becoming ill because I usually puke only while/before being ill, but fortunately, I feel alright now.

Also, sometimes I wonder why am I even doing all this? Why do I draw? Who do I dive into the fandom every day? I think I'm the worst kind of female otaku. That creepy "forever alone" kind. Borderline hikikomori. SO FRIGGING PATHETIC UGGGHHH. I want some kind of... real motivation and goals! I want challenge. The thrill of overcoming trials and... SUCCESS. Being somewhat popular with my fanarts is not really success, it's children's play. I should think of life as a videogame. Yeah. Try to play, become better and better at it and achieve things. I've always been good at games. If I think of life as a game, it should be easier to face my fears and problems too. XD; I'm not making sense, am I? Haha.

Anyway, here are a few things I've been working on:

Just slapped some base colours on this recently, cuz people seemed to really like this sketch of mine. I also redid the lines attempting to fix some anatomy errors and it's still sketchy... I also posted this on my Tumblr.

Another Vince/Gil pic. This is a really quick sketch I did in February. The whole pic is bigger, but I can't get Vincent's pose right. :B

Steps of my semi-realistic Jack portrait. This one sucks, lol. I like the Glen and Vincent ones much better. Why are you so draw, you bastard?! FFFUUUUU. I think I spend literally hours on just trying to get his face right. And it still looks like shit. If you flip the pic upside down, he looks awesome, though. 8D;;; I hate his face so much I even considered redoing the whole thing from scratch, but then I realized I probably couldn't make it better. *le sigh* And why do I even bother to do a base sketch... ? XD; These always look TERRIBLE when I do a quick base sketch for them. But I like lineless painting because I don't have to stick to a lineart. I'm not bound by black lines, I can just spread colours and shape them how it seems good to me.

And I drew this today in the morning. It's Lotti as her chain, Leon. XD I think she'd be quite similar to Cheshire in a way. Actually, I kinda like how this sketch turned out. I wanted to do quick lines + colours too in one sitting, but then my aunt wanted me to look up something online, so I had to stop working on it. This somehow always happens when I feel like drawing something, haha. 8D;

I've been working on my 150k kiriban pic too, but I don't wanna post another wip of that, cuz I just noticed another error on it, waaa...

Okay, that's it for now. Listen to some Two Steps from Hell music:

Snow

I'm such a kid. Yesterday, it snowed all day and it made me so happy. XDD The snowing continued until about noon today. I was watching it for a while early in the morning from my window and the snow was sparkling in the light of the street lamps, it was so pretty! I was about to give up on seeing more snow than just a few drops this winter, but  now we finally got some cold (VERY cold) and a decent amount of snow.

Drawings. KICK MEEE!! PLEASE?! I should draw more. I have a sketch which has the potential to be one of my best drawings if I finish it. I started doing the lineart yesterday and couldn't draw one character's face decently, kept erasing and redrawing, then eventually gave up. OTL (For now.)
I gave up on creating original things a while ago almost completely, but I'm not good enough even as a fanartist. I'm stalking a couple of artists on Tumblr and I'm always like "how can they draw so much? why is even their sketchy stuff so good? why can't I draw half as well as this person when I'm 5 years older and I have been doing digital art for 6 years and she's just a hobbyist like me?" Anyway, I've been trying to draw, but everything I do sucks.

First of all, while I was working on my Glen portrait, I noticed that the same file looked slightly different in Sai and Photoshop. The only thing I don't like in Sai is that the shades don't seem to blend as nicely as they do in PS. Different shades have this "edge" in Sai that I can't delete no matter what tool I use. When I open the same file in PS, it looks smoother.

Quick sketch of Leo. I stopped drawing/colouring this, cuz I didn't like how it was turning out. :\

Break. This one was inspired by a cosplay photo. I can't draw his hair.

This is COMPLETE UTTER SHIT. This is what happens when you try to draw something cool and dynamic and then you realize during the process that you cannot draw dynamic things to save your life and the result turns out looking like crap and 200% static lol. I'm just posting this to show you how bad my really quick sketches are. -___-;

Okay, here's a sample from the Pandora Hearts fanart calendar. We are seriously making a calendar (actually two calendars). In fact, I'm already done with the first 12 months. It's more difficult to do than it seems, but it's turning out better than I expected at first. I'm not sure when it will be done, because we still don't have a 2nd June pic, but I hope we can finish it before March... >___<;;;

I want to draw moaaar, I'll go now...

Oh, and some people take and edit even the sketches I post here on this blog without permission. Is it so hard to contact me and ask for my permission first? D: I may have to start watermarking even my doodles, lol.

Happy New Year!

This blog is almost one year old now. Woo~ I like posting stuff here. It's like an archive for myself and it's fun to look back at all the shit I've posted by now. XD;

As first thing to do on the first day of this new year, I joined Tumblr. *le gasp* Within like 5 minutes, someone already started following me. O___o; Whoa!

JESUS CHRIST I posted an older doodle of Break just to post something to see how it looks like and people already started liking and reblogging it. That site scares me. D:

Drawingz.

Jack. Tried to to a super quick not-very-accurate copy of him from the cover of volume 7.

A very different version of Jack. I cropped this, he's holding something on the full version~

"Damn, there's a fly in my drink..." XD
Apparently, when you become the next head of the Baskervilles, you have to drink not only from the chains' but your predecessor's blood as well.

Random sleeping Vincent. I haven't drawn every detail on his outfit. I think sleeping people are hard to draw. But Vincent is a character who tends to randomly fall asleep at times because of his Dormouse chain and I'm obsessed with drawing him. He originally wasn't supposed to have legs on this drawing, so sorry if it's totally off. >___<;;;

This one might be familiar from my previous post. I originally didn't intend to do a lineart for this, but then I somehow stumbled upon this fanfic (I hardly ever read fanfics, actually. But this one is way better than the average.) and it inspired me to continue working on it. 8D I have no clue why I drew that fancy underwear thing (or whatever it is) I drew on Ada, but it was fun to draw. Ada is like a Barbie doll, so girly and disgustingly cute. And Vincent is wearing a regular white shirt here instead of his frilly nightgown-like one. This pairing needs more fanart (the newest drama CD is all about them, tee-hee~) and this fandom needs more het pairing art in general.

Other stuff.

I found my old My Little Pony toys when we were cleaning before Xmas. I have/had more, but only these two are original Hasbro ponies. The baby one was manufactured in 1984 (yeah, a few years older than me, lol) and the big one is from 1992. They still look like they are new and the big one has all of her accessories. Do you think I should try selling them online? Hehe. 8D

This is my mom's cactus. It blooms in December-January. Isn't it pretty? I like how this photo turned out.

I wanted to rant about anime/manga stuff, but this post is already pretty long. I should post more often. XD; I watched Inception yesterday and liked it, but I think I should watch it again at least one more time.

Anyway, I hope I'll continue posting lots of things here in 2012~~

PH insanity and some OCs

Long time no post again, ugh... I've been drawing. Slowly and not that much. Let's see some sketches...

XD This is a "parody" of my own drawing of Glen, lolz. The original is in my deviantART gallery. I started this as a quick random scribble and when I posted it on DA, I somehow got lucky and it ended up in the most popular pics in the 8 hours interval, it had over 400 faves in a week. O___O

Jack and Glen. I drew this because of Kasia's comment on my previous Glen drawing. She said she wanted to do this to Glen. XD It's super quick (I drew it in about 1-2 minutes, I guess) and crappy, but I wanted to upload it here anyway, hehe.

Grumpy Alice is grumpy (or tsundere?). This is part of a bigger pic I plan on finishing soon. I still don't really like how her face turned out here. D:

Jack based on a panel from chapter 67. I just loved his expressions in this chapter so much I had to draw him. Maybe I'm finally starting to learn how to draw him. I really want to do a picture of him later, he's so cute. 8D

I revamped an old OC. It's a bit disappointing how little my style changed in 6 years, isn't it? D: I mean I've always been relatively good at drawing. Other people improve more in just half a year or so... OTL

This is a quick sketch of MauAcheron-the-crazy's character, Olivia. I don't like how her face came out and she looks too girly in my style. DX I drew her because she's one of the 3 characters I have to draw for a kiriban prize art. I've done 2 sketches for that pic already, but I just couldn't get them right for some reason. I feel guilty for not completing this request yet, because I've been sitting on that pic for about 2 months now... OTL

OH MY GOD!! Can you believe I drew VincentxAda smut?! Early in the morning I get fanart ideas like this. What the hell is wrong with me? -___- Vincent probably told her he'd show her some awesome magic spell which involves getting her undressed. 8DDD *shot* Uncle Oscaaaarrrr, your precious niece is about to get tainted!! D: I like this pairing even if Vincent is a "brother-obsessed creeper who buries his desires into vulnerable women". 8) And I actually like how this sketch came out, but I don't intend finishing it.

Woo~ That was a lot of... stuff. Pandora Hearts ate my brain a while ago, so most of it was PH again. I've been listening to a lot of Akiko Shikata songs while drawing lately. I'm also into Yuki Kajiura music again. Many of her songs remind me of winter, maybe because I watched PH in December 2 years ago, lol.

Anyway, here's a song by her I discovered just recently:

American edition of Fiction, WHY U NO HAVE THIS AWESOME TRACK?! FFFFUUUU