Biggest hailstorm I've ever seen

 Time for my annual post!

I wanted to post the photos I took on July 9 this year. I was livetweeting the storm on Twitter, but this blog serves as a much better archive than Twitter, so I felt like making a blog entry dedicated to this storm that occured on July 9, 2021.

We had golf-ball sized pieces of ice falling from the sky, they destroyed the bird feeder.
After the storm, there was a rainbow and pretty clouds.

I wonder what we may expect from the weather in 2022.

How I got a Nintendo Switch Lite

 Annual post time!!

Now that there isn't much left of 2020, looking back at this year, one of the best/funniest things that happened to me this year was when I was like "if I earn enough with commissions/donations, I shall buy a Nintendo Switch Lite so I can play this darn Fire Emblem game I'm so crazy about

- ahaha just kidding... UNLESS..."

And that's the story of how I got my Switch.

A few days after I made this announcement, the Claude drawing I posted on the same day suddenly blew up on Twitter. Nothing I posted on Twitter for 5 years received any particularly remarkable attention before that one drawing. And all of a sudden, there was no end to notifications and even famous artists started following me. It was like everything in the universe was conspiring together to get me that Switch.

I think my Ko-fi goal was maybe $230, but I'd already had 43% of the money from earlier commissions. That was enough to buy a Switch Lite at that time. A lot of people donated (most of them came from Twitter), so I managed to collect the money and have the Switch in my hands in less than a month.

Little did I know in the summer of 2018 when I went "oh my gosh, the yellow archer kid has such a fun design, too bad I don't play Fire Emblem" that it would eventually escalate into this. XD

My FE3H fanart will meet an inevitable decline in popularity in 2021 as the game was released in July 2019 and FE3H fans are already moving on to new hyperfixations, but I'm still having a blast playing the game and drawing fanart. <3

Thank you!

Annual post

So I guess I've officially migrated my sketches to Twitter. I originally made an account there in 2015 to stalk the cool Japanese/Chinese artists and participate in the PH69min challenge, but now I post there sketches and shit I'm too shy to post elsewhere. I log in and retweet a lot because I have the app on my phone, so it's easy to access all the time.
I still think I could use this blog for something but I just don't have the time/energy for it, I guess.
And nobody is looking at it anyway.
Bye~

First and last post of 2018

Where the heck did 2018 go?

Hmm, so last few hours of the year, you say?

Actually, not much happened to me in 2018. Still, it was a pretty great year for me. I feel like I achieved somewhat of a financial stability and I got more confident and stronger thanks to my job. I did have some depressive episodes, there were times when I was feeling down and I still have no social life, but 2018 was a good year in overall.

As for drawing, I really don't know. I am now certain that commissions were the only things that kept me going, as soon as I saw no interest and closed them, I completely stopped drawing. As I grow older, it just makes me feel ashamed. I still draw like a teenager and I'm over 30 already. I don't think I should keep forcing it since I'll never be half as good as I'd wanted to be. I've been on deviantART practicing and doing art as a hobby since freaking 2006. I saw improvement memes and they make me cry. :I

I'm not saying I shall never draw again because I'm a fickle person and will do it anyway if I feel like drawing again. In fact, I may start posting some older art on this blog or DA that fell victim to tumblr's "NO NSFW" rule.

Idk what to do with this blog. I may start using it again in 2019. Let's see.

Anyway, since my last post was a sims post in 2017, I'll post some sims again on the last day of this year. :B

One of my fav sims in The Sims 2 recently died so
RIP Claudia 01.11.2015-12.29.2018
(She lived for 77 sim days but almost 4 years in real time because I've been playing the game on and off with long breaks and I have shitloads of sims/families. Haha.)

~~HAPPY NEW YEAR~~

Animu list

Okay so my graphics card died and I'm using this opportunity to do a big PC cleaning and reorganize/delete all the shit I saved and downloaded in the past 9+ years. I'm writing a list here of the anime I currently have on my external HDD. The ones I definitely want to keep are bolded, undecided ones are italic and the ones that must go are in strikethrough.

1. 07-Ghost
2. Ao no Exorcist
3. Bakuman
4. Claymore
5. Code Geass
6. Code Geass R2
7. Dantalian no Shoka
8. Deadman Wonderland
9. Dogs OVA
10. Durarara
11. Eden of the East (series + movie sequels)
12. FMA Brotherhood
13. Gosick
14. Hakuouki (trash but looks good and maybe I can use it for art reference)
15. Kuragehime
16. Kuroshitsuji (trash but looks good and maybe I can use it for art reference)
17. Kuroshitsuji 2 (trash but looks good and maybe I can use it for art reference)
18. Magi
19. Magi season 2
20. No.6
21. Otome Yokai Zakuro
22. Pandora Hearts
23. Puella Magi Madoka Magica
24. Rainbow
25. School Days
26. Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin (trash that I still liked for some odd reason)
27. Shiki
28. Supernatural
29. Tales of the Abyss
30. Tiger and Bunny
31. Togainu no Chi
32. Toradora
33. Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
34. Usagi Drop

Others:

• Gintama Benizakura movie
• Black Rock Shooter OVA
• Spice and Wolf II OVA that I downloaded but couldn't make the file work 

 Oh well, there's actually a lot that I'd like to keep. I guess I'll have to delete the undecided ones then... Some of the bolded ones are bound to change too. All this anime is about 200 GB of disk space, so I could free up a lot of space if I deleted just half of these.

Sometimes I just want to lie down and die

Writing this very personal post here because nobody reads this blog but I need to vent somewhere.

HOLY SH@T AN UPDATE!!

*wipes cobwebs away*

Okay so I haven't written a new blog entry for almost a year. It's because 1) I don't draw much 2) I no longer have time to ramble here 3) it feels like talking to a wall 4) I sort of moved to twitter with my doodles and wips. :B

Worst storm I've ever seen

I don't write about personal things a lot because nothing interesting happens to me. But yesterday we had a terrible storm where I live and I just have to write about it a little.

Putting it under a read more because of reasons.

More birdy photos and stuff

Mother managed to make my digital camera work and I'd thought of editing the previous post to add more photos, but then I ended up procrastinating and thought it would be better to make a new post for more photos. So yeah...

I also thought I'd post more photos online because I put about 5 years of photos on my external HDD last summer and I recently discovered that several of them are corrupted now and I can't view them anymore... D:

This year there was a baby boom for the chickadees! There were at least 8 young birds + the two parent birds. The parents were feeding them in the beginning, but they learnt to manage by themselves fast.
Also, they bring dead mosquitos. Those are probably the sparrows who bring them, but it's funny when I find some random giant dead mosquito in my window. XD

Look at this photogenic little guy! Or gal. I made some better birdy photos on May 16-17 and this was the first one.

"Feed me, mommy!"

They are so adorable, aren't they?

Even a goldfinch came on May 16!

I managed to get some pretty close shots of them. The only distracting thing is that the curtains were reflected in the window a little.

4-5 birds is the most I managed to capture in one photo, but we counted 8-10 of them at times. Sometimes there were 5 birds at the same time in one vessel. They move really fast, so it was hard to count them let alone take a photo.

And here's something we woke up to on the 25th of May. It was raining and there was this beautiful rainbow in the sky. Unfortunately, it was behind some clouds and you can't see it that well on photos, but it was awesome in real life.

View from my window with the rainbow. This was the 2nd time in my life I've ever seen a rainbow from my window.

Casual sight in my window at 5:30 am. This was taken after taking some photos of the rainbow.

Just a random shot. We had lots of rain in May and it looks so beautiful when there are dark clouds in the sky, but the sun is shining.

This is an older sunset photo from last November. I don't even have to leave my home, I can see all these beautiful things from my window, lol. I love nature.

Ok, that's all for now. I have some scribbles I'll probably post later, but I wanted to make a separate post for photos~

Also, here's a song. I saw a gorgeous AMV of various Makoto Shinkai anime with this song once and it's a shame it was deleted from YouTube.

May = baby birds

EDIT:  Ok, I think there are SEVEN chickadees, lol. I counted 7 the next morning.

Oh my god. I've never seen so many little chickadees in my window at the same time. 8D

Me and my family have been feeding birds for years now. Last winter only a few sparrows came, so we almost stopped feeding them, but around the end of February, we occasionally started seeing chickadees, greenfinches and goldfinches as well. There was a pair of chickadees that started coming regularly. They came more and more and we figured it must have been because they started raising their little ones. We've been hearing the young chickadees chirping for a couple of weeks now, but they didn't invade our window until today. Today was raining all day and it was also "chickadee invasion day". It happened before that they brought their kids, but never so many at the same time. X'D Imagine 5-6 little fluff balls chirping in your window. IT'S THE CUTEST THING. I swear they have at least 5 or 6 chicks because we could count this many at once. Yesterday and the day before, we watched the little sparrows, but most of them disappeared today. Maybe they were afraid of the chickadee army, lol.

I managed to take a few photos with my phone:

There are 5 of them here. It was hard to take photos of so many without scaring them away.

Two of them. They can eat by themselves now, but they still start chirping and asking for food when the parent birds appear, lol.

And here's a random sunset photo I took a few years ago. I must say there's a wonderful view from my window. I love living here. I'm really going to miss this place when I have to move one day.

Alright, this has been yet another pointless post. I could post a few wips and sketches, but I won't do that now. Maybe when I have more.

Random Ramblings of Randomness

Warning: This post is not going to make much sense. Read at your own risk.

First of all, I have no new drawings to post. I'm writing this now because I'm on 'holiday'. I'm currently working at the local town hall and we had to take a day off after the elections. I wanted to go to the doctor, but the receptionist told me I should have called and asked for an appointment first. Well, fuck. I've been going there for years now and I could just go, give them my health card and wait till they called me. Apparently, you need to call them to get an appointment now. Just for a frickin' prescription. :| I don't even know when I'm going to call them because I'm at work at the time you can actually call them. Oh well.

In connection with the elections - We always have to go to my old elementary school to vote and the drawings I did while I was a student there are still on the walls of the corridors. Looking at them now makes me think I really sucked at art back then (I did those when I was in 5th or 6th grade), but at the same time it's nice that they still didn't throw them out and replaced them with works by new students.

Putting the rest under a "Read More" because I feel like it.

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

Sakura Sakura

So many trees are in bloom now. It's like a real life animeee~ Ovo

<- This photo was taken in 2007. There are these awesome young cherry trees in front of my house and I love them. The pink ones are the "classic" pink Japanese sakura trees you can always see in romantic anime.

2008. I can't really remember when these trees were planted here, but as an avid nature and tree lover person, I was so happy when they started blossoming every spring.

2009. The white ones are so pretty here.

This is also from 2009, but the other side. These trees are more beautiful because a lady who lives in the other side of the house took care of them and she was watering them a lot.

2011. They were still quite pretty in this year, but the summer was hot and their leaves started becoming yellow earlier than they should have. We kept watering them that summer. However, they grew only a few flowers in 2012, I didn't even take photos of them that year.

2013. I see this and it breaks my heart. They are dead, DEAD. All of my beloved pink trees are dead on this side and most of the white ones too. It's the end of April and only two of the white trees are blossoming. I blame myself because I was working all summer last year and didn't pay that much attention to the trees. I think I was the only one on this side who actually cared about them, but then even I abandoned them...


3 trees on the other side are still quite beautiful thanks to the neighbour lady, especially the one next to the lamp - that one has always been the most beautiful. However, even one of those trees seems to have died down and the one in the back doesn't have leaves or flowers on the highest part of its branches anymore. Maybe they were actually infected with some disease...

So yeah... I'm a simple person who can easily get happy or sad because of small things like this. I was hoping they would at least grow leaves eventually, but they are still naked, ugly and dead. :( I feel that the entire world is slowly getting ravaged around me. The places where I used to play as a child are getting destroyed, plants and older people I used to know are dying. Everything is changing and I don't like it. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those happy carefree times when I was a child, everything was simpler yet more colourful and even time passed more slowly. Ugh, growing up sucks...

Ok, I'd better stop rambling about nonsense and post a few sketches...

Roy and Riza, my holy OTP, yeaaah. I did this like... over a week ago, but stopped working on it for some reason. I originally wanted to do a lineart for it, but I like the sketch too much and I'm afraid I'd ruin it with a bad lineart. So I think I'm gonna clean and refine it a bit more and then slap some quick colours on it.
I'm not gonna tell what inspired this... -___-;

And this is a crapstatic Judal/Judar from Magi. I tried to draw some random pose I normally don't draw, but I messed up his right leg. I have a love/hate relationship with this character. I think he's shallow. He doesn't get to be in the spotlight enough to become deep or lovable enough to me. But sometimes he's kind of cool...? Or just so eccentric and rude that it seems cool. And I like his character song. :O

I don't have any more to post atm because I'm frigging lazy. I should really finish up and post that Sinbad I did about 2 months ago (you know, the one where he's in his alternate orange outfit, which looks kinda like a rag that is about to fall off of him), but I already have so many sketches of him it's getting ridiculous. I'm not even a Sinbad fangirl, he's just too fun to draw, gaaah... And I miss drawing my precious brother-obsessed baby, Vincent.

My internet is utter crap lately. I'm currently using Skype to determine when I can click on things without having to worry about getting a "page not found" error. (The small green icon usually turns gray when my modem disconnects.) I wanted to link some songs and a cute animation, but my connection is so bad at the moment that I'll be lucky if I manage to post this entry... :B