May sketches

Yo! I've been feeling down about my art a lot lately. I just look at other ppl's sketches and it seems so easy... And then I get inspired and try to draw something too, but it doesn't turn out half as well as I imagined it and I need to realize how bad I am again and again. I will eventually give up, I guess. Although drawing is something I've loved doing ever since I was a small child, so I'm not sure I could just give up. But you know, the lack of improvement is a little depressing. My "art" is just terribly boring and static. Even after spending over seven years on deviantART, I still can't do more complicated poses, perspective and dynamic stuff. In fact, I often have to use a reference just to be able to start a drawing from somewhere. You know... for a certain pose, style or something. I'm trying. I go to posemaniacs and do the 30 sec drawing exercise and stuff. But it's like doing nothing at all. I'm pretty good at drawing those poses by relying on the refs, but as soon as I try just by myself, I get stuck after 2 lines and have no clue where the body should go or how long a limb should be from a certain view. I think I simply lack the ability to be able to envision these things correctly and it should be vital for an artist. TT___TT
A friend of mine told me some time ago that I should move on to drawing environments and backgrounds because I'm already good enough at drawing characters now, but I highly doubt I'm good enough for trying more complicated things. Though it's possible that studying and practicing perspective would help me with the character poses and angles too...

Ok, enough of my whining for now. Let's post some sketches I've done in this month so far. I'll start with the worst one and then go in chronological order~

This is a very fast sketch of Break and Vincent from Pandora Hearts. I kinda gave up working on it because I couldn't figure out how to draw their poses. I just can't get that prison scene that was in one of the recent chapters out of my head.

A super quick Alibaba from Magi. I love this boy. I keep forgetting that he's already 18 years old because he's just so moe and silly and adorable, haha~ I've been trying to force myself to draw quick simple things because it's still better than not drawing anything. And purple is good for shading.

And there's also this alcoholic idiot. Oh my gosh... I think I'm in love with him. XD;;; The thing he is hugging is supposed to be one of those big jugs. This sketch was actually inspired by a sketchdump I saw on pixiv. His leg probably shouldn't be where it is and the pose is probably all wrong, but I couldn't draw it better. :B

Shota Drakon. He has green hair, bitches! I've always thought human Drakon must have had dark green hair. I really love this kid too. I don't even know why, I guess I just liked his personality from what we could see of it in the Sinbad no Bouken prototype. I almost wish he'd have kept that attitude and remained human. Though I love how he looks so much like a dragon already, lol.

Evening doodle for yesterday: Esla with baby Sinbad. My anatomy skills are a catastrophe, I swear. I spent like 2 hours (maybe not two, but at least one for sure) trying to get the poses right. And it still looks weird as heck. Oh well...
Sin got his eyebrows from his mom, good. And the earrings. Otherwise he'd be a carbon copy of his father.
Also, why do anime/manga moms always get sick and die at a young age (or get eaten by a giant or something)? I'd seriously like to see a manga hero whose mom is alive and kicking asses.

Hey, these sketches are not that bad after all. I only wish I had a longer attention span. I'd like to ramble about more things, but I gotta now, so maybe later~ I'm sure I'll do some more sketches in May.

My song obsession for today:

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

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...

Winter in March

We had snowstorms where I live last weekend. O___o It started snowing on the afternoon of March 14 and then it kept snowing for almost an entire day. The snow didn't melt right away and it was still cold and windy even today. A snowy March 15 like this has never happened in my life before and I heard the last one before this happened when my mother was still a kid. Nature is not fooled, though. The blackbirds sing in the morning and evening and small leaves and flowers began growing everywhere.

 It looked like this.
My mother says if you washed your face in March snow, you'd be beautiful, haha~

Anyway, Pandora Hearts Retrace 82 came out yesterday. It's 65 pages. It's beautiful. This series never ceases to amaze me. It's so cute, emotional, exciting and bloody dark and tragic at the same time. I love Oscar so damn much. I've loved him from the beginning, but at first I didn't expect Jun would give him any special attention or character development or anything. I thought he'd only be this random funny uncle, who won't have much purpose in the story other than being a minor comic relief character. Well, I was wrong. Oscar is a great character like everyone else.

I did so many super fast PH scribbles in the past 1-2 days. @___@

Oh, and I'm also refining/colouring this thing from my previous entry:

VERY SLOWLY because I had commissions and other more important things to draw in the meantime. But I'm having so much fun with this lame sketch. XD

The story of this sketch:
hand: SINBAD PLZ.
brain: NO. COMMISSIONS.
hand: NO. SINBAD.
brain: NO. PANDORA HEARTS.
hand: I WANT MY SINBAD.
brain: I ORDER YOU TO WORK, HAND.
hand: ONLY IF I CAN DRAW SINBAD FIRST.
brain: ... OK.

I think I'm crazy... Anyway, I'd better go to sleep now. I'll work on my Pandora Hearts sketches tomorrow.

~Long time no see~

Hello, my dear blog! I've been neglecting this place because of reasons. I actually have quite a lot of unfinished sketches, but I just... don't feel like posting them, even though I know not many people view this blog. But I finally decided to create a post here after a long time.

So this arrived in the mail yesterday. It's a tiny Alibaba charm I won in a tumblr giveaway. IT MADE ME SO HAPPY. I never participate in giveaways like these because I know I have no luck. But I'm a follower of the blog where this giveaway was held (and it's all thanks to them reblogging a Magi fanart I did), so I instantly became a probable winner. Apparently, I do have some luck after all, hahah~

Magi. I seem to have a serious affair with this series. It's just a terribly mainstream battle shounen, but something captivated me in it. I keep drawing the characters. You'll see it below.

This is an old unfinished sketch from last December. Levi/Lacie from Pandora Hearts. I dunno why I made Lacie's hair look like Alice's here.

My first Magi sketch ever, lol. I can't draw Aladdin. (Also from December. I started watching Magi in the beginning of November, then read the manga in December.)

Alibaba from the same sketchdump the previous Aladdin sketch is from. After this I decided to draw Sinbad. It was a mistake...

My Pandora Hearts OTP, Vince/Ada. I was suddenly inspired to draw this when my mom was watching some crappy romance movie in the other room. The women were wearing pretty dresses and the main couple died in the end. I guess this drawing is kind of OOC. But I wanted to draw it anyway.

Sinbad and Kougyoku from Magi. I drew this in January after not being able to resist the temptation to draw them any longer. I don't exactly ship these two but they look cute together or something. :B Oooh the wonderful unrequited love!! XDD But hey, they actually have a few pretty cute scenes together, Kougyoku is adorable, lol~

This is a super quick random sketch. I think they kinda look like young Roy and Riza from FMA... 8D

Ja'far-kuuunnn. Magi. I didn't like how he turned out and redrew his eyes today. He looks better now.

The stories about waka!Sinbad and child!Ja'far are some of my favourite things about the Magi fandom. All there is about them in the manga is like... A SINGLE FLASHBACK PANEL showing the young assassin Ja'far attempting to kill Sinbad. But there are hundreds of doujinshis inspired by that one panel and I have to admit I became intrigued by it too.

OOOH GO TO HELL SIN. I can't really draw you anyway, you don't look like yourself. My anatomy skills improved a little, but I still suck. I actually coloured this, but I prefer the uncoloured sketch. Btw I also started messing around with this and drew him different facial expressions, but this was the "default" one. And he's not really naked, I just made it seem so by cropping the pic. :B

Super quick crappy Alice scribble. Pandora Hearts, obviously. I'd really like to finish this~~

Quick Gil scribble. My mother told me he was handsome yesterday. Oh my God, the world is coming to an end... (My mother hates every character I fangirl over.) She also thinks I'm totally obsessed with Gil and I only like guys who resemble him in a way. Real or not real. That's why I like Josh Groban too. Yes, totally. :B

Here's another Aladdin I did a couple of days ago. This one turned out better than my first Aladdin, I think. His proportions are also better (I cropped the body off of the first one), though Aladdin is still too chibi for me to draw, lol. I wanna put his staff in his hand and colour this.

Eyebrow-kun. STAHP. GET OUT OF MY HEAD. NOW. I don't wanna fangirl you.
He really arouses my inspiration. There are probably around 5000 mistakes on this sketch, but I still like it. I hate that my Sinbad sketches turn out well. And I totally drew this instead of working on a commission... -___-

Ok, that was A LOT. Haha! I have some more Magi and even some OC stuff, but those are terribly sketchy unfinished things and they are simply unworthy to post. Now I'll go and try to finish the things I should have finished ages ago~ ^^;;;

So tired...

Today's date is 12/12/12. How cool. 8D We won't have another date like this in our lifetime.

Anywho, I didn't forget about this blog. I just don't have anything to post. Seriously. I have a few new sketches, but all of them are shit. Here are some screenshots I've shown to friends:

This is a wip shot of the pic I did for the calendar project, I spent a lot of time on it and I think this is one of my best linearts so far. I tried to keep it relatively clean.

And this is a sketch I abandoned. It's kind of cute, though. Maybe I'll continue working on it one day.

I wanted to reply to some comments on DA, but I had a pretty rough day and I'm so tired now I don't feel like doing anything else... I'll save it for next morning. Good night~~