Magi things

So I really did take a short break from drawing. I didn't do even a single doodle between August 5 and August 26. But then the 194th chapter of Magi came out... and what a wonderful chapter it is... 8D;
Lol. So yeah, I didn't draw much and even that "not much" was only Magi. But now I feel like I'm ready to get back to drawing. I bought an external HDD before the holiday and now all my drawings are on it because I'm still not sure for how long my computer will be okay. I'm still in the process of getting rid of some old unfinished doodles and files I don't need any longer.

But enough of rambling, let's post some drawings!

I drew this random Judal when I didn't have internet at all one evening. I don't like this guy very much. In the beginning, I actually expected myself to end up liking him more but... I don't like his personality, only sometimes. I don't like his outfit. I don't like his hair. He doesn't get enough screentime. He's a shallow character. I don't even find him attractive looking, he's too skinny.
WHY DO I DRAW HIM THEN??
I have no clue. To tell the truth, my entire Magi obsession is like that. I *know* the series is bad, but for some mysterious reason, I'm attracted to it. :B

Sinbad returned in his glorious Baal form in Chapter 194 and the Magi fandom was screaming so loud I could almost hear it from here, lol. I just had to do this really quick scribble of him.

Focalor!Sinbad and Kougyoku. I was talking to Nolven on deviantART about the lack of fanart of these two together and it inspired me to draw something with them. I started drawing this only yesterday, but rushed all the way to the base colours. I wish my anatomy skills were better, though...
I don't consider SinKou to be as fluffy as you may assume. One thing I like about Sinbad is the way he bounds others to himself. At first I thought he was manipulating Kougyoku only on an emotional level, but then it was implied that Zepar's powers might have gone farther than just putting her to sleep once... Kougyoku is a little butterfly who got caught in the spider's web. I wonder who she will choose if she has to choose between Sinbad and Kouen.
I drew FocaSin because FocaSin is everyone's favourite djinn equip and he looks evil somehow. Powerful, threatening and attractive at the same time. Evil is sexy. I like drawing Sinbad because he's pretty, but not in an overly effeminate way.

This is all for now. Lately, I find new music and song obsessions by going through fan soundtracks, AMVs and music posts of RP and fan blogs on tumblr. It helps me draw, so I do hope I can finish at least that Sinbad/Kougyoku drawing soon. I even found a rather "dark" FST for Sinbad.

Speaking of music, I was listening to the album Bad Blood by Bastille today. Such a fun album~ I didn't know this band at all, I just randomly came across the song "Flaws" on tumblr a short while ago and got obsessed with it. Then I found some more good songs and then got this album. "Icarus" is my favourite at the moment. <3

Here, listen to it:

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.

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.