thagirion: (Default)
Ok just finished this. I made lots of art this year but mostly traditional.



January: RipTalon, the captain from Triangulum Resistance.
February: Captain Ahab in Gregory Peck style. Or Lincoln style.
March: One of this year's commission pieces. A jeep wrangler. I also drew a bunch of vehicle doors. People ask for the weirdest things.
April: An uncolored drawing of Henrietta the Rhode Island Red hen I used to have.
May: A drawing from my Bible Journaling I made when rebels tried to over throw Moses. God opened up the earth and they were swallowed up tents and all.
Numbers 16:32 And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.
June: A pic of Solan looking at his watch. I don't think he's ever been late for anything.
July: Empress Bullet from Triangulum Resistance.
August: Phage the budgie surprised.
September: Sorath with Planets.
October: Gord talking about defeating Fear. These last four are a series for a solitaire video game.
November: Scary Fear enjoying a beautiful Fall day.
December: Scary Fear as this year's Christmas cards. Hopes and Fears.
Bonus: The first drawing of last year. The cover of this year's Bullet journal. I modified his phrase to say "What powers will you give me this year?" Looking back on this now that's an amazing question I can now answer. This year was great. I made tons of art. Some of it didn't make the cut into this review. I got more commissions this year. And I made some actual physical art too like a mailbox, tail lights and a custom budgie hat. I'm sure I'm forgetting other accomplishments. This year was just packed. Kinda sorry to see it go. Hard to imagine a better year but I'm hoping for that and hope 2020 will be even better. We are the ones that make our time great or now. So be awesome.

And that reminds me. I've been wanting to share this video since Christmas but keep forgetting. Politically the year has been awesome too. Our nation has prospered. The economy is great. We're exporting oil and are the leader in oil for the whole world. We have helped out Israel which is a guaranteed blessing for us. The turkey pardon this year was funny. Always enjoy those. And Melania (sorry I spelled it wrong I know) Trump made the white house into a winter wonderland for Christmas. It is like a palace right now and a lovely mix of Christmas and Patriotic. Two things I love. Having the Trumps in power has been like having a good King and Queen for our nation. I hope they win the next election in the new year. They have our vote for sure. Anyway check out this lovely video. Oh and the song is funny but also nice at the same time. They took Trump's voice when he said these words in speeches and ran it through auto tune so it sounds like he's singing the song.


https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bin_7V0X7mc
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thagirion: (Default)
So things are finally getting back to normal here after Peregrine left. I've started training Nautica to do tricks. I've never trick trained any bird so this will be a first. I am finding that doing so causes our bond to strengthen and she's learning to associate her little perch with good things. When I pick it up to clean the table she gets all excited. This is good. So she has mastered the command "Turn Around". We are now working on "Hang" and "Flip". Hang is her hanging upside down from the perch. Flip is an extension of Hang where she will come back up the other side of the perch. So far she sort of gets Hang and can do about a 270 degree flip but hasn't figured out how to come back up. Here is a short video of her doing Turn Around.


https://youtu.be/b5Eq0mZTt5o

I'm also trying to catch up on driving compilations. This is the one for Feb 2019 so I'm finally in this year. I'm very happy with the editing on this one.


https://youtu.be/vVDybSoisbw

Chris and I love watching dashcam and crash videos. I've noticed I'm relying less on text and visual effects like adding little traffic lights and arrows in this. The reason is we both are now better at anticipating what will happen and turning our radios down and narrating. That way if we say "Red light runner" I don't have to put a little red light to make things easier to see like before. Of course we can't always do that but it helps and that's less background music I have to find which is becoming very hard without having to use the same pieces over and over again. Dashcam Australia is still our fave though and then trying to find decent ones of stuff from US and Canada.

The other day yahoo finally got me. I have been avoiding the update to the email. I hate the new inbox. I kept saying No for months and blocking the pop ups with ad blockers and such. But they finally got me where they didn't even give me a choice. I guess they figured out how I was holding out and that I knew how to switch back to the old style. That's gone. Sucks but I'm proud of how long I resisted.

I miss doing art but still can't because I don't have a scanner. I'm also getting really sick of the "art collection" I have amassed over the decades as a traditional artist first. I wish I could draw 100% digital but I'm starting to think that I need to make good scans, keep the good digital in work and crazy enough just throw out the paper version. I'm quite happy with how I've gotten junk out of my life. I don't consider my art junk. I'm my biggest fan after all, but it's eating up my space and really in the end I'm a digital artist. I don't know. It's something I need to think about. Not sure how to go about it. Once I know I have several back ups perhaps do an end of the year toss out? I don't know.
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thagirion: (Default)
I'm thrilled that we got our HP printer to work finally. The new cartridges for the Epson didn't work. It read that it had full ink but printed blank pages. I did all the tests on it and not sure what would fix it other than a pro taking it apart and putting it back together. I hate that I have to keep it around because it's an awesome scanner. The HP has a crap scanner I can't use for my art, but it prints well. So after getting ink all over us and ending up with rainbow hands we now have a lovely printer again and yesterday I ran some gorgeous prints off of it.



Look how nice these are.



Here's a close up the Staples Print. These were terrible. The color was nice but it's all grainy and blurry. Also it has red and blue lines through it. They told me the paper was glossy. That's not glossy at all. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for these but I don't want to even give them away or display them. What a waste. They have fancy expensive printers and my cheap $50 one once it works has way better quality.



The contrast is better on the Staples one on the left but I'm willing to trade that off for these high gloss, in focus, sharp and vibrant prints. I have to remember to lighten everything then when I print my stuff but these are display worthy and gift worthy. Unfortunately my computer is in the red on memory. I'm getting scratch disk errors and can't open photoshop. So I'm backing up videos which I think may be the culprits taking up the room on my C drive. I SO need a new computer. I just hate that I'll be forced to have windows 10 if I do that. Ever since I got the GoPros it's amazing how much space videos take up. I've already filled an external drive that I think was 1 TB with just redundant back ups. I've got one left and who knows if it won't be full after this transfer. I hate backing stuff up. I'm just waiting for it to clean so I can open photoshop.

I finished October for the Bullet Journal. YAY I'm so happy about that. I need to start working on November right away and try to finish it. Seems it takes me two weeks to finish a month. I might be able to do this one faster since now I kind of know what layouts I like and what to do. I still dont' feel fully confident since I am new to Bullet Journaling. I'll post pics soon of the new journal pages since I won't be making a video on it until the end of the month.

Journal Pics )
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thagirion: (Default)
My Bullet Journal is off to a great start. I got it yesterday and started late on it. I also had to go out and got more art supplies. I mostly picked up a big thing of 50 generic gel pens from Hobby Lobby. I drew an awesome pic of Bullet for the inside cover of 2018. I'm still working on my October cover. One big problem I have is I don't know what kind of layout I want for my weeklies. I noticed that everyone starts with Monday for those. I used to have a weekly planner in high school and boy did that help me. I NEEDED one each year so I never missed an assignment and was always on time. Because school, and most work, is M-F Saturday and Sunday were small sections at the bottom and that's how most layouts I've seen are. I had forgotten so I was confused why it didn't start on Sunday. But our work week is different. It starts Thursday and we have Wed and Sunday off. We didn't want two days back to back because it's nice to break up the weak and also have a weekday when we can get stores mostly to ourselves. So it would be funny to start the week on Thursday. People would freak out seeing that. But I have decided to go with the Monday version only because Oct 1 when I started happened to be a Monday.

I finally have a chair at my art table. It's temporary though. Chris put one of the dinning chairs there for me. I REALLY need my gaming chair though. I hope I can order it in Nov and not wait til Dec. Though the dinning chair is comfy and doesn't hurt my back I have a new problem. It hurts my arm and neck. I think this is why my arm is so bad this morning. It's too low and my art table is too high. Really I've never used a table to draw in ages. I always draw on my lap. I may just sit at my table and work on my trusty clipboard like always. Dinning table can't be raised like an office/gaming chair. The annoying thing about an office chair is that then my feet would dangle and hurt my back so I need a step for my feet when I get that because I'm a shorty, haha. Other than that I LOVE my set up. My art table is actually a drafting board but I can't draw with it raised like an easel. I never understood that whole concept. So uncomfortable. Plus it's a working table so all my books and pens would slide off it.

And this is hard to believe but I'm going to do inktober this year. I "blame" Peregrine for "twisting my arm". You guys know how much I hate inking. Hate it being either traditional or digital. I don't know if I'll do all 31 days. But I already drew yesterday's. I'll try though. I hate stupid rules though and one is no digital art. Screw you man. Digital art has inking and it's just as big a pain as it is in traditional art. I may do a few digital ink posts just to protest the idiot rules. Though digital is more work really not just counting the scanning part. Here's the promt list for this year.

1. Poison ..... 11. Cruel ..... 21. Drain ..... 31. Slice
2. Tranquil ..... 12. Whale ..... 22. Expensive
3. Roasted ..... 13. Guarded ..... 23. Muddy
4. Spell ..... 14. Clock ..... 24. Chop
5. Chicken ..... 15. Weak ..... 25. Prickly
6. Drooling ..... 16. Angular ..... 26. Strech
7. Exhausted ..... 17. Swollen ..... 27. Thunder
8. Star ..... 18. Bottle ..... 28. Gift
9. Precious ..... 19. Scorched ..... 29. Double
10. Flowing ..... 20. Breakable ..... 30. Jolt

I originally thought about doing these in my bullet journal but then was worried I'd waste all my lovely pages. They are limited after all. So I've decided to draw them on index cards because I have tons of them lying around for years now. I'll put this list in my bullet journal though. I'll probably color some of these in pencil after it's over to break all the rules and well inks should be colored. To me inks are just outlines or highlights for colors. The chicken one I'm imagining a lovely Salmon Faverolle in pretty light tan colors. A great job for my colored pencils. STUPID LJ didn't put the spaces in for my list. Sigh! Well adding dots made it a bit better.

Anyway. Some people do themes. I think I'll try to feature Fear and Bullet as much as I can. Same goes for my Bullet Journal. Today is another great day for Bullet. She was flapping her wings and slamming her door today. Ok I better get to work on all this art now.
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thagirion: (Default)
So much has been going on the last few days for me. I'm very excited about learning a new art form. So this all started before Peregrine came over to visit me. I don't know the exact date but I knew I wanted to get her a new Bible. I had gotten her one last year but it wasn't the best one. I began to do an Amazon search and discovered there were Bible Journals. When I was growing up Bibles were not every exciting. As far as the looks go. The message is wonderful of course but it doesn't help kids when you have a huge book, with tiny font and bland covers that are black or brown. I had a brown one growing up that I never liked much. But now I find out there are colorful Bibles out there that encourage you to write and color in them about whatever the Lord speaks to you. As an artist I was thrilled about this. I had only seen the floral version of My Creative Bible which is the one I got for my friend since she's an artist too. It comes in a lovely box and has so many cute birds and fancy text to color. I'm not into flowers though. Too girly for me. BUT then I found there were variant covers and there was a turquoise one. Perfect. I ordered one for myself not long after I placed her order. It came in a few days ago. It's a King James Version which is my fave translation.

I ordered some colored pencils because I knew that those are the safest since Bible pages are so thin. I didn't want inks or paint to bleed through. After doing some research I decided to order a box of 48 Prismacolored pencils.



They are supposed to blend well, be soft and are professional artist quality. I also got the Crayola twistables 30 pack because I was impatiently awaiting for the prismacolors to arrive. They are not in the box because I have put them into a cup. It was very hard getting those in and out of the box so into a cup they went. I'm still learning how to use the prismacolors. Another thing I liked about them is that they look like paint and not like pencils. Though I have not mastered how to get that look yet. I have always hated crayons and colored pencils for leaving that white grainy area when you color on paper. That looks so unprofessional to me. I have never liked most traditional art. Digital art is my true calling and was so glad when it became available to the public in the 90s. So I am a bit frustrated that I haven't quite figured this whole traditional art thing out yet. But I know I haven't been at it long. Less than a week. I didn't master digital art right away. I've been doing it for two decades now. But yeah I wish my skills were parallel in both fields. I'm always that frustrated when I start anything new though. I'll keep at it and will improve. So I don't know yet if I want to invest in the full 150 set. They are expensive. I've already run into the problem of no greys. The next set up is the 72 and it has some greys. Using black lightly does not work. I need greys. If I can get to the level I want to be and master blending and shading then I definitely want to get the full set. My aunt is an artist. Perhaps she can help me when I go visit her.

Ok so back to the story. I have been watching lots of tutorials on Bible Journaling and am watching this one lady on youtube that does amazing things. She even water colors her pages and they don't get bleed through. I'm not brave enough for that. I hated water color as a kid too. Traditional art was just never my thing. But anyway, I learned about a thing called Tip In. You get this see through paper called Vellum and draw on it then insert it in as extra pages. It looks very pretty and books still close like they are part of the pages. Here's one I made.



Too big and I'm not a fan of how pale it turned out. I did like adding the glitter pen. I didn't permanently glue it in yet. So then I decided to do what I am good at and color it in photoshop.



Beautiful! And I test printed it on Vellum. It looked good but the paint streaks. That's ok. I found out there's a specific kind I can get for printing. So I will be doing that from now on for these. I can't wait to print my first one. Also perhaps these will turn out better if I use my prismacolors. I did the other one with Crayolas. One thing that's hard for me is I don't have lots of strength and I see people really pressing their pencils in. Sigh, yet another thing I have never liked much.

More journaling pics )
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thagirion: (Default)
Finally this is finished. My latest drawing of Scary Fear. It took me way too long to do. Was supposed to be a simple piece. Yeah right. There are no simple pieces when it comes to my art.



Fear is ready for a night of stalking. He sits on a power pole at the top of a mountain and looks down on the cities in the valley below. I love how sinister he turned out here. Lots of people are going to have a very bad night.
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thagirion: (Default)
New drawing. Just a quick and simple drawing of Fear in time for the end of last month.



I did a very basic shading job, easy background and just didn't go all out on him. Just wanted to get something that looked nice and woudln't take me two days or more to complete.

Now it is June 1st. It's been two straight weeks of rain. At least now it's summer and the official start of Hurricane season, but the weather got a head start on the rain. Well with this project out of the way perhaps I'll get back to working on the driver side door again. That's so close to being finished. Darn it, I see I forgot to make his right wing messy. I draw his wings pristine so I have to remember to mess both up. It's something I have a hard time with haha.

Chris got a new bluray player the other day. We picked one up and didn't notice it was a used one. It had no remote, so we went back and exchanged it and finally got a new one. It looks very nice. It's an LJ and I like that it's basic. The reason it looks so good and was cheap is because it's just a player. It doesn't have netflix, youtube or any of that unnecessary stuff. It's annoying all electronics seem to come with these things whether you want them or not. TV's already do this so no need for more stuff when that and your tablets and other things do it too. A player should play disks only, so yeah we like this. Maybe I'll get one for myself since I've never liked the Sony one I have. I also ordered a bunch of colored HDMI cables. Can't wait to get those in. They'll come in different colors so we'll know what goes to what system.
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thagirion: (Default)
I've been working on the update for Conspiracy nearly all day today. I have a major headache from it. It's been a lot of problem solving. I have noticed my art is complex because I have a propensity to draw things both in front and behind each other. The hug drawing from my dream is a good example of this. So on top of having many layers I also have many masks on the layers so I can conceal or show certain parts. Adding his wings has made a huge mess. The secondary feathers are behind his cloak well between the cloak actually. The primaries are in front of the cloak. Then I added a light reflection layer and I had to figure out how to add a mask and how to figure out if the lines for the wings are covered or not. And which layer is causing issues. I can't wait to be done with this but it's looking amazing. And I thought that drawing couldn't get better. Since I'm doing this to potentially be a giant print I'm thinking the ravens might make things too cluttered. I may remove some and all need to be lightened up. They also have to be spread out more. And when I show this to the print guys I know I'm going to have to redo it yet again because I'm going to have to make the space background match the door and the door is wider than this vertical page. Perhaps they can give me the template for a Jeep door. I really do have a headache from this. I've had to stop so I'm typing up this post. But I do like a challenge and I do enjoy this. Oh you guys get a sneak peak. You might have noticed my icon changed and now has a green mouth. It's so much better this way. When he had a blue one you didn't notice and it blended in too much.

I hope I get my Pluto tomorrow. I will do an unboxing and a review. I found this funny but cool song on youtube about Pluto is Still a Planet To Me because yes that's how I feel about it. I don't care what some scientists say. I was taught 9 planets and it will always be that way for me. I won't put the word "dwarf" in front of it. The video is stupid though with guys dancing around like morons. So just open another browser and do something else if that's distracting. The music and the lyrics are good though. I love hearing the scientific terms in it. This should be made into a metal song and it would be loads better.
https://youtu.be/eFAxumuzmN0

I love the parts
Trans-neptunian
No longer 1 of 9
In the Keiper Belt you could scream and shout
Rotate and revolve and keep your orbit in lock.

OMG I love that last line. Ha ha.

I forgot I had a third dream too. Last night nothing happened. Too bad I was hoping for another awesome Fear dream. But before the last two I posted I had a dream inspired by my conversation with [livejournal.com profile] actipton80. I dreamt I was in bed lying on my back. I woke up and on my right side were three huge owls perched just looking down at me. The middle one was the biggest. They weren't real owls my mind made up species. Non had ears. They were all very round headed like great grey owls. But I was happy they were there and I lifted my left hand and petted the big middle owl. He was sooooo soft and fluffy. And that's all that dream was. Chris said it was creepy. Yeah I guess it would be to most people but like all my "nightmarish" dreams I wasn't scared and enjoyed it very much.
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thagirion: (Default)
Most people when they dream of Fear have a very bad night. Not me. This was excellent. Here are some doodles of my fave scenes from that dream. Wings are not anatomically correct because these are just doodles so I won't forget these scenes. Though I love some of these so much that it's tempting to flesh them out properly and color them.



1. This is when I first saw Chris up on the pole. I got very excited. Flew up half way then started to struggle in the dream with gaining altitude. I became lucid and pushed through this problem and made it to the top.

2. At the top of the pole and Chris and I are very happy to see each other. I rushed him in a hug and knocked him off the pole.

3. A close up of the hug. Had to not draw two of their wings or you wouldn't be able to see anything.

4. Over head view shows better what's going on as we rotate and slowly float down over the parking lot.
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thagirion: (Default)
Here's a simple and quick ref I just made up for Schuyler. I will still make a proper one for him later on as he needs a real turn sheet with more detail than just this. [livejournal.com profile] jokerforever, [livejournal.com profile] solartornado, and [livejournal.com profile] samanthafalco I know you guys were looking for a ref so hopefully this will help. At least with the flats for color picker.



Despite this being basic and put together fast it still makes me happy to see. Oh one thing. I'm thinking of changing his iris color to the off pink. I have to experiment with that as I'm thinking that will really make it look like he has white irises. Only his pupil is black which makes him creepy and hints at his true form.
Some stats.
Height: 5'8" (I think. His Scary Fear height is 5'10" so they shouldn't be the same I suppose)
Weight: 160 lbs
Age: 31
Personality type: INTP
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