Back to zombie mornings

Listening to: Given Up - Linkin park
Feeling: Tired

Where did it go? My break was so nice and yet it had to end. It was a very relaxing break for me and since I didn't have any homework, it was awesome. I spent the first few days not really doing anything but relaxing at home and reading The Indigo Spell (review to come). The last few days were pretty good; I got to see my friends from both uni and high school. I hosted a hot pot party at my house and watched X-Men: First Class for what I think would be the 5th time. It never gets old. Especially not with James McAvoy afterall he was the source of a house filled with happy squeals. It was successful and the food was great. No setting tables on fire, which is always a good thing.

Had a sushi lunch out with high school friends downtown while chilling with our Lat-Teas at a stone park and talking about pigeons and pigeon boyfriends. The latter part refers to the otome game, Hatoful Boyfriend, which I haven't played, but heard a lot from a friend who plays it every so often. Then dinner out with family and family friends.

During the last day, I got a new desktop computer! Hurrah! My old one is pretty ancient and I decided that it was finally time that it could retire. Haven't set up the new one yet since school is draining me already on the first day back, but will do that soon. Hung out with high school friends again in the evening at SB's house and it was a fun time talking about our post-secondary life while fooling around. 

So, now my break is over and I'm back to attending school 5 days a week. Sigh, zombie morning mode is now in effect, referring to unwillingness to get out of bed and groaning at the idea of school. On the bright side, it's about the middle of the semester, so I'm about half way there. Once this semester ends, I can enjoy my summer vacation!

Last but not least, drew these quickly for my friend, Alasyn of Crimson Amethyst, who has been a wonderful, amazing supporter and fellow fanfic writer. These sketches were done for her latest story, Forbidden. Please excuse the mediocre camera quality; I was too lazy to use my scanner.

If I had him as my calculus professor, I'd be so motivated. But unfortunately, I can only dream.

Super adorable scene in a diner/coffee shop type of place. Sadly, I ran out of space and was unable to draw the pie that was the main idea of the chapter.

Suffering from S.A.D

Listening to: Change the World - V6 (Spent about a decade without knowing the artist)
Feeling: Bored

Well, it's the weekend and I should probably get stuff done, but like the title says, S.A.D or "Study Avoidance Disease" is hard to get over. As my professor said, "There is no cleaner room than a room around exam time", to which I agree... on my behalf anyway. To put off my textbook readings, I've cleaned my room, cleaned my hamster cage, chilled at the library and doing just about anything else that isn't studying. I even made this:

It's a chain bracelet. I got the idea from seeing something similar to it at a stall in a market and wanted to make one for myself. The problem with having a small wrist is that bracelets generally don't fit you. But making one yourself can get rid of that issue. The small charm dangling there says "home sweet home" with a small key attached.

Sigh... I need to go back to studying.

Arts and Crafts Update IV

Listening: Runaway - Linkin Park
Feeling: Normal

It's been pretty busy lately with relatives coming over for the first time. First there was the cleaning, then the prepping and finally the packing for our 4 day road trip. I'm looking forward to that because oddly enough, I do like road trips. You just get to see a lot while on the road instead of going by plane. Got my clothes packed and of course, my books too. There's still one book I haven't put into my luggage and that will be because it's not released until the 28th. I really can't wait!! Need to find out the fate of the dark haired, green eyed boy who is trapped in the land of his nightmares.

I did these about a month ago, but I kept forgetting to put pictures up. First off, a yukimibotamon cellphone charm. Quite cute. Didn't take too long, though most of the time was used for waiting for the glaze to dry.

 Second will be a workshop that my friend persuaded me to go with her. It's really cool. You get to pick a ceramic object off their shelf and then you can personalize it with their paints before giving it to the staff to fire up. Prices vary depending on the item and it does get quite expensive since you have to also pay for the firing fee, but my friend had membership to the place, so she used her name (thank you CL!) and so I only had to pay for the cup itself. It was very fun and I'm really glad that I went.

Before firing:

After firing:

I wish I actually though of something to paint instead of choosing a picture I had saved as a wallpaper on my phone (found it off the internet), but still looks nice. The inside of the cup is painted sunshine yellow, the handle is a light pink (I wish I chose a darker shade) and the base of the cup is painted sky blue. No idea what I'm going to use the cup for.

Arts and Crafts Update III

Listening to: Brand New Day - Forty Foot Echo
Feeling: Happy
 
It's been a while since I posted anything art/craft related, so here are my most recent updates... though it's actually been a few weeks since I completed them.

(This is a cellphone strap for a friend who requested a tiger. Originally, I thought that it looked more like a fox with stripes, but I guess it doesn't really matter since she loved it all the same! ^_^)

(Found various shoes on Google and decided to practice my shoe-drawing skills since I can't draw shoes whenever I draw people. I still don't like drawing the flats... Loved drawing the adidas high tops since I have a pair like them!)

 (Another weakness of mine: Drawing hands. My drawing club pres suggested that we draw things that we sucked at, so I decided to do both various hand postures and shoes. Photo references come from artsyposes.com)

Art/Craft update II

Listening to: The Way You Are - DBSK
Feeling: Tired

 Well, it's been a long day. Nothing interesting happened, but energy draining nevertheless. It's been a while since I last posted anything that had to do with art or crafts, but I did do a few, so I'll post them here:


Staring off with my clay cellphone straps:

1. Mameshiba~~~ I love making these! They're really cute and simple to make. :3
2. My current cellphone strap (this picture doesn't have the strap attached since I took it off)
3. My gift to my friend, LW since she loves Doctor Who. It's supposed to be a Tardis (you can look up the actual thing if you're interested to see what it's supposed to be). Made this the night before the party and I'm pleased that I was able to do a fairly decent job in 3 hours (mainly waiting for it to bake, for paint to dry and for glaze to dry).

Onto my art club drawings/doodling:

1. I'm actually quite proud of my naked man. He actually looks pretty good. I can't draw back views to save my life. It looks like he has no butt. These two grid drawings were to get us familiar with their proportions, so we wouldn't butcher them like we've done so in the past.
2. Not so proud of my naked woman. Too many damn curves. I prefer drawing angles and lines rather than curves.
3. Warmup drawing of Doraemon. The first one was where I didn't exactly remember what Doraemon looked like, so I googled him and afterwards, kind of half-hearted did some warmup exercises.
4. More warmup exercises where we were told to draw game controllers. Drew an xbox controller and a really old joystick.

Coffee break

Listening to: Somebody Else - Se7en
Feeling: Content
Ah, I really love having school-free days that aren't the weekend. It makes me feel productive when I actually do something. Well, spent all morning and a bit of the afternoon chilling, but afterwards, I progressed a little more in my book and did some of my math assignment that's due tomorrow. Still got like 7 questions to go though. It shouldn't be too bad though.

For drawing club, we're starting character designs where we're all coming up with a character. After much discussion, we decided on the steampunk-war-renaissance era. How does that work? No idea. I can see steampunk-renaissance or steampunk war, but not really a combination of the three. But anyway, it was be interesting. We chose careers the other day for our characters and the ones that we decided upon were: general, royalty, butler, alchemist, paladin and for me, I chose assassin. Why? I love mysterious characters. Would I be able to draw one? We'll see, but it'll be fun. However, as my luck would have it, the club members didn't have any references for assassin/assailant types, so I'm left with trying to find some on the internet. Should be easy enough right? But when I typed 'assassin' into google, I was bombarded with pictures of, you guessed it: Assassin's Creed's Altair, which is always cool, but not exactly what I was looking for. Eventually, I found some that weren't from the game, so I'll use those for references. I can't wait to draw the weapons though.. that'll be super fun. 

Anyway, something that I saw today was pretty cool in my opinion, so I'll share it here. Apparently, on allkpop.com, they were holding a Se7en Comeback Cover contest and the winners were posted today. Some of my favorites included:

And of course, the original music video of Somebody Else by Se7en:

Personally, I think the english cover in the first video was pretty well done. However, since this is probably the first time I listened to someone do a cover for this song, I never realized that the pitch was pretty high for this song.  Se7en~~~

Fanfic updated X_X

Listening to: Hiding Place - Hedley
Feeling: Out of it

Well, I spent the last 2 hours writing the other half of my latest chapter. It was extremely energy draining. Especially since nothing really special happened. It was kind of like another one of those filler chapters where I'm dying to get to the next chapter, which should prove to be very interesting. I'm really really grateful that everyone's stuck with me up to now, since I know that the story's romance is taking its sweet time. Usually by chapter 18, I'd be wrapping things up, but that's definitely not the case here. There's still a long way to go. I have some ideas for the next DP story, but of course, that will be put on hold until this one is finished.

Anyway, like I said earlier, I finally got my drawing club "skeleton" sketches scanned and uploaded. We're currently doing character sketches, which I'm eager to learn. :) Just click on the images to see them more clearly.

My Birthday!

Listening to: Stand by U - DBSK
Feeling: Happy
 
Today was my 19th birthday! Other than being a year older, not much else happened today. I went to the gym to work out for about an hour and a half before heading to Michaels so I could buy my sketchbook:

 
Originally, it would have been quite expensive but thankfully it was on sale, so that cut the price by nearly a half. I'm in the drawing club, so our club president told me that it'd be a good idea to get a sketchbook rather than sheets of paper, so I can refer back to my drawings. I'll post up some of my human "skeletons" later when I get my sketches scanned. 

I also headed to Chapters for plans to buy my friends gifts. I originally planned to get one friend The Book Thief and The Book of Awesome for my other friend. However, I got the feeling that they either own these books or have read them already, so I gave up and eventually got them gift cards. I'll add a journal and a handmade phone strap to each present, so it'll feel somewhat customized. :)

I told my fanfic readers that I'd most likely update today as a present to all of them, but sadly, my creative ideas just stopped flowing midway. :( Currently, I have half the chapter written, but I don't want to post a chapter with only like 2000 words, since that's not much of an update. So I guess I'm going to start praying for another miracle to pull through tonight and hopefully post the chapter sometime tomorrow with the apology. This is probably why I can't become an author even if I wanted to; I'd most likely miss my deadlines.

 

Art supplies are expensive

Listening to: The Barber of Seville - Gioachino Rossini
Feeling: Content
 
Had a pretty good day today. Somewhat productive, I guess. Cleaned hamster cage (was unable to clean it last week since I was sick and was afraid of my hamsters falling ill), went to the gym to work out, went to Michaels and did some chores while taking the rest of the day off.

I joined my school's drawing club recently and we've been practicing drawing figures and gestures. I've also learned that it was better to use a softer lead pencil for the drawing since the texture was different, so I went out to get some today. I ended up getting some 4B pencils since those were the types that the others used in the club. Unfortunately, like most art supplies, it wasn't cheap. I got two pencils for $4, which I guess really isn't THAT bad, considering I had a coupon and a few weeks ago, I had gotten a Faber Castell black ultra-thin fine liner for $6 (but I had a coupon for that too). 

I guess getting stuff for your hobbies can get quite expensive, since my craft supplies take their toll on my wallet. Clays, paints, brushes and glaze for my clay projects while I also get coloured string, hot glue guns and felts for my felt projects. Haven't done either of them for a while and I definitely miss doing them. Hopefully when I'll have some more free time after the semester is over, I'll get a chance to work on those projects. 

PS. Took the photo with my phone, so the quality is pretty crappy, but it's the most convenient way of taking a photo. :)