Holiday Busy-ness

Now that all that craziness is over with, maybe things will calm down. I was so busy with the holiday preparations and lots of overtime at work that I didn't get around to showing off my current cross-stitching project.



You can see what it's going to be at this point, but I still have a good ways to go. I already have my next two projects lined up so I'll be going at it for awhile. So excited!

Being into the holiday spirit this year, the husband and I decided to make a ginger bread house. Him nor I has never made one before so this was quite the experience for the both of us.


I felt bad that the windows came out crooked when he put them on, maybe we should of thought about putting them on before we put the house together?


I love the tree he made. :)


I went a little crazy with the Dots.

It might be lop-sided but not bad for our first try right?

Christmas Tree!

It's that crazy time of year again. Everyone is out trying to finish off their Christmas List and find those elusive items. While I stay home and put up the Christmas Tree!

I was so excited to put it up this year as the two years before it didn't get put up. The husband and I had to go out and buy ornaments and lights for it as a lot of those things got thrown out when they were ruined in a flood couple years ago. Surprisingly that part I found enjoyable to!
I was very happy with how it turned out as we kept changing our minds constantly whenever we would find something neater then planned to buy for it. I think blue and silver works very well for it.

I must have moved when I took this one. I'm not the best person to stick behind the camera.

Winter Blues

Yesterday morning when I went to go take the dog out, it was snowing for the first time this season. Thankfully it didn't stay as I'm not ready for the whiteness yet. Seeing it though made me realize that it's that time of year for me when nothing gets done. I'm not sure if it's my mind trying to go into hibernation or a funk but I seem to just shut down and not want to do anything.

So far my excuse has been that I don't have anything in my room set up, but we all know I'm just kidding myself. I tried sitting down the other day and drawing something and I just got frustrated and gave up. I hadn't even be trying for fifteen minutes. I don't feel forcing myself is the answer as that will just push me away from the joy of it.

Instead I picked a different angle of 'art' and picked cross-stitching back up. That's right, I'm twenty-five and love to cross stitch! It has been three years since I last did some thread crossing and it was exciting to jump back in.

At the moment I have a tiger pattern that I had started back then and plan on attempting to finish this winter. It is the most detailed one I have ever done with twenty different thread colors to it. I'll post pictures later once I re-find the camera since I unpacked my things and "put them in their own places", I have to find those places now.

Settling In

Things have been coming along slowly at the new house. I am still painting my room so nothing has been unpacked for it yet. Not only did I give my husband my computer desk since it won't really fit in my room, I have absolutely no furniture for my room. I plan on getting a small desk for my computer and then another larger one for my "art area". When I'm done painting the room I'll show pictures, but the way the room is set up, it's hard to put certain furniture in it so I can't just use anything. I'm getting antsy though and trying not to unpack things that wouldn't have any where to go because I want to draw so bad. I don't even have my computer unpacked, I have been using the laptop at the dining room table to fix my Internet cravings.

I am going to try my damnedest to get my room finished this weekend. I have seen a couple of things since I moved here that would make great photo opportunities. Just have to dig out the camera...

So hopefully next weekend I will have pictures to share, and maybe sometime after that, some art!

Not Happening

I didn't realize how busy I was going to be this weekend. Worked some overtime, did some packing, and went to the house to paint my "office". I spent four hours painting yesterday and only have three door trims to show for it that don't even have enough coats of paint on them. I underestimated how long this little room was going to take. I will be lucky to have the room finished before they bring the new carpet in.
Speaking of carpet, if you ever go to buy new carpet... DO NOT go to Lowes for it. They promised it would take five days for the carpet to come in then they would have it installed within three after that. It has been two weeks since we ordered and paid for the carpet. It just came in on Friday and the installer hasn't bothered to contact us. So we are very upset.
The whole point of me rambling on about this though was that I have no time this week end to work on my drawing. Next weekend is suppose to be the move and after that who knows how long it will take me to unpack and settle in. Especially now that we aren't going anywhere after this so whats the big hurry?
So here is some cute pictures of my dog instead :)

BlueJay Dragon WIP

I managed to sit still long enough this weekend to get more done on my dragon. Since the moving day got pushed even further back to the ninth, I might get a little bit more done before I have to pack it away. I'm starting to learn the whole patients thing more. I really have been holding myself back from just attacking it without a practical eye and ruining it. The legs are definitely going to be redone, but I want to ask for some advice from others before I try fixing it myself.

Well, I better go pack my box for the day to get it out of the way. Then get to go to the house and clean, yay..

Moving On

I know I said no promises, but it looks like we have take off! Gee, I have pencils there I'm not even using. Oh well, it's a security thing I guess. Have to love my cluttered desktop, and don't ask what that is to the left that says Monster on it!



I gave up on the stupid scanner and just used my digital camera, at least I have -something- I can rely on even if it's a five year old camera.
I was so excited how positive I was feeling about this I had to share what I had so far. Though the more I look at it's torso the more I make faces at it. Oh well, I never said it was perfect and it can be fixed and I'm still excited!

I have a feeling after this weekend I'm going to lose all my spare time as we get back into weekend overtime. We are also suppose to close on the house the twentieth, so things are going to be hectic after that. I know that's when we are really going to see how much overtime we really need to do in order to pull everything off. I get so nervous/excited about it I don't know what to do.

OK, gotta crack the whip and see how much of this I can get done before I go to bed in a few hours. Yes it is 5 AM here :P

Changing Faces

As I'm sure you can see I have given the blog a face lift. After playing with the colors for a bit I think I got it to where it is readable. I can read it, but if your having a hard time reading it, let me know. I can make the back ground on the font darker or something. Knowing me, the starry background is probably going to be changed a couple weeks from now since it really doesn't match the banner, but I do like it. I never can go with simple, plain colors, it has to be busy :)

Stage One, Complete!

It's hard to believe that summer is already coming to a close. The season is never long enough for me and it really doesn't help I live in a cooler region. So as I sit here and shiver just thinking about the winter to come, I bring good news. I finally finished drawing the soon to be Blue Jay Dragon!



I am pretty sure I'm OK with how it looks to go ahead and move on to coloring, that or I'm just fed up with it ;). I always have a hard time with hands and feet and of course there wasn't an exception here. I changed the head and removed the horns as that didn't seem right to me for something that was going to mimic a bird. So I just gave it a hard plating on its head that is shaped slightly like the crest on a blue jay. The branch is dead, or it's winter, I haven't decided that yet but I'm not comfortable enough yet to try foliage.

In the spirit of dragon drawing, I thought I would share another WIP I have laying around.



This was inspired by a game I was playing that is all dragon. In the game there are four different types; Earth, Wind, Fire, and Ice, and the dragons are customizable. Unfortunately I didn't get this idea till seventy-five percent through the game but I decided to take each element and draw the heads. Each one has three different head types, this one is the Earth Dragon heads. I want to give the pieces a look like something a researcher would draw in a journal. I'm happy with how these came out except maybe the bottom one, looks a little deformed.

The only thing about this little 'project' though is that I have to go back and restart the game to go through the levels I already finished since you can't revisit them later. So this is going to take me a long time to complete. I think it will just be an in between thing so when I get frustrated with another drawing, I have an excuse to play video games to get art done :).

Frozen In Time

This past month has been a bit hectic for me. I did manage to work on the dragon a little bit. There was a change in plans for it though. Instead of going with the original idea for it, I'm going to do something different. After losing four birds now to this cursed place, I'm dedicating this dragon to the first two and I will possibly draw another dragon to dedicate to the second two. Two blue jays and two baby cardinals (Who didn't even have their eyes open yet) have been lost because I swear there is something wrong with this place that is beyond the veil.

Anyway this dragon is going to have coloring like a blue jay. Not sure how close I'm going to try to get it, we'll just have to see.



I think I need a new scanner. It won't pick up lighter colors, especially pencil and I don't want to draw darker cause it makes it harder to erase. I try darkening it in Photoshop and that's why it looks so blotchy and horrible. I have a feeling I'm going to be redoing those wings when I have settled with everything else..

I don't know how much I'm going to be able to get done for the rest of the summer. We are still trying to do as much over time we can and now we are trying to buy a house. When I get all worked up and stressed I can't draw. Besides it's not like I have a lot of spare time either..

Over Time, Over Worked

Since overtime has picked up at work, I haven't had time to really be home much less get anything done. Since it looks like this is going to go on for a couple more weeks, I'm just going to put this on pause till things settle down again. If I do manage to find time for anything I will still post but I don't expect to.

Book!

It usually doesn't take much to amuse me. So yesterday when my book came in the mail, I was super excited. I had seen it at Barnes & Nobles and was disappointed that the price was $27. So I went onto Amazon and found it NEW for $12, oh yeah baby!

So this is my new precious and I will be occupied with it for the rest of the week. Hopefully tomorrow I will post my inchies.

Hippocampus

After much fussing I have finally finished digitally inking the hippocampus.

I didn't realize how bad it was till I got into it. Note to self: from now on, don't draw something so fast unless you want to antagonize over it later. Now I have to finish the Pegasus. Hooray.

There is work going on here

I haven't forgotten about this, just things have been a little slow. There was some overtime at work and we definitely had to get in on that. That of course left little time for anything else. Right now I am working on digitally inking my hippocampus. That darn pegasus ticked me off so I'm taking a break from it or I won't do anything at all. Here is the horse in question:



I'm sure you can see how lop-sided it is so that's discouraging me from working straight through it. So far I have fixed the head and I'm working my way down to the shoulders which I have to be careful not to mutilate next. Maybe when I'm not fretting over this I will work on making this blog more personal looking. I'm very lazy when it comes to html, I know it, I can learn what I don't know, but putting it all together seems like a pain. I don't know why.

When I went to the library a few weeks ago, I saw a picture that I wanted to use for something, so when the weather here decides to stop raining so I can walk down there (why drive when it's only two streets over?), and work on that. That's when I will go over my big life project I will be working on...forever.

Progress

Today wasn't without success as I got one of my horses digital inked. After once again not being able to sleep I decided to be stern with myself. After giving myself a severe scolding about procrastination, I picked an already drawn horse and got to work.



This was drawn last year and at the time I thought going over the lines with pen was such an awesome idea because that was the only way my scanner would pick up the lines. So anyway I got done with it in Photoshop and now it looks like so:



I tried something different with the pen tool. Instead of solid blocky lines, I played with the stimulation effect to get flowing lines. I actually had fun with it instead of it feeling like a mundane chore.

Epic Fail

So the whole library thing was a bust. I spent most of the time flipping through books and when I was trying to draw, it would never come out right. Then the day was crazy busy, I came home, took a small nap and now that I'm up I'm so tired. I have to stay up for a bit cause if I don't I won't sleep right before work and it will suck. I know if I try to work on anything right now I will do a half attempt, not care how horrible it looks,finish it, then see it later and go OH MY GODS THAT IS TERRIBLE! Yeap, so maybe I will try later after I've had some power sleep.

It's a Horse of Course.

Well after a week of some lovely insomnia which was something new for me, I'm ready to try to get this started. I sort of went through my unfinished projects...ok so I did so mentally but at least I remember them all. I pulled out this drawing to be my starter:

I apologize for the terrible scanning job. I didn't realize the page was warped and I would have darkened the lines but I'm too lazy to play with the whole thing since it's just some unfinished work.
This drawing is part of a "series". I started this idea of drawing different types of horses that I would use as adoptables or siggies. I have two others; a unicorn and a hippocampus that both need inked. This one is to be a pegasus so obviously it needs wings. :) I'm hoping that today I will take the time to finish this one, ink all of them and tomorrow I will show all three. My only question is do I pursue my original plan or stop with just these three? I had plans for seven or eight other types but I'm not sure if I want to keep going with the number of other projects I have in progress. Since my first goal is to finish started drawings, I have time to think about it I suppose.
I have discovered that part of my problems is that I don't really like sitting at my designated drawing spot. So I'm going to take a trip to the library and see if sitting there will help. I really like going to the park, but it's suppose to be low fifties today and I hate the cold.

The Beginning

After some time of moaning and groaning that I wasnt as actively artsy as I use to be, I figured maybe a public "art journal" would help. Once I get everything organized I will start posting projects that are WIP (work in progress). I will probably start with things that I began long ago and are sitting around not getting finished. I don't know how much free time I really have for this, and I'm hoping this will help me figure that out as well. I have several unfinished projects, not to sure where to start but hopeful that will be revealed in a few days. Wish me luck!

P.S. If the color of the font is bothering, please let me know. I want this to be colorful but readable as well. :)