Too Late for Halloween?

       Okay, so I know that it's nearing the end of November and all, but I really wanted to share this little image I did specifically for my website and comic with you all before it got too late:

       I decided to do something a little "holiday-themed" for my blog, and I guess this was the result.  I just wasn't feeling enough in the Halloween Spirit (if there is such a thing?) and I find now that doing something art related usually helps.
       This was my first real educated and purposeful event in using copic markers (I had to consult our overlord YouTube for some assistance) but, I think that I pulled things off quite nicely.  Don`t you think?
       My particular interest in doing this image was how I would preform and go about doing all of the shading and the lines of the pumpkin; I think that in the end, the pumpkin has become the real centerpiece and focus point of the drawing.  You see, pumpkins were always a challenge for me to draw in elementary.  I mean, most of the other students in my class, they would just try and draw them completely round, like circles, but I would never stand for just that.  It use to drive me up the wall!  I knew, because I was always such an observant boy, that pumpkins are not perfectly round at all.  They'er not just circles! There is much more to a pumpkin than that!  Heck, I'd even go as far as to say that they were rectangular and square-shaped when you take their dimensions when copied onto a flat sheet of paper into account.  But I think what really got to me the most were the lines; those individual bands of creamcicle-orange, oh! They seemed to scream out and taunt at me above all the rest of the physical features that make the pumpkin such a mind-boggling and strenuous task to draw.
       I think what present me knows and what past me didn't, is perspective.  Once you understand how to apply perspective and viewpoint to a pumpkin, drawing it becomes a much simpler task.  Just ask any good artist, and they'll tell you that perspective is "key" and plays quite a vital role in many forms of art.

       Here, I was going to write some kind of story of how my Halloween went this year, but I think that it's too far behind me now to even bother.  It's not like anything particularly exciting happened to me this Halloween anyhow.  I suppose that I could have used some of my excellent story telling skills to whip something up that would scare the past off ya! ...But I think that I will save that for next year.

       The only thing that's really scaring me now is the sound of my voice!  My throat hasn't been so good this week and I actually end up spending a day at home, away from school, because of it.  I went to a local community college on a field trip this Monday and I have to admit it was pretty pathetic how much I had to strain my voice in order to ask questions.  This really wasn't any sort of a guided tour, more of a free-range sort of thing, which I found to be very neat by the way, (WHILST OTHERS ABUSED THIS! you tell me, since when has it been that the pizza restaurant across the street has become part of the university?! hmm?) ''XP  and even though me and my friend I was touring with didn't get to visit all of the places we wanted to, we still learned a lot of information on the courses available to us through our local option.

       I am thinking about doing some wintery scenes soon.  There is a local Christmas event coming up that I would really like to take part in, and I am not going to say much about it just yet, only that I am seriously taking it into consideration, and that you can expect to see some major-minor tidying up of my blog over the next two weeks before this thing gets underway.  However, I will tell you this;

Upcoming posts are going to be about something really neat!

"I guess not..."

That rainbow lied.  It told me that it was going to be a good week, and it lied.
Well, for the first part of the week, it was right; my days were grand!  But for the second part of the week, not so...
You see, I had a huge project to do on Napoleon Bonaparte that week, and I really seemed to let the workload get to me.  My judgement of the situation was off, and I didn't assess things properly.  This stress felt as though it was fueling something in me, perhaps it was my determination to get things done, but it overcame reality and blinded me from seeing the truth.  I had convinced myself of that project being the most important thing in the world for me to have done, and nothing else seemed to even matter.

As this happened though, I began to blame myself for the things that happened around me, and then,  I started to accuse the things around me for causing my own personal troubles.
I even started to blame the 3DS for lowering my level of productivity, yet, how can a machine ever know the difference anyhow?  "I'm sorry 3DS... (sobbed)" :)

Anyhow, I was really lost with that one assignment, and really wanted to please my teacher by having it handed in on time; it had been two years since I had her as a teacher, and I really wanted to show her how much I had grown, but that decision ending up costing me a whole lot of other problems in the end.  I went all out that one Thursday night, neglecting to do any of my other schoolwork, and maxing out on history and running on very little sleep from the night before.  BAD DECISION.  I became to tired to finish it, and had a Healthy Living & Nutrition test the next day that I was suppose to have studied for, but hadn't because it was too much for me to take in that late at night.  I had failed...

So, here I was, trapped in my own little hole I dug for myself.  What could I possibly do to get myself out of this predicament?  I wrote a letter; one to my history teacher.  Without knowing where or how to start, I wrote a letter that seemed to derive from the deepest parts of my mind where the answers to all life's toughest questions lay.  As I wrote, I seemed to pore the words out.  I didn't think, I just typed; typing without thought.  And in the end, I had written down the equation and solution for all my homework problems!  It was long, very long.  The computer's clock was reading 2am by the time I was finished, but I was happy the moment that I hit send.  I knew what it was I needed to do now to prevent that sort of thing from happening again.

I stayed home the next day, needless to say.  But, I awoke with a much different attitude towards life.  I noticed the puffs of fog whisking up the side of my house, and decided to go out walking in the mist, seeking the simple beauty and quietness of the world.  It felt good; everything was nice and swell.  I felt better~
---

These posts were first thought up a month ago, and I feel like I'm jumping all over the place with them, but it felt good to let them out.  It is pretty neat though, to go back and look at how my mood warped and changed within the context of a couple of weeks.  I am really finding this to be a very defining year in my life, and I am witnessing changes in myself and in my level of comfort and attitude towards certain things, that I could only have hoped to achieved when I thought about them last year.
This will be the last post in the series I did on Procrastination, Schoolwork, and my 3DS and from now on my focus is going to shift to more import things that may interest you,
Such as:
My Comic (Knights of Mamus'sa), the various Sketches and Artwork that I do, and simple tales from my life in general.

[No more sob-stories, I PROMISE!!!!!]

As I was reviewing my last post, I noticed that the paragraph stating the fact that I am making an effort to tighten the belt on on my blog posts to be a lie, and thus I feel the need to reword that to you:
"I am not bringing an end to all lengthy posts, I am trying to eliminate the amount of wordy posts I make."
There, that feels more correct. (My last post was just as long as any other post I made, so it kind of was defeating the purpose of having mentioned that.) But, there is a strong difference between a longer post and one that is wordy.

Oh, I almost forgot! I got my first comment this weekend! ^-^ ~"Yays!"
Here is what it says: 

Anonymous said...

very interesting content. Keep up the good work!

18 November, 2011 1:24 AM

I also feel really bad for not having posted anything about my comic for the last little bit, so I just felt it was right to give you guys this to feast on:

Her name is Éneil (That's 'Ay-NEE-ul' with a French e accent aigu, or just 'Awn-yell & EE-neel' if you're English and don't like pronouncing things any other way.) :p  You are going to see her first introduced in my little legend/prologue thing I am doing now, and her importance will become much greater as the main story progresses and evolves.  

Good news! (not that you'd really care, but...) I started learning some German this week! Wanna' hear...?  Oh, yeah, forgot... Ahh, the limitations of my currant blog are so grand~  It just means that I have that to look forward to in the future- I mean, with my YouTube and all.  That is, if I actually do get to make it to YouTube? Which I know I will.  All in good time, Len, all in good time.

Previous

Liven Things Up

I guess I spoke too soon!  This week has drawn many people to my blog; most of them have come from Canada, but others have viewed my posts from places as far away as Malaysia! (and I really want to thank you for traveling such a long distance just to see me! hehe)  But in all seriousness, I'm touched. I really am.

You may have already noticed this if you are a frequent visitor to my blog, which I doubt that many of you are, and are interested in viewing any of my older posts, I have now added new pictures to some of the ones that would otherwise be too "blan" without them. Here's a couple of posts with changes made:

1. 3DS: Now that's Progress?
2. 3DS: Progress (Part 2)
3. Story of my 3DS: (Part 3) A Trip to Town!

I also want to issue a notice to you that all lengthy post shall come to an end.  I am challenging myself to make my jottings more 'short and sweet' after I finish the serious of posts I am working on about my slip ups in school life, my struggles with procrastination, and the 3DS.  Those stories are almost becoming a thing of the past, so I may have some difficulty in remembering some of the facts. (HEY, I rhymed~!)  But I guess that is maybe a good thing for me because it means that I will have to force myself to stick to what's really important about what happened, rather than ramble on an extra 250 words and have you all bored to death!

Remembrance Day may have come and gone, but I still care enough to make a post about it.  I had a pretty important possition this year at my school's yearly assembly for the holiday; laying the wreath and representing my class was really empowering, and everyone present said that I did a very good job at it.  I feel that doing this has somehow made my deceased grandfather proud, and I am very honored.

Above is a finished picture I had originally sketched on Remembrance Day.  I was feeling very inspired that day and wanted to capture those deep emotions I felt by focusing them into a single image.  I think I did well.  R.I.P grand dad...
When I first had did the sketch for this flower, I never would have imagined it to turn out like this! Wow!  My sister had a couple of university friends over this weekend and they asked if they could see some of the artwork I do, since my sister often mentions it to them that I really love to draw.  They were really impressed with all of the sketches I had shown them, but their favourite one out of all of them was this.  It wasn't finished at the time that I had showed them it, having only the inking stage complete, and they really wanted to see what it would look like once it was done.  Sadly, the left before I had a chance to colour it.

Reference images used: 

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=poppies#/d3jkprs
http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=flanders+fields#/d2saffj

I never noticed the sheer beauty of it until I had scanned the image into the computer, and then at that moment I realized what a masterpiece it was; to me, it represents so much~
My Grandfather traveled overseas to serve our country in WWII and I'm sure that he is cracking a smile and shedding a tear in his grave rate now because of this.

Wha' happin?

So, I get home later than usual, it has been an unbelievably inspirational day, and so I decide to end off all the excitement of the perfect day by checking my blog... and the results are somewhat displeasing.  As I quickly flip to the little graph page that tracks the amount of views you have gotten, I realize that over the past four days I have only had two people visit my website.  Huhhhh... Then I ask myself, "what am I doing wrong?"
The answer to that is, of course, that I am doing nothing wrong; I can't go around blaming myself for everything that goes wrong, now can I?  I mean, not that I do now or anything, or at least not as much.  Lately though I just seem to be posting just to satisfy myself, hoping that whatever I post will suffice, but I can't do that and still expect to keep my views.  Posting too soon ruins the novelty of it all, and placing post too close to one another doesn't give the first post justice.  I need to think quality and stop fretting over the content or getting things posted 'on-time'.  Being timely is good, but being overclocked can lead to despair.  There is something about hitting that post button and knowing that within that very minute, your creation is being born in the eyes of others for the first time.  I should try doing that more often, but not more than often.  


What cha think?