Beginnings of Western Art: Stonehenge

Artists: Possibly created by pagan druids.  Evidence shows that it had undertaken various structural changes throughout its existence, undertaken by a number of different societies.  
Time period: (2000BC)

Location: English county of Wiltshire

Thanks to Wikipedia for this image!

Stonehenge is considered to be one of the British Isles' greatest landmarks.  What amazes people about it is its immense size for the time period in which it originates from.  Nothing before it was built with solid stones quite the size of those that compose much of the circular ring at Stonehenge.  It is a mystery as to how it was built, (for the most part) and there are several creation stories attributed to it.  One of such stories even suggests that aliens had a hand in lifting the stones for the druids, but, as to how creditable that theory is… Well, you could guess that there would be a great deal of speculation about such claims.



Interesting Facts:
Besides the fact that the stones are huge, they are actually constructed to be in-tune to the sun’s yearly patterns!  When the sun rises on the summer solstice (June 21), the light coming from the northeast shines its way past the heel stone, which sit outside of the main ring, through an archway, and lands directly on the altar stone close to the centre of the ring.  A similar thing happens upon the setting of the sun on the winter solstice.  How cool!

Some of the stones at Stonehenge came from Wales, which is more than 200 kilometers away!
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Further Reading: 

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=_pXtHqAGN6E

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This is the same video as the one that is listed in the "Further Reading" section above.  If you wish to watch the video directly from YouTube, then click on the link provided.  

I had to do a full-on assignment about Stonehenge: it's creation, modern significance, etc., for my grade 10 history class and after sifting through numerous web-sources and library books (yes, because there still are some of us left in the school systems that do such a primitive thing) I found this one to be the most helpful in my studies of the ancient, historical landmark.  

"Gee, I hope this helps!" -LEN 

Greek and Roman Art: The Clouds

Author: Aristophanes, a comedian from Athens. 

Time Period: (450-388BC)

Location: Written/preformed in Athens, during the festival paying tribute to the god Dionysus, who was the divine god of most Greek recreational activities. 

Yes, this is my own photo. (I worked
so hard to make this one just perfect!)

The Clouds is considered, by many scholars who study on the subject of historical drama, to be the first play ever written where the central purpose is to achieve the crowd’s laughter all the way through its duration, or simply put, a comedy.  The story is an almost textbook case of irony, as the main character’s motives end up being the result of his own misery in the end.

Interesting Facts:

The play, believe it or not, actually has nothing to do with clouds at all!  The word clouds is used in place of the word gods, and implies that the gods are against the main character in the story and only want to punish him for sending his son away to the Thinkery for his own self interests.  How sad. 

Although the play has been translated into many international & non-Greek languages, there is no written copy in existence of the original ancient Greek text before it was revised.  It is thought that some of the things had to be reworded in order for it to make sense to foreign audiences, so a few minor details of The Clouds may have been lost in translation.  

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Further Reading: 

1. http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/clouds.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clouds

*Kitchen Crew (a working title)

I'm thinking about starting a new series of short, four-panel, cascading comic strips featuring food-based characters (mainly vegetables and fruits.)  I realize that I need to appeal to more viewers who just want to have a quick laugh, and who do not want to necessarily hang around my 'site for too long, easy entertainment as they say, because that seems to be the general trend I am witnessing around here:

People come to my blog, click around a bit, lose interest, then leave.

It is hard to make people want to sit down and read a graphic novel if they have not read some of your more simpler works.  I have decided that this may be the best way to go about making my comic-booking/graphic novel debut.  It is not that I'm giving up on "Nights of Mamus'sa" or anything, it's just that this is what I feel I need to do.

Here is some draft work from "Kitchen Crew" that I know all of you are just dying to see:

URGH!!! (It is so hard trying to make them all fit!) *I SPELLED CARROT WRONG TOO! :O

Lately, I've had a higher interest in digital art.  Not that I want to make my artwork become completely digital (I prefer to work with traditional mediums, myself) but I do see potential in its ability to strengthen a finished product.

Here is an example of how one picture can produce two really different results:

The original image done in pencil

Image completed with India Ink,
Copic Markers and Watercolour Pencils.

Digital Image created using the Pixlr online image editing service. 

I have more digital images saved to my computer that I just haven't come to show you yet... I don't exactly know why?  Maybe it is that I do not feel that I am ready to release them to the world; much of my art is locked-up in that same way.  I feel that these things should be presented properly, in a formal post, but I just don't have time to do that for all of my drawings.  (You guys only ever get to see a fraction of my art!)  It's a shame, really... but that is just the way things are.

Life can always use a little more 'Passion'

I'm sick of this.  I am just so angry with myself for being so passive!

I don't have enough drive!  Where is my purpose?  I have lost touch with it, and in doing that, lost sight of myself and the world-entire.  Let's try this again... WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?! ~I need to remember who I am in order for this to work~ Why am I here? 

This photo is of me and my ticket to see CBC's
The Q: Live at the ECMAs (East Coast Music Awards.) 
I was there with my school's Media Studies class and I felt
that everyone who appeared on stage to play music and to
do their interviews were just so passionate about their lives
and careers that it really gave me a confirmation that what
I am doing here on the internet, is a good thing, and that it
is a good way for me to debut my career as an artist and
media personnel. There are some days when I am unsure
of my-self, but after listening to Jian Ghomeshi talk about
how he got into the business of being a host of a radio
show and about his childhood and life before his career,
I began to feel a confidence rising within me, and I knew
that this is where I want to be when I grow up; this is where
 I would like to see myself in a couple of years time.
*You can listen to a recording of the live broadcast and
performances clicking the link above.  

This is me making my way out.  Out of this rut I'm in... and in order to do it, I need to stick what drives and propels me to do better.  I must know what makes me want to succeed.  PASSION, Love, friendship, that's where it's at.  The ultimate goal of this "I going to step out into the internet and stuff" (and eventually out into the real world) was for me to better myself, but now I see that it has become so much more... it's not just about bettering myself, it's about bestowing passion within me, and it is passion that keeps me alive!  I went- what, like a couple of weeks without blogging, and I'm already starting to feel the pain of last year's "being trapped within myself" starting to return.  I've grown quiet; already things have started falling apart. 

I can't live like this.  I can't return to being who I was before~

I don't care if I am blogging or doing this internet thing for the rest of my life!  I will do it as long as I need to, or at least until I've got myself lifted off the ground.  Birds can't choose to stop flapping their wings and glide until they've actually gone a certain distance above the ground, otherwise they crash and burn.  The same goes for me.  And, now I'm thinking that I'm going to have to flap a lot harder to get me in the skies, so that is why I'm setting my compass so that it points towards YouTube.  I've already got my parents on board- or, well- sort'a.  (I still have yet to make my appeal to them, but at least the thought of me having my own YouTube channel to 'promote me and my art', which is what I've told them, is beginning to sit well with my parents.  They, and especially my mother, has learned to not be so taken back from it as they have seen the change in attitude my blog has given me this year.)

This song just keeps playing through my head as I am making this post.  I guess that it just resonates with how I am feeling right now.  The parts where it says "Planning my escape" and "Were making our own way out" along with the fact that other kids don't seem to have to feel as much passion in what their doing and choose to stick with what is considered a normal way of life by listening to what's only popular, really ring true to me:

"Give It All Back -Noah and the Whale"

I can only hope for the better- no, I HAVE TO GIVE IT MY ALL- with this blog, my passion for art, my future career, because my life depends on this!  I have so much potential to do good and to better the world, it would be a sin for me not to let it out.  It helps to be conceit.

What I like: Visual art

This was originally done on Feb 11 for my Fine Arts online course at school.  Now, I know that I said that I was only going to post these kind of things on Mondays (art interests) and Fridays (art history), but now I'm not so sure.  I have obligations with school that have to be met and the crunch is really on to get things done as the year is rapping up, so it will have to rest at a basis of "post when ever I can afford to" until school is done.  


Section B: Visual Art

Title: Like An Artist

Medium: Comic Strip

Artist: Ida Eva Margrethe Neverdahl

Link: http://jellyvampire.deviantart.com/art/Like-an-artist-197147822

In a few sentences, describe this piece of work and what it expresses (its theme).  Include a sentance telling the message that this piece expresses to you:

In this comic page, the girl tells her story of what it was like for her to take the path of an artist.  It expresses the common problems that most artists feel they have when they think that they have reached their artistic limits.  However, this story gives hope to those who feel that way because it states that this feeling is often something you get before you reach another level of your abilities that you never knew existed until then.  This comic speaks to me, telling me never to give up hope; when I think that I have come to my end, try another route and see where it leads me.

In a few sentences, explain what it is about the piece that causes you to like it:

The story and its images reminds me of myself.  There are a lot of parallels between the author’s life and my own.  I love how the artist chose to use the panels in the comic as an artistic metaphor of the normal boundaries that each person, no matter what the dream or reason for perseverance, sometimes feel they have.  Ida, the girl in the story, shares the same goal as me “to become an artist.”  Seeing that she continues to walk her path and does not give up so easily makes me look up to her.  I suppose that I would like to be where she is today in her career, perhaps even further if I give it a good go! 

Atomic Bomb: the beginning

How the Atomic Bomb came to be:
According to Dictionary.com, an online resource for finding the meanings of words or phrases, defines an atomic bomb as being the following:

Google and Dictionary.com sometimes do funny things!   Just look at
what I discovered while searching for this definition on the net'! 

A nuclear reaction occurs when a nucleus of an atom is altered in some way, either trough fission, fusion, or radioactive decay, that causes it to release its mass-worth in energy as the atom flies itself apart in a massive explosion.

Radiation was first discovered back in 1895 when Antoine Henri Becquerel, the inventor of x-ray technology and the first man to photograph an x-ray image, just so happened to place a packet of photographic plates in with a small amount of the element uranium before closing his office one night.  He had originally believed that a radioactive material’s energy had to come from an alternative source such as the sun.  He felt that this energy was only stored in the material and that the material’s slow release of the energy was what he had first been picking up in his initial tests on fluorescence.  But when he got the photographic plates developed, he was surprised to find that they were showing that they had interacting with radioactive material that had not been out in the sun!  His discovery in the properties of uranium marks the beginning of the nuclear age.

Becquerel’s research later held the interest of German scientists in high regard.  Right before the start of WWII, Germany began looking into the possibilities in the implementations of nuclear energy in warfare.  The information about their theories was kept quiet, only disclosing it to the number of people involved.  However, there were those among the group who feared that the research was too malicious in nature to be kept secret, and thus pasted it on to others in seeking to hear their opinion of it.

Albert Einstein, who had good ties to the United States and their people, was one of the first individuals to relay the message of what the Germans had come across in their research to the continent of North America.  On August 2, 1939 in a letter to the President, who at that time was F.D. Roosevelt, he said…

Einstein had immense knowledge about the make-up of the Universe, so if he was concerned about this new discovery, then so too should the United States.

The USA then went on to undertake what was known as The Manhattan Project, in which their main goal was to produce and test a viable atomic bomb.  On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb, whose codenamed was Gadget, was detonated in Northern New Mexico, at a safe distance from any residential homes.  However, the light from the explosion was so large that people in a faraway community swore the sun had risen twice that morning.  It was so intense that even a blind girl who happened to be facing the direction of the explosion said she saw a glimmer of light in her dark field of vision.

After the Manhattan project had been successful, there was nothing to stop the USA in their race to produce more nuclear warfare and as much as possible.
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"The Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima"
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Announcement: Serialization Begins

NO, WAIT!!!!!  Don't get all hyped up for nothing!  It's not one of my comics that's getting serialized in a magazine or anything (although I wish it were...), its my blog post here at Lonely Totem Pole!  

I've decided on a whim that I want to serialize some of my blog post: that is, that the bulk of my content will have some sort of progression within a theme.  The themes will be chosen based upon the time of year, events that happen in the news and what's going on in my life.  So, in a way, my blog will begin to reflect what's going on in the world around me and what you guys will see is how I come to internalize it.  To sum things up, its art.  (Will you soon come to understand that art functions in the same way in my upcoming series, hehe!)  

There are a number of contributing factors that have lead me to come to this kind of conclusion that I need to radicalize the way I do blogging or just abandon the whole idea, but I guess that the past couple weeks have been like hitting a brick wall for me.  Nothing seemed to be allowing me to do things in any sort of logical order, and I hate having that feeling that I'm not in control.  But I'm not here to complain to you all, if anything, you will get the just of how I felt last week when I publish some of my art that became products of my madness (some of the things I made really do scare me!)   Anyhow, I've been working my butt off at school with co-teaching Poetry alongside another student for three days straight and I feel wiped!  I am realizing now that there are a lot of school documents that could be serialized here and many of them actually fit into themes very well.  Hmm, I'm flexible (or at least I try to be) with my blog, and because I have no one telling me what I can and can't do with it, I really have no limits, however, I also don't have anyone setting deadlines with it, so there are many incidents where I don't post anything at all for long periods of time (over a week!) and that's not very good.  Not attractive at all.  So I have made myself a blogging calendar in hopes of clearing those messes up.  

I declare this month and the first of next to be "Fine Arts-Themed"  that is "art for the sake of art."  I have been getting behind lately in my assignments with my Fine Arts 110 online course and I feel that this would be a good way to spice things up and encourage me to keep going, pushing my way through the final stretch of highway, my destination being summer vacation.  You may see the regular sorts of posts in between, but I doubt that there'd be much extra.  Not until summer break at least.  (You may see me rant and complain every now and again, however...) 

This is a rough sketch of how it will be:

• Mondays will be art interest days: this is where I will be reviewing works of art I personally find amusing or that I enjoy.  
• Fridays will be art history days: this is where I we will explore art as it appeared throughout the ages (I'm kind of excited for this one!) It will be a journey you won't regret taking...

*One quick note before you go; as I am nearing the milestone of receiving my 1000th blogger view, I am now readying myself for the 'Big Shift' to YouTube.  If you follow me now, I hope that you will join me as I venture into new territory on the 'net (gosh, I sound like a Viking!)  Len, concur!  Len, destroy!  I know that it's nothing special for those of you who are already receiving a thousand views, daily, but for rookie like me, this is something really special!   

P.S. {I decided to throw in a picture of my cat so that it would catch your attention...

         If you are reading this, then I know it worked!} ~Harhar!!!

Table of Contense: Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima

Whew!  I'm done!  That's right, I just got finished doing a-not-so-big-gone-really-big project for my Fine Arts 110 online course for school, and man!  Am I ever glad to have that behind me...  Well, not yet exactly; I still have a couple of things I want to do with it here on my blog before I call it quits.  To tell you the truth, I was very moved by it.  I found that the content surrounding the fatal dropping of the two bombs in Japan was so disturbing, I just felt that it deserved more than just a glance.  (I still, however, found myself going in a little too deep.  I think that I even lost some sleep over this, but in order to make sense of what I was reading and learning about I just had to deal with it.)  Oh, the sacrifices I make for you guys~!!

 

Anyhow, like I said, I am going to post this here and I am not all that sure how I'm going to go about it.  This introductory post is bound to be edited several times before the whole thing's said and done, but here's the names of the sections it contains:

1. Atomic Bomb: The invention that wished it wasn't made!
2. The Setup (a look at both sides of the war)
3. The Dropping of the Bomb
4. The Great Inferno (a look at what happened inside of Hiroshima in the hours the fallowed the massive explosion through eyes of those who saw it firsthand. Plus, a look at art created by a-bomb survivors.)  
5. Effect it had on the world in the years after WWII 
6. Effect doing this project had on me
7. Further Reading

*Some of these are likely to be grouped together within a single post.  I will let you know more about what I'm doing with this in the days that follow.

 

 Series:

"The Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima"

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I have so much computer work from school that I know would work great with my blog, it just requires the commitment and interest needed for me to get it out there.  I want to... just not enough, apparently.

Expect me to do more of this kind of work in the summer, that's when things will really start taking flight with my blog.  I have few doubts.

"Atomic Bomb Embedded in Facebook?!" Oh, my!

Recently, I've been working on a presentation for my Fine Arts 113 online course, and it just crossed my mind today that I should maybe think about posting the presentation here.  

There were a wide range of topics to choose from in our introduction to World War II assignment but the outline seemed to be calling for events and people who made the war more towards the side of dramatic (and let's face it, what can be more dramatizing than an Atomic Bomb?!)  So, I decided to run with concept of basing it around this.  

I decided to narrow my topic down from just atomic bombs in general, to the one that fell on Japan and then to "Fat Man" (the one that fell on Hiroshima) in specific.  However, as I was searching around dictionary.com for definitions of atomic bomb this is what came up:  

I feel sorry for Mr. Bomb... Atom's parents must have a really poor sense of humour.

-So does Google for generating absurd adds such as this one.  Don't worry though, I'm sure that Adam's (Oops!) I mean Atom's parents got a good dose of karma the first time they tried to go on a family vacation to Cuba.  "Your name, sur?" Lol...  But wait, there's more! 

This is just too hilarious; I checked the link to the site, and it turned out to be some kind of skincare product. 

-"Let's go rub our skin with leftover radioactive waste from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan in hopes of bettering our epidermal appeal!"  "Mmkay..." 

Yeah, I don't know about these ads, but I sure hope that my presentation will be worthwhile.  We'll just have to wait and see on that one.  

True Blogging Potential Awakening: lonely totem pole's views skyrocket!

I'm starting to get into photography, taking pictures about once a week.  I always loved viewing photographs and taking pictures myself, but I never really did it as a disciplined form of artwork up until now.

I've noticed too, that a gentle mix of drawings and picture really draws in a crowd.  People seem to be more interested in the person behind the drawings than their drawings themselves at times, so it's good to give the people what they want.  

I guess the reason that the reason for me not touching my camera until now is because I didn't feel comfortable with it.  It's probably strange to hear a teenager say this but... I don't like Facebook.   There!  I said it!  Maybe I do see it having some implications in the future, but for the time being, its best for me to stay away.  If I want to become an artist who goes showing his face around the internet and elsewhere, I have to be careful of who people see me associating with.  Some of us judge others based on their friends, do we not?  So if one of my 'friends' (or just someone you've met only once in real life but have added to Facebook) goes posting a picture of themselves drunk at a party, then professionally, what will people think of you?  Not too many high school students think of that when signing on.  Perhaps we should. 

Anyhow, the results I have gotten from including a mere two photographs in my last post really pleases me.  

It seems as though viewing photos of my culture and where I come from really perks your interest, and I have to admit that I am touched by this.  I have always thought of giving back to the community that raised me, so I guess that a cultural identification is a must for me as I progress into making a career out of this.  

"LEN-Komix, Atlantic-Canadian artist..." that sure does have a nice ring to it.  

My views for the past two weeks are the highest they've ever been!  You appear to be coming from all over too.  At times, I wondered if the bulk of my views were just my friends, but now I am assured that they aren't.  Before when it said "3 views from Canada" there was no way of telling if the person was someone I knew or not, and I was kind of hoping that they were strangers, you know, to attract new faces to my blog.  But, when all your views for one day are from outside the country, you are almost completely sure that they are part of an audience that aren't your closest friends.  This is all very good.  

I've been working very hard as of late in achieving a solid look to many of the characters and settings for my future comic project.  I might as well call it future now, because calling it current makes it kind of misleading.  Truth be told, I haven't really got anything of a finished product to show you guys yet, so it is not fair of me to get everyone hyped up for nothing.  What I do have though is what I believe to be an excellent concept of a comic with charming characters and a self-absorbing story.  I haven't come to set myself up with any real deadlines for this however, so it may be long after I graduate before you see this hitting store shelves or anything.  Yet, (and I did tell my parents this) I plan on pouring myself into the project in the next couple of months following the school's end, and I do want to get to the main body of my comic, creating chapters and such when I'm freed from having to juggle schoolwork at the same time.  I work far better when I don't have other things weighing me down.  

As always, if any of you want to view more posts
containing pictures, try making use of the labels
currently locate at the top of this page!

*I've got more "My Themed Life" content coming your way in the next couple of weeks leading up to Summer Vacation in June.  There will be loads of Pokémon and The Hunger Games-themed content being posted here, so STAY TUNED!  

I made a crossword... Wanna' See?

Recently, I have undertaken a little art project for my English class.  We were put into groups and asked to come up with a lesson plan to teach the class about a romantic poet of our choice.  My partner and I decided to do our's on William Wordsworth.  The name just seemed to jump off the page when I read it, so I knew we had to pick him!  Plus, we both knew a thing or two about him, or at least remembered reading one of his poems before.

I based them off a couple of portraits I found of him after doing a Google Image search.  He was from a time long before photographs and camera were around.  This is all I had to go by.  Still, I think I have a feel for the kind of man he was.  

There was a list of things we had to do over the two classes allotted for us in teaching the class.  One of the items read...

Arg!  I messed up on Plue's hand!  (That's right, I decided to call him Plue after all.  It's short for Polarious.)
Maybe it is too soon to be saying this, but I am thinking about giving him an appearance in my comic
"Knights of Mamus'sa."  Although, I don't think that he will look like this... You'll just have to wait and see!  

As Polarious said, I thought to myself "I should do this..." and not just do it I also really wanted to do it.  And so, I did.  Here are some pieces of draft work for you to ponder about:

I made a crossword but it is not quite pieced together.  However, I can guarantee that it will posted here as soon as it is!  (Or whenever I feel it's right to... I haven't made up my mind yet.)

It's a 'White Easter' this year in New Brunswick

I'm supposed to look overjoyed in this sketch,
not sad!  (Just so you know the difference.)

This week, even though it was short, was a hard one to pull through.  I had set myself set up pretty bad after missing Monday's classes at school, and the staying at home to work on my speech got me nowhere.  I felt like I was only digging a deeper whole with my schoolwork in general, and just as I figured would happen, my pain and suffering was only an allusion to a sudden metaphorical growth.

This week's moping seemed to bring me out of my trance.  I've been so consumed and drawn into my academics as of late that I seemed to forget who I was and why I'm here, as I do so often.  Every now and again I need to remind myself that my marks aren't everything; they aren't the basis of how well I'm doing, they are only one aspect of my life!  Well-being, for me right now, should be based on just how content I am with myself, my social life and my art.  However, when an outside force begins to command all of my attention, I seem to let the others slip and fall into a trap.  Luckily, towards the end of the week, I seemed to find myself again; I know where I'm headed and have gotten my bearings straight!  (It's about time, hmm?)

I have come to realize that in one a quarter year's time, I graduate!  That's a big deal.  It means a lot to me.  And so once I graduate, my life isn't going to be based on whether or not I know "What combines with hydrogen to produce water?" but on how skilled I am as an artist.  Let's face it, artists don't need much in the way of grades to get into their courses.  Nope!  You need dexterity and determination, talent and will power!  Enough of this stressing over things that in two years time mean nothing to me... My mind is now set on art!

I feel like I need some art and blogging therapy right now, so I'm going to fill you guys in about what I've been working on:

• Page Four of my comic (Now set aside until more concept art has been completed.)  
• Maps: Over the course of this month, I have come to develop a real 'finalized' version of the map that includes all the major locations needed to tell the main story of my comic.  
• Settings: I have sectioned off different regions of the map and tried to use my imagination in constructing what I feel some of the places should look like as seen from the eyes of a bird soaring over the various kinds of structures and terrain. 
• Character designs: I have just resurrected a couple of the characters that will have a major appearance in the first book.  My art style has developed over the months since I have undertaken this project.  
• Blog Posts (Here are a list of ones that are currently in the drafting state): "Welcome to the Internet, Mus'ka", How to scare a Nerd (saving this one for next Halloween), Picture Storage (only used to hold the odd image as I travel from one computer to another; disregard), Len Square (A post about my efforts in trying to make a cartoon version of myself for my blog), Seventeen (A post from a back in January that never made it out.  I don't know if my vision for it is still the same?), Deviously Cute (Reviewing my experience in designing a t-shirt of the deviantART 'Cute Monsters' contest), Another Winter Shelter (I will give instructions on how to make a shelter out of fallen trees and snow.  Originally written for my outdoor pursuits class at school.),  Pokemon and Nostalgia (describing what it felt like to start to replay Pokemon Blue as a teenager), How to Build a Quinzhee (instructions to building a secure snow fort; another OP class creation.  Plus, an inked and coloured version of one of my comic's settings as part of its concept art.), *{There are many more that are in the planning stages and just haven't made it into drafts yet...} 
• Tidying Up: Going back and fixing various grammatical and spelling errors I've made in my earlier posts. Rethinking the use of some of the tags that you see at the top of this page.  
• Photography: I've dug out my camera again, so lately I've been taking lost of photos!  My cousin has really inspired me with her sudden interest in photography.  I was inhibited by Vista's horrible way of organizing stored images, but now with windows seven, I feel much more comfortable in trying this.  (Fingers crossed!  Hope I can get some nice ones to my blog without too many problems.)
• My Themed Life: This part of my blog and deviantART is currently on pause in real life (I have assigned no theme for myself this week.)  I have many posts backed up that I would still like to get out there for my audience with my two themes Pokemon and The Hunger Games, so until I've worked the life out of them, I am at a pause with this.  

Below is a list of posts that are either finished or in the making for the "My Themed Life" section of my blog:

• Pokemon Week: Favourite Pokemon (completed), Replaying Pokemon Blue (have information written down, drew some sketches, still trying to finish the game up to the point where I can carry out the 'Mew Glitch'), Outdoor photography featuring my Game Boy Colour and I in a winter landscape (Photos have been taken, downloaded and selected.  Written portion of post still needs to be done; no draft has been created), Pokemon Black and White 2: My reaction (nothing has been done yet.)
• Hunger Games Week: How I Pictured Things (need to find and make copies of cartoon characters that look like the ones I saw in my head while reading, no write-up has been attempted), One With Nature (made sketches almost daily for a week, photography has been taken, no write-up has been done), My Hunger Games Strategy (just a though... nothing done.)

I mentioned above about doing colourized versions of different settings in my comic.  Since this is a frosty scene, I thought that I'd couple it in with this post just so all of you good lads and lasses can have a looksy.

This is the rough draftwork I made while sorting out how I wanted the Southern-most region of the fictional world to look. 

I am really excited about this one!  Through different sources I've found online about beta versions of video games, movies and such, I have discovered that the concept art plays a big role in achieving a concrete model of how you want things to look in the end for your product and that if I want to make all of my panels featuring vast and complex backgrounds to look anyways congruent, then I need to try and replicate this somehow.  So I've tossed my main pages aside and started in on concept art. 

I know that it's only the penciled version, put it's looking pretty good for something that only took me a couple of minutes to sketch.  Good copy will be coming soon in the post "How to build a Quinzhee."

As the title of this post implies, it is Easter and there is snow on the ground.  How's that for being Canadian?

We went from having this one day...

To this the next.

I can honestly say that this is not an uncommon sight here in New Brunswick, and I have many earlier-childhood memories of running about outside searching for Easter eggs in the snow with my cousins, while trying to dodge the odd snowball.  What fun!
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Oh!  I just looked at the clock and noticed that it is now past twelve.... So much for having this posted on Easter Sunday.  :|  (Frowny face)  "~Happy Easter Monday, Ya'l!!!"
I went skiing directly after making this.  I just couldn't stand all this excitement! 

Otters Stuffed in Onion Suits Hate Math Equations

So, I've been feeling pretty down on my luck this week. Oh, and no, its not anything serious, everything was good up until just now.  You see, we started speeches, and its not that I hate them, because I don't, it's just that they're very stressful that's all.  I have a bad history with speeches; I never really was very good at public speaking at any point in my life until just recently, but now that I have gotten much better about making conversation with people in general, I am still tainted with the residue of years past.

Back in grade eight I wrote a speech for my language arts class about the history of Nintendo, and ended up turning what should have been a four to five minute speech into a fourteen minute speech.  Not fun.  I don't think that my middle-school language arts teacher (who is actually my vice principal now) or me will ever forget.  It was three months over-due and I squirmed in my seat every day in class that was the date I was supposed to present.  My friends never did get to here about that one, eh?

I presented my speech after school that year to him alone, and because it was so long I missed my bus and he offered me a ride home.  I was quiet almost the whole way, and it was not surprising because my parents always told me to never hitch a ride with anyone you don't know, and to me, I only knew that he taught me.  He was a teacher, and there was nothing more I could say.

I guess that through trying to avoid a repeat of grade eight I have just brought on another downfall.  I stayed home today, and today I was supposed to present.  Rats.  I find that I do that with a lot of different subjects this year.  I've improved so much from where I was in middle school with handling schoolwork, that I try and make an effort to show it off.  Reveal to the teachers just how much better I am at getting things in on time.  But it sometimes makes me lie to myself, thinking that I could actually handle it all by myself.  Working myself past twelve o'clock just to reach a due date is not my idea of having fun.  I just break down.  Get disjoint and out of place.  It's not healthy.

But I am better.  I know my limits, and am picking up the ques well.  I know when I've had enough, and I've had enough.

As you can tell from my doodles, my other courses have suffered from the particular interest I'm dumping into English.  In the past week I've gone from knowing everything that's going on in math to not having a clue what the teacher is talking about.  Imaginary Numbers?  Come again?

Through all of this though, I haven't given up on you, my dear viewers.  I've been doing the odd sketch and photo here and there to help me keep sane.  I am sane and I am going to school tomorrow too.

(If you don't recognize this  little guy, then I suggest that you go take a look at my deviantART cute monster's design challenge t-shirt right away!  I would make me feel a lot better...)

I've been thinking about making him my blogger mascot, so I really worked with him this week trying to draw him from all sorts of different angles.  These aren't even half of the angles I tried to make him fit into!  It's pretty tough, but skill building I guess.  I still haven't even decided on a name yet.  (Plue or Pooshmoo?  How about Plue the Pooshmoon?  Eh, what do I know...)

I had to post something to feel like I got something accomplished today... {Sigh}

Meowth: a study in character design.

I wanted to keep as much of the stray
underlines as could with this.  You can
really see how this was extracted from its
original 3D model & design.

"That's right!"  I wanted to kick off this Pokémon-themed week with a little doodling.  And, who would be a better suit for that job than meowth?  He's a classic anime character and a well known species among Pokémon fans, so, I said to myself "Eh, why not?"  

I started off this week hoping that by the end of it (which is when I'm creating this) that I would have drawn my whole ideal Pokémon team, inked, coloured  and featuring me as a Pokémon trainer, the whole works, but as time went on and nothing started happening (yes, I know I was procrastinating), realistically, I knew that I would just have to settle with something like this.  

Meowth, believe it or not, really isn't my favourite Pokémon from the whole series.  It's actually one really obscure one, as far as fandome goes, that holds my vote, and, if you weren't into Pokémon as a child, or have stopped following it since generation two, you probably wouldn't even recognize its name.  Its Lombre.  

Meowth's so awsome! It was even featured on
a special collectors' coin on the island of Niue
in the mid-pacific! Official mint. No jokes! 

Traditionally, since the first North American games (Red and Blue) I liked grass Pokémon, and so today, I still like grass Pokémon.  So, it is unlikely that I will be changing any time soon.  I also grew to love psychic Pokémon as well when they became more obtainable in the later games.  However, the only psychic- and grass-type pokémon that exist in the series are two that are really rare and almost impossible to catch in the wild through normal means: Exeggcute, its evolved form, Exeggutor, and Celebi.

Not to be dissing Exeggcute fans or nothing, but I kind of hated that pokémon back when I was in elementary.  To tell you the truth, I thought it was pretty ugly... a downright disgrace to the first-gen world of Kanto.  But, its Pokémon Blue sprite didn't do it any justice.  (Since when did an Exeggcute have an egg that large? It's a good three to four times bigger than the rest!)  It's kind of funny now that I think of it, but I used to think that an Exeggcute was some kind of naked sumo wrestler with eyes all over its body and not just a group of eggs, that is, until I saw it on the show.  I was relieved to learn this because every time I would battle one I used to get scared that my parents would see it or something and then take my Game Boy away!  Ha ha!  I somehow kind of wish I had one now though, now that I know the difference.

I made this one by using my other images
as my only two references. It might be a bit miss-
proportionate, but I loved working with the base
'skeleton' of this character in producing my own
unique stance from a different level of perspective.

Now that its been made obvious to you why I did not choose Exeggcute as my favourite pokémon, you are probably wondering, why Lombre?  Lombre statistically is not chose by many Pokémon fans as being their favourite.  It is just not the lovable type; not one that most people would tend to gravitate towards, but I love him just the same.  To me, Lombre's rad!  Its colour scheme is great, and its just the right height of a Pokémon for me (3' 11'').  I know I have strange tastes, but come on!  Who wouldn't love a pokémon like that?  (It kind of reminds me of a DJing monkey-kappa with a sombrero hat on...) Okay, wait.  Never mind.  Only a face a mother would love. (sobs)  


Meowth is one we can all agree on though, am I right?  He may not be my absolute favourite, but he is my choice from the 151 pokémon of the first generation of games.  My love affair with Meowth goes beyond its prominent appearance in the anime, too.  (Truthfully, I feel he has more brains and soul than his two accompaniments put together.)  I loved to capture and raise a Meowth or two when playing Pokémon Blue, and I still wouldn't mind getting one on my team today.

Pictures of Meowth were based off the 3D models of the pokémon as it appeared in Super Smash Bros. Brawl
for the Nintendo Wii gaming console. Credit to its original creator, and to the genius behind
many of the Pokémon Franchise's character and art designs, Ken Sugimori. 

His, stats are good (swift and powerful) and his original in-game sprites were awesome (except from behind; his back was just a mess of pixels.)  I could not wait until I had him leveled up to Lv.17 so that he could learn Payday.  It was such a sweet move.  Extra cash, what's not to like?!  I would also give him a wide range of TMs that included Swift, Thunder or Thunderbolt, Water Gun or BubbleBeam, and Toxic, just to keep things interesting.  I found it strange that a normal type could be taught such a large number of moves.  He is, and forever will be, my favourite character from my first video game I ever owned.  
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Sorry if the links are kind of confusing.  I decided to try incorporate more sources for people who want to learn more about what it is I'm talking about in my blog, by providing them a general direction for them to start their search.  Click away!  Let me know what you think?

"Len-Komix is blasting off again~!!" 

My Themed Life

"Inked sketch of a Pikachu" made using a set of
STAEDTLER: pigment liners & a SAKURA: pigma brush,
created by me back in grade 9. Early (2010)

Last weekend, I had the most brilliant idea ever!  I'm not joking either.  I mean like, the most amazing, light-bulb-springing-up-above-my-head idea, had just showered down upon me like an epiphany of all-knowing knowledge and I was enlightened!

Do any of you people still remember that post I did back about a month and a half ago?  I really hope that you didn't because it was just one of those weird post that had no direction and was made just out of the spur of the moment, however, if you did (and you can click here if you missed it), this is the solution to my problem I was talking about.  I searched and searched for it, and now it's finally here!  I know how I'm going to expand out the usage of my blog while keeping it simple and still end up drawing in a bigger audience in the process.  

I am going to live a themed life.  

And I know that that means nothing to you now, but it will in just a minute when I explain things to you.

You see, I have many interests... and when I say many interests, I mean many interests.  I like everything from skiing to quantum mechanics to learning Japanese (and that's just the start!)  So, I decided, "hey, why not spice up my life a little by going pro-interest every week with my blog?"  And so, at that moment, I made a pact with myself to devote each week of my high school life to one specific interest, paralleling it with my blog and its posts.  Sounds great, huh?  Well, I can tell you from experimenting with it this week, it's not so easy to stick with the schedule I put in place, but it is challenging, and a lot of fun.

Here's the concept:

• "Every week must have a theme." One that is both challenging and skill developing; it must equate to some growth for me by the week's end.  
• The theme must be purpose driven: for example... "This week I want to study the composition of a Zelda game, so that I can learn how to build a solid, fictional world for my comic." {I want to verb noun, so that I can verb noun.} Simple.
• Lastly, it must fit, realistically, into the format of my week.  (I've been meaning to show you guys my latest, full-proof, weekly, schedule-planning template... ugh thing, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, and I suppose that now's just as good of a time as ever.):  

Me and my messy writing... It can be worse, though.  I swear!  (This isn't as neat as it gets.)

When I have an interest in something, I really like to envelope myself in it.  By surrounding myself with something, I feel that I get more out of it somehow.  Like a heightened experience of sorts.  I think that's how the concept of doing something like this came about.  Through this desire to learn and educate myself.
I'd encourage you to try it too, if you'd like?  
Just follow the outline given above, and you should notice a change in the amount of knowledge you have about the subject you are most interest in.  The important thing is to have a desire to learn and obtain something from your week's efforts.  If you do, you can go far!

*This week's theme was centered around the Pokémon franchise & it's series of games.  Expect content to begin appearing on my home page sometime next week!  (I'm revving off posts like the dickens!)