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.)

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!) 

Content For Next Week

One of the things that I had thought about in my massive "realization" I talked about in my second-last post was the fact that I want to venture into different medium with my internet postings, so I am now preparing myself to do just that.
Just in case you haven't already noticed the image-link I attached to my blog quite recently, I have now grainted you all access to my deviantART~!!!  It's true; I actually fallowed through with what I said I was going to do and, on a whim, began tinkering around with deviantART, and I have to say I love it!  

Check Out My T-Shirt!
(Vote For It HERE!!)

As one of my challenges I had brought upon me this week, I forced myself to work alongside the watchful ticking of the clock and produced a T-shirt for the deviantART: Cute Monster's contest.  (If you want to check it out, click here.)  I will have more info on how I came about doing the T-shirt in one of my upcoming posts this week, so stay tuned if you would like to see how I did it.

Also, on another note, I have now decided that one of the mediums I want to delve into this year is, in fact, doing reviews.  I found that I really like to talk about all of my different interest.  So, rather than have me insert random blurbs of these into my art-related post, which have nothing to do with whatever the thing I feel about mentioning is (most likely a video game or anime), I have now decided to reduce the amount of anime/nintendo-fan outbreaks by sectioning off these interests into their own individual fan-dedicated posts in the form of reviews. :)

*[Expect Art, Manga, Anime & Nintendo reviews to start flooding in sometime next week!]

Next week is spring vacation for me, so I hope to ramp-up my production of art again as I will have a lot of time at my disposal.  I will try to put my artistic abilities to good use!

Who'm I Foolin' ?

Okay, I admit it! I am stressed! Though, for a good reason...
    Just in case you don't know, here in New Brunswick, we write our end-of-semester exams after Christmas instead of before, like the rest of the entire planet does.  And, as most teens do, I am stressing over it... along with everything else in life.

    You know, its funny, really, how everything else that always seems to make sense just doesn't when you've got something else on your mind.  Then again, maybe its just me, but during exams common sense stuff just doesn't seem to apply to me or to anyone else I know.  Things like wasting time on the computer instead of studying seem to occur a lot more often than they should.  (Hmm, gah! I suppose I'm doing that right know...) Wait, what was I going to say...?  See! There I go again!  Can't hold a single thought in my head for more than a minute for the life of me.  But, yeah. As you can tell, I'm stressed! 

    The truth is, I've studied so much over the past three weeks, that I don't even know what I have left to cover, and, unlike a test, there is no exact limit that you can go to say that you know absolutely everything about a subject, there's just not!  I mean, you're trying to study a whole five months worth of work in just a couple of nights!  There's just no way that you can know it all!  Not even for a smart kid, and I'm one of them.  {heh heh...} So, I think the most healthiest thing for me to do is to just stop.  Stop whatever unit it is I'm reviewing and breath, because in order to obtain sanity, that's just what I have to do.

    It took me a while (up until yesterday) to come to that conclusion, but now I can say it with confidence. "I'm not failing, so I don't care!" {more like I'm far from failing, so this shouldn't even be an issue.} But, I've said it none the less.
    The only really conflicting thing that happens when doing this is that I tend to feel guilty about it, real guilty!  So guilty that I can't enjoy myself, even when I'm doing something I love, and thus find myself worming my way back to the textbooks for another bought of studying. (so unfair!)  I guess that's kind of a tragic flaw for me.  I'm really a nice guy, but my brain always seems to want to shower me in false guilt.  None of this is was ever my fault.  I just wish I could see that.

    I sure make it hard on myself though, don't I?  Normally, I'm the most preppy guy in my class, however, exams seem to transform me...

    I've forgotten to shower, I've neglected to shave, I've worried and sweated so much that I've got pimples forming in the most peculiar of places (like in my ears!), my socks don't match, my shoelaces are undone, but, meh... it's normal for a teenager to respond in that way.

    Exams are like drugs, aren't they?  Now, I know that's a semi-stupid inquiry, especially coming from my mouth, but when you really stop to think about it, the results from an overdose of a Mathematics exam are similar in comparison with those viewed in patients in rehab for Methamphetamine... har har!

    "I'll call it examocede! It's sure to be big with the nerds on the street! ($_$)"  Just Kidding!
But seriously, who would buy it anyway? Not me!!!  That's for sure... {I'm already suffering enough from Exam-Solicititis to do me until June.} Ah, June... when I have to write exams, yet again!  

    I think that the only thing that kept me from going clinically insane this past few weeks was my ability to socialize with students who were going through the same thing.  I haven't abandoned my friends or my social life through all of this, I actually have come to strengthen those routs a little, and think that it is a trend I want to continue even when the exams are through.  You know, people aren't that bad?  (Well, most of them anyway.)
    My situation is not unique; I am a teenager, and it is exams.

    I spent eight hours the other day at school writing two exams, and that's without any breaks, too. "Urgh!" I was wiped completely out by the time I was finished.
    The two exams I wrote were Math: Circular Geometry & Statistics and Healthy Living & Nutrition (yeah, that's a course.)  It took an extra hour to complete my morning exam than almost everybody else in my class, and I had to rush right to the culinary classroom to write my nutrition exam as soon as I was finished.  I didn't even have time to eat lunch with everyone else!


    When I first got into the Culinary Lab I was like, "Um, so yeah... I didn't have my lunch yet?"  and my teacher was like,
    "Yeah? Well neither did I," she was stuffing her face full of strawberries and running to help another student as she was saying this.  I noticed this mockingly through my hunger pangs.
    "Well, can I-?"
    "Go quick!" She allotted me enough time to go to my locker and get me my lunch.  I ate it while writing my exam.
    Eating pulled pork on a bun while everyone else is busy working is a real test of your self esteem.

    After school, I spoke to a grade twelve student who had done the same thing.  Not eating pulled pork on a bun, mind you, but working for eight hours straight and not having enough time to eat lunch, only she had been working so hard that she had totally forgotten about it.  Her reaction was like, "Lunch? OMG!  That's why I'm so hungry! I forgot to eat lunch!" I guess I'm not the only person whose beginning to lose it then, hmm?  She leaped up off the bench almost immediately after saying this and came back a minute or two later with a bottle of 'Powerade' in one hand and a bag of salted pretzels in the other.  "Not the healthiest lunch," she said, "but it'll have to do."  We laughed.

    Oddly enough, through all this pain and suffering, I've gained a sense of unity with the world.
    If anything, I've learned what it's like to live life as a normal teenager, not one who is used to obeying rules and doing things in a mannerly or poised way, which is how I naturally am.  It's not bad to every now and again to get a healthy reminder of what its like to be a child who doesn't give a hoot!  You know, not that I'd want to be that way every day of my life, but it doesn't hurt to test the waters. (Although, this time I think I did a nose-dive!)
___
This post is crammed with images made specifically with this post in mind.  I suspect that this is a trend I will continue in the future!  I hope that it is received well by the web.  I'll just have to wait and see... (Makes for good practice, though!)  
Enjoy!

Starting the year off RIGHT.

Wow... I have gotten just this massive explosion of views in the past couple of days.  I mean like... "Kaboom!"

    

  ~I wonder where they are all coming from?

Lately it seems that things have changed, perhaps for the better.  I know that Christmas has worn me down and all, but still... I feel like I'm on the verge of something amazing!

I decided that I would make this post a commemorative one; a post commemorating the passing of 2011 and the birth of 2012.  As the year begins its first stance by popping out of the soil in its stretching towards the sun, so am I.  My mood is a seedling now, small and unsure of itself, but as time passes I will find myself budding anew and flourishing as I grow.  For now, I just have to wait.  Nourish myself and my artistic creativity, but wait.

Some of you may be wondering, as many of you in person do ask, do I have a favourite piece of artwork?  This type of question for an artist of any kind is mostly interpreted in the same way.  It is like asking a parent "Who of yours is your favourite child?" and in order to answer the question justly, the response usually tends to be something along the lines of "I love them all equally; each individual I love the same."  But I'm going to go a little on the contrary here and lie to you all saying that I do have a particular piece that stands out above the rest, and I am going to praise it by showing it to you all right now:

This is my absolute favourite piece of artwork I have done in the year 2011!  It embodies everything I have done, all the achievements I have made, my blog, the whole 'shabang' (as we say here in parts of the Maritime's) in one, single, condensed visual form. [And, above all that, I love it!]  ~This is my version of the favourite child. 
Okay, so... I'm not sure how long it took me to make this or when I made it for that matter, but I'm guessing that it was sometime during the spring of grade 10 (which is still within 2011.)  There were reference images that I used for both pictures featuring the lovely lady that you see here, but I lost them all somewhere on my computer between then and now, so, my bad! :(  However, I do want to give credit to whoever originally took the shot, so if any of you remember seeing the pictures I am talking about or perhaps know the photographer (which I know is an unlikely thing, really) either personally or on the net, then you can send me the links to any of the two pictures and I will edit them into here for you.

     All the information I know about the photos:

1. The second one was found on deviantART's homepage.
2. They were done by the same photographer & feature the same model.
3. Both pictures were in Sepia or Grayscale. 
4. The Titles were: The Violinist and Equilibrium. 
5. Some comments said the model was good looking, most tend to agree. :) 

The hunt is on!

On another note, I have surpassed some of my expectations for this year by getting 500+ views by December's end, and I am proud.  There are many things that I didn't get checked off my list this year that I would have liked to have done, but realistically I know that this is enough.  Any progress at all is good in my eyes and I certainly have progressed a lot this year, both on a personally level and a level that all of you can follow here on the net.  I won't go in too deep with all the achievements I have managed to cram into the year of 2011, but I will have you know that this year will be remembered by me as a year of Action and Change.

Aside from the resent changes in my life, there have also been noticeable adjustments that I have made to my blog:

• A 2011 arrow has appeared on my "Blog Archive" gadget (as all Blogger blogs do in the transition into the new year)
• New Tabs have now been placed along the top: 

         Weekly Posts: My homepage. Contains all my posts, two newest appear first. You can
                                  access older posts by going to the sidebar and selecting different moths.
         The Legend: A new feature I added to my blog. There is nothing much to see here yet,
                               but sooner or later I will provide an overview of the story in general and its
                               major conflict.
         Meet the Characters: New! Will be updated and filled with fresh content as characters
                               are developed. First installment to this Tab is coming after *two posts form
                               now.

• My website now has a Favicon! it's been there for a while but I haven't mentioned it in a post until now. You may have a hard time viewing this in 'Internet Explorer'; I suggest using Google chrome to view blogs in general. Created using this site, Following these instructions.  Image is an all original Origami design I made. [That's right, you won't find it anyplace else on the net!] If you plead on me long enough to do it, I may do a tutorial later. Its importance will become clearer in first chapter.  

Swapped images with this post.

• I now have a © Copyright statement at the bottom of all my blog's pages.  Beware!
• Lonely Totem Pole now has a new follower! Pleased welcome my first member, my cousin Maddie, to my growing group of Lenwatchers.  I haven't had a chance to thank her in person yet, so (thank you!) Please visit her blog for me to show her how much I care! <3

• And last, but not at all least... (can I get a drum roll, please)... I JOINED 'deviantART' !!!  Yeah, I know "WHAT?!"  I told my friends that I wouldn't join until after the prologue to my graphic novel was complete, but I just couldn't help myself.  I figured "now's as good as ever" and so, just like that, I joined!  I don't think it would be wise for me to give you my deviantART name just yet, for the reason that I don't have any content uploaded to the new site at all.  But just you wait! because in a moths time or so, after I've gotten the hang of using it and navigating its pages myself, I will open the doors to it for all my blog readers.  Its nothing really, I just don't want you all flooding into there with nothing to see.  So, rather than have you disappointed, I'd prefer that you get excited as you wait. (But don't worry! It won't be so long that you'll get board waiting!) That's just not my style... Haha! Bonus points to those who can find my deviantART name!  Hint: it's written somewhere on this site! :) 

How am I rate now? Good, I guess.  Although I was getting my days and nights a little mixed up for a while after New Years, I am starting to level out some now as the time for me to get back to school approaches.  I recently had a birthday, if that really matters to you at all, so I guess that makes me 17 now. (Yippy?)

Guessing I will post about that one next.

(Page 3) My gift to you~*

I saw page three come sailing in, 

Come sailing, come sailing in. 

I saw page three come sailing in, 

On Christmas day in the morning!

       How are you all on this wondrous morning?  Good, I hope!  ...Well, I'm glad to hear it.  Oh, and since I didn't get you anything this year, I thought that it might be worth the while to do a little something:  

Here's page three!
       I wanted to have something to send out on the net for the twenty-fifth, but I couldn't seem to find out just what.  Then, I remembered... "I still haven't posted the third page to my blog!"  So, here it is.
       I don't really know what has kept me from posting this one and I hadn't really stopped that to think about it all that long.  I guess that I just wasn't as excited about this page as I was with the rest, but now I've come to find myself in a good bout of inspiration and I plan to get a lot done towards my comic and to what you folks see on the net (because you don't get to see very much of what I have at all!) during the next two weeks that I am at home.  'Two weeks!' isn't it great!!!

There were a couple of boo-boos made with Page 3, I know.
Just in case their not all that obvious to you, I decided that I would point them out:

  Here is what the page looks like when you scan it in black and white.  The black in the background is far more solid when you do it this way and it really strengthens the lines in the details of the cloud and rock. 

  When I went to fill in the solid black myself, I experimented some in using two different kinds of black to see which would work better.  

  Bottom line: Do not attempt to shade things in two shades of black, using different markers, when planing to scan things in colour!  

The results from mixing "Copics with Faber-Castell" can be messy... 

You've been warned. 

Even when I compare it to 'Grayscale' things begin to look different.  

It's good to know your scanner and your scanner's settings well so that you can use that knowledge to your advantage.  

I myself, plan to scan everything in colour when doing the prologue that I am working on now.  And, although I am only using all of the blacks and grays that I have in the Faber-Castell: Pitt Pen series, I find that the variations between the warm gays and the cool grays comes out better when I scan things in colour.  

It's just helpful to be able to identify what it is you are looking for from your artwork, to then be able to choose the right scanner settings that best suit your style's needs.  

________

Okay, so I know that it wasn't exactly Christmas Day when I posted this, but in my mind I had hoped to have it posted for that day.  However, it is a hustle and bustle kind of season, Christmas, and you must understand that I am a busy man.  

                                                                                                                       -No hard feelings, Right? 

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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.

2nd Page

Yippee! IT'S DONE! My second page is complete, and what a great feeling it is. Voila!:

The DPI settings with this one is a little higher than my first one, so it actually to a little bit longer to upload.  (DPI= dots per inch, for those of you who don't know.)  Oh, well. It just means that you get to witness all of the second page's glory in its original size if you wish.
Now that I am looking at this on a smaller computer screen, I realize what a great sense of depth I put into these three panels, especially the first one.  All of them somehow look like you're peering through a window or something.  Hmm.. weird? But, I love it all the same.

There are significant improvements here from my first page.  The boarder is a bit simpler in this one, making it less distracting, but equally attractive.  The Idea with the boarder is to make it feel ancient and religious, and I hope that I have managed to capture that essence in this one.  The more I do this; the better I feel about it and the happier I get.  I can actual feel this thing begin to take off, which is an emotion I have been waiting a long time to have felt.

I hope that you are enjoying this as much as I am, and I'm sure to keep you updated on what is to happen next.  This is an awesome feeling, it really is!
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1st Page-Done!

I am finally finished inking the first page!  I am very happy with the overall results, and am proud of myself for reaching this milestone in my pre-graduate years of high school.  I had promised myself that I would have posted at least this here by the end of summer vacation, and it looks as though I followed through and kept to my word.

Anyway, to save you from having to hear me rant about all the things I could have done differently with this, my first comics page (yay!), I would rather hear you comment about it yourselves.

Just leave a little message for me at the bottom of the page saying all of the things you either liked or disliked about this particular segment, and I will make sure to listen tentatively to what you have to say so that I can incorporate all of your thoughts and ideas into my next piece.

(*So... Much... BOARDER INKING!  It is far too cluttered for my liking. My poor hands yearn to weep!)

"Oh well, Len! Just live and learn, live and learn~"

EDIT: View my second page here!