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! 

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!)
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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!