onna's scratches and scribbles

I am always forgetting about drawings and finding them again, months & years later...

I found some more half-done drawings yesterday and even started another one, stupid me. The 'threat' of an upcoming con seems to get my creative juices flowing, drawing-wise.

I tried a sketch of the Mabudachi Trio (Shigure, Ayame and Hatori Sohma from "Fruits Basket") but I made the first two head sketches too large so the third would not fit where I had planned on placing it. I gave up and turned the page. A sketch like this does keep the idea in the back of my mind so when I come across the sketch again I can be reminded to try it again. I would like to eventually do a drawing of the three boys in kimono, relaxing together and reading books. Will it happen? Only if the muses deem it so.

I started another sketch, which quickly turned into a pic of Eiri with Shuichi leaning against his back.

I found a sketch I had begun before Xmas - actually something I had initially considered as an alternative Xmas card. It is Eiri and Shuichi in kimono, with Eiri taking advantage of Shuichi, of course. I ended up putting a lot of shading into it last night. I also did a lot of erasing to get rid of extra lines. Shuichi's eyes are not balanced and I haven't even begun starting on filling in Eiri.

I went back to the earlier sketch I had begun of E&S earlier yesterday and added a kimono on Eiri's body. Yeah, of COURSE they were naked! You KNOW clothes are difficult for me to draw if I don't have a reference. Besides, wouldn't you prefer to see naked men with nice bodies snuggling together?

Etc.

I spent most of my time last night away from 'online' and worked on my latest scanned drawing in Photoshop.

I actually scanned this one in at 150dpi instead of 75dpi for a change.

I did the black and white work earlier this week; made a from-scratch pattern using an Oriental wingding font so I could overlay it on the kimono, picked and overlaid a texture on the kimono, made sure the eye highlights were actually white, cleaned up the scanner 'chatter' in the background, etc.

Last night I decided to do some colour work to see what I could come up with. The skintones are a little dark but I think I can compensate if I add some kind of darkish background. Added a boring blue solid to the kimono. I really need to find another colour for the boy - he wears other colours. I worked in the hair a bit, too.

I adjusted the flow and opacity of the brush down to half each so I am finally getting the watercolour/airbrush effects I used to get in Photoshop 6 when I was colouring the drawings I did for Joules and Talon so many years ago. I think if I truly want that kind of look again I will just go back to PS6 and do the work there.

I think the website will remain in hiatus until after I get back from a-kon. I might do an update in mid-June. I will need to get the photos organized, sent through the Photoshop auto-gallery and add all the annotations/comments first before posting.

I have been doing some icon making for contests lately. I joined some other communities to get away from the exclusive Gravi stuff. I have joined a few Fruits Basket ones a Saiyuki one and a Wolf's Rain one.

Now, if we could only find our Fruits Basket anime collection so I could make some screencaps! The gremlims have it, I just know it! And it also tells me the gremlins are yaoi fans! I have to depend on manga scans exclusively right now.

I am definitely curious about what kind of work I will see at these other communities who have mostly strangers entering. Well, I know patosan participates in some of the Fruits Basket contests, but I think the Saiyuki and Wolf's Rain communities probably have hardly anyone I know as members.

I really need to work on the rant community and get the 'all other icons' community set up so I can open it.

Too much to do, not enough time...

A single oekaki:

Obsession Oekaki Central:
http://w4.oekakies.com/p/0bsesion/p.cgi
353: Shu smooches Eiri

Banning People

Any person whose lj account I do not recognize is immediately banned from all my lj accounts.

My creative journal is still getting friended by those vindictive people from that crappy Harry Potter group. (No, I don't want to be your friend, so piss off, you fuckers.) I wasn't fond of Harry Potter before, especially the shota aspects; now I absolutely HATE the entire fandom, even the benign elements.

So, instead of getting freaked about these little fucktards, I ban them so I don't have to see them on my Friends list. They may still be there, but at least I don't have to look at them anymore. So far, 24 people are banned.

Writing

I sat down at the craptop when I got home today and put in a little less than 100 words on the bed fic. Yesterday, I carried the craptop to the office and did another 100 on the same fic. I just need to do this every day, if I don't fall asleep, to get all the scribbles from paper to e-doc. I know I cannot take the craptop to the office every day - the weight of it in its bag on my shoulder kills my knees when I use the stairs. Nope, no elevators for me. As long as my damaged knees can still use stairs, I will use them.

Artwork

Well, I do the occasional oekaki still (see prior posts) and I have found some finished drawings from way back that need to be scanned and cg-ed. I tried to scan last night, but the scanner decided to do its flaky thing and not work. I forgot about it until now, after rat went to bed. He knows a 'jiggle' trick to get it working again.

Other Creative Stuff

Watching the gaming network has gotten me a little excited about learning a 3D program. Our main 3D instructor is a big anime/manga fan and wants to get me in the class to make my characters three dimensional. So, how ugly can I make Yuki Eiri when I try to make a wireframe of his face?

The AVID class has gotten me a little hyped about doing some anime music videos. Yesterday, during office hours, I pretty much worked in the AVID program the entire time. I tried various compressions/codecs and discovered the best ones will not play without the expensive codec also being installed. I think I might stick to the larger avi file format with the Microsoft Video 1 codec. It makes a large file but at least it can be played on old machines. The mov files refused to play, which was odd. Today, I showed the advanced video class instructor some of the weird results I got when I exported. One file digitized wildly, taking out sections of the images and pixelating areas. Another file superimposed a zoomed-in version of the video on top of the correctly-formatted footage.

Some oekaki:

Tearing us Apart
http://members.lycos.co.uk/eva94589/oekaki/index.php
245: Trowa from Gundam Wing


Wrapped In Plastic
http://members.lycos.co.uk/chickenheadsasuke/oekaki/
62: Yuki Eiri from Gravitation

I have put the Planet Witzend website on hiatus until a better internet connection can be set up.

Here are some oekaki:


Blistering Lightsaber Action:
http://www.swordbreaker.com/oekaki/
112: Shuichi from Gravitation


Blistering Lightsaber Action:
http://www.swordbreaker.com/oekaki/
113: Yellow Youkai

I am notorious for putting participial phrases at the beginning of many of my sentences in my stories, especially my older in-progress pieces. I am trying to remedy that now.

I have all my most pressing fics-in-progress together and in one large divided folder now. Yay!

Yes, the gremlins gave me the other folder back within 24 hours. They probably knew I talked about them here and realized they needed to go mess with hiding the usual things, like unpaired socks.

Anyway, I looked at 'the fic that will not end' and found myself cringing at some of the sentences. I just need to tighten up paragraphs and change how I phrase entire sections. I have been scribbling on it on and off, trying to fix the 2003 writing.

My back and legs keep me from carrying the craptop to work to use during lunch so everything is being done long-hand right now. By the time I get home at night, I have to have a lie-down for a while because my lower half is in pain. It really doesn't work well when I try to type in bed while on my back.

Also have the razor fic, the Greek myth fic, the newest fic (working title, Fox), the bed fic and a disturbing dream I had of the boys still on the lined notepad in the folder. And I still carry the small notebook in my back pocket that has a lot of other ideas and even some partially developed outlines.

I think the sf/pirate fic I have in the notebook would be a great collab piece if I could get the outlines of what each section needed to have within it together. Don't hold your breath, though. I do not have enough free hours in the day to do what I want to do.

I need to figure out when I am going to take another week of vacation this summer, just to do some creative stuff.

Ack, I need to scan some drawings in soon.

I loaded my buttload of third-party filters again and have been playing with some new icons with some of them. I guess I need to decide if I will post an icon tonight.

Too much to do, and now I am ready to go to bed.

Boy, have I been uncreative lately...

Tearing us Apart
http://members.lycos.co.uk/eva94589/oekaki/index.php
220: Some guy

This took over a year, on and off, to complete. I think it was partly because I could not draw Shuichi consistently well back then so I stopped working on it. I can finally draw the tribble pretty reliably now so recently my muse jumped on me out of the blue and I finished this in record time.

Anyway, this is fanart for 's wonderful multi-chaptered fic, Pianissimo Butterfly. You can read it at gurabite and I highly recommend you do so.

An artist note: This is my first purely computer graphics image that is not an oekaki. I did this entirely in Photoshop, without using any traditional drawing materials nor scanning any sketch into the program. I drew the characters while in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet. Each character was drawn and coloured in a separate file then copied to the main picture.

No one has a shirt because I absolutely SUCK at drawing decent looking clothes without some kind of reference.

It is difficult to see, but Shuichi DOES have a pierced eyebrow in this pic.

This thumbnail is a little blurry around the edges, as usual. Large copy to the usual later.

# fucked up by bakayaro onna : 12:26 PM
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The Wearing O'the Green got an amusing review over at affnet from "Chad":

http://adultfan.nexcess.net/aff/review.php?set=read&no=544179680

I wonder what part was shit? The fact I could actually spell words correctly? How about the fact I can write descriptions that can be seen? Maybe it was because I had not used one of the Top 10 Bad Gravi Scenarios but instead came up with something original?

With the recent mess over at gurabite, I find this really amusing. Let's praise bad writers and encourage them to continue producing lackluster and even icky work and blast writers who can actually write.

Got another review recently, asking, "Who is Shiyuu?" and that's all that was written, even though it states at the top of the story in question the reason for the spelling. The idiot did not leave an email or I would have sent the person a copy of the statement.

I guess I should lower myself and change all my stories at the various archives so the 'standard' spelling is in place. *sigh* I will still keep my chosen spelling with my artwork at my website to cut down on people doing searches.

It will fuck up the a/u Greek myth fic, but I suppose I can just explain the spelling there.

The house gremlins have run off with the working hard-copies of the fics I was working on a month ago. I will have to look harder for them and try to tempt them with something they will like instead. They still have my Gravi 10 manga in the original Japanese held hostage somewhere.

It is time to start dredging some stuff out of the apt. permanently. I may have to get an eBay seller's account for some of it. I have craft magazines and books out the wazoo. I will need to make photocopies of the crafts I actually do (crochet, cross-stitch, quilt) and then get rid of the originals. I have thousands of dollars invested in the craft/sewing stuff, just like all my anime/manga stuff.

I suppose I do not view oekaki the same way as my regular art pieces. Sometimes it feels like it is mindless sketching I do 'just because'.

Artist's Cafe:
http://cafe.firefly.nu/oekaki/pictures/100.png
100: Shindô Shuichi sings


hochuuami oekaki
http://www.hochuuami.com/oekaki/index.php
125: Shindô Shuichi at the beach
The companion piece to this image is #352 at this oekaki board: http://w4.oekakies.com/p/0bsesion/p.cgi


Waterless Death
http://members.lycos.co.uk/waterlessdeath/oekaki//index.php
71: Green-haired Guy


Tearing us Apart
http://members.lycos.co.uk/eva94589/oekaki/index.php
211: Yuki Eiri from Gravitation


I have been posting some icons over at my icon community, gravi_icon_art , usually daily.