This Friday will see 3 more permanent (?) residents in my home: my aunt and her two children who are a few years younger than me. The aunt will for sure be home 24/7 until she finds a job, which is very unlikely since she doesn’t speak english, and I will have to look for schools for my two cousins and most likely have to help them with any school work they don’t understand, drive them to places, and just in general have my doors open to my family. I’m beginning to stress out now because I need the kind of concentration and freedom from external hindrances I have right now to work; sometimes even just the interaction of my parents and grand parents and the tv would throw me off. It’s almost like I have those artist retreat in the mountains right here in my room lolol, JUST NOT IN A HEALTHY WAY. It will be a great motivation for me to save up to maybe start paying for a place of my own though! I’ll manage but the transition is going to suck :T /spoiled only child

I’ll be posting a bigger version of this on my sites on new year’s (: but you guys can see it first as a reward for looking at my blog! I am very bad at drawing stuff for special occasions, and since I missed christmas I forced myself to at least draw something for new year’s. I wish all of you a safe and peaceful 2012! (or I guess a dangerous and exciting 2012 if you’re an adrenaline junkie)

Writing about this year feel kinda like counting down my life, scratching another year off til the deadline and I’ve got all these things that I am now bent on accomplishing. I kinda like this because unlike having nothing to do, I feel motivated and unlike having a boss, if I miss a deadline I won’t dread to be scolded and wait for my sentencing. I’m so cut off from society but at this very moment it feels like it’s not worth it to fit myself into social norms just because it will make me miserable and slow down my work greatly.

I looked back at last year’s resolution list to see what I did and didn’t do LOL. I never got around to the studies like anatomy and colour and just plunged headfirst into practical work. I think that’s pretty terrible for my growth but yeah, I never really find myself to be the scholastic type. I feel more like the apocalypse-is-tomorrow-so-I-better-finish-this-book-so-it-can-be-incinerated-by-the-sun-along-with-myself type. I also just outright threw any semblance of a balanced lifestyle out the window in exchange for productivity, and it showed I think… I remember thinking that all I churned out this year was manga pages with relatively few drawings, but while upgrading my gallery script, I noticed I painted more than last year, and most of the pictures had taken much much longer to complete than drawings from last year. I played piano more than last year… though considering I played in like almost half year gaps last year, that’s not saying much LOL… but I can feel my fingers numbing because there are some pieces that even after familiarizing myself with them, I can’t play them as well anymore simply because my hands are more clumsy now from lack of practice. It’s depressing but I can’t ask for reward without putting work in LOL.

2011 summary of stuff I remember:

• Published CP finally! and suddenly the subsequent volumes are following like the wind (in my mind ok)
• Got out an artbook too? although that’s more like putting art together into a book because I didn’t draw too many new pieces for it
• I did better at conventions than previous years because I have books to sell now
• what I’m doing is much more solid and does not involve describing abstract career concepts to parents
• I am not sure about this but I think I treated people better? I tried to go the extra mile (at least for me it is considered such) to correspond with (or just respond to) my friends and loved ones. It’s really tiring still but it’s coming to me more naturally
• I somehow suddenly found a style I am completely comfortable with painting omg?? before no matter what I did I would always struggle greatly with the face, but somehow I can finally bid this decade of struggle good bye

I’m actually not going to do a resolution list for next year because there is nothing I am particularly keen on overcoming above all else, and I would probably mostly just aim for a continuation and improvement from this year. Also I just have no idea what would happen to my work style and habits after my aunt’s family moves in ): but here’s to a safe and peaceful world. I hope that while the young and fed-up stand up for their own causes, they actually have an idea of how to deal with the onslaught of chaos should they actually succeed in overthrowing the “system”, whatever they consider it to be. I’m not the most responsible or considerate person out there and I’m not too filled in on a lot of the current worldly issues, but while I believe some of these world powers are fucked up in the way they operate their countries, I feel like the masses trying to spread justice are just as dangerous and insane.

Ending with my playing! My mom went out today so this would probably be the last chance I have to putting together a recording without anyone else in the house for a long, long time. I did this to record flandre’s theme for my waifu sepia but also decided to record something else too because I get asked about my education once in a while. Time really hurts my skill but I’m not out here to impress any experts haha, if I need to do that in the future I can always actually practice for it. and tune my piano…. it hasn’t been tuned for like 3 + years now LOL;;; anyway this is lezghinka by liapunov; I decided to learn this after hearing a classmate play it and it has been my favourite song to play for fun. Everyone living around me is probably so fucking sick of this song lmfao

Until my art book will be available for preorder!

´Д` Then I can finally post new art and move on with my life LOL… and then 2 or 3 more weeks and then I can finally DRAW NEW ART why did I bring this on myself LMAO. I don’t mind drawing a ton of pages per week but it really helps improve my mental state to know that I can slack and draw other stuff anytime I feel the need to and I’m just being responsible with my choices, rather than telling myself I’m doing this because if I don’t I won’t finish stuff in time ughh

I realized a while ago when chatting with a friend that I am all business when it comes to reaching milestones (AS I AM WITH EVERYTHING ELSE ACTUALLY…) so I decided to celebrate my art book a little and go out for some ice cream on preorder night HAHA… I can’t believe I wanted to go for like the past 1-2 years and I NEVER WENT, even though it’s like 10 minutes from my place what is wrong with me ): but fear not ice cream crepes, I will come claim you this weekend.

I’m pretty much done with my late romantic period so I’ve been looking for different music to listen to, and looking through billions of songs you’ve heard billions of times is HARD HAHA. But I’m back to baroque stuff now–or in this case late romantic renditions of baroque stuff LOL. I fucking love the fact that they’re so focused on forms (not sure if this one applies tho I don’t deserve to pass music history lmao) I don’t know why this always gets me off so much more than emotional downpours of romantic stuff and totally makes me wanna cry. same for art, too! I just may have some serious obsessions over control and constrain

Anyway have some busoni! This is only the second half but this is what I’ve been listening to haha

Ending with a wall of self reflection which might inflict brain damage so I’ll put that behind the cut (:
(more…)

I have a relative who will be moving to Canada in January, and my dad suggested to me that if I have any books that I can print at that date, I can save a few hundred dollars on shipping by just shipping it with her cargo. Naturally I thought about my manga but in order to finish it JUST in time to be printed, I have to draw 4 pages a week starting now (excluding NYAF week) until mid dec. It’s something I was going to try in the summer but never had the time and urgency for, and now it’s being shoved in my face. I am going to do it just to see if I can keep up with this kind of schedule (well, I know for sure I can, it’s just whether I want to live by this or not HAHA… I’m really lax with my schedules and always make it so that I get minimum amount of stress from meeting deadlines because WHO LIKES DEADLINES) and if anything I would have a good buffer of unposted pages for various purposes? I already have the rest of the book thumbnailed back in May or June, so all the work left is drawing it out. If it works out in the end, I’ll have CP2 available for sale like 2-3 months before I finish posting all the pages. And if I don’t go insane from this I might keep doing it so that we all won’t be like 80 when CP finishes lmfao

A sketch I forgot about that I did during fanexpo haha; I did some sketches that I was going to post after i fixed them up/coloured them but I didn’t find any time this week lol ;; I’ll try to remember that next week. This is a redesign of an old chara that I posted about ages and ages ago and never did anything for. He’s the archbishop named Syro but I’m probably changing his name later cus it’s lame LMAO. He was older but since there is obviously a lack of young characters in Carciphona that look alike I am making him younger. He’s amazingly traditional and conservative but only because he believes he has no choice except to be as responsible as possible, and that if he cares about his own concerns he’d be putting countless other people’s concerns in jeopardy. Guilt tripping works wonders on him.

I’m pretty sure no one can figure out wtf is going on in this sketch but this is a great example of what my design doodles look like; I kind of go out of control when I’m making designs for the first time because I’m too lazy to draw new figures for designs so I just draw lines on the same figure over and over again until it becomes uselessly incomprehensible LOL. I’ll totally go insane and frustrated about having waste time on neatness if I were a concept artist lol ]: Archbishop is just his title; he is a summoner and he uses his holy shit ceremonial staff for that. It’s supposed to be turn upside down and played like a doublebass (I just wanted an excuse to make more impractical musical weapons) He has a huge crush on veloce that will never play out because romance is not allowed in Carciphona LOLGOD

IN OTHER UNRELATED NEWS, Islamey gets mentioned a lot when I was in college because it was supposed to be the most difficult piece to play up to that era or something; a lot of people talk about it when I played Scarbo since they get compared a lot for virtuosity, but I never really liked Islamey as a song because it sounds really over the top and generic to me lmao ): But I was looking for good recordings of it and came across Berezovsky’s and holy crap does he make it sound good. I love how he plays Liszt and… I guess this is perfect for him LOL. The only thing I don’t like about it is he plays a lot of passages dry without pedaling just because he can. It’s pretty fucking amazing but in the end I always prefer the noisier performances XD

I’ve been having such an “art block” per se that I haven’t done anything since I finished next week’s update yesterday. ok that doesn’t sound like a long time LOL BUT IT IS. I’ve been getting by with working on a web design for a friend, but otherwise I barely got anything done. It’s not even a real art block because I can come up with things to draw, it’s just that I’m forcing myself to go for illust concepts of stuff I like but have trouble doing, ie modern, casual, down to earth, more photo-like rather than arbitrary and posed. And those didn’t go anywhere ): so I got annoyed in the end and just flipped to an unfinished sketch from last october, finished it and pretended I got something done LOL

a princess of northern descent! I believe I was really just trying to make a chinese princess crown with baroque ornaments but I decided to draw her some fancy clothes too. I think this is weirin but I’m not sure…..

yesterday night’s attempt to convince myself I didn’t waste the night away LOL. I painted half of it and got a little bored because I really just wanted work on illustration ideas some more. It was nice to colour hair brainlessly for 2 hours and occasionally chat on livestream!

And lastly, tonight’s attempt to be productive was to .:*~research drinks~*:. because, you know, I decided to make poor veloce an alcoholic but I don’t drink at all nor know how they’re served :D The best way to avoid making her look like a poser is of course to do it myself, but I hate the taste of alcohol lol SO youtube will have to do! I ended up looking at bartenders and this guy is pretty funny and the best I could find tonight. Everyone else looked like juggling clowns because they just toss their bottles around for a while with a long or nervous face, then pour the drinks like nothing happened which is pretty lame ):

I keep getting reminded how much of an aural person I am recently. My dad’s family has been trying to buy this apartment together in China so he’s been doing hour-long phone calls every night checking out places on google maps. BEHIND ME. My workdesk is big and my mom is usually asleep due to her schedule, so I told him he should move his laptop in my room and work here instead. except I didn’t expect this kind of calls LOL. I cannot think if I hear someone else talking in a language I understand… I can’t even write a simple e-mail because I’d forget what I just wrote a few seconds ago in the same sentence because my mind is being flooded by the sound ): Same thing for songs that I haven’t heard before; I would just start focusing on the musical materials of the song. I can’t do the same for visual things, I can tune out visual information so easily even if I’m staring straight at it, and usually I can’t remember what I just saw for beans LMAO (so whenever I ref character design I literally have to tab back and forth stroke by stroke or put the images side by side) I’m totally not meant to be an artist man ):

And how is it July? I will have cons every other week starting less than 2 weeks from now (leaving next thursday for Ai-kon) and every con is gonna take me at least 4 days… My force-myself-to-go-to-cons ambition has died down HAHA all I want to do now is sit at home and get shit done ): I think I am aiming to finish Blackbird’s character profile this week (not doing Iriel anymore LOLOL FORGET THAT), do this week and next week’s updates, and then do… something… with my remaining time LOL maybe start on another CG :D and rebuild my AA display stand. I’m pretty nervous for ai-kon because It’s a small con, I’m going alone and I dont think I’m meeting up anyone I already know there. It was kind of a SHILIN MAKE YOURSELF DO SOMETHING THIS SUMMER thing when I applied for artist alley. I’ll be staying at Rensing‘s place for the duration of the con (thank you sooooo much ;;;;;) I hope I won’t be a boring annoying guest HAHAHA /socially inept

OTHERWISE, HAVE SOME MORE DRAFTS!!!!

I believe they’re more fun to look at before you see final pages, and I can’t do this with CP for obvious reasons so I thought I’d do this for the AU storyline instead! I was going to use these as test pages for complete digital creation, but I don’t know if I’ll have time anytime soon to do them ): So in the mean time please have some ridiculous thumbnails. As I said before I only go as far as making it comprehensible to me because, well, no one else really need to see my thumbnails. So I won’t be surprised if no one can figure it out LOLOLOL

And more drawing videos! this picture is really simple, and I made it a little slower than the rest so it’s possible to see my blending process if you’re interested. Click through to youtube for a bigger and maybe clearer version (: