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 (:

I want to draw a character line up poster where they are actually wearing the clothes they wear in the story ): But I can’t think of a setting/theme for them because I fail at group pictures LOL. I want to draw something that shows their height and a walking picture is the easiest setting, but judy already did it ;;;;;;;;;

FFF just 3 more boxes of packages to mail and I’m done. I’m so frustrated by the inconsistency between post offices because each clerk ACCEPTS SOMETHING DIFFERENT. I just wasted an hour talking to the clerk that was in today about how I was allowed to use the old green canada post customs sticker for the other post office, but this guy refused to accept it and insisted that I had to fill out the new one (the one that requires me to rewrite my 5-line address AND the recipient’s address) and I’m like I can’t do this 100 times… so I carried two boxes of mailers around for NOTHING and I have to go back tomorrow when the guy that accepts these slips is in. Also now I’m worried because he says if they’re not accepted, they will be returned to me and there would not be a refund. This is very scary because that’s potentially a thousand dollar loss there because the postage is as expensive as the book. But at the same time the guy who accepts the green slips has a friend who basically sells tons of contact lenses daily on ebay or something, and if his friend doesn’t get in trouble with his standards, I shouldn’t have to worry right???

I wish I was successful enough that I can contract a proper shipping company to manage all this for me… I have no problem doing the manual labour on my own but getting past FLEXIBLE RULES (???????) is way beyond me. I’m so not suitable to be a businessman LOL I consider every worst case scenario and take it as my responsibility to prevent it from happening. My dad tells me I’m horrible at this because I try too hard on service… he insisted the clear plastic bag wasn’t even necessary, and that I shouldn’t worry about the book getting damaged over WEEKS of INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING because it’s something way beyond my control (ie if a postman is bent on snapping my book in half or tossing it in water, he can do it and no amount of cardboard backing will save it). Also he told me to just ship the books regardless of a strike because that is also not my problem, and that I’m going too far in making sure the orders ship in a timely manner because I’m not the one transporting them and should not be the one to blame. It sounds like I’m boasting about how well I treat my customers but I really just find it interesting that he says that when a service is too good in a business, there is a problem with the business. I guess I can understand to a degree, but saying “no, that’s none of my responsibility I’m sorry I can’t reimburse what you paid for” is so hard ):

On the plus side, if I do this very often, my lifestyle will become healthy as I get my daily dose of exercise doing physical labour LOLOL. I consider book weight very carefully next time… This book is giving me troubles because it’s only 1 or 2 grams underweight, and the ones with custom sketches/charms in it are overweight and I had to pay extra. I really love the paper quality of this book but it’s so dense and thick, that it becomes a big problem when it comes to shipping. Lastly, I’m not doing double book shipping next time LOL and I will probably have to up international shipping rate depending on how this old customs form is accepted. Right now I send international orders as small packages rather than letter mail to save about $5 in shipping cost to arrive at the already expensive $10 shipping, but in return every single one of them has to include customs clearance. If they don’t accept this green slip I’m using, I will have to write down the addresses twice per package and I really can’t afford doing that to ~200 mailers. It’s sad because I have almost as much int’l orders as USA ones and the shipping will probably discourage many, many people from buying my future books.

And here are some randomly sexy men

I need to have something to look forward to in order to productive, ie a deadline or something that’s not finished. That’s why whenever I finish something I go into sloth mode and get nothing done HAHAH ): I have a commission and a gift piece to CG (and those 40 more sketches) but what I really wanted to draw was was a big huge scene of grandeur or chaos, some environment that shows veloce as a powerful figure. I didn’t really know what would be an effective way to portray that, the only thing I was sure of was devastating weather, and the fact that I don’t want to draw her sitting/standing around doing nothing. I actually wanted to draw her casting or fighting because movement is a big part of her fighting style. While sorcery is a mental exercise and the best sorcerers can fight without moving an inch, she isn’t the type where power translates to elegance and control. She also doesn’t use magic unless she really has to, regardless of the Prohibition.

But in the end I couldn’t draw a fight scene without compromising the feel of might ): she just looked like an ordinary or extraordinary fighter in those pictures, not someone unfazed by overwhelming forces. So I ended up drawing something like that arrogance sketch I did for my high priest. I don’t know if you can actually tell what’s going on here… I would work more on it but it’s time I put it away and use it as the drive to get my commissions/gift/sketches done LOL. I look forward to working on / finishing this picture though, because I already know what I want it to look like. Usually the sketches that I have a clear image for look like shit because I don’t want to spend time jotting down what I already know HAHA

And I’m not very creative when it comes to shit like this lol ): but I usually don’t try very hard with poses for repeats of past sketches that didn’t pass the CG test. My friend was like bb is doomed to be a man so I made it look more like she is the lady seducing a man(with boobs and wearing a tank?)? I might cg this one too because it looks nice and easy!

And I’m listening to the art of piano documentary again so here’s some cziffra! I don’t know why aside from the really corny stuff they say in the documentary, I really really like the performances they had in the documentary even though they’re mostly mono, low quality, has lots of mistakes and don’t really conform to the standard expectations of how each of the pieces should be performed. I guess it just feels… alive? Like I can feel the insane over the top happiness of the artist in this recording like he’s lost his mind LOL… God I just want to go nuts at the piano right now I AM EXPLODING WITH ENERGY

Also it sounds like liszt was trolling someone into thinking that it’s a grande waltz brilliante ripoff HAHAH

Documenting the entire drawing process from start to finish (sans 1 hour in the middle)! For some reason I have the tendency to move the canvas around instead of moving my hand around the tablet, so the speed video is like seizure inducing lol ):

My rest week turned into a do everything else week as expected. I felt a lot better on wednesday so I started working on those 100 free sketches. I’ve also decided to draw them on separate pieces of paper. At least this way they look a lot better than if I were to scribble with a pen onto the books LOL. I try to keep them fast but I can’t draw them any faster than like 15-20 minutes each so after 2 days of (half distracted) work, I’m only at 40 ): 60 more to go! and counting on people who don’t pay because I’m not drawing their sketches until they pay HAHA. I had wanted to finish all of them by today but I was short yesterday’s quota by like 50% so I think the work will have to go into next week ): I intend to send off my art to make prints next week as well, so although I wanted to draw a gothic/punk pic as the last new print of the year I don’t think I’ll have time ): NEXT YEAR IT IS.

I want to post some of the sketches because I kinda like them, but that wouldn’t be nice to the people getting them haha. After 40 sketches it’s still pretty fun although even though I’ve drawn like 35 veloce/blackbirds and 2 weirin/keris so far LUL I think I just have ocd issues

SPESHIAL HALF-HOUR SKETCH FOR SUMBADY

For some reason the charas in my traditional sketches look so young I don’t know why hahaha :D they start to look old when I paint them but I think it’s because I draw such big heads and cute short little arms and hands, and I fix those with freetransform on photoshop when I paint them. This is what you should NOT do guys, practice a bad habit so hard that you naturally do it and can’t tell what’s wrong with it.

ok time to do 60 more sketches! I’m so amazingly motivated recently it’s surreal

The picture is technically finished! Like the sunset CG I’m going to save it for after I start taking preorders for the book to help with advertising ^^ but I’ve posted it in the gallery of this website already so you can see it there!

And I also took the livestream of the boots ornament on wednesday and edited it into video walk through :D livestreams are good for seeing individual brush strokes (and how slow I draw) but speed up videos are great for showing the overall process. I’ll probably avoid using livestream videos in the future though because I usually draw petty badly in streams, because I feel pressured to not pause and think too much, which is actually an integral part of my drawing process

I think this is as close as I can get to my pretty picture goal… I stopped before I start adding massive amount of details and depressing themes LOL. I started with Weirin but when I considered a sky texture for background, I thought the colours work with Veloce better. With interest to variety I’m pretty sure I should go with weirin but man, the pinks and lavenders LOL… Another problem is cyan doesn’t print, and I don’t know how to deal with that colour in terms of printing so I’ll most likely go with weirin. Which of the three do you prefer?

I mentioned this a few times to some friends but I don’t think I ever talked about it in public, even though it’s been a pretty big thing for me in the past few years–especially after I started going to conventions–but it’s been my goal to beat my old popular works for a while. I decided to write it here because I think it’s pretty absurd of me to do that and might be interesting to know. An artist improves and improvement sometimes means change, and and during change some old charm might be lost. Now that I’ve gone through 4 years of staggered experimenting with various styles/processes/procedures, I’m taking what I’ve learned and applying it to what people once liked best about my art. I didn’t expect this part to be this hard because I didn’t realize that some of the old charms of my art were thanks to my mistakes and lack of knowledge, and once you learn you can’t unlearn!

I really appreciate people enjoying my “basilica”, “too late” and “roxanne” pictures, both online and as a print in real life, but I don’t like the fact that they can be (incorrectly) seen as the apex of my career or the best I can do, because I can’t produce something with my improved skill that can defeat their popularity. It may be obvious that I’ve deliberately drawn things with this motive in mind and if not, this pretty picture thing I’ve been trying to do is an attempt to defeat myself at my roxanne picture. I understand that timing played a big role because those three pieces were all done during a time when I still actively posted, and deviantart didn’t destroy their fave system yet (I think), and now that they’ve got such surreal fame it’s even easier for people to spread it around. But even when I sold prints at conventions those three were the top three year after year. I’m so surprised that even after I finally did figure out why they were so popular, I could not come up with new pieces that work on the same concepts without them looking like a replica of those pieces. I’ll see at this year’s conventions to see if I finally succeeded!

And speaking of conventions, if by chance I win the AN contest and win a table, I don’t think my books will be here in time for the con ): is a little sad