!!! I’m drawing an original piece OMG

although the pic is already not turning out the way I expected it to be (I didn’t mean to paint it like this but ended up doing so after painting her face and hair) I’m having a lot of fun going nuts over my own characters again. If only drawing everything is like this SIGHHH

click to see full image <:

I can’t believe I’m actually working on the new website layout I’ve been talking about for a year. I also can’t believe I’ve kept this theme across every single version of my layouts, although this one is largely just a copy/redraw/improvement of the last one. I had thought about going for the professional look like everyone else and putting an actual illustration as the header to represent my art better, but I decided to just do that with content layout, and preserve this ridiculous happy pastel world I’ve created. It totally looks NOTHING like what I normally draw lol

And so, as per usual, you can see my test page here as I slowly work on it: http://ashen-ray.com/5/ It features broken stuff everywhere, gibberish and the occasional coding explosion because I’m a noob.

+1 class variety to my RO collection! a soul linker using a soul linker soul link HARHARHAR

And instead of working on a set of new pages I treat myself by making some random design that I can’t logically use for at least 7 more chapters

once again idk why everything is slanted… and I don’t understand why I don’t draw out a proper figure before I draw on clothing design and now she looks funny

More random thoughts about the design because changing her appearance is fun to think about for some reason. MAYBE I JUST LIKE TO WASTE TIME THINKING ABOUT TRIVIAL DETAILS
(more…)

She looked so much like Blackbird at one point in sketch mode lmao

Ugh I slept late last night, then woke up a few times for extended periods in the middle of the night because some random pollen allergy I’ve been getting lately. I eventually gave up and used the allergy spray my dad gave me and it MADE IT WORSE. Then I got woken up pretty early (for my standards) by the door bell for some packages; turns out they’re cushart’s artbooks and the bahamut figure that I bought from 2 weeks ago. So I was all overexcited and tired/sleepy at the same time unwrapping them and had a super hard time putting his tail together and sticking the stand up his ass… BUT HERE HE IS IN ALL HIS GLORY I’m so happy he got here alive

looks like all my recent blog entries are like this for some reason

and here’s one of the few pieces I really indulge in from the slow-and-peaceful collective!

Going to Otakon next week :D Then to NYC outlets as per my mom’s request afterward.

I’m trying to make Blackbird more detailed and professional, and the first step is to not slack off on anything, including backgrounds right? I REGRET IT SLIGHTLY NOW because I spent forever drawing these boxes of houses and they still don’t look good because the paper is not big enough, and I gave up using ruler for every single house. In the end the shades covered up most of everything ): BETTER LUCK NEXT TOWN

Also a random scrap inspired by a commercial

and the song for the commercial! the title is “Por Una Cabeza”; it’s a song with singing but I am more attracted to this chamber version. It’s so stylish, I want to play it fff

Lastly I’m in LOVE with Shin Angyo Onshi. I first read it a few months back when my friend introduced it to me, and I enjoyed it very much back then, but recently I went back to read it again and I’m now obsessed over it. There are some things about it that I wish was better but they don’t change how much GENIUS this story is. The art and story telling is phenomenal and I wonder why it’s not famous. I want to buy the books cus I love it soooo much but I don’t think it’s published in English WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY. there’s no artbooks or anything AND THE ANIMATED FILM VERSION IS CRAP ]: sad panda

And here’s something from an album that I recently listened to again. Chopin’s opus 10 #12, followed by Godowsky’s 1-hand arrangement, played by Berezovsky! more guilty pleasure yayayayayay

Sometimes I get jealous of record producers; think of all the greatest artists they get to listen to for every work day ):

Apparently I got this spammer on my ass, so I’ve set my blog to hold all comments for moderation unless you have a previously approved comment (I don’t get a lot anyways). So if your comment doesn’t show up right away, don’t worry! I usually see it pretty quickly (:

I’ll be posting the finished product sometime after AN and before I leave for Europe! I’ve decided to kill my eyes with this picture and use colours I never use, because I’ve always wanted to try it out after seeing people like Nashya and the eyegasm they create.

Aside from the fact that my eyes are like on fire right now, it was tons of fun, especially since I livestreamed half of the process and got to chill with a bunch of super cool people. I feel like livestreaming may have hindered the way this came out (the curtain was supposed to be half transparent, but I didn’t do too well in the first try, and I didn’t redraw it since I was streaming and I was slow enough ):…) but it looks fine enough to me regardless, not to mention I got a lot of useful input from everyone during the final bits. I think trying out all these things in the past year is making me confused about which style I want to stick with though, LOL.

in other news, oh my fucking god it’s SO HOT. I remember last year at AN it was FREEZING. COME ON GIVE ME A BREAK it’s only may ):

Also a new layout that I was whipping up (which won’t be done anytime soon LOL)

I decided in the end to keep the upside down madness that I’ve had going since version 1. I’m not crazy about the fonts idea for the menu and I still have no idea what the bottom half is going to be like, but other than that I think it’s ok! better than the other 2 or 3 ideas I came up with and ditched over the years LOL

and we have a cherry tree and an apple tree in our backyard and they recently bloomed, so my grandmother cut a twig and put it in a vase at home and I decided to take a random pic of it since it was sooooo pretty

posting it here because I’m not posting this on DA until I have volume one printed and ready for sale! for obvious reasons.

but MAN I’ve spent AGES on this image for some reason. I was originally fond of the sketch, then during rough colouring and detailing a lot of anatomy errors began to bother me. And as I was getting through all of that, I kept wishing that I had designed more appealing clothing, even though simple designs are good for comic purposes and Veloce does have some bad memories about fancy clothing.

I was looking through a lot of comic/manga covers for layout and content reference, and I liked the cover designs for the japanese version of Bleach a lot. I don’t understand why they had to ruin it when they translated it into english. The cover art are not amazingly detailed and extravagant, but as a series I just love the congruence between each cover.