Woohoo!

The government just gave me $700. (My mom got a grand. What's up with that?)



Oh yeah, so I'm trying to make a solid effort at recovery and self-improvement. I actually decided to go for a run earlier today. Figured I'd start off slow, so I mapped out a roughly 2km route, and work my way up.

That run utterly fucking destroyed me. I don't think I ran more than 300m before my legs started to feel the burn, and hit maybe 1.5k before my legs refused to push any further (not to mention my lungs!). Walked the rest of the way back, punctuating the walk with little pathetic spurts of jogging. But hey, gotta (re)start somewhere, right? :p

Photos 'n' stuff

As promised, a few photos from Rome and Matt's visit (hover for description, click for larger):

Trying not to get shot

Well, it's been a vaguely busy week. Rome and Matt arrived on Sunday, at the ungodly hour of 6.35am, after which we proceeded to spend the next three days doing the touristy stuff that I hadn't gotten around to doing since I'd been back. I'll have pictures up sometime tomorrow, once I've sorted through them. But yeah, fun times. :) Managed to not get shot while attempting to visit the Istana, a historical and colonial building that houses our President. Apparently it's only open to visitors a couple days a year on certain public holidays, or so we were told by the 5-0 on gate duty. He, along with the two other cops backing him up (and approaching us very warily), seemed infinitely relieved that our only purpose in approaching the gate was to ask if we could visit, or at least take pictures from the exterior.

Tonight, on a whim (and somewhat inspired by the thread on conceptart.org with pictures of everyone's work area), I decided to finally get off my ass and, well, reorganize my room. See, before I moved back in, my folks were using my current bedroom as a storeroom. It still shows evidence of that, but it's looking a sight better than just a couple hours ago. Moved my bed, moved a bunch of stuff, tossed a shitload of stuff, and still have a bunch of stored stuff I'm hoping to be able to move out of the room. Anyways, I've gone from this trainwreck (note the piles of junk on my work desk, the two large suitcases beside that, and the completely inaccessible desk to the right) to this:






After moving my bed, I found enough room to setup a makeshift drafting table (hard to tell, but it's at a 30-ish degree tilt), though I'm going to have to jerry-rig some kind of narrow shelf at the lower edge.

Also, In the process of moving shit around, I found my mom's old stash of acrylics. I had an artbin full of bloody acrylics sitting right next to me all these months!



Now I just need to see about getting new curtains. That blue and jaundice set on my windows ain't cuttin' it right now. :p

Whoops, just realized that the bedside table is blocking access to the pullout spare bed. Frack.

Metal Gear Awesome

Okay, so this is relatively old news, but I hadn't been sold until today. Now, I'd heard about the MGS digital PSP comic sometime back, and I thought it was pretty awesome that Ashley Wood was doing the art for it. That said, I pretty much wrote it off as a gimmicky thing, an ebook-style comic. Then today I saw a trailer for it.

This is pretty fucking compelling stuff. They've actually managed what looks to be a successful marriage of media and styles, and I'm chuffed as shit to see the end product. I'll just have to convince one of my friends to buy it, since I still don't (nor likely plan to) own a PSP. :)

And of course, the title of this entry simply begs the pimping of Metal Gear Awesome. It's oldish, but pretty fucking hilarious.

Bill should be rolling in his grave right about now

Desole, Monsieur Bouguereau. Tres desole.



The original if you're curious. I botched the proportions big time, but that's what I get for not dropping down some guidelines before jumping in for an hour and a half of painting fun. Pure black and white is tough! Anyways, I have no idea why I had Sin City on my mind when I did this.

Caravaggio update

I need to quit slacking. Didn't really manage to put in as much time as I should hav drawing or painting this weekend. Anyways, started tightening up the Caravaggio copy. The drapery fucking destroyed me. Some stuff is off, like David's gaze and right shoulder, but I don't think I have the heart to repaint those. Hands and sword still need to be done, though, and Goliath still needs tightening up.

This is getting out of hand

The Case of Pete Panse

PETE PANSE is a talented and popular high school art teacher in Middletown, NY who uses traditional techniques to to train his students. In December 2005 Mr. Panse was suspended from his job for recommending that some of his advanced students consider taking figure drawing courses that included nude figure drawings. Mr. Panse is suspended from his job pending hearings after which he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career. In the meantime, his students are sitting in study hall learning nothing and failing to prepare the materials necessary for their receiving scholarships.

I'm not normally one for this sort of thing, but I've signed the petition asking for him to be immediately reinstated. This case, reading through the article once, twice, thrice, I'm still fucking speechless.

Mr. Panse was charged with making “comments that students could construe as being of a sexual or personal nature...or using [his] position as a teacher to put students into any situation reasonably likely to make them feel uncomfortable because of the injection of sexuality into...the substance of [his] comments”.

Because, of course, kids are certainly never exposed to such filth on the boob tube. Because studying the nude figure is surely a measure of abject sexuality. You pricks.

The petition to reinstate him, for anyone interested. The more the merrier.

Caravaggio

Decided to start up that Caravaggio copy.

Initial sketch plus value dump, 15 minutes

Another half an hour in. I dipped David's left arm too much. Will have to fix that for the next round. I should also probably be calling this another value study, rather than a master copy.

Previous update

Update 11 March:
Nursing a cracking headache, so not much progress. Switching modes between this and focusing on math class was not a good idea. :p

March 11 update

And another update:
Spent another hour, I think, spread out over a few 10-15 minute spurts. All that drapery can make baby Jesus cry. Randomly, I noticed that Goliath looks rather like Zod. :p

Arr, mateys!

Thar be pirats aship!



Another page of randomness owing to the inability to sleep at normal human hours:



And spent a little time doing touchup on the SP:



edit:
Still can't sleep. Did a quick value study, 'bout 20-30 minutes or thereabouts:

Awesome + eyes

The Song Tapper

For people like myself who can take the memory of a melody to the grave without knowing the title or artist. It actually works pretty well, too (it managed to recognize Super Mario :D).

Now some eye studies. Ariel Sharon (top right) has no eyebrows. Never actually noticed that before. And they say you never learn anything useful in art. :D

We love you Natalie!

N: Ey yo dudes, you know I'm talkin' to you!
D: We love you Natalie!
N: I wanna...you too!

Natalie Portman raps on SNL

This had me cracking up. Scary thing is, she ain't half bad. :D

Noses and an eye

Some studies, from random photos on google. Decided to go with hatching, since it's been some time since I've done any of that. Starting on a mid-value background proved interesting, though. When I used to hatch, it was always on white paper, so starting on grey made it a little tougher to decide where to hatch. Anyways, I like the first two noses, not so happy with the next two. Rather happy with the eye, though.

Plasma Pong = Awesome

Plasma Pong

This is just awesome stuff. The included fluid editor thing is addictive in and of itself, nevermind the game. :) By level 30, the plasma is doing all kinds of crazy things with the ball. :D

And another one

It seems evident to me that faces and hands (especially of the female variety) terrify me. Might be worth doing a bunch of studies of the two.



I realized as I posted that I made her legs way short. o_O

Another value study

Stupidly enough, I re-enabled the power-save feature on my display driver today, even though I knew there had to have been a reason I disabled it in the first place. Basically I get an apparent boost in contrast due to the display showing fewer shades while on battery. So after I got back on AC and uploaded the pic, I realized my values were kinda meh. Oh well, live and learn. Anyways, sketch (10 mins) and value study (another 20-30 mins):

Backkom

Lordy, these are bloody brilliant. The second half of "I Love Sky" literally had me in stitches. Great camerawork, models, animation, and rendering, and above all, fantastic comic timing. The sound effects and "voices" don't hurt either.

Meh.

Agh. Much visual brainstorming has netted me zero solid inspiration for the current CGTalk Challenge. None. Zip. Nada. -_-

Did a quick SP for warmup.

Original line sketch
10-ish minutes? Sketchbook Pro.

update: Spent about 20-30 minutes doing a value study.

Rebecca wasn't letting me off the hook

Erilaz seems to think I look like Daniel Radcliffe. Listen, I know I look young, but this is ridiculous. :p

update2: Right, pushed the values more.