Suddenly it appears summer has arrived, and I can cut through the air with a knife it’s so thick. Which makes it rather difficult to breathe/function. I’ve been stealing away to the basement and doing any work I can there instead, because it’s not horribly warm there. Of course, the next house may not have a livable basement, so I suppose I’ll have to buy an air conditioner then. Or at least a giant fan.

My head has been hurting lately, and I’m not entirely sure why. I thought it was a lack of sleep (it still may be) but it seems to not be going away. I really don’t feel like going to the doctor about it, because then I’ll have to get all sorts of head scans and whatnot, which is not my favorite thing to do. I suppose if it continues I’ll have no choice. It’s really becoming too much of an aggravation. Maybe I should go take a nap.

I wish I had a hammock.

Somehow I totally missed Fred’s birthday, which was yesterday. Oops. Guess I better buy him an extra cake. The good news is he probably wouldn’t even notice what day it was so I could tell him today is the 25th.

Happy Birthday, Fred! Today, on the 25th! Which it is today!

It was a pretty tense five set match, but Andy Roddick is into the next round of the French Open. I don’t fully expect him to win it, because clay isn’t really his game, but you never know, and every extra match means one step closer! He’s one of my favorite players now that he improved so much, and I really would like to see him win a slam again. Just one more, now that he’s so much better. We’ll see…

I started playing tennis with a new friend of mine from church, and he used to play in high school. So he’s much better than I am, but it’s amazingly fun because it pushes me to play a lot better. And it’s rather amusing, because a lot of his style of play is exactly like mine but just improved. So now I can pretty much experience exactly what it’s like for my other friends to play against me. At first it was maddening; so many slices and drop shots! But after a while I started to really enjoy getting those shots thrown at me, because it puts the ball in an awesome place to hit topspin. I just have to GO for the topspin, which is a bit unnerving since I’m not great at it. Time to get better!

School, that is. Because every week I go in thinking I’ve gotten better only to be smacked down because I haven’t. At least, not better ENOUGH.

Sigh.

Today’s daily drawing is hands down the most dynamic image I’ve ever drawn of Fred the Monkey. It has personality and feeling like few other Fred images have in the past. This is because I didn’t try to make him look “exactly like Fred” but instead just let the pencil do what it wanted and then put my name at the bottom. However, now that I’ve done it I’d REALLY like to use this as the future Fred model. I like the thicker legs and sense of weight that he has. Instead of being a makeshift torso with legs stuck on the bottom like in the cartoons.

What do you think? Leave a comment below if you’ve got any opinions on him!

Also, last night I rode around in a limo with family members because a cousin of mine went to her prom and after being dropped off we took the limo for a joyride. She wasn’t using it at the time, and it was paid for, so why not? Anyway, my aunt dragged along some black markers and a giant pad of paper for me to do caricatures. Because she’s obsessed with the fact that I do them now. I really wasn’t in the mood to, but I agreed, so when we stopped for ice cream I drew the people who went with us.

Well, as I was doing my last one a group of people surrounded us. Nothing like the pressure of an audience, right? Actually I found it wasn’t nerve racking at all, and actually kind of pleasant. When I was finished, my aunt came over and asked me if I would be willing to draw someone else. Apparently a couple there wanted one done and talked to her about it (since she was telling everyone around me my whole life story- sigh…). I said no, but the guy seemed like he REALLY wanted one, and it was too difficult for me to ignore his disappointed look, so I dragged over the milk carton I was sitting on (not proper caricature seating, trust me) and did my first ever two-person on one page caricature. It was also about the 10th one total I’ve EVER DONE. And for a stranger. Two strangers.

Interestingly, though, it was hands down the greatest caricature I’ve yet done, and I had such an unbelievably fun time doing it that I didn’t want to finish it. When I did finish it, I seriously did not want to give it to them. I wanted to hang it on my wall. It was too “portrait-ey” really, but I loved it anyway. It made the others I did that night look terrible (sorry, family members). So my first caricature of people I’ve never met and will never meet again was completed, and now I completely see why people do this for a living. It was so much freaking fun, and their faces when I gave them the picture were priceless. Awesome stuff. Will do it again.

Though at some point I better start charging money, because pads of paper this size are expensive.

Have a great weekend, everybody!
(EDIT: Also a new picture up at DA.)

I like Illustrations. I enjoy doing art for the sake of nice things to look at, especially simplified and cartoony. One thing school has taught me this second time around is that I really do enjoy the heck out of doing this sort of thing. So I decided that I’d do some of that art I love so much, even if it doesn’t make some monumental difference to the world. You never know what might come of it, so I might as well give it a shot.

Since FtM really doesn’t have an “art” section for non-comics or fanart (and I didn’t really have any desire to add one) I decided to sign myself up over at DeviantArt.com and put my fun drawings up there. It’s a cool place that I’ve been going to for a while to see what other artists are up to, and I enjoy it a lot. So I’m going to allow myself this new-old hobby because I think it will help fuel me in those times when I have a lot of work to do. After all, all work and no play makes JKR a dull boy. These artworks are me “playing.” I love them to pieces.

Today’s Daily Drawing can be found there instead of here. Don’t worry, I’ll still post normal Daily Drawings here, but that one is more complete, so it goes there. If you’ve got a DeviantArt account, leave me a comment there and I’ll be sure to click over to see what you’ve put up for the world to see. That’s the whole point of that place!

Sounds like an interesting character, but it’s in reference to me and my new-found onslaught of sneezing. I’m not sick or anything, but apparently there’s been something in the air for the past week or two that has caused me to probably sneeze more in 14 days than the rest of my life combined. Maybe not quite that bad, but it’s getting close. Previous to this I think I probably only sneezed a few times a year. What a WEIRD blog topic. Sparked by me just sneezing and realizing this has been happening a lot lately. Allergies? I really don’t feel sick or anything. Wacky.

I signed myself up for summer classes the other day, and it looks like I’ll still be doing the school thing for a bit longer. Sadly they aren’t offering a bunch of the courses I need in the summer, so while I thought I might be able to squeeze the rest in before September rolled around, that doesn’t appear to to be the case. The good news is that because I won’t be able to take the classes I wanted, I should have a little more time. Well, I should if this moving thing goes at all well. Otherwise it will be taken up by moving. But if it isn’t, I think I can manage to get some other stuff done.

Sometimes I want to do another relaunch and fix all the stuff that’s wrong and needs changed. But wouldn’t I just be falling into the same old trap of being re-inspired, and then things falling off again? I dunno, maybe I’m doomed to repeat that cycle again and again, and maybe it isn’t even really “doomed.” Maybe it’s just how it should work or something. Constant evolution to regain confidence and motivation. Darn it, I just don’t know. It’s like I have a lot to think about and I don’t want to think about any of it because it’s so much. I should probably start by working on that.

Maybe starring at all these monkeys is making me the way I am. Lousy monkeys…

I went back to school so I could better my animation, and now I have no idea what I should be doing. Animation takes forever. Real animation, I mean. Not Flash stuff. So yeah, I’m really confused about what to do now. How am I supposed to make this transition when people are generally used to updates more often? Obviously the updates are far and few between right now, but I’d hate for that to continue once I’m done with this school thing. I don’t know. I just don’t know. Lots to think about.

Well, here’s today’s Daily Drawing anyway. Nice and simple, unlike everything else.

Somehow, without me noticing, I stumbled into a tremendous amount of work! I’m not sure where it came from, only that it is here now, looming over me like a snowy peak. Reminds me of the old days (you know, several months ago) when I had Fred updates always around the next corner. Except now it’s random other things. Firstly, there’s a student show coming along at my school, and I’ve decided to enter. The winner gets something. I don’t know what. A few hundred dollars maybe? I don’t care, I’m doing it to try and get a piece into the show. You have to submit work for judging to get INTO the show, which will then be judged. However with a June deadline coming up fast, I need to get moving. HOWEVER I have an insane amount of homework from my Character class. And I really need to do that first and foremost, because if I “win” (aka pass) that competition, then I get… um… not failing the class. Which is important.

Also I have a new freelance project, maybe, if the person gets back to me on approving the budget. It would be pretty nice to get the job, because then I could use the bit of extra money for school. I underestimated just how expensive this school thing is. Expensive.

PLUS, because all that isn’t enough, I have another project that starts this week. Truthfully I started it months ago, but the person in charge wasn’t ready. So now hopefully he will be. And we’ll start it. Months late, but still! And I’ll talk more about that when I can, but at the moment it’s a hush-hush sort of thing that I can’t spill any beans about.

Oh and moving. Yeah… Still working on that.

So long story short, I have to go do some stuff now. Bye.

PS.

Wow, I’m surprised it came along so quickly. If I was on a regular schedule I’d be flipping out about having no update for today. Of course, with school I merely have another hundred and eighty drawings to do, so that’s much better*.
*That would be sarcasm.
Yesterday, Beedle wrote: “Isn’t the point of a caricature to take the most unusual features of a persons face and exaggerate them to the extreme?

I’m sorry, but it looks like you just made a badly drawn portrait.”

Quite so, old chum. Spot on. Which is why I learned so much from the first. I wasn’t exaggerating or pushing anything. I was timid and scared. Ah, but what changes in one drawing:

That’s a little more like it! Of course, you can look at it two ways. One being that it’s still pretty awful, but the other that it’s lightyears better than the first one. I choose to look at the positive side. I’ll keep practicing, but at least I’m on my way.

And now for further depressed primates, and then I’m going back to work on my 225 animals. I learned a very interesting bit of information yesterday. If I draw a simplified version of an animal’s skeleton, it makes understanding their bodies a lot easier. Darn kangaroos are flippin’ complicated on the inside!

Awwwwwwww! Poor little monkey! *tear*