One of those days

I had such big plans for this weekend at home. I was going to write some cover letters and spend hours doing fun arty stuff. Alas, it wasn't to be. Art is no fun when it's hot and your body has also decided that it's time for a monthly dose of emo. It's days like these that I bum around downstairs on the Wii or reading. This time stubborn Helyn decided to fight the forces of evil and finish some dolls. It wasn't fun. Stupid hormones...

The good news is that my casual job has pretty much ended so I should have some more time for arting fun. The bad news is that my casual job has pretty much ended and I need to find a Real Job. Monthly dose of emo is not helping. Very hard to write a cover letter when there's a voice in your head telling you that your cover letter is terrible and there are heaps of people out there that are better than you so you might as well give up before you've even started. And your art sucks. Go play computer games, that's something you're capable of. Oh wait, you just died. Sucks to be you...

*Sigh*

Beach conference/holiday

Kookaburra!

After almost four years, I'm now officially a doctor. Woohoo!
Now to find a job...

A few days after I submitted my thesis, my friend and I headed to the Great Ocean Road for a conference. We left a few days early in order to hit the beach. Except it was cold. And wet. We did check out the cafes, admire the birds and dogs, walk along the beach, and check out a waterfall. But mainly we hid out in our cheap cabin.

The weather turned good just as the conference started. Both of us felt out of place. It's not so bad attending talks that aren't your field, provided the speaker is good. If not, you end up spending the time playing with your phone, falling asleep, or (in my case) drawing people who are falling asleep. So my friend and I attended the morning talks and then spent the afternoon on the beach (we didn't actually pay for our registration, otherwise we'd feel too guilty). The water was amazing. It actually turned out to be a nice cheap holiday.

It's dangerous to sit in front of me during a lecture. I will draw you.

Almost over

It seems like I blinked and suddenly January was at an end. Where did the month go?
I was completely unprepared for the end of my thesis. The final analysis that the examiner wanted (I think, he was somewhat vague about it) that I spent Christmas trying to figure out and then took me a month to run was finally done (and told me nothing but never mind that...). My supervisor stopped sending me feedback for my drafts. The chair of examiners sent his approval for my changes (he didn't actually read my thesis, just the letter I wrote in response to the examiner comments). Shit, it's actually ready...when did that happen?

I spent the last day reading my thesis. I don't think I've ever read the whole thing before. I don't think I ever what to read it again. There are certainly bits in there that I am rather proud of but there are also lots of bits that sound rather lame. As for the project...bleh...
Lucky I did read it, there were a few mistakes and a lot of missing references.

Base by Lithriel

Now I'm at my parent's place, assembling the digital copy and getting everything ready for printing. We have a market tomorrow so I'm going to start printing on Monday. Then it's off to get it bound. If it goes well then I shall have the hard and digital copies submitted before I head off to a local conference on Friday. Then back to mum's to help out with another market.

Lucky I managed to finish my fairy doll before I freaked out over submission. It's for the new fairy pageant. Although I was super-pumped after Christmas to do lots of art, there's been a plenty of hot days and I haven't been doing anything. And now I have to wait a few weeks before I can finish off stuff that I started months ago.

Redraw

After taking a hiatus to work on my thesis, I've gotten back into doing some art. I still have two more chapters to finish editing (plus performing analyses that won't actually be finished in time so it looks like I'm going to have to try plan B) but I need to do something before I explode.

I've decided to revamp an old picture of mine. The original was done in 2005, before I had a tablet and PS elements. I remember being quite proud of it at the time. I redrew it in November when I was dog-sitting. I know that I'm still a long way off from being really good but I can't help being really pleased by how far I've come.

I have just spent 3 hours working on the hair. It seems that whenever I have trouble, it is usually when I come to shading the hair. I'm not so bad with dolls, though I often have to retry the shading. I just can't get the hang of digital paintings, they're just too bloody big. Another thing that I've been discovering is that I'm better at shading darker hair. So after two failed attempts at shading, I decided to go brunette. And still failed.

Finally I got my act together and managed to get it to work. It doesn't look great at the size that I want so I will have to resize the final version.

The issue with going brunette is that the thickened outer lines are no longer noticeable. Should I thicken them some more? The thick lines was one of the key features of the original picture.

And of course now I'm not happy with the skin shading. It doesn't look as good with the darker hair. I'm glad I hadn't started shading in the nose yet.

Maybe I should have left this until after the thesis is finished...

House-sitting sketches

New Year!

Just got back home. The weather has turned hot and I got bad hayfever from checking out my mum's new alpacas this morning so I am feeling very drowsy and lazy.

Here's the sketching I did over the past three days while house-sitting. I had Will Supervillains Be on the Final? on the table next to me so I flipped through it and drew a few characters. Legs are overrated.

I did take a photo of my legs but the knees looked so strange and intimidating that I told myself that I would try drawing Leah's legs later.

I would like to be able to draw more than legless females so I also tried making a windmill. But I failed. Apparently backgrounds require skill and patience. Who knew?