Art Dump

I've been such a stress monkey at uni.
I am one of two PhD students submitting this year and both of us are panicking and going insane in the lab. But she has an RA to help her. It is so hard for the three of us to coordinate use of the machines and I can't help but resent them slightly (it's the stress thinking. I really love these guys). Plus my friend accidentally stole my reagents (to be fair, I had not yet put them in my reagent box) and there is a current shortage. Thankfully, our supervisor has had a word with our sales rep and our monthly deliveries will be increased. Still, I'm constantly fluctuating between thinking I can get everything done in time (I've set my lab work deadline to end of April) and thinking that not even weekends will save me.
To say nothing of trying to organise a trip to the US when no one seems to be responding to their emails...

So in this stressful time I am trying hard to force myself to do art. It's hard to get started and maintain it but even the little that I'm doing is helping to calm me.

Was meant to be full-bodied but the way I rested my camera meant that I had to kneel. I couldn't be bothered trying to take reference pictures. This is one of the very few things that I don't like about living alone. Still, I wasn't even sure that I would be able to draw the hands so I'm quite excited that I succeeded. I plan to start working on the digital art this weekend.

I have a lot of great stock photos saved to my computer but haven't really gotten around to using them. So I decided to scroll through them and pick the first one that gave me an idea. This photo seemed ideal for Presea and her large axe. It looks like an older version of the character, which I quite like, but it's a little disturbing that she's wearing her original clothes...

I liked my sketch so much that I thought it would make a cool base. And I actually did a decent job of it. Now I'm working on a sci-fi-esque doll and I'm not sure about it. Maybe it's the bare arms? I guess it will look ok once I start to shade it (tool-shaded).

I've had this on my to-do list for several months and only got around to starting it this week. I'm not sure whether I originally planned to pixel- or tool-shade but in the end I went with pixel-shade without any regard to colour count. So far I've only shaded part of the face but I think it;s working well with the base style so far. Plus it's proving to be lots of fun ^_^
Base by Meririm