Done and bored

Finals are done, the semester is over. Now I'm bored out of my mind. Still no job yet =_=, but I haven't gone all out on my job hunt quite yet so I'm sure when I get my engine running I'll be able to snag something for the summer.

<3 

It's been a few days since I finished my last final, I didn't do well in one class and it ended up tainting my GPA for the term. I'm pretty bummed out by it, but it's too late to beat myself over it now. It feels pretty weird. I thought I would be so preoccupied with playing video games and whatnot but instead these days have been incredibly stagnant. I went to a LAN party with my fellow comrades on Saturday which was pretty awesome, nothing better than having some beer and dro with your best friends while playing some games. I was actually supposed to go to a family friend party that night as well, but I absolutely cannot stand them anymore. I don't really know any of the people my age there so I was already way outside of their social circle. I probably could have made an effort to fit in but the process of doing so would be pretty damn awkward.

The random shit I draw when I'm bored

I've been drawing a good bit on my bamboo. It's typically a lot of random stuff- hands, arms, legs, torsos... I've found that I needed to go back to my foundations and work on them even more. I don't have a lot of variety when I draw people. Usually it's just a guy or a girl standing doing nothing in particular. Not only that but I also unconsciously avoid trying to put more than one character in the same image. Its odd, but I figure that I'm just not comfortable enough to draw out people like I draw faces. 

More Coloring

Progress is slow with coloring. I'm still a big noobie with the software itself, and then with the concept of coloring it's difficult to make everything go together well. I decided to go back to reference drawings and copy over the way they color in and shade their images. It really depends on the lighting in the drawing, I've seen some super advanced toning and shading done to some images and it looks amazing, trying to copy it is  one hell of a job. 

But practice makes perfect. I like singing as well. It took me like 2 years singing alone in my car before I realized that I was starting to recognize different tones and octaves and began to mimic them. I began understanding what sounded right, and what didn't. In fact it was really easy once I realized that I could just copy the exact notes in a song on the radio to know whether or not I was singing the right note. If it sounds like I was singing in the same voice as the artist in the song then I'm doing a good job, if I clearly hear my voice separating itself from the song, then its awful lol. Now I'm pretty confident in my singing ability. It just kind of happened, because I and probably everybody else enjoys singing their favorite songs. So if I keep working on drawing different things I'm not so good at right now, I'll eventually get better at it.

Finals are almost done, and I bought a Bamboo

Just finished the toughest final for this semester. I breezed through my business ethics and advanced statistics courses easily earlier this week. The real final boss was my accounting final. I hate accounting with a passion, of course it is REALLY important to businesses but it's just an awful subject to study. I really don't know how accounting majors deal with having 2 - 3 courses of it per semester. But alas I studied for a week in advanced, took careful notes to review, and finished it like a boss.

I did every single calculation without second guessing myself, so I'm really confident of at least getting a passing grade for that course. On the other hand, there were a few curve balls on the exam I wasn't expecting. The exam consisted of just a handful of chapters we had gone over at the end of the semester, but the professor had included some material from the very beginning of the semester. It was some sort of debt to asset ratio problems so if I divided the right numbers I should be fine... but again you just never know. You can study your heart out and then end up with a mediocre grade.

Wacom's Bamboo

I seriously don't know why I didn't go out to buy this thing sooner, especially during my artsy phase when I was so motivated to draw and practice my craft. The bamboo is basically a tablet that let's me sketch and draw stuff right onto my computer. So I no longer have to constantly scan and upload my sketches. Plus by doing this it opens up a whole new opportunity to actually add color to my drawings, giving it a finished look. 

Very first sketch with the bamboo

It's pretty difficult at first to try to adapt and adjust to drawing with a tablet. First of all you're no longer looking directly down at your pen or pencil while you draw. It was so awkward to crane my neck up to the computer monitor, my neck actually began to ache a bit too after an hour or so. Also using the pen and maneuvering around the screen is a very tricky endeavor. I spent a good hour just doodling random stuff before settling down to draw out this small picture of this girl. A lot of this is credited to the program I used to sketch in, AutoDesk SketchBook. It did a really good job to simulate how the marks I made would look if I had used a real life medium. So my nice "sketchiness" can be seen even on the image rather the typically dark hard lines you would get if you had used paint. 

Coloring...

My biggest challenge right now is learning how to color... I failed to make myself practice at least painting out random scenery like your typical art student would. It was really embarrassing when I was in my art courses when I had to do some painting with various colors. Coloring and drawing are two huge skillsets. Coloring requires a huge amount of knowledge of how different tones work with each other, and how colors  can be combined in many many different ways to give your image different themes and moods. Like for example you can any image and color in a way to make it either look super realistic or very comically. Plus there's also the technical aspect to this as well since I'm using the software to color in my drawings. Being a complete newbie to both aspects makes coloring a very daunting task... but I'll work on it bit by bit. I was terrible at drawing when I first started but I slowly worked my way up, so it's not an impossible thing to do.

Latest drawing

I'm starting to understand how to use layers... which I believe are one of the core fundamentals to coloring on a computer. I'll have to take a new approach when it comes to doing hair. I tend to include a lot of visible hair strands because I like the look of it but it's not so great when I add color to it. When you look at anime characters they always have their hair filled up with solid colors and only variate when there's a need to show what areas of the hair are affected and not affected by sunlight. That and just learning how to use the software is probably the first step I need to take... 

It's a nice motivator, and it's really fun and fulfilling to draw again after not having done so for so long. I'm also glad my skills haven't decayed too too much haha.