Long Post, Updates and a Personal Challenge

Hey everyone! It's been a little bit since I've updated, I've both been busy with schoolwork and a couple projects I had short deadlines on. I had a couple things I wanted to get done for Valentine's Day.

First was a miniature I painted. My finance likes angels so I decided to paint an angel for her. Her favorite color is also pink so I made it have shades of pink in it, but not be overwhelmed with pink. I don't have a great picture of it so I will post that when I do.

The second is a cross stitch. We both love scott pilgrim and I happened to stumbleupon a couple different patterns like this one, though those I saw were mostly done in perler beads. I looked through those and created a pattern, added in the hearts and worked through some shading myself. The problem I encountered is that the colors shown on the program I use do not mimic the real colors they are, so I had to unstitch quite a bit after realizing the #s I had picked looked terrible in real life.

I got quite a bit of it done, and it'll mostly be done in the next week or two.

FYI: She has received both and loved them. If you wondered. :)

I have not had a chance to get a whole lot done on the Mario cross stitch, but I managed to get a little bit done. I am currently just finishing out the black boxes across the bottom and so I can just do the rest of the Marios after that.

I also have something new I am doing. I got a book for Valentine's Day called Fantasy Genesis. It is sort of a game for the imagination. It has charts and with a series of dice rolls you generate a list of words, afterwards you look at them and pick out a few words as Major words and a few as Minor words and come up with an idea and draw it. It also has tips and techniques to help you out. You don't have to use all the words, only a couple of them. It looked really fun when I saw it and got it for a gift. I did one last night and it was really fun.

So I decided I'm going to challenge myself and my imagination. For the Next 30 days (Sunday counting as day 1) I am going to roll out a list and the next day post up what I came up with for that list. I am also trying to limit my time. After I decide what words I am going to use I am going to give myself about 10-15 min to find references if I need, and then only giving myself a few hours to sketch/finish/color. I just don't want to end up spending days on a piece because I tend to be a perfectionist and I want to work on letting things be done. I plan on posting each night, with the words I rolled, my initial thoughts and then how I used the words and post up my drawing.

Here is what I got Sunday night for my list.
(AN - Anima, VG - Veggie, EM - Elemental, TC - Technology)
AN: Squid/Mudskipper
VG: Seaweed
EM: Brick/Cobblestone
TC: Bulb/Lamp

AN: Pig/Boar
VG: Flower - domestic
EM: Ember/Hot Coal
TC: Reactor Core

With these words my first thought was to use squid/mudskipper and seaweed to come up with a creature of the sea and then my mind was trying to use other words as well, but decided to start with just a few. I looked up what a mudskipper was because I couldn't think of what that actually was, and found I didn't want to use that as a reference, so I found a couple squid images and started sketching. I decided that it's limbs were very thin and ribbon like that almost looked more like seaweed. Then when I started coloring the brick/cobblestone words popped out to me and I decided to use shades of brick red to color it. I thought it came out rather well. I decided to name it a Sqweed. Turned out really well I think, and I had a blast doing it too.

Sunday night I rolled out my Day 2 list. I came up with:

AN: Mouse/Rabbit
VG: Mushroom
EM: Fog/Vapor
TC: Spring/Coil

AN: Ram/Bull/Buck
VG: Lichen
EM: Slate/Shale
TC: Telephone

Here I decided to go with the Ram/Bull/Buck as my Major word, it just sounded fun. I chose Slate/Shale, Fog/Vapor, and Lichen as minor words to go with. I decided to use an Elk as a reference. My thought process came up with a elk-like creature with stone/slate antlers. For the fog/vapor, I decided that as a defensive mechanism, it could spout fog/vapor cloud from it's antlers. Because of this moisture and the antlers being rocklike they would have lichen growing on them. I also challenged myself here by not drawing it from the side, instead having the head facing more toward the viewer. That was really hard for me, I'm not that great at creatures and perspective. I had some problems with perspective on the antlers as well. I only spent 3-4 hours on this and for that amount I think it turned out well. Took a lot longer to color than day 1 as well, but it was a bigger thing. I decided the name of the species is Shelk (real imaginative right?).

Also, if anyone else is interested in doing this with me, I'd be more than willing to throw up the list the night before and just edit in my drawing the next day.

And if you're still reading, Thank you. I know that was a little drawn out and lengthy, but I get talking about this stuff and well, I can go a little bit. I hope everyone has a fantastic day and thanks for stopping by.

~Ben