Still here!

With all the chaos and hectic-ness that has become my average day lately, I've forgotten about this blog and neglected it along with all the other places I visit. O.o

What's new?
I'm glad to say I'm close to finishing the last of five dragons I was commissioned to illustrate for a collectible card game in the making. I'm very excited! After that, I will begin and finish the five commissions from deviantART. Looking forward to painting something different from dragons. o_O

School is too much of a mess for me to even find where to begin. I'm just going to say that I have five weeks left and I'm counting every. Single. Day.

Lastly, I've got my first issue of ImagineFX magazine and it's absolutely inspiring. :D I did one of the workshops and thought I'd share that bit:




Well, that's it from me, for now. I'll try and update this soon. ^_^

Getting there....

I think I'm almost done. At least, I know I'm done with the background/foreground. o_O

Slow going as ever...

Driving me crazy.
All of this (except the obvious one) is zoomed in at 100%. See how far from finished this is?? x__x

Resolutions

One of my resolutions this year is to finish reading my ever-expanding (if slowly sometimes) library of fiction novels. I started with 35 books to read this year. Now I'm down to 33. I've finished Plea of Apollisian from the Abyss Walker series by Shane Moore, followed by Brisingr by Christopher Paolini.

A little summary on my thoughts (or should I say critics?) of the books.

Plea of Apollisian was a good book, with good characters and an interesting story. It's simple and an easy read (although the battle scenes are, in my opinion, slow moving due to over-description.) The only thing I didn't like was how I felt little to no attachment to the characters that died. I kind of liked Victor, but I didn't know him enough to mourn him. I just winced when he died (he was killed rather painfully, if I do recall.) Overall, a good story and I look forward to reading the next volume (AFTER reading all these others books.)

Brisingr was very, very good. I'd like to start with saying I have a love/hate relationship with it. It's a fat book, no lie. It's seven hundred plus pages that, really, could probably be condensed and not lose its flare. However, that's me being nit-picky. Every scene - necessary or not - was written beautifully. Paolini has grown as a writer. There was no scene I disliked - order and if they could've been cut is debatable, but I didn't hate the book as I plowed through the description. The biggest disappointment, really, was probably the lack of feeling a climb toward a climatic point.

Let me reword that; not lack, just not noticeable. I didn't feel any tension until the last one hundred pages. I did cry for Oromis. It was very hard to hold it in since I was at work; but by the time I got to my car, I just sat there, stared with tears in my eyes. Paolini really wrote well. The build up might not have been as good as it could've been, but it still hit hard when everything played out. I loved it. So, in the end, I still recommend this book, tenfold.

Looking forward for the next installment.

I do, however, want to note one thing.

Since when did Eragon learn what a gazelle was or seen one? I mean, I understand how the "like a gazelle" simile works in conveyance, but it threw me off a bit since I haven't heard of any gazelles living in Alagaesia. 8D I'm being picky again, ignore me! Still love the book :D

-Yukimi

ffsdkfhs

Keyboard smash for the win.

A little news:

I'm obviously not uploading sketches for a bit. I gotta go to work soon, so no time to scan everything. In retrospect, I haven't done much sketching in general. I'll upload what little studies I have done here soon (if I can remember, it'll be tonight. If not, tomorrow morning.)

I have, however, been reading at every break I get at work, I read when waiting to clock in or waiting for the car to thaw out so I can drive home. In all this "in between time" reading, I've nearly finished Stephen King's On Writing. What do I have to say for it?

The best. Book. On writing. Ever.

Ever.

Besides that book, I'm almost done with The Outstretched Shadow, Brisingr, and The Plea of Apollisian, respectively. The first book I started reading in 2005. Yes. Five years. And even though the story is good, the characters likable, it fails to keep me "gripped to the end." And I know why. It's too damned descriptive. Stephen King put it best. "When there's too much description, you know the writer got too fascinated with his power of vision." Or something like that. Basically, these writers are good, but it's hard to read through all the description, inner dialogue (that could be condensed without losing the story), that the book feels like it's draaaagging. Even during the battle scenes.

As for Brisingr, I've been working my way through that book for a year and a half now. I'm not proud, as an Inheritance fan since I was 14, I'm ashamed it's taken me so long. The only reason I have for not finishing it is that, although interesting and well written, the pacing is so long that I don't feel like there's any tension build up. I'm less than 150 pages from finishing it. Why don't I make the last jump in a few hours? Because I'm disinclined. I feel that if there was a climax, I should be feeling the tension climbing up and making me WANT to keep reading.

But I don't.

I got a spoiler recently and so I know something big DOES happen. But I totally have no indication that anything different is gonna happen. :XD:

Good book, just not keeping my interest. D:

The last one has been pretty good, but I think it's just not paced the way I like it. I think the reason I don't feel more inclined to read it is a biased one; it's not too descriptive nor under descriptive and the characters and story are sound. I don't like the idea of another prophecy child, but I've talked to the author and he's given hints that it's darker than it sounds. Because I do like the characters, I want to finish it, but I guess it's not as gripping to me as The Death Gate Cycle was.

Right now, in the Plea of Apollisian, I'm at a scene where there's a battle with dwarves going on. From previous battles covered, I've learned that these dwarves mean business. Mean, horrible, filthy son of guns. And there's a lot at stake. Yet I closed the book to save it to read later. xD;; Not sure if that's a good sign, or maybe my attention span wavers too much.

All in all, I can't wait to finish these three and On Writing. The next books after those are either the Darksword Trilogy or the Raistlin Chronicles. After those two, I'll hopefully have gotten my hands on the very first trilogy in the Drizzt legacy. I'm excited to read R.A. Salvatore's work. I've never read his stuff, but have heard a lot of praise, so we'll see. :)

So, I have over thirty books to read next year and I have a lot of plans concerning art. School is going great and I'm looking forward to some of the classes. Work has been difficult, but during this break it's easier - at least I have a job! For that I'm endlessly grateful.

I have other plans, but I'll cover them when I've put more thought into 'em. :)

Hopefully the next update will be sketches, not just talking about them. ;P

No images yet.

I'll try to upload more studies here. Just haven't had the time to scan (or work much on them. :()

Kinda got sick in the past couple weeks. Started feeling better by Friday, but Saturday everything went downhill lol. Now I'm feeling better, and I'm just glad I got the next couple days off. This is the last week of the semester, definitely looking forward to finishing and being able to breathe a little easier.

Other than that, I have a lot of new ideas for my books and a lot of inspiration and ideas on improving both writing and drawing. I look forward to sharing them.~

Hope everyone's having a good December so far. :]

Thoughts and speculations

National Novel Writing Month is coming to a close. I'm fairly certain I'll cross the finish line, but once again, it's only with 1/3 of the actual story complete. I'm going to estimate this book to range between 100,000 ~ 150,000 words, before cutting anything out and seriously editing.

I'm thinking that I may have been wrong, that UnWritten may just be a trilogy begging for completion, instead of a stand-alone. We'll see once Part I unravels. It may be a duet-ish, with only two books. We'll see once the editing phase kicks in.

Believe me, I'm SO ready to call my inner-editor to come back from vacation. :B

Besides that, I've decided I'm going to do my best to get a booth at GenCon next year. The details are fuzzy but one thing is for certain, no matter which way I go, I'm going to be working on better-painted pieces.

To start off, I'm illustrating Tal, our mute protagonist from UnWritten, as the first test dummy of sorts, for methods of painting. It's also going to be the first fully-finished and refined painting of a humanoid since...well, I can't remember. Everything before it were dragons. 'The Elder,' 'To Escape,' and 'Dreams' stands before it. Let's see if he can stand among them.

Here's a screenshot of the work in progress. Planning to refine a bit more today. (Left is the rough sketch, right is the progress of refining it. Duh, but really...)


*Edit**
And here's an update for today~