Blogging in the AM aka why am I still awake?!

So I woke up at 4am this morning and could not get back to sleep. I tried for a bit, but if that doesn't work within the first 5 minutes, I end up waking myself up more. By 4:30 when I heard when I heard some suspicious bangs (cars can't backfire more than once in a row can they?) I was wide awake. So here we go. I also typed up some of one of my papers, so it was not all for naught. I'll also let you know what I've been up to in the past few weeks, since school has made me well slack in the blogging.

After much deliberation and compiling of votes, I pretty much decided that I was going to do one of the pictures of Jonny and Ben for my painting class. I talked to the prof, who was actually a substitute that day and she completely changed everything. Instead of doing one of the pictures, she suggested I put two pictures from Spiral Beach together. The one of Airick and Maddy did have the best colour, but I would never have thought of putting Dorian in too. As she said, "Those two are having a little lovefest singing over here, and this guys is just rocking out on his own..."

So I did a preliminary sketch to figure out the placing for the three figures. I separated Maddy and Airick a little, since they were overlapping, and pulled Dorian in. This helped a lot as well with figuring out the colours, since the green/red really needed to be balanced so that it didn't look like a big Christmas party. I changed a couple colours to fit a bit better. Dorians' bass is red instead of orange, and I added a purple light instead of a blue one.

Stage two! This is an underpainting and all the skin tones. I kept the style pretty loosey-goosey to keep with the idea of movement. Also I just like painting like that.

This is the painting at about 90%, before I took it to class. I darkened the background and fixed up the lights a bit, and raised Airicks left shoulder quite a bit. I blended some of the skin tone shadows, especially on Maddy's arm, as they were getting very cartoony.

And now it's done! I might go into it a bit more once I'm done with school to fix up some little things. Dorian's teeth need some help, and no one like that white smoke between Maddy and Airick. Right now I'm glad to have finished that class! Only three more to deal with....

Also finished in that hiatus is Alexis's socks! They were indeed finished in a week. The toes were seamed up at The Local out in Roncesvales, while watching New Country Rehab play. These Socks that Rock really rocked!


I went in the Friday afternoon and gifted them to Alexis who professed them a success. I'm thinking I will write up a pattern soon. I wonder if she'll part with them long enough to have proper shots taken?


Speaking of proper shots, I got a camera! It's a Nikon D40 and it is currently en route to California. No, you didn't read wrong and no, that's not a mistake. I didn't want to get screwed on customs and shipping, so it's being shipped to my dad's office there. One of the admin ladies is responsible for holding onto all our internet shopping, so this will come as no surprise for her. Unfortunately this means that I won't get it until my dad's next trip, which will be the first week of June. But that's probably a good thing, since I have loads of work that needs doing right now for school anyway. Not to mention that the savings totally make the wait worth it! I'm excited! Now back to essays. Or sleep. Whichever comes first.