damn, school's about to start and all of a sudden I've got virtually no time to draw.

thankfully it's not just because I've lost all will to move, but because I've been meeting with old friends, going to concerts, attending birthdays, dancing, eating, drinking, and in general just being all around merry.

Still not sure if that's a good excuse or not.

OH~!

Also I've been catching up on a few animes I've been meaning to watch.

Now this isn't purely for pleasure.

I have to watch them in order to review them for that far off anime festival thing that I'm guest curating for.

But man.

I feel *rekindled* in my love for the japanese dedication and attention to detail.

I MEAN HOLY SHIT.

The sheer love of detail, movement, lighting and line is breathtaking. Like, not just a gasp of breath, but a punch to the gut, double over on the ground breathtaking.

I wish there was a trick, or a hint, or some sort of technique that I could pick up from these animations and just apply to my own work.

But the only one that is obvious is just spending an absurd amount of time on every single detail, photoreferencing the fuck out anything you want to draw, and more or less making yourself a SLAVE to your work.

...

haha. What an sobering/intoxicating thought.

So yeah.

here's a ten second doodle in lieu of any actual drawings (which I actually have, but do not have access to at the moment. really!)

titled: lol hypocrisy

ugh, sketchup is way harder to manipulate than I had previously believed.

...

no good pics today, come back later.

um.

I'll write stuff then too.

blrlrlr....

lost my comfy stylus.

where? I have no idea.

ugh.

twas my mothers birthday today!

I made her a kitty picture and bought her a big book.

I am a good son.

yaaay.

...

although she wouldn't let me set the kitty picture as her background for some reason.

hm.

...

Saw Zack and Kate briefly today as they traversed up and down the island. To be fair I only got to squeeze them into the time it took to eat some ice cream and walk down from union square to my house, but it was a beautiful day to just walk and talk.

Really, why has it been so nice?

I'm really expecting a blizzard to crash down on us all any moment now. I just feel that we've spent all of our nice days in one lump sum, and the upcoming fall and winter is going to beat us all around the face and neck.

Really, hopefully everyone has charged their solar batteries good and proper, because if a *long* *dark* winter comes don't say I didn't warn you.

But!

Maybe I'll go to the beach tomorrow!

...

(maybe I'll take my tablet to the beach. haha... no, bad idea, bad idea.)

but hey,

school starts soon, and with it...

ENLIGHTENMENT!

Not sure if everyone is going to be a fan of the sketches and coloring I did today, but what I was aiming for was *speed* which I feel I accomplished quite well.

These are really supposed to quick prototype color, light, contrast and balance sketches.

Hopefully I'll get a bit better and cleaner with them, and will be able to crank them out before a big project (or even possibly... a job? someday? maybe?)

Kinda give myself a decent idea of what I'm getting myself into before I go ahead with it. (seriously, canceling an idea a few days into it is kinda frustrating.)

...

I also played monopoly today. You know, I *try* to be someone who other people will want to play with again in the future...

but it's so hard.

By the end of the game it was just me and Alex. Everyone else had long since been wiped off the board.

He had helped them when he could, and apologetically taken their property when he had to.

I had done my best to crush them all and the property I had gotten was ruthlessly pushed forwards.

It was a long final battle.

The forces of Good. Versus... um... evil. I guess.

At times it could have swung either way, and vast fortunes were amassed and lost.

but in the end...

well.

...

let's just say the hobbits weren't jumping on the bed at the end of THIS story.

hohoho.

eh... I was planning on working on head studies today.

I didn't.

*tear*

however I am going to try a new approach to how I start pictures.

Very small black and white thumbnails, focusing on the basic forms and light.

Still pretty shaky on it, but I've found it to be interesting at least.

this should be able to tie into what I was saying earlier about values = colors, and I can keep just zooming in for detail work as i need to.

(also came up with some more brushes. it's uh, relaxing I guess?)
...

Recently I've been thinking about the progress I've made over the last few years when it comes to illustration.

...

I just wrote out a long metaphor here that I then trashed.

essentially what it said was, I've got to diversify.

yes, I know, this is obvious, but I guess I feel like I'm ready now?

anyways, yeah. time to go back to freshman year with some new approaches towards light, color, design, and figure drawing.

yay!

ugh sixteen hour workday.

still have another two hours to go.

well, this has been a long day.

as a way to sooth myself, I just drew whatever the hell I wanted.

blah.

no learning, no under sketching.

as expected it's an incoherent mess.

but, whatever, it's a pretty acurate portrayal of my mind at the moment, so in a way I feel fondly towards it.

*pat pat*

Damn.

I'm pretty sure I had an idea for an awesome blog post.

That was a day or so ago.

Completely lost now.

...

Anyways, spent most of yesterday browsing through conceptart.org.

Man.

So many fantastic illustrators.

So much good advice.

A quick tidbit that I picked up which should have been OBVIOUS but had eluded me until now was the obvious tonal values of colors correlating to the tonal values of grays!

What this means is that if I apply it right I should be able to do a tonal sketch of something using only gray values in order to build up volume quickly and efficiently.

Then, substituting each tonal level for the color at that level, I should be able to let the picture virtually decide what colors get put down and how.

I've tried this before but always gotten strange results, in large part because I largely ignored the inherent values of the colors.

Mind you, I haven't put this to the test yet, but it all seems to work out in my head.

Also made some awesome new brushes by taking black and white images of various cells and crater formations and then changing them into brushes in photoshop.

...

damn.

that awesome blog post is still eluding me.

ah well.

After being at Mayela's party last night, I've come to the conclusion that having a constantly active barbecue going would be absolutely awesome.

and oh so delicious.

...

Something very nice has been happening lately.

Freshman year clouds have come back.

To clarify, huge beautiful clouds that I used to see a huge amount freshman year and then sort of haven't seen since.

Almost went out and spent the day drawing them today, but I kinda got distracted by my brother and various air conditioned activities.

haha...

I feel almost embarrassingly happy recently,

maybe it's just the clouds?

ah lab hours.

long, slightly uncomfortable, and absolutely free.

for some reason I'm always compelled to take a half an hour nap either before or after I go to work.

Back!

Canada was awesome.

Seeing some old old friends and some old friends and some new friends, dancing on a crazy all night dj boat with 700 other people, drinking *delicious* home made beer, eating some great french foods and some great not so french foods, spending inordinate amounts of canadian dollars on alcohol of various kinds, and in general just enjoying the last few days quite a bit.

Hell I even got some reflectin' time in!

And I've come to the conclusion that this summer has probably been my most productive/worthwhile summer so far.

Now that's not to say I haven't had summers before where I've enjoyed myself quite a bit, or summers where I haven't done more "work" (ha).

But I feel like I've gotten actual growth out of this summer in a social, mental, and even technical way.

I don't know why exactly, I guess a variety of reasons, but this time I was motivated to do things the way I felt I wanted to, and for once that wasn't just sleeping in as late as I could get away with.

All I can say is that this next year is going to be *thumbs up*.

also.

My brain is finally making sense to me again.

More than ever before maybe?

Ah well, a few more years and I'll absolutely be able to see if what makes sense now is a real truth and not just a beautiful fake one.

And although the cynic in me might feel that all things will probably fail, it's not like life can't be fuckawesome right?

:D

I'm off to canada tomorrow!

...

I dunno!