I haven't given up on the art lessons yet 🙁 ARGH! I still feel like I'm stuck at the same level and not getting any better. Meh. Faia Emburemu style is too hard for me 🙁

Well, you can kinda tell who they're supposed to be, right? Right?? Uhhhhhhhhhh 🙁

Chibis are easier. These came out better:

Bodies still look lame though. C'est trop difficile pour moi. Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Yeah, Jasmine's back!!

Just as happy as usual, I see.

I've been trying out this new program of Paint Tool SAI, which is an awesome paint package and I am absolutely totally in love with it. It makes increeeeedibly smooth anti-aliased lines, which you can't get in Paint Shop Pro, and also it's great for paint effects which is utterly brilliant if you are the kind of person who makes lots of mistakes and also can't afford to buy real paints and paper. The problem is it is only a 31 day trial, what I am going to do when it runs out I don't know.

Rabid fangirl is rabid!

I am also feeling quite utterly disillusioned with Paint Shop Pro at the moment. Firstly, if I use the graphics tablet, even on another application, I can no longer use the mouse to paint. I don't know why, nothing happens, although the airbrush tool still works. So I have to exit and reload the application, which takes a while. Also as well, I am sick of it always crashing. Thirdly, you don't get smooth lines like you do in SAI. I still think PSP is awesome for vectors, especially when you need to do precision stuff and might need to resize and tamper with lines a lot, but I hate the way the ends of the vector line are so blocky, you'd think they'd at least have a way to smooth the edges, but you can't have everything I suppose.

It costs £40.

What happened was, my How to Draw Anime book which I ordered last month, seems to have got lost in America somewhere - or something - anyway the upshot is, I can't be bothered waiting for it, and £15 crumbs! So I've cancelled that, ordered it second hand and also ordered Manga for Dummies, which in total together, cost me about 12 quid.

Sooooo, I hope that in 2 weeks or a bit longer I should have my books, and by then I hope to be able to produce some new work and say, What an improvement!

I'm so utterly bored of the chapter on how to draw trees — not just because I was finding it a leeetle bit difficile I dunno how it is, sometimes my mind is just a blanket and I can't seem to get the pencil to do what I want. I drew a squirrel instead:

And also!!! I am getting better at profile views!!

Il faisait beau aujourd'hui. It's surprising how much better one feels when the sun is shining. In any case I'm feeling happy enough to start my drawing lessons — as my regular readers (all one of them) will have noticed, there's been a bit of a hiatus in the drawing lessons department. Anyways, I'm having another go. So let's see what wonders I've managed to come up with!

Moar pictures:

Okie, finally got off my butt and attempted the next 4 lessons in my art odyssey. Let's see what we got.

First off, I have some drawing pens now. Mr Linley says you need a 0.1, a 0.5 and a 0.7. I have a set of pens my (retired) artist uncle got for me a couple of years back, but I never had any use for them till today. Unfortunately, the sizes I have are 0.25, 0.35, 0.5 and 0.7. And the 0.5 he already used and the ink is so clogged up and dry in there that no matter how much I washed it (I even tried vinegar!) it just won't unclog; it's totally unusable. So my lines are thicker in places than they ought to be. Anyway, let's see if it's an improvement on the blue ball-point.

Okay, I'm thinking it's about time I learned to draw. I mean, properly draw, not just any old rubbish. Currently, I would say I'm kinda... okay... at drawing. Not dismal, but not anything to write home about either, and besides, my pictures never come out the way I imagine them to in my head. My style is far, far too cartoonish, which is great when Continue reading →