Category Archives: Art and Crafts

My Scrapbook

Here are some pages from my scrapbook. Originally, this was going to be a gift for someone. It's a good thing I didn't give it to them in the end, because it probably would have just ended up being given to their boss. Or stolen by a flatmate, because that is how this so-called friend treated not only my gifts, but my actual in fact property that they were only borrowing. I'm not bitter. What makes you think that? Sigh.

Anyway, enough whining. Let's look at the scrapbook!

This card I got solely because I loved the illustration. I'm a total sucker for pictures of the moon. I think it comes down to this book I read when I was about 14. It had a lot of moon imagery in it, and I think it was the first fiction book that made me cry. No, I'm not telling you what it's called.

scrap1-foxes

Close up:

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Micah and Zaid

Micah and Zaid from Rune Factory 3. I love the dynamic between these two. Micah gets all snarky and acts like he's above Zaid's "man's journeys", but you know inside, he's all "HELL YEAH!". Anyway, apart from Zaid's hand looking a little awkward, and Micah's looking a little small, I'm really happy with how well this came out. This was also where I experimented and discovered this painterly style. I used this technique on later pictures, but I think I forgot to note down the settings I used. So I forgot how to do it.

micahzaid

Micah and Zaid belong to Marvelous Entertainment. This is a fanwork only.

Revisiting My Old Sketchbooks 2 — Dreamsong Edition

It's time to take another trip down Memory Lane, as I look back at my old artwork. Some of these pictures date back to 2008. So well done me, it's been 12 years since I started Dreamsong, and I'm still not done.

Here is an old sketch of Apollo. This was meant to be the scene in chapter 4 when Palutena asks if he knows what's going on. I didn't use this, because he just doesn't exude enough sliminess. He's supposed to be way more repulsive!

apollo

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What is This Book? — (Re)Create This Book Pt 3

I haven't really done any work on this for a while. See how easily I get bored of projects? So I thought I may as well post my last entries since it may be a while till I do any more.

So here is "Create Hope". Of course, I thought of Star Wars: A New Hope, so I drew moisture-farmer Luke. This was a really hard one. I'm not good at realistic portraits. I had to use the grid method, but even then, his left-eye was so hard to draw. No matter what I did, it always looked wrong. So I quit before I made it any worse. It didn't help that in the source image, Leia's bun was super-imposed over the left-hand side of Luke's face.

create-hope

I mean to seal this as it's soft pencil and I don't want it smudging, but I can't think of any way to incorporate the fruit rule without cheapening the picture, so I may have to break the rule in this one case.

Next is "Create an Upside Down Drawing". I drew a sloth. I mean to paint this with watercolour, as I've finally dug up my drawing pens, but the Luke picture is on the following page, and I'm so scared I'm going to manage to spill the paint onto it.

create-upsidedown

That's all I have for now.

Revisiting My Old Sketchbooks 1 — Ferys’s Gang Edition

I was having a look through my old notebooks to find my old Dreamsong chapter 6 draft (which I did, by the way, and it was as bad as I thought). And of course, I got a little nostalgic seeing all my old art, and a little put out, actually, as it seems that my skill level has gone quite a bit down since then. But I thought it would be fun to share my trip down memory lane. You also get to see just how much editing goes into the lineart after scanning. Even though I prefer the experience of traditional art, digital art is necessary for me, just to fix the worst mistakes.

Anyway, I'm breaking it into two parts. To start, here are the pictures, and a few character development notes, from my AD&D gang.

Here are the original sketches for the chibis. I feel sad to think I can't even draw at that level anymore.

Raven, and a random Itachi:

raven-itachi

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If At First You Don’t Succeed…

nerdmug

An oldie, but a goodie. I accidentally gave it a width of 404. This was not deliberate, but it makes me happy. I used to code in XHTML and PHP, I dabbled in JavaScript and Pascal for a while too, but I don't have the patience for it these days. This was for a custom mug for the same person, but unlike the mousemat, this wasn't given to the boss, but shoved in storage. I believe the clipart was from openclipart.

Fly Away Home

flying-dandeliongirl

There's a bit of a story behind this. I drew this picture a long time ago for a personalised mousemat for someone I considered a friend. It still kinda sucks, but I put several days into getting this as perfect as I could with my limited skill-set. I even had to copy and paste the background from my Micah and Zaid piece, because in spite of several attempts, whatever I drew sucked so bad. Drawing is hard for me!

Anyway, a year or two ago, I asked if this friend still had it. They said, casually as anything, that they gave it to their boss ages ago. Even though they knew how much time (and money) I put into it. So screw it, it obviously meant nothing to that person, so here it is for everyone to look at.

Lost and Found (Japanese Bilingual Retelling)

lost and found cover

The original outhor and illustrator is Oliver Jeffers. This is a simplified retelling by me, but I don't own this story, and the illustrations are simple remakes of the originals in my style (I do have more pictures, I just haven't painted them yet). This is a fanwork, and no copyright infringement is intended. Please support the original artist/illustrator. Thank you.

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Fimo RoboRed from Commander Keen

The Chipmunk is crazy about Commander Keen, especially RoboRed. PROTIP: the (unofficical) sequel trilogy, "The Universe is Toast!" has been around for some time now: Episode 7, Episode 8, Episode 9 (all download links are on the right-hand sidebar). We're on episode 8 at the moment, and it's up there with the official releases in terms of quality.

Anyway, I decided to make Chipmunk a RoboRed of his own. I toyed with using salt-dough, so I could make a large scale one, or even attempt to make a plushie, but discovering I still have some red Fimo leftover, I went for that. And yes, being about 10 years old now, it did need reconditioning.

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New DIY Mini Dollshouse Project

Ohhh, you remember my paper maché monstrosity, don't you? Well, this is not a repeat of that. I'm sticking with the smaller scale. I started by mocking this up in The Sims 2. Fun fact: the in-game screenshot function no longer works, so I now have to use printscreen and tab out. Oh, EA, how I love you! I went for a tiny-home. In real life, I'm really starting to feel inclined towards living in a tiny home. Not that it will ever happen, because prisoner, gilded cage, etc. But I have to dream to keep myself sane.

Here is my mock-up:

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