Scribbles V

Mini comic of the DGM series; showing the domestic life of Kanda and Lavi. Lavi tries to cook, but what on earth does he use? Heh, I'll definately ink this one and then colour it. Might take a while, but I'll get to it.

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Left to right: Levante's aunt, Ue and Aein (younger). Ue in uniform, which I will post detailed designs of later.

Aein, Blithe and Edel again. With scary doll-looking eyes in the foreground! I know it sucks to see b+w pictures (and poorly scanned ones at that) on the blog all the time, so I'm trying to see if there is an alternative to this situation. A scanner perhaps, and no more photograph+upload? Or I could ink these images, but I already have a huge backlog of stuff to be completed.

Scribbles IV

I would have inked and coloured this, but I'm simply too tired to do this after an entire day of revising for my midterm next wednesday. The boy at the foreground (with the neck-a-chief) is called Clementine Edel May, but just goes by Edel. Then the girl on the left is Blithe, and the characters in the background from left to right are Phys, Aein and Monday.

Top to bottom: Monday, Blithe and Phys. Monday and Blithe are siblings whereas Phys is their cousin. (Blithe and Phys look very similar to one another, which causes some confusion; does Blithe look like a boy, or does Phys look like a girl?). Both Phys and Blithe have orange hair colour, except Blithe has green eyes whereas Phys has blue. Monday has a shock of pink hair with brown eyes. They all have Bauhinia as their surname.

Scribbles III

Image of Lavi and Kanda as children, and wearing strangely designed outfits.I don't know if I want to finish this, since I started it in 2007 Oct and never had the motivation to continue. Drawn and coloured completely on Open Canvas.

Just a draft copy of an image in intend to draw of Aein (left) and Rue (right). It'll have a white background, with minimal colour and emphasis on red. Aein and Rue look so similar to each other (and I have a reason for that). Aein has light brown hair, is possibly an unintentional sociopath; whereas Rue has white hair and is openly and conciously viscious with his actions. Both of them are constantly confused about other people.

The subject was...

The day started fabulous. The weather was delightfully cloudy and grey. I went to work (after bailing out yesterday) and got a lot of things done. I ordered my graduation sash. I finalized most of my statement of purposes. I finished my Renaissance Scholarship application and handed it in. And I managed to have lunch with an old friend of mine. Then I went home and found my roommate.

My roommate #1 has to be the most inconsiderate being alive. And I know for sure I won't miss her when I graduate in three months' time. Horrible, aren't I? But she keeps taking/using my stuff without asking, and she's constantly blasting her crappy music out loud when I'm trying to study. She throws her trash over to my side of the room and her clothes all over the floor. And then there are those awful phone conversations she has with her friends and they are both loud and annoying. Especially when she does that baby-voice thing with her boyfriend....who she is currently cheating on (roommate #2 and I know about it because she was so obvious with the cheating). The other day she was on the phone with her friend and said that the main reason she was staying with her boyfriend is because he has a job and a stable source of income. That's the only 'good point' about him she came up with. Can you say, gold-digger? Such a two-faced, superficial and incompetant person (I'll explain why these adjectives are suitable later). I'm not even going to do anything about that situation, because I know it'll end in disaster. You should only attempt cheating if you're mentally meticulous ad great at organisation. She has neither of those traits.

Roommate #2 is good, so no complaints here. We get along perfectly fine.

Roommate #3 is the new girl that moved in this semester. Personality wise, she is nice, but she is a semi-slob. I say 'semi' because whilst she leaves the most astronomical messes, she does know how to clean. The problem is, the doesn't clean often. The dishes are piled up in the sink until the end of the week (and the kitchen smells like rubbish by then), and she leaves her crap everywhere. I don't know how one person can leave their toiletaries in both sinks, or how one can use up three towel racks. Or how one can use up to three pans just to make a sandwich. I don't want to be mean about the clutter, but I'm starting to get a migraine (and I suspect a stomach ulcer) over it.

Heh. But then I can comfort myself with the thought that roommate #1 lured #3 to live with her next year. Ahhh, how interesting would that be? Das ist unglaublich!

Scribbles II

Left to Right: Phys Bauhinia and Aein. Phys is Blithe's cousin, and is the same age as her. They actually resemble each other alot (heh), and their mothers were twins. Phys, Blithe and Monday (Blithe's elder brother) currently live with Phys' mother.

Left to Right: Clementine Edel May, Blithe Bauhinia and Aein (OLD drawing, with character designs from 2006).
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"Rainboots". Kanda and Lavi as children...to be inked and coloured soon.

V+DAY=...?

My main V:Day illustration...go and check out the full version at my DA site. I don't submit much stuff there anymore, but I do like to share with the community once in a while. I was supposed to have a V:Day card tradeoff this year, but unfortunately I ran out of time and resources (in other words, I am too poor and I am an undergrad student with a very full course load).
And here is the counterpart to the Allen V:Day drawing, but I decided against submitting/finishing this off. The design of his (yes, HIS!) outfit doesn't match Allen's as much as I thought it would. Ahh...I love designing little dresses like these. Totally unwearable in the real world, but I can be a dreamer on paper, can't I?

I went and watched the Vagina Monologues the day after V:Day. I would highly recommend people to watch it, no matter which theatre troop is performing. I watched the one my roommate and other college people were in. Whilst acting at the college student level isn't exactly steller, the strength of the writing and the vulnerabilty of the interviewees made the entire production very powerful. I proudly admit that the Comfort Women segment almost made me cry. Other touching stuff include the women in South Asia who lost their faces due to acid attacks... I can't believe that such things are going on around the world (I knew about them, but to hear other people act it out and to know that these stories are from real people...a completely different experience).

End of Weekend

Just a colouring test to see how I deal with different levels of shading. The answer to that is: not very well. I need to practice more. And plus, I ended up with a completely different colouring style than my own. But then again I drew this in a style that doesn't resemble mine either. Hm...is this a sign of illustration-bipolarism? (I made this term up).

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Anywho, I watched Dexter on CBS yesterday....I can't afford cable in school housing and watch the non-censored version on Showtime. But then again, I wouldn't want to watch the uncut edition since I can't stand blood and gore at that level (hence I am not buying the DVD sets). I like what I saw from the first episode, but you never know how it turns out. It could end up like Lost (I have no bloody idea what is going on anymore) or the Sopranos (...).

President Day's weekend went by like a breeze, and I ended up doing nothing. Of course, some poor soul wanted me to go out with him for lunch, but I really wasn't up for it. Too damn sunny. And then I got invited to go on a brief weekend trip up in Pasadena with family friends, but I didn't feel like being exorcis-- I mean, go to church. Pft.

Scribbles I

An image of a younger Kanda and Lavi together: I never intended for it to look like this in the end, but it somehow did. Unpredictability in drawings is a good thing...but only in the realm of fine arts. For anime/manga illustrations, it just means you don't have the skill level to control the direction your images go.
A 2008 remake of the Alice in Wonderland image I did (it's on my DA account....at the risk of adding a plug-in, go and check it out). So the composition has changed, and I used a different perspective this time around. Hurrah! Now let us see if I have the will power and motivation to actually get around to outlining this on Open Canvas and actually colouring it.

Bad lighting

An image I thought I uploaded, but never actually did. The characters in the front are Blithe and Monday (when they were younger), and the ones on top are....well, I don't have names for them yet. The one with the eye-band thingie is SoSo (short for Sophie Solice), and the one jutting out at the uttermost right is Rue.

A simple dress design I did for no apparently reason. Shall colour this someday and make it look more trimmed. The dress is striped at the top, and is connected with a white skirt; babydoll style. I know alot of fashion magazines crucify the babydoll dress saying that it is absolutely unflattering (I see their point), but they look cute on paper. Key words: on paper. But then again, I also have a babydoll-cut winter coat.... so who am I to talk...

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Ah, it has been a long time since I last talked about my apartment situation, hm? After one of my good friends/roomates (there are four girls in total living in this apartment, including myself) left for an exchange program, the apartment has never felt emptier. A new girl moved in, and we get along well, but it simply isn't the same. But my roommate-roommate (the one who I share a room with) is sanity-challenged.

Alright, that's abit mean. Maybe it's just a cultural thing? Afterall, I come from a relatively docile family and cultural background...and going to school next to a cemetery for seven years must have sobered-up my way of seeing the world. In contrast, my room-roomate seems to find drama and problems in everything, and constantly complains how everyone around her is in the wrong. I would sympathise with her predicaments if only I (and another roommate of mine) didn't know she was cheating on her boyfriend.

Not a Giving Person

Here is the draft version of the DGM image I'm drawing this V-Day. It's Allen in a girly costume.

My good mood today was destroyed when I got a letter from the local Mission Centre asking for me to donate money. I don't mind giving a little (I do have part-time jobs for a reason), but last time I donated they:

-sent me a letter of thanks with a ton of stuff praising god (god has nothing to do with me donating money to your charity. I didn't hear any voice in my head telling me to open my cheque book, grab my pen and start writing. I am an atheist, but I also think I am a decent enough person to help those in need without some divine entity prompting me to do so). The letter was so filled with the word god I couldn't read it after the first two paragraphs.

-sent me another letter within a week asking me to donate again; this time for a different event. I'm happy to do the occasional good deed, but I'm a student and I need to eat and pay rent too! After that, the letters just kept pouring in. I felt as though I've opened some sort of floodgate. Don't make me regret having donated in the first place.

The cupids fear me.

Don't worry, this isn't the image I plan to submit for V-day this year. I have something completely new, but just needs to be uploaded and coloured. Should take less than a month (hehehe, I'm joking). The image needs to be penned on Open Canvas.

But yes, I am indeed one of those curmudgeons who depises V-day. Not because I am never on the receiving end for roses and candies (save for one high school year, where I was so cynical I started suspecting that someone left me a box of chocs as a joke and subsequently recycled the accompnying card), but because I find the idea of 'super' loving someone for one day to be so ...superficial.

Some people seem to stress over what to buy their other (and probably better) halves. (Other people I know are worrying over what to buy their better....thirds...get the hint?). Just the other day I was watching G4, which is technically a male-orientated television channel, and they were running adverts for a website that allows people to buy flowers for someone in under 2 minutes. They feature 'real men' who were prior customers, and their drive-at-home point is that "it takes one thing off your mind". Seriously? If you find buying flowers for someone to be such a hassle, wouldn't it be better to....not buy flowers at all? Or not married/dating at all? Plus, flowers are such a generic gift that screams "no mental capacity was wasted on the choosing of this gift".

As for me, this year I am going to spend my V-Day alone. Though granted, I have to spend it alone since I have work, meetings and class from 8:00am until 8:45pm. People might give me sympathetic looks as I walk in solitude (ooh, such dramatic langauge!) on campus that day, but they can just go and shove it.

Misc.

Sketchbook plan for the composition of an image....never got around to actually starting the final version.

Sketch of children and their demons, a part of an entire sketch series I have

My first attempt with using watercolour on wood...not exactly done very well, but the primary purpose here was to test colour combinations. This look is probably good for someone who needs make-up ideas for Halloween. Heh.

An example of the other kind of stuff I draw/paint. Credit goes to to Clara who took this photo for me.

Note that these images are not chronologically arranged (too tired to do that), so it is difficult for me to say which images show my more recent works. However, I can say for sure that none of the stuff shown in the images are complete, and they are all still works in progress. Since I have a tendency to get bored of the stuff I do after a few weeks, so none of these look the same anymore...

...I'm really not cut out to be an artist. Nor do I really have the intention to have art around 24/7 for the rest of my life. I'll just stick to anime/manga, or other art hobbies.

Lunar New Year

A day late, but Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

Though personally I'm not on board with this 'new-year' plan, since I got a horrible prediction for 2008 from my Chinese horoscope. So I'm going to be in denial. I'm atheist, and I normally don't believe in these superstitions, but it's just so depressing to know that someone else thinks the next 365 (366, since it is a leap year!) days of my life is going to be one downhill ride. Well, whether I believe in these predictions or not, I'm still going to make the best of what I have.

Hm, surprisingly optimistic thoughts coming from a pessimist.

Well, I've spent my New Year working at the library and writing up my thesis. The former is going perfectly well (it is now my job to mutilate and discard books, and I'm proud to say that I'm very competent at that), and the latter is moving at a snail's pace. I sat in front of the computer for five hours before realising that my paragraphs were getting redundent. Looks like I'll have to work harder this weekend.

To be coloured...

Kanda and Lavi in a whimsical childlike setting. I still need to edit and colour this, so it's still considered a work in progress. I was debating whether or not to submit this as a b+w image, but then whose childhood is b+w? (Maybe except Allen, since he was all emo and angst in his earlier years).

I love DGM, and the recent chapters are very exciting and all, but that level 4 akuma has me cracking up instead of feeling creeped out. It's the half-man-half-woman torso part.

It's almost Super CHOOSE-day.

Aein and Blithe

Random illustration

Random illustration 2

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I finally received my voter's guide through the post. (A month after I sent the application-- if I was in Hong Kong, whoeevr it was in charge of this business would have been fired. FIRED!). I was hoping to use a mail-in ballot instead, but the documents arrived after the deadline for that passed, so I guess I have to take time off on Tuesday just to head to the voting booth. Apparently, the voting booth closest to me with be at the elderly home down the street, so I'm going to assume the entire process will take 4 hours or more. (When I voted on campus in 2004, the queue was so long and the students so numerous that it took me 3 hours to get where I needed to be).

Wait, today was the superbowl?