chess designs

a painting design today. it was supposed to be based on the still-life, and either based on Surreilism or Impressionism or some mixture of both. I've been looking at that still-life for too long, so I went with a more surreil approach. I designed my own chess set, basically, which took me an hour to figure out. It was a lot of fun, though. Then there was the grid of the chess-set, from the POV of the board (more or less). Two vanishing points. It was a great workout.

Initial gnome designs:

Secondary shape-based thumbnails:

More final sketchbook designs, K Q B. The queen has another dagger in her other hand behind her back. Heh.

The knight and rook. shouldn't the rook really be bird-shaped. . .

Sketchbook page, the pawns (notated as 'x'). They are indeed poor serfs with farming equipment and minimal details. They don't even have another hand. Technically, they should be righties, so I'll have to change that.

The final design. Somehow, this was okay'd as the design for the canvas.

second day. no thunder tonight.

listening to: Scarborough Fair, Simon&Garfunkel.

friend marcus has a car and drives to Art League with me. Being with a young driver is sorta like eating a burger from White Castle- your worried you might die really really soon.

some india ink painting. technically, i should be using a quill, but there were brushes for washes. some pics below.

theres a painting project coming up. I don't know what it will be, except acrylic, but i want to have shapes play a strong part in the piece.

the fight against the powdery mildew continues.

learned how to play Risk, and got a little too into it. I proclaimed myself the totallitarian dictator of all of Oceania and South America.

1. the ink eye, with white conte crayon highlights.

2. the ink face.

3. the legs design, but without real background. might be kept this way. original thumbnail.

where do you go when it gets dark? and is there room for me there?

listening to: something medieval. iTunes on shuffle, you never know. "Prevent Us, O Lord" from cd Musick for Elisabeth (the shakespeare one).

made oat-almond-zucchini muffins, that were'nt that bad. Not as bad as they sound, anyways.

staked the tomatoes. bushes and bushes. also got to trip a lot of the garden and spray the powdery mildew-ridden squash with a milk solution. i don't know if it works, but I don't want to lose a zucchini crop two years in a row.

Art with Ganes from school, with his mustache. it's basically art class from school with a different group of kids. The kids are generally nicer- nicer than FIT girls. And there's at least one kid who has better drawing skills than me, which is great.

There is a nice pair of styrofoam legs that will be the center of my piece. I'm trying to throw conventional proportions behind me. And I wanted the background just to be black, but that will not sit for the Ganes.

zucchini-oat-almond muffins.

listening to Peggy Sue. And Everyday. It's a buddy holly night.

A storm's a brewing.

The sky is interesting- at one point, it'll be all black, but far off you'll see a patch of sunlight.

watched LotR: Two Towers. drew Orc feet (inside of left foot, unarmored) and some quick oliphaunt sketches. The Fellowship is on my reading list, behind War of the Worlds and Treasure Island. I really need to read them. I'm not picking up Dickens or Austin, though. I don't have that attention span.

No school news yet, and I want my schedule. And there's also some not-nice-looking lady profile.

I do not like large, loud noises. Especially gun-like noises that i cannot see.

Fireworks, between 3 and 6 blocks away from my house, and night. Real fireworks, with different colors and patterns. Technically, illegal in New York without special permission, but a lot of firemen and teenagers usually get things like sparklers and bottle rockets.

In the end, I hid in my basement fearing the apocolypse. The sky was on fire, and there were cannons and gunshot.

In garden news, my first zucchini was harvested today, and it will be made into breakfast muffins tomorrow. I'm trying to dry lemon balm for tea use, to see if i can do it and to cut down on the overgrown mess of a bush.

On the side is my first friendship bracelet. I'm a lanyard (aka boondoggle) person, but i had a lot of pre-cut string around.

sketches raining and late at night

some sketchbook designs and studies. There wasn't a horse around. And the restaurant is all lifedrawing, and the striking face was a characature.

1. little black dress

2. characature

3. riding attempt

4. businessman anywhere thats not where he wants to be.

5. some creature thing and its skull, from different sides. tried to figure out exactly where the horns were.

6. more attempts at horn placement.

7. http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n263/HoD_Lizy/restaurant.jpg Full sketchpage of the restaurant across from me, the one in Rockefeller center when there isn't a skating rink.

ionia and some doodles

i have a bad habit of doodling in the corner of self-respecting pages. lately at FIT class we've been doing the same pose the whole day, in 20-min slots with breaks. Thats about 2 hours of the same pose, which gives me a lot of time to do studies (hands and feet, mostly) and doodle.

This was an exercise in lighting, and this guy ended up in the top left corner. And then he grew the mustache and the hat and bowtie couldn't be helped.

i got to sit at a table in rockefeller center. There are the restaurant tables outside, and just inside there is an underground mall of sorts with cafe tables. There were people staring at me when i took out my pen and ink, and even more when i pulled out a nice watercolor set.

The movie only covers the first adventure in the Sword and the Stone, with Madam Mim. and disney made Kay out to be a total idiot in the movie, but in the book he's a privileged jock trying to have good manners. And also, Merlyn is closer to the Shrek Merlyn than the movie-Dumbledore Merlyn (koff same character base koff). Merlyn doesnt always remember, wants to nap in peace, and lacks all personal hygiene.

There is one part with a knight battle that goes to hell. Sir Grummore and King Pellinore attempt to fight after being thrown off their horses. I drew in the book.

pg. 98- King Pellinore calls Pax, but says Non after and ends up sitting on Sir Grummore while they argue about the legalities of calling Non after Pax. King: "I win" Sir: "Cad." On the other side, the knights can't find each other through their helmet slits.

The scene ends with the men charging at each other, missing completely, and getting concussions from running head-on into trees.

and as of july 17th, im officially 17. rated R movies and all that. whoo.

actual drawings.

my first concert (Peter Paul and Mary appearantly don't count), a full day meet the bands listen to music mosh crowdsurf scream clapping day. i didnt crowdsurf, but i was in the front row for Vanna and therefore i had to help.

an interesting side-affect of the concert is that because it's a whole-day event, they sell extremely overpriced food. Water cost the same as a cheap CD. I brought my bag, which had 2 gallons in it. we finished those by 2. But we didn't eat until we left and sat down at Gino's at 9 for pizza. You don't get hungry in your stomach, because you're moving all the time. You get empty, and in my case, a blaring headache that was caused by a number of things.

a good day, i got a tshirt and i got to meet Vanna and Ionia. i saw Underoath and Bad Religion in addition to those, and i've started cursing more.

some of these are pretty good, but the photos are crap. utter crap.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n263/HoD_Lizy/dunnohowlongman.jpg

i dont even know.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n263/HoD_Lizy/30secposes.jpg

1min or 30 secs. i dont know how long.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n263/HoD_Lizy/20minshortlegs.jpg

i really really like this one, but the photo is crap. and she has short legs. after the session we all compared our drawings, and they all had short legs, so it was very confusing.

Some outstanding individualities:

I want a dog named Igo just so that I go "Aren't you a good Igo!" and "Where's my Igo run off to."

I've started a copy I found of The Sword in the Stone, which is about Arthur's childhood. Subways have a knack of getting people with short attention spans to read difficult books.

Agreed with a Mac person today that Macs and PCs have their good uses (Artsy stuff and Corporate stuff, respectively), but one cannot totally trump the other. Pats all around.

SPORE:

I can feel my AP Biology going down the drain. I really really want to be the friendliest carnivore out there.

My planets and their species are named after colors. I'm working on the species Lemongrass on the planet YellowTape. my brother has his nasty scorpion-thing on the planet RedLeather. The fluffy herbavore is on BlueSoap, and the omnivore (Carrot) is on OrangeSweater.

SPORE.

a comic-thing, from the zoo, while i try to figure out how to put the figures up.

one of them really did go 'tookie tookie' to the poor thing. it really doesnt show up very well.

WALL-E soundtrack is pretty

so starts the arduous task of taking pictures of pages that wont fit in the scanner. some of the drawings came out beautiful. all will be numbered. but right now i have tin roof sundae ice cream and i cant feel the part of my tongue that tastes sour things. Altoids sour tangerine drops can do that. but i really needed the tin for charcoal and i needed to finish it today.

Venus in Furs

listening to: Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico.

some big zoo drawings at the end.

today in class we drew from a skeleton, then a model, without looking at the paper. This is aggrivating. Professor said 'it's not supposed to be proportional. Actually, the more you don't look at the paper, the more accurate the drawing will be. it's more of a representation of what you see.'

this bothered me. Then i was scared more whenever he stood behind me and said that i should work slower, a millimeter at a time. it was aggrivating, but I really do notice a lot more when im staring intently.

i finished an outline of the model's right side, from crown to toes, and he said "yeah. yasee these lines?" the lumps on the 'blind drawing' were parts of the thigh above and below the knee. I don't believe thighs are "pipes", they have so many more curves and the model was normal-sized, decently curvy. No one else seemed to notice, though. it just looked like a failure of a straight line.

i felt like someone hearing voices when they are sure no one else is. Professor: "Nice noticing. Those are actually supposed to be there."--- He hears the voices too. I didn't realize how comforting this was until the train home.

a note about trains: don't sit in the front car. It's considerably more noisy than anywhere else.

i really really wanna do an hour of quick-fire poses, just for the adrenaline rush. 1-min, 45sec, 30sec, i wanna draw more poses. we've just been doing 20-min ones, cept for a 5-min end of class thing.

the room is rearranged, the computer is back together.

FIT SUMMER CLASS:

REAL figure drawing! yes! And wait a sec- actual friends? this is quite an interesting experience, blah blah blah no seriously wow my social skills are lagging. But appearantly, I'm one of the more experienced drawers in the class.

the teacher collects drawings, so each night I'll have to load photos here. Some came out a lot better than others.

NYC AND THE ZOO:

New York City has so many tourists. The group psychology is amazing. There are so many languages- just today, there were families speaking in Spanish Spanglish Italian (methinks) Czech? Japanese, Germanic something. And there was a Scottish couple and an Irish grannie and a Southern family. And I'll never forget the black kid that walked up to me and goes "Whatcha doin'?", in total City fashion (the answer was "drawin' ").

I know the animals after 8 hours at the Central Park Zoo. There aren't that many, and I mostly like drawing birds. So fast, but all with the same basic shapes. Plus I learn more bird anatomy every Thanksgiving (vegetarians cringe).

My favorite favorite bird is the Long-Tailed Hornbill. Parrots are just silly compared to the personalities of these. I swear, they pose for pictures. The picture on the Wiki site is one of the Central Park birds.

the colors are toned down, which lookes really nice. Too many colors is bad for web design.

happy Independence Day. my family usually doesn't celebrate much- we don't have a barbeque- but I'll try to keep in mind 1776 the Musical as I rearrange my room.

song: take a walk on the wild side

i changed around some of the colors in the HTML for the webdesign. I like it, but perhaps the colors are too bright.

new icon is an inverse of my Mural.

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

wow helpful. Just pick a character description, and then you can let your mind go with the other possibilities. It's really helpful for character design practice. I'll post some later that don't look like crap.

Walking into spiderwebs

i have passed a gauntlet. I have gone into Manhattan, alone, and come out intact.

FITorientation: Dear Loving Parents, We'll take good care of your children in this terrible city, don't worry. Just step back for a sec and leave them alone. Thank you, FIT.

There was a segment about 'what causes the most medical problems, the top 5'.

5. Fainting, due to excitement or lack of breakfast.

4. Throwing Up, Anxiety-Related Problems, Or Being Sleepy, it's probably your own fault.

3. Cutting Your Finger, Xacto knives.

2. Burns, Flame torches are used in the jewelery class.

1. Sewing Your Finger, it's a fashion school- this happens.

Of course, I had to compensate with making up grievous medical problems that are associated with drawing with neglect.

There is a coffee shop by the train station that has everything. Hand-stuffed teabags. Mason jar cups. And what I think is an original Donkey Kong arcade machine. GEEKING.

The tables have trivia cards, and the lemonade is too acidic and too sweet and too cold. It's wonderful.

The garden is officially planted. Late enough.