Confidence Acquired!

See this beautiful piece I did this week? This was a redraw of a piece I did ten years ago. I am super proud of this. Would you like to see why? Of course you do! At least I hope so if you're actually reading my blog. ^_^

Woo look at that DBZ hair! But more importantly, look at that progress. I was in a funk of not thinking I'd actually improved. I'm so glad that my friend Kuroi Tenshi had done her own 15-year comparison and thus inspired me to do the same, only with ten years since I've only be taking art seriously that long.

Okay I feel like I'm tooting my own horn here, but I'm super excited to see just how far I've come. I've been trying really hard to stop comparing myself to other people when it comes to many things, art included. Comparing myself to myself is the only way to go. And now I see how much I've grown.

Combine this with the help I received with drawing men and I feel so much more confident in my abilities. I was honestly afraid to move forward with my stories because I did not think I could do them justice. Yet I look at Firestorm and Andiago up there in their first incarnations and how they look now and I can't help but feel so excited to keep going.

Never let someone else's progress get in the way of your own. Never.

Emotional Blergh

Well, I'm actually awake three hours after getting up to make the hubster's breakfast and lunch. This was supposed to be the normal but it hasn't been since Shuto Con, mainly because that was the same week I kicked the hormonal birth control. My body is suddenly having to make all it's own hormones again and it got a little cranky with me. That's a small price to pay for better health though, so I've been taking it was it comes.

As for the Blergh part of the title, things have been a little nutty around here as of late. I won't go into details right now, but the situation has not been good for my heart. It's left me feeling raw emotionally and the hormones are just making it worse. It's also been terrible for my journey toward contentment in my circumstances. At least I can look at that one as challenge.

I have learned some things about myself through this though so I guess that's good. I can correct some of those things that need correcting and be thankful for the others.

I just wish my immediate solution to all this wasn't crawl back into bed and hide from the world.

Instead I'm going to listen to Arrietty's Song and Spiller's Theme from The Secret World of Arrietty over and over again because they make me happy.

I can at least end on a good note and post a preview of what I've been up to art wise:

Clearly this is far from finished but I'm very happy with how its turning out so far. The woman is my OC, Luna, who has to put up with those three Links for the sake of Hyrule. Insanity follows. 

The best part of this piece so far is that I've proven to myself that I can actually draw men. I honestly thought I was lost to all hope in regards to that one. Thanks again Kristie! 

Mind Blown

Church Zero by Peyton Jones

An ebook that was free for a short time through davidccook.org that I decided to download on a whim. It sounded interesting. I've always like to see what people think is the problem with the modern church. People blame so many things; the congregation, the pastors, the facilities, the music, the chosen denomination, the list goes on.

I'd been wondering much the same myself. My home church has been scratching their collective heads about it for a while. We have a lot of good things going. We have four incredible pastors who works their butts off to lead us. 

We have a set-up that allows for individual care through small groups headed by two individuals (a shepherd and apprentice shepherd) who are in turn headed by mentors who answer to our pastor in charge of adults ministry (he is a totally awesome guy who can preach the entire Bible in one sermon) . It's a good system that is based on the setup God gave Moses so that all of the people of Israel could be taken care of without killing Moses do to the non-stop care the people needed. 

We have a great Children's Minister who is passionate about reaching children and a Youth Pastor who never ceases to impress me. We even have a pastor dedicated to Life Care, meaning counselling the hurting!

But we are still missing something and I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I read Church Zero.

And there it was.

My church as well as the modern church as a whole have been focused on growing up, not out. We are so focused on bringing people in, we forgot that our job is to go OUT and reach those who have never heard Jesus's name or only heard it in passing. We are supposed to bring the Gospel to them and that usually means one thing: CHURCH PLANTING.

Peyton explained it in a later chapter in the book as such:

"Churches should be like Mogwai. Multiplication is hardwired into their DNA, all you have to do is accidentally spill water on them and they pop out five more furry church plant balls."

So what happened?

According to Peyton, we have lost sight of what Luke penned in Acts. This church was growing out through various apostles (with a little a, as in not the original Twelve picked by Jesus, but Paul, Timothy, Titus and others like them) rather than up like today's megachurches. Granted, Jerusalem had a megachurch but it was constantly sending out people to reach those who hadn't heard the Good News.

In other words, yes we need to get people in the Church, but we must also prepare those that accept Christ to do His work, which often means leaving to start new churches. We've focused so much on Shepherds and Teachers, the ones that stay put, we have forgotten, by ignorance or willful omission, the Little a- Apostles, the Prophets and the Evangelists of Ephesians 4:11-12.

This was very challenging to me personally as well as in regard to my home church. I did have some consultation though. Whether we were aware of it or not, my church family is led by most of that fabulous five. I don't know if we have all of them, but we have most. We are also not afraid to try new things for the sake of reaching more people for Christ. We have helped plant a church in an area that needed one. But are we doing enough to grow out?

I'm still trying to take all this in. It's incredible to think about. How many time have I read that passage and missed it? How many times have pastors done this same thing?

I'm still praying about all this, seeking God's wisdom in the face of this information. But I can say is this:

I'm not the same as I was before I read this. My perspective has changed drastically. The Modern Church is content to hold its ground when Jesus told us to gain ground for the Kingdom.

I am no longer content to stay in the trenches.

Herderrrr! I forgot this!

So in the post I did earlier, I meant to post this as well. The problem was, I'd forgotten to finish it by drawing the guy on the far right. Watch me herpaderp, everyone!

Here is what I've been up to on either side of preparing for Shuto Con. The middle two were supposed to be part of my Intentional Practice but I got carried away and finished them a tad more completely than I'd originally planned which threw it all off. I'll start back with that next week.

These four are the main characters and their best friends from my long-standing story, Rain of Fire. From left to right they are MaiTeia, lady-in-waiting to the short woman next to her, who is YuKia Fuenoia or Firestorm, Princess of War. Next is Andiago, Prince of the Alliance and fiance' of Firestorm, though the poor girl isn't allowed to know that little bit of trivia until an hour before the wedding. Last is Majene, Andiago's best friend and comrade in arms.

To finish off the trivia before I go into more about the art part of the deal, their ages are, respectively, 30, 20, 21 and 32. The three tall ones are part of an alien race the came to live peacefully on earth when their planet kicked the bucket, known as Ye-Ap.

Name Pronunciation (as I imagine you are lost) :

Note: There is no particular accent on the syllables, like in Japanese. The Fu is also pronounced in the Japanese fashion, more Hu than a hard F.

Ye-Ap = Yay-Ahp

MaiTeia= My-Tey-Ah

YuKia Fuenoia = You-Key-Ah Fu-En-Oh-Ee-Ah

Andiago = Ahn-Dee-Ah-Go (this is the easy one!)

Majene = Ma-Jay-Nay

Okay so now that the formalities of character introduction is over, I'm VERY happy with how they turned out. I'm still getting the hang of my tablet but seeing results like this makes me thrilled. I'm rather heavy-handed with graphite so its nice to be able sketch and erase cleanly for the most part.

Firestorm seems the most solid but that makes sense since I've been drawing her since 9th grade which is 12 years so it makes sense that she is so easy for me to just whip out. Andiago is pretty good aside from being stiff because I was primarily focusing on proportions and design with him, less on gesture. I've been drawing him for almost as long as Firestorm but he has undergone a recent revamp due to freakin' James Cameron's tall blue people (The Ye-Ap used to be blue...).

I'm particularly proud of how Mai turned out. I've only drawn her once before and that was before Cameron crushed my blue Ye-Ap dreams. Seeing her so well fleshed out and adorkable makes me seriously happy. I think I sped through Maj a bit though. He still looks good, better than I expected, thanks to Kristie's fabulous proportion-focused panel at Shuto Con. I just didn't finesse him as much as I did the others.

Well, I think it may have been a good thing I posted this on its own. This combined with the other would have been waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long.

Conventions, Medication and Decompression

I live!

I feel like I fell off the face of the planet for a bit though that's not unusual for me while prepping for an anime convention. Yay Shuto Con! Yay Decompression post Shuto Con!

That's mostly what's been going on with me lately. I've been a sewing fiend and when I wasn't a sewing fiend, I was a wig styling fiend. I was a few other types of fiend as well but to a much lesser degree.

Shut Con was a blast. I made some new friends, learned a ton from Kristie in her lovely panels as well as hung out with her at Art Jam (greatest panel ever for drawing/hanging out with fellow artists!), and had a somewhat successful cosplay experience. And I finally got to see our friend's panel that we missed last year due to limited space/VIP pass issues, even if he did get technology-screwed and had to smash his whole presentation into about twenty minutes. Equestrian Embassy: Condensed was still just as good as it would have been normally and was probably funnier because of the time crunch.

Expounding upon the cosplay experience, the reason I call it somewhat successful is that I was still not as identifiable as my husband and friend and creating the costume just about gave me a aneurysm. Here is the break down:

Successes:
* I finished the outfit the week before Con week and the bags two day before rather than a race to finish line that my previous costumes have been.

* I was able to use a commercial pattern without killing my brain.

* It was comfortable to wear, aside from a wig cap issue. Apparently I have a large head.

* There was no catastrophic failure of any pieces. My shorts did pop a stitch or two, but I expected as much since I sewed them with the wrong tension but didn't figure that one out until it was too late.

* I was far more recognizable than in my first Fluttershy cosplay. I even received an attack hug from a Discord cosplayer which made my day.

Less than Successes:
* Sewing my dress and shorts was incredibly hard, mainly because I merrily jumped into the world of knit fabric. I mostly knew was I was getting into and the shorts weren't bad. The dress fabric was a very thin, fine jersey though, and I swear it was doing the hula while I tried to sew it. It still turned out well though.

* I trusted Burda too much with the gathers in the dress and not a fabulous sewing blogger (http://www.makeit-loveit.com/), who had already helped me with my shorts. Burda's instructions for the waist gathers were to zigzag over lengths of elastic thread, while the lovely lady at Make It and Love It manually winds the elastic thread into a bobbin.

 I did test the Burda method and it seems to work. OVER SHORT LENGTHS! I am no tiny person, so the width of the fabric was daunting. Sure you can still pull it to gather but your elastic thread will probably break and it will be nigh impossible to keep it at the right length you want. I ended up having the remove the back gathers because A) the front gathered too short so it wouldn't fit around me if the back was also gathered and B) it is very hard to sew over elastic thread on thin jersey fabric and maintain straight lines. Bad call Burda. Bad call Me.

* I placed my Cutie Mark on the right side of my dress, which was promptly covered by the front of my wig. I ended up playing with it constantly so that people had a chance to notice it.

* My bags were okay except that I had to carry more than a hip-slung bad on a thin belt could handle. I hadn't planned on carrying two small sketchbooks but my friend didn't have the space in her carrying device (she was Twilight Sparkle, so she carried a hollow fake book for a purse). The bags kept slipping down and they weren't even in weight so it was always off.

* Again, I was still not as recognizable as my friend or my husband. To be fair though, they are doing more closet cosplay than me. The only things handmade they have are their Cutie Marks and my husband's Smarty Pants doll (which I made...). Also, I take a different view of Fluttershy than a lot of other cosplayers do. I think Sweet Lolita Fluttershy is cute, but the pony works with animals. She has chickens and a host of other animals. Loli is impractical for taking care of animals, so I went with something cute and breezy but with a practical side, hence cute but sensible boots and "saddle" bags. Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but I don't want to feel I have to be LoliFluttershy to be recognized.

There is also another aspect to this. I do wonder if it's partially because I'm a large woman. I'm not trying to say that everyone who recognized my friend (who is a stick) didn't notice me because I'm fluffy and they all are jerks. I just wonder if I'm deemed "not cute enough for pictures" because of it. Aw heck it's probably not that. Some people did take pictures of me, though it was always with my friend a/o husband. Well, best not to over think this one!

This does made a good transition though. In regards to weight issues, I've finally kicked a factor out of my life for good. No more hormonal birth control for me! Maybe I won't have to think about that paragraph above this one ever again!

Bye for now!

Intentional Practice

For those of you who may have missed it, my primary creative outlet is drawing. I have been having a terrible time actually doing it though, due to all the other things I need and want to do as well. I kept thinking I didn't have the time (same excuse I use for cleaning our room...eesh...).

But then I read a blog post on Mabel and Riv. It struck a huge chord in me as here I am at 26 years old like the author was when she heard the word "Intention" used in a way that drastically changed her life. I am currently doing what she talked about, surviving only, letting myself be a victim of my perceived circumstances.

But Ari taught me something different. She taught me that living intentionally means thriving instead of just surviving. She taught me that intention means slowing down and taking the time to actually do things that matter in ways other than getting by from day to day.

I decided that Intention needs be a theme in my life as well. That's why I made a weekly plan for my sketching practice. It takes the guess work out of it so I can slow down and enjoy the process. As an artist, I've been surviving. 

Now it's time for me to thrive. Thank you Ari.

If you're an artist like me, feel free to use this plan or the concept behind it.Customize away but do please credit me a wee bit. Go ahead and share it too.  I know I will be!

A Strange Collection

Disclaimer: In this blog post, there be nudity. I really do try to keep this to a minimum but I've also made my peace with it after taking a Life Drawing class. I promise that it will never be nudity for its own sake nor will it be pornographic. The specific image I am referring to in this post is of a woman who spent most of her life alone in the woods. She does not understand modesty at this point in her story. You have been fairly warned and it is the last image herein so you can just ignore it if you wish. It honestly shows nothing as I'm posting an iteration of the piece that has no nipples. I simply wanted to share it because it spells a great deal of improvement for me as an artist.

Well now that that unpleasantness has been dealt with, on to the fun stuff! And by fun stuff, I mean what I've been up to while not updating this blog for so long.

This is my sourdough start, known as the Blob that Ate New York. At the time I took this picture, it wasn't quite as intimidating as I'd separated some into small jars and put them in the fridge. It completely filled that vase previous to that and is back to that status. I really need to use it more often.

This is the first food I made with Blobby. This is cinnamon sourdough pancake batter. It made way more than I was expecting. There are still some pancakes in the freezer should I decide I'd like more. It looks oddly pumpkin-y. My only guess is that I used the "white wheat" flour I have hanging around, which tends to do this. It's been so long I can't remember. 

And here are some of the pancakes. Holy moly they were good with some frozen berries and Greek yogurt. I barely made through three when I can usually demolish more conventional ones. Just goes to show you how traditional methods produce more filling results.

This is my sad sprout jar. It's currently on hiatus right now because I can't seem to remember to harvest my sprouts before they grow their embryonic leaves. The last batch even got hairy and thus when to the stock veggie bag. I'll get better at this once I'm not in the middle of a new project.

And here is the new project! Last week I received my kefir grains in the mail, from Cultures for Health . Two evenings ago they were finally hydrated and yesterday morning produced this lovely kefir. Unfortunately I missed out on a third of this first batch. I used most of this to make a berry smoothie. Everything was perfect until I reached out to put the blender jar back on the motor. I knocked my smoothie over, losing almost half to the depths of the stove's left from burner. After screaming "WHY?!" at the top of my lungs, I proceeded to clean up that horrible mess and enjoy the smoothie.

I've yet to try plain(er) kefir. I'm not that brave yet. Well, more that I'm not entirely used to the taste of fermentation yet.

And in new not food related, I found one of the most difficult part of my Fluttershy Cosplay 2.0. These boots have been agonizing to find! At first I wasn't sure what I was looking for, then when I did, I COULDN'T find them for less than $50. I am not made of money therefore that wasn't going to work. But when I thought that I'd never find the right pair, these popped up at Meijer for about $20 and I practically cried. They are cute and somewhat feminine but not impractical. You could take care of chickens in these and still be adorable. That is the essence of Fluttershy.

By purplefairy456

She's just so darn cute!

I've also been having fun with my Bamboo tablet. This is one of the first semi-finished sketches I have done since I received it. Only one of the characters is mine, Uzumaki Reiko on the bottom right. That's Haruno Sakura and Hyuuga Hinata (top and bottom left respectively) from Naruto (Kishimoto Masashi). Ahhh fanart, how I love thee! This is for one of the fanfics that made the cut.

Now this is one very loose sketch but I had to learn eventually that Sketchbook Express flattens layers of any file you close and then reopen it...and that is why Akimichi Chouji (also from Naruto) here is soooooooooooooo unfinished. I plan to finish him some day because the squishy expression has an adorable reason!

WARNING! This is where you need to stop if you do not wish to see the nakey. If you don't mind, keep scrolling down.

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I posted a colored head shot of this before but I couldn't help but post the rest. This is the best piece I have draw in a long time. This is a rare image that turned out almost exactly as I'd hoped it would. I never tire of drawing my Lithium so that makes this kind of growth that much more special.

Well, that's what I've been up to. I hope to be better about posting in the future.