I wanted to do something urban fantasy inspired for quite a while... after all thats the main genre I'm reading right now. Only I never really got around to it .. and - if you think about it, its sort of hard to define anyway.
Urban Fantasy covers tend to have pretty girls with Tattoos and guns. I'm no good when it comes to guns and normal clothing - and besides most of my friends aren't really into that sort of image anyway (I still find it pretty, but even i have to admit it gets a little overused) Then, of course there are men in trenchcoats in a modern city. Add some light effects an a full moon and thats it. Only .. without the context of a book cover a picture like that could be anything really.. I'm a tad frustrated here as you might realize. I have a few nice ideas but not really the skills to realize them .. working on that. I'm slowly trying to learn something about drawing cities .. I guess when in vegas i have to make a ton of reference photos.

So I pondered this for a while .. effectively going nowhere and then just had a go on a small sketch I did a few weeks ago and it just evolved into something that is actually a lot closer to what i wanted to do in the first place then I might have managed if I really tried. Its far from perfect .. a lot of things aren't right .. but I like it :D

I guess this is a break from my usual style, but actually I wanted to do something like this for a while now. I have a faible for mystery thrillers, films and books about serial killer, dark rituals and the like. And there are some kinds of photo montage pictures that just fascinate me every time. So, when I got to buy "Das Letzte Ritual - In Memoriam 2" yesterday (hey, it was only 1€ and had a pretty cover) That was probably only the last drop needed to get up and finally try my hands on the style. So far, I like the result and I very much like the work, so it won't be the last one, probably.



this one is called "waiting" and the photo I used is from a stockphoto site.

I realized I haven't posted for a while .. mostly because there isn't so much exciting to tell. The time before Christmas is always busy with shopping, social events and last minute commissions (not so many this time, oh well). I tend to participate in some of the sweepstakes floating around the net but never win anything and try to be a nicer person which usually doesn't work out either. (not that I'm so very horrible but its hard to stay calm and friendly in the cold and rush hour shopping)

The year leaves me pretty much broke .. so to even out my sparse christmas gifts I did my own christmas card at least - I just hope I'll get the prints in time..

I have to admit that christmas shopping for the kids in the family is really fun, though ;D

I hope all of you have a good time ..

happy birthday to kerimaya! hope you have lots of fun at the larp!

Lately I'm doing more personal picture than since a long time .. I'm not sure if thats a good thing or if I#m just being lazy :)
Instead of working on my commissions I got distracted by doing this:



Well, I think its worth the distraction at least. It feels like its something new for my portfolio - though the nose really annoid the hell out of me, even with a reference picture.. I guess its one of the things you just can't get right, it looks wrong even in photos. The brush strokes still feel a little rough here and there but I think that only adds to the intensity..


In other news: thank you so much midget_gem - I got your parcel! Thats so awsome :) you really made my day and I need to make a photo!
and also aryana_filker 's book arrived - thank you so very much! With the double recommendation for the series I'm really curious!


One other note - If I drew a picture for you and didn't send you a fullsized verson by email - could you please contact me again - I probably forgot a few people .. I'm really sorry for that

I finally got around to do a picture just for myself again .. and this time its even a character of mine (ok, ok, I've not even quite started generating the stats, but the idea is what counts, right?)
The character (if I am ever to play her ) is for the Firefly roleplaying game and pretty heavily influenced by Jamisia Capra from "This alien shore" .
The book is a real recommendation, by the way. If you don't know it, go and by a copy. Anyway - the newest ImagineFX issue arrived yesterday with a step by step on an SF character picture and I decided to overcome my SF fear and try my own version .. ok, my frail girl has little in common with the soldier he was doing so most of the advice didn't apply - but it got me started, which is what counts.

The color scheme feels a little weird to me, but I like it a lot, and I love her face so very much. Couldn't resist giving you a detail shot to look at.

its so strange - lately I seem to alternate between being totally proud of myself and confident in my skills and being totally crushed and feeling like a talentless impostor from one minute to the next without any ground in between. Might be the cold season getting to me. But, well, with this I'm firmly on the - I'm proud of myself - side.
Hope you like it too.

 oh well. I really want to write a con report but I don't know how to start. telling you about all the things that went wrong might take all day, shortening the list by telling you about the things that were fun gives the wrong impression .. I'll do my best to do a mixture of both, probably.

If I have to explain this fantasy fair in one word, *disaster* is probably a good choice. On the side of the vendors, only one person I talked to lucked out and didn't loose quite some money. The various performances had so many technical problems and  missing athmoshpere and, worst of all - almost no spectators - it was just sad. The many helpers were from the lack of information, organization, care and, well, things to do, as frustrated as everyone else. I feel totally bad for the few visitors who paid a substantial amount of money for empty halls, ruined performances and cancelled workshops.

We made do, of course. The vendors among themselves tried their best to be  cheerful, help each other and find some sarcastic kind of humor in a situation that might very well lead a few of them into insolvence. there was plenty of time to chat among ourselves, the few workshops I saw were pretty good, as were some of the performances - especially the taiko drummers that were the last real act on sunday. The girls I work with are great, even when things go wrong. I met engelszorn, a great digital artist I talked to on the net but never met before - and of course a whole lot of people I only see at conventions usually. 
Its not like we didn't have fun at all - and some things might have worked out - with more visitors, other organization and maybe a different location. I sold probably 4 items at all. Its so strange - it sometimes feels like the better I'm prepared, the worse I do. But then, everyone suffered from the same problem.

I don't think this convention will ever see the light of day again. I'm not sure if its funny or just insulting that one of the orga people must have said something like "The image loss isn't so bad, we'll definitely do a new convention next year." but perhaps she was just delusional.

If the whole thing had been a bit less expensive and blown up from the start, maybe we would be nicer about it. 

well, I#ll just stop here and not go into any real ranting. Its past. Can't do anything about it now. This was my last convention for this year and I'm pretty much relieved about that. 

 First and most exciting: I've just booked a small 3 day Trip to Las Vegas for next march together with flame_song. I'm very much excited - I don't travel very much at all and I've never been out of europe .. I'll also have the chance to meet juxtaposefantsy again and I'm sure we'll have a blast of a time. She's a local and will hopefully show us around a bit.

In not quite as exciting and not quite as far away matters: the fantasy days are about to start. I'm still not absolutely sure on the workshop stuff,  but I just got some example pictures copied you can try your hands on if you don't bring your own pictures, a few new brushes and stuff and an alternate plan if we manage to get enough computer users in a workshop to switch to digital (if there's just one or two pwople with laptops, the can just follow along the normal course digitally.)I'm nervous but it should be fine. Its not like I've never done a workshop before ..

 it seems while I was away from the computer for the weekend, everyone bravely started out on Nano. I'm very impressed . especially since I hardly muster up the energy to do my normal stuff. Oh well. I have another faire at the end of the week and a small writing experiment scheduled with flame_song  and kerimaya  later this month so I feel busy enough for sure.

some small service announcements:
during the fantasy days in Düsseldorf, my workshop times are
friday 15:30 - 17:00
saturday 12:30 - 13:30
sunday   09:30 - 11:00

I'll have  tablets and a beamer so I'll improvise a bit and do a combined computer/traditional coloring workshop - or choose based on interest and available hardware - so - if you want computer stuff, bring a laptop if you can.

 I hope you'll all have a good time tonight. I'll just curl up with chips and some horror videos, got a few sweets in case kids come by and used the opportunity to dress up with my horns :)
should be fun.

 Its Monday and I'm home again - ok, I wasn't really away - instead my collegue stayed with ma for the last 5 days and flame_song as well for the weekend. Its always strange to go back to normal after a longer convention. The last days were loud, cheerful, chaotic and very very busy. I have a hard time summing it all up in a few lines. Lots of things went wrong, other stuff went well.. its like someone just turned up the intensity instead of giving us good or bad luck.
We tried a new setup for the booth that leaves me a little more separated - I think that this is very good for me and looks very pretty and more professional than before. We also had a corner booth next to the food stands - so we had friends coming by, sitting down and talking for a while almost the whole time. This was really nice on the first 2 days - I would have felt pretty lonely otherwise but a little overcrowded on the weekend .. oh well. Guess I can't complain .. I mainly ignored people when I didn't feel like socializing and/or had something to do and drew like mad. A lot of friends and aquaintances came by .. others I had been expecting were absent. I guess it has been a busy year for everyone.  

Strange enough - I'm back in con and buyer mode. the last years I wasn't really playing RPG's anymore and I hardly ever browsed the booths myself - this time I spend more time looking around and had considerably more fun. I can't even tell you what changed .. maybe just my mood, but I definitely had a good time. I went doing silly photoshoots in the middle of a boardgame promotion, solved riddles at first try and mooched flyers that allowed you to roll for prices at a near RPG booth (got a CD, a few dice and a cardgame booster pack) I started to feel like I have a special case of ADD only present when I'm on adrenaline and sugar. It was great. Not all was good of course .. my printer ran out of ink through the same important printout twice .. flame_song spent half a day and more money than it was worth trying to make photocopies on a saturday, I got a cold, all of my muscles ache, a friend crashed along with my chair so I'll have to get a new one (chair, of course) but, well, I can't let a bit of bad luck ruin my mood, right?

I also decided I'd like to play a RPG based on firefly - only to have a friend find exactly that as a rulebook. Guess what I got. And lots of pretty sparkling dice and wraps for my ATC cards and some more stuff I can't seem to remember right now. I'm still a little bit hyper and dead tired at the same time. The only thing that really brought me down was discovering the vacation I had just talked myself into was booked out by the time I decided to really do it. i'll check to see if I can find something similiar, but my hopes aren't high...

I made you wait quite a while, but I finally finished up the last of my art exchange pictures over the last days.
Theres some eye candy for the ladys - you should enjoy these :)

if I forgot anyone - please tell me immediately because that means you fell completely off my radar.
I'll really need to move on to some commissions now, and one of my mayor conventions this year - the Spiele Messe Essen starts this week, so I'll have to prepare stuff, stock up on sweets and such.

I probably won't update until after the con .. my internet connection is being peculiar again - if you're around - come by and say hello :)

I'll mail the fullsize pictures over the week ..



I have to admit, this picture scared me quite a bit -- I tend to avoid doing scenes if I can .. but I think it turned out pretty well, I hope the demon is like its supposed to be .. the four eyes were a tad hard on me..

I promised you eye candy, didn't I? He demanded a lot of attention too, since I had to start over the coloring job 3 times, since my program crashed a few times.

this was heavily photo referenced as you can probably see, but I did have fun with this. still feels strange to draw somone as un-bishi as this :D

and some more eye candy .. I tried to match the style as well as I could without taking weeks .. so this was actually a pretty valuable speed painting exercise..

my planned coloring workshop for the Fantasy Days Convention might just have gotten a whole lot cooler. I was palnning on doing some watercolors and mixed media techniques with up to 15 people (and I have to admit I was already a bit fed up with the whole thing since I never seem to be done with answering questions, handing in paperwork and ansewring more questions)
but now they mailed me and asked f I could use some wacom tablets .. wacome would sponsor the event, so there would be a chance of them providing a small number. ok, this doesn't work with my current workshop concept at all, but I screamed "hell, yes" anyway. I'll need a computer (mybe my laptop will work) and a beamer, but if I can do computer grafics instead of watercolors I'm a really happy critter, and I think the workshop will be a lot better for it.

i stil have to wait for the reply of course.

I'm strange
now, this isn't news to me and probably not to you either.
Still I need to mention it now and then since there are times, it just feels sort of new and urgent.
I spent the whole day writing away on a new/old project that was almost dead for a year or more and really didn't need to be done right now..

unlike -- well, everything else.
I did some eating and drinking in the meantime but thats it. While having lunch I couldn't keep from doing a few more lines. I felt like I'm possessed (or maybe just obsessed.)

This always happens when I'm totally and utterly swamped with other stuff I should do.
Its like a silly sort of anarchy - the more I have a scheduled plate of projects - the more I want to do something completely else. and I can't even say I procrastinated .. I worked harder than on anything else for the last few weeks. Until my fingers hurt, even though my neck hurts like hell by now and I feel like I'm coming down with a cold or something.
Still I had fun. I'm usually very very easily put off any sort of productivity and creativity when i start to feel bad.
I even did a bunch of little stuff that needed doing while waiting for a slow upload.
It sort of makes me wonder what I might be able to do if I just could bring myself to have that sort of focusing ability in my everyday life. I guess I'd manage at least 5 times my current work load.
But it never seems to work on things you *should* do.
and it usually dies off before you come close to really finishing anything.
*sigh*
ok, this rant has been pretty unhelpful .. but maybe you get similar urges?
I need to go to bed now, my sleeping schedule has been more than off for the last 2 days ..
oh .. and daiseechain .. the book is great, it really is. I've got about 100 pages left, lol

some commissions have been keeping me busy, but I've finally some progress to show



wfeather - done
flame_song - done
l_greytree - need to sketch
midget_gem - done
kerimaya - done
uberreiniger - done - look below
aryana_filker - sketched
saliss - done
hiruki_demon - done
guiltyred - working on the sketch thing .. can't quite decide on the position ;)
andartha - adone
daiseechain - need to sketch





( cut for pictures )

you probably wondered what was up the last days, but I got stuck a little.. here are the newest updates..



wfeather - done
flame_song - done
l_greytree - need to sketch
midget_gem - done
kerimaya - done - look below!
uberreiniger - sketch
aryana_filker - sketched
saliss - done
hiruki_demon - done (if I got it right she's got the first chapter of the pirate fic up for you to read, so head over to her journal!)
guiltyred - need to sketch (sorry, sketching this is the next thing I'll do, promise)
andartha - almost done (I'm handcoloring the figues, so the version you get will actually look a bit different, but I'm almost there , just need to do highlights)
daiseechain - got the description, I'll do what I can, you're obviously last..





( cut for pictures )

 My present from my family was a subscription for imagineFX - and one issue to tide me over until the first subscribed one arrives.
Besides being generally awsome to the point of being intimidating they included DAZ (a free 3D prog) - and some corresponding  character packs. I remember trying it ages ago and giving up on it, but this time I just meshed together some prefabricated characters poses and a nifty space ship, exported it over to PS and a space BG I did a while ago following some tutorial and added some textures and lights..

Its so very different from my usual stuff I don't even know what I should think of it, but it was fun. :) good to do something different every once in a while..

 

in other notes: I'm still working on the art exchange pictures - took the weekend off, but I'm on it again.

 I had a great weekend, celebrating and hanging out with friends .. its just a little hard to get stared with work again. I feel slightly hung over but I didn't actually dring more than one or two glasses over the whole weekend..

thank you all so very much for the good wishes..

 I'm turning 33 today .. and somehow this is less evil than turning 30 -- maybe I just gor used to it or something ..

the sun is shining, mainly due to the art exchange I've got parcles in the mail every day and I'm really happy to be here, do what I do and to know all of you.

OK, this sounds cheesy, but with all the whining going on in my LJ - I thought it might be a nice contrast.
thank you all for being there and my RT friends for dealing with my lack of organization and coming tonight anyway :)