Deregulation Strikes Again.

Computers Warping My Brain Again

I'm sure everyone has had one of those moments where they did some sort of mistake in real life, and thought "Ctrl-Z!" to no avail.

I was inking something, thought "Where did I put my hawk-quill nib?" and instinctively reached for Google Search.

I'm pretty sure there's just no hope for me anymore.

I was in a livestream last Friday, and asked for a challenge... a photo of something that'd be really hard to draw.

First thing I got was a picture of a hand, but I draw hands all the time. Second was this portrait. Bald guy, really bold lighting with strong shadows, and all I had were H2 leads.... that was more like it. So, here's the results.

This took about... I dunno, I wanna say an hour and a half, two hours? Probably needs another solid hour of work to tighten up stuff like the ears and the nostril.

Anyway... came out alright, I guess.

*’m L*lling at this harder than * really should be.

*IoI. X3

if you c*nsor anything in a post you are l*gally required to put all of the omitted v*wels at the end as a footn*te

*eeoo

Bleah. So much fail.

Decided to sit down and see how well I could draw heads from a full range of angles. I think  the worst is the lower left one, since I really wasn't sure what the heck the far side of the face should look like. I'm surprised the right coulomb came out as well as it did.

Two big mistakes on this one... First, the blocks I used to rough in the positions were cubes, when heads are actually 2/3rds as wide as they are tall. I think the left coulomb looks off because the eyes are too far apart (for comparison, the drawing on the right was done with the proportions I usually use). Second, the heads are turned about 45 degrees, and tilted 30 degrees... that's at the extreme end of how far the neck can bend. Comfortably.

For the record: by "mistake" I mean "I should have known better," not "things I did wrong." The things I did wrong are legion, and it'll probably take me a month just to google up the reference images I'll need to study.

(Quickly) inked in photoshop. The pencil and paper version was a mess.

My third second birthday

Whelp: those of you who’ve known me for a while are aware that three years ago yesterday, (Nov. 28), on my daily walk from my apartment to the McDonalds where I would sit and draw all day, I suffered a stroke. Today I got to meet the ambulance crew who picked me up, and I found out a few interesting things:

That thing you see in all the hospital dramas+crime shows where the paramedics shine a little flashlight into someone’s eye and use the dilation reaction to check for concussion? They really do actually do that. Relevant to me because I’m been blind in my right eye (Nothing to do with the stroke, had a bout of Diabetic retinopathy some 10 years ago now: that’s a whole ‘nother story), and as a result my right eye is permanently dilated, so i’ve always been a little paranoid that someone would do the flashlight thing and incorrectly assume I’d had a concussion due to the resulting lack of response in that eye. Wasn’t a problem when they picked me up three years ago, but I need to get an updated Medic Alert pendant. X3

You know how people will complain about having to wait like 45 minutes for an ambulance? Chances are, quite often, that’s probably because the ambulance has to drive out from the next town over. An ambulance centre covers an entire region, not just one metropolitan area. When I had my stroke, the ambulance centre was literally about a block away, so they got there in a matter of minutes. (Stroke of Luck #1).

When it happened, I had been walking down the street, someone saw me keel over on a lawn, and called 911... stroke of luck #2: If I had stayed at home that day, no one would have found me till my brother got home from work several hours later... if whoever had made the call hadn’t seen me keel over, but rather had simply seen me lying there, they might have assumed I was just passed out drunk on the lawn or something. For that matter, I’m lucky they decided to call an ambulance at all.

Second thing I found out on my visit: once the ambulance crew drops you off at the hospital, they don’t hear anything about what happens to you after that. I would have thought that one of the major payoffs to being an ambulance crew member is the satisfaction of helping to save peoples lives, but once the hospital takes you in (if you make it there, that is), doctor patient confidentiality takes over, and the ambulance team doesn’t hear anything unless it makes the papers... which it usually doesn’t, unless the news is bad, which, all too often, it is.

So, when I showed up to meet the guys who’d scraped me off somebodys lawn and spent 45 minutes trying to resuscitate  me right there on the street (keep in mind: 10 minutes without oxygen is long enough to cause brain death, tho CPR will keep the air pumping into your system, so, stroke of luck #3, I’m really lucky they got to me so quickly and didn’t just give up and call it after 20 or 30 mins), they were pretty happy to see me up and about, hale and hearty.

Details of the Stroke itself below the break.

Anyway: once I landed in the hospital, They thought I’d suffered a heart attack, and treated me as such (technically a correct assumption, since the stroke had immediately caused a heart attack). Stroke of Luck #4: everything they did in the first 24 hours to treat me was the exact same thing they would have done if they’d known at the time that it had been a stroke.

So: after a bit of time in the hospital (and notifying my parents et al), the cardiologist, Stroke of luck #4, asked the staff Neurologist, who wasn’t even supposed to be in that day, #4.1, and asked him to take a look at me. The neurologist saw something on my EKG chart that he had heard about at a conference he’d been to that very weekend, which suggested that I’d suffered a stroke rather than simply a heart attack, #4.2

Anyway, after that all got straightened out, I went through 2 months of rehab in the hospital (Including daily physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy). Stroke of Luck #5, I had an amazing team of people taking care of me (Including, coincidentally, no less than 5 therapists/doctors named Michelle, and I think a nurse or two as well). Turns out, my town has basically the best rehab team/facilities in the region. Stroke of Luck #6, the costs for whole thing, top to bottom, from the ambulance ride, to the therapy and hospital stay itself, to the bucketload of pills I was proscribed, down to the gas my parents burn driving me to and from doctors appointments, is totally covered by Canadian social assistance, since I’m on medical disability (Have been since even before the stroke: my diabetes and ADD make a very nasty combination).

So, that was three years ago... during the 2 months in the hospital I did very little drawing, and virtually no writing, and my skills basically rusted away to almost nothing nor does it help that apparently I suffer a neurological right side neglect, which has an interesting impact on my drawing (i’ll draw a figure that looks pretty decent overall, but their left side will look like I phoned it in... interiestingly, not the right side of the drawing, the figures right side). I’ve basically spent the last three years trying to regain my prior skill, and there’s a loooot of rust to brush off for the 10 years of independent study and practice I’ve done in comic art and writing. (when I dedicate my entire life to something, I don’t take half measures).

The hospital stay did have one side benefit; with a whole team of nurses handling my blood tests, insulin shots, and meal records (none of which I was ever able to manage on my own). The diabetic specialists were able to sort out a management system for my diabetes as a whole! I was first diagnosed as diabetic when I was 6, 27 years ago now. Back then the insulins available weren’t nearly as effective as what they have now, so I was never able to keep my management on track. Bad management meant bad blood sugar levels, which was painfully discouraging, so I sort of just let my management as a whole slide. Since I wasn’t getting tests regularly or keeping records, my specialists couldn’t even advise me without any data to work with. Which only made my blod sugar levels worse. But,  over the course of my hospital stay, the nurses handled all my tests/shots/pills. With that information, the specialists sorted out a management plan, which I’m happy to say has working quite well for me these days. I’ve been doing pretty well following it. Every stormcloud has a silver lightning.

At any rate: I ramble. Back to the sketchbook for me.

This is one of my favourite poems. ^_^

Happy Hallow' indeed!

Happy Halloween, folks!

Unplanned Adventure Comics!

'Kay, so... after helping Verzi with his little April Fools stunt, I've come to a realization: I plan way, way too much. Seriously. Whenever I start up a comic, I spend months doing preparation work. Lame.

So I started a new tumblr: Unplanned Adventure Comics! In three days, I'm gonna start posting comics based on whatever I come up with on the spot, and just run with it. You guys can submit material for me to make use of, using the ask button (Labled "Suggest Something Unplanned") Or the submit button, I guess (Labled "Submit").

A few guidelines:

You can make suggestions for anything: characters, plot, setting, themes, art style, items, genre, you name it.

No copyrighted material. This is going to be all original material, I'm not gonna be throwing Naruto/MLP/MegaMan in there. I am willing to do something inspired by existing franchises, however. Parody, satire, spoof, or similar basic concepts.

Likewise, I'm not going to be inserting other people's characters. I'm looking for suggestions and ideas, not full character biographies. I want to sorta make this up as I go along, after all.

Once the "story" actually get going, there will probably be some homestuck/Ask Woona sorta stuff, where the story advances based on what the readers suggest, with a bit of whatever-I-feel-like thrown in for good measure.

So! You have two days: Do your worst, and I'll give you my best. Let's see what happens.

I’m dead certain that the first 20% of learning to draw, the first step, is learning how to handle the drawing utensil. They say anyone who can write can learn to draw, but they don’t mention that learning to write results in a whole lot of habits that have to be retrained.

Notice that the artist is not scrunching their fingers to inch the pen along? It’s all in the wrist and arm. Finger scrunching is good for up to, like, lines up to an inch long.

Quick Tip to Draw Straight Lines & Avoid Shaky Hand Lettering by Sean McCabe

An Icosahedron. A while back, I figured out a nifty trick for drawing them at any angle whatsoever, and even in perspective.

Hatched it for penmanship practice. Nice little refresher exercise. 

Went to the zoo.

Got to feed alpacas.

Totally worth it.