Musings of the Lorekeeper

I realized that this isn't actually a spoiler picture, so I decided to post it.



The song I used to title this picture (a practice I seem to be doing a lot for this story!) is perfect for the soundtrack to the climax of the story. :)

I'm pleased with the sky and Azilie in this picture, but the ground looks terrible. Eh, oh well. I'm still learning with the markers, and I don't have much practice with drawing buildings, especially from high above.

Speaking of Defying Gravity, I thought I'd throw a little reminder out there for any of you guys reading the story for me. I heard from one person right after I sent it out in December (thanks again, shadowfreder!) and then heard from several people saying they were almost done commenting, but then never heard from any of them. And then just after I scanned this picture the other day I heard from arieswriting saying she hadn't forgotten it (thanks Jen!) and that reminded me that I meant to post a friendly little reminder here in case anyone else had forgotten it. I would very much love to hear what you readers think of it thus far! Absolutely no pressure to hurry or anything, but sometimes I can use reminders myself so here's one should you be needing it. ;)

I plan to start up again on this story in March (whether before or after I go to India, I don't know) but for now I am taking a break to work on another creative project, which I hope to complete this month.

Anyway, hope you like this picture!

Time for another picture from my character portrait book.



It's Chiharrie! She's probably floating but just down near the ground.

The colors on her shirt did not scan well at all. Those Sugared Almond Pink stripes in her shirt are nowhere near sugary almondy pink enough. In fact, looking at the paper version right now compared to the scan, the whole thing looks lacking in vibrancy, but at least the rest of it isn't as striking. Oh well. Overall I was pleased with this picture, and I think she looks enough like her sister while still looking like herself. (They look very similar, but Chihi's puffs are pinker and her hair is lighter.)

I have another drawing of this style that I just posted too, but I put this one in my regular journal because I thought the subject fit there better. (It's pretty funny to flip through my book of profile pictures now, though. Which one of these things is not like the other...!)

--

Along with another drawing, I have another song for my soundtrack!

Remember how I was griping in my regular journal during the Olympics about how NHK's theme song (a song by a Japanese boy band) just didn't have the right epic quality to it? And then perhaps you recall that I said "but I'm sure later on I'll like it because it'll remind me of watching those Olympics in Japan." Well, that turned out to be somewhat true.

It turns out I have had a new version of Limewire sitting on my computer and, you know, actually working. Whoa, cool. I discovered that accidentally a few weeks ago and have been enjoying looking for music. One thing I searched for was Olympic music, and this song (which I had forgotten about) popped up, so I said, what the heck, I don't resent it anymore; I'll download it for the nostalgia. It's a upbeat little song. And then, listening to it, I realized, HEY, this song fits pretty nicely into the Defying Gravity soundtrack! But I didn't note that at the time because I was too busy being irked at it for not being what I wanted it to be for the Olympics. But all's well that ends well. So I think I shall add it to the list of songs. Even the group's name fits ("Arashi," which means storm.)

涙流すのは　信じてるから
心のノートに　書いた言葉
描いた通りに　いかない時
にじんだ空に　放った言葉

僕の後ろに出来てた道

雨の向こうへ　風の向こうへ　旅は続いていく
今　君の向こうへ　そして僕の向こうへ　道は続いていく

My tears are flowing because I believe
In the words I wrote on the notebook of my heart
When it didn't go the way I'd sketched out
I shouted these words to the blurred sky

The path I made was behind me*

Beyond the rain, beyond the wind, my journey will continue
Now, beyond you, and beyond me, my path goes on


(*I had trouble translating that line. Anyone else have a suggestion on 出来てた, especially with regards to 後ろに?)

Okay, just had to share that. I think Azilie would like this song. You can listen to it if you want, and watch a really stupid music video while you're at it.

--

Goal for this weekend: WRAP IT UP!! Can I do it? We'll see!!! I better get pretty darn close at least. :D

Tonight I resumed editing Defying Gravity! Yay! I was planning to hold off until after the election, but I got inspired to work on it RIGHT AWAY, and who's going to argue with that? :D (Incidentally the inspiration came from some of my political junkying, but I won't get too much into why as I have little time and lots to say.)

Here's an encouraging sign: though this story still will need tons and tons of work when you guys see it, it's nice to see that it's not QUITE as hopeless as I thought at one point. ;) I mean, I see lots of stuff to clean up just going back in and rereading it to reacquaint myself with where I left off, but it's not as big a disaster as I thought. Some of the things are minor fixes and others are only moderate. Of course, we still have the ending to tackle, but I can at least have confidence that I might get it down one of these drafts. ;)

Also! It's time to celebrate MARKERFEST! I have done several pictures which I have particularly liked over the past couple weeks -- in fact, three of them are from the past week alone. I have been quite busy! (I park in front of CNN on-line video and listen to that as I draw.)

This one is not impressive and also not new, but it gives a starting point to show the progress I have made in just a few weeks with my markers, and it also includes the first time I've drawn two important adult characters. (ninquenis -- IT'S WEDGE BOWDEN! :D ) Here it is:



I wonder what you guys will think of them.

Then, in my new sketchbook that I'm using for just character image pictures instead of scenes, here's the first picture I did:



It's much like what I've done before of Azilie, but this time more realistic. I was pleased with the shading of her face, which is something I'm just learning to do with markers! And her expression is a little scary, but then, Azilie is sometimes a little scary. ;)

I used a source pic for this drawing, and that's worth sharing too:



It's more the expression/posture than the hair (though it's not too far off; Azilie just has bangs) but this girl looks so much like Azilie! So this can be my realistic photo version of her! (I found one of Chiharrie too, but I'll save that for when I do a drawing of Chihi.)

Then on to the next character to get a profile picture:



Here's the second one in my new profile picture book, of Questri. I am pleased with her realism even more than with Azilie's. The background got away from me and I was really upset with it at one point, so considering that, I'm pleased with how I salvaged it and how it turned out, even if it's still flawed. I wish I had done the blacktop in a lighter grey so Questri would stand out more clearly against it, even if this is more realistic.



I am most pleased with this one, with all the details. Though there is one glaring error -- I want to say it's really obvious and that you guys could point it out to me, but if I say so and then you point out a bunch of OTHER stuff instead, I'll feel squelched so I'll just say that it's the open locker between Shanai's legs (or rather, the lack of it). I could fix this on the computer but I was too impatient and wanted to share it with you right away, and working on editing seemed more important tonight. But otherwise the open locker is one of my favorite parts. I did that last, and it felt like the scene really came to life with that detail for some reason. I love it when that happens! And I'm very pleased with everyone's expression in this one, because it captures the character dynamics I was shooting for.

There is one more picture I really want to share (which I did a few weeks ago; it's the one for which I needed to go get cool grey markers!) but it's a spoiler pic! Ack! So I'll have to send it to people who read the draft when they finish. Which is too bad, because I want to share it with people now (as I mentioned, I am feeling impatient!) but oh well, I'll exercise some self-restraint. Since I know some of you WOULD look at the spoiler pic if I posted it and I want you to be surprised at that scene if possible. ;)



(P.S. Do pictures of this size bother anyone? I like to see them all displayed on my journal, but I could cut them if they're inconveniencing anyone terribly. I made the files much smaller than most digital photos are, but if they're not small enough, I'll have to change my policy.)


And now it is much later than I meant for it to be when I got off the computer, so I shall go sleep now.

Yep, that's right, I actually added a new story to the Carlson Septuplets page today. Enough 12-year-olds were e-mailing me saying that the site was getting boring that I decided to do something about it. (I do appreciate those 12-year-olds' impatience since it's a sign of interest! In fact I appreciate it from any age group. :) As it turned out, I had a story written mostly in 2005 that was nearly finished already -- at least, rereading it now I realized that it was, if I just made it a simple sort of glimpse into their lives. It's sort of an experimental fluffy story that I don't expect to impress any literary critics, but I hope people who like the Septuplets' stories will get a smile out of it. :) It's called "Playing with Normal Kids."

The Official Carlson Septuplets Page is here, should anyone wish to drop by and take a look.

I notice (and readers here will likely notice too) that I quite enjoy writing about the daily life of kids. The Septs in this story are a year younger than Azilie is in her story. I feel like I am spending a lot of time in the early 90s lately. (And the 1960s but that's a whole nother story. And whoa, it's weird to write something out with an infix like that, but that's how we say that, isn't it? Strange. ;)

I also added a new picture! I started drawing this for their birthday, which was on July 12, but of course it took me a lot longer to finish than I hoped.



I am not entirely pleased with it. I worked really hard to get them to look like they all share they same DNA, and I'm pleased with the results for a first try, but it means that most of them have the same flaws. At least they all have the same noses and rounded short bulb on the end of the nose, but the eyes are not the same. Melissa (2nd from left) turned out the best (another JET here said so without my prompting) which is to be expected because I used a source picture for her. (I also used one for Megan, on the far right, but she was the first try and the first try is always a little off for me. But I'm still pleased with her.) Mary, Michelle, and Monica (the three in the middle) turned out the worst, I think. But I didn't use source pics for any but Megan and Melissa (because I couldn't get source pics that all looked alike enough) so I suppose that is okay -- for a first try, anyway. I'll have to do better next time. One thing I think I need to work on is the eye shape. Melissa's was right on (with the source pic and all) but the others got a little weird. It's a subtle thing but once I look at it carefully, it's obvious. Of course, I only notice these things after I've finished, and these pencils (and this paper, come to think of it) are not very forgiving. Oh well. Also, my last realistic drawing was cited by one friend as having chipmunk cheeks; I think this one is better in that regard while still having cheeks defined as I think that's a trait that the Septs do have. I gotta figure out a good balance for that. (Whereas when I draw Asian characters, which I may be trying for my next poster, their faces will look different in that respect, as will some other Caucasian characters. TS's Indigo, for example, has a very level sort of face.)

Overall, I think I can do better, but for a first try at drawing seven genetically identical girls, I guess it's okay! It's now up on my wall near my TS realistic drawing (with my Polar Lights aurora poster in between them). Now I just need to do one for Chloe's story and one for Azilie's story* and then I'll have realistic posters of all my major projects, yay!

(*I'm referring to Chloe's story as such now because Aka-chan is no longer an acceptable title. Whereas Azilie's story has a title in MY mind but I'm still not sure if it's an okay title. But more on that later.)

Oh, and I don't think I ever showed you the latest gift art I got!



It is such a treat to get gift art! :)

Meanwhile I didn't get to work on Azilie's story tonight (for the second night in a row) but I had a good excuse. But it involves someone else's business so I must not share it in this forum. Oh well. You'll just have to take my word for it. ;) I hope I can work on it tomorrow, though! I'm never going to make my goal at the rate I'm going.

Here's my latest drawing! I've been doing a lot of art lately. It's fun. :)

The last picture was almost a new medium for me (I've used nice art pencils before, but never to do a large finished work), and this is almost a new medium too, since I haven't done a full marker drawing since the days of Crayola washable markers. Since these are a combination of ultra-fine point Sharpies in 24 colors and some Copic markers (professional-quality Japanese art markers) that I bought individually at Loft, I'd say this counts as a new medium for me.

I still have a lot to learn in how to use such nice markers, but I'm pleased with this as a first try! I want to work on getting the backgrounds to be smoother, since I hear that these markers are supposed to make that possible.

The picture is of Chiharrie and Azilie over the entrance to the Lagoon in Coral Grove. To do the ocean background, I used a poster I bought in Cairns which is now up on the wall in my living room. And my favorite tidbit about the creation of this picture is that the light green of the shallow water is a marker called "Coral Sea," which I bought as an "extra fun color" (in addition to various skin and hair tones) because, hey, I went to the Coral Sea! And I figured it'd be useful for this drawing...and I was right. It really is exactly the color that the water in my poster is. Very cool. :)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this latest artistic update. ^^

I've got a new picture for Twilight Star!


(Click to enlarge)

Once I finish Azilie's story, I really want to get back into working on Twilight Star. I am full of ideas to make it more condensed, more interesting. I also am tired of staring at computer screens, so drawing is a good way to work on a different project while getting away from the computer.

The characters shown are of course Celeste in the middle, with Indigo, Gabriel, and Mikaela down in the left corner, Cozoqui in the lower right, Celeste's grandma, grandpa, and uncle to the right just above her (whom I've never drawn before! Older people and men? Whoa! A challenge!), Kymathece, Esti, Sorl, and Izick (whom no reader has met yet) up in the right corner, and a mysterious young woman whom I shall not even name yet in the upper left.

This drawing is noteworthy because it's done in a realistic style. Fotosearch.com is my new favorite site for finding source pictures! It really helped me a lot. I'm not the best when it comes to realism (not that I'm anything special with cartoon style either) but I am rather pleased with the way this came out, for someone who's rusty with the style and medium and all. The paper was also cheap 100 yen shop paper and kept pilling up when I tried to erase multiple times. So it does seem a great victory to have bent it to my will!

I used my artist's set of pencils to draw it -- that is, not No. 2 lead, but F, H, HB, B, and 2-9B. This is the most ambitious piece I've made with those, so yay! Even though I got the pencils back in 2000 for Christmas, I still thought to bring them to Japan with me. I'm used to drawing in color, so having to represent color in black and white -- and even more than that, to represent light, since that's a big part of this picture! -- was a fun challenge for me.

The picture is now on the wall above my computer desk, near my glowing star curtains and aurora poster. I think it fits there quite nicely. It's about 15"x10" in real life. This was much too big to fit on my school's scanner, so I had to scan it in halves. Stiching it together was a bit of a pain since the scanner did the greyscale differently for both pictures, but thanks to some creative cutting and the dodge and burn tools, I think I mostly made up for that. Yay! I'm annoyed that you can still see the stitching on the right side (I guess I scanned it at a slightly different angle each time -- I didn't flush it to the corner of the scanner because that was doing some weird thing where it cut off the edge of the piece) but oh well, considering the trouble it took to scan this, I'm happy it worked at all.

If you have comments about the drawing or story I would of course love to hear them! :)



Speaking of artwork, I just thought I'd share that I got gift art from a 12 year old Septuplet fan on Monday! It really made my day. I love getting art from my friends who are experienced artists, but it's a different kind of special to get something from a kid learning how to use a paint program and enjoyed my stories enough to draw the characters. I had never heard from this reader before, either. Really, really cool. :)


(Click to enlarge)

Or click here to go to the picture page and scroll down to the gift art section to see the new pic, the Group Shot by Micha. I set something up to forbid direct linking to JPGs by people who were stealing my images and bandwidth, but now I can't seem to unset it. It was supposed to let me specifically allow linking from LJ, too, but that doesn't seem to be working and I have no energy left to fight computer battles right now. But it's cute and makes me happy and I want to share it so I hope you'll go take a look!)


Editing update: I'm on page 42 of 120 on draft two of Azilie's story. (Which really needs a better title one of these days. Usually titles come to me somewhat easily, but not this time.) Actually, I did a fair bit of work on it (writing a new scene that it really needed) and yet that change the page count since yesterday, since it just filled in empty space at the ends of chapters. Hmph. Oh well. I really hope to be done with this draft of it by my birthday. Unfortunately, the second half of the editing will be harder than the first, since the end basically needs to be rewritten. But then, I have lots of time during the summer vacation to work on it, so I'm optimistic. (For most of July and all of August, I have no class, but I still have to go to work. I'll be taking my computer to work on my novel in the 職員室 [teachers' room].)


Okay, that's all, but if anyone feels like chatting about writing or drawing, please do feel free to strike up a conversation via e-mail or comments because I'm all excited about this subject right now. ^__^

Don't you love it when your image manipulation and HTML/CSS all just falls in place?

I say this like this has happened to me before. Hah!

Yep, it's a minor miracle. The doodles I made the other day with my new markers (some a prize from swankivy and others purchased on a trip to Kyoto with serialfiller) turned out great on the first try. Then I scanned them at work today and came to play with them in the GIMP. Usually it takes me a fair amount of determined trying and tweaking before I get them the way I want them, but today in about an hour of playing around, I had them exactly as I had long imagined them. Woooo! That was so easy that I'm afraid my computer will burst into a firey ball in my lap just to balance things out. I'm ever so pleased with the result. Maybe this will motivate me to get the new layout done sometime semi-soon, but it will require a lot of revising of all of Skygawker.com, so I've been putting it off until I finish Azilie's second draft.

The GIMP is great, by the way. I'm not used to it, but I'm slowly learning it, and it's a very powerful and high quality image maniuplation program. Once I learn it well enough to judge, I might even like it better than Paint Shop Pro, which is saying a LOT, because I love Paint Shop Pro. (That was the one program I really missed on Linux, so it'll be a wonderful thing if the open source version is just as good or better!)

I have soooo many projects I'm working on. (This is not news. This has been my life for the past...um, 20 years? But we're at an up-swell in project levels even for me.) I have a (moderately time-sensitive) essay I'm working on. I have the new layout. I have some more drawings I'm just really inspired to do (both monochrome pencil and marker, since I got some nice comments on my former abilities recently and, on the later, because I have new markers). And of course there's that pesky draft sitting around unfinished! I really want to get that done soon. But I think I'd be really happy to get at least a few of these other things done in the meantime, so I don't feel stuck on just one project, even as much fun as I am having with that project.

And in 45 minutes Myra and Katie are coming over to watch a creepy crazy conspiracy movie on which Raf wants to know my opinion. That seems like a good use of time too. There's always so much good stuff to do!

Anyway, I feel like I made a major accomplishment tonight, so yay.

I have two new pictures!

The Carlson Septs: Group Senior Portrait (Scroll down to find the link to the newest picture if you'd like to see it -- I have direct image linking disabled on that directory and am too sleepy to go around that tonight. Thank you!)

Azilie's Story: Cast/Concept Poster

I'm really pleased with these two drawings -- they're consecutive pages in my sketchbook, which means I haven't wasted pages on drawings that went nowhere! I like that! (And the previous Septs' pic is just one page separated, by a TS pic that I might finish one day. This sketchbook is going very well so far.) They look better on paper than scanned, though, given the way the scanner picked up the colored pencils. It's the scanner at work so I can't tweak it as much as I would otherwise. Oh well.

The first is something I've just thought of doing for a while: a picture of the Septs with them looking as much alike as they can (well, without going to more effort than I can imagine them going to ^_~) and also something a bit more formal. So it's a classic studio portrait, taken in 1999 just before they start their senior year of high school.

The latter is the cast of Azilie's story. You can see the four main characters who got avatars posted in my last entry as well as three others who are important as well. The background is also sigificant. I had fun drawing those clouds! The characters are, from left to right, Liely, Romie, Questri, Azilie, Chiharrie, Solar, and Seagin. I am really excited about you guys getting to meet these guys.

Though I have frustrating news on that front. I wanted to rewrite all of Chapter Two today, but by pulling out all the garbage, I ended up condensing the scene down to what feels just infodumpy and yucky. I need to remind myself that "second draft" does not equal "final draft." I put off all my high standards in the first draft for the sake of just getting the story out, but now I feel like I have to make it perfect before I can show it to anyone! Nooo...then it'll NEVER get out! Because it will never be perfect! But I can make it better than this...but not tonight. Because I can't tell what to do with this scene until I ask people how they react to it. It's a paradox: it won't be good enough to show to people until I show it to people, but I can't because it's not good enough to show to them! Ack!

That's why we have people read our first (and second) drafts, I suppose...but I'm such a perfectionist that it's hard for me. So take this as my "I know it's not perfect! I know! I'm not so ridiculous as to think this is any good right now!" disclaimer. (Well, honestly, actually I think it IS half-way decent right now; maybe even two-thirds decent. I just wanna get that other third down.)

Sigh. I wish I had gotten more done. I dwelled on this too much and stalled. Plus my brain went crazy spinning on all the thoughts and an unusual bombardment of e-mails.

I am happy to report that I have had a fairly productive day today. I have had plans to hang out with all sorts of fun people for the past week or so, and today I decided to continue that by hanging out with Azilie. ;)

The biggest news is that I have started my second draft! This is the draft I will be sharing with people. If you're interested, let me know! (I'm sure I'll ask another ten or fifteen times before I actually am ready to send it out, but it's never too early to let me know you're interested. ^^ It helps me edit even faster!) I actually started a little bit last night, but I didn't get home until about 11. I worked on it until almost 1 and then just got too sleepy. I have gotten up to page 7, which is almost all the way through Chapter 1. I hope to finish the chapter tomorrow. (Then again, I also hope to figure out what the IRS wants from me tomorrow, so I may have to abandon hope for everything else.)

Then after two sessions of editing, I worked on coloring a group illustration. I want to finish that tomorrow too and scan it this week. While I colored it, I talked to my friend Teresa on IM (who also happens to be a JET, but I met her through my web site -- turns out she is a writer too) about stories, and...watched Harry Potter in Japanese. I found this accidentally after a round of DDR, just as I was about to switch the TV off. (When I'm doing creative projects and my mind starts to wander, I do something active for 10 minutes or so and then I focus better. DDR is great for that!) It's really funny to see Harry and the gang speaking Japanese. Dobby speaks in 謙譲語 (humble form)! Which may be obvious, but I'm still excited that I pick up on these things. レーヴェンクラーに十点！ (That is, ten points to Ravenclaw! Which I just awarded to myself for understanding most of the movie. ^^)

And then I finished up some pictures I made with one of those on-line avatar makers that leithal pointed out to me. (I edited them while doing a conference call on Skype spanning three time zones! Wow, that makes my life sound much more exciting than it is.) So I shall leave you now with Azilie and her three most important supporting protagonists. :) I hope you like them. (And that you want to know more about them!)



From left to right, we have Azilie, her little sister Chiharrie, her best friend Questri, and her other close friend and rival, Solar. I added the puffs myself since the avatar maker didn't have those. Questri doesn't actually play volleyball, but she's a gymnast, and this was the best gym backdrop they had.

And now it's bedtime. I am looking forward to doing more tomorrow!

Wanna see what Azilie looks like? Here are some drawings.

Basic shot

SD version

The second picture is more how she looked when I created her back in 1994, but for the current story I've decided she doesn't actually have the wings and tail. She does still have the puffs, though. (I'm calling them "puffs" for now, though I don't know that I like that term. And antennae sounds too bug-like, though they essentially are antennae of sorts. Any thoughts, anyone?) When people grow up, their puffs droop down into their hair, and sometimes people dye them to be less visible, but kids' stand up like this. And they come in all sorts of different colors.

Speaking of colors, I do need to come up with some protagonists who aren't brunettes, but I did have a habit of making all my protagonists look a lot like me when I was younger. Celeste looks the least like me, but she still has medium-brown hair, and brown eyes. (Her hair is so light that you could call it dirty blonde, but I don't think of her as blonde. Then again, I don't think of myself as blonde either but I've actually been called blonde two or three times before, which always throws me for a loop. I didn't realize how light my hair was until I came to Japan in 1999, actually. On that note, one of my ESS students yesterday said she wished she had light hair just like mine. Aww. I'm used to people thinking my hair is ultra-boring, which is why I gave a similar color to Celeste, actually. Heh. But personally, I like it!)

Uh...right. The point is, maybe my next character will be blonde. At least Chloe is a red-head! The Septs and Azilie have my hair color -- with Azilie the blonde highlights are more noticeable, though. She's out in the sun a lot. :) And her color is definitely orange.

By the way, these pictures are my cutouts that are on my wall in here (my living room).

And now I'm off to draw cutouts of Celeste in similar styles. I feel like I'm a little kid collecting toys. Jessie's Character Cut-Outs, collect them all! (Except finding the TIME to spend drawing them is harder than finding the money used to be!)