Fuzzydragons

I don't really have a title for this yet, but I have at least figured out how I am going to try to finish it. Going to use my Graphitints, so graphite, but if I want I can use water on them. Its not 100% correct, the tack had to be modified slightly, but if I wanted 100% I would have just traced a printed copy of the photo. Nothing wrong with doing that, just felt like drawing a horse rather than tracing one. And yes, I don't have a problem when a person traces an image, skill still shows in how the image is finished. Yes, I do think a person should have at least basic drawing skills, should know colour theory and walk before they run when it comes to art. Nothing will help a person with finishing a piece of work if the basics are not there first. But tracing can be another tool to help those skills develop if used right and not abused. Nothing beats practicing drawing what is actually right in front of you.

I haven't decided if I am going to paint this, use graphite or coloured pencils once I have it drawn out. Leaning towards graphite since its been awhile since I have used normal pencils for anything. Will decide once I finish the line art and once I find out what paper I have left to use. Linking to Sunday Sketches :)

This is going to take even longer than normal lol Working on an etching seems to make my eyes worse, so this is probably going to be a few extra weeks in the making. My left eye does seem to be getting better, able to shut it completely now for a few seconds, but working on anything with a lot of detail, seems to make it worse. I actually thought I had really messed this up the other day, but getting back to the tack outline today, realized I can fix what I messed up. Normally I wouldn't etch areas I am not going to work on next, but I needed to know where the tack lines were so I can work on the horses body. And I really need to fix that ear, looks so odd to me right now lol

Only finished one book but also finished half of Uncle Tom's Cabin. As long as I manage to finish at least one book a week until the end of the year, I sould reach my goal of 90 books no problem.   Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov My rating: 5 of 5 stars Beautifully written. such wonderful prose for such a dark subject matter. View all my reviews  TBR this week if I finish Uncle Tom's cabin:   Evelina by Fanny Burney Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald   I really should finish this since I started reading it in January. And its as if its a bad book, just can be a little slow at times.

Spent all day working on our summer project, not that it looks it lol More than likely I will not be going with this idea for the final poster, but it shows I am working on it. I think I prefer it without the text tho, just wish the whale was solid white but I am working on that.

People are probably sick of seeing daisies lol This is probably the last of the photos of them for awhile since they are starting to die now. You can tell its turning into Fall, not that we had much of a Summer before it tho :p Nice bright oranges and reds :) Not sure why the petals are bent, there were a few of them like this, very strange. Last one, I promise.

John and his mom or mum if you go by UK spelling, at what looks like Xmas if you go by the little tree in the corner. John would be about 9 months old here and still has the dimples when he smiles.

Another older sketch from 2003 that my scanner had problems picking up. When I say I had a light hand when I was younger, I really mean it :p A very tall dragon with a very  little stick figure,  really like the wings on the dragon.

I did end up finishing the Rottweiler puppy today :) Pretty happy with the way he turned out. Up next, possibly a horse. Actually, I need to practice colouring fabric first :p

The ear isn't done, almost but still needs a bit of shading. Hopfully I am going to get this finished tomorrow, but that depends on whether I also work again on the summer project we have due the second week we come back. We have to write a 2000 to 2500 essay the first semester. I'm screwed lol I have no idea how to write an academic essay properly. What saved my butt with the last one was the research and the bibliography. Research has never been my problem, its writing it all down the "proper" way that is :p

So, its been 17 days since I had my jaw joint replaced. Healing good and I can eat bread now. Well, I can eat it very very slowly and only if I squish it :p but its a start. The nerves on my face are going haywire trying to repair themselves. So while it is frikken painful its a good sign, still look like half my face is frozen tho. My vision is still fuzzy and still need drops, but there are signs that is improving too, as long as I don't read too much and strain my eyes. Which sucks when you are as much of a reader as I am. The area where the stitches are is looking good, hard to say how much of a scar it will be now. I'm thinking more than the last time due to how the cuts where sewn shut but time will tell with that. Anyway pic update, puppies before the photo as usual :p 3 2 1 The muscle on my neck is still really swollen, feels like a huge lump when you touch it. I need to dye my hair :p

Very quick drawing of a horse. I'm out of practice with horses it seems :p Blame all the dogs and birds I've been drawing lately lol And one of thr dragons I have laying around :)

Looking cute. As cute as puppies are tho, no way I am getting another one :p Too much energy for me.

Only managed to read one book this week (must read faster), but am about a third of the way through Lolita. Lolita is wonderfully written, it actually is a great book, if you can get over the subject matter enough to see that the book is well written. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King My rating: 1 of 5 stars ok thats it, I give up on King for awhile, the only reason I finished this was because I had more than half of it finished before it really started to go downhill. Just too predictable, characters made no sense in what they did and I found the main characters just full of cliches that I thought didn't work. The bad guy in the story was like a cardboard cutout written by someone who just finished reading about serial killers/mass murderers and decided to put all of their traits together into one person. And the ending...setting up for a poor sequel with the bad guy?? Pass View all my reviews I have pretty much lost all faith in King's books right now. Which is a shame...

Update on Luka. Pretty happy with it at the moment. The eye is only a centimeter in size, so hard to really get any detail in it, must not work so small again lol its difficult to get any detail done. I should have done this on A3 paper so that the dog was bigger but I don't have any big pieces of the Fisher 400 paper left, and can't get anymore until my student loan comes in.

Too many seeds in the trough? :p Meh, couldn't be bothered thinning them out so we have a burst of colour in the backyard. Makes for some nice photos with the newish lens. I really should draw or paint some of the photos John took, (I can;t really use the camear right now due to fuzzy vision :( ). Would be a challenge to see if I could get the colours as bright as the actual flowers.

Started a drawing of the Rottweiler puppy we had in Ontario, who is still going at 10 at my dad's. Moving a little slow but still moving. Pastels on the background since using coloured pencil on the background would eat up the whole pencil. I am going to use coloured pencil again for the dog tho, easier to get detail and I have pencils I need to use up. Cropped the kitten, looks much better now. You win some, you lose some. Part of being an artist, you learn and move on and hopefully improve :)

This was so light my scanner had a hard time picking up the lines lol I use to sketch 10 years ago with a very very light hand. This was dad's Dalmatian fishing in a pond. You could see him stalking the fish in the water with his eyes, plunge his head in and often come up with a decent sized fish. Sometimes he would be the only one who caught anything.

I really wanted to get this finished today but my vision has gone too blurry to continue. And now when I look at this, all I see are mistakes so don't want to finish it lol The eyes, while I like how they are coloured, look very odd shaped, which is something I should have noticed earlier. The thing is, they match up the photo, so either the cat has odd eyes or I messed up somewhere in the drawing. Oh well, I will finish it since its almost done, and then on to the next one. Or I could just crop the image like this, which I actually like a lot, so maybe I wont finish the image. Just crop it and call it finished :)

I know I posted the maple leaf totem poles before, but I don't think I posted what I did with them. Thought they could be used as road side attractions, so stuck them in some random photos from Canada. Could probably have spent more time on the shadows, but since they were just mock ups of what I could do with them, I wasn't too concerned. Which is probably why I got the mark that I did lol received a  C3, which means good but I'me sure I could have done better.

Might as well stick with the teeth theme I have going on lately lol This is a mold of my upper teeth done quickly with Derwent Graphik Pens, which I really like since they are water soluble, which sometimes make shading easier. 3 of the molds I've had done to make teeth guards to try to protect my teeth from me grinding them, since I was a horrible teeth grinder. My teeth were being ground down. I have horrible teeth, blame the fact that dental work in Canada is horribly expensive. Not costing me anything here so there is no panic trying to find money for a broken tooth, which happens a lot with me :(

So its been 10 days since my jaw surgery, the stitches came out on Thursday, so it is much easier now to move my neck even tho I still can't move it normally. Due to nerve damage I cannot close my left eye all the way, doesn't close about 2-3 mm so my vision is really blurry even with glasses on. Should get better, if not I am doomed to a life of eye drops and an eye patch. Here is a photo update after the stitches, with more puppies before and after. 3 2 1  Some people might be wondering why I post about my jaw but not the MS . I think its because to me, the MS while a pain in the backside, its something I deal with every day so don't consider it a big deal. Its always there, so if I did post about it, it would be all the time and that would get boring and grate on people's nerves. The problems I have had with my jaw, more specifically my TMJ , are not talked about a lot and really some people often think the problems they have are normal...

About half done with the kitten and the rest of her face is pretty much black so shouldn't take that long to colour. And a grey scale version which clearly shows that her forehead needs darkening and this needs a bit more shading on the cheekbones but I'm not sure if the paper will take anymore pencil.

Almost finished 3 books while I was in the hospital, because really what else is there to do when you are not a T.V. fan but read? H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald My rating: 3 of 5 stars First half of this book I found enjoyable, interesting and it was wonderfully written and then I thought it got really bogged down with going back and forth to T.H. White's story. The story couldn't really make up its mind if it was a story about grief or falconry,or a short bio of White's life. The 3 different parts off this story just didn't work well together. but worth a read if you are a fan of birds just to see how difficult it can be to train one Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Clever writing, you really do get a good sense of what is happening to Maud as her dementia worsens, the writing gets confusing at points, but that could have been the point to help illustrate how confused Maud is, (or the hospital meds from my surgery :p). The e...