Anna the Crow

I hope you like it

Abarat fanart.

Carrion being his charming self. Also, glowing.

I tried to not like him. I really did. I blame Absolute Midnight. There is only so much of tragic past I can process.

Skullduggery Pleasant fanart.

Yeah, I know... I finished book 6 and wanted to draw something sappy. I regret nothing.

I'm studying Chinese and last year I took some courses. We got the lecture materials in pdf, but I wanted a hard copy.
So I decided to use my bookbinding skills for once.

It's printed at home on A4 sheets; the spine is glued and reinforced with string. The "covers" are a strip of bookcloth and paste papers, both handmade.

The hardest part? When my printer warped the pages in the same pattern so the block waved. It was impossible to press flat. I had to divide it to small batches (five to ten sheets) and put those between thick paperboard and under a pile of heavy books.
That worked. It still has a tiny hint of a wave to it, but you wouldn't see it if you didn't know it's there.

Oh, and the text is "Help! My Chinese is really bad!"

You know that one task, the one you promised to do without much thinking, then put it off again and again until it was too late, and then way too late, and you suddenly knew that if you did it now (and you should since you promised) you would have to explain why it took so long, and it made you feel so miserable you put it off again, and it then stuck on your to-do list like a gravestone and you integrated it into your little mantra of "all the reasons I suck"?

Yeah. This one is mine.

I promissed I would do a cover for The Beautiful Rain, a novel written by ~umbragens. I said it will take a month. It took fourteen.
It was one of those pictures. The ones that you want to make right so badly you don't do them at all (because you just can't make them good enough and you know it).
Well, I didn't do it right. I think it's a bad, bad piece of a cover and I know I broke just about every rule for portraying fantasy heroines as people.
But well... whatever.

I am allowed to make crappy art. ^{(I've allowed myself. Don't ask.)}

Sorry, ~umbragens, I guess you don't need it anymore., so I'm putting it here like this. But if you do, you can have the hi-res file and this one taken down and whatever.

_{And those tasks? I have more. Yeah, I'm that kind of a person.}

A snowflake book. I was inspired by ~ciaee and her flower book.

I had fun making this book, it's so easy and fast (especially if you have precut sqares).

Help!
I don't know what to do with this picture. I. Just. Don't. Know. Options:

detailed "claned up" digital painting (that's pretty hopeless for me but I'm ready to try)

rough painting with loose strokes (not sure if I can get there from what I have but again, I could try)

rough and grungy with textures (would that even work? I can't tell. -.-)

I like what I have so far, but… *sigh* I don't have an art style. I never really did either of the things above. I''ll be pretty much going blind either way and so I just can't choose what should I do.

So, what do you thing? What would work the best? Please?

Have a good one (well, both of them).

It reminds me of the lifecycle of a jellyfish.

My first watercolour since… september. *sob*
Also, my first painting on structured watercolour paper. Huh. I'm not yet decided. It looks better, it scans worse and the paper I have looks…unconvincing.

Inspired by illustrative art from several Tumblr blogs I follow.

_{<whine>My scanner hates me and burned out all the subtle colour washes. This thing looks much better in person!</whine>}

Or My atelier head artists must be crazy.

School work. The assignment was: B1 poster about car tuning, containing the word "tuning."

It was PITA for almost everyone in the atelier. I swear, if I quite liked cars before this, I'm now a strong believer in public transport. Or, jetpacks.

Also, I haven't printed this yet. Dealing with printshops and dishing out a hefty sum, yaaaay!

School work.
The assignment: We wrote our last SMS on a paper, put in a bag and drew one at random. Then we was told to make a story from that SMS, with whatever artistic means we chose.

So, my story is about an AI monitoring satellite who randomly gets an SMS instead of it's usual commands, and how it reacts.

It's my second Flash animation ever, so sorry if it looks goofy. I'm not really sure if it will make sense if you don't understand Czech . Even when it's in english… oh well. I hope so.

Also, yes, I apparently spent several days animating a command line. I am such a nerd.

What's the point of wanting to make things perfect if you never start because you know they just won't be?

I just spent a day on YouTube because I'm afraid to start working on the school assignment. I'm too afraid I can't possibly make it Right.

or My best Toby Maguire impersonation.

Also, colors, how do they work?!? Because I don't know.

Books as cancan dancers.

White petticoats, red skirts; arms locked, dancing in the line.

I wanted something more conceptual, but I wonder if it isn't too obscure. What do you think?

I made this for a game my friends and I organized. It's something like a real-life adventure game where you go through a path with stops with a puzzle on each, and you have to solve the puzzle to get the position of the next stop.
Isn't there an english name for this? Google is being extra unhelpful this time.

Well, I suppose I should thank *Altalamatox, because I picked the animals to draw from comments on her journal entry. Haha, I'm such a leech.

Also, if you want to use the images in any way, please do - hit DOWNLOAD to get a zip with the pics in printable resolution.

This book was fun to do and surprisingly easy, considering all the new things I learned on it!

cutting holes into covers
make lined notebooks
sew headbands
use fonts to paint letters

The fabric on the cover is my own handmade bookcloth, which probably sounds uninteresting to anyone who never tried to make one... haha, I\'m still traumatised.
On the other hand, the headbands were surprisingly easy to do and I think I\'m going to sew them on all my closed-spine books from now on. I made them too long though and the bookblock doesn\'t fit into the covers as well as I\'d wanted. Well, that happens.
Also, painting super-thin lines on fabric with acrylic paint is haaard...

The idea was something like Art Nouveau prints - really bright and decorative.
Of course, it would be easier had I used something else than watercolors. Also, I am not really sure how I got this idea in a first place.Oh well…

Boring lecture was boring. Also long. 3 hours, gaawd…

Drawn into this sketchbook. And - is it a composition I see there? No way!!!

Not a kirin, the Kirin. Since, you know, no horn. Having a third eye is better anyway. Because the lecture was about islamic mythology, I hereby declare it's a djinn. Or maybe an angel?

Ugh.

After several hours of smudging, I managed to make it to look like a sketch. I admitted defeat, threw several layers to balance the colors and add some fancy glowy effects, and voila - here it is.

At least I finished it. Somehow. Better than most of my pics.
I'm still unsure whether I like it. Oh well.

OK, not much to say abut this one. I liked the sketch, but didn't really know what to do with it... and then I just had too much on my plate to do anything. I'm pretty surprised I've finished it after all!
The backround is all wonky, because the sketch doesn't have any and I sorta run out of ideas. At least I've been quite lucky with my improv-forrest-something.
Other than that... teeehee, purple.

It's an alegory of Sun. I think. I have (almost identical) piece called Moon. It's blue. No, I didn't think about it too much.

Butchering a pencil sketch is always fun! An' filters. You gotta love filters.
All the textures are mine, one of them is an old blurry starscape photo. Never thought I'll use that one!

P.S. That "submit art" link is mocking me. Oh yeah, it's art… really…

An expressive autoportrait (better than say that it sucks…)

_{insert a witty remark about looking like a hobo on crack}

In other news, I'm still a lazy ass and can't be bothered to CG paint a detailed thing. I guess that patience thing was more important than I thought when I swapped it for another serving of imagination…

I made these for my art school application portfolio and it took helluva lot of time. No kidding. If I count it right, it's about 42 hours.
This idea started as something completely different (in september), went through two fussed up attempts evolving along the way and ended with this. Har har.

The binding is a variation on long-stitch, actually reverse-engeneered from Cai Lun's button-hole long-stitch, since I couldn't find what I wanted. The thread matches the print and the pages are all white 80 g/m² printing paper.

Aside from visual quality, they're completely useless - the binding is pure paper (=fragile) and the paint smears.

Oooh… does that mean I am an artist now?

It was sooo hard to choose the right pics, really *sarcasm* Like, when there was just one - or not even that. I am such a lazy slob!

I haven't put in the books I've done, since it looked weird when I did. But I did use the fractal and the leaf, which I haven't even uploaded her on dA. Huh.

The ones I like:
april - Me, A Comic
june - Happy Apple Is Full of Win: it makes me smile
november - Samuel: it looks like it did in my head

The ones that looked good in my head but I fussed them up:
march - Guan Yin: skin lotion faces!
may, july, august - the ACEOs for ~Fey-rine, ~FoxlingTM and ~Dryas-juas: smudgity smudge, so much mistakes. X|


Template by =AudreyDutroux, since I just couldn't choose from the new ones.

Have a great year 2011!

May you have lots of inspiration and no art blocks. :3

I like hazels, they are beautiful all year round.

I've learned new trick with my far-from-perfect camera. I can make photos with very shallow DOF if I zoom in a lot and then "focus" by changing my distance from the object.
Maybe if I actually knew the fysics behind all this everything would be much easier…

Since I like it as a wallpaper I figured out you might too - just download the full size.

For once, I love the flash - perfect contrast against the night! I guess I should have tweaked the focus instead of going automatic. I no camera-man, nosiree.

My tree was once again possessed by a flock tits and I, for once, picked up my camera and took some shots.

These little buggers are so cute and fluffy.

Window of mother's old room back at gradparents' house.

I did what the last 4+ hours?!? My, I am crazy.
And I need to find some easier way to do comicky stuff, these vectors are pain.

I can make my PC write chinese chars AND pinyin. Win!

Bah, i won't remember the words even when illustrated with cute kitties. My memory is hopeless...

Meme by *Xiaoyu85ve, blank here.

OLDEST: Oooooold. I was enamored with digital colouring at that time. And horses.
NEWEST: Samuel!
MOST STUPID: One very corny poem about vampires. I was into vampires before you all, world! XD
BEST: Sigh. This was difficult choice. I don't really believe this one is the best...
WORST: Ow my gawd oldnessss >.<
MOST DIFFICULT: Handcarved from cherry tree wood with a not-really-sharp knife. It was made of pain.
EASIEST: 1.Take math scribble; 2.use as mask; 3.make rainbow gradient underneath; 4.profit! _{or not}
MOST FAVED: My Haibane Renmei fanart. B| I can't say i am perfectly OK with that. Since it's basically a computer coloured scribble. Oh well.
MY FAV ID: From the five I have? Nah, this has to do.

More Samuel, spamity spam!

Quick colors. Stylisation is intentional. _{Ugly brush strokes, not so much...}

Girl named Samuel.

Lines in Inkscape, screentones in Gimp. I've learned an awesome trick how to create them with Newspaper print filter. Super easy!

Made after this tutorial by ~Fractal-Impact
Special thanks to =Fey-rine who helped me with it. Apophysis is still confusing.
Lightly retouched in gimp.

Actually, all the credit goes to Apophysis - I was generating random batches and got this one. All I did was chose the colors.
But I like it. So, there.

If you want to see some real fractals, =Fey-rine has some really good ones.

^{I guess "generating random batches until something looks fancy" will be my modus operandi. Last time I tried a tutorial on something more controlled, I got a smudge. And it was labeled as "very easy, good for beginners"}

...no, no art yet.
Self-absorbed as always, I decided to do this meme by *antoanela91

With a translation, since I have my folders' names in Czech now. I actualy had them named in English for years, but then I decided I should stick with my own tongue.

So, from left to right:

* icons and others: avatars I use on various sites, devIDs and the like
* digital: pictures done on PC - vector graphic, paintings, typography, book layouts
* projects: bigger ideas (usually unfinished )
* crafts: photodocumentation - there is a subfolder for my book bindings
* suitable for portfolio: it's almost empty
* video: not much; an old art school project "An Egg" an unfinished NGE video review (It's just a practice in video editing, I swear! )
* WIP: or "that stuff I will finish... one day..."
* audio: foolin' around with my cheapo microphone (my voice sounds funny)

I am sure you wanted to know all this

No, still not art. But this one looks like something from a romantic painting (something like Friedrich's Chalk Cliffs of Rügen).
The place is overall very romantic (you can guess that I love it to bits) - I am even thinking of going there on a little plainaire... well, once I learn to paint, that is

___
Sirotčí hrádek (Orphan's Castle) on Pálava

I felt really bad when I was submitting it. "Submit art" huh? No art, this.
But since I have nothing else to post... and hate to be dev-dead... and since I really love this picture and the place... here you go. If you squint, you can pretend it's art.

__
Sirotčí hrádek (Orphan's Castle) on Pálava.

Mushrooms are funny. And amanitas are cute, too.

I cheated! I combined tho photos to get one with both 'shrooms focused.

It was so beautiful.

They are so tiny...

I like autumn so much. It has the best light of all year.

Cheeeeap. Me likes gradients. My PC not so much, but screw it.
Better than my badly-comicisized-portrait I've been using. And yes, "comicisize" is a word. From now.

Sized up, redrawn the lines, cell shaded detail from my last ID.
I added a caption since I looked brainless.

Still weird. I fail this style so hard. *sigh* Back to realism it is, then. Or some "wannabe-realism-turned-stylisation" thingy.

And no more big mugs of black tea for me. Too much coffein means shaking hands means ugly lines! Argh!

The idea was "a book resembling a package sent by mail". Oh, going all artistic, me...

The thing is... Where I live, there is a university, and it has faculty of fine arts, and that has an atelier called "Book and paper".
So, I am going to try my luck and get there.
Uhm. Not that I have a chance - the atelier has, like, 20 students total, there is almost no information about the entrance exams, all I know about bookmaking I learned from the intertet and the few books I could find in the library. So, I guess it's hopeless. But I like bookmaking, and I would feel like a complete idiot If I didn't try it.
So I will try it.
*sigh*

On other note, this is my first secret belgian binding. It's awesome! I was afraid it will be difficult, but it was almost easy and really pleasant to work on. The binding is sturdy and doesn't wobble at all, there is no glue to screw things up, no waiting for the spine to dry... pure joy.
____
secret belgian binding
cardboard from an old box, some more tape added, tricolor string, packing paper
cca 18 x 12 cm

Ooooh sooo laaate.

ACEO for , her character Rinzu.

The branch was on my mind from the beginning. That's why I didn't leave blank space for it and had to paint over the background-slosh-thingy. *headdesk* And yay for uninteresting clothes.

But it was fun to paint.

Pretty simple thing
_{(not that I didn't make several awful mistakes when making it, but that's just me)}

A6 hardcover, white printing paper for pages (60-something), warm grey cotton and white-gold recycled wrapping paper. Rounded spine. (mostly, anyway...)

Title taken from my first impression of the finished book: it looks like a book of poetry, the light, sweet, naïve kind.

ACEO for

I hope she likes it, since I... uh... forgot to ask her what she wants!

Three things learned here.
A. My brain doesn't get anatomy. I discarded, like, four different compositions until I settled on this. And I had to reference myself to make it look realistic.
B. My compositions are too abitious. The four compositions noted above? Yeah...
C. I need finer brushes. Or less shaky hands. Or both.

BUT, it was fun to paint this.

:laa:

Making of this was awesome. Happy apple! *sigh* I really needed something so happy.

download for walpaper 1680 x 1050

Failsome.
top left: 10. draw something very small - 5x7cm, respectively.
top right: 71. draw something using your nonprimary hand - that's left for me and oh, how I suck.
bottom: 23. draw an imaginary object - it's a hairpin with a green silk ribbon attached. Or something.

Bojujme proti gramatickým patvarům!

Vážně - zní to hnusně, vypadá to hnusně a ještě je to gramaticky špatně. A ty "argumenty", že se to pak plete s počítačovými daty, neberu. To je jen lenost přemýšlet.
*grammar nazi rage*

English: Stamp about a particularly anoying gramatical error in Czech. Untranslatable, sorry.

*stare*
I call her Nilla. The dragon-thing has no name. I think. Not sure.

_{<rant>
I should be studying for my friday exam from history of buddhism. Since I failed the one I had today and I sort of don't want to repeat every singe one of them. Ooohhh well. I'm so lazy.
And I want a "general" category in "drawing-fantasy" gallery. Original characters? That's ridiculous! Everything non-fanart is original character, goshdangittoheck! *grrrr*
</rant>}

I wonder what that flying tea cup means?

For

Details!

Um, artistic idealisation or something. I tried to get the face right but got a bit... sidetracked. *Color mixing! Color mixing! Color mixiiiiiing!!! * Same goes for anatomy, but I admit I fail at that anyways.

I hope you like.