Engelszorn

Work

2012-02-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish I could upload some of the work I do at my job. Especially the last one I just finished. It's not so much a "oooh, shiny, loookatit!" kind of work, just one I'm really happy with because it's partly me. Most often than not I have to draw things, motifs that are just not me. There is that one time of the year (halloween) where I can get close to that, but usually I draw stuff I wouldn't touch in my own private time. And that's ok - it's the job and despite the little problem with what I have to draw here, it's an awesome job. It forces me to rethink a lot, especially concerning colors. That was a nightmare and it still is, but I think I made some good progress and finally found a way to keep my colors in check and that's helping me with my private work. What can anyone ask more? oh, right. to show that little thingy in public:D. Well, that's not going to be, so I'll just have to work harder on my private stuff so that I can show my progress online. Stupid hand. Why did you have to break the wrist on your right hand? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Homepage

2012-02-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

First mock-up. I decided against bigger thumbnails for the moment, it would clutter the design. What do you think?

Working on my homepage

2012-01-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, i have a webpage. A very neglected and dusty old homepage. I mean to update the design and make it into my online portfolio - which means it won't be very busy, but I would like to have a colorful footer. My hand still hurts, progress is slow and I have to finish another project too. Once that is done and over with I have enough time to concentrate on the homepage.

I like that monster, hehehe :D. Need to add background and foreground...

One of these days...

2012-01-18T07:08:00.000-08:00

I'll be able to paint a fanart of my hunter. SOMEDAY. Eventually. Perhaps.

Welcome 2012

2012-01-10T04:37:00.000-08:00

The new years is already a few days old - I hope you had a good time and not so much a hangover. I've been busy drawing and thinkging, thinking and painting. New Yaers resolution: draw more! Continiously and attend to the uncharted places on the map - perspective. I suck at it :X

Ok, back to work. More stuff to come laaater.

New chair

2011-12-07T04:47:00.001-08:00

That's my new chair: Click meeee and it's wonderful. Sitting in that chair made so much of a difference, halleluja! Still, I believe I really need to do my excerises more often if I want to stay healthy.

I've been painting again, but I can't show most of the stuff I drew as it is either for clients or meant to be a xmas-present. Maybe next year I'll blog more often with sketches to show - it's on my to-do-list, I swear!

Heiligsblechlesakrifixnochmal

2011-11-30T09:30:00.001-08:00

No, I'm not bavarian. That's just a sort of rather precise description of how I sneeze. It's not very ladylike, more a fullblown hurricane and after the like 50th time it's also no longer funny. Stupid allergies. Wonder what's it this time.

I made a wallpaper! It fits perfectly on my Cintiq in the office and it's even more epic than Thrall fighting Deathwing. Yup.

This is an expensive year

2011-11-14T03:45:00.001-08:00

Adding to the numerous things I had to buy this year because.. things just break... I now need a new office-chair. The one I have at home is an odd IKEA-thing that I really liked but it's killing my back. The chair has no armrests, the pillow always tries to escape from under my butt and it's got nothing to back my... uh back. Why did I buy it in the first place? Probably because it was cheap. Here is a lesson well learned: Don't EVER buy a cheap chair unless you manage to get a cheap ergonomic chair from a sale. Keep away from cheap stylish furniture like the devil from holy water. My new chair will set me back hundreds of euros, but at least I have a chance to keep me healthy while working. Never guessed I'd ask for such a present from my parents (they'll give me some money making this my xmas-present 2011).

People: Stupidity costs money!

New Scanner

2011-11-08T02:19:00.000-08:00

I bought an Canon LIDE 210 to replace my 4 Year old Epson scanner/printer/copy-thingy. The Epson was working fine (although it was never great for scanning) until I updated my new PC's USB-drivers. I hate having to replace working equipment if it's not by my own choice and really? non-compatible drivers are ridicoulus. So much for protecting the environment, right? Fortunately buying the Canon scanner turned out to be a lucky necessity as I can't remember that my scans ever looked so good and it's joy to scan my drawings. Now, if only I had time to myself and wasn't working on commissioned pieces :P

Oh well, there will be a time for personal drawings, too.

It's almost weekend!

2011-10-21T03:06:00.000-07:00

And I plan to draw, draw, draw. But what? I would love to finish a painting, but I'm working on two comics as well. I think I need to finish the short comic first, so comic layouts it will be! Just can't show those to the publich since the comic is meant to be published. Yikes, it's it's almost november? Yep, I'll definetely be working on those pages '____'.

Also, I'm looking for a certain brush pen - made by ZEBRA. This is what the pens look like. These are perfect for drawing clean and precise lines - not what I want for my bigger comic project, but for small illustrations? oh yes. I only found these at german conventions and asked J-stuff if they would import these - alas they won't as they need to buy a big amount to profit from selling these pens. Does anyone have an idea how to get these pens? I have no idea how to import those from japan.. kind of funny, Zebra seems to be an american manufacturer yet only Zebra japan sells these >_>;

Ah... I'd love to buy new artsupply ;_;

The total Damage

2011-10-17T05:34:00.001-07:00

The total Damage sums up to:

- broken down couch
- broken pair of glasses
- broken vacuum cleaner
- 3 broken glasses
- had to replace the shower curtain

And other assorted things I've forgotten right now. Oh yeah, the guestbed is leaking air, I might as well well throw that away too. Berlin seems to have no free trash-pickup service, so I'll have to pay for that as well @_@. It's so not my year finance-wise, but with the exception of my glasses it was to expected that things just break, it's almost my 5th year in Berlin. Only why did they have to break in a matter of 2 weeks?

Spend my vacation with a friend and she dragged me to a Jrock concert. Versailles, a japanese Visual Kei band. I'm not interested in that kind of music or japanese music acts, but the band was good and the members seemed to be nice guys. The club has the best Bitter Lemon I've tasted to date, yumm.

Now I have time for my own projects again. And I wouldn't mind taking up commissions again, hinthint.

Hyaena

2011-10-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

No WoW-huntard is complete without the pets. One of these days I'd like to draw all my pets. Especially those that are based on real life animals. Still no Hippo ingame, come on Blizzard!

Hyaena, no reference used, couple of minutes in Photoshop

More fixing

2011-10-01T02:51:00.001-07:00

He was starting to look like that Wildenstein Lady, hopefully I fixed that now.

Continued

2011-09-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

My new glasses have arrived - man, I'm so broke, it's not funny anymore - but at least I can see again. Actually I had planned to write about something totally different than simply posting a progress-shot of my hunter-fanart, but I'm too tired to write that up. Rahrah-rambling about todays comics, the image of women in comics, women as customers etc. Instead, I'll just link to this blog-entry here. She wrote it better on more wittier than I could anyway. So, go read it: http://mssnarky.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/a-response-from-a-female-comic-book-fan/

And here is my hunter. Changed the background from somewhere in the shadow-highlands to a random place with crystals. Would have loved to draw the highlands, but the lightning and the composition drew the attention too much to the left side and it felt rather odd. Since this is really not an excuse but fact *g*, I changed everything. But his face still seems flat, I don't know what I did wrong.

Still no new glasses

2011-09-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

Fielmann broke my new glasses - not kidding. I have to wait another week or so until I get my new glasses.

Painted a bit again - just messing around really. My hunter looks waaay too girly Ö_ö hrm.

Updates

2011-09-22T06:04:00.000-07:00

Didn't do much painting or drawing this week because I managed to break my glasses and need a new pair of glasses. Am still waiting to hear from the optometrist because I have to order special glasses, meh. In the meantime I found an old pair of glasses and don't have to rely on my sunglasses anymore. That's what i get for stepping on my glasses. And I really liked those, too :(

The one drawing I started working is the first illustration for the comic I'm working on. It's on A3 sized paper, scanning will be interesting on my old A4 scanner, hahah. The paper is amazing for blueline-drawings, I love it. Still... I'm a bit nervous about inking as I have my sweet problems deciding on the look of the project. When inking I usualy go for a full inked style, but I want to color the comic, so I can't work on fully rendered inks. And what style of colors should I use, what style of painting? Gah, so many options! *explodes*

Almost there

2011-09-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Re-watched "The Princess and the Frog" and liked it better than the first time I saw it. Guess, that just means you shouldn't let expectations ruin a nice movie.

Fanart unrelated, that's just a sketch of my hunter.

New bed is awesome

2011-09-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Yeah, my sleep is improving. Progress on the comic is slow... slooooow. At least I kind of drew a color sketch for the main character. Abd I tried to ink some test sketches... oh, the horror. I like inking, but scanning is a nightmare. Fine lines turn chunkyuglyomgwhatdididooooo and using those inks to paint is simply impossible. It's not a question of personal preferences, it just won't do. Perhaps I just don't know how to prepare lineart for coloring,I've been struggling with that problem for years and it's one of the reasons I turned to digital art.

Anyway, here is the first color-thingy. Used a Ryan reynolds photo as reference - he is the face model for the character anyway, so yeah. Maybe I can find a solution for my ink-scanning-problem later.

Mission accomplished

2011-09-05T01:42:00.000-07:00

All sketchcards are done, everything is on the way to Schnee and I bought the new couch. As of tomorrow evening I should be happily sleeping in a normal bed again. My back will surely welcome that.

Guess, I'll be back to drawing the comic on Tuesday or something. Yay :D

Stressful Weekend ahead

2011-09-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

This weekend is going to be hell. Screw that, the rest of the week is going to be hell. I have to finish a couple of Sketchcards for a convention, send them to Schnee, so that she can sell them, I have to do a lot office-stuff, sent that out too. I have to clean up my room because IKEA offers my new couch for HALF the original price and I don't want to miss out on that offer and I'm sure I have forgotton half of what I wanted to do by now. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to draw those sketchcards - they take more time to paint than I thought.

I sound like a horribly unorganized person. Guess, I am. At least I'm no longer the person to curl up in a ball and hope things will simply blow over, the last months have been very, very helpful. So, I'll do the best I can do and see what I can finish by sunday.

Oh yeah, My comic-project is taking shape. As soon as I'm done with the sektchcards it's back to working on the layout-sketches. somehow I think I'll lack sleep this week *sniffles*.

New Art

2011-08-22T03:46:00.000-07:00

Won't be posting any new art for a while, despite that I actually want to draw. A lot. But thanks to Trenchmaker an Malisaa I'm now concentrating on a small comic. I'm about to finish the storyboard (currently at page 21), which is a big step for me. Not only did I manage to start on the project, I also have a lot of fun and I'm making progress. Not much difficulties, execpt maybe for 2 pages. Need to find a better camera-angle and work on drawing perspective *lalala*.

THIS time I promise myself that I'll finish this project. It's not Dragonbones. It's smaller and a lot less serious, plus I have to draw a lot of machinery and architecture. Sure hope my readers will like it as much as I do!

Really do not know what to make of this

2011-08-10T04:11:00.000-07:00

Cryptic headline is cryptic. Consider this: You're an artist trying "to make it" out there in the big wide world. The internet has become your weapon of choice to promote and interact in a way never seen before and you're a member of one of the biggest art-related communities there is. Every community has it's loosers and it's stars plus people stuck in-between. Some you talk to, some you like, some are your personal heros and others you can't ignore because they clogg the "frontpage" - getting faves and comments for everything they post. I'm not getting at "they don't deserve it" or "it's boring to see the same 4-5 people over and over again". This is something that probably happend back when the first caveman painted the first cave-paintings. Consider rather this scenario:

One of those artists did not paint those artworks for which she or he got the praise. Instead the paintings are a complex puzzle consisting of parts collected from dozens others artist's paintings. Sometimes these artists even work for the same company - meaning the company bought parts of the same image TWICE. The sheer scale of the fraud is mindblowing - considering the artist sells posters, calendars, puzzles (harrdeharr), artbooks and other merchandise worldwide. So far the artist in question has failed to give an answer. I don't even know if the companies and agencies who contracted the artist know about this disaster.

Is it a disaster? Yes.

This... "artist" based her/his whole career on nothing but fraud, lying to customers, friends, media, agencies and whoever wanted to give attention to the artworks. This artist is NOT the first, but the scale this case has reached is so far nearly uncontested.

Today I've found another part of the puzzle and contacted the artist that was ripped off.

As an artist myself I have no clue how to react to the affair, but I can hope that this case has an impact on the whole digital art scene. I do not wish this on anybody, but the fraud-artis has brought this on her/hisself, feeling sorry for this person is certainly inappropiate.

I continue to watch this case.

The Monster is tamed!

2011-08-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, finally - or as a friend who also plays World of Warcraft put it: congratulation on earning the achievement "Defeated Windows 7 on heroic difficulty on 4.8. 2011". Win 7 is finally activated, all partitions are working, I've installed most of the software I need and need only to test if my old scanner/printer work with Win 7 and then I'm done.

Oh, I also managed to paint a little. I plan to finish this over the weekend. It may not be the oh so grand painting that I was hoping for, but it's step in the right direction. Some photo-reference used.

The Monster

2011-08-02T04:01:00.000-07:00

The monster - my new PC - still continues to give me trouble. It works just fine, but when I had to format the PC the first time something went wrong. The PC has two windows-partitions installed, which was just annoying but otherwise didn't cause any problems. Of course I didn't want two partitions - I specified that the first one should be deleted when I re-installed Windows, but somehow that did not happen. Now I tried to activate Windows and it did not work - because the serial is already in use.

My schedule for today: reformat the Monster again and making sure to delete the first installation of Windows, then re-install everything. Thankfully I haven't installed much so far. The Monster works beautifully when you ignore those problems. I'm a very fast and *cough* energetic sketcher and it felt very natural to sketch a little in Photoshop - hardly have reached the limit of the machine.

Wish me luck!

The long wait is over

2011-06-23T04:35:00.001-07:00

Finally - after enduring PC-failures for the past 6-8 months, I ordered my new PC. This one will be a massive upgrade, 4 times the RAM of my old PC, completely different CPU (my old PC still has one of the first-gen Duocore..), 1 TB of storage and I hope everything works as amazing as it sounds. In a few days i should know if this is true or not and then I can finally retire my old grandpa.

A historic Moment - twice!

2011-06-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Not only did I write my annual blogpost a few days ago, now I present you my contest entry for Deviantart's Rift "create a Colossus" contest. A big step for me, not only did I manage to draw this fast, I also like it a lot. Thanks to the help or Trenchmaker, Malisaa, Laumännchen and guild-mates ! The contest ends soon, I wonder how I'll fare...

The Annual Blogpost

2011-06-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hrmm.. jupp, I'm realy bad at keeping my blog updated. Not that my life is that dull or whatever.. but.. well, most of the stuff happening isn't worth blogging about. But a dear friend of mine recently linked back to my blog right here and asked that I update more often and so did my colleague. So.. update, yay! My friends blog is titled Brainmoths. Go visit!

And so it's not a totally pointless post, i give you Sandor Clegane of A Song of fire and Ice. The next book will soon be published - for real this time! can't wait to read it.

Runny nose and painting

2010-09-07T04:06:00.000-07:00

With Connichi 2010 just a few days away and still a few things to paint left, running to see various doctors and badly needing a haircut, I'm quite busy. Not to mention problems with my second girocard - somehow the bank got the account data mixed up and now I can't access my money. Well, at least it's still there, so hopefully I can get this sorted out quickly.

In the meanwhile I decided to got back to phase one with painting, to refresh my memory. You know, re-read about the basics. Perspective, color - you name it. Since most of my books are still in my old room at my parents place and thus they're useless to me, I thought: How do I do this? I'm not buying another book and while live courses are surprisingly cheap, I don't have the time to attend them. The internet has a tendency to divert my attention, but whatever - so, the internet it was and I remember wetcanvas.com.

I made a new email, a new photobucket account - just so I'd have a completely fresh start, be a total no-name and not feeling like I have to force myself to draw and show what I can paint. That's when my trouble with wetcanvas started, though. My first account was removed since I used part of my new e-mail to register. Security reasons, I can understand that perfectly and was rather happy, too. Who would say no to a board that actually tries to protect it's users? Not me. Nevertheless, I was a bit puzzled. I DID read the rules prior to my first attempt at registering and even read few threads in the forum itself - this is something I always do. It reduces confusion dramatically, don't you think? Well, after my first account was removed by a moderator, I went back to Wetcanvas and re-read the post, even tried searching for rules and reasons, hit the Text-search, tried searching for "Username" (as that was the reason for deleting) and came up with exactly: zero. nada. Nix. There was absolutely no rule, not even the "security reason" - rule and my username had not been demeaning or similar, maybe a bit silly... I shrugged it off and tried a second time. This time the moderator took it's sweet time until he or she decided to remove my second account as well. Reasons this time: same as before, except the parts that explained demeaning and insulting were a bit longer than in the first mail. WTF. Anyone who knows me, will also know that I'm not the kind of person who registers an account purely for fun and I never choose an insulting or otherwise inappropriate nickname. I also don't consider myself to be a total internet-Noob, but still there it was: another failed attempt at registering at Wetcanvas.com. Thinking that another attempt could be viewed as spam and also feeling a little bit miffed I decided not to register at all, but I still wrote them. That was a couple of days earlier and still no answer. Either they're too busy deleting accounts or they feel that my inquiry doesn't deserve to be answered. Either way, I won't bother anymore with them. Quite a shame, the site has numerous resources available - buuuuuut you need to register!

Still, being a completely selftaught artist-wannabe has it's drawbacks. Yes, you have a lot of freedom at your hands, yes, you probably work even more focused than any art-student, simply because you WANT to understand and learn... when it comes to applying techniques and searching for painting materials, you're totally on your own. You'll have to work and worm your way around, maybe you misinterpret an instructional photo and a book offers only "so much" info - sometimes you'll stumble on the proverbial "happy accident", still I feel like rummaging around in the dark lately. No longer the "go away, don't bother with art any longer" dark, just the "huh.. and what do I do NOW? and how does this and that work?" kind of dark.

Which is why I tried to get into an art-community other than conceptart.og, cghub and related. Those are advanced - which don't mind, but what i really want is going back to the start and see what I can learn still. Have you ever had those "AHA!" moments? When something you really puzzled over and just couldn't get at all suddenly falls into place? I had quite a few lately, it was both exciting and a great relief.

If you have any suggestions concerning art-resources that don't cost a thing, know another community like Wetcanvas (minus the annoyance I described in length), that would make me happy.

Going back to the roots

2010-08-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

Just yesterday I thought: this is almost like going back to my roots after a long journey. At least when it comes to painting and comics. I have to think real hard and surely I don't remember correctly... my first comic, that is. It may have been The Smurfs, it could have been Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse or a free comic from a local bank which they always handed out to young "clients". I didn't have an account, but my grandma always took me with her to the bank and once a month or so I got that comic. Later I got Asterix & Obelix and Batman. A rather odd present from my parents - they don't like comics at all, except for Asterix & Obelix which they somewhat consider to be of cultural importance. Well - at least the old issues were really good, the latter are embarassing to read.

In my teens I worked at the local library and they had a few other comics as well, but all were a bit similar to Asterix & Obelix - only later I would get to know these comics or that style as franco-belgian comics. Still, in looking back and realizing just how young I was and what little comics were available to me at that time, I have to say it's a bit impressive that I recognized the styles at all. After I switched school I got my hands on american comics and that was around the time independent publishers were a big deal in the states, Image was very new at that time and slowly comicbook artists emerged with a different, more personal style - Joe Madueira, Mike Mignola etc. . Aaand it was the aera of variant covers *laughs*... ah, good times. In between my love for shiny, glow-in-the-dark, foil-embossed and whatnot comics, I never forgot about franco-belgian comics, but they were rare even back then. And compared to imported american comics? Expensive, so I couldn't buy them. And.. they were also a bit... uh... frightening. I mean... the comic-book-shop had a lot of them! But most of them in the 18+ section and that wasn't exactly of my interests. I wanted dark fantasy, maybe horror, something like that, but not big tits. I read Möebius, Valerian & Veronique - ach, I can't remember all the titles! But again, those titles were hard to come by and then manga started to be a big trend. My first manga? Vampire Princess Myu. The style was sooo different from what I was used to. Akira and Battle Angel Alita (or Gunm, if you prefer), Gon... those reminded me of the european comics. For years I would read manga and american comics.. a little franco-belgian as well. I must have spend a fortune on those...

Lately, I've noticed, that my interest in manga is declining. Most stories are... bland. Inking style is stil.. hm.. beautiful, but I'm beginning to miss something special. Xmas last year I pulled a comic from my bookshelf, I had bought it, because it had an impressive cover, duh. The inside pages were impressive as well, but, the story? While still original and all, laughable - yet entertaining. It was also the first time, that I saw a traditional european comic merging handdrawn art with computer effects. Friends recommended "Chronicles of an Immortal" in comic-book form and I didn't hesitate at all to buy the artbook as well. I simply love the style. It may not be perfect, but I love it.
I'm slowly but surely buying more and more of those comics. I'm currently reading "The Unicorn" by Gabella and Jean and "Arawn" by Le Breton and Grenier. Do I recommend these? Well... no, not really - the stories aren't remotely as well written as those of "older" franco-belgian style comic books I read years ago, but do they entertain me? Oh yes! Do they offer a feast for the eyes? Certainly. It's also funny... both artists were influenced by american artists and at least one of then was influenced by manga! The former states Todd McFarlane as a main influence and the latter seems to sleep on artbooks by Brom and Royo. I tried to paint in a similar style or rather a similar technique as Anthony Jean who draws "The Unicorn". It didn't quite work out, seems as if my journey - although it has brought me back to were I started from whenI began painting - isn't complete yet. I still have to find my way.

What I can say: I feel more comfortable with what I'm doing, even If I have a lot left to learn and understand.

Finally results

2010-07-30T05:42:00.001-07:00

This was part of the reason for my lack of sleep. I'm very happy with this result and I really kicked my rear end to get to that level. Don't worry, I have lots and lots of other things to deprive me of sleep even after I'm done with Arachne.

Sleep, where are you..?

2010-07-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have been filled with 16 hours of work. And I feel like I'm walking two steps ahead and running 5 backwards - not getting any results. Which is not true, I'm actually progressing. However, after all that time and effort I'd like to see some results. Some reward, something that actually means something, right? No, I'm not depressed or anything, just a bit grumpy from lack of sleep and I'm really looking forward to have something finished, it's just very frustrating that I'm not there yet. Too many stuff that's idling around, I guess and I really would like to have something to show. A result for pete's sake!

On a happier note: I won Anatomicae (cghub.com) two times in a row and was awarded an editor's pick. That doesn't mean I won the Pulitzer Price or whatever, but it does mean something - to me anyway and I had fun competing as well.

Arachne is progressing very well, but I deviated a lot from my previous plans. It's still the same painting - actually I never changed the concept from the moment I first put colors on the digital canvas - but what did change was the way I treated form, color, depth... well.. the painting style shifted from messy concept art to semi-realistic style and progressed even further. It's still very stylized, yet it feels like huge leap into the direction that I want to go. Soooo... I'll just have to be patient and not ruin what I have gained so far.

Now? Now I'm off to bed. Sooo tired...

Too damn hot

2010-07-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

The weather was too hot to work, but now that it has cooled down a bit, I can go back to painting. Just not today - today I'll try to make strawberry jam for the very first time in my life. Don't know if I have even enough empty jars to store the jam in.

If you'd like to see more recent works to something, just visit CGhub.com or Conceptart. You'll find me in the Overpainter thread als well as in the individual sketchbook threads.

The Paintover Thread - Page 4 - CGHUB Forum

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=115564

Arachne

2010-06-22T07:54:00.001-07:00

The artwork will be called "Arachne" and now I'm pulling it all together - working out details as most of the elements are "done", just the ground needs a bit more detail and I think I'll add some undergrowth as well, maybe a few critters. Not sure I I'll make it this week, very busy at the moment, but this is definitely something I'll put in my portfolio.

New artworks in the pipeline

2010-06-18T05:23:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I had quite a scare - my PC took very long to boot and then it refused to connect to my second HDD. Read/write error and I nearly fainted as that particular drive stores all of my original PSDs, printdata - essentially everything I have done since I moved to Berlin. Meager as the amount of art is that I drew in those few years, all of it is important. Especially the print-data. Thankfully it seems that only the cable connecting the drive to the motherboard was broken and I was able to fix the problem with an extra casing - I'm certainly NOT going to reconnect a possibly defect HDD! No data was lost this time, but there is no guarantee that the HDD didn't suffer some damage. Needless to say, I promptly copied my important folder to another disc as well.

I do have a couple new artworks of course, but somehow I'm not able to finish those. bleh. It's not that I lack motivation or ideas, no. Maybe it's just not the right time to finish those paintings, I don't know. Whatever - I am actually pretty sure that I'll be able to finish this painting over the weekend, maybe by next week. It's not very complicated, but I love it.

Back to my beloved dark colors and themes. How I missed you so much.

New sketches, new Stuff

2010-05-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't scanned the rest of the sketches yet, but these are a couple of things I've drawn recently:

A World of Warcraft Fanart, not based on any characters in specific, I just wanted to draw a scimpy plate bikine cheesecake kind of sketch.

My first bag! Completely done by myself.

An ACEO, a tiny acrylic painting. More to come, I just need to scan all of them.

Staubwolken wegblas

2010-05-20T05:05:00.000-07:00

Fast ein Jahr vergeht, bevor ich mich wieder hier hin bequeme. Tatsächlich hab ich sogar einige neue Sachen fabriziert und arbeite an den unterschiedlichsten Sachen!

WoW ist immer noch ein großes Thema bei mir - aber ich habs geschafft Spiel & Spaß zu verbinden ohne meine eigentliche Projektarbeit allzu sehr zu behindern. Yay for me!

Das sind einige aus meinem Raid - die Heiler. Wie man sieht, sind sie sehr beschäftigt, muahah!

Irgendwie mag Blogspot grad keine neuen Bilder von mir hochladen :( schade. Ich hätte doch ganz gerne die neuen Skizzen hochgeladen oder mein Mäppchen gezeigt - ich bringe mir grad das Nähen selbst bei, jawoll. Aber wenn Blogspot nicht möchte, dann versuch ich es einfach das nächste Mal.

WIP

2009-08-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

Here is a fullsized preview, hope I get to finish this drawing by the weekend. Also hope that I fidn a bit of reference for the pose, it looks like he's totally out of proportion ;_;

oh noes

2009-08-11T01:09:00.000-07:00

*sigh* My PC doesn't accept my data-sticks anymore. I'm not sure if the sticks themselves are malfunctioning or if I've messed up something. Well, there are several online-services available and I've started sending my stuff via e-mail to my own account, works fine. I'm working on a file and I've send it to my own e-mail to download and work on it during lunchbreak. I checked if I've recieved the e-mail and yes, it worked. I closed my e-mail program, went to bed, got up and drove to work. At work: No link.

That's because I already downloaded my mail - at home!. DAH! I'm such a dummy.

Guess, I'll just start a new sketch and continue working on the file when I get home from work. Here is a small preview. Very unrefined scribble, the actual file is half-finished. Meh.

The Pain of being artistically challenged

2009-07-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

Which refers to both the great walls of artblock and the pain of being an artist. You NEED to paint. If can't paint, your in pain, because you want to overcome the obstacles that prevent you from doing what you need to do. Now think about this - you really love painting and the same thing hurts you the most, so you give it up or you're still struggling to regain your spark.

For the past 2-3 years, right after I painted some of my best works, I've been in artistic hell, seventh ring of fire. I put myself under the pressure to paint more, paint better and faster. I uploaded work after work and yes, I did improve. Until I turned into a dead end. Uploading for uploads sake, hungry for recognition. Yes, that. Not the give me all your comments kind of recognition, just recognition as an artist. What I wanted and what I still want is for someone to step up to me and tell me: I really liked your works, they mean something to me - you're doing great. And by those words I would know that I've gone the right path, that I've found my way. That from this point on, everything will be right, I would know what I want to do, what I will do in the next 5 years and that it feels right. To achieve that goal I started to expand my so-called network, I re-read tutorials, I painted some more and joined other galleries, submitted my works for critique and got hit by the "your stuff is boring"-hammer. I got near to zero constructive feedback.

I talked to other artists about this problem and I analyzed it to death day and night.

Fact one:
I am to far advanced in anatomy, colors and general painting techniques. People can't give me advice, because mistakes are less obvious in my drawings concerning those elements.

Fact two:
My drawings are plain boring. Not visually attracting enough, they don't stand out. My themes are clichée. Many others are competing with what I draw.

Fact three:
When I draw what I see, feel and need to draw, then I scare people away, because it's different from what they expect. I fail at creating a solid "fanbase" because my work isn't what can be called "popular". This is most evident when I draw something without worrying about.. OTHERS.

Fact four:
This is a downward spiral that keeps on dragging me down. I have no real goal, I feel I have failed without knowing where and when exactly. I care less and less about my art. I play WoW. Projects I hold dear get messed up and I try to change them, til somebody says: Yes, this is good, well done. Get it? I. AM.TOTALLY.CONFUSED.

I do not know what to do. I really don't. I KNOW that whatever I whish is more or less right in front of me, but I can't see, touch, feel or smell it. It doesn't help me.

How the f***** hell can trying to be and do what you want be so damn hard.

Life strikes again!

2009-06-03T06:49:00.001-07:00

And it hit my baby. My precious PC. I was minding my own business and suddenly the PC froze. It had done that a couple of times in the last days, but it had none of that "hoooo~shit" feeling to it. Just.. you know.. a PC freezing. No big deal. Well, this time, it froze completly, turned itself off and left me all: riiiight.. and now what? I booted it again and it took a long time to boot and I really didn't need to see my screen to know that my PC was damaged. The screen didn't load fully anyway, all I'm seeing is a grey bar at the bottom of the screen and a zip-file on my desktop. I can't click anything and a friend, who came to my aid, thinks the motherboard got fried. If you can't trust ASUS to make good quality motherboards who can you trust? Gah!

I ordered a replacement and will try to fix the PC later today, though I'm rather anxious to do so. There is no guarantee that the problem was caused by the motherboard and not the power-supply unit, too. To make sure that a defunct power-supply doesn't damage the new ASUS-board I'd have to buy a new power-supply as well. Another 30-50 or so Euros because I like my PC to be silent. That's just it - I don't want to spent money on a busted system, if I could be forced to buy a brandnew one! So, here's to hoping the motherboard works. Last time it was the power-supply AND the motherboard, sigh - but that time my PC also burned. Smokes and flames, lol.

In the meanwhile no new art, sorry.

Getting things back into working order is hard

2009-05-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

Managed to get another kidney-infection and the pills make me sleepy and grumpy. Hopefully they help. In the meanwhile I managed to finish one artwork, I've come up with a new webdesign for my homepage that I now have to finish and.. lot's of other things I need to finish. But all I want to do is sleeping.. sleep, sleep, sleep.

I've been featured in an interview here:

http://openminds.lucido-media.de/

I bought a new book full of high quality photos from different asian countries, this should help me with the other works I still have to draw. I love collecting books, but I hate the way they clog up my workspace ;_;

Workload

2009-04-30T00:43:00.000-07:00

The pile of unfinished works just keeps growing. I'll try to ignore deadlines and just finish one drawing at a time. The newest wip is below. A bit plain, but I love the colors.

Vacation

2009-04-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my last day at work, then I'm on vacation. Can't wait! 3 1/2 hours by train and then I'll see my pug again, plus - no PC, no Internet and hopefully a few days of peace and quiet. I plan to finish a few drawings and work on some characterdesigns, though. Yes, it feels good to be working on my own stuff again :D

Watchmen

2009-03-31T14:18:00.001-07:00

The next fanart and I opeted for a traditional drawing - graphite. The drawing will be larger and I guess I'll have to spent a few days on it until it's finished. Don't have time!!! I'll work on it whenever I can... The comedian is an awesome character and the actor did him justice. Note that I'm not really aiming to draw a portrait of the actor.

Watchmen

2009-03-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure to watch the movie on saturday together with a good friend of mine and we both enjoyed the movie very much. She didn't know the comic and I haven't read it in years, but still recognized a lot from the original story. Good movie, but you really need to have guts to watch it. I kept my eyes closed in some scenes which I normally don't!

Geisha

2009-03-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

Speedy during lunchbreak - about 20 minutes in Photoshop.

Lunch Scribbles

2009-03-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

I like scribbling during lunchbreak - I hope to do this more often! Working on some designs, textures from cgtextures.com

First Post

2009-03-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

A small preview of the file I'm currently working on. Something to creep out the kids ;) I don't expect this to be finished soon, but I'm progressing faster with this one than usual. It's a nice departure from anime, which feels a bit forced lately...

Test

2009-03-24T07:32:00.001-07:00

Das ist ein Test.

Engelszorn

Work

Homepage

Working on my homepage

One of these days...

Welcome 2012

New chair

Heiligsblechlesakrifixnochmal

This is an expensive year

New Scanner

It's almost weekend!

The total Damage

Hyaena

More fixing

Continued

Still no new glasses

Updates

Almost there

New bed is awesome

Mission accomplished

Stressful Weekend ahead

New Art

Really do not know what to make of this

The Monster is tamed!

The Monster

The long wait is over

A historic Moment - twice!

The Annual Blogpost

Runny nose and painting

Going back to the roots

Finally results

Sleep, where are you..?

Too damn hot

Arachne

New artworks in the pipeline

New sketches, new Stuff

*Staubwolken wegblas*

WIP

oh noes

The Pain of being artistically challenged

Life strikes again!

Getting things back into working order is hard

Workload

Vacation

Watchmen

Watchmen

Geisha

Lunch Scribbles

First Post

Test

Staubwolken wegblas