New Digi-Art?

I like where this sketch/WIP is going so far, but I'm not entirely sure what to do from this point; at the moment, I can't draw buildings and my human anatomy is, for lack of a better word, blargh-ish.

If it means anything, the fellow in this sketch appeared previously in this post.  Good old Minister-General Halsev.  He doesn't always play video games.  In fact, he almost never plays video games; that just isn't what politicians do.

Various songs by Muse kept playing in the back of my head while I was scribbling this.  Halsev isn't a particularly oppressive guy and never directly partook in a revolution, so I'm not sure how Muse fits in.

I tried to embed the "F***ing f***ing f***ing little f***er" song, but the original music video had embedding prevented.  Of course, this video is the more likely to induce seizures, so it's all good. (kidding, kidding... though it does have flashing lights...)

The cat.
I think it's name will be Marie.  Or, considering the atmosphere of the sketch, maybe it should be Joey... Josef... but that could be silly and contraversial.  Charlie, Albert, and Erwin are reserved for other cats in Halsev's lifetime.

Well, I should work on my homework.

Happy spring :)

Tails to Tell

My family and I got back from Houston, Texas, yesterday.  We visited my sister and her family, then we all went to Brazos Bend State Park to see some cuddly ally-gators :)

This one seemed particularly sinister.  And big.

This one was kind of cute. Its tail is in the first photo :)







None of the alligators desired to converse with us, though my sister did toss some bread to a small-ish gator.  My nephews seemed at least somewhat interested, but preferred to run off-trail and make us run after them.  This here's my 4-year-old nephew with a giant, stegosaur-shaped strawberry he picked at the strawberry farm:



Yum yum!

 Those strawberries were good.  I taught those kids that cows say "woof," y'know.

But back to the reptiles.
Alligators are pretty awesome animals.  I'll just let Wavy explain it all:

Anyway, Texas was fun; I got to see my sister, her husband, (he keeps fishies!) and my nephews; I met a guy with the same hairstyle and style of dress as my AP Physics teacher; I saw some maned wolves at the Houston Zoo; and I got a bag of yummy green apple licorice.  You can't ask for much more than that! :)

Whadda-do, everybody! :D

Happy spring!

Deru Concept- I Needs Halps! D:

Well, there's the Deru v2.1 or so.

I'm having trouble designing this fictitious dog breed; it's not like a species, in which case I can go haywire and place it in a fitting environment afterwards, or just build it off an existing environment and go haywire from there.  Instead, it has to fit human necessity.

It's meant to be an "all-around," hardy, working dog breed. It lives primarily in northern regions and should be able to herd livestock, guard property, track game, and survive on its own, if necessary.
Ultimately, these dogs will become a feral variety in the northern provinces of Raleia that will occasionally interbreed with the local Raleian wolves, producing "wolves" with noticeably dog-like features.  A few of my characters are such wolfdogs, so I figured it would be best to design the dog before the characters.

I aimed for a sort of shepherd-spitz-malamute-pitbull-wolf-elkhound... thing... with a dash of the real-life Balto.  However, it turns out that AKC standards won't help at all; the best sled dogs are mixed breeds (like Balto! Except his owner wasn't a fan of his body type and castrated him. Oh, well.) and the majority of breed standard-meeting purebreds are near-useless in practice. On top of that, many of the breed histories are partially falsified. Not helpful at all, that.



If you can, in any way, critique or redline my deru, it would be incredibly helpful! :)

MEOW

I decided to watch Cats 101 today while eating my Eggo waffles.  Mmm... waffles...
Mumford & Sons was number one on the VH1 Top 20 Countdown this week, so to celebrate, here are some accordion-playing red pandas:

And an unrelated violin-toting raccoon:

It's only toting the violin; it can't possibly play it like that!  The bow isn't even touching the strings!
I'll have to look up these instruments.  My goal is to create the most awesome fantasy band ever, with the cutest (and furriest) musicians and the best instruments known to humankind.  Of course, I think accordians and banjos are among the best instruments.  I may be the pseudo-band's only fan.  They won't even have music, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

Moby Dick fanart may come about soon.  It's a great book to read if you have a lot of time and very little to do.

Maybe I'll make a design or two for my Zazzle shop to raise money for the Japan tsunami relief effort.  Half my family lives over there, (far from the directly affected areas, thankfully) so it only seems right to at least try and help out.

Happy spring!

The Dreariest Time of Year

The snow is almost completely gone; the dreariest time of year is soon to begin.

Spring?
I couldn't possibly be talking about spring!

But alas, I am speaking of spring!
Why is it so dreary?  It's rather simple, really:
The ground, the trees, the bushes, absolutely everything, save for the people, is bare.  At least winter has snow and incredible light; the sunlight is always yellower in winter.  Even in fall, the light is great, and after the leaves turn brown and fall, everything becomes a bright, gold/orange color.

But in spring?  All of those fallen leaves have turned black from the mud made by the melted snow, the green buds are few and far between, and the natural lighting is usually poor.  It's getting warmer, but the only major highlight of the season is the thunderstorms.

Additionally, it's usually the heaviest time of the school year in terms of homework.  I'm supposed to be doing a research project on Melville's Moby-Dick, but I'm only 100 pages into the book when I'm supposed to be halfway through.

On the plus side, it's a very good book.  If you're into nineteenth century novels, this one's quite shiny.  It even has a bit of humor every so often.  I think.  Neither my neighbor, who read the book last year for school, nor the student in my class who is reading it now will agree with me on that.
Either I'm terribly wrong or I've read too many works from the nineteenth century. (mostly in the form of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe; I love that book!)

Right.  Spring.
So it looks like I won't be able to go out and photograph much; I nearly went through November and January without picking up my camera.  The elk photograph above is from yesterday's visit to the elk enclosure.  It was nice to be using the camera again :)


Ah, forget it.
At least the warmer weather means I can go volunteering again!
And volunteering means photo time!  And warmer weather means migrating critters!
And a trip to Houston.  Heheh.  Farewell, dull, Illinois spring!  Helloooo, semi-exotic Texas!

On another note, I'm rather tempted to draw-paint a whale.  I like whales.
Supposedly, they taste pretty good, too.

House Drudal

House drudals are considered domesticated animals and can be interesting pets. However, they are also considered to be dangerous due to their aggressive behavior, particularly toward other pets, and should only be kept by experienced owners.


These animals have two sets of eyes; one that perceives visible light, and another that can sense infrared light. The drudal’s second pair of eyes increases the ability of its wild counterparts to hunt in caves and at night. They also make the house drudal an excellent mouser.

Height: 14-20”
Weight: 50-80 lbs

Wolf Calendar

It's an absolutely terrible time of year to make a calendar, but I believe this one is justified.

Nearly every other wolf calendar available is filled with photos from the free domain.  Many of those containing original photos contain wolfdogs and/or dogs.  A few actually have good, original photographs of actual wolves, but they're usually all of the same set of individuals, namely, the Wolf Park wolves, or the same weather, which gets rather dull after a while.

And I'm not just talking about Zazzle.  Professionally published calendars are the same.  I just got a daily wolf calendar in which every photo was shot at the same facility, so the calendar only has 6 or so different wolves.

This calendar is different, though; 12 full-color original photos from five different facilities, with 4 varieties of wolf (including the red wolf) and perhaps 10 different individuals.

And a bison calf.

It's currently available on Zazzle.