End of an Era

So, today I got the message that I will no longer be able to attend the lovely school I went to, which was pretty devastating to me. I'm dearly going to miss all of my classmates, and the teachers as well.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, I'll have to take my time and orientate myself, see what I want to do with my life and wether I want to continue studying something artistic, perhaps illustration, or if I want to go do something completely different like pedagogy or something to do with plants - cultivation, education, selling, whatever. I don't know.

Where-ever I end up, I hope it's eventually something I'm happy with. But now I have to get back to crying some more, stuffing my face with comfort foods, comforting purchases, and sleeping.

So. Much. Sleeping.

Oh, and uhm, ol' classmates?

I'm watching you!

("Boys, girls... I'm going to miss you so! But ... I'm watching you!)

Caffeine Comics

Oh my poor neighbour, she endures a lot ;) Having to put up with my allnighters, the moodswings caused by such allnighters, and my pretty extreme caffeine intake after such allnighters.

So, of course, I dedicated some silly little comics to it, as I was working on something to start the ringbinder with that's been assigned for this class. I wanted something silly and fun, without making it all too hard on myself. I have the tendency to be extremely hard on myself - everything has to be perfect, anatomy has to be perfect, it MUST be PERFECT or I will have FAILED. And that's exactly the type of thinking that has gotten me into such a massive amount of trouble at school. I might be kicked off of school for being a self-blocking perfectionist who gets into such panicked breakdowns she can't put her brush to the paper without worrying about how ugly it will probably look.

Inhaaaaale.
Exhaaaaale.
Stay calm.
Stay positive

Well then, have a look at some of the things I've been tinkering around with. This is a fun way of drawing for me, very relaxed, and I get far less worried about Super Perfection while drawing this way. I'm currently tinkering with how to show surroundings in this art style, so you'll be seeing some of that as well. But for now, facial studies and just random fun :D

"Long live daylies! (And coffee)"
"Did you pull an all-nighter again?"
"When I have to choose between getting my propadeutic diploma and sleeping, the choice is easily made."

"Go to sleep."
"Sleep!"

Oh dear, more Dutch! Sorry lovelies. Poor disturbed neighbourlady asks "WHY?" after a tiny cup of espresso, I cry "I want coffee!", and neighbourlady celebrates that the coffee has worn off in the bottomright corner.

All ye Italians. Never give me genuine espresso. Ever. Thank you.

And of course, you can also follow my neighbour's antics on her very own blog, Badly Drawn Neptune.

Stay tuned, there's far more updates coming ;)

Linoprint Cover

Remember the lino prints from the previous post? Well, we had to use those to turn into a Comic Magazine cover. In Photoshop. Oh Photoshop, we're GREAT friends, aren't we?

; __ ;

Regardless, a cover had to be made and thus a cover I made. Dear LORD is it a random one, with a random name and a random headline. I don't really ....follow Batman lore and must confess I've never read any of the comics quite seriously, so I'm not really 'up to date' when it comes to that villain. So I'm nooooot really interested in people explaining to me what would be canon for this particular villain, I just thought the name went well with the Magazine's title.

That and it was about 3.20 AM when I finished this. Might have influenced my ability to come up with Good Stuff slightly...

I need a LOT of Photoshop practice. Yes.

DIY Lino Printing

Or rather, cuttingmat printing. Linoleum is expensive, I'm a poor student, and the ACTION cuttingmats are so weak they're great for linocutting C: After a long time of cussing and swearing at the cut itself, I've fallen back in love with the printing. It's quite unpredictable when doing it at home without a press - this was all printed on my floor, with a mixture of ink, water and acrylic paint. It was a very interesting experiment, and I'd actually love to do this again sometime. I think I've got the hang of it.

Remember the Cardboard Robots I had to make for class? We had to make a lino print inspired by them, and I took my big galopping beastie as my inspiration. I wanted to take a more abstract approach, something I don't do quite often, as the technique is very suitable for thsi approach. So, let's go!

First off, the angle I took my inspiration from. Just a random photo I took of my beastie to loosely base my lino upon:

And then it's time for printing! For these prints I mixed together water, ink and blue and red acrylic paint. It was somewhat tricky to find the right consistency to keep the paper from sticking (as is what happened in the third print), but it was a fun process overall.

The textures the hand-printing caused on the paper is very interesting! I really think I'm going to try using this technique more - I'm going to be looking for excuses to do this for class! Click on the images to enlarge the photos, so you can see the lovely textures. Even the mishap of the paper sticking in the third print caused a very interesting visual effect.

And that's it, for now! You can be certain you'll be seeing more of this technique in the future, it's grown on me! Quick, gimme an excuse to do it more! See you all soon!

LP Photoshoot

So, today I had a photoshoot with Ryanne from Cats and Clouds for an important assignment for school. It's one of three courses I hadn't finished last year, but now I only have to puzzle together the LP cover and finish a stupid Indesign assignment tomorrow, and those coarses will all be done C: It's gonna take a lot of coffee, determination and No Sleep, but I'll come out triumphant! I just have to! >:C

But in the meantime, have a few nice photos from the photoshoot. Ryanne is a lot of fun to work with, very pretty ^^ Now if only she loved herself a little more ;) YOU ARE A PRETTY LADY, stop denying it D<

She's pretty, ain't she? |3 I had a lot of fun with this, and I hope she did as well ^^ She was a lovely model to work with C: AGAINZ!

24 Hour Comic Day

So, long, very long overdue, my ...creation from the 24 Hour Comic Day. It was my second time attending, and as foretold, the second time was far less exhausting. I was very awake and alert through most of the event, whereas last year I'd actually fallen asleep a few times and was very exhausted and felt quite sick.

I'm actually quite happy with how this turned out. Unfortunately, it's in Dutch, but I might translate it for the non-dutch readers later. It's just ...a hassle translating sometimes, but as a devoted fan of my First Language, I just like making comics in Dutch.

But don't worry, the translated version should eventually be created. I just ..don't quite know when, yet. So until then, just look at the pictures 8D The comic doesn't make sense, anyway, and fortunately isn't -that- text heavy.

Well then, that was it! The product of drawing a comic for nearly 24 hours straight, with the occasional food/refreshment break. My joints and back hated me for it, but it was a great experience anyway. It doesn't matter wether or not I'll still be allowed to attend school next year, I know that at least I'll be returning to the 24 Hour Comic Day!