RatCreature's Journal

One of the moments to wish for roommates: you find yourself tediously posing for some position, trying to catch yourself on autotimer with your crappy camera, and not just that, but actually half-naked because it turns out that if you photograph yourself wrapped in two layers, one of it a cozy, thick fleece, you can't easily deduce how the limb looks. I'd actually even take a tripod to put a camera on, because balancing said crappy camera on something a workable height facing in a direction where I can pose on doesn't really work all that well. Argh.

Now that the Christmas cookies have been around in stores for weeks, and the holiday exchange post frequency heats up on my dwircle/flist, it occurred to me that maybe I should think earlier about individualized holiday cards for my family, because last year I did none, and my online sort of holiday art was posted on the 28th.

However that reminded me of said holiday art, a Santa!Cthulhu, which I still find quite neat to look at, and I wondered whether anyone would think it fun to have it as a motif on one of these easy merchandise sites (like Zazzle or the like? I've never used any such site) that offer to create prints and cards and stuff. Hence this poll:



(ETA: I probably should have included some "I don't celebrate Christmas/don't care for some other reason." option, but then you'll just have to resist the lure of the ticky...)

In other holiday-related news: I got my Yuletart assignment, yay! (Though, omg, why aren't people more specific in their wishes than their favorite characters?? I wrote half an essay detailing my preferences, so long in fact that I had a shortened version in my comment and then linked a yuletart letter post!)

I just signed up for yuletart, and you should sign up too if you like drawing fanart.

Though took me something like two hours to edit my detailed request info so that it fit into the tiny 4300 character LJ comment, because I'd be happy to receive something in ten fandoms, so that comment length gave barely room to mention my favorite characters.

Anyway, it's an awesome art exchange. This will be the fourth time I'm participating and it has been running more smoothly every year. And I wouldn't want to miss it, even though I will just have to hope for the best wrt to the somewhat unpredictable family-related hazards to my schedule.

The yuletart gift for me was just posted, and it is a very cute Spock/Uhura piece with a tribble. So check it out.

The yuletart gift for me was just posted, and it's great! I got lovely Farscape art, showing Aeryn Sun, and you should look at it too.

Coloring the yuletart thing is taking forever. I've started yesterday and been at it for hours today, and I'm still not even half finished. How can this take so long? Granted, I'm layering for livelier colors so I have to go over every area many, many times, but still.

Also, I need to learn to sit more ergonomically or something. I have this unhealthy tendency to hunch over when I do details, because I'm very shortsighted and somehow it works better to look at details without glasses, but with my eyes that means the paper being less than two centimeters away from my nose tip. Obviously my back does not thank me for that.

On the bright side, I've finally gotten past this annoying creative block wrt to my recipient's requests, and have an idea that could look cool rather than just being a random, boring character drawing. On the downside, the deadline is looming really close (*meeep*), and my idea is somewhat complicated, and I'm not sure my skills are up to realizing it. Though because I have participated last year, I have until the seventh to finish my art rather than until tomorrow night, so I might manage it, and won't have to hide from the internet in shame.

Fandom: Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik
Characters/Pairings: Temeraire
Media used: pencil drawing, inked and colored with a Wacom tablet in GIMP
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This was done for the yuletart gift exchange for tylercat. I'd also like to thank brown_betty for helping me to come up with a motif, when my initial idea didn't work out, and for taking a look at the half-finished stages, spotting problems with the rocks and such.
Preview:
( the image and two high resolution details are behind the cut )

Yay, my Yuletart assignment has arrived! Also, the mods suggested participants do a public post to elaborate on their requests, though I feel I have gone on at quite some length there already, so there's bound to be some repetition, but I added some more detail on my preferences.

Dear Yuletart artist,

first, thank you for drawing me a picture in one of my fandoms. I'm not set on anything specific for any of the fandoms I listed, so if you have a great idea, just go for it.

( However, if you are looking for more guidance and info about my likes and dislikes... )

With all the posts about yuletide and some fans pimping the newly created yuletart (a fanart holiday exchange for all fandoms except HP), I've been thinking about signing up for the latter, but then I read the rules for the sign-up, which ask you for offering to draw in at least ten fandoms, if I understand the sign-up correctly.

The form is a bit oddly phrased, it asks for "At least 5 fandoms you would like to get art of:", "At least 5 fandoms you want to get art of the most:" and then "Any other fandoms you would be willing to give art of:", which is unfortunate, since first, it assumes that I'm able to offer in all fandoms which I'd like to receive, which has to be bad for matching too, because I'd be more than happy to get art in a dozen fairly popular live-action fandoms which I don't draw in, and second I have to come up with ten fandoms I can draw in, which is a high number. I mean, I think yuletide only asks for a minimum offer of three fandoms for people to write in, even if most people seem to offer more. At least that high number makes sense for better chances to match people, with the fandom choice being wide open like this, so I can understand it.

But I don't think I can reasonably offer that many. While I do have many fandoms, I don't draw in live-action fandoms, so those are all out. That leaves only my comic and book fandoms, and okay, the main universes of Marvel and DC comics I can do, and to fill this out a bit more I could maybe count Sandman as separate fandom, then there's Dresden Files, and maybe LOTR, though I never tried drawing that before. And I've drawn Muppets already at least once so I guess I could do that, though I'm not that familiar with all of the canon or the movies and such, but still that's only six. I don't do a manga-influenced style so that leaves out Avatar, too. Maybe Watership Down? I mean, I've never actually read the book, just watched the movie, though I've always wanted to, but I think I could read it and manage rabbits. Perhaps Temeraire, otoh I suspect I'd suck at drawing the dragons, and worse, period costumes and stuff would probably need a lot of research. I have no clue about that stuff and never even watched any of these Age of Sail movies, so offering that would probably lead to disappointing disasters as result.

Sigh.