The best laid plans...

So, I am still super busy with stuff, however, tomorrow looks like it'll be a busy day doing fun things. I believe the plan is to go out to the cinema and either watch Life of Pi or Seven Psychopaths. I haven't seen the Hobbit yet, but I am saving that for the new year. If anyone is interested I will be happy to rant a bit about whichever film we see. I also have to act like an adult for a while tomorrow, but hopefully that'll pass quickly.

Chill out plans are to play Audiosurf for the first time in a good while. I got the soundtrack to FTL for Christmas and I think it would play nicely through Audiosurf. Might also be a good shout to try some Lightguides on that, or the Bastion soundtrack. I'm also going to try and start a few projects I've been planning for a while, which also means learning some more code, so I'll have to look over my Gishwhes stuff from when I recoded Pacman. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

I've not drawn or painted anything today, but I'll post another happy dino for you all, since the last one I posted seemed to go down well, and because I haven't posted something cute in a while. I've just realised in saying that, I've not posted anything about the Mortal Kombat film this month either! If my cinema plans fall through tomorrow, you know what I'll be watching instead. So please enjoy this complimentary triceratops:

And thanks, as always, for reading! If you have anything you think I should be talking about, you can tweet me or leave a comment below. 

A late festive message.

Hi folks, sorry for the radio silence lately, December's been a month of family birthdays (the latest one was on Christmas eve...), so I'm late in sending all of you my Christmas wishes. I hope you all had a great day, or at the very least a tolerable one. Today- at about half nine in the evening- I decided to make the festive image below to share with everyone.

I swear we get the strangest carollers. They kept getting the words to "The Christmas Song" wrong. At least the wee one was cute! Lookit his wee mittens! This is the second thing I've painted in about 4 years, and I'm pretty pleased with the colouring. The first thing I painted in 4 years was my first piece of fanart of an actual person, and now I'm not sure what to do with it. It looks alright, the colours are a bit off but the shading makes up for it. I'm trying to decide if it's creepy to send it to them, or creepier to hold onto it.

Please let me know what you think of the painting above, like I said it's been a while since I picked up a brush and any feedback or criticisms are welcome. I may write out the Dalek version of "The Christmas Song" if I can figure out something for all 4 verses. The Daleks are a race of bad guys from Doctor Who, for folks that perhaps don't know, although they are pretty iconic. I had planned to tweet the picture before midnight passed but twitter had a hissy fit and wouldn't let me.
Hope you're all doing well, leave a comment if you want to and as always, thanks for reading!

I didn't expect zombies.

I've just spent most of today reading through a fairly interesting book written by Mark Hodder. "The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man" I guess comes under alternate history, with hints of steampunk and horror (hence my zombie title), but is classed under Science Fiction. The 'Clockwork Man' is actually the second book in a series that follows Kings agent Sir Richard Burton and his accomplice Algernon Swinburne, and their Watson and Holmes type roles in 19th century England. Plenty of historical names are dropped, such as Florence Nightingale and Charles Babbage, as parodied characters and the appendix at the end of the book even tells you a bit about what the actual people got up to in their time. The book has time travel, supernatural elements, a bloody good mystery and such a good twist in the story, I really enjoyed it. (It's the whole history nerd thing flaring up in me)

         The characters are wonderfully complex and fallable, for example, Burton's assistant Swinburne is boarding on alcoholism and seems to get worse as the story continues. Some characters are downright grotesque, such as the claimant in the 'Tichborne Affair', which is the central plot line throughout the story. Even little details, like the messenger parakeets that insult everyone they come across, or the description of the clockwork man, just add to the overall story for me. Hodder describes a Victorian era London with Eugenically 'enhanced' insects and plants that act like machinery, or are used by Technologists and combined with steam powered machines. He describes this Victorian era London being thrown into disarray and rioting, then plagued with some very polite zombies and smogged by wraiths, and he describes it very well.

         I loved reading this book and getting lost in the world it created. I'm a bit sorry I didn't start with the first book in this series, "Spring Heeled Jack", but I know it's something I'll read in the future. The book appealed to me on a number of different levels- steampunk, alt. history, and genetic experiments- and did it with humour and a compelling story. I have to quote a review on the book cover and say that it is, "steam opera at it's finest." So if you like a good mystery, or a little bit of the strange and the wonderful, I'd suggest you check out the 'Burton & Swinburne' series by Mark Hodder, it's certainly a series of books I'll be keeping my eye on.

If you've read it, or just want to suggest good books, I'm happy to accept any suggestions/criticisms, even if I don't have much time to read these days. You can leave a comment below or tweet me. Thanks for reading!

Anatomy practice

I go through weird phases of drawing skulls, or skeletons. I feel it helps with learning proportions or just as a way to come up with ideas. It can be helpful for movement too, knowing that an arm can't really bend in a particular way. I should've maybe asked for an anatomy book this Christmas but I'll check the library first.

The picture above is of a 3000 year old turtle skeleton, that measures 11 feet long by 7 feet wide. I found the original image on imgur and fell in love with it dino-like feel. I really like the way the skeleton's been posed, the way it looks like it's moving towards you. I'm still not good at defining the digits though, I'll try working on that over the next week or so.

If you have any comments or suggestions of things for me to draw, please feel free to leave a comment below or you can always send me a tweet. Thanks for reading!

Pokemon Picture!

Hey everyone, I was asked to draw a picture of a Sandshrew from pokemon in the style of my Myr and my Cthulhu drawings for Mack. This is the finished drawing:

It looks like a Clanger a wee bit, and Clangers are awesome, therefore Sandshrew is the best pokemon. If you don't know what a Clanger is, google it and try to find some old episodes of the Clangers. I do quite like the armour of Sandshrew and I wanted to effect to look like it was actually plated like an Armadillo. I wish I could've gotten better shading on the eye, but that's what practice is for.

I'll probably be drawing a fair bit over the next couple of days. I'm trying to draw or write a little each day especially since I've been super busy cause it's a great way to just take a break and chill without getting sucked into a game. I haven't gamed in what feels like a month (probably more like a week) but I'm hoping I can get Audiosurf working for a bit, that's not too intense. If you have any drawing requests please feel free to get in touch, I'll see what I can do. If you have any comments you can leave them below or get in touch with me over twitter. Thanks for reading!

Winter Sleep- Dreams

I stumbled across this album really late last night and I'm kind of in two minds about it. "Dreams" written by James Webster under the name "Winter Sleep", not to be confused with the Canadian indie band with the same name, is almost surreal in places. I'd even go as far to say that the third track 'Small Dreams' is bordering on being disturbing, but I can put that down to the strange backing track of laughter that runs through the song. Other tracks, such as 'Forest Fountains', are wonderfully upbeat, and the whole album flits between unsettling moods and positively dreamlike feelings, much like dreams themselves.

            It was an odd album to stumble across late at night, but it does make great music to have on when you're trying to write or draw. Finding it on the site where I get most of my chiptunes, Pause, made it an odd find. And it's not exactly what I'd call easy listening, but I am enjoying having it on in the background when I work. It's the only work by Winter Sleep that I can find but I think it's something I'll keep going back to listen to. Have a listen for yourself here, and please let me know what you think. It's a weird album so your opinions on it are more than welcome. I have a tendancy to like strange music, so if this is just me being weird then I'm fine with that. Feel free to leave a comment below or to get in touch through my twitter, and as always, thanks for reading.

Cthulhu art

Hi guys, I'm back from my week long break and I've brought Cthulhu with me! Well specifically this piece of fan art of Zeboyd games "Cthulhu Saves the World" titular hero. People seemed to like my Myr drawing so I thought I'd try that style again, and just to show you the difference between my pen and pencil shading.

The pencil shaded version.

And the pen shaded version.

Sorry the pictures look like balls, they were both taken on my phone and the camera on that is rubbish. I've been away from home a fair bit over the last week and that makes it hard to take photos of the stuff I've been drawing. Mostly over the past week I've been writing, fixing up a small short story I'd written and starting another that looks like it's going to be a good bit longer. I'm hoping to get a few more drawings done over the next few days and finish a couple of things I got planned for here. Until then, please let me know what picture you prefer, leave any feedback you have either down below in the comments or you can always tweet me. Sorry I was away for so long, and, as always, thanks for reading!

Ps. I know the pen version shows up much clearer, it's purely because of the camera. I'll probably end up using the pen version for something so you might see it again someday.

Research and distraction

Today I have had the attention span of a gnat with A.D.H.D. So naturally this makes it the prefect day to focus on research for some upcoming projects I want to work on. Double this with fact that I meant to spend a lot of today looking at 1920's fashion, it wasn't the best of days. I'm not into looking at clothes I'm afraid, which is tricky when you need to think about costume design. The problem is that when I become unfocused I get ideas and I forget what to do with them. Today I've come up with at least three painting ideas that I want to try and no clue about what to actually do with them.

Fortunately, an idea I've been stalled on may have been given a helping little push today. I was kindly given a book that has made me realise how much work is going to have to go into this project. I'm still really excited about it, but there's a part of me that's beginning to panic. Honestly I think part of me mostly panics because I'll be looking at coding again, and I am terrible at coding. The last time I did it was through the Gishwhes thing and that was a fairly simplistic, and slightly wonky, recode of pacman. This is going to be much bigger. However, with this little nudge of inspiration I may have found a place to start planning the behind the scenes stuff that is difficult and a ton of work. But I have a plan, and that's something right?

I also keep thinking of wee things that I'd like to write, but when I try to focus on something in particular it spirals into novellas and huge stories that I'd never finish properly. I want to write a few stories that are maybe a page or two long. Just to get the practice in. Maybe someday I'll actually do all the things I get ideas of.

In the meantime, I have spent most of today listening to this, and making lists. Tomorrow is a day without internet for me, so there won't be a blog post. But I promise the one on Sunday will actually have purpose to it! I think I'll be spending the rest of tonight sketching or doing a bit more research. But I'll see you all next on Sunday. Thanks for reading!

Back on Batman's legs

Remember when I was getting frustrated at Batman's legs? Well I think I've fixed them, and if I haven't well tough, they're inked now and all I can do is colour them. So below is a snippet of the picture that was giving me so much batrage. I've still to finish inking his opponents face, but when that's done I'm going to try digitally colouring it. The legs don't look too bad. And I never did come to a conclusion on whether or not his legs were actually sexy...

This will be the background to my twitter when it's done (hopefully, unless I get distracted and draw more dinosaurs. I might just draw dinosaurs forever.) and I'll move on to planning a background for here. The background for here will probably have something to do with sea life  as wunderpus photogenicus is a genus of octopus and where I got wunderpuss from.

I'll possibly not be updating as much as I normally do this month just because December is really busy for me- and, well, for everyone- and because I can't stop watching livestreams. I keep finding things to watch. And my laptop is just crashing daily now, poor thing.

Anyway! (I'm rambling, sorry) I'll try to keep on top of my posts and if there's anything you'd like to see me ramble on about or attempt to draw, leave a comment, I might try it. And I'll keep working to try and make this place look a bit prettier. Thanks for reading!

Trying something new

What do you guys think of this-

This is my first attempt at trying to shade with a pen. The picture is a piece of fanart of a Myr from Magic the Gathering. It was based off a wallpaper available from the Wizards website of a Silver Myr drawn by Kev Walker.

            The Myr were always my favourite race from the MtG lore, despite me getting into the game just as the set they were in fell off. I was gutted. In Magic, the cards that you play with gets updated every year, and if you're playing at a competition, unless it states otherwise, you can't play with any of the outdated sets of cards. I still love these guys though, they're the closest things to golems that I can imagine. These kinda of cards are either rare or expensive to buy now, but I have a few with some Myr. I'd ideally have an Myr based deck, but after looking into it, it doesn't seem possible for me.

I like how this turned out, although I still see things I want to fix. If you have any opinions or feedback on the drawing above I'd really like to hear it. Like I said, it's the first time I've tried shading like this, I'm very used to pencil shading, so any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks for reading!

A ramble of a blog post.

Hello, this is a going to be a kind of strange blogpost with no real aim or point because I don't really feel like I have one today. Today's been a great day for having ideas. It would help if I actually sat down and try working on these things but I have a reputation as a lazy bum to uphold. It's also been a good day for discussing ideas as I got to see Jim (from the Droids blog! remember that?) and he's the dude that listens to my inane ramblings. Even though it was mostly writing projects we talked about I got some great ideas for drawings too.

 Speaking of drawings, what do you think of this. I drew this about a year ago, and it's very much in the style I engrave in.

I like bats, I've always found them to be interesting animals but then again I was very young when I first saw them. It was in a friends backyard, they lived a bit north of Stirling if I remember correctly, and there were tons of bats that came out at dusk and ate all the midgies and other tiny flying things in their backyard. I thought it was amazing, these tiny, near silent hunters. I should see if there's any zoos or sanctuaries that house any in my area. It's been a while since I used this style, even in my engravings, but it might find it's way into some things my brain is telling me to do.

Also, is sharing my stories something that you guys and gals might be interested in? I'm a beginner writer, but getting feedback through here could help me shape my writing. I don't have many finished stories, but if folk were interested I'd be happy to share them. Thanks for putting up with the odd post today guys, I'm gonna go watch a Dishonored playthrough I'm getting into and make lists for tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

More band photos

Hi, I wanted to share some more band photography I've done on here. In the process I've found that I'm missing a ton of photographs from my old laptop, so I'm going to have to try and find them again and get them on this machine. It was disappointing not to have the exact photos that I wanted to share, but the ones I'm sharing I'm still quite proud of.

The photo above is of Anthony Green, the singer with Circa Survive. This is from a gig they played at King Tuts in Glasgow. I quite like the lighting, although normally I really dislike that kind of lens flair, I think it works alright with Anthony's pose and with him facing away from the camera.

And this photo is of English band Enjoy Destroy, and was again taken in King Tuts! The two gigs were very different, while Circa was packed, Enjoy Destroy's gig was painfully undersold, despite both bands putting on great shows. And again, this is another photo where I'm chuffed with how the picture turned out, even though I'm not really a fan of black and white photography. To me, black and white photos have their place in more arty photography, wedding albums, and modelling glamour type shots. To me it usually give a bleak and stark impression, especially in landscapes. But in saying that I think it works really well in the picture above.

Maybe I'm just strange, but I think we'd figured that out already. If you have any comments about the photographs, maybe your opinions on black and white differ from mine, please feel free to leave them below or tweet me any feedback. I hope you like the photos. Thanks for reading!