So check it out. A few pictures behind the cut...



<sub>There is orange coloration because of the lighting in the room at the time of the picture. What can I say? We love warm tones in our place. :]

So okay, I got a C on this as well. And what's frustrating, is that I actually FIXED what she said was wrong when she came around. These were her exact words: "Oh...I think that this looks good.........but.........the body could use more work. It needs to be...um....wider, right here. *points to the character's right arm* Other than that, it um...it's ok."

So I turned it in for critique. And she tells me that the proportions are off (didn't specify) and that's also what she wrote on my grade sheet.

*screams*

I'm starting to think that I'm getting c's because I'm not incredibly conversational with her. But come ON! How can you have a conversation with someone who stares at the ceiling and mutters "uuuuummmm...." all the time??? Can you do that?


Click the picture to see it bigger!

Ok, this was the first major project for my sculpture class. Done with steel and brass rods and some brazing. This was pretty fun and incredibly intimidating! Imagine lighting up a can of gas that burns a blue flame, which turns green as soon as it hits the flux and metal. Craziness, I tell ya! I totally thought I was going to burn something up, but I didn't. =]

This is in the gallery showing! I was put right at the entrance, front and center. That was rather flattering! Everyone loved it so much, so I guess I'm not surprised that they put it up front like that.


This is my most recent (completed) project for the drawing class. I'll be damned if she tells me that the proportions are off on this, because they are imaginary creatures.

I am incredibly proud of this however. I love how everything turned out with both sides of this book. <3</sub>




Excuse the watermarks please!

Thanks for looking! <3 <3

Oh noes! Seems an octopus has taken to liking business cards! D:

Ouch! I was just bitten by mosquitoes. Now my arm will be one big welt. Grah! >=[

Back on track.

So I've been working on a sculpture, which is an octopus card-holder. He will hold pens too, but I'm not sure if I want more than one tentacle to hold a pen or not. He's about 85% complete, with the suckers and more detailing added to the skin.

He will be painted after I bake him! I'll airbrush him a solid color, and then try to give him more definition using regular acrylics. Should be fun fun! <3

Anyways, here you go! Just click on the thumbnail, and you'll get to check out a bigger picture.



Isn't it coooool?? One of the few highlights in my creative life right now. Working on this has definitely made me feel better by zoning out.

So there's been a lot going on here lately. Namely, a crapload of homework, learning another language, a car wreck, being extra broke, and many many headaches.

If you happen to wonder where in the world I am, then now you know. I rarely look at myspace these days because I have been swamped with school and stress.

I am sculpting still. In fact, check it out:


I'm making this octopus business card holder for Kendrick. I've since made lots of progress on this, so I'll probably update pictures on it if people are interested.

Anyways, be good people!

Are you folks ready for a massive art update?? Ok, maybe it's not that massive, but it indeed has a lot of content, so those of you with a slower browser do view at your own risk. :D

A lot of this stuff is up on my deviantart account, so I'm sure a few of you have already seen most of these, which is cool (I'm even being lazy and copying descriptions from my submissions, hah!). However, you folks are seeing exclusives here today! I haven't uploaded some of this to my gallery, and probably never will. =3



Oh Astral, what are you up to now? D:

That's one serious hammer of JUSTICE! I'm not sure you want to be on the receiving end of that hurt.



I like to draw things for people on myspace when I get the chance. This was for a friend who's having some probs, and I plan to solve them with a swift smack across the forehead. What better way to remind her than a great picture of Astral swinging a hammer named Justice? =D

I've been having fun with the mini-requests, so if you have one, do please say so. =3

Drawn with, what else, OCv1. Text added in photoshop.

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I drew this up for (better known as Mike) for his birthday! Just a quick little doodle. He's pretty awesome, so I made him a smoking monkey. Haha!

That actually sounds pretty awful when you read it over. A smoking monkey...lord.

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My oh my!! If it isn't a semi-giant squid attacking my lamp! :O Whatever shall I doooo?!

I know what I'll do! I'll invite him for tea and biscuits, because that's what a real lady would do! =3

It's Squidges!! I gave this plushie to my middle sister Elizabeth for a grad present. She very much enjoyed it.

Squidges was created after I ran upon the Adopt A Squid website! I had to come up with a pattern for this guy off the top of my head, so that was a bit of a challenge. I am terribly proud of him, although there are MANY things I'd like to fix (such as over-stuffing his tentacles, and perhaps even adding suckers and claws).

---

Here's Bella!! She comes in at over 6 feet tall, and weighs about 5 pounds. My dog was enjoying the plushie. Enjoy Mel's "I conquered it!!" face in the second picture.

She's super soft, since the maroon fabric is a sort of velvet stuff, and the black is a gorgeous fleece I found on the cheap! This huge plushie only cost me about $30+ to make, considering that the stuffing was the most expensive part. :O

This plushie currently resides with my baby sister Addy at my parents'. She absolutely loved it, and drug the poor thing all over the house. ;___; Ah, oh well, all my effort didn't go to waste since the thing is getting plenty of love. =]

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So this was originally a little doodle in my sketchbook that I grew to love each time I passed it for a new page of drawing. So I completed it as much as I could stand, and tossed it on the computer and added some very quick color (in photoshop). I'd love to edit that color and make things a little tighter, but I also like the roughness of it. Yes indeed.

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Can you tell that I'm frustrated about something?

Some days, I feel like I've reached max capacity on the amount of negativity that I can possibly take. It's on those days that I feel like all the negative is radiating from me in a toxic fashion. So I decided to illustrate this phenomenon.

The little cloud is my little friend, the art block. You guys have no idea how hard it was to get this picture into line form. I almost threw my tablet across the room.

Ok, I'm going to stop ranting here and try to go to sleep.

I used opencanvas and photoshop (for final touches of glow) to create this mess.

---

Ah, so now begins the projects for summer semester I's class. Here's my favorite out of all of them that I did:


Woo boy, this was a doozy of a project! We had an even shorter amount of time to do this one than most. Good lords! This was the 3rd project.

So I'll explain a little:

The canvas is muslin fabric, onto which I dropped on some gesso (which smells awful D:). Then I painted on the bg, and all that good stuff. Props to my teacher for showing me how to blend acrylics! I'll have to play with this new ability more in the future.

The brain is drawn on with a permanent marker, and the chains are painted on top of that.

It's about 3 1/2 feet tall, and about 2 feet wide. Fun fun!

What does it mean?

Well, the meaning is pretty easy to pick up on. If you don't get it, do ask, and I'll explain more, if there's more to explain.

That is the side of my head with exaggerated hair (of course). I hate how my chin looks now. :( Time to loose some face weight!

Um...big inspiration music for this one was Bjork's "Wanderlust", and Incubus' "Dig". Plus a whole bunch of Royksopp and Hirasawa. Mmmmm!

Oh!! This painting got a "best in class" rating! Let's hope I can keep that kind of reputation next semester!

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Here's the first project for the class.

This project was entirely rushed, hence its sloppy appearance. We were given 5 days (one of which I was terribly ill) to do this, and of course I had to go and shoot for the stars. Which left me absolutely no time to do everything that I wanted, and forced me into a more rushed state.

It is not advisable to sit down and cut details into paper while planning on painting an entire canvas, adding live foliage (I originally planned on adding actual plants, but bailed on that as soon as I figured stuff would start wilting and falling apart), hot glue-ing walmart-bought plastic plants, and fighting with acrylic paint.

It's just not. Never do it.

At first, I didn't like this at all. My heart was in it at the beginning, but I just slowly fizzed on it, because of how much stress this brought me. The teacher literally piled on work for us to do while doing this project, and my being sick (freaking STILL) isn't helping this any.






Ok, so I'm going to have to do a part II for this art post. Adding the rest will just be entirely too much for one post. =S

    Hmm...perhaps I should become more involved in the art scene here on myspace. But then, the times I've browsed the art forums, it was like clawing my eyes out with trimmed nails.

So, a background. I want to figure out how to overhall the entire page so that the layout is completely different. I mean, you wouldn't even know that my page was a myspace one.

Check it out! I've been working on a website, and it's juuuust about finished. All that's left is adding all content and making sure links work. I'll make sure to keep you all updated.

I'm going to post up the few journals that I have written on my ankle on livejournal. You folks won't get to see the livejournal, but I'll be kind and let you see the entries here in their entirety. Some of the pictures are very graphic! So please keep that in mind as you scroll down through them.

Thanks, and have fun!

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January 15, 2007Broken to Pieces
Guess what guys? I broke my ankle this morning on, you guessed it, the ice. =[ It was so stupid too, because I'm not one to fall on ice, since I used to have to walk on the stuff ALL the time when I lived in Amarillo.

So I stepped down off the curb to go pour some hot water on my car to de-ice it, and *SLIP*! My foot rolled under me, and I felt two quick pops. My ankle was instantly swollen, and my foot dangled from my leg all awkward like. Not only that, but I felt the clicking and grinding of the bones.

A neighbor saw what happened, and helped Kendrick walk me inside. I thought I was going to vomit at this point, because it hurt so much and the bone movement was absolutely grotesque. We called our friend Summer, and she graciously took me to the doc, and then later to the orthopedic surgeon. I owe her so much for that! <3

So the resulting damage is this:

Those arrows? That's where the breaks are. On the tibia, the curve of the bottom of it, right before the talus, it's been snapped off. On my fibula, right there at the talus, it's been broken in two.

Fun fun.

=[

Yep, I'll be in surgery Wednesday morning. The doc is going to put two metal plates in my leg! Oh noes! It'll be complete with screws and everything, and I'll have to stay in the hospital for 2 days after the surgery.

But you know what guys? I am so scared. So incredibly scared. =[ I've never had any kind of surgery, and I'm just plain terrified of getting sick from the painkillers or the surgery itself. I know I'm just overreacting, but still. =[


I actually haven't taken any painkillers since this morning when it first happened. It's ok just being still, so I'm not going to fill that prescription for hydrocodone. Anything with codine in it is what my mom gets violently ill too, so I'm a bit afraid to take it. Oh well, I'm feeling ok now, so yay (I guess).

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January 19, 2007
I'm Hoooooooome!!
Oh thank goodness!!

*passes out on the couch*

I'm so happy to be back, you guys have no idea! The surgery went pretty well. I'm surprised! I'm also thankful to know that I'm not allergic to codine like my mom. Whew! Which means I wasn't vomiting my brains everywhere.

I got to see the x-rays of my now fixed bones, and lemme tell ya...wow! =O  It looks pretty gross to see plates and screws all up in your leg, but hey...if that's what it takes, then I'm cool with it. =]

I had a few cool nurses. One of them loved how I kept the room all cold. She was fun, so yay! And then another that was really cool and..yeah, just all around good times. =] I had one nurse that was trying to kill me by putting a REALLY cold antibiotic drip straight into my damn hand. Holy jeez guys...there's nothing more painful than freezing liquids going straight into your blood vessels. =[

Ok, so I'm going to relax for a bit, and I'll upload pictures of my drains later! They were so nastey! But the doc came and ripped those out yesterday morning, and I almost punched him. >=[ That hurt something FIERCE!!

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January 20, 2007
The Aftermath!
Allrighty! Here's a few pictures from the hospital!

<sub>Note: If you're easily squicked by blood, please don't look under the cut. There are only two pictures of blood, but I really don't want to hear complaints about my not warning you. So here's your warning! The pictures aren't bad, I promise.



Apparently, my dad was having a few laughs.


...at me. >=|

I didn't feel good at all right here! After they wheeled me out of recovery, I had to close my eyes to keep from getting really dizzy on the way down the hallways. For the most part though, I fell asleep during the trip! But lemme tell you, it was pretty damn strange being in recovery. There was a guy next to me that got a new lung, and the girl to my right was itchy from that stuff they scrub on you for sanitation. An older lady to my far left was vomiting, and I was shaking up a storm. But the nice nurse gave me some magical juices that stopped the shaking almost instantly. I was all floaty and heavily sleepy after that though.

But my dad and Kendrick where just giggling it up at my hair being everywhere. I do remember turning my head everywhere trying to look at what was going on when I was in recovery. That didn't work out too well, because as soon as I turned my head to look, I was back out. It's interesting that I remember so clearly what happened with the other people though. O_o

A weird thing that I very clearly remember, was that my mouth, and the stuff I coughed up, tasted like sweet plastic. I'm sure it was from the tube they jammed down my throat at some point, but that was a pretty tastey flavor to wake up to! =D


Oh snap!! Here's the grossness!! Ok, so maybe drains aren't that gross, but it really did freak my dad out! Especially when they came to clean them out. I'll talk more on that under the second drain picture!


Mmmm, look at that close-up goodness! I specifically remember telling Kendrick to take pictures, because this is going to be cool! Ok, so the nurses had to clean these out every so often, and that HURT! Oh good LORD that hurt! They had to open them up and squeeze out the fun, and that would actually force some of the remaining blood and whatnot back into my foot! I'm actually getting chills thinking about this...

Woo..had to take a minute there. That streaky-ness you see on my leg is a bit of that yellow stuff left over. It was actually really hard to see it on my leg, but after a while, I really saw it. Fun stuff! My toes were significantly yellow though. I stared at them for a long time wednesday afternoon. That was odd...

Oh! I almost forgot to talk about this! Ok ok, so...my wonderful doctor came in to check on me thursday morning. He looked at my foot quickly and made me wiggle my toes, then went about looking around the room for paper towels. I pointed him in the right direction, and he grabs some and washes his hands. He strolls over to me and tells me pretty casually that he's going to pull out those drains. I remember this moment, more than I ever want to.

"Ok, this is going to sting a little. Are you ready?"

Before I could answer, this biatch is yanking the things out of my leg!!! Oh my god. I can't describe to you just how much pain this brought to my life. My leg stings now thinking about it. And it was endless!! I'm guessing that they had these bitches strung about 4 to 5 inches deep into my damn leg. Wow, this is still pretty upsetting. =[


Ok, last picture! This is the aftermath, which doesn't look much different than the other picture of my leg. I was actually pretty disappointed that my leg wasn't open and bloody for public view. I had made up this whole imaginary scene of my leg being hung by harness, and that you could see the screws poking through my skin. Tsk..what a shame. Such a bland bit of aftermath. But I'm pretty optimistic that my leg will not disappoint on Monday when I am to have this splint cut off. =D It'll be all kinds of nasty fun!


And here's the doctor you should all love! I almost decked him when he pulled out those drains. I know that I cussed at him and punched the bed! Haha! That's embarassing, but good gravy bob that hurt! He's been excellent though, and I can't thank him enough for the great work he's done with my bones! <3

So if you're in need of some orthopedic surgery, give Dr. Bernie McCaskill a call!</sub>

That's all for now folks!!

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January 22, 2007
The Beast has been Revealed!!
Ok!! I'm back from my morning appointment! This follow up involved the nurses taking of the splint and wrappings. I told the nurse that this was like unwrapping the best christmas present ever! Nothing intrigued me more than what the wounds looked

Oh man.


Ooooooh man!

Are you guys ready for a bit of stapled flesh fun? Only two pictures of the actual sutures under the cut, so look at your own risk!



<sub>So here I am, looking awesomely chubby in the overly earth-toned doc's office. I *hate* those tables that they make you sit on! That paper is beyond irritating. Ah, oh well.


Oooh the suspense! I had this nurse laughing, because I told her how this was like opening the best and longest christmas present ever! It took her quite a while to get all that junk cut off, but boy the payoff was grand!

You can see a bit of the weird tape that they put over the cuts. It was this yellow stuff, and it came off surprisingly easy! No pain at all! =]


And there she is folks! There's the beast of an ankle! This is the left side of my ankle, and it now houses 12 staples!!! Oh gosh!

Ouchy ouchy ouch!!


And here's the right side of my ankle. As you can see on the picture, I circled the very visable hole that used to hold my drain tube! You can't really see the one on the left side, so I didn't circle it. That's incredible though! This means I was right on the length. The doc would have had to strung that drain in at least a good portion of the actual cut, and then strung the rest of it out through these openings about an inch up. Which leaves room for about 3-4 inches of tubing actually inside of my leg!!

=[

But yeah, this side of my ankle holds 10 staples in it. Goodness me my foot looked awful too! It was all yellow from that stuff they put all over my leg, and it was swollen. The swelling has my foot about 2 times its original size! D= It looks all squishy and gross! But now I have room to move my toes, so that makes me happy. =]</sub>

I go back to see McCaskill on monday to have the staples out, and I'm not looking forward to that at all. The nurse claims that it's painless, but I'm not willing to believe that right now. They put a boot on my leg, and that thing is ridiculously heavy! I could barely keep it up while I was walking on crutches. =[ I had to take it off a little while ago because of the bars. They were actually putting pressure right on the staples!!! That wasn't pleasent! =[

Oh! The doc also told me that I can keep the boot off if I'm not outside, so that means that my leg can breath for a change. I've got the boot off now, and I've been massaging my calf to help it ease up a bit. Boy that feels good!

Ok, enough from me today! I'll update on the ankle situation again monday after the staples are out. =]

So tell me, oh mysterious reader, about the ex-partner(s) that you have ran into on this place. I ask, because I'm having a ball finding old ex boyfriends on here. There's some good memories that come up, and some bad. But of course, that's in everything.

I'm going to doodle something....any ideas?

Does anybody even read this thing? Haha!

Starting anew is always frustrating AND fun. Ok, maybe not fun, but frustrating as all getout. School started for me today, aaaand it's whatever. I'm not exactly the most thrilled person in the world, but hey...it's what I've got to do.

So this semester, I'm taking:
American Literature, Classical Mythology (hour filler, but should serve as a muse of sorts), Intermediate Swimming (I'm a rather successful fish!), US Government (can you tell that I've been avoiding those core classes?), and Art Appreciation.

=[

This is going to be a long semester! Haha! But the swimming will keep my mind active, along with (hopefully) the mythology class.

Just a few more classes this semester, and I'll be headlong into some serious art instruction. I can NOT wait until the clay, painting, and computer illustration classes! I CAN wait on taking the horrible typography and the business-related classes that have to do with graphic design.

Can you tell that I'm really not too fond of graphic design? But! I'll grab that hybrid degree and get my ass a job downtown, printing and designing napkins and gaudy commercials and pop up ads for large corporations in order to make ends meet for a while.

And then I shall take over the world with my concepts and sculpture! >=D Primarily sculpture, but concept design has always tugged at my heart strings. <3

Here's a random picture to give you all the warm fuzzies on this otherwise bland day:

I drew the majority of this while hanging out with Kendrick when he was working on a saturday. Colored it up at home though. Used Opencanvas version 1 (the best version, imo).

Wanna see some art o' mine? Good! You're in the right place. =]

First up, sculpture! I'm aaall about the hands-on currently, and I plan on persuing this hobby as a possible career.

So today, you'll get to see a few of my prized works! <3


This was my first "serious" sculpt, if you will. I love this little guy! He holds such a special place in my heart, simply because of how successful this attempt at sculpture was. =] He's based off of a doodle that turned into an actual illustration that you can view HERE.


This little guy here is named Draconis. This started out as a commissioned sculpt, but I ended up just sending him off as a present. Woo, this one was serious business in the learning department. I learned a whooole lot about construction and other sculpting whatnots with this guy. And he's pretty damn big too! He was at/almost 9" tall, and weighed about 3-4 pounds! D=


And here's Monchii! Quite the scary little bugger! He's a combo sculpture/plushie that I just finished working on. Man was this ever time consuming. I also only posted the preview picture, because the full view on my Deviantart account is so much more worth looking at. I promise! ;]