The Scrawler in Descent by *freakdearts on deviantART

just a sketch of Wren from my sketchbook that I was keeping over the semester... I really like the way the ink came out and it was just a ballpoint... think of what I could do with my crow quills


The Scrawler, Wren Melbourne, and "Lalaland" are (c) to me

Zane's expressions by *freakdearts on deviantART


well this is about three months worth of effort from my moleskin compiled into one file for your enjoyment...

I kind of figured that Zane should be a sort of childish but aloof and gloomy character since he's been locked up in "The Room" for so long so he'll have these sort of spells of melancholy followed by outbursts of random happyness... don't ask me how I'm going to translate this into a comic where he's only got a few lines but it's important to have all your homework done before you do something as ambitious as I'm planning... I just want to get it right the first time so I don't have to go into redux 

any way Zane and "The Room" (c) to me and the meme is (c) to Nancy Lorenz, bless her soul...

The Seventh Friend

the Seventh Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

The Sixth Friend

The Sixth Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

The Fifth Friend

The Fifth Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

Just some Japanese thoughts...

I would like to go to Japan but, you know what, I can't.

And I don't actually need to and I don't want to either for two reasons... for one because I don't think I could stand another flight with my ears still in their loopy condition and two because I don't want to get even more sick than I already am... what with all the radioactivity and the fact I just got out of the hospital after a personal disaster myself I don't think I'm ready to visit a disaster site if you know what I mean...

it's just something I'll have to accept...

But, you know what, I don't have to go either... for one thing I have faith in the Japanese people; that they'll be able to take care of their second nuclear disaster in a most dignified manner and also that they'll do it in a manner that the international will be able to respect... it is a strong country, one that's been getting along fine for the past fifteen odd centuries it's been around... which is something that anyone who's ever read about it would understand... but also after my own disaster I understand that I can't do it all on my own... the recovery is mine, but it's only mine to do... also I'm never alone as long as there's family around to feed and clothe me I'll be alright...


And there will always be Anime...That will never die....



evar


-The Revig

JAPAN

My hopes and prayers go out

The Fourth Friend

The Fourth Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

The Third Friend

The Third Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

noooo

I swear I'm not closing up on you all it's just it's of course been very hard to keep writing while writing for school as well, if you catch my drift. I really wish that I could update more frequently but when you're also doing home work til two o'clock in the morning it's quite hard to follow through with something that may be fun... and I have been working enough that it's put me out of commission for three whole days and still coughing... I'm not sure if it's a good thing for me to already be pushing my body to a limit already ... it's only been six weeks since term started... anyway, it's not like I don't have art... my typography teacher has a bet with us of sorts that he won't get one extra credit sketch book journal from any of his students this year... I probably won't need to submit it as design isn't really a hard thing for me although this is of a typographic nature, but the required minimum of 5 minutes a day of actual drawing it is a good motivation to get me actually sketching again... and we're coming up with some lovely designs for Lalaland... I might actually post somethings from there but then again that would mean taking time away from homework to scan and upload them so it may not happen at all, just like me actually finishing posting these character sheets won't either...

The Second Friend

The Second Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

The First Friend

The First Friend by ~freakdearts on deviantART

ARRRRGHH

Sometimes I swear technology has sentience... a spiteful sentience...

I had just bought an external hard drive to save my overstuffed internal one on my ailing PC, when the graphics card killed itself... in my presence. I had just started it up and sat down when my screen was splayed across with something like this:

Of course I was kind of expecting something like this, my computer had been flagging all of last semester and this close to the next one it was practically asking for it... but just the week before? really? well luckily it was 3 years ago that my machine was built so an upgrade will put in hardware that is discounted by now so it should only be about a week until its back up and working, still, that's annoying... and creepy... gads! first bouncers and now this; term can't start any sooner! 

Friendship-Hatred by ~freakdearts on deviantART
My first piece for the new year is a piece that, oddly enough, was inspired by an NPR news story [link] at the beginning of last semester... It was last of a series on All Things Considered aired in early August about life in the Gaza strip, no doubt sparked by the Israeli peace talks that started during that time... for some reason it resonated deeply with me and when I heard it I couldn't help but start immediately sketching what came to mind...

As an artist I'm fascinated by the connections that can develop between two people, naturally these are usually romantic in nature but I still feel that a lot can be communicated about the nature of said relationship by facial expression, gesture, and body language... subtle things really but there... but with this piece I wanted to focus more on a relationship of a friendship nature than the romantic sort without being as sentimental as in my other pieces especially a relationship as complicated as the one reported... as such I really wanted to emphasize the links in such a way that would be respectful to the source material and not overly cliche... color plays a very symbolic role in this piece in tandem with typography and imagery; I really wanted to make things clear but in a subtle way that wasn't too sentimental... since this is my first piece of potentially political artwork I've done I wanted it to focus on the people involved more than anything else.

As for the symbolism within the piece I highly recommend you listen to the story [link] since it makes more sense when you do...

As a note of trivia that particular color of orange gold was lifted from this particular movie:[link] which I also highly recommend.

TL;DR listen to this story [link] to get it...

All the necessary excuses

There is nothing more embarrassing in my opinion than violating that unspoken internet contract that states that once you start posting something you must continue to do so indefinitely (if I were speaking as an advertising exec I might say that such a contract is more often than not less unspoken than actually written and signed at least if anyone wants to make any money off the webs).well, I've obviously been in violation of it for the past *looks over* oh, year at least on this blog anyway on deviant art I have been rather active more... But I have good excuses for that which we'll get back later... Now, Of course there is that part of my self that says:" wtf You're an artist not a blogger why would anyone want to read your tl;dr crap they're just into the next visual stimuli which you aren't even getting payed to create...in fact, its none of their business what you do with yourself why are you letting yourself be dictated by what your non-existent audience's expectations? In fact, why are you even writing this?" (and that may also possibly explain why I'm even trying to continue on with this line of logic). Well to you, little annoying voice I say: that's a very good question... The answer to which both of us have the potential to find an answer to on this great new adventure were going on right now or will be beginning very soon because we're restarting our online sphere of non-influence (which would usually present itself to the tune of "I'm alive!!!" or some other noise of renaissance.)
Little voice: You just ignored my question completely.
Me: It waS a stupid question.
Little voice: and kept on with your grandiose bull***t to do something unsustainable and potentially stupid because you're desperate for attention
Me: Yes, but I'm not desperate for attention, it's a resolution, besides people might actually want to know what I'm doing and what I think.
Little voice: Yeah, like like they want to have a hole in the head...
Me:yeathatwasntreallyfunnyanyway*ahem
Anyway! Excuses! Well for one school... As I already said in my previous post which started this hiatus, my first semester of college was quite full. Well not really, I only took four classes three of which were art/design related and the other was engl comp1 but that's not important...

What's important is that because of some incredible fluke in the testing process the english class was part of the honors program and took a lot of brain and emotional power to crank out exposition pieces that were laking in imagination although not semicolons... Luckily the professor was interesting enough to pay attention to and invest effort in meeting his expectations so somehow I was able to scrap together an...A? (Must have been the same improbability blip that got me into the class in the first place) but needless to say I was not going to expend the brain energy that I did not have after finishing a term paper fifteen minutes before the deadline on a recap of what I had just jammed into my brain, diced, minced, scrambled, pickled, reassembled, disassembled reassembled again and finally hoicked back up onto the nearest keyboard,dressed up and shipped off for my prof to shred and grade.

As far as the visual arts were concerned the drawing pieces were either too large to photograph or too weird and unfinished(not to mention vague) to fathom submission and while my instructor was certainly excited about them I wasn't. Most were too close to the english pieces in feeling and I was not that inspired by the subjects which usually were the same grimey and frustratingly familiar array of objects in the class room ... I never like reprocessing reality there's just not that much margin for error, the reality in my head is far easier to draw. None the less, the drawing class was great because not only were we working on a larger scale than I was used to we were also able to experiment with different media and approaches. And of course there were the nude model sessions which are essential for any serious artist no matter how awkward they may be *snigger at least we had professional and moderately well looking ones... *hem and despite the difficulties of actually reproducing it I was able to learn how to actually see what I was looking at and trying to draw. I think I try and do a mash up with the best of the larger ones and individual postings of the better smaller ones...once I get them back from my teacher.

As far as the digital art classes I took were concerned they were merely introductory courses which, while I did learn some new tricks,were mostly tedium that reviewed well troden pathes in PS and introduced me somewhat flounderingly to Illustrator, PS's cousin. The photoshop class dealt with using photos which I was ill prepared for since all I had for that was my cel's camera and I knew nothing about illustrator so I was a complete noob and nothing ever did look right. Luckily I had my handy dandy graphire tablet to save me and greatly enhance my output. I don't think I'dve passed without it since I suck at photomanipulation and was a beginner at the illustrator program, not to mention the teachers were kind of duds imo. Needless to say the work done has no place outside the classroom even though it was what my creative efforts had been fed into all that time(it was usually too late once I got back home to do much more than dishes and cram a bit more writing in before crashing).

Now I'm not going to say that this next semester won't be as stressful as the last, certainly not as in fact I'm going to take math as well, but I'm also not going to say that I'm going to cut off all contact indefinitely again... I'll try to update as often as possible even if what I have to say isn't the most interesting or the art the best I could do...in that area you may just have to settle for moleskin pieces and the random doodled fanart... But at least I'll be posting something... I may even do a few digital pieces so I don't get too rusty and I certainly will release the designs for my latest comic project which I may or may not do... I mean after all why would I go through all the trouble of saving up to buy a super awesome cool tablet if I were just going to use it as a mouse pad?

So yeah, if you skipped all of that then all it means is that I'm back and hopefully-though not too likely- it'll stay that way.

-Freakdearts