Hello everyone, I've got a new Tumblr up and running and yes, you probably guessed it, it's dedicated to my new dog, Dante. It will basically be a blog following his life, including his growth, training, and any adventures he has along the way! Expect lots of a pictures as well as some more bloggish entries describing Italian Greyhound behavior and care. Anyway, if you like Iggies, puppies, or dogs in general, you might want to give it a follow!

[link]

I was going to hold off on posting this journal until I officially picked him up on June 29th but I just got some more pictures today and afsgkjdshgkljhtrkwjhgsdfhl.

So. Cute. I'm melting. ;^;




His name is Dante and he's an Italian Greyhound, 5 weeks old right now. Expect to see a lot of him in the future because I am OBSESSED!

Hey all! I have very few characters and I'm looking for more, so I thought I would run a little contest to see if I could rustle up a few creative designs from people! I'm not looking for anything super specific but I do have a couple of general guidelines.

RULES
-Must be a new design, on original lines.
-The ref must contain a full body shot and a headshot at minimum; if design is non-symmetrical, you need to showcase both sides.
-There will be one first prize of $40.
-If I like more than one design, I may award a second and/or third prize OR I might just buy the character outright from the designer.
-Designs that don't win are fully resellable.
-I reserve the right to end this contest with no winner if I don't particularly fancy any of the designs offered.
-If you need an extension, feel free to ask; I'll most likely say yes!
-Ends on June 25th as of right now.

BREEDS I LIKE
-Irish Water Spaniel (!)
-Borzoi
-Bull Terrier
-Alaskan Klee Kai
-Afghan Hound
-Catahoula Leopard Dog
-Great Dane (preferably with cropped ears)
-Saluki
-Airedale Terrier
-Shiba Inu

I also like creative mixes AND more unusual breeds, even those not listed. Just be creative and come up with something you've never seen before!

DESIGN IDEAS
-I prefer mainly natural designs with unnatural highlights OR natural-looking patterns in unnatural colors (i.e. purple merle or something)
-I also really like designs that are inspired by nature and other animals (i.e. an oryx-based design or a wood duck-based design).
-I lean towards simple but elegant designs, not something with a dozen colors and multiple patterns.
-Add accessories as you think they complement the design; one or two is good, but not a whole ton of bangles, piercings, or whatever else.
-Come up with a personality as you think fits the character and take full advantage of it. The character's pose(s) should reflect this.

Hope that sparks some people's interest! I look forward to seeing everyone's entries. Good luck!

ENTRIES
-KingCavy (FP)
-!xDisasterXDx
-*lazendar
-Sparta (FP)
-Emmalyn (FP)
-~dragorazer
-~Lionhannah
-*manciple
-*TamilaB
-*Bloodtaintedsoul
-*Penny-Dragon
-*Xannijn
-~Blackkatze
-*Frilled-Aten
-~WacomDragonArtist
-Erë (FP)
-Buddie (FP)
-~StarvingScientist
-~AgiandSoreto
-Lucky4 (FP)
-=Naomi-Wiflath
-*silvytabitha
-*xN-E-V-E-R-M-O-R-Ex
-~Vaxl
-*chameleonskyes
-~MidoriMaou
-*StarlightAngel-Wolf
-*Ndevils
-*StarlightAngel-Wolf
-~deenji
-*Amirah-the-cat
-=TrollGirl
-Kaze (FP)

...is going to kill me.

ADGFKDJFHSDFGKJLHERTKJHRSKJSDFKJHSGKJ

I just spent no less than 6 hours staring at a spreadsheet of the stimuli for my experiment. AND I'M STILL NOT DONE!

I want to cry. ;_; I NEED to start collecting data this week or else I'm dead in the water, since I'm presenting at SEPA (a regional psychology conference) in only about a month. I'm praying that I can blow through the transcription with ease. It will probably just devour my life though....

</academia rant>

Where did the month of January go? I really have no idea....

Anyway, I've been spending a lot of time on Furry-Paws which is why I haven't been posting here as much. For shame, I know. =.= I haven't had much energy or inspiration for personal art lately. I'm taking 22 hours of classes and have a major paper I'm presenting at a conference in a couple months, so that's where most of my energy goes. All my artistic energy goes into commission work at FP these days. One of these days I promise I will just kick back and draw whatever the heck I want just because. c:

But in the meanwhile I have soooooo much work to do. xD I'm happy though, which is a big plus.

I kinda miss dA, not gonna lie. I will come back to you, one day.

So how has everyone been? Tell me something fun about your life. Or not fun, if you feel like being a party pooper. xP

I got my 500th watcher a few hours ago. I'm not a huge stickler for keeping track of special numbers, but I still think that's pretty cool. I never would've imagined being able to amass 500 followers when I started out on deviantArt almost 7 years ago. Now let's see how long it takes me to get to 1,000. xDD

Thank you to every single one of my watchers! You guys inspire me to keep working hard and improving every day.

Soooo I made a Tumblr because every day in 2013, I'm going to strive to create at least one new drawing. Sometimes they will be polished pieces, most of the time they will just be rough sketches. If you're interested in following my progress, you can check it out here: [link] The more people I have following me, the more I will be motivated to keep to my goal, so I appreciate any support! 2013 is going to be a year of big improvement for me and I'm determined to make it so.

[link]

Working on a ref for a commission today. :3

I have had an FA account for a while now but I forgot to let people on my dA account know about it. xD If you have an FA account and want to add me there, here you go: [link] I upload mostly the same art here and there, but sometimes I'll upload things there that I won't upload here and vice-versa. In any case I always appreciate the extra support!

Because I have a lot of fun buying point commissions so I'd like more points. xD I should note that this time I'm taking COLORED commissions too and not just sketches. All coloring will be digital, since I need a lot of practice and it will give me a chance to experiment, in addition to being faster than traditional coloring. For a sketch with colors, it's only an additional 30 points, and for a lineless colored drawing it's an additional 70 points. All in all pretty cheap if I do say so myself. Full information is listed in this journal: [link] You can leave a comment on either journal or send a note if you're interested! Unlimited slots for now.

You can watch me paint a image of Trixie in SAI here: [link] My eclectic music choice will be playing in the background so you might want to mute.

Hey all, I want to do something special for Christmas this year and offer some free art to any one of my watchers. All you have to do is be one of my watchers and comment with a link to a picture or ref of the character you would like drawn. On December 8th I will use a random number generator to pick someone, and your picture will be done by December 25th, which is also when I will notify you that you were chosen (it's a surprise!).

Now here's a little twist. If you want to increase the odds of being chosen, you can comment twice with either the same or a different character if you do one of the following:

-Make a journal which links back to this journal OR
-Offer a Christmas raffle of your own (you can make up your own rules as long as it's still a free raffle).

Please provide a link to the journal in your second comment or else it won't count. This way we can spread holiday cheer together.

...who thought King Sombra was a disappointing villain? He seriously had almost no lines, just a randomly evil shadow unicorn wreaking havoc for the lulz or something. Really no character development there, which is a little sad because a lot of the other MLP villains have been great. If his character design were amazing, it would offset it more, but even that was pretty disappointing in my opinion. It kind of ruined the season premier episodes for me, to be honest. =3="

Anyone else have thoughts on the first two episodes of season 3?

I have a bunch of points stored up now which originally I was going to use to buy a premium membership, but now I'd like to use them to buy commissions. It would be great if people could do a little self-advertising and link to their commission info so I could check it out and possibly buy some commissions! Don't worry if you think your commissions are too expensive or too low quality, just put your work out there and I'll decide for myself. You may be surprised. xD

I feel like I've had enough of a break, so I'm going to go ahead and re-open commissions while starting to work on the list I've accumulated. There's a few changes this time around though:

-I will NOT be accepting point commissions anymore. I used to want a premium membership, but my desire for one has since waned. After I finish the point commissions I have accumulated, I won't be taking anymore for a very long time, or maybe never again! I will still do point adoptables from time to time, however.
-Colored pieces now start at $10. This is a little bit cheaper than before, since I've gotten very fast at coloring traditionally with markers. If your character is very complex, it will be a bit more expensive because it will take longer to complete.
-I am going to start doing digital commissions. Here are the kinds I will offer:

Lineart for $8+.
Flat colors for $10+.
Full colors for $20+.

These will become cheaper as I get faster at them, but for now I need more time to complete them. Eventually they will probably be faster and cheaper than traditional commissions.

That's about it! Please contact me if you are interested in a commission, either via comment or note. I can be sure to set something up. In the meantime, I will be churning out owed art.

My depression has been hitting me very hard for the past few weeks, but finally I have something to look forward to. I love visiting foreign countries and exploring new languages and cultures, so studying abroad has always been a dream of mine. Now it finally looks like I'll be able to do it! I've been researching Korea University's Visiting Student Program and it looks like a great fit for me. They have linguistics and psychology courses taught in English, and I could pick up basic Korean too! This would also count as my intercultural credit for my home university, as well as fulfilling some of my much needed psych electives and taking courses I could never take at home. I would get all this for a price that is MUCH cheaper than going to my home college, since I wouldn't be going through my college's foreign exchange program and would only have to pay KU's tuition which is less than a fourth of my school's tuition. Even with the cost of airfare and living expenses, my family would be saving money. All I need to do is get the courses approved for transfer of credit by my school, and then I can go!

Even better, living in Korea for semester would give me a chance to visit other Asian countries as well. Right now, my plan is to fly from the US to Nagoya this summer to spend a couple weeks with my friends who are living there before flying into Seoul for the school year. Hopefully I'll also have a chance to visit Shanghai and, of course, Jeju. Best of all, my parents are fully supportive of the idea, so I know it's a real possibility and not just a fantasy.

All in all, I'm pretty excited about it. It has given me something to research and work towards instead of wallowing in sadness. >.< I'll definitely post updates as things get finalized. I'm aiming for going next summer/fall, basically as soon as I can help it.

Hey all,

Random request, but are there any good basic (like absolute beginner) Photoshop tutorials that anyone has used before that you think might be of some use to me as someone who is just starting out in digital art? I have a nice tablet but stopped using it after I got frustrated with the digital learning curve, but I would really like to stick it out this time! If you think I should be starting out using software other than Photoshop, what software and could you link me to some good tutorials for it?

I realize this is something I could probably accomplish in a Google search too, but I wanted some suggestions from real live artists. Thanks!

My mom had to put my cat to sleep today. He was so sick that the vet said he wouldn't last for more than a few weeks. I wish I could've seen him one last time, but maybe it's for the best that I wasn't there to see him put to sleep and buried.

This month has just sucked so bad. I really can't wait for it to be over....

My 21st birthday is in less than a week. I feel so old. ._.

School is crazy hard. We have a linguistics prof now though so that's amazing. She's like my new best friend. I've also found some other students looking to go into linguistics through her, so I now have more people to geek out with!

My drawing has been suffering lately because I'm on mood stabilizing drugs. They make me loopy and drowsy about 85% of the time, but they lowered my dosage so I've been feeling more lucid for the past few days. It's so hard to concentrate on drawing, so my sketches are very sloppy and more caricatured than usual. Hopefully I'll get more adjusted soon.

And that's about it that I have to share about my life. I just wanted to get my uber happy and optimistic journal off the main page because I definitely don't feel that way anymore. It's a struggle to get out of bed most days, but I do it! Fighting!

My drawing "I Do it for the Wub" was featured in Equestria Daily's Drawfriend #538 today: [link] Maybe this isn't a big deal for most people, but I'm really excited about it! I've never made it into a Drawfriend before and I didn't think I would be able to for a long time coming. Hopefully it won't be the last! Thank you to everyone who favorited and commented, and also to whoever submitted it (wasn't me haha!).

The bigger news is that I'm leaving for college tomorrow, which could mean a lot less dA for me. My college Internet has a habit of randomly blocking and unblocking dA. Usually it's blocked at the beginning of the year and then becomes unblocked within a month or so. o.O I really dunno why, but it's been that way for the past two years. Anyway, if I can't upload my NATG entries here anymore, I will still submit them to EQD and just submit them here after the fact. When September rolls around, I WILL get back to work on my commissions and hopefully finish a lot of them. If I can't post them, I'll send the files to commissioners privately and upload them later when I can. Once I get through more than half of my accrued commissions, I'll open up commissions again and post a journal notifying everyone! If you've already contacted me about getting a commission while they've been on hold, I'll contact you personally.

That's about it! Hoping for a good semester for everyone.