Printed

Yay, it is printed now!

The final size is 55cm x 39cm, which is a tad bit larger than originally planned (42cm x 29 cm). It means that most of the text on the dragon's wings will be visible (and that was not planned when I made the painting, so most of the text is pretty random, because it was never intended to be seen!). Oh well, it'll give the viewers something to laugh about :P

Exam week is starting tomorrow, meaning I won't have time for much else than studying. Thankfully this is my last exam week ever in high school :)!

Same old

Still working on it...
This time I decided to take a new approach on the colors, because the I wasn't really satisfied with the last version.

Done!

The picture for art class is finally finished and e-mailed off to the printing house!

Basically, what's changed is that I polished some details and tweaked the colors and contrast.

And as for writing, I managed to type down 72 words yesterday. It's not a mind-blowing amount, but still better than zero.

Drawing, progress

Painted some more on the sketch I posted earlier (found by clicking here). Still very unsure whether I should bother finishing it or not.

Alone at home

My parents left early this morning for their Caribbean cruise, so now it's just me and the house for one and a half weeks. Yay!

By the way, remember when I talked about my school project? Been working on it some more in art class, and it's now 95% done. Just going to do the finishing touches on friday, when I have art class, and then I'll have it printed out on some nice paper, and then it's done! Now I just need to start planning the portfolio that has to be done as well.

Updated picture of the painting:

(you can compare with the previous version that I posted earlier, which can be found here. What's changed is basically that I finished the horse and added text on the books on the dragon)

Should probably write some today, but I'm procrastinating. Again. Should also probably start studying for the German and French final exam rehearsals that I'm having tomorrow.

Drawing

Started on a new painting today. We'll see whether I'll finish it or not.

Also, I did manage to write today! A whooping total of 350 words. Now I'll just have to coach myself to do the same every day.. :P

Presidential elections

Voted for the first time in my life today in the presidential elections! We'll see tonight whether my candidate gets chosen.

Been prepped pretty much all day by my parents to be left alone in the house for one and a half weeks when my parents leave for a Caribbean cruise on Wednesday. I'm actually quite looking forward to managing on my own for that time.

As for writing, I'm kind of stuck again. I haven't written anything since I got home from Paris, because I'm a bit stuck on the details on how the story is going to continue from now on (I've made the general draft on the story, but that only includes the main storyline, not the smaller parts). Tomorrow I'll try to get a grip on myself and force myself to write, even if it's just one sentence.

Oh, and I've been completely in love with this song for the past few weeks:

Goodbye

A person that I got to know only a few weeks ago died today.

Film en français

Watched the movie Vampires Suck dubbed to french earlier today to practice for my french final exam. Combined with french subtitles, I'm actually quite surprised with how much I understood from everything that was said! 3 years of studying did pay off in the end, it seems.

Then I painted most of the evening. I kind of like how the colors turned out, but for the rest... not so sure. It feels like I'm still struggling to find my style!

Stressed out

Nowadays it feels like I'm never going to learn to drive well enough to get my driver's license. I've got only three more lessons before my driving test, and I still can't drive at all. Argh!

Sorry for the angst. Gonna go do some homework now.

Je suis retournée!

Paris was great! Not going to say that it was the best trip ever, but it was great nonetheless. The only thing that bothered me was the poor quality of the hotel (which was expected, since it was a school trip) and the fact that we visited all the same places that I saw two years ago on the same trip. But I'm really glad that I dared speak some French with the people there, and I'm even more glad that they actually understood me and I that understood most of what they said to me.

Going to post some more photos once I get the ones my friend took with her camera.

Paris tomorrow!

I'm going on a six day trip to Paris with my French class tomorrow. I can't wait to go there! I've done the same trip on my first year of high school, but it'll be much more fun now that I'm on my last year and have a much better vocabulary in French. Hopefully I'll learn to understand spoken French better now, and maybe even dare to speak some myself :)

In other news, I'm currently working in art class on a big project that needs to be done by the end of January. It's kind of an interesting challenge, because we got themes that we had to choose one from, and we're only allowed to paint during class - which are two things I don't do when I paint normally. I usually paint the whole painting in one sitting, two at the most, and I hate deadlines. Besides, none of the themes we had to choose from were in my taste. I ended up choosing "Workweek and weekend" (where you could portray either both or just one, and I chose workweek).

My progress so far, after 7h 30 min of work:

Now I really need to start packing.

School again

Can't say I've missed having to wake up at 6.25 every morning. Why can't school start at 10 :D? Guess I can only blame myself for taking so many classes this semester.

To make the most of my last day of freedom, I used basically the whole day yesterday to finished one of my half-finished paintings. The unfinished version of this painting can be found in my previous post, though beware - I did quite a lot of changes along the way.

Earlier today I had my driving lesson, and we went to a skid pan to practice driving during slippery conditions. There's only one word to describe the experience: horrifying! I seriously hope not to have to experience any of that scary sensations of completely losing control of the car when I start driving on my own.

And now, 597 words of novel-writing later, I'm going to go tackle some homework and then I'm off to the gym. Hopefully I'll have time for some more drawing afterwards :D

Sketches part II

I completely forgot to write on my novel yesterday, so I wrote 1200 words this morning to compensate for it.

And now, here are the rest of the sketches and stuff, as promised :).

2010

For the painting above, I used this photomanipulation by Julia Starr as reference: Click me.

For the next one I just googled a random photo that I used as reference.

And some more The Crystal fanart. In 2010 me and my cousin started working on another novel called Frost, set in the same world as The Crystal, but with different characters. I did a lot of Frost art this year, and the character on the next three pictures is one of the main characters, Astraea. The last picture features Aivycelon and Treicina.

2011

The picture above is actually the cover that I made for my first (and only) novel Nightmare, which my dad took to his cousin who works at a printing office, so I now have my novel in physical form in my bookshelf :D

 This is an alternative, colored version of the painting that's on my blog header, but I ended up choosing the blue and yellow version instead. The full header-painting can be found on my DA page: Click here

 For the painting above, I used a photo that I found on Deviantart as reference. Unfortunately, I lost the link to that photo.

The image above and on the right is actually only a few weeks old, so I'm still debating whether to finish it or not.

And, last but not least, some compulsory The Crystal fanart :D

Finally winter? + sketches

I apologize in advance that this post will be very image-heavy!

The world certainly looked a lot different when I woke up today :D! Let's just hope that this snow doesn't melt away tomorrow, like the previous times it snowed.

I sorted all the sketches I found on my computer, and decided I'd upload some now. To not overwhelm you with a whole bunch of sketches, unfinished drawings and drawings that for some reason never made it to my deviantart account, I'm going to post some of them today and the rest tomorrow.
For my finished paintings, you can go to my deviantart page: http://black-phoenix-juliet.deviantart.com/ because I feel there's no need to repost all of them in my blog.

Well, here we go, in chronological order:

1998

Heh, I happened to find this drawing from when I was four years old (yes, that's a derpy number four written in the corner there :D).

Now for some more "serious" ones :D. You can click on the images to see a larger version.

2008

 The one with the angel and the harp is an early concept of a painting that I finished in 2011 (http://black-phoenix-juliet.deviantart.com/art/Melody-259922166). I can't believe it took me 3 years to finally start doing that painting!

 I want to comment on the three following images separately. They're featuring characters from a story called The Crystal (later renamed to Possessing the Elements, but we still keep calling it The Crystal) that I wrote together with my cousin from 2007 onwards. The one with fiery wings is Trei, one of the main characters, the middle one is Treicina (Trei's ancestor), and from left to right on the last image: Treicina, Trei, Aiv (the other main character) and Aivycelon (Aiv's ancestor).

2009

The painting with the angel wielding a sword is actually partially done in 2011 - I made the clothes in 2009, but repainted the face and the hair in 2011.

And some more The Crystal art:

I really wanted to finish the painting with Trei on a dragon (the sketch on the right is part of that same painting, you might be able to discern the mouth of the dragon on the upper edge), but sadly, when my computer crashed back in '09, that file became corrupt and I lost everything but a screenshot I'd taken of it.

That's it for today. I'll be posting 2010 and 2011 (= the interesting part) tomorrow :D

Now I'm off to do some work for school. Eek, only today and tomorrow are left of my winter break!