New layout

I decided to finally join tumblr! Here's my profile in case anyone's interested: http://julia-aurora.tumblr.com/

Not sure whether I'll keep this layout around, but I think I do prefer a colorful one compared to the blue-and-yellow-grayish thing I had before.

Seems I'm getting the hang of painting again! Here's another work that I finished yesterday:

Something a little different from my usual paintings, but I kind of like how it turned out.
Now off to brainstorm for further paintings :D!

Artblock is GONE!

Finally managed to do a full painting :D! This one took around 10 hours, and I used a photo of myself as reference to get the shading right.

I'm thinking about changing up the layout of this blog. Shall see when I feel like starting to work on that.

Yesterday mom and I were experimenting on making smörgåstårta-cakes (literal translation would be sandwich cake) for my graduation party. Here's a photo of them:

Two of them had salmon filling and two had ham. Yum!
I really can't believe that I'm actually graduating in just two weeks! Also, on Wednesday I found out my final grades for the final exams, and I was happy to discover that my points had been raised in two of them. I did not end up with stellar grades, but I'm still very happy with what I got :)

Friends

Saw my friends on Wednesday for the first time in ages! Gonna go out with them again tonight, which should be fun since I haven't been to any night clubs in ages.

Had the urge to doodle stuff with vibrant colors, so here are a few very quick, low-quality sketches :D

There will be a short Guild Wars 2 beta on Monday (7 hours - not an actual beta but a stress test to see how much the servers can handle) from 9 pm to 4 am :D It's really a shame that I have work on Tuesday, but I'm still planning to stay up all the way until 4 o'clock.

Drawing and waiting...

Only roughly 31 hours until the Guild Wars 2 beta starts, yayy :D!

My fingers have been itching to draw something for the past few days, so I made this quick and hideous sketch:

I kinda like the colors, but I just couldn't get the shading on the face work for some reason, so I think I'll just leave it like this. Still trying to find the motivation/inspiration for a "real" painting :(

GW2 beta :D

The official date for the Guild Wars 2 beta is announced: 27-29th April :D!
I seriously can't wait! This is the moment I've looked forward to ever since the announcement of Guild Wars Eye of the North back in 2007 :D
*insert a fangirl-squee*

I also tried out Les Mill's Bodycombat last Saturday at the gym. Gotta say I fell in love with it instantly, so I incorporated it into my workout plan, which now looks like this:
Mondays: spinning
Tuesdays: Bodypump
Wednesdays: Bodycombat
Thursdays: Bodypump
Fridays: rest
Saturdays: Bodypump+Bodycombat
Saturdays: rest

I'm also getting about an hour of walking each day because it's actually faster to walk to work than take the bus downtown (approx 20 min) + bus to work (approx 20 more min) :) Hehe, beach 2012, here I come.

As for drawing, I really feel like doing it, but each time I start sketching something the motivation kind of fades away when I realize that the painting won't be as good as I picture in my head. Looking at all the amazing artists that can be found on Deviantart makes me really inspired on the other hand, but also kind of depressed on the other hand when I realize that I'm not as good as them. I know that the only way to get better is to practice a lot, but I just don't have a lot of motivation right now :(
Gah. Patience is definitely not one of my strong points.

Work

So, I've been working at my parents' bookshop for about a week now.
It's the best job ever.
Basically, I get paid for just sitting at a desk for two hours 5 days a week, doing pretty much what I want (facebook/surfing on the internet/drawing/reading) because the shop rarely gets any customers. Just me and my iPad for two (often very boring) hours.

...I should probably spend that time doing something productive, such as studying for entrance exams. I still don't feel the slightest motivated to start studying, argh!

Here's something I doodled on my iPad at work:

Gah, drawing with my fingers is such a painfully slow technique. I'll probably never attempt a full painting on my iPad and only stick to sketches until I miraculously manage to gain some more patience :D

Exhibition

I was at the opening of an art exhibition yesterday, and the painting I did for art class was on display there :D

Also found out the last preliminary results for my finals today. I'm satisfied with all of them - now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that my points won't be reduced in the official results that will be published at the end of May!

As for my novel, I finished the revision of it today :). It ended up 4 pages shorter than before the revision, and I hope that those removed pages will make the book a smoother read. I actually really like the last 100 pages, but still kinda dubious about the first 250 :P. I probably will be doing a second revision soon to see if I can rewrite any of the scenes that still bother me.
After that I'll have to make the big decision of whether to send it to a publisher or not. Eek!

Freedom!

Finals are over :D! French went well, German not so much (but thankfully that one didn't matter as greatly).

Now I'm free until September, with the exception of studying for entrance exams and potentially working if I manage to get a summer job. I have a feeling that I'm going to get really bored at all this free time pretty soon :P

Worked a bit on my Mononoke picture. I don't know if I will be finishing it or not, because when I tried coloring it I just couldn't make it look right, and it looks too lame in black-and-white to be left this way :(. Such a shame, I kind of liked how the face turned out.

Mononoke

I recently watched the movie Princess Mononoke for the first time, and I have to say that I now definitely understand why it has gained so much popularity!

I was actually so blown away by the movie that I felt really inspired to make a painting of San. I sketched this right after seeing the movie, but I haven't had the chance to start working on it until now.

And as for school-related news, I'm still freaking out about Friday's math exam.

Witch painting

I kinda liked the sketch that can be found in this blog post, and decided to make it a full painting :)

Finnish exam tomorrow. I don't really know how to prepare for it, so I'm just going to relax and study some Math instead (which is on Friday, and I'm completely freaking out, because I thought I was kinda good at math but doing old final exams has made me realize how much I've forgotten of the things we learned!)

School, writing and sketches!

Had my English exam today. Two down, four to go.

I couldn't wait to start the revisions of my novel, so I've actually already began doing them (even though I planned to wait until the end of my exams). Now that I've had a break from writing/reading/proofreading that story for the past 3-4 months, I'm seeing it with new eyes again and noticing a lot of passages that have to be shortened or changed. I'll probably even have to completely rewrite some chapters toward the beginning. I usually hate having to go back and re-read my texts, as I'm dreading all the mistakes that I know I'll find there, but this time I'm actually looking forward to it because I really want this novel to be at its best when I send it off to agents/publishers.

I've also got another batch of sketches from a few days ago. I only had the energy to do two, because I was suffering from a terrible migraine that day.

Heh, the face sketch completely unintentionally ended up resembling Rihanna.

Sketches #6, exercise and pastries

It always feels really satisfying to be able to add more weights in Bodypump :D. Makes me notice that I am making some progress after all. Also, I finally came up with a good training plan for me! I bought a one-month card to the gym I go to, so now I have room for more workouts there. Current plan is:
Mondays: Indoor Cycling
Tuesdays: Bodypump
Wednesdays: Pause
Thursdays: Bodypump
Fridays: Pause
Saturdays: Bodypump
Sundays: Pause
Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until after final exams before I can take that plan into effect. Until then, I'm doing Bodypump those three days, but since I'm having final exams every Monday I'll most likely take some aerobic class on Wednesdays instead. And when the snow outside melts, I'll probably take up jogging on some of my pause days.

I ended up watching the movie Untraceable yesterday. I quite liked it even though it was pretty predictable and held a very dark atmosphere. Because of the movie, I completely forgot to post another batch of sketches:

And, glutton as I am, I just had to make some muffins yesterday!

This time I didn't leave them in the oven as long as I usually do, which caused them to still be a bit soft/gooey on the inside. I have to admit that I like them a lot better this way.

And, if that wasn't enough, I tried another recipe for the fastlagsbulle (a Swedish/Finnish pastry that is eaten during Shrove Tuesday), which turned out unexpectedly well - I had no idea you could put dough in a microwave and still get good results quickly!

Art class, intending to publish and cinnamon rolls!

You might or might not remember that I had this huge final project for art class a while ago. The finished work can be found in this blog post.
Today we finally got our grades for our works - and I was delighted to find out that I got the highest grade for mine (meaning 5/5)!
The artworks done during this class will be displayed at our school until the end of the month, and then all of the works that got the highest grade will be displayed in an art exhibition in May :D!

Also, I've decided to start sending my finished novel to publishers soon. After the final exams are over, I'm going to do one last proofread of the story and then start looking into how getting published works. It feels nice to finally be able to move on after having the novel just laying around on my hard drive for the past six months. I'm pretty excited for this, since I've been dreaming about this ever since I first started writing novel-length stories back in 7th grade. My hopes for getting published on my first try aren't exactly high, but I know that this experience will teach me a lot. If nothing else, it will motivate me to keep writing better.

Yesterday I made low-carb cinnamon rolls. Mom didn't really like them, but I'm completely in love with them! Even brought one with me as lunch for the final exam today.

Speaking of the final exam, I think it went so-so. I'm mostly worried that I might have wandered a bit off-topic.

Gonna stop writing now before this migraine kills me.

Sketches part 5

A few days ago, I got this crazy idea to make a comic. Too bad it failed after 2 pages, when I noticed that I don't have the skills to draw the main character from three different angles without making it look like three completely different people.

Anyways, here are the pages.

Final exams are starting tomorrow, and I still haven't properly started studying. Not that there's much that I can do concerning the Swedish, English and Finnish exams, but I feel like I should have put more effort when it comes to French, German and Math. Thankfully those three are the last ones, so I've still got two weeks to make up for it.

Sketches part 4

Some pretty random sketches, done without reference.

Sketches again

Some more sketches, this time painted without any references. (click on the picture to see it bigger)

I'm currently following one of the live coverages of Apple's iPad3 reveal event. So far I haven't seen anything that would make me want to upgrade from my iPad2, except the retina display, so I'll most likely wait until iPad4 before switching up.

Edit: Seriously? They're going to call it "the new iPad"? I'm usually one of those apple-can-do-no-wrong persons, but this seems a bit silly.

University

Applications for university opened today. So from today on, I have one month to decide which universities to apply to.

Good news is, today I finally managed to find the perfect subject for me to study (after four years of feeling like I'll never find something I like) - information systems. It's kind of a combination of studies of IT and economics, which is perfect, since I want to work with computers but I don't really want to become just an ordinary programmer. I guess I'll apply there as my first choice, to French studies as second choice, German as third, economics as fourth and computer science as fifth. All of these can be done in the Swedish university in my home town - Åbo Akademi - so I won't even have to move to another city, yay!

Also, I did some more practice sketches, on clothes this time: (reference used for all of these)

Practice

Googled some random photos that I used as reference for a quick shading practice. Spent around 10-15 minutes per sketch.

I have no idea if I actually learned anything or not, but at least this was a lot of fun! Will probably start doing this more often. This one focused on faces, but I guess I ought to do more practices on the rest of the body, clothes and hair.

Mermaid

Started on a new painting. Let's see if this one drags out into a one month project like the last one.

About time.

Finally managed to finish that darn painting, though I did cheat a bit and cropped only the upper part, because I completely lost motivation for the bottom half :P