Mass Effect 3 OST - Dream

Here again! This time from Germany. I am terribly sorry I haven't been posting anything here in a while but I have had some problems with my internet and also in my personal life. However, for you, I have drawn a new picture. It has been ready for ages, my internet just sucks.

The seventh drawing in the series of music inspired pictures is here. It's very white and I was pretty worried it would look very grey and dirty in this picture but it turned up better than I expected. It's a bit dark, but you may thank the camera for it. I really liked drawing this song and I think I'm beginning to like this abstract way of drawing. In this song I heard the feeling of calmness and frost, so I drew left it quite white.

I used pencil and coloured pencil in this drawing. It was very interesting to draw without ink this time. Mind you, the silhouette is made with pencil and rubber, better known as an eraser. So, I kind of sketched it out of a mass of grey. I've never done it before and it was extremely interesting.

Here you can listen to this most calming piece of music.

So, dearies, now that my internet is just working, what shall I draw next? As a reminder, I'll draw my impression of the first song mentioned in the comments of this update, so make haste.

P.S. Sorry, if my English sucks, I've been talking mainly in German for a while.

It's so cold

Bring me the horizon - Don't Go

Fly, bird, fly

Hello, hello, hello. I'm terribly sorry that I haven't been writing. I have had some schoolwork to finish and some matters to be arranged for I am going to go abroad as an exchange student quite soon. In 21 days I'll be in an aeroplane. Well, almost...

Anyway, to get this update going, I will present you the sixth picture of Project Inspiration. Actually one of my friends challenged me to draw an abstract picture so I decided to try it. I have never really been good with animals but I still decided to draw a mechanical bird to this one. It came out rather well. I was actually quite surprised that I could draw a bird, so if there's anyone who specializes in bird anatomy, please don't crush my feeling of content.

Because in every abstract picture there's bound to be interpretations, I shall tell you that the bird is actually a reference to H.C. Andersen's fairytale The Nightingale. If you don't know the story, here's some information for you. So, when you listen to Don't go, you can decide what the rest of the picture means.

The song you might wish to analyze can be found right here.

I am very sorry that I could not include some of the songs I was proposed but I have a policy with this project: the first song commented in the newest update of this project is the one I will draw. Although the songs proposed are all very good. So, what is the next song I shall draw?

Project Remake - Jedi

Happy New Year everybody! Project Remake continues with a remake of a picture of a jedi. Or at least a padawan, she still has a braid. Those of you who do not know what a jedi is should watch the Star Wars movies for more information. In 2005 I had a huge jedi phase in my life, thanks to the movie Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith that appeared that same year. I had a lot more pictures of jedi but this one is my ultimate favourite because even now I think it is a good picture, even though it has been seven years since I drew it. I say seven, because it's only the beginning of the year 2013 and I'm sure I didn't draw this in January.

When I re-drew this picture I wasn't sure I would be able to draw a better one. My skills as drawer have improved but I was so proud of the picture that I thought that if I could not draw a better version of it, I might as well give up. I decided to create the outfit of hers again and I had to google Obi-Wan Kenobi in order to see, what kind of robes did he wear again. It wouldn't have felt right to draw a robe that was not 'jedi' enough so I copied quite a lot from Obi-Wan's robe. Oh well...


In the original picture I used only pencil and in the new one I used both pencil and ink. I'm quite proud of her hair in the picture, especially because there are two, no, three sources of light. Also the tree's took their time to look nice but I did it. I guess I'm never going to learn to avoid little details. One thing I'm not happy about is the lightsabre. It looks way better in the older picture but try to make it look as epic with ink... Well, nobody's perfect.

...and after.

Before...

Project Remake - The Crew of Moonlight

As a continuum to the series of self portraits I decided to start Project Remake. I will re-draw some pictures I have drawn when I was younger. This will give you an image of my developement as a drawer. This project will either be short or then there will be huge gaps between the updates because the pictures I consider old enough for this project are all at my parent's home and I live in a different city. However, whenever I visit my parents I try to continue this new project of mine. This can be concidered as one of the side projects I will probably end up having too many. Oh well.

To get this project going I decided to re-draw the crew of Moonlight. Moonlight is a ship in a fictional story me and my friends wrote when we were about 12 years old. This picture is almost as old as the story, perhaps only few months younger. The story was inspired by the movie Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl and the original idea of it was not mine. It was a crew consisting of mainly women (Well, what do you expect from a bunch of girls?) and we all had characters of our own. This is the story in which May, a character I have mentioned in some of my older posts, can be found. I hope that someone still has the notebooks we wrote together.

As you can see, my skills as a drawer have developed quite a bit. Mind you, it has been a very long time since I drew the first one, so I guess that the change in my style of drawing is acceptable. Oh, and I took some liberties with some details, as you may have noticed. I thought they would brighten up the picture.

Before...

...and after.

Series of Self Portraits - Part III

Who am I? Where would I start... I am a girl who thinks the world is a big place just for a little girl. However, the same world feels a lot smaller when there are other people in it so, as you may guess, I have a lot of people in my life. I am qurious and love to explore the world and yet I'm such a homie that I could just stay home all day, watch tv, and drink tea. I'm an auditory learner and especially love the sounds of the world. I love music and often sing in the shower. I have a vivid imagination and drawing is my way of illustrating, what is in my mind. Very often my skills as a drawer are not good enough to express the image inside of my head but still I try to draw it because I can always use the practice. And, as a random continuum of these facts, I would really like to have a cat but unfortunately I am allergic.

I decided to draw a realistic portrait of myself to show you, who I truly am. I decided to use just pencils because before this blog I used to draw just with pencils. They are a part of my history and a pencil is the first thing I ever drew with when I started actively drawing. I really found drawing when I was eleven and I had broken my leg. My friend came to see me and drew me a get-well card while I was watching. I was so inspired by her drawing that I wished to be as good a drawer as she was.

I got some comments from my friends saying that my forehead is not big enough in this picture. I quite agree with them but aren't our flaws the things that make us perfect? Even when drawing?

The Face Behind the Mask - pencil

Korina

Korina - pencil, coloured pencil, and ink

Korina was my charachter in the second larp of the U-series. In the first one I played Joanna Reecks, the leader of a group of scientists. In that game I played a proper human being but in this game, however, I got a part of a mutant. In a way the charachter and its description were not very deep but desining the outfit for the charachter and the actual playing was marvellous. For instance, the gray vest like thing Korina wears has a little letter U in it. No-one will ever know but she may have once been a U-soldier, a human from space.

As I said in the previous post, this was one of the most fysical I have ever played. Not just because of the pose in the picture that was actually meant to be a confusing chasing tactic, but also because of the voice I used. Because Korina in English means something like wheezing I spoke only with a sound that resembled the sound which the woman in the movie Grudge makes. I had already lost my voice the week before the game, so I really didn't need to alter my voice very much. I also had this little habit in the game to go and stalk the ones playing humans and when in a dark enough shadow, I sang Don't Worry, Be Happy. The look on their faces when they were searching the source of the song was priceless. Nevertheless, I wanted to do the voice and so I did. My voice was gone for the next week but it was totally worth it. I also moved in a crouched positions which was fysically quite hard.

Also the make-up for this game was one of the most radical ones I have ever done. I used coloured contact lenses, I covered my eye brows for the game (mind you, it was bloody difficult to cover them because I've got pretty dark eye brows), I used liquid latex to create boils on my face, etc. The other mutant players said I looked pretty creepy. You should have seen the faces of the ones playing humans when they first saw me watching them through a window. I'm pretty sure they got pretty jumpy after that.

I used ink, pencil, and coloured pencils in this picture. It is a shame that one can't play these kinds of charachters very often. I would love to sing once more the song of finger tip soup with the other mutants. Oh, and by the way, before the game we had a small mutant rave: We got out of the car with which we had driven to the place the game was held, turned the volume of the car radio up, started to listen to the soundtrack of Tron Legacy and started dancing around the car. I'm not much of a dancer when thinking of modern music but at that moment it was awesome. And yeah, it was winter during the game, hence the warm clothes.

Strike a pose!

I actually posed like this for a foto.

Sneak peak time! I will not be able to finish this drawing of mine today for I shall be role playing later in the evening. The fate of Madeline and co. shall be determined tonight! This, however, has nothing to do with the picture I have decided to show you today. It is about yet another charachter of mine and I must say, this charachter has been fysically one of the most challenging charachters I have ever larped. You can take a wild guess of what her pose might be. Mind you, the picture is not upside down. Why on earth keep I trying to draw these kind of poses?

Series of Self Portraits - part II

The Doll - pencil, coloured pencil, and ink

How do I feel? Well, there are a bunch of things I could draw and I guess I will update this post eventually with another picture some day. However, this picture has a story behind it and I would like to share it with you.

Couple of years ago a very dear friend of mine said, as a joke, to another friend of his, that I was a puppet who would do everything one said to me. That was one of the few times I actually was offended and mind you, I do not get offended often. I was very upset, because I realized what he said, was actually true. I was always trying to please everybody, make them happy with small favours, and I had never actually learned how to say no. It was that moment that opened my eyes. I realized I didn't have to please everyone, I realized I could be myself and say 'no' once in a while. I'm still not an expert in using 'no' but I have learned to use it to some extent.

In the picture there is no puppet but a porcelain doll. Porcelain dolls are the perfect girls, the normal and the pretty ones. I used to be like that even though I was the one with strange hobbies and weird and loud laughter. Nowadays I believe there is not much left of the doll.

I used ink, pencils, and coloured pencils in this picture. I had real trouble with the colourful part but I got it right, eventually.

Vanamo & Varpunen

Vanamo and Varpunen - pencil and ink

This is one of the most interesting charachters I have ever larped. My charachter was the other half of twins and what was the most curious thing was that they shared a soul. This basically meant that when, for instance, one would get hurt, other would feel the pain too. They also constantle spoke of 'we' and 'us' and never used the word 'I'. Actually me and my friend chose the names of the charachters and came up with all kinds of little manoeuvres our charachters would do. By the way, their names in English would be Twinflower and Sparrow but they don't have the alliteration which was the basis of their names. Their soul's name was Miranda, if my memory serves me right.

Vanamo and Varpunen were... well, I wouldn't call them assassins or anything, but at the time of the larp they at least posed as a circus. Who knows what had happened before the larp began. They worshipped the Owl god and that is one  of the reasons they went out for a walk during the night (the game lasted for two days). Perhaps the funniest thing in the game was making other people confused. For instance, we clearly stated that Varpunen could read and Vanamo could write but we weren't able to learn the other's ability. We also sang this song of a crow gettin killed and we called one charachter a crow during the whole game.

As we pretended to be a circus, we of course held a show in which we actually juggled and did acrobatic tricks. I have a background of apparatus gymnastics, so I was glad to show a few tricks as well as how to make a split. Also the situation in the picture actually happened, because we had honestly practiced this pose. My charachter is the bottom one. I used ink and pencils in this picture and it took quite a while to figure out, how I was going to draw this pose.

Expressions

Happy Madeline - pencil sketch

And now for something completely different. The Call of Cthulhu campaign I'm playing is coming to its end, so I just happened to draw a picture of Madeline in a wedding dress. The only reason I'm putting this picture up here is the bigger face of hers: the expression on them is so genuinely happy. I have never succeeded to picture so well a feeling on a face so I simply had to put it up here. I'm pretty sure I'll grow to hate it but at the moment I love it.

Maria

It has, yet again, been far too long since my last update. I have had a ton of work to do both at and for the university. I have also been writing a larp, so basically I haven't had as much time as I used to have to draw. Nevertheless I'm updating this blog.

Maria - pencil

Maria is my first larp charachter ever. She was a fisher who was quite a loner. Half of the game she sat on a bench beside the campfire. She didn't talk much which suited me quite well, as I was new to the whole larping stuff. It was a basic vampire larp, aka there were three vampires whose goal was to kill everyone and I am quite proud of the fact that Maria did not die. If I remember right, she had a nephew of some sort... or was it a son... I don't remember. Nevertheless, she tried to take care of him. Neither she nore the young man got killed. When the game ended, one of the vampire players actually came to me and said he would have killed me if I hadn't all the time been surrounded by people. Then I told him that I was surrounded by people only when he came to the campfire. Oh, the irony. I must say it sounded quite cool when somewhere in the darkness I heard a scream: 'ANOTHER CORPSE!' It was a great feeling.

I used just pencils in the picture and tried to focus a bit more on the folds of the clothes, especially the coat. It's quite sketch like but so it's supposed to be.

Life Is Worth Role Playing

A random Madeline update. I know this is not a part of any project but at last I have succeeded in a relationship in an RPG. Our beloved Madeline, of whom I've made so many updates has finally found her knight in shiny armour. Barney the Bartender actually confessed his feelings to Madeline and they are both very happy. They'll only have to defeat a horde of cultists so that they can live happily ever after. Luckily Barney has a large family with likeminded relatives. Clanwars and so forth.

The Lovers - pencil, coloured pencil, and ink

The picture captures the moment just before their first kiss. Well, technically it's not their first kiss, but Madeline doesn't remember anything about it, because she was so drunk at the time. I tried to picture the romantic atmosphere of the 1920's London in december at 3.30 AM but I find the picture still a bit lacking. However, I'm mightly proud of the shadowing I used in the picture. I've never tried to do such strong shadows in colours before. There's still a lot of work to be done with it, but I'll keep on practicing. I used pencils, coloured pencils, and ink in this picture.

Gerda Úldurfsdottir

Gerda - coloured pencil, pencil, and ink

Gerda was a charachter that I thought up all by myself for a larp. Usually that doesn't happen in a larp but I was one of the GMs of the game. It was a vampire larp, the setting came from Vampire the Masquerade, so the vampire clans and sects are the same as in Vampire the Masquerade RPG. It was not the first larp I "hosted" but it was the first larp I could invent my very own charachter and be a GM. The first time I was a GM was actually a part two in a series of larps so I played the charachter I had in the first game.

Gerda is quite a typical clan Malkavian vampire. Malkavians are the lunatics of the vampires. They are honestly crazy and their craziness can from one malkavian to another: one can have two personalities while another might see huge and slimy talking slugs in random places. Gerda's speciality was talking with objects. If you have the chance, do play a pc-game called Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, it shows the difference between vampire clans. For instance if you play the game through with a malkavian you can argue with a stop sign.  However, the malkavian madness isn't necessarily just a bad thing: they can see things from a different point pf view and come up with surprising solutions for difficult situations.

I used ink, pencil, and coloured pencils in this picture. I actually startet drawing this picture in a train and you should have seen the look on the conductor's face when he saw the picture. The larp was held during the winter and thank god it was situated indoors because otherwise I would have frozen with those clothes.

General Kita

Kita - coloured pencil, pencil, and ink

General Kita is not my first larp charachter but one of the most important ones to me. It was my fifth larp and I didn't have much experience as a larper. Yet, the GM decided to give me quite an important charachter as a general. She was in charge of the safety of the people and her role was crucial because there were evil  and strong creatures on the lose. They looked like humans but could enchant one to obey. My charachter thought their only goal was to kill everybody. She hired some guards to keep the tavern they were in safe but nevertheless we ended up having an epic fight in the end.

She is a hot tempered woman who believes that fights should be settled with a fight. Once she was fighting one of her hired guards she beated him quite bad and they ended up in a situation where he was lying on a ground and she was standing over him holding his foot above his crotch. He said to her that she wouldn't do it. When she asked why, he said "Because you're a woman". She had always been bullied because she was female and you can guess that  she wasn't very pleased of the guards comment. You may guess that she landed her foot with quite a lot of force on his crotch. I kind of feel sorry for poor Horatio.

I tried to copy the outfit of Kita here but I noticed that the hand armour was in the wrong hand. Otherwise the picture is quite accurate when speaking of my clother during the game. I used ink, coloured pencil, pencil in this picture.

Series of Self Portraits - Part I

Even though Project Imagination is still unfinished I start a new project. I'm not going to drop Project Imagination but because there are going to be more and more charachters to add to the project as I get new larping and role playing charachters, this project is going to take forever. Therefore I now launch a series of self portraits to tell you more about myself. I must thank Mesore for brining up this idea for a project.

How do you see me? - coloured pencil, pencil, and ink

The first picture of this project is quite simple and totally lacks imagination. This is the way I wish people to see me. There's me, typically dressed, with a huge grin on my face, as usual. I'm a tomboy in my own way: I really like to dress myself in jackets and wear a fedora. I also wear these unisex shoes which make my every-day wear look a bit gentlemanlike. I would also love to own a tailcoat and sometimes dress up like Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Also my sence of humour is very masculine and I tend to make jokes only guys would understand. However, the shadow on the wall is quite feminine. This is the side of me that is there in the background but I don't usually wish to bring it out. I am a dreamer and I sometimes wish for some very girly things.

I used pencil, coloured pencil and ink in this picture. And by the way, I actually own an umbrella just like the one the shadow has.

Catherine Burdett

Silly me, I still have a few role playing charachters. I guess I have too many of them.

Catherine Burdett is a 90-year-old woman. Wouldn't believe it? Neither would I because she looks like a 26-year-old. As you may have guessed, she is not an ordinary woman. She is a vampire and when comparing her to the other player charachters in the game, she was actually quite old. One doesn't necessarily have to be hundreds of years old to be influental. Me and my friends were playing Vampire the Masquerade rpg and my charachter was part of a vampire clan called Ventrue. The Ventrue are the self-proclaimed leaders of the Vampires and they tend to have power over the society during both day and night.

In the picture Catherine has just arrived to the head quarters of Vaughn Industries. Mr. Vaughn, Catherine's sire (the one who made her into a vampire), informs her that someone had broken into the vault of the company and had stolen something. Just before she came to the hq, a young female vampire, Eleonor came to her appartment saying that her sire had just been killed. So, Catherine became her mentor and she was the one who was supposed to teach Eleonor, how to be a vampire.

By the way, this is perhaps the only occasion when she wears her hair down. Usually she wears a bun. She actually didn't have the time to tie her up after a party in which Eleanor and another newcomer were welcomed into the vampire society. I guess it's good to let your hair down once in a while.

I used coloured pencil, pencil and ink in this picture. It's kind of grey, but aren't all buildings.

Catherine - coloured pencil, pencil, and ink

Dr. Fitzwilliam Fitzwilliam-Snout

Doctor Fitzwilliam Fitzwilliam-Snout has probably the most ridiculous name in the history of (at least my) role playing charachters. I'm a huge fan of the series Jeeves and Wooster and the is inspired by this series. There are a couple of very silly brittish names mentioned in the series and that's why Dr. Fitzwilliam-Snout has such a silly name. His best friend is a private detective Gregory Potter-Purbridge (nothing what so ever to do with Holmes and Watson...), who actually is encluded in the picture. At least the light of his lantern is. You see, in the picture both of them are climbing down a small hole that seems to last forever. Greg is holding a lantern while he climbs and Fitz just tries to climb down after him. When they finish climbing down, they find a monster and Fitz, like Madeline, does not even see it. Greg on the other hand loses a bit of his sanity when meeting this human-rat-spider creature.

I used ink and pencil in creation of this picture. I'm running out of role playing charachters so I will move on to my live action role playing charachters.

Fitzwilliam - pencil and ink

What did I say about little details...

Yet another sneak peak before I post the whole picture here. Stripes can be a real pain in the... Well, let's just say it takes time to ink the outlines of the stripes. I'll post the picture later today.

Stripes but, alas, no stars.

A bit more Madeline

And now for something completely different. It's a bad habbit of mine that I simply have to draw something when I get an inspiration. I happened to be role playing last night and Madeline, of whom I have told in my last post, went out with Barney the bartender and they both ended up quite drunk. Nothing bad happened. They just shared their first kiss when Madeline was getting out of the car of another bartender, who promised them to take them home. She was so drunk that she decided to kiss him and he blushed as hard as one can blush. Unfortunately, she doesn't remember that. However, Barney does.

Barney & Madeline - pencil sketch

I quickly sketched this during a lecture. (Yes, I know I'm a bad girl because I didn't pay attention to the lecture.) The only reason why I decided to update my blog with this is Madelines expression. She looks totally drunk and exactly how she should look like after a sherry and an absinthe. Not that Barney wouldn't be drunk.

I shall now continue the Project Imagination, but I simply had to post this.

Ri’dzaeln Wehlagharlyn

Yet again, another little pause has passed and I have drawn yet another charachter of mine. Ri’dzaeln Wehlagharlyn is my first Dungeons and Dragons charachter. Some say one should always start role playing with D'n'D but I'm a horrible player and I didn't. It's a fun rpg nevertheless. Ri'dzaeln is a drow, a dark elf for those who don't know what a drow is, who has left the drow society and become a druid. And yeah, drows tend to have long names with a lot of consonants. Those, who know anything about drows, know that it is extremely weird for a drow to leave his or her society. And no, this charachter actually wasn't inspired by Drizzt Do'Urden, perhaps the most famous drow of all time. She just happened to got caught by humans and then she became an outcast, even though she had a drow fiancé.

In the picture she is just leaning against an old tree and thinking what on earth was she doing with a halfling, an eldar, an elf, a human, and a thiefling in a forest on an epic quest (halflings are like hobbits, eldars are elfs who can teleport, and thieflings are kind of half demons). In few seconds from the moment in this picture she reveals to the others that she is a drow. Drows aren't really accepted in the world on the ground where as under ground they have a very high stand in the hierarchy of different races. However, the others were surprisingly okay with her race.

Ri'dzaeln - coloured pencil, pencil, and ink

I used coloured pencils, ink, and pencil with Ri'dzaeln, but I left the background black and white just to create contrast.