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I want to do as much as possible on this mini with my airbrush before moving on to the inevitable shudders hand painting. So I experimented a bit doing the good ol' Max Technique shading... or my iteration of it. I swore off acrylics for a while because any little bump or brush would scratch the bigger model kits I'm used to working with, but since these figures are pretty safe from bumps and scuffs while on my Very Official glass painting jar, I'm rediscovering how nice artist grade acrylics are to work with! Could even thin the paint down to essentially colored water and spray all the finicky washy layers I wanted. I may pick at it a bit more with the airbrush tomorrow, or just jump into hand painting the details and then after, ink wash!

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First day of summer vacation, so I stuck a bunch of doods onto their bases because I can! Pretty exhausting actually, because I can never do things the Easy Way and pinned a lot of them before gluing them down if they seemed unstable standing up without the base. Right now things are skewed pretty IS- heavy, but I have another box coming in a few days that will put my collection firmly in Filthy Clanner territory <3 .

I also put a base coat on the normal size Nightstar from the Catalyst Lab set, which has such a great design! No particular canon faction's color scheme, just the color scheme for a (one of many) Battletech OC's mech, which I mocked up in Photoshop before actually laying any real paint on it. Geez but painting mechs is a whole lot harder than painting Zoids or FSS kits because there is soooo much to choose from and decide, and in the end, I just want to paint ALL the color schemes (No, seriously, I have a spreadsheet with a list of mechs and color schemes to do...). Also, apparently flat/matte finishes are the way to go with mech minis, but at heart, I am the queen of WEE SHINY. Luckily, Golden So Flat paints airbrush beautifully and are very matte, so no issues there. At any rate, there is a learning curve both in techniques and remembering/relearning my tools.

And just to make it abundantly clear, I don't actually play the tabletop game, I just like collecting and painting my favorites.

I need to buy a 3D printer...

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Did you know that Battletech has gotten terribly interesting in the past… *looks at calendar* 15 years I’ve been out of that particular fandom? I brought my airbrushes (yes, I’ve literally got 5 of them now) back with me during my last visit back to the Motherland and I’ve got an air compressor that had been sitting quietly in my closet for 5 years, which I will now use to paint my… oversized? Marauder and Nightstar.

What a time to be alive…

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Me: I feel like drawing, I haven't drawn anything in ages

Brain: alright, let's draw difficult shit at weird angles

Me: ... this is fine

It's Reyne. Yeah, that back foot and neck crest were an enormous hassle to draw and I have grown tired and impatient in my old age. So I used my own hands/harassed my dog to put her legs into the same position as reference so I could make a more educated guess at how the muscles/shapes in the hind legs would line up. Still had to fuss with those parts for HOURS. I was hoping to post another sketch of her dumb boyfriend Atli but I am having similar... pose issues. No wonder I don't draw much anymore- anytime I do, my brain gives me complex shit to do that takes me hours to finagle out on the sketch level and I end up rage quitting 90% of the time. While my brain has gotten better at picturing shapes/objects in space, my hand's muscle memory needs to catch up. That means I need to draw MORE.

Also, hello.

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New iPad, who dis?

Yeah, finally came to the conclusion that one of the main reasons I kinda stopped drawing and writing is due to having to constantly be in front of my desktop... which I cannot do most of the time because of a little thing called work. So even when the inspiration hits, I have to either a) forget about it or b)hold it (like I reeeeaaallly gotta go to the bathroom type hold it) until I can get home to my desktop and crap get it all out, hopefully before I forget. Sorry for the gross analogy, but at any rate, neither of those 2 methods were really working for me. So I decided to make it easier on myself and make it so I can take my work with me. Even when I’m at work-work, I can at least scrawl things out during my breaks and pretty much not forget anything, then come back later and fill in the details without missing anything important.

For a little while, I was divided between an iPad Pro and a Cintiq, but the former has the portability that the latter lacks, so the matter was decided pretty quickly. My Intuos4 is getting on in years, and while knock on wood, it is still truckin’ along merrily whenever I plug it in, it’s likely only a matter of time before it goes kaput eventually. At that point, I should hopefully have sufficient impetus (and funds) to spring for the Cintiq.

So I got Procreate and doodled Nadia, who I have never drawn before! Procreate is a lot to take in and I’m still not used to drawing directly on a screen, but I think it will get better with practice. Maybe. I am reminded just how much my hands shake when I draw, which makes me miss Sai’s line smoothing function. Procreate has something like it, but I don’t like it as much. Also keep looking for control+z keys when all I need to do is tap with 2 fingers. Simultaneously the most convenient and frustrating thing at once!

Honestly, I am kind of at a loss as to where to post stuff these days. Twitter is too... much for me, dA is meh since Eclipse was implemented, Toyhouse is nice, but I treat it as more a vault/repository for character info and pictures and less another social media platform to interact with people on. I recently started browsing tumblr again, but am disappointed to find many people I follow have stopped posting. At the risk of sounding like a whiny ass, I kinda miss the old days of LJ and openCanvas group session insanity. But even I don’t have time to sit down and draw like that anymore, alas. An odd place to be in, at any rate. For now, I guess I will update here and dA as usual whenever I finish something that’s not... like what I just posted.

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One colorful dragon and one not so colorful dragon.

Have to balance these things out, you know?

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Two things I’ve finished recently!

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Actually threw some color on something :O! Still up in the air if I’ll attempt adding shading, but it’s something!

Renamed this fellow to Azeor (Kinda sounds like “azure” in my head, which fits I guess). This design is really fun to draw for me. It’s the right mixture of fiddly details and simplicity that makes it interesting, but not intimidating to draw.

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Happy New Year! 

Today is my last day of my end/beginning of the year break, wehhhhh. Have some dragons.

The top 2 (Same image, but whatever) are actually from October last year. How I felt when I was drawing it versus how I felt when I was finished with the line art are kind of day and night, so not much motivation to color it. It was helpful in pushing myself to follow a consist plate pattern and not just make shit up as I go along, at least. Details were fun too.

Bottom image is something I scribbled today. Finally got my hands on this design by Arukanoda that I have been wanting for ages, and boy is it fun to draw. It’s pretty much ready for the fun things (Scales, little details before going over once more with clean lines), so I may do something more with it tonight.

Would like focus on drawing more this year, though I have job- related things I need to be studying for in what little free time I have. I would finally like to get my N1 certification on the JLPT (Despite most of N1 being rather useless for daily life) and possibly take a trade- related licensing test. The latter is more for help with studying all the industry jargon than actually performing the trade. Need to look up some practice tests on Amazon later...

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To-do list

I keep going through old galleries of mine and thinking, “I still like the original concept/idea behind this character or creature, but the execution is meh. I could probably do this better now”. But cuz I never write them down, I forget. So, I’ll make a to-do list.

Already in progress/short term things:

-[IN PROGRESS] Update Doko

-Update Koko

-Draw some pictures/refs of adopted characters!

Medium-term things/things that require a bit more fleshing out first:

-Redesign/redo Aikos’ ref (Dragon form first, then machine form second?)

-Piggybacking off the previous, reexamine/rethink canon about the -aikos trio and drop characters/redesign as needed.

-Coronet update (Beast and machine forms) 

-Astrae update (Keep or ditch plates? Do something about that tail. Also, crystalline effect for pink areas)

-Gen update (Same as above)

-Maybe update ASHURA a bit? Nothing major as I like his general design. Just make things a bit more believable/retouch certain areas to improve potential mobility (Ex.: Elbow area on front legs)

-Artemis redesign? Keep her separate and create brand new dragonsona-ish character?

Long term/bigger ideas:

-Nine Gods’ pantheon update/redesign? There’s 9 of ‘em, so definitely long term project

-No idea if I will ever have the time and/or patience, but Gen sculpture/ maybe super duper limited run garage kit? If have to cut up the master/resculpt connection areas with keys, build molds, and do the molding myself, then I can maybe get max 5 “artist molds” (Only 4 would be actually available for sale, since I want to keep one/ do a test build first). I still have to do more research about construction methods (Easier to sculpt in pieces and fit them together, but her proportions are weird and easier to keep track of when you sculpt it as a single solid object), decide on materials (Sculpey is easy to adjust if you screw up, but no giant American ovens here for baking, and epoxy putty is more familiar to me with no need to bake.), and then make a base and decent armature first. Probably not feasible until we get our own place, but writing it down now.

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Some lineart + greyscale color of an adopt I picked up. Original design is by Hagon.

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One of my first FSS kits in forever. Obviously yellowed thanks to sitting in its box for who knows how long, but everything seems to be in order. When I first forayed into resin kits, I used brass rod to pin the parts together, but am planning on trying out piano wire this time. Supposedly lighter and more rigid (and cheaper) than brass, not that this model is particularly heavy. Eventually will need to get some putty for the inevitable surface correction hell, but today, will just clip off bits of flash and give everything a good scrub. 

It feels nice to get back into this kind of stuff again, but I am not looking forward to essentially rebuilding a large portion of my toolbox. 

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Draw some pictures? Ok!

Top one is Doko. I kind of mashed the last iteration I drew of him and his very first design (Is he seriously almost 9 years old?!?!?) together and arrived at this. I like the hair, the unicorn horn is still a maybe right now.

Bottom two are sketches of some designs I snagged recently from Arukanoda. I don’t think I will continue either of them. I haven’t quite grasped the bird dragon’s (named Petrus) head shape yet, and I would like to redraw my sea dragon (Pelageya) in a slightly less curled up/wonky pose. Was good for shaking off the rust and drawing limbs and digits at weird angles though!

Today is the last day of my summer vacation :<. While I still have about a month left before my next long vacation, it’ll be for wedding stuff, which will be... hectic and not relaxing at all, I imagine. Time to go accomplish one last thing I wanted to do during my break- wash my filthy car :|

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@neogeen said: It is good to hear from you and the updates are appreciated! Congrats on the move, the marriage, and everything. I hope in the future there will be time to share your creative endeavors again. Miss seeing you around. Take care!

It’s great to hear from you as well, and thank you so much! Hoping with some careful time management, I can start doing something again. The itch is there, just not enough time to scratch it XD!

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bulletpoints

A brief rundown of RL stuff that’s been going on and maybe new updates to this blog to come

・Changed jobs last year! Quit crappy contract job and am doin’ the 正社員 salary(wo)man thang. Yay financial stability! But boo additional stress from the corporate rat race!

・Changing my job meant moving out of microscopic company- rented apartment and into a real house. In the countryside. With monkeys. And tanuki. And bears and stinkbugs and- LOTS OF WILDLIFE.

・Got married! This happened earlier this year. We dated for a while, so fortunately, married life hasn’t been really any different!

Some other interesting things include:

・Acquisition of a very bad but luckily for her, very cute, Italian Greyhound puppy! 

・Zoids collection continues to grow steadily, and will finally purchase an air compressor in 2 weeks so some painting action can happen! 

・Slowly reviewing old ideas I had for customs that I never got around to, and am seeing which ones I can revive and possibly attempt once I get a few more things in place. Currently wanting to do:

-Kotobukiya-fied Rayse Tiger

-Same as above for Brastle Tiger

- Trinity Liger variant on Kotobukiya base (This one is kind of a long shot because while I like Trinity Liger, sculpting that thing’s head was no picnic)

-Something dragon-y using Lord Gale head

・Thinking about getting some server space again and reviving the custom model section of my old, old website

Yeah, not calling it a comeback, because now more than ever, life and job loves to get in the mix and take up more time than initially allotted, but it’s a couple new steps. Job is stressful, but ever since I started slowly picking up a few Kotobukiya and NJR kits off Yahoo Auctions and Mandarake and the like, I’m starting to feel that old “spark” here and again. 

Am going to see about returning to the states during Golden Week next year, not only because I haven’t been back in nearly 5 years, but I need to start seriously shipping model kits and supplies I do want, and disposing model kits and other things that I simply don’t need or want anymore.

Drawing is neither here nor there right now, but I am wading back into dA a bit and enjoying the “adoptables” craze going on right now. At the very least, they give me a “topic” to consider drawing rather than straining my already overworked brain to come up with something completely from scratch. I at least feel like picking up the old tablet pen more than I have in the past 3 or so years, so I will happily accept that small victory.

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Zoid things are happening again, but very... very slowly.