Day... what was it again?

Okay, so I haven't been keeping up with the Monster Girls as I should. In truth, I drew a couple more before I pooped out completely. However, I've got a new life-driving goal this month, and that is, as some of you already know, my desire to complete a 50,000-word novel in a single month.

That's right, ladies and gents, I am participating in that world-renowned literary contest known as NaNoWriMo. Never heard of it, you say? A Google search should clear that right up.

It's awkward getting back into writing. I've been jotting down ideas and story summaries for years, but actual prose... I don't think I've attempted that for quite some time. It was hard getting used to writing dialogue and description again. I'm quite rusty. However, despite my failings (I am also currently under par for word count at the moment, but am slowly working to fix that), I am thrilled out of my socks.

The writing I have done so far may be fourteen pages of utter tripe, but it is tripe that will later be ground down into the foundation of a much tastier treat.

Okay, possibly not the best metaphor, but the truth is this--I'm having a blast. This stream-of-consciousness type writing has me working out creative muscles I forgot I had, and learning about more every step of the way. I've already had several epiphanies about the structure and flow of the story as it is going to exist once I begin the editing process in December. I also become more familiar with the setting, characters, tone, and general themes of my tale as I go, so that by the end of all of this, I'm sure I'll be much more confident with what I want to do with this creative explosion.

In the meantime, I probably won't have a lot of art to post here. But here are the two monster girls I came up with before throwing myself into the literary winds.

Day 9 - Demon

I'm not terribly happy with this one, as I began losing steam around the time I started drawing her, but I like the concept. The mental image often associated with 'demon' is full of red skin, horns, spaded tails, and fire. In my world, demons are often subtle creatures, taking advantage of whatever form will get them what they want with minimal effort. I chose a cheerleader for their obvious appeal. It doesn't take much to manipulate a horny teenage boy, but this girl has the skills to get what she wants already in place--leaving the demon with a job that requires minimal effort.

Day 10 - Succubus

As you can see, I put a bit more effort into this one. A good friend of mine had the brilliant idea of starting a bit of a drawing chat. It didn't work out quite as well as we would have liked, but it did mean that I had little to concentrate on other than this image as I worked. I think the result is pretty good--especially for one of my first attempts at color. 

The concept behind this was that the succubus was a living doll onto which she would paint whatever appealed most to the one she was seducing. I suppose it's difficult to tell (I'm still working on the color thing), but her aqua features are supposed to be ghost-like, the phantom portrayal of an ideal. Maybe I'll come back to this idea some other time, when my skills are more developed.

I'll undoubtedly come back and finish the Monster Girl Challenge, but probably not anytime before November's end. 

8k/50k and counting! Wish me luck!

Day 8 Octomaid

So, I've been told that my sketches look better than my lineart. Instead of deciding what I wanted to do with this information straight out, I wasted all my time on indecision and funny youtube videos. Here's an octomaid sketch.

I think I took the 'maid' part a little too seriously. Couldn't help it. 'Mermaid' is a normal use of that suffix. Octomaid? Just kinda stuck out. Hope ya dig.

Day 6/7: Spider Girl and Plant Girl

Alright, so there were a couple more days between these entries and the last ones. But I'm determined to finish these! Hope you like the latest.

Day 5: Mermaid

Didn't account for my Pathfinder game last night and missed the 5th Monster Girl. Completed her tonight, with two more to come tomorrow, on my day off.

Pfft, fish don't have boobs.

Day 4: Naga

More effort could have been put into this, but I started late. I think this goes on the list of ones I wanted to play with more. We'll see.

She's making friends.

Day 3: Slime

I think I could have put a little more phlegm on the pole, but here's my slime girl. Hope ya dig!

Day 2: Centaur

Horses are just so mainstream.

Day 1: Harpy

So, my good friend and fellow artist, Corvus convinced me to try out this 30-day monster-drawing challenge with her. All my skills and resolve are being tested with this month-long meme, as I have a consistent tendency towards laziness. But I shall do my best to complete the challenge!

The first subject was a harpy. I'm off to a fantastic start--I completely forgot that the title of the challenge was '30 Day Monster Girls Challenge' and drew a man. I started out with a woman in mind, but somehow my pen took on a life of its own. Oh, well. I'd like to think he looks pretty spiffy.

See you tomorrow! This ought to be an exciting October! 

Pardon the Absence: Part 1

This little girl has had quite the exciting couple of weeks! This largely accounts for the amount of silence that has gone on recently, but let's fill that with a bit of a recap.

A month ago, I was at a 4th of July celebration with a bunch of friends I'd made through a Meetup group called 'Geek Girls'. Stellar folks. I love 'em to bits. But one of them brings up the fact that she's never played a tabletop RPG before, wants to, and knows a bunch of other girls among the Geeks who would like to. I've played before several times, so she asks if I want to run one. This was not something I felt I was up to, feeling still like a bit of a newbie myself, despite the number of years I've played. However, there was another girl present who had some experience and a pension for rules--my one true weakness. So we decide--what the hell? We become co-GMs for a newbie Pathfinder game. Over the next week or so, a lot of effort went into world-building and background formation. We didn't want to use anything premade. So we made Solden.

I drew the map and my co-GM Kate filled in the awesome color and texture. We've both had hands in the names. We're very proud of it.

Our first game was about two weeks ago, and I think we were rather successful. We had a huge turnout. Ideally, we wanted six players and wouldn't go over eight. We ended up with seven. A bit much to handle, but they were all really well-behaved. I can't wait to get into real character building and interaction. I think there are quite a few who don't quite know what to do with themselves or their characters, but I'm thinking we could maybe start doing a couple one-on-one-type sessions to get people more familiar with their characters.

We had to forgo a second game the following week on account of my being out of town to go to my cousin's wedding--not to mention my mother's arrival in town and my very first car accident. But that's a story for next time! 

Man on a Unicycle

I've been busy as anything these past couple weeks. Art, writing, and general creation has gone on, but so has work, organization and exercise. It's left very little time for posts to be made on my blog, but it's left a satisfying feeling in my chest.

One such time-consuming event was this past Sunday evening. I attended my first friend's-birthday-party at, of all things, a Hawaiian-themed resaurant. The food was expensive, but I managed to get by on a delicious goat cheese and beet salad and some noodles. Not the best fare I've had, but everyone seemed satisfied with their choices.

In any case, as I explained the to the birthday girl, one of the pitfalls of having a cheap and artistically-inclined friend is that you get drawings for as gifts. Fortunately, she insisted that she loved hand-made gifts. Unfortunately, she had earlier revealed to me her love of men who rode unicycles. This resulted.

She's threatened to hang it in her house. I can only pray she was joking.

Swarm

For no reason at all, I decided on a change of scene this morning. Walked the half mile to my local coffee shop and worked on one of my recent projects there for a couple of hours. None of you will have heard of this, but it's called 'Arcana' and it's the delightful brainbaby of myself and a friend borne of countless head-together hours over the interwebs. Very proud of it. Anyway, I'm walking back in the early afternoon and I see a handful of bugs zooming around a little ways down the sidewalk. As I get closer, I wonder what these bugs must have been attracted by. Assuming they're flies of some kind, I look around for some stray garbage or--gods forbid--fresh roadkill. But as I'm glancing around, I catch a closer glimpse of one of them and realize that they have yellow stripes. In the same breath, I catch sight of a dark cloud just over the fence of the house I'm passing and realize with no small amount of terror--this is a swarm of wasps. I'm walking right by a cloud of angry wasps. Little thought goes into my wrapping my jacket quickly around myself and bolting, dusting my hair and clothing for any unwanted passengers. Fortunately, I was not stung. But I'm still wondering hours later what the hell pissed so many of them off--and whether or not the people in that house were planning on leaving at all that day.

Last night, I started a prompt pact with another artist friend of mine. The first prompt was 'a person caught in a strong wind'. Because of dinner obligations, I didn't get it all finished, but I'm rather happy with the progress I've made in a short time. Now I'm just debating continuing with it on paper or digitizing it--but I am enjoying the feel of a real pencil on paper for a change.

Oh, and the water came back on this morning. Yay!

Full Water Panic

So the fiance and I had a bit of an adventure today. This afternoon, I went to wash my hands and found that we had no running water. After I checked to make sure that it was not working anywhere in the studio or the main house, the fiance went to check next door to see if it was a neighborhood problem. Our neighbors in the main house were away on vacation, so I decided to investigate their mail. Sure enough--a notification that the water was being turned off because they'd failed to pay the water bill. I don't know if this was some fluke of the system or if they'd honestly forgotten to pay or what--but it meant that we had to take care of it or go without drinking until they got back from Ireland, where we can't call them about it because it's already midnight there.

So now we've got little more than an hour to get to the city where we can pay the bill to get our water back on. We shoot down there and take care of the issue relatively painlessly, but we're both stressed out about the whole thing. It has not been a fun afternoon. And we won't really know what happened until the neighbors responsible either call us back or return from their vacation. Hopefully the water will be back on tomorrow.

So to take up some space let by my lack of artistic activity, here's some of the avatar art I got done on Gaia before the muse left me.

Avi: The Featherless Angel

Avi: Countess Delsaber

Avi: Pure Forever

OC: Ally the Jellybunny

Avi: Blood_Red_Moon_Wolf

Avi: Mistress Deevine

OC: Kobraja












I've got a bunch more, but I figure this is a fine batch for now. Gotta save some filler for a rainy day. ;)

Happy 4th!

Happy Independence Day, folks! Despite the holiday, I'm still making the effort to post. Not that I've had much to distract. The majority of my barbecue guests had other plans, and the fireworks show malfunctioned, releasing  every piece of pyrotechnics they had into the sky at once. Made for a pretty thrilling seven seconds.

So, got in a little sketching this evening. Traditional, this time.

Still working out how to use 'levels' in photoshop. Maybe I'll find myself a tutorial.

Also note that these are vague imitations of a few favorites of mine on deviantart. I have an account there. I should update that thing.

Resurrection

So, despite the massive amount of NOTHING that's been going on here at the blog lately, I have been drawing. A little. Avatar art for Gaia has become less than stimulating, so while I have some of that to post, my more recent art has been geared towards some of my own characters--mostly from games I've been playing.

The plan is to give you a bit of a teaser to start, then deposit a massive post or two over the next couple of days.

I've been recently overcome by the desire to try out Dungeon Mastering. I have several new friends who want to give DnD a try, but are beginners and aren't quite sure where to start--on the other hand, another friend and I have never tried DMing, but think it could be lots of fun. So we're going to co-DM a beginner's campaign. As inspiration, the fiance suggested that I try out the game 'Legends of Grimrock'. In the first few minutes of the opening cutscene, my mind was swimming. Unfortunately, less with plans for a dungeon-crawl and more with a developing fantasy of the characters I'd assembled to tackle Grimrock. I started immediately recreating one of the opening scenes.

As you can see, it isn't finished yet, but the plan is to complete it at a later date. Tomorrow morning marks the first brainstorm behind my DM project! Wish me luck!

New Thread

Hullo lovelies.

It's been a while. Again. Not much has happened. Christmas with family, jobs lost and gained, and a renewed attempt at getting daily exercise. And now--more art!

It's been over a year since I started my art thread on Gaia, and I felt that not only had the list become clogged--it's likely those who had originally signed up wouldn't remember that they had. So, I made a new thread! It's more organized than the first attempt, and now I'm only taking five names at a time so I don't get overwhelmed--and so the commissioners don't forget. I'm no closer to opening an art shop or stepping outside my comfort zone, but I'm still getting practice!

This piece I did for bittersweet music was the last piece I did for my old thread. Since I opened my new thread almost a month ago, I've done the following.

magickgirl: her dancing with NPC Ian

animekittyninja-aka kiki: avatar

XKura_Love3s_YamiX: hers and her friend's avatars

Scholarly Memnoch: avatar

little_rabbit52: hers and her friend's avatars

edward13two: his avatar and favorite pokemon

Ethereal Lady: avatar

i B r a n d o n w: avatar

-LoveMyHeart-: two of her OCs

Panda Starr: OC

SultrySexSensation: avatar














I was really happy with a lot of these. I feel like I'm actually starting to improve. :)