Y1W9 Berp’s Zoo Adventuuures: Duck Stalking
Leonie’s small blog island says hullo! (:
In this post: Starting to see a silly pattern here with my posts.
“Heeey ladies and gents!
What will Derp do this week?
Wow! This time, Derp goes to the Zoo! Much adventure!”
/end cheesy narration
Well. This is to be expected; Derp’s art learning journey after all.
Jokes aside, Derp is pushing her comfort zone and as always you’re welcome to come along for the ride.
Let’s go! Journal Time.
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| Apparently I’m that scary and creepy. Oh, this is definitely to scale. (Nods veeery slowly). |
Year 1, Week 9 (12th to 18th Mar)
- Learning about B&T: I’m not as daunted of it anymore; not as bad as I thought as a huge part is irrelevant to my situation. Tedious and time consuming but accounting and financials need to be prepared for. Shall keep learning about this.
- Untitled001: Illustration 3! Got it done somehow with a really tight deadline! Got to draw someone famous too!
- Derp and the Zoo: The last time Derp went to the zoo was…11-12 years ago. Whoa. Was essentially sleepy and braindead by the end of it and thunderstorms started happening after. But some interesting stuff happened! And I’m not good at drawing animals…! I enjoy drawing people more admittedly but animals are so fun to draw also!
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| Left: Train people heads. Then at the zoo, Derp stalked and chased a peacock and various species of duck so she could draw them. Right: The Rhinoceros iguana and Derp spent too much time at the Collared Peccary waiting for people to arrive. (These are *not* warthogs or “Pumbaa from the Lion King” but are wild hogs from the Americas rather than from the African plains). Derp saw two growl at each other over food; they’re so hungry. |
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| Left: More of the Ducks and birds that Derp was chasing stalking, a turtle, a tortoise and a reptile (who gave Derp a good helping of curious staring; she stared right back until it got bored). Right: Cute little kid, more Peccaries where one of them was taking a sneaky pee and some lemurs. |
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| Left: Lemur Land continues and sleeping lumps of “I’m not bothered” Gorilla. Right: Some people and more wonderfully acrobatic monkeys. |
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| Left: Gorilla head, exhibitionist monkeys (apparently it believed people wanted to see it in full view) and a tree kangaroo. Right: loose tiger doodles and elephants. |
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| Left: Hungry Elephants. Right: Zebra, head, Koala of Awesome, Coolness, Laziness and Self-Assured Poses, Dead Bored Croc, Random Rock and a Snake. |
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| Head and Naturally occurring Unmentionables. I actually drew it out of amusement! And some random guy had to shout it out to bring attention to it and hysterically laugh before I noticed that part of the elephant at all. “It’s still going! It’s an ocean!” someone jokingly commented. Also, a snake, Ducks, Galloping Crazy Tapirs and Train people heads once again. |
- Drawing People: My glossy pad keeps getting the reaction: What is this paper? Why is it so tiny? It’s cute. Get a proper sized sketchbook. Get something that doesn’t fall apart so easily. Is this even a sketchbook? How do you draw on this paper?
‘Well’, I usually say in response with a laugh, ‘I’m poor’.
But I didn’t say: ‘this is what I got 4 years ago for $2 and I need to use it up for something!’ Haha
And I’ve got a tower of recycled copy paper (see next dot point) I need to use up too as my sketchpad instead.
So much unintended ink splodges; my pen was bleeding! The poses were wonderful but my drawings were not as great. And don’t ask why the paper are in different colours; my lighting and camera combo isn’t that great (substantial improvement from my camera phone though!)
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| More train and sketcher heads |
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| Bodies and heads |
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| Ahh her face! |
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| Heads again. Or busts. Or portraits. Or…let’s call them heads. It sounds morbid that way. Oh! That’s the ballpoint pen I’ve been using. It’s alright but sometimes I get a horribly blotty one. |
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| He didn’t move much so…prime target locked! His head shape was fun to draw. |
- Copy Paper Tower Challenge: Okay.
Yes it’s the same tower I talked about all this time since the beginning of this blog. It’s still there, right next to me. Haunting me. At least I’m saving money where I can and I plan to use it all up eventually one day.
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| The Copy Paper Tower is not a Lie. I threw in my icky flip-flop shoe to help with scale. Approximately 80 cm tall; mixture of A5 at the top and A4 sheets at the bottom? They’re all half used or simply paper that got thrown away. No, I did not raid all of this paper in one go; that’s crazy. Look at all this paper I need to use up! Whoa. |
Or maybe I’m content envying people with better paper and traditional media. (:
- THealing now known as Save My Tribe: Doing studies for this. And more research. Now calling it this too.
- Arm strain; just crackling bones now. I take breaks! I do!
Other Adventures:
- Games (watching): Prop Hunt, Yakuza 4, Banished, Pokemon Nuzlocke, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Dark Souls II
- Dr Luigi (played): I did not realise that I was actually somewhat okay at this game. Ah the nostalgia of Dr Mario and my original old chunky GameBoy.
- Router got KO’ed by thunderstorm: Limited internet! The loud crackles of thunder (it felt like it was *right* next to my window) was heard and then my wifi internet died.
- Cromartie High School (linked playlist): Okay. In general, I have moved on from anime a long time ago. At least the mainstream and recent ones; I just don’t have the time, there’s such a huge variety of them in terms of quality, story, pacing and design and most of them seem highly predictable.
There are definitely good anime TV series and movies out there such as some of the Ghibli movies and Cowboy Bebop and many others I’m ignorant about. Then there are ones that I grew up with such as Dragon Ball GT and Z, Sailor Moon, early Pokemon series, Ranma 1/2, Doraemon and several others I can’t recall at the top of my head. And don’t get me started on manga; I don’t remember now.
Reflection for the Week
Been feeling sporadic moments of helplessness (as creatives do sometimes). Looking at this article reminded me the very reason I started this blog with years and weeks attached to most of my recent posts. No, it’s not about racking up the number of hours or time (pointless to count and I work at it almost all the time anyway) and I haven’t cared about pageviews, subscriber/follower/friend numbers since the old times where I used to be frequent at deviantArt. I hide them where I can because instinctively, I know people judge your social status, social circle, connections, popularity and success just by these numbers; even I do. Sure they are useful at times but I did not want numbers to dictate or influence my next move or define who I am. Perhaps this is the road less traveled and I’m okay with that.
For me, this number is just an indication in how far along the journey I’ve come. It reminds me to be humble too as it tells me:
“Hey, you’re only seriously doing this for a year and a bit.
I know you’re not where you want to be yet.
The ride is full of failures and rejections anyway before you get there.
This is the stage where people won’t know or care about who you are.
This is the stage where people don’t have much to say about your work and simply glance over with disinterest as you’re only still getting there.
Do not chase to please others; you’re doing this for yourself with a target in mind.
Enjoy your anonymity.
This is the stage where you’ll be in the shadows, invisible, alone and working away.
It’s okay if you’re not happy with your work, this is normal.
All wonderful artists go through this long, hard stage.
You’ve got 9 years or so to go at most.
You’re committed for the long run.
So don’t be so hard on yourself.
Sure think about it, but don’t ever give up on your focus or make up a back up that it drives you to be complacent.
Don’t settle for less.
Keep doing what you enjoy.
You will get there.
Things will be okay.”
And then I smile to myself with a mixture of sadness, amusement and encouragement and I keep on rolling anyway. Ah the creative life.
I have been bestowed with a wonderful study buddy at least so I don’t feel so alone in the dark.
I have also been reaching out (briefly) to a few fellow artists I know in the same boat (they don’t really know me well though), just to lend out words of encouragement or a silly, silent thumbs up (if even I do appear awkward and cheesy in doing so and so sometimes people aren’t sure if I’m genuine or not haha).
I’m not striving for anything in return as I feel rewarded already; I feel less alone and inspired because they haven’t given up either. It’s a difficult journey already working things out on your own. I enjoy telling hard working, admirable people to keep going as it gives me a boost too, just by knowing that I helped boost someone else however little it is. It’s a win/win.
Boost someone else today. Someone who inspires you or who is struggling. Or you simply want to remind them that you’re here for them. Or even someone you don’t know that well.
Gosh. I never thought I would actually type this sort of advice in my life [which means I actually mean it — I do and strive to mean what I say, otherwise I own up my mistakes; I’m human after all]. This is another level of cheese! Have I gone all mushy?! I need to see a doctor for this.
I’m not in the cool crowd then?
But then again, I never was.
I was and am always that weird, quiet, invisible, black sheep ninja girl somewhere.
But I am slowly working my way to get myself out there.
I don’t care if I’m awkward along with my nervous laughing at this point.
Until next time, Leonie
(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)
