Puffins! | August 13th, 2010

So last week it was horseshoe crabs.

This week…it’s PUFFINS.

Oh my freakin god. Puffins are the reason why I LOVE BEING ON THIS PLANET.

They’re like toucans or hornbills or rockhopper penguins, only cooler. And they’re SHO CUTE!!!!

Fun facts about puffins:

• They’re sometimes called sea parrots or clowns of the sea.
• They have penguin colour-age and are actually closely related to penguins!!!
• They can swim underwater to a depth of 200m and sometimes even eat fish underwater.
• Puffins often form nests on rocky terrain/clifftops or in burrows where they’ll lay one egg a year.
• Puffins swim with their wings, not their feet!

They’re pretty awesome!

Jakki posted @ 4:50 pm

This pretty much sums it up | August 12th, 2010

Happens to me every single time.

[Source]

Jakki posted @ 10:33 pm

Motivation vs. Intimidation | August 10th, 2010

So I’ve uploaded most of the stuff I was going to this week- mostly new illustrations and drawings though, which I still need to update and add descriptions and stuff (something which I’m going to do right after this…or maybe tomorrow)! I’m working on adding photos but I have LOTS to go through, so it’s taking a while! I also have to upload all that ‘free stuff’ I promised – though I have to say, they’re not very exciting unless you’re talking about the Photoshop brushes/patterns I made a while ago.

I’m kind of sad though, because I’ve lost some original fireworks and ai files which contained the original illustrations due to me losing my USB, so I can’t make some images bigger than they already are!

I was also going through some old folders with some really old drawings in them, and it brought me back….waaayy back….to the Paint Shop Pro days. The days when I used to use rasters to draw instead of vectors because I didn’t know any better. It was quite cool though, and very nostalgic.

I found this old sketch which I drew when I was like, 12 or something, and because it was the first drawing I tried to make digital I thought it was funny it was still there on my hard drive. Funny story behind that too: I scanned it in the computer to try make it into a digital drawing but found out I actually couldn’t figure much stuff out after messing around a bit in Photoshop. So I signed up to some random Photoshop enthusiasts forum and posted my image and a question to see if any pro artists could give me a few tips on how to go about making it into a digital drawing and colouring it in and such.

I suppose my drawing must’ve looked extremely juvenile (it was an A4 sketch of a fantasy-type character holding a sword…I was very much into fantasy back then and still am!) because pretty much EVERYONE on the board laughed at me and told me not to bother- except for this one kind gentleman who took me through a few steps and how to use the basic tools in Photoshop and the best way to colour it in. I suppose the most important thing was, he was the first person that actually encouraged me to try doing something about me wanting to turn my drawing digital…instead of trolling me off the internet (which wasn’t hard back then because it was all dial up)! I can still remember that to this day and that has definitely taught me the importance of encouragement and motivation instead of intimidation.

I look at other people’s illustrations and artworks now and still get really intimidated about how I’ll probably never be as good as them. In fact, today I was just looking at this woman’s work, and they’re pretty amazing. I’m actually pretty jealous of anyone who can draw people, because drawing people are my worst nightmare.

I guess the only way to get better is to keep chipping away at that rock, and now that I have gotten back into all this, I am going to try get a million times better by this time next year!

I’m also using a new monitor today!! Well I got it about a week or a bit ago but I just got the cable to hook it up to my Macbook today. And it’s AMAZING. I’ve never had a monitor this big in my entire LIFE. And it’s all pretty much thanks to Cam. <3 I can draw stuff on a huge screen now!!! It is seriously the best thing ever.

I also rediscovered Fireworks!! I used to draw on Fireworks ages ago, before I realized Illustrator had a lot more features for print/web graphics, but the one thing that I really like about Fireworks is that the pen tool has a line coming from the cursor so you can angle paths better. I don’t know, I just think- why doesn’t Illustrator have that?! It’s so useful and makes things SO much easier! I know Fireworks is mostly for graphics/webpage integration but drawing on that thing is awesome. Maybe I’ll try using it again and see which program I like better.

Inspiration wise, I had another weird dream last night. It was kind of inception like because it involved a lot of elevators and going up and down into different realms, but the annoying thing is, I can hardly even remember where I end up because I forgot it all before I was about to write it down. You know that feeling when you’re just on the brink of remembering something important? That happened to me today- with that dream- but it wouldn’t come back and it was disappointing

Anyway I should probably go finish off an ad I need to do for dotdotdash and resize photos and stuff.

Goodnight internet!

Jakki posted @ 9:54 pm