A million excuses, minimal results. But a big entry!

I have been a busy gal, lately. It seems like hitch after hitch is coming my way. So, uh, here is a big ol' post for the month of May.

I vowed to myself to keep on a regimen of six hours of practice every day I don't work, and, well, so far this summer it hasn't been successful. I am changing it to two hours of practice every day, whether or not I work. I read in a book about practice and talent that it's more effective to keep practice deep, meaningful, and focused for a short amount of time than to stretch it out. Apparently people get burned out after more than an hour and a half or so. I can make it the full 2 every day, I know I can.

Anyway, so here is a laundry list of all the junk that has prevented me from doing a lot:
Food poisoning
Finals
Vacation
Losing my pencil box
My entire Adobe suite being spontaneously dysfunctional
Really bad malware/virus on my computer
My birthday weekend (last Sunday, the 31st)! I am now 22!

Here are some fun photos of me pestering some funny animals at the zoo. I got to pet the kangaroo and the trained kitty because my friend trains animals for the show!

The Columbus zoo also has a really great Lorikeet exhibit, wherein you can feed them juice in cups so that zoo patrons are deceived into thinking the birds actually like them!



Kangaroos feel like microfleece. And they poop pellets, too.

Apparently I kiss at every other animal I'm allowed to get close to! (Thanks to Jory for such a wonderful day!)

Also I just want to show off my new dress.



Okay, so, now what I'm sure most people are here for: studies!

I'm gonna start with the bigger, slower ones. First, here's a study of Bugs.



This is my most recent, done mostly two days ago, but finished today. Boy, can you tell I am rusty!! Shame on me, big time. However, I finally got some new blue pencils. You can't see the construction as easily, but it sure did make it less of a greasy affair than the stuff later in this post.


I forgot to say: TOO MUCH NEGATIVE SPACE ON BUGS' HEAD!

Tons of nitpicks. I really messed up that head's angle and evened out some features. Also, notice that I lost my custom font based on my handwriting because of the malware issues... oh dear. Hopefully I can find it in the files I managed to save.

Here is a comic cover study. I liked this drawing of Fox and Crow on John's blog:


What a charming drawing. I notice, however, that I made some proportional errors. I think, however, what's more pressing are the errors I made with the directional thrust of the characters. The fact that Fox's head is too big is not helped by the fact that his line of action is off. See, here's what it should be:


Compared with what it is....


Woops! See! Again, toned down. Grr.

Well, anyway, here's a hodgepodge of selected Preston Blair studies. They have almost no regard for finish. I was trying to get quicker. I also didn't have a good choice of pencils because some of them were done on vacation (during the horrible era of the Lost Pencil Box) so you can see me dealing with lots of greasy lead and erasers. Yuck...










These are from pretty much all throughout May. I have more, but believe it or not, they are even messier and quicker. So this is just a chunk of them. This month I will be much more diligent.

Oh, speaking of this month, I have a second, temporary, job, which is gonna suck away 20 more hours of my week. Yikes. I am going to stick to my guns as much as I can on the 2 hours a day thing, but it might be hard on days I have to work both jobs. We'll see!