Title: Untitled
Size: 8½ x 11″
Medium: Prismacolor Marker on Aquabee Manga Artist Paper
Time: 5.0 hours
Status: Work In Progress

I finally snuck in some time to work on my self-portrait.  I am pretty pleased with how the mouth is shaping up.  Especially the teeth.  Though, I might look at softening some of the lip creases.  They feel a bit… harsh right now.  Too line-y!?  That said, with any luck, I should have this baby done by the weekend. Then it’s off to New York!

I also finally used some of my DAZ reference images.  I was just messing around on my lunch break. Overall, I think its going to be very, very helpful.

I might go back and do some more inking of this particular drawing during my lunch. Her hands and feet (as usual) need a lot of work.

In other news, I signed up for the intro class at Burlesquercise. It runs from March 10th to April 12th (I think!?) and I might have an opportunity to perform. In public.  Scary! It should be fun though!

I need to buy a boa.

I am in love with The Girl.  Totally and completely smitten.  She is so much fun to play with. While I will likely use Victoria for all of my portrait references (she is much more “realistic”), G4 is definitely my Go-to-Girl for pin-up work.  Her curves are awesome and her morphs allow me to play around and make her even curvier (or not).  She’s just so soft and squishy! I love it. She is going to be a fantastic reference.

Plus, a lot of her available poses are very pin-up-ie already. All of the images I have included in today’s update are preset poses (there are many more after the jump).  It’s kinda fun.  And there are even a few that are suspiciously familiar.

And lighting! I didn’t realize until last night how much this will help with lighting. It’s weird, but I always struggle with light source when I am drawing figures.  Mostly because when I am working in portraits, the light source is pretty much always the same – straight on (boring, I know). So when it comes to figures, my light source is never dynamic or interesting.  I think DAZ will help me with that.

In other news, I am off to Mona Lisa’s at lunch today. I going to finally score some more Prisma grays and maybe a new pad of paper. It’ll be fun to be back in the old neighbourhood for a little while .

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Lookit! I rendered!  Well, I rendered again and this time I will let you see because it is pretty and doesn’t look like assballs.   

Using DAZ Studio is proving to be a lot easier than I thought. Sorta.  I am still trying to understand the use of materials and assets and that type of thing. Sometimes when I add a material to a model it doesn’t show up and I’m not sure why.  I have probably set the add-on up wrong. But generally, I think it is going to be a fabulous reference tool for me. Woot!

I mean, look at her! With some proper lighting and maybe some hair (or not), I could totally draw that! I am pleased.

Speaking of hair, it is also proving difficult to find hair assets that don’t look like ass.  Most of the ones I have found aren’t very realistic and mostly look like stripper hair, which itself isn’t bad, mind you, but I would like some variety.  I’m also hoping to familiarize myself with adjusting the models specifications and posing on my own. Right now, I am relying on presets and material assets to do it for me.  It’s the lazy, easy route.

But rendering is fun!

I’ve also posted a couple additional rendered images under the cut. But there are boobies involved and you may not wanna open it at work. So consider this your warning!

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Last night was DAZ Studio night.  I created my first rendering – which you will never see because it sucked balls – and completed a couple really basic tutorials from their YouTube Channel.

The goal was to get used to the interface, loading models, and perhaps learning a thing or two about positioning.  So far, so good.  Though, I will admit to spending the better part of an hour organizing a lot of my assets.  I’m not convinced that DAZ does this very well.

In my anal-retentive head, each asset should have its own category – People, Clothing, Morphs, Hair etc.  And when they are installed, the new assets should be populated in the appropriate category. Somehow, the different install packages do not file the assets by category. It’s really annoying.   If I wanna select a person, I just wanna go one place, not six.

Tonight, I wanna finish my asset clean-up and maybe do a couple more tutorials.  Perhaps I’ll even have something to share.

Last night was supposed to be DAZ Studio night. I was going to work though a couple newbie tutorials that I found on the internets.  That was the plan.  Only, a five minute cat nap turned into a two and half hour nap and I got nothing done.

I’d like to say that tonight will be better, but  W and I will be going to a movie instead. To be fair, we could both use a legitimate night off. W has been killing himself in school (it’s only been a month!) and I have been pretty busy my own self. It’ll be nice.

Ha. The vampiress cracks me up. She’s so happy.  The second one is a quick Dorothy study.

I haven’t started colouring my other girls. I really should. I am interested to see what they look like as a completed series because they sure do look fun sitting on my table.  I just need to manage my time better.  Things have been oddly busy but yet, not. It’s weird. Really, I just need to do it.

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I’m a big fat liar.  I had been droning on and on about getting those pieces for SMc and JA sent to them by the end of January. But the truth of the matter is that my actual deadline was much, much sooner. It was for January 9th, the day of their house-warming.

You see, I am tricksy and my true intent was to get them completed by that date because I was flying out to surprise SMc on the day of their house-warming.  Well, mission accomplished!

I flew out on Saturday morning, hung out with the mighty SP and PB, and then headed to SMc’s new place to surprise her. And surprise her I did! Yays!  She had NO IDEA and was throughly confused when she saw me hanging out in her doorway.  The confusion was quickly replaced with delight. Yays!

Thanks to everyone in YVR who kept my biggie-big secret since the beginning of December. Especially JA who was in cahoots with me from the beginning and even gave me the go-ahead to crash at their new place. Hee.

Yay surprises!

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