Happy Valentine’s Day! xoxo

Just wanted to share a little piece I did for Valentine’s Day this year. Enjoy your day, and even more importantly, enjoy all that discounted chocolate and candy tomorrow! 😉

Happy Shark Week 2021

Aside from binge-watching Shark Week goodness all week, I’m celebrating by participating in the #DrawingSharkWeek art challenge hosted by Marcc the Shark over on Instagram. 🙂

Some of these haven’t been posted yet on my Instagram page, but I’m posting them here anyway because I don’t feel like waiting until the end of Shark Week to do my celebratory Shark Week blog post! 😛

Prompt #1: Hybrid (Puppy Shark!)

Prompt #2: Reef

Prompt #3: Earth

Prompt #4: Titan

Prompt #5: Galactic

Prompt #6: Mutation

Prompt #7: Chonk

I hope you guys enjoyed my silly shark drawings as much as I enjoyed creating them. ❤ This was my first year doing digital Shark Week drawings and I really had a blast with it. Even though I don’t always finish all the prompts for the art challenges I participate in, I still like to give it a shot when I can since it’s a good exercise in thinking outside the box and coming up with ideas for things you may not have drawn on your own, and it’s always good to push yourself and try to learn more. 😀

Have you been watching Shark Week this year? What’s your favorite type of shark?

Art Update: August 2020

Happy Friday!! ❤ I hope you guys are all doing well and staying safe. I know 2020 has been a total hot mess, but I hope you’re finding ways to keep yourself sane during all of this. I’ve been finding a lot of solace in drawing and it’s been really nice. Like spending time with an old friend from before the stressful days of adulthood. (Maybe it just feels like that because I haven’t actually been able to see any of my friends in-person since February due to the pandemic!)

For most of my life, drawing was such a huge part of my daily existence. The past 10 years, though, I found myself doing it less and less. Sure, sometimes I’d make time for it, but it just wasn’t how it used to be. Well, the past year I have definitely been at it more again and now I’m pushing myself to not just settle into my drawing comfort zone, but to work on new poses and techniques, and really work at strengthening my skill again. I’ve got a long way to go, and a lot of learning to do, but I’m enjoying being back on the journey. 🙂

One of the ways I need to push myself further with my art is getting back into digital art again. It’s been a long ass time. I’m strangely intimidated, to be honest. I got this great new art tablet but to quote the Joker from The Dark Knight:

“I’m like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one”

Well, one thing that will eventually force my hand to branch back out into digital art is the fact that most of my markers/brush pens are on their last leg. Filling up that sketchbook I got a while back has been slowly murdering all of them. 😥

Plus, I don’t think I’ll forgive myself if by the time I eventually return to work, I STILL have not gotten the hang of the new art tablet. I mean, it’s literally been 5 months since my work had to temporarily close its doors due to the coronavirus. Usually I have the excuse of not having enough free time, but that excuse has kind of gone right out the window this year, hasn’t it?? 😉

I hope you enjoy the new art. I’ll be posting some shark illustrations soon that I’ve been working on during Shark Week for an Instagram art challenge I’m participating in. It’s been a lot of fun so I figured I’d feature them in their own little post at the end of Shark Week. 😛

What skills have you guys been building on during this year? What hobbies have you found comfort in?? What have you been doing to keep from going completely stir-crazy???

Thanks, as always, for checking out my humble little drawings and reading my ramblings! ❤ Have a great weekend!

SPECIAL SHARK WEEK SPOTLIGHT: Sharktopia

I love art and I love wildlife conservation. Combine the two and you have such an utterly amazing win-win situation on your hands. 🙂 I recently discovered the site sharktopia.org through their Instagram account and I am absolutely over the moon about it! ❤

Sharktopia is run by the friendly and talented Caiti Rose, a self-described “coffee-loving, shark-obsessed, happy vegan artist with the goal of altering the misconceptions surrounding sharks and other Ocean life”.

Stickers!

She uses her creative and amazing art to help spread awareness about a variety of topics regarding sharks and other ocean life. Her work ranges from absolutely adorable and lighthearted to impactful and eyeopening, and all of it is for the benefit and love of sharks.

The line work and coloring and cuteness, I just absolutely adore it. ❤

I’ve already purchased and received my own shark goodies and can honestly say that they were absolutely worth the money. 🙂 I love what I ordered. ❤ I also printed some of the free coloring pages available on the site for my participants at work to color and learn more about different types of sharks as they do so. The coloring pages are awesome and so informative!

 

Be sure to check out the Sharktopia website and enjoy some great artwork featuring our favorite finned friends and Caiti Rose’s great mission to raise awareness about their struggle. There’s the free downloadable coloring pages I mentioned, a great shop, and more to be discovered there, so dive on in! 🙂

My Writing Minion

That moment when you’re doing your best to concentrate on character sheets for your writing project and your fuzzy cohort says “Screw that shit, it’s cuddle time!”

Bailey cares not for productivity. She demands pets and undivided attention from all mortals.

It’s isn’t easy resisting those giant imploring kitty eyes when you’re trying to work on stuff. Still, I wouldn’t trade my writing minion for the world. ❤ Generally she’s pretty good about just relaxing by my side while I write, but today she wasn’t having it, rolling over onto the books I was referencing, meowing at me incessantly.

What are your biggest and/or cutest distractions when you’re trying to get your creativity on? Do you have the willpower to resist or do you succumb to the cuteness? I’m a sucker for all things adorable so I’m pretty sure you already know what my answer is. 😉

 

 

Nimona (No-Spoiler) Review

I’d heard good things regarding the graphic novel Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, and I did not feel let down one bit upon reading it. The story was so sassy, cute and fun. I really enjoyed the characters, and how the story developed from humble beginnings to an increasingly dramatic plot with ever-growing stakes.

Here’s the description from Goodreads:

Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from Noelle Stevenson. Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren’t the heroes everyone thinks they are.
But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona’s powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.

I think this story would definitely be of interest to people who enjoyed the cartoon Adventure Time. It has that same sort of charm in my opinion, all while doing its own thing. Definitely worth checking out, in my opinion!

Halloween Pugs & Pumpkins

Hey, guys! No, that’s not a picture of a goblin (although I do call him “my little goblin”), that is one of my parents’ pugs. I love taking cute photos of animals, although I will be the first to admit I am in no way a pro, but it’s fun and especially entertaining around the holidays. I thought I’d share some of my fave Halloween photos I’ve taken of the puggies from a couple years back.

Pugs and pumpkins! ❤

Playing in the fake cemetery.

Brutis getting a little overzealous in the graveyard.

Bebe paying her respects.

Spooky pugs guarding the cemetery gates. I made the spooky graveyard for a halloween party a few years back. It was a lot of fun. I think this devilish little duo got just as much enjoyment with it as the party-goers did. 😛

 

Past Pumpkin Carvings

Like many other Halloween fiends, I love carving pumpkins this time of year. So I thought I’d share some of the pumpkins I’ve carved from years gone by with you guys. Above is my Jack Skellington pumpkin I carved.

I love so many of the baddies from the Super Mario games, so above is my Boo pumpkin and below is my goomba one. One of these days I’d like to take a stab (heh) at a shy guy pumpkin carving, too.

I’ve got a thing for carving video game characters apparently, because here’s my Super Meat Boy pumpkin carving. It was the first time I shaved the skin out of the pumpkin rather than just carving chunks out, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Even if it did take forever to do. 😛

And like my other The Nightmare Before Christmas pumpkin pictured at the top of this post, I of course had to do an Oogie Boogie one. 😛

Last year’s pumpkin carving was an owl. Originally I had wanted to try the pumpkin shaving thing again but then I remembered how insanely time consuming it had been and quickly abandoned the idea. Hence the random shaved off bits on the owl. lol

Are you planning on carving or painting any pumpkins this year? What are you thinking of making? 🙂

Kimmie66 (No-Spoiler) Graphic Novel Review

This was one of those reads I went into headfirst, knowing nothing about other than that I enjoyed the work of the creator, Aaron Alexovich. Finding this little graphic novel at the library, I saw that it was written and illustrated by him and that was enough for me, having previously enjoyed his other works like Serenity Rose and Confessions of a Blabbermouth.

Kimmie66 turned out to be a sort of science fiction mystery set in a 23rd century future where people spend more time living their virtual reality lives than their own physical ones. It’s a place where your very best friends might just be people you’ve never even met in real life, and who live lives you know nothing about.

The story follows a teenage girl named Telly after she receives a suicide note from her best friend, the titular Kimmie66. But things get weird quickly as Kimmie66 continues showing up all over the various virtual reality “lairs” after her supposed death. Telly doesn’t know what’s going on at this point and is wondering if it’s all some sick prank or if she has an actual ghost story of sorts on her hands. Setting out to discover the truth, Telly gets help along the way from her slob of a brother, a mysterious hustler hacker, and her and Kimmie’s other loud-mouthed friend from their own VR lair.

Kimmie66 was a quick and entertaining read, and featured the spooky/cute black & white art that I’ve enjoyed in Alexovich’s other works. My only change I wish could be made would be for this story to be longer so it could have gotten into things a little deeper because it was all really interesting and left me wanting to know more about certain characters and whatnot. It was a good read though and makes me want to look into checking out more of Alexovich’s work again soon. 🙂

 

Saga, Volume 2: No Spoiler Review

Volume 1 of Saga had me madly in love at first read, and Volume 2 made me put a ring on it. This series really is something special. The writing. The artwork. The characters. It’s the total package.

It’s actually been a couple weeks since I finished reading this, but I kept getting sidetracked when it came to writing up a review for it. I think I’m going to have to attribute some of that to the fact that this is a tough series to review and define. It’s such a fresh, exciting, witty, and outrageous series that it can be hard trying to confine all of its awesomeness into a neat and tidy little package of a review. That, and sometimes I can be a total procrastinator. 😉

This volume gives all us Marko/Alana fans some much desired backstory of how they came to be the epic couple we now know and love.

We get to see Marko way back when he was just a little tyke and get some more insight regarding the friction between his and Alana’s people. We also get to learn more about how much of a book nerd Alana was before she was too busy on the run from bounty hunters to crack open a good book. (As if we needed any more reasons to love this woman!) ❤

And of course we have adventures aplenty from bounty hunting duo, The Will and Lying Cat, as well as a certain somebody from Marko’s past. Perhaps someone with an old grudge of her own?

Prince Robot IV is of course still relentless in his hunt of Alana and Marko. The man is willing to do anything to find them, even reading trashy romance novels.

Plus, you get adorable new characters like this little cutie:

If you want a comic series that truly lives up to all the hype around it then Saga is for you. A beautiful blend of science fiction and fantasy, action and romance, laughs and thrills. As if you hadn’t guessed by now, this is a solid read and deserves nothing less than 5/5 stars. The only drawback is if you don’t have volume 3 on hand when you finish reading this because there’s a definite cliff hanger!