I-Should-Have-Been-Taking-Notes 7.5: Art

Unlike my last post, where it consisted of things I found after I had uploaded my first three batches of doodles, I had this one ready to be scanned and uploaded for a long time. But I, being the lazy me I am, never got around to it. To prove how lazy I am, I still have a small pile of sketches I did back in July I have been meaning to upload for a while now, but probably will wait until the start of September to do so.

Anyways, I didn't upload the art I did in art because this actually contains some stuff that I'm proud of (of course, because it also includes things I did for school).  

Disclaimer: This doesn't have every art assignment I had completed for class as I never bothered to take them home (they wasn't a lot anyways, trust me). Thus, even though I have not much to show for it, and even though the class was ultimately an easy A, I did put some effort into getting that A.

Fanart for someone's character, except the term "fanart" implies that I'm a fan of said character, which I'm definitely not. She's basically a mary sue put in the Bleach world.

The concept work for my vegetable marching band picture.

Loosely based off a bird in a birdcage. It was supposed to be inked with actual pen nibs and liquid ink and such, but once I saw that it bled horribly when I used it with a ruler, I gave up.

Ugly self portrait. I prefer the portrait of my friend I drew using a phone picture as a reference. The quality's so bad because I took the picture with my phone camera as it's too big to fit in my scanner.

Another ugly picture, but this time its a painting. Something I did when I was bored. I obviously don't know how skin's supposed to be coloured.

Probably my favourite piece in a while, especially since I did it entirely out of paint and it has a background for once. It was actually put into the yearbook.

And that's all, folks! Unless I find some more art I forgot to upload, this is practically all I art I have to show you from my last year of high school.

Check the rest of the series out:

• 7.1 Sciences
• 7.2 Languages
• 7.3 Psychology 
• 7.4 Misc

Drawn with pencil on mechanical paper.
Third picture inked with Indian ink.
Second last picture made with tempura.
Last picture made with tempura and pencil crayon accents.

I-Should-Have-Been-Taking-Notes 7.4: Misc

Hey guys, guess what else I found when I emptied out more of my binders? More art I didn't upload! Yay!

Here's stuff from a bunch of subjects, I just never uploaded them with the batch because I'm not going back to those old posts to update them. This saves you time you would have been spending going back to old posts looking for the update. You are welcome.

Horses and cats. Found in my Japanese binder.

People practice. Trying to get better at drawing realistic.

More concepts. You might recognize them to be practices for my Eng graphic novel project.

Some concepts drawn in the back of my math notebook during English.

Reversed side of the picture above. The same concepts, and some dinosaurs on request from the guy sitting behind me in English.

Done during volunteering when I should be looking after the kids, but I do a lot more than some of the volunteer colleagues who just do the craft and doesn't help the kids at all so I deserve to slack off and draw this once. It's obviously a picture of a girl.

Check the rest of the series out:

• 7.1 Sciences
• 7.2 Languages
• 7.3 Psychology 
• 7.5 Art

Drawn with pencil on plain ol' paper.
Last picture drawn with pencil crayons.

Fanart: Saya no Uta

See? Finally finished it.
And it practically looks like the one I showed you before.

But now you can see their faces.

Fuminori and Saya

Event File.

I originally also planned to show tendrils of her monster side, and Saya "blooming" in that monster thing at the end of the game (the ending where she turns everybody into monsters like her) but I just gave up. I'll show you how much of it I got done, though.

I gave up because it looked bad so I scrapped it.

Still looks alright, I guess, from afar. I kind of like the picture better with the background blank like this.

I'm kind of tire right now, so I'll keep this short. I won't spoil the game for any of you, but I will say that I didn't find it as sad as people say it is (doesn't mean you won't though, I'm just heartless) and Fuminori is one serious asshole.

Also like to mention that I tried to keep the colours less saturated than what I'm usually used to, and sicne they still look as lively as ever, I consider that a success. (Yup, artsy talk. You don't have to get it.)


Made in openCanvas.

Chalkboard scribbles

Back around the end of July, I spent a couple of days painting one of my bedroom walls with green chalkboard paint. By now, it's been covered with scribbles, but I'm been planning to erase much of it to make way for something more cohesive.

To be honest, I just thought this would also be the perfect opportunity to test out the picture quality of my new phone.

My cousin drew a dragon on my wall, and I killed it.

Not bad for a picture taken in low lighting. Looks better than anything my old phone could ever produce.

EDIT: Proof of my new phone's superiority.

What the heck is this?

Taken right after the first one in the same low light conditions. Can't make out anything. And I even edited it a bit, like I do all my phone pictures.

Yeah.

WIP: Saya no Uta

I feel sleepy so that's all I'm going to provide atm. Be lucky I felt bad enough to even provide a WIP.

Recipe: Not-so-fail Cakes

So the cake I made last time (and ultimately failed at) was for preparation for this one. Since I have no faith in my skills as a baker or cook, I couldn't just give out a cake to someone without testing the recipe first. I say this as if I remade the cake again, but I really made an entirely new cake for said person. Anyways, let us continue.

First, my baby:

I'm nice, I know.

It got a stain on the side. :(

BLARGH, I SPENT THREE DAYS ON THIS. THREE DAYS. |
I know it doesn't look like it, because it looks pretty bad on the front, but it's true. Three days.

Wish I could have taken a picture of the cross section, because layered chocolate and plain cake to make a kind of stripe pattern. The outside is pretty boring being stark white and all save the words, but I intentionally wanted to have it look all innocent on the outside.

Chocolate and White Genoise with Coffee Frosting Proud of it because though it's based off recipes, when I was making it I had to rely on either memory or my taste buds thanks to the internet being down.

Cake

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup cake flour (shift the flour before measuring)
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• (4 tsp chocolate powder)

Frosting

• 3/4 cups instant coffee
• 1 1/2 pkgs of cream cheese
• 1/4 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 powderd sugar
• (Dark chocolate bar)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 7" cake pan with parchment/wax paper.
2. Mix the sugar with the eggs until combined. In a larger bowl of hot water (around 170 degrees), beat the eggs with a hand mixer until it doubled in size. When the eggs are warm to the touch, take it out of the water and continue beating on high until you can draw ribbons for at least 3 seconds.
3. Mix in the the chocolate powder with the flour if using, then shift it into the batter. Swiftly fold into the batter and don't worry if it's not fully combined. Then fold in the butter until the batter is uniform and smooth. Try not to mix too much.
4. Pour the batter into the cake pan and drop a couple of times to break any air bubbles. Bake for 30 minutes or until it comes out clean. Drop the pan again once out of the oven to prevent shrinking (apparently, I don't think it really works).
5. As for the frosting, just mix everything together. I also melted half of a chocolate bar and poured ribbons on top on the frosting, popped it in the freezer for a while, then broke it up to make "chips".

I decorated the whole thing with fondant, which was just a bag of marshmallows, with a bunch of powdered sugar mixed in to make it dough-like. And I piped those words in dark chocolate.

Once I saw how heartbroken my dad would've been after finding out the cake was a lie, when I got back from delivery, I whipped up a completely new cake. The only problem is is that there's barely anything in the fridge I could use to make the cake look semi-fancy. I had some cherries, half a tub of yoghurt, and some extra dark chocolate at my disposal though, and scrapped something up.

I took the remainder of the vanilla Greek yoghurt I had and mixed it with chopped cherries and some powdered sugar and allowed that to chill in the fridge before spreading between the cake slices. I also made a kind of dark chocolate ganache with milk instead of cream to use to top off the dessert.

And for a dessert I just made on a whim with limited resources, I guess it didn't turn out bad. The cake is a little dry, but genoise is like that. Then again, how should I know for certain? Someone ate my share of cake too.

Now my mom wants me to make her a cake on her birthday, but I really don't think that's a great idea.

Fanart: Anime Revolution's Mascot

AR's Mascot

Last weekend I attended Cos & Effect, which is pretty much a stand in for the lack of Anime Evolution (our native yearly con) this year. Being something scrapped up from AE's ashes, it wasn't so bad. Smaller, yes, and there wasn't nearly as many memorable events nor things to buy, but I got my yearly anime con fix so I'm content (times three, actually, because there were three anime related events this year).

Anyways, I remember while watching the C&E Idol, the MC mentioned that he’s going to be the MC for Idol for Anime Revolution next year. So maybe what people said about “starting a new con under a different name” thing was true, because the name is just too similar to ignore. However, on the page, it clearly says it’s “not Anime Evolution”. Though at this point, nothing is set in stone. They don't even have a venue as of yet.

They released a new mascot like... yesterday, which is pretty much a recoloured version of this picture of Tomo from Azumanga Daioh. It now replaces where said picture used to be on the logo. I thought I'd show some support by drawing some fanart of the currently unnamed mascot and trying to make it deviate away from looking like a ripoff.


Made in openCanvas.

Fail Cakes

IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL BEFORE IT DIED.

You can kind of see how it dying, though.

Note to self: make space in the freezer BEFORE putting a cake into it.

It was a good thing I even have pictures of it before the incident. One side of the mango-pudding layer (seen above) was beginning to crack, so I cut that chunk off and ate it. Then I saw the other sides were begging to crack and slide off, which is when I ran to get my camera. I don't think the cake itself turned out horrible, it just what happened to it after that made it fail. I don't want to explain the accident, because it's a tragic one indeed, but lets just say that most of the pudding and whipped cream ended up in the freezer than on people's plates.

Two days of work gone in just three seconds. I seriously wanted to cry afterwards if my cousin wasn't there. :(
(I knew the cake not rising was a bad sign.)

I don't know how much you people would like to make this cake, though, because I don't think it turned out properly. Alas...

Mango Mandarin Pudding Green Tea Cake

Green Tea Sponge Cake
(Stolen from here.)

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup cake flour, shifted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 teaspoon matcha

Mango Mandarin Pudding

• 1/4 can mango pulp 
• 1 cup mandarin juice
• 1 cup hot water
• 125 g half and half
• 2 pkgs gelatin

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Using a hand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar over a bowl of hot water (ideally around 170 degrees) until frothy and doubled in size. Remove from the hot water once the eggs are warm enough to touch. Add honey and continue beating until you can draw a ribbon which will last for 3 seconds.
3. Combine matcha and flour together and shift into the bowl. Fold the it into the eggs until combined, then fold in the butter until smooth (around 30 folds). Try not to mix too much or it'll prevent the cake from rising.
4. Pour into baking pan and drop it a couple of times on the counter to break any air bubbles. Bake for 30 minutes or until you can insert a skewer and it comes out clean.
5. For the pudding, first dissolve the gelatin in the hot water. Then stir in everything else and let it set in the fridge for an hour or two before pouring on top of cake. Afterwards, allow the whole thing to set overnight.
6. Decorate with whipped cream (or stars cut out from mangos like I did).

UGH, IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. I couldn't even enjoy eating it because I was so heartbroken.


But that's not the only cake I made this week! Behold, my banana bread (my mom refers to it as a banana cake so close enough).

My banana bread... or half of it anyways.

It's fail because it's under baked and it came all congealed on the bottom. But the top part was delicious.

Got the recipe from here. Kept everything pretty much the same except I substituted the butter for greek yogurt, and I added almonds. Yogurt was a good idea, almonds not so much.

 

Fanart: Skyward Sword Link

Skyward Sword Link

I don't it doesn't look like it, but he's based off Skyward Sword. He could probably pass off as Ordon Link too, but in Ordon he doesn't have a sword... I think. Both of those outfits look simular to me, but it's probably because it's in the same colour palette and has the same waist band thing.

Anyways, did it in a similar style to my Skyward Sword Zelda picture. I chose these colours because in his official art, it's mainly green, blue, and yellow.

He looks more mature than he needs to be. Meh.
And don't even get me started on the anatomy. I know it's bad... just go away. Admire the shading for a while.


Made in openCanvas.

Fanart: Powerpuff Girls Edo-fied

Sugar, spice, and everything nice...

The Powerpuff Girls movie was playing a couple of days ago, followed by The Powerpuff Girls Rule! (which is an extra episode made for the 10th anniversary in 2009). Been a while since I've watched the trio saving Townsville on TV, even though I have the movie on VHS (yeah yeah old school). You may or may not know this, but as a kid I was a huge ass fan of them. I have this huge stack of fanart I did around that time lying somewhere around the house. I was considering of just drawing them in my style, but I figured I might as well pay tribute to the grade 3 me and to prove that I've still got it.

Their outfits are a simplified version of the Edo ver. of themselves the PPGZ crew meet in that one episode where there's that crossover with traditional PPG - not that I know because I'll never watch that blasphemy (even though I've done fanart for it before). I figured I might as well make it a bit more interesting for me. You might've noticed that Bubble's hair is the only one which is different, because Blossom's was pretty much the same, and who would Buttercup be without her... I don't know what you'd call it. Without her hair.

Something simple. More of a filter test than anything.


Made in openCanvas.
Edited in Photoshop.