Before we start rolling I wish to apologize for this going
up later then my normal scheduled time. Had something come up Thursday and it’s
stretched itself all the way till today which caused some delays. I already had
a lot of this written and I could of already thrown it up but I felt the blog
was incomplete and I would have been more disappointed to give you a rushed
incomplete blog rather then make you wait. It’s like what Shigeru Miyamoto of
Nintendo always says "A delayed game is
eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." A quote he
quipped for the first time during a 2012 interview with Simon Parkin and The
Guardian. So hey if Nintendo can delay Zelda for years I can delay a blog by a
few hours, right? Seriously though I apologize for this, I’ll try not to let
this happen again.
Speaking of Nintendo let’s get rolling into the blog!
Princess Peach has for decades been the ruler of the
Mushroom Kingdom and the usual damsel in distress that Super Mario needs to
save in every game but that doesn’t mean Peach isn’t a cool character by any
means. (Try playing as her in Smash Brothers, she’s one of the best characters
in the game in my opinion.) What’s even cooler is when someone converts Peach
into an awesome dishcloth knitting pattern, which Carolyn Lislie has nicely
done. I’ve featured this pattern twice so far on here and rightfully so, it’s a
really cool but simple at the same time pattern. Another reason for me
featuring this is the fact I’m actually knitting this exact pattern!
While I’ve already showed off the beginnings of this
dishcloth in an earlier blog I’ve gotten a little farther ahead and you can
finally start to see some of the pattern forming.
Things weren’t completely smooth when starting the actual
knitting pattern, see I’m doing this from a graph within the pattern and I’m
not the best at reading graphs. (I should improve over time.) I got a little too
in over my head and ended up knitting the pattern in the wrong direction, which
ended with me unpicking three weeks of hard work. I now have my graph set up in
a way that helps me read it much better. See on a straight knitting pattern
like this you purl one way then knit back the other way, so I’ve numbered all
the rows putting all the purl row numbers on the purl side and the knit row
numbers on the knit side. Does that sound confusing?
Anyway this should stop anymore confusion for me towards the
graph and I shouldn’t knit my rows the wrong way in the future. Maybe when
making my own graphs I should add the numbers so save others who can’t read
graphs well like me.
For those who don't know I'm using some Peaches & Creme Candy Sprinkles Twist yarn, which was a complete accidental buy but I actually think this yarn is knitting up nicely. I'm also using Size US 7 (4.5 MM) needles.
So that’s about it on the washcloth progress! My
afterthought heel sock project has not been touched much so I don’t have much
to show there today. Go check out the Peach Dishcloth at Carolyn Lislie’s Ravelry page! It’s an awesome pattern and she has a plethora of other Nintendo
Dishcloths that all knit up the same size, which would make an incredible blanket
if you grafted all the squares together.
Now it’s time to talk about a different kind of art I’ve
been up to…
It’s amazing what you can do when you take off the
suppressors and just… Do it. (That’s not a Shia LaBeouf reference, if you’re
asking.) Recently as you may or may not know I’ve taken a dive into an artistic
journey. Yes I got tired of having all these character ideas and urge to draw
but not doing anything about it what so ever. Well I’ve taken a leap and
starting sketching, drawing and doing vector art.
I’m a writer at heart but I’ve always had that urge to make
things visual as well and while my visual desires are normally satisfied with
my Video Editing and Video Making (Which I really need to do more of.) I’ve had
characters and ideas from a story I’ve been brewing in my head for years now
called Dream Eclipse that I’ve really wanted to draw just as much as write.
I’ve been on this artistic journey for a
couple of weeks now and I’ve been doing a lot of practice work and sketching in
a sketchbook I forgot I had stored in a trunk for years. (It even had some of
my old sketches from when I was a kid in it, I don’t think I’ll show any of
that off.) I’ve also received a very special present from my much more
experienced Artistic Sister, her old Wacom Intous 5 tablet, you can read more
about that on my blog Passing The Tablet from Art Master to Apprentice.
So basically I’m a professional now with all the equipment I
need, rev up them galleries! Jokes aside I’m still an amateur and I still need
lots of practice to ever be on the same level as some artists I know such as my
sister.
Anyway after some frustrations and me being an annoying
perfectionist I actually finished a piece of art that started off as a sketch
and turned itself into something more. I’ve introduced this young lady before
but let me reintroduce her to everyone, this is Aeris Eclipse.
This is a digital line art and coloring of the sketch I
showed off a while ago and while it’s not Picasso I’m surprised I managed to pull
this off.
I did this entire art piece in a program called FireAlpaca, well I
was working on it in Krita but decided to redo it on FireAlpaca after coming
across an artist who has some pretty great tutorials on FireAlpaca (As well as
being completely awesome and hilarious.) called LeslieLuMarie (Go check her out
on Youtube.) She showed me that FireAlpaca can be pretty awesome and I highly
recommend you go check it out if you’re seeking a new art program. I’m still
learning my ways around it but I’ve learned how to make brushes in it so I’m
now a FireAlpaca genius, haha, just kidding.
I still have a lot to learn and I wanted to add more detail
to the face such as different shades of skin tones, because our face isn’t made
up of just one color. Aside from that I’m happy with how it turned out and hey
in 5 years I can do one of those Draw This Again photos; hopefully I improve at
least a little bit by then.
I have taken this character art itself and turned it into a
ref sheet! Now as a writer I can’t just throw this artwork up without going
into more details then the ref sheet describes so let’s dive into Aeris Eclipse
and the world she lives in.
Aeris Eclipse is a outgoing, spunky but kind hearted, smart and
friendly teenage girl around the age of 16 years (I’ve been playing around with this, I’m really not sure if I wanted her to start off as 15, 17 or even 18 just with the idea of her being in her last years of High School.) Aeris also has a bit of an attitude at times and it gets her in some trouble at times. Oh yeah, she also has a bit of a goofball streak in her. Aeris for the most part
has lived a normal life, to her knowledge and memory, in the town of Puente, a
spanish word for bridge ironically named this for the crisscrossed bridge
running above the flowing river in the middle of the village. Puente serves as
a bridge to the outer city and the rest of the surrounding world, a perfect town
to serve as a beginning for the High School student’s journey into life.
Aeris goes about her business leading a typical High School
life until one fateful night when the blonde teen meets someone that changes
her life and the entire world forever. (Trust me it sounds like a typical Magical Girl situation... It's not, I wasn't even intending it to be anything like that.) Dreams become reality and Aeris soon
discovers the truth behind the Dreamwrights, enhanced human beings from an
ancient time, reduced to a mere legend in modern times, who could tap into the
energy of the Dream World, the world our minds go when we sleep. (This is
fiction, I have no proof a dream world exists… Yet… Get on it scientists.) The
Dreamwrights are even more real then you and I and Aeris along with her best
friends get wrapped up in a thrilling tale that concerns the fate of reality
itself.
So that’s basically the gist of Aeris and Dream Eclipse. I
have plans to make it a novel but I also think it may be possible to create
comics (If I ever get good enough at art to make comics that is.) and short
stories to post on here related to Dream Eclipse. This won’t be the last time you see Aeris and
I’m already working on drawings of her friends/other characters from this
story. I no longer have to bug my sister to draw my characters, (You can still
do that if you want sis… Pretend I just winked right there.) I still have a lot
of improvement to do, I kinda wish I added more shading to her face but its
time to move to a new project. I’m not going to get anywhere stuck on the same
art piece.
Actually despite wanting to move on this won’t be the last
time you see this specific artwork, I really want to do something cool for the
background to make it more of an art piece then just a character art but I’m
not sure how to go about that yet, maybe I’ll make something similar to the
background of my first vector artwork of Aeris.
With that all said and done that’s pretty much a wrap for
the day. As far as Video Games go I’ve actually started playing a new
playthrough of a timeless old favorite…. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for
the Gameboy Advance.
I absolutely love this game and it really does deserve it’s own
blog at some point. The characters of the Mario Universe are so fleshed out and
with the amount of humor in this game and the good sprites this game never ages
to me. Oh yeah I actually played a little farther into The Legend of Zelda
Twilight Princess which I started playing, as I talked about on the blog,
earlier on last year. I’ll talk more about what I’m currently playing on
Monday! Until then enjoy this sketch I made of Mario & Luigi, which I haven’t
drawn these two since I was a kid. I based this off that sprite of them popping
out the suitcase on Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
That’s a wrap folks!
Oh yeah I have a Deviantart account now: http://zak-art.deviantart.com/
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