Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Smilodon King

This piece was done for an art contest in one of the galleries I hang about. The subject was Global Warming and the effect it might have on the events of TLK and such. I have heard rumours of an ice age being the result of GW, so I decided to make Simba and Nala Smilodons and threw in some mammoths for the IJCWTBK number. The mammoths irk me, I feel that if I had just taken the time to line them by hand I might have been able to color them better. Still, I rather like the background and Simba and Nala came out satisfying....ly.

School is not a very jolly good time. Still, things are looking better than they did Sophomore year....not that that is saying much....

Monday, August 11, 2008

Thar Be Dragons

Well. I'm back from the Mediterranean at last. Because I like to have a sort of theme in my uploads, I have decided to round up my most recent dragon sketches that are currently WIPs. Hopefully they'll get completed, but that's unlikely.

This was originally going to be a random one-shot character but my sister convinced me to flesh her out a bit and actually...make an effort with her background or something. So I have decided that she is an evil queen, and it seems she has abducted an egg or summat. Poor egg.



This is Balor. Or at least that is what I'm going to call him for now. Yes, he has a pet bat. He has a kindly disposition, even though he spends much of his time studying the dark arts. He uses this knowledge for good and treads the line carefully, making sure he doesn't get so deep into his work that it corrupts him. Yay.
These are some stank sketches of what I think my dragon fursona would look like. The colors would be mostly silver and blue, seeing as they're m' favorites.
Now, about my trip.
It was a blast. :D We started out in Venice and stayed there one night. (My dad hosts these trips for his company, so we always go a day early.) The canals are just as beautiful as I had imagined they would be. And the gondolas were adorable, I actually saw some newly weds being paddled along in one. I think my sister got a picture of them, I hope so.
Our first stop was Dubrovnick, Croatia. (Excuse my spelling, this is from memory.) Our bike trip was cancelled due to lack of interest though, so that stop was a bit of a let down. :c
The next stop was Ephesus, Turkey I believe. That one was my favorite. The thought that I was treading the same stones that Paul once did was amazing. I even got to see the open air theater/arena where he once taught. I also got to purchase a lovely purse for only ten dollars.
After that we stopped in Greece twice, but I can't remember the name of the cities. One of the stops involved shoving past donkeys to climb a cliff road at the hottest part of the day...when donkeys smell the most unattractive. It wasn't so bad, but I was exausted afterwards.
On the last night at sea when we were sailing back to Venice, there was an amazing storm. The lightning was like a strobe light, and the rain pelted down in sheets. Then the clouds parted on the front and left side to let the sunset give some light while the storm raged on to our right.
The most interesting part of that evening was my close call involving seafood. I have a horrible allergy to anything that lives in a shell, and shrimp has become my special enemy. My family was at a business cocktail party on the fifth floor and munchies were being served. I'm very careful about what I eat because you never know when the stray shelfish is going to crawl onto your plate. But anyways, when I finally hopped into the line, all that was left in the...silver...serving box-thingy was some crispy brown things my sister said were potatoes and some sort of chicken on a stick. I grabbed a little of each and bit into one of the crispy things to find that it was fried cheese (Ew!) and not potato. I stopped eating it after that bite, as I sort of hate cheese in that form.
Soon afterwards I got extremely painful stomach cramps, and a little after that, hives on my left arm. Then I learned that there had been fried shrimp in the same serving unit as the creepy fried cheese I had taken a bite of. So, if I happened to actually /like/ fried cheese or the cheese had really been potato, I probably would have eaten more and there's a chance I might have died, (cruise ships aren't known for their outstanding medical care.) Thank goodness I can be a picky eater at times.

...Perhaps I should look into getting an EpiPen.