Hiya folks!

I've been mulling over the concept of opening myself up for commissions for some time now. It would present a challenge for me, a way to stretch my artistic boundaries, and hopefully make someone happy in the process. It would also be a way for me to earn a little cash for some side projects of mine (namely some small decorating upgrades to my house!). So my questions for you guys is this:

1) What is a reasonable price to charge for commissions?
2) How would I go about setting one up? (I have a PayPal account, for whatever that's worth)
3) What's a good method of doing commissions in the first place?
4) Blah?

I dunno. I feel really damn pretentious offering commissions in the first place (would anyone actually pay to own some of my artwork??) but it's an idea I want to explore. Thoughts/suggestions/ideas?

Any of my fellow Deviants headed to Atlanta this weekend for D*C? It's my first time going and I'm pretty nervous. I'll be dressing up as Peri Brown (haha shut up) from Doctor Who and joining the folks from Prydon Academy for the parade Saturday morning. SO, if you see anyone walking around dressed like this, it's me!

I'm just really excited because not only will I have a Fifth and Sixth Doctor to bounce off of, someone is dressing up as Sharaz Jek!! I cannot wait for that photo opportunity.

My sister, who is going as Amy Pond (complete with someone else as Eleven) is coming to grips with that fact that her face may be all over Flickr by Monday.

So I had a little bit of an epiphany the other night concerning my mental blocks against creating art and why I've essentially stopped (and some pitfalls of creativeness in general). Bear with me here as I ramble a bit ...

When I was young, I was drawing all the time. Constantly. It was something more than normal childish scribbles--I remember writing and illustrating a rather macabre story when I was about 7--but I loved doing art. I was OCD even then about my coloring (pencils and crayons and markers) and always tried to stay in the lines.

When Allison and I were about 9 we somehow stumbled upon a particular style of drawing people. I have no idea where we picked it up from, though upon reflection last night I think maybe ancient Egyptian art may have been an influence. It also bears some remarkable resemblances to anime (large eyes) though we'd never seen any then.

We continued to draw and refine this style for a couple years. We both wrote stories and illustrated them and drew all sorts of various collateral material for said stories. Then, when we were 13 we stumbled across anime and comic books (Star Wars of the Dark Horse Comics variety) that were done in a more realistic style than I had previously encountered.

My epiphany basically revolved around the idea that this is when I started my downfall as an artist. Don't get me wrong--I have learned a TON in the 13 years since then (holy shit that was half my life ago AAHDGFJSFHFS). I've learned about anatomy, proportion, shading, composition, etc etc, gotten a tablet and mastered Photoshop to a degree. I've produced some art I'm very proud of since then. What I meant by my downfall was that was when I pretty much stopped drawing with pure love and desire for *drawing*.

This is kind of hard to put in words. I think it all boils down to: I was introduced to this vast new world of wonderful art, and have since come to follow and admire several artists on the internet. But I became too hung up on wanting to draw EXACTLY like them, immediately. I wanted to be able to put out that kind of work effortlessly. I stopped focusing on what I COULD do, and how to get better at it, and became focused on dreaming about how I WANTED to draw.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to aspire to draw in a certain fashion, but I went about it the wrong way. (Bear with me, I'm fumbling with verbalizing this.) Basically, to make an extreme tl;dr shorter--I've spent so much time amassing resources and tutorials and reading on techniques and etc that I HAVEN'T PUT HARDLY ANY OF IT INTO PRACTICE. Also I'm a perfectionist and if I don't get something right within the first few tries (hello, math and science) I get pissed off and usually quit.

I'm afraid to really draw again. I've forgotten that sketches are allowed to be imperfect and messy and bad. I forget that in order to get better I actually have to (gasp) practice and mess up. Mostly, I just wonder where I would be now as an artist if I'd never stopped drawing in that old style and just kept at it, and refined and grew on it. I'd be a whole lot more prolific, that's for sure. And I probably wouldn't be sitting here crying about how I can't draw anything from my imagination and have to use references for everything.

Excuse me while I go be emo about the artist I could have been. D:

(p.s. an example of said old style can be found in my scraps here.)

We finally gave up on the laptop. It came back fixed twice only to die again just as many times, and the last time, Seth said I could go ahead and get a new desktop. I've had my new rig about about two weeks or so now and I love it. Hello, 22" widescreen monitor! Just about everything's upgraded from the laptop and running smoothly. I couldn't be happier. Now I'm in the process of transferring all my files, artwork, and resources over from my old hard drives, which will take some time to get organized.

In the meantime I probably won't be doing much illustration, but I will be playing around with some photographs I've taken recently, as you can probably tell. I've been interested in getting into HDR photography for some time but I really just don't have the right equipment. I've been reading up on techniques and technical terms, though.

Still stuck with Creative Suite 1. I just wish upgrades weren't so damn expensive, or that my new CS4 Copy of Dubious Origin[tm] didn't behave so funny.

Found out late last week that my laptop has been fixed. Let's cross our fingers and hope ... repair has a 90-day warranty on it so I am actually feeling hopeful. I'll be getting it back from my dad this weekend probably, then I'll have to reload all my programs (one of the things we tried was wiping the C drive and reinstalling Windows) and get all my resources back on there.

To be honest, I'm just thrilled at the prospect of having my widescreen monitor back. Call me spoiled, but I find it almost impossible to work in Photoshop with a 15" square monitor where my toolbars take up 80% of the available screen area.

I keep meaning to bring some stuff into work to scan and post so I can prove I'm actually working on stuff, however slow it may be. >.<

Well, Page 6 is a definite goner so I'm starting it all over, and am currently taking a short break from drawing paths for the line art!

One day, if Rich finishes his awesome saga and I catch up with coloring it all, I am going to print him out a nice copy, bind it, and mail it to him.

Also, I actually need to get involved in the community here. It looks like fun.

Well, this sucks. I think Page 6 of The Ten Doctors, which I was almost done with, is toast because Photoshop refuses to open it--at work on CS3 I get the "cannot complete your request because of a program error" bit and at home on CS I get the "is not compatible with this version of Photoshop" error.

I suspect the file is corrupted somehow and that it happened at home. UGH.

Ha, finally reach the benchmark! And it only took me three years to do it. Just wanted to say thanks to all the people who have commented, faved, and watched me over the years--you guys are awesome.

My laptop is still out of commission and probably will for some time, but I have a more optimistic update: I'm currently using a desktop my dad is letting me before, and he yanked the D drive out of my laptop before he sent it back off to the repair people. Then he went and got a nifty plug-and-play type thing which essentially lets me hook the D drive up to any computer and it acts as an external hard drive.

Hooray!

So now I have access to all my art, music, resources, etc. I even worked a little bit on Page 6 of The Ten Doctors while I had some downtime at work on Friday.

(Not that I mind, and all credit should still go to Gorpo, but it's kind of amusing to me that my most popular deviation isn't even mine alone, but a collaboration! I love DA. )

Copied and pasted from my Livejournal.

Nvidia and Microsoft have gotten me unholy pissed off.

I wouldn't even know where to start this story, and the information I have found out since my computer troubles is so wide and varied that writing all I know would take up a novel-length tome. So here are the basics:

- I have an HP Pavilion dv9500 laptop, purchased in July 2007 for $2000. It came with Windows Vista and a Nvidia Geforce 8400GS 512MB graphics card. I didn't have any problems with it for over a year.
- At the beginning of October the LCD screen died. I was three months past the expiration of my warranty, so my dad had the LCD replaced through a local company which was a drama in and of itself.
- I get the laptop back at the end of October. My dad said everything was in working order, and he had done some Windows Updates--including installing Service Pack 1--before sending it back to me.
- I am joyous to have my computer back in working order. Before logging in to World of Warcraft, I check to see if there are any more Windows updates that need to be done. Three are recommended, and towards the bottom of the list, I see an optional driver update for my graphics card. "Driver update, cool," I thought. I included it in the update, then logged into WoW.

Then all hell broke loose.

After being in game for 5 minutes the screen flickered violently, went black, and then the computer froze. I was forced to do a hard reboot. After logging back into WoW, the screen started flickering again, but before having to reboot a second time, I caught the name of the error I was being given. Windows said that my display driver had failed and recovered, and that the file nvlddmkm.sys was responsible. "Fine," I said. "This time when I reboot I'm going straight to Google and finding out what this error means."

I guess that was the last time my computer ever functioned normally. When I rebooted that second time, the screen did a weird horizontal split down the middle--it was like I had two squished copies of my desktop crammed into one screen. It wouldn't boot up unless it was in Safe Mode. I tried EVERYTHING--uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling the old ones, uninstalling all the updates my dad had made (wouldn't let me uninstall SP1 though, the bastards), and doing various possible fixes that have been suggested around the web. Nothing has worked. Ended up having to order boot disks from HP, which arrived Friday. Formatted my C drive, reinstalled Vista. Everything looked great. Installed WoW. No flickers. Started up WoW--after 5 seconds of the login screen, LCD flickered, went black, and on reboot, was straight back to being a split screen.

I have shed so many tears over this it's not even funny. According to my research on the web, this nvlddmkm.sys error is affecting literally tens of thousands of people, since early 2007, and there is not ONE SINGLE FIX FOR IT. Nvidia has acknowledged that there is an error with there equipment but has no plans, as far as I can tell, to fix it. (It has since come to light that Nvidia's entire 8- and 9000 series of cards made within a certain time period is borked with faulty hardware that will cause the chip to overheat and fry.)

So basically, I am out a $2000 laptop that I haven't even finished paying for, and there is nothing I can do about it save paying $600 to get the motherboard and chipset replaced. With my family's current financial situation and the economic crisis, we can't afford that. We can't afford ANYTHING right now. I'm furious and upset as hell, not only because I've been screwed over by Nvidia and M$, but thousands of others have too and these companies aren't doing jack shit to alleviate the problem.

I'm researching my legal options. I won't be suing myself, but if there's a class action lawsuit out there that I'm eligible for (and I've heard rumors of some), then I'm hopping on the bandwagon. I just want to be reimbursed $2000 for a laptop that is pretty much only good for being a boat anchor now.

So the prognosis on my laptop is not as grim as we originally feared. It seems just the LCD screen blew and needed to be replaced. My dad took it to a friend of his that could get him a good deal on an exact replacement of the screen (it's one of those super-upgraded ultra-crystal brightlight ooga booga LCDs) without have to fork over an arm and a leg for it + labor. It should be ready to go on Monday, but then there's the question of how am I going to get it back? (Dad is 2 hours north of here.)

The evil impatient part of me either wants Seth to go get it or Dad to come down here ("come see your grandson!") because I know I'll die of impatience if I KNOW it's fixed and it's just sitting there, but that's pretty rude to ask that.

Buh.

In other news, in an attempt to make a little extra cash to help our dire financial situation, I am going to start selling prints of my stuff.

So, my laptop died a few days ago (I'm currently on my husband's ghettotastic computer). There's a good chance it's just the monitor gone kaput because it's still showing signs of life otherwise, but it might also be the video card, which would suck because that would mean a whole new motherboard as well (I think the vc is integrated into the mb). My dad took it home with him yesterday to take to a professional buddy of his who can at least diagnose the problem.

I'm just crossing my fingers (omgomgomg) that the hard drives aren't blown because ALL of my artwork, ever, is on there as well as all the resources I've spent years collecting, among all sorts of other things of a very personal sentimental nature (pictures of my son, etc).

If the hard drives do end up being fried I'll probably just go stand in the freeway and wait for something to hit me. :/

Yeah, I know I'm far from the most prolific person here on DA, but I try to strive for quality over quantity.

Just letting anyone who cares know that I'm not dead (yet!) and that I've got a couple of things on the way: Page 6 of The Ten Doctors is halfway done, and I've made up a tutorial for an image coloring I did as a template for an oil painting I'm fixing to start. (Yeah, I've taken up traditional painting, yikes.)

My schedule is pretty full now that I finally have an 8-5 job, plus a rapidly-growing toddler, so I don't have much time to be creative. I've been on an artsy kick lately though, so this should be a good sign.

Husband let me go ahead and get the tablet. I got overnight shipping. IT WILL BE MINE BY THE END OF THE WEEK.

My joy is boundless.

So the husband said I could get a new tablet when our tax refund comes in, but I am impatient. So I'm taking my old desktop and tablet up to my dad's so he can sell the parts on Ebay, and I'll use that money for my computer shineys, and the refund can go towards more important things, like bills.

My list of things to draw this year (bonus points if I actually complete them all before December 31st):

Moar, better Neville+Ginny
Neville and an OC of mine
Reyer and Christine illustrations for my sister
Tenel Ka (because I adored her so in my youth)
Doctor Who something
My WoW characters (all 7 of them)
My LoTRO character
Star Wars stuff, preferably Rogue Squadron-related
Maybe some NJO stuff
Maybe something original? Haha.

That is all. Now, why is Nancy Grace on my TV? Gtfo.

Ummmm let's see. Still no tablet, and not going to have one for a long while probably. (I only got $100 cash for Christmas, and that's not quite half enough for a new Wacom.) I borrowed my sister's Aiptek tablet several weeks back and it was utter crap. Call me elitist, but I'm used to my beloved Wacom and I can't handle the Aiptek's jagginess/non-smoothness.

So pretty much no tablet=no real art, and though I have some sketchbook dumps I'd like to scan in, I dunno if my scanner (c. 2001) will work with Vista. I've yet to check HP.com for a driver, but the scanner's so old I doubt they would have updated their drivers for it. ARRGH!

So in the meantime I cobbled together some old junk and some patiently-waiting WIPs and threw them up. View and weep.

I think my New year's resolution is to start sketching more. I was thinking about how, when I was younger, I used to draw all the time just for the love of it. My style was very comic-bordering-on-anime (though I'd never seen anime). Then, around the time I was 13-14 I discovered a whole world of kickass artist via the internet and just ... quit drawing. I guess these past 10 years I've wanted so much to be able to draw like other people that I quit drawing the way I knew how. Who knows how good I'd be now if I never quit?

Anyway, I'ma throw up an example of my old style to show you guys (and for you to possibly laugh at). I was starting to get an idea of how anatomy really worked then. I think I might go back and study some of my old art and, possibly, start with that style and build on it.

(BTW, if you haven't guessed, all my recent art has been me tracing the basic outline of a photo ref and going from there. Bad me!)

Blah blah, blah. Blah! That's it for now.

EDIT: OMG INTUOS3 SPECIAL EDITION asdfjkl;sdfaiu4ht11011. SHINY. *drooooool /ded*

I probably won't be posting new art for while ... not until I get a tablet that works with my laptop. XD my ancient-circa-2002 Intuos2 is serial instead of USB, and my laptop doesn't have a compatible port. I'm hoping to get an Intuos3 (shiiiny) for Christmas, or at least get enough money for one.

In the meantime, I'm sitting on top of a mixed-media piece that I'm afraid to finish for fear of sullying it with colored pencils. (Also, my scanner is even older than my tablet and scans everything with a nasty yellow hue.) To be at least a little productive, I'm practicing figure drawing and doing some inking on future pages of the Ten Doctors comic.

Happy belated Thanksgiving!

Since my webpage is officially down and won't be back up in the forseeable future (I need a job to afford it plzkthnx), I'm going to turn this into more of an online portfolio. Thus, I'm exhuming a bunch of old work from my school days to try and encompass my full range of skills in case any potential employers run across this. Don't mind the dust.

Well, it probably would have taken another year to reach that many were it not for the Doctor Who comics, but ah well. I'm excited!

Greetings to anyone who happens to stumble upon here ... I've been doing art for several years but just now broke down and got a DA account in the hopes of getting more exposure. Also, I've found DA to be an invaluable resource for me as I seek to better myself at art, so I hope to be able to give back someday. Anyway, I hope you enjoy what you see.

Just a warning though, I am not a very prolific artist. ><