Battle's End update

 

Lovely! Was having an awful day where nothing was keeping my attention, but this bit of shadow detail in the background? This FINALLY made everything work out!
Did a little detail on the rocks in the lower right, too. Currently enjoying how that much has come out, too. 

The other characters SHOULD start coming through now that I have some shadow actually working. @@ Wish me luck. XD And...hm. So much for the predicted 'one week' from before, right? ^^;

(Edit Dec 11, 2021: There's been a bit of a breakdown on my end and I've lost that white fire for my site's background. Please tolerate this black on black site for a short time.
Thank you so much for your patience!)

Battle's End update

 

Oh my gosh, now I don't have to do more than some bare grayscale after I get behind the middleground healer and injured. It's awful and I'm going to keep enjoying how much I drive myself mad with this. The shadows in the scene are going to be lovely when I finally get my butt after drawing them. SOON though. This whole thing is going to be all finished and pretty at some month!

...I promise all of that natter will make plenty more sense when I finally get done with it all. ^^;

Battle's End update--That's...a little backwards.

Watch out! D= A dead pair of Jeans!

Agh, as fun as my little playing is, I didn't even put down any of my light sources yet. Why didn't I at least wait til I'd thrown the light in! XD

That's another thing to love about Layers though, isn't it? Can actually throw some lights in (and I have an idea what to do for that, thanks to my friend on Discord since I have healers working in the scene). So the lights from the healers and a couple of lanterns with the more alive three in the back? That will entirely light the scene for me. 

Thank goodness it's going to be good!

Battle's End character plan & general chat

Two more characters to place and the scene will be planned out.
It's been so fun to play with so far, too! Still can't wait to get Valeon in the scene so I can finally do a linework of the characters; getting them dressed and set up is going to be great. And then! I will FINALLY get to paint this whole thing properly!

Have to admit that I've been a little slow on this (obviously) and I apologize. I've just been so exhausted. Finally went by the doctor two days ago and I've been fighting some infection. ...I could have told someone that, what and the slime I've been coughing up...
Either way, I'm 2 days in on my antibiotics and can definitely tell a difference. So everything is turning better!

No feature today.

 Features will certainly return soon!

When I am able to write features (next week, this time I'm SURE) look forward to DaoHaiNgoc's work!

No feature today

 I apologize for the lack of a feature this week. 

On the 20th, I will be sharing work by DaoHaiNgoc. Remember to come back to see his awesome work!

So excited about the MS med stuff!

I'm still not on my new medicine yet. That happens. It is going to take a little bit longer to get the Alongside Kesimpta payment assistance thing set up and to get Medicaid to straighten out. That one makes sense enough! But I am so excited, read this!

I've learned that Accredo is probably going to remain my pharmacy! That's amazing and it'll be oh so much easier than having to pick everything up and switch to another. And, with a phone call today, I accidentally learned that they are the one that is going to be handling my Kesimpta, one the insurance mess settles down.

Everything is so very slowly coming to place; I can't wait!
May it be within this month that everything is finished. I'm tired of being so exhausted. XD

Hello! How's everyone?

I hope things are going quite nice for everyone!

Have to apologize for last week since I didn't have a Thursday post. I've just been wiped completely out of energy! Medicaid's delaying on my medicine--actively rejecting it--since I've been on so many other MS medicines.
Don't they sound like pure idiots for pretending to be doctors? The other medicines I've been on either I was allergic to or better versions just came out.

So...yeah. My Neurologist is going to get after them and get me set up on another medication until Medicaid gets its head out of its ass. Kesimpta does have a free set up like Copaxone did so I think that's what I'm going on pretty soon when they can get it set up.
Still! One shot a month vs one shot or one pill every day? That's going to be a great change up! I still look forward to that.

Otherwise, so far, I've just been very sleepy because of this MS. It's just been keeping up with that so far.
I'll try to remember to keep a post trying to explain what's going on! See y'all later. ^^

A Change to the Site and Small Discussion!

It's kind of a minor change but it's going to be a lot more interesting for you than the drip feed of wips and so much easier for me. XD I hope that you'll enjoy it!

On the Art page, you will notice that I've added another button named 'Games' and, at the moment, it's currently showing what I've built in Minecraft. https://art.rachburns.us/search/label/games

To give credit where it's due, I'm using a resource pack and the maker of this one knows exactly how to make things in Minecraft especially gorgeous.
--The resource pack I'm using: Natural Realism Resource Pack 1.16.1  (this requires Optifine)
--The maker of said resource pack: SCtester

And ooooh the ideas and plans I have for what to build! Right now I have to finish V'aeonn's castle, then build out more for the town that is not too far away. Not to mention the wall around the castle's ground that should and will (eventually) be built.
So very many ideas at the moment!

Now, for my artwork. I will gladly continue to share that here but it will be the finished stuff so that I don't get so trapped up into the wips like I did before. That was honestly driving me crazy and I'm sure, by the end of it, it was also driving you mad. I apologize! But now we have much better to enjoy for Thursday posts.

Thanks for hanging around!

Did a quick commission for someone! And what's on my mind.

This is a very quick commission I've done for someone, they were quite happy with the properly sized version! I don't know why I enjoy it so much but this was so very fun to do!

I have also done a brilliant job in putting off working on the Altera image. So yeah...all because of my lack of focus last week, I'm still at this point:

At my appointment the other day, my neurologist brought up a new medication for my MS version, too. It's another subcutaneous shot but it can be taken one time a month. Very interesting! And since I have had spells on my current medicine, maybe it's time to try things out? Have a couple of months to make up my mind, if the MS doesn't decide it for me beforehand.

But, so that I don't end this on a drab note, have you ever wanted to listen to wikipedia? It's a thing that was introduced to me earlier today and I've been sharing it since. It's so fun to play with!

What happened to the Feature? And Norux Anihes WIP

I...kinda missed Feature 86, didn't I? And there was such a streak going!
My apology on that. I was so busy Monday that I didn't get a chance to really settle down. Good news, if you're interested, though! Neurologist thought that things were currently going pretty well so I'm happy!
Feature 85 will be posted on Monday of next week, on the normal schedule. Hope to see you there!

Norux is coming out fairly well, thank goodness. I'm normally awful about 3D but this clothing is trying to work out properly. His armor is proving to be difficult but what else is new for a person who has trouble seeing 3D if there's no color? XD

References for this image:
Pose
Hair

 

Sooooo... What I see about his boots? I need to get those laces to circle around the front of the boots. Maybe re-sketch them some! But oh my stars, I dread getting to his armor. It's leather armor around his waist...The front part would be most likely gathered between his legs in some form. 

The back will very likely be falling straight down too in some form.
His chin is also incorrect! I knew it! ...I just have no idea right this moment how to correct it. Maybe bring the chin up a bit more? Well, all that will be a lot of fun to work on. Wish me luck! XD

Critiques are such gorgeous treasure!

Let's speak about drawing critiques. I absolutely love them! So my tutor has given me some critique on the Norux image, yesterday. The bad part? I've been all kinds of exhausted and sleeping too much. >>;

So please excuse me that this is all I've actually got to show at the moment. Updates will come each week!

The dagger has been moved so I can show where this goes on Norux's belt. And I have more work to correct all the boots we see here. Not to mention this trouble I keep having to show small things like the hand guard of the blade (in his hand) as 3D instead of simple 2D!

There's some good news about all this, though!
Tutor wants me to show him how much I know about light and shadow once I've fixed up this bit of linework. Which, of course, means the dreaded fire on the fire pose. It ought to be pretty fun to get the fire to go from his hand and around him.
Double so for actually showing the light and shadow for the thing!

As I state all of this, it hits me again. Why is it that the fun part of artwork is all of the work we do in it? Maybe it's my unfailing interest in puzzles. Maybe it's that I like playing with things that pretend to drive me insane.
But gosh, it's got a hold on me and I keep begging it for more!

Wish me luck, please, as I take you on this trip of madness with me.

Norux's sheet and pricing update

Hello everyone, thanks for dropping by my page! I'm slowly working on the Norux character sheet and all I really need to do is dress his action poses here.

With any luck, the standing sword pose shouldn't be any more difficult than when I was dressing him for the images on the left. That leather armor is going to be quite weird looking on the top pose, though...as long as everything works!

I believe that I'll be recording the painting and not the linework this time. Hopefully, I'll remember to post the link on the videos tab!

I also wanted to bring up where I updated my commission prices. 

The whole thing is simpler than before. I have had to update my line art, flat color, and full color prices to bring myself more into a competitive price range to other artists. This will mostly help with buying groceries and paying the bills that I cover in this household.

You will also probably notice that I have given a baseline where I will start my character prices from;
"Clothes and Weaponry per character:1 shirt, 1 jacket, 1 belt, 1 trousers (or dress), 2 boots, 2 blades or guns. $5 for each extra"
I have to agree that the more detail on each character is nice. But this limitation is to write out clearly where my prices begin and how more will add up into the finished price.

If I am already working on something for you, your prices will not change from what we agreed. This is only for new pieces! 

Thank you so very much for reading!

Videos page? Oh I'm trying!

Since I'm going to be posting videos from YouTube, it'll make perfect sense to put them on their own page. At least I think so! They won't be squeezed between the features and my own posts, at least.

But of course my own brain is standing in the way of how to accomplish this idea. >>;

I don't remember for my life how to make a new site to become a new page. Sheeez. It doesn't help because everything I can find is how to get a new page on the old way Blogger was working. It's going to be locked to the new set up sometime pretty soon so I hope the instructions will hurry up and straighten out.

But onto my projects!

1. I'm working on painting this picture while recording: 

It'll be another video to add to my YouTube library. If only I could stick to one thing at a time, this would have been finished a lot sooner and I could just be working on the other thing! But it's still very fun to see it all come out.

2. I've already shown this one before, right? 

My apologies for posting the same thing twice. I've just been so trapped in playing an Assassin's Creed game that a friend gave me. Why did no one tell me how good that series is? It's eaten so many hours of my time...

Hm. To be fair, even if someone had told me how good it is, I probably wouldn't have had a computer willing to play it. You don't have to have a "gaming" computer to play them! Just don't buy the cheapest computers in the world and things will be just fine.

Edit:
Thanks to Ace Edmonds for his help getting my Videos page up and running! He was able to figure out what made the most sense for the idea that I was trying to put together and helped me get everything set up for it.
I linked to his blog Dream Classier there at his name. Go check his blog and everything!

About this new gaming computer!

I have finally gotten that computer that I've been blabbing about!

It's so exciting to actually be building up this PC to be exactly what I want for Steam games and 2D art/minor 3D setups! I'm pretty certain that it should let me record all of that with OBS Studio without an issue and this computer is doing excellent in showing the game graphics. (This time I have an HDMI/DVI wire connection? The difference in what the monitor is showing is amazing.)

I can use Blender with very little lag and was able to set this tabletop and wall without issue:

I will probably change the wall later, but just that I could do it at all!

(Edit: Tutor was recently able to check out my file to see what's causing that black circle around the cup. We'll be working on that fairly soon!)

So far, I've only played a little Darksiders, and King's Bounty: The Legend, Gems of War, and Two Point Hospital, but every single one of those is not lagging at all like the previous PC. The previous computer was amazing but this one really shows the difference between a gaming pc and the basic one I had before.
...I did not realize the last computer was lagging on Darksiders and Two Point Hospital. It's such a difference!

Have to give a mention about Cobratype Computers, at this point.
They shipped a large box with a smaller one in the center, surrounded by all the packing peanuts necessary to make sure that the center box (with the computer, mouse, and keyboard) was steady the whole trip. And I had a minor issue with getting my monitor to work but a very quick contact with customer service solved everything in record time.

So if y'all are interested in a new PC for whatever reason, check them out. This one was so worth saving for!

Nadia's flats

A huge thanks to both my tutor (Art-of-Akrosh) and a friend of mine (DragonSteinCole) for helping me get to this point. Go check out their artworks after you've looked at Nadia for me, hm? XD

This girl has been a headache and a half for me...and I've not even gone past the flats right now. She better make herself worth it as a character, I swear. It's one thing to go through all this effort for one that cooperates, but one who has remained so flat feeling as Nadia has? Madness!

...at least Valeon felt like he was worth the effort. And at least artists are known for being mad in one form or the other.

Cera's Bedroom, features, and figure sketches

I love frustrating myself. >>; Didn't paint half of my shadows that I planned... But so be it, this is the complete version here, til I get started with another perspective on this room.

Pretty thrilled though. Tutor got us started on drawing figures...and you know what that means. Gestures! Right now mine aren't too great, but I definitely expect that to change at some point. Might post the current 30 that I'm drawing next week, so expect that and other mildly boring work from my end for a little.

I'll keep doing the features as well, it's just nice to show off other people's good work. The only thing I need to change is the day I post my own...Let features keep Mondays and try to have my work posted on Wednesdays. XD Something will work out.

Sandisk player arrived!

That MP3 player is a lot tinier than I thought it was. Very fun that it's about half the size of the one that died. Plus it's amusing that I use these huge over the ear headphones...imagine this plugged into this little thing.
Giggling aside, the player's been doing pretty well for me. Loving the option to turn off the e-reader and other bits that I'm not going to use anyway (why didn't the old player have that option?!) and that it will clip to my pocket or something. Makes it a ton easier to handle!

Music player aside, I may never get back to my picture. Had 10 dollars to spend and I bought Stardew Valley of all things. So far, I enjoy that I can get right into fishing without having to spend a game's worth of a few months to get the fishing guy into town. He was already there.
...I complain right now but, if Harvest Moon had everything so open, Stardew's maker wouldn't have had a need to create this game. So I'm much more happy than I play at and I hope that it keeps like this.

Image preparations!

So. My ideas again prove to get harder and harder. This is going to be oh so hard to get correct. XD Especially when the monsters around Kima and Valeon are becoming monsters, no less when it comes to dressing them and getting their clothing set up! 

That said, I'm thrilled with what I've set up right now. It's going to be nice to get all of this lined and set! Then I need to put together the background and everything...haven't decided where they're standing yet. 

If my current idea keeps running, I'll be painting this to be somewhere around the middle of the day. Or at least sometime when the sun is up. We'll see. ^^ Thrilled to be doing another project! 

And, while I'm working on this, I'll finally stop aching. This is going to be day 3 of aching all over for whatever reason MS came up with. Don't want to take an ibuprofen nor do I want to call the neurologist and ask for some pain medicine. 

I don't want to get high, I want to stop aching. But how can a doctor know, as many people as there are who just drug seek? (One is too many, therefore I make it sound worse. Which isn't helping the situation, but dammit, I'm sore.)

Tre and Streaming Bothers

Someone's noticed something I forgot to do on this picture--I got too occupied and forgot to add in the brighter hues for the face looking left and the one looking forward. This will not be too hard an edit, it's just having to go back to that bit when there's plenty of little things to adjust!

Edit: Nov 30

How about a useful tip when recording? Make sure that you've adjusted OBS (or whatever your recorder is) to be recording and not just streaming. You'll be able to decide your moves just as quickly either way, don't get me wrong, it'll just delay having something to put on youtube yet again.
Maybe I'd be wise to just finish poking around the small bits and try to record painting the full bodies for youtube.

All and all, I'm happy with how it is at the moment; silly complaints aside.

I also give up with Picarto.tv for the moment.
Can't really figure out what I did with OBS to cause it but, the past few livestreams have been jittery and blocky on that site. (If it's OBS at all and not something else.) Plus it makes my computer run so hard for whatever reason.
Not getting those problems on Twitch.tv, though; so I think I'll move any other streaming/recording operations there. I'll leave a link to it on my Contact page.