Food Porn and Cheesecake [Safe for work! No, really]

Hubby was in Iraq for his birthday this year, so I finally made him a birthday cake. This is the same recipe I screwed up way back in high school when I accidentally put two layers' worth of batter in each pan. They filled those suckers all the way up to the top and took forever to cook, but they were the most dense and delicious carrot cakes ever.

As for the aforementioned cheesecake...

Dunwanna LaRoux, goblin librarian

The Cataclysm expansion is coming soon and I can't wait to make a goblin. I already have a name picked out and everything. Gary Larson specs and giant hooters, what's not to like?

A Wild Comic Appears!

It really helps to have a plan when you're making a comic. In fact, if you don't have a mock-up, it's downright painful and you can flush a lot of valuable time right down the toilet.

I spent most of yesterday working on this strip, making up the dialogue as I went. Turns out there's a lot of timing involved in writing for comics, and while I think of myself as somewhat funny, I can't just pull snappy one-liners out of my ass (and who would want them then, anyway?).

The bottom (hehe, bottom) line here is that next time, I'm going to 1) prepare my scene and dialogue in advance and 2) do a rough sketchy bit to put everything in its place before I start.

PS. After all that, Libby ruins everything by ending her sentence with a preposition. Screw you, grammar!

A Special Guest

(Unrelated picture: Steampunk Ethan, per his special request.)

It's the end of August. That means it's been a whole year since my husband left home to work overseas, and his contract is now officially complete. He's stateside again, finishing his outprocessing/debriefing crapola and will be home soon, soon as in maybe in a few hours, maybe tonight, maybe first thing in the morning, maybe maybe maybe. It sucks not knowing any more than that!

But we persevere, wielding our large cleaning brush and a vacuum-cleaner hose, washing the linens and sweeping the floors so it will look like we've been living in a clean, tidy house the entire time he's been gone. "Yes dear, that's right. I am supermom."

He won't believe it for a second.

What has he missed? Oktoberfest. Home-cooked meals (including lots of tofu and more pizza nights than I can remember). PMS (lucky him). An entire year of school, minus those two weeks in November when he was able to sneak away for just a little vacation and see us. Christmas in Oregon. Ethan's first DS. Mommy's malware incident. THE WORST SPIDER SEASON EVER. Those soba noodles that introduced tiny noodle-eating pests to the pantry and launched a spring-cleaning war.

He's missed poorly-sung karaoke, Super Dance-Moves Mondays, a dozen new CDs and the addition of a stereo to the living room. He's missed Ethan's Jet-Li obsession, his anime obsession, and most of all his obsession with subtitles on every show or movie EVER.

My hair has grown 10 inches longer in his absence. I hope he doesn't mind that I threw out let Ethan use up all the shampoo and bought bar soap instead.

He missed my affairs with LOTRO, doodling, hair care, D&D, Le Creuset, finding a houseplant I can't kill (go go kalanchoe) and real, honest-to-god snow that lasted a whole day.

I know he's missed us a lot. But I'm also pretty sure he wouldn't care if the house looked it'd hosted its own personal hurricane, so long as we're here.

But no. I am going to clean ALL the things!

Catch y'all on the flip side. I'll be sure to tell hubby that my invisible internet people are glad he's home.

Dysfunction, Dinner & Doodles [Lots of images!]

Today's been a very rainy, very slow and somewhat productive day. Usually Sundays just kinda tear by but this one was rather comfortable without feeling lazy.

I decide first of all to put on some music, then clean the living room. En route to the couch, I notice all the couch pillows are on the floor. It seems the Ethan-monster chucked them off so he could use the couch as a weekend bed. When I pick up his blanket I notice it smells rather funky and decide it should be washed.

On my way to the laundry (it's just a closet in the dining room space between the kitchen and living room), I find an exceptionally large spider has chosen to die in front of my washing machine.

By this time, the CD I picked is barely through the intro and I've already careened off-course into the completely wrong room. I'm supposed to clean the living room, not vacuum the laundry closet, but here I am with the Dirt Devil anyway, extra-long tube extended as far as it will go so that I can remain a safe 4 feet from the carcass (it makes audible rattling sounds and I can feel it clatter through my hand as it vanishes up the pipe, which is revolting).

Since I've already got the vacuum out, may as well tidy up the rest of the room. I go around every crack and crevice in the dining room, then the kitchen, using my vacuum rather than suffer the indignity of sweeping. Let's face it, sweeping sucks, and brooms are gross.

Holstering the tube, I see the toaster and a couple boxes of tea are taking up valuable real estate on my counter. I don't even eat that much toast, let alone drink tea. What am I, some kinda highfalutin' whatchamajig? Holy crap there is a lot of dead toast crumbs in this thing. Soon there's crumbs all over the counter, the sink, and the freshly-vacuumed floor, but the toaster looks pretty good huh? Aw yeah!

So I put the toaster in the cabinet and vacuum again. I want to relocate the tea, but where... oh, I'll put it up on the baker's rack! ...which is dirty, but whatever. I clean it off and decide that the tea doesn't look nice enough to go there, so instead I cram it all in a ziploc bag and open the corner cupboard to find...

Old medicine! Well THAT isn't worth a damn, is it? Expires March 2005? Oh no no no. All of that goes right into the trashcan, and I can finally put the bag of tea on my new clean shelf. Yay! But now I'm hungry. I should make dinner now, let's chop up some onions and some celery and some carrots and put them in a pot and play video games and draw a picture and wash my hands 16 times because I keep forgetting to do messy stuff all at once so I don't have to wash up after every single one.

AFTER dinner and all of that stuff is done, I finally remember that I was going to do laundry but it's getting kinda late so I should probably wash some clothes for Ethan to wear to school tomorrow instead before I wash his icky old blanket and he should really take a shower pretty soon before it's bedtime and he has to stay up late just so he can hose off the skunkiness of a weekend before I send him back to his teacher and that's what it's like to have ADD the end.

Here's some pictures!

This is my brother's girlfriend. She is pretty awesome. She also looks exactly like this IRL.

A friend requested a doodle for his real self, so I made this. I like how it looks in black & white. :)

Been working on some Libby and Fenniel cartoons so I can try my hand at making a comic. I think they look pretty adorable, if I do say so myself. Fenn is channeling his inner Peanut in this one, I think.

My mom FINALLY decided to start a recipe blog (I made her this doodle to put on it), and I'm very proud of how many posts she's made. She ain't no slacker!

I finally figured out how to use layers in Gimp, so I was able to color something without it being like torture. Yay!

Keltyr is evil. I don't know what else to say. Viva la turtleneck of doom!

A watersprite.

Here is a sketch I made for Ghaar. He ended up with Mel Gibson hair, eww! I don't know if I like how the coloring came out, but I do love the guild symbol on his tabard. You can see it whole here.

Dir Goes Commando; or What I Learned Last Month

So it's been a month since I started doodling. I'm still having fun with it, which is a good sign. I have good news and bad news, though. First off, I got some nasty malware (I blame Twitter, long story) and had to reformat my hard drive, killing all my arts. The good news? Almost all of it survived because I've been diligent about sticking them up on DeviantArt. I lost sketches, doodles, and re-colored completed sketches, but for the most part, at least one color version of everything survived the wipe.

So, now that I've had a good long week off, went to visit friends, reinstalled Windows, made pickles (for the first time ever!), a big pot of hot & sour soup, and coffee, it's time to get my ass back to the wheel (what?) and show you what I've been working on. Have some arts!

I've drawn Dir before, but it was a long time ago and I wanted something a bit nicer to go along with the story we wrote about Ysani and Dir. Dir prefers robes, because he can go commando. Duh!

Ysani decided after all that mess she needed a beach vacation, so I doodled a picture of her favorite bathing suit: green and pink. Not pictured? The big slice of watermelon on the butt. Story coming soon!

I play D&D on the weekends with some of my friends (official nerd card material right there, I feel validated now), and this is Mouse, one of the players. Mouse is a gnome shaman with a spider spirit companion, so she gets a nifty web tattoo. I like how she turned out, gnome-fro and all!

This dwarf fella here is Hardal, Ghaar's fighter in said D&D game. He actually gets a nose. I also think there may be a slight resemblance between this picture and his player IRL. Except for the beard, I mean (although I hear he gets quite the facial rug when his woman is out of town and he doesn't have to shave).

Fells is something of a legend, having taken a bazillion years to level her character (and she's still not capped). Her character is plain, prone to trouble and mischief, and doesn't seem to be all that fond of The Man. Personally, I would see that smile and run for cover.

Tried my hand at Hammaryn again, using a style more like Bika's beast-girl incarnation. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I like how she turned out having a buff look to her, but I think she needs a narrower, rounder, more feminine jawline, and I just plain don't like how her eyes and mouth came out. I tried a ton of different ways but just left it at this for now.

Dravir is an engineer and I always assumed he lost his eye in some mechanical backfire (I could ask, but it's funnier to imagine he just had a mishap with an explosive sheep). He has some silvery facial tattoos, and they didn't really elaborate so I just made up my own design however I felt like doing it. The moral of the story is: be specific, or enjoy my own doodle-y interpretation. I think he liked it, so this was an overall win.

I started this doodle with someone specific in mind, but it did not go in the direction I was planning, at all. Female instead of male? Oops. I decided to make this one a DK, even going so far as to create Avaera on another server. Leaf tattoos are vertical on the WoW models, but I like them horizontal.

Last but not least, Reggie's warlock, Alsatia, is the Mary Poppins of evil zombie bitches. She wants you to be a good little boy or girl, so she can experiment on you and eventually eat your soul. Don't worry, she'll be sure to do so with a spoonful of sugar.

Bikadoodles & the Wacom Tablet

I don't have much of anything to say, let alone anything witty, but I do have more doodles. Content is content, amirite? Anyway, I got my Wacom pen tablet in the mail yesterday and it's pretty tough getting the hang of using a pen instead of a mouse. I think my fingers have become stupid since I started typing and using the mouse for everything. My handwriting sucks - the text recognition software translated "I am awesome" to "fourteen alimentary dildos" or something like that. DON'T WORRY, I WILL GET BETTER.

At Reggie's request, here is Tessere, the saucy urchin who made such a name for herself at Fenn & Libby's wedding by loudly encouraging Fenn to be sure to "GO DOWNTOWN", complete with lewd gestures.

Cows are still hard to draw, but I did like how Kirfkin's nose turned out. It's annoying that tauren doodles tend to take 3-4 times longer to draw than your average human or elf, and twice as long as trolls. (Really though, I shouldn't complain. I can draw tons of pictures in a day, they're just little speedbumps.)

Jamarra requested a doodle of her undead warrior with Fawnah, the moo-cow lady of drunkenness. She said she cried tears of laughter when she saw this... I think that's a good thing, right?

I hereby dub these Bikadoodles. Like snickerdoodles, only they're fun little treats for your eyes. So quit licking the monitor already.

-Jamarra

I drew almost all of this portrait using my new pen tablet, yay. :) It's harder than I thought it would be, but like anything else it seems to get better with practice. This is Ysani. There are a ton of things I like about this picture; the subtle shading of her good eye, the shadows in her hair and, most of all, how her right ear just looks right in relation to the position of her head. Victory!

Cemeteries told me he had a "prosthetic jaw". Well, I immediately though of a big scary metal beast that bolted right to his head. The way the glowing eye and shiny metal turned out made me real happy, so I rewarded myself by drawing a little skull on the eyepatch. I love those little guys! xD

I did not make this cute little clay Bika. Labrae offered to make it for me in exchange for a doodle, and I was like "HELL YES". I can be bribed, oh yes.

This is the doodle I made for her! Labrae is pretty silly for a zombie. She loves her grape juice box and her purple pigtails, and so do I.

Anyway, that's all I have at the moment. Tomorrow, there will be a ridiculous RP post, a sequel to Tuesday's awesome shenanigans. See you then!

Sleepy Saturday Sunday and DeviantArt

Okay, now it's technically Sunday, but I got distracted after uploading all of these freakin' pictures and didn't get a chance to finish labeling them before I was whisked away on an epic journey to the Misty Mountains, where fish-head goblins chased me with big cartoony bombs as I ran screaming in the opposite direction, usually headfirst into a clan of yeti.

GOOD TIMES!

Friday night, I realized I have a DeviantArt account. It's a place where anyone can post their various artworks and writings in a personal gallery, and visitors can see all their work in one place, leave comments and follow their favorites. You can visit my page here anytime to see my doodles. There's even some stuff that's not quite PG enough to post in my blog. (Yay boobs?)

In other news, a brand-new pen tablet is on its way. I didn't really expect to move beyond the mouse and MS Paint so soon. I didn't expect to be so prolific either, and I think that having a pen device rather than a mouse will help speed up the drawing process and make it easier on my hand. ("Augh! My hand! I was gonna use that!") Very much looking forward to the delivery man now, I can assure you.

Anyway, I ain't posted since Wednesday and I've been a busy bee. Behold, many new pictures! I hope you like them!

I love how this turned out! Bika looks like she belongs in the cast of Teen Titans, almost. Knowing her she'd be the one to kick Beast Boy's ass on a regular basis (and he'd have a wicked crush on her). I sure miss that show, but what the heck was going on near the end? I just stopped watching. I couldn't get past the creepy stalker Slade who always fucked everything up, especially Robin. What a depressing direction to take the show. It was so badass and cute at the same time, but then they ensured that Robin will need just as much therapy as Bruce Wayne.

Muriam is a mage. She's got a brilliant mind, but undeath was not kind to her. Unstable as they come, she's now the most paranoid character I have ever played. It's unclear whether her theories are amazing breakthroughs in the field of magic, or if she's just giving vent to the voices in her head. Maybe it's a little of both. Her shoulders are hunched to give her the appearance of a sort of creepy, birdlike zombie. She's harmless. I think.

Bullhoof carries a small mirror everywhere he goes so that he can reflect Bika's glower back at her. It annoys her, but she ignores it (mostly because Bull, in spite of his unbearable puns, is still one of the least annoying people she knows).

Feliche once asked Skulley to paint vrykul tattoos all over his arms and torso for his Hallow's End costume. I'd really like to draw that scene sometime, if I get good enough at this drawing stuff! :)

Bellesta has dreadlocks, complex facial markings and a missing ear. I was a bit apprehensive about pulling this one off but I think it turned out great. It's the first one of this style with the heavier black lines and minor suggestions of shadow.

Yva's picture gave me some practice working on eyes. I wanted them to convey just how nutters she really is and I think I did a fair job. I am somewhat biased toward creepy pictures though, I admit.

Moretta's player draws awesome paint sketches too and I love them! Because he kicks ass, I am giving his Death Knight extra-bright colors and a special super-suit complete with skull. Rock on!

Genise is a schmexy librarian type. I really liked drawing her with glasses, but it came out looking a bit modern to me and I questioned whether it suits a game character in a fantasy setting. The player of Genise said she liked it though, so it gets to stay.

GAH! Oh. It's a Tufak. The nosering was hard to draw, both in perspective and suggesting a metallic surface. He also wanted graying hair/fur, so I added gray tones to the colors I used and sections of lighter, grayer hair. He looks fierce. Also stripe-y.

And lastly, we have Takchawee again. I made her nose longer and carved off the bulk of her armor to make her look more feminine. I also fixed her horns and made them curve forward and up, like they are supposed to.

That's all I've got for now. Suggestions and constructive critiques are always appreciated and you'll never hurt my feelings by pointing out where I can do better. That's a promise.

Which one is your favorite?

Hump Day

Today is Wednesday, so let's celebrate its utter lack of awesome with more drawings. I know, you totally didn't see that coming, right? Well shaddap! I can't help it, all right? I like doing this. Don't hate.

Bhe is a rude little orc with a penchant for destruction.

Manettia is actually a hobbit minstrel character. Don't hate on my lute, it hates itself enough already.

The lady who plays Alishe is awesome and I heart her. Her character is awfully cute and I love the way her facial tattoos turned out.

Illithias is a temperamental wench with half of a face. I made her take a bath and put on something nice before I would even think about doodling her.

Vomher requested a doodle, and described himself as a sorta greasy evil thing that I could only equate with a Snape-Edward Cullen lovechild. Turns out that unholy union results in an evil David Bowie in a cardigan. Who knew?

Lansiron is half human, half elf, and has a permanent 1000-mile stare. This is fairly hard to accomplish using MS Paint, but I think he turned out pretty well. By the way, the dude behind Lans is an amazing artist. My doodles look like dog poo in comparison, but he had really nice things to say about them so I made this face: ^_^

This fella here is Pitchblack, a goofy druid who probably carries a pocket-sized book of pick-up lines for the ladies.

I have a few more requests in the queue right now that I'm working on. People are really tickled to see pictures of their characters, and it's nice to see them all happy about it. I think I'm getting better (a little at a time), learning nifty tricks for MS Paint and drawing in general, like how to draw by erasing lines and shaping white space, and how to use gradients of colors to make more subtle designs like stubble, sheen and shadow.

Now if only learning anatomy was easy.

(PS. I made it all the way through this post without making a hump joke, aren't you proud?)

Warheads and Mullet-B-Gone

While catching up on Facebook today I discovered that my friend Eric/Gorebash sweats when eating really sour candy. Mild to moderate on the scale of TMI, it reminded me of that time in the 90's when cramming your mouth full of Warheads and puckering your face until it looked like a butt was the most extreme candy-related school activity. (Pop Rocks & Coke shooters were really before my time, I think. Plus, you know, that whole thing where it was a load of crap.)

Anyway, now that I'm done playing "hey, remember that thing that makes me feel old?" here are some more pictures.

After several revisions, my portrait of plaguebringer Uthas is finally complete. Braids AND five o'clock shadow, this drawing is basically like Christmas in 10000 pixels or less.

Renshank had the Coolest. Hair. Ever.

Tarquin got a wee reshaping to remove his mullet, hence the title of this post. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS ROCK THE MULLET.

Wueten looks like he's contemplating how to fit 10 lbs of explosives into a 1 lb bag.

Redfield wanted to be drawn lighting a gnome on fire.

Wish granted, ya bastard.

Rashona is a fierce Savannah huntress. It is freakin' hard to draw cats, the end.

We will pretend that Grizz has shame. Blush, naked wench.

I like how Ezma turned out. She's like a cute bug. Also a zombie. Cute zombie bug. Yeah.