Day in the Life of an Idiot

Oh my goodness, I really have been terrible about keeping up over here, haven't I?  Well, to be fair, Mason's summer vacation has started and that means I've been spending a lot of my time at the beach.  I can take my laptop a lot of places, but not there.  Although I really should post the picture of what I did to my last laptop.  I...er, broke it.  With a frozen turkey. 

I'd say "long story," but it really is that simple.  I had it outside of its usual backpack, sitting in the footwell of the backseat of our car, when, after grocery shopping, I dropped a 13 pound frozen turkey on it and cracked the screen.  It still works, but the screen is completely busted.  You can't see to type.  BUT, I was able to quickly pull everything off the laptop and transfer it to a USB drive, so even though we were out the cost of a new computer, I didn't lose anything  was working on.

Because, you know, it's important to have stuff like this:



So, what this is, is that my friend Kate and I were emailing back and forth about my Anime obsession and she basically asked the question:  What if your favorite character were a girl instead of a boy?  Suddenly, I had to draw it.  The above is actually my second piece, because I wanted to see what 'she' looked like with her tattoos showing.  Below, was the first attempt.



I found, to my surprise, that drawing Renji-as-a-grrl was actually easier on my brain in a way.  She's a scary lady (dude's a scary guy,) but I'm pleased how sexy she looks, how her determinaton shows through, in a way that I struggle to show on him.  If she's JUST like him, she's also six foot two.  It would be interesting to show her "in situ" with Byakuya (who is 5'11") still as a guy.  It would be fun to draw the both of them with Renji-as-grrl because Byakuya is SO PRETTY, and while Renji is sexy in either gender, s/he's never supposed to be pretty, per se.

I also may draw her in bankai, because I think she'd rock the fur collar in a way Renji-boy never quite does.  :-)

For the first one, I've got a recently colored version of my first half-naked Renji (with bankai Zabimaru). Both of these represent my attempts to break from drawing directly from the Manga. The colored picture is a pose from the Manga, but I took Renji's clothes off (nice of me, right?)


This one is a funny combination of the St. Paul firefighter calendar and Manga, but completely original.

I plan to write to my penpal later today, so to that end I spent some time "fixing" a picture I'd done earlier of Renji, so that it could be the background art to my missive. Also, since I'm sending it way, I decided to record it for myself for Posterity, as it were. Here's close of up Renji:



Now in action, with his beloved Zabimaru:


And finally, my newest picture in which I attempt to recreate the awesome that is Renji Abarai (and continue to fail somewhat.) This is also a problem I have with Byakuya Kuchiki and why, thank god, I will probably never be able to truly commit Renji x Byakuya fan art... (Now, fanfic is another story, so to speak.)

My most recent:



Byakuya Kuchiki, whom, I have to say I struggle to draw. He's one of those Anime characters with THE EYES. Plus, he's a very delicate-looking man in many pictures, but in the Anime (and the Manga) he's really quite hard and unbending. It's his tragic flaw, actually.

I have theories about him, too. I really think that one of the plots Aizen set in motion was implanting the idea of treason in Renji's mind in order to distract Byakuya (Renji is Byakuya's lieutenant.) I think that's why Aizen is quick to approach Renji when Rukia is brought back, AND he works to get Renji reinstated after Byakuya would have him dismissed for insubordination. What this says to me? Aizen needed Byakuya distracted for a reason. I think he was scared of him.

We've started the Arrancar arc, and it's fairly awesome. My only question right now is, okay, so they're freaked that Aizen is after the golden key/key to heaven but they haven't even dispatched their best yet. No offense to my boy Renji, but he's a fukataicho, not a taicho. Let's get some of the heavy hitters in the game, pronto!

A somewhat casual Ichigo (probably my favorite of the bunch.):


Gin Ichimaru (not quite right, but creepy...):


Renji Abarai and Zabamaru (I like this one okay, but it's not my best Renji)


Gin Ichimaru and Shinso (a dialogue bubble obscured the back of Gin's head, so I had to punt.):

I've managed to go twenty-four hours without committing any more fan art. All that really means is that I haven't had a lot of time so far.

And I need more Manga.

Drawing is such a different experience for me. When I write, I tend to "go away" to my happy place, but I can be easily interupted and it's not that hard for me to return to it if I have to quit for a minute or two. When, I draw, I'm down for the count. You can't rouse me until the picture is finished to my satisfaction, which, in some cases, can be two or three runs at the same peice. The last picture I posted of Renji, in fact, is a "take two." I really loved the movement in the original and it took a couple of tries to get his body parts all in the right places. :-)

This is why Shawn teases me about being "obsessive." It's not so much that it occupies more of my brain, but I'm really unavailable when I draw in a way that I'm not when I write.

I should say too that my art is ultimately more frustrating than my writing. Like writing, art takes a lot of practice, and there's something that happens... hurdles you push past to become better at it. At some point in high school, I got to the point with my art (which I practiced constantly, I remember spending entire Sundays sitting at my drawing board) where I could reliably "copy" an image. If the folks at Marvel had drawn it (or I cut it out of a magazine or someone sat for me), I could produce a reasonable facsimile of my own.

I've never gotten beyond that stage. Not really. I can draw someone standing around, or with minimal animation, as it were. But, that's it. Otherwise I still have to look at someone else's work and essentially mentally copy it.

With writing, I managed to get past the "fanfic" stage (after a sufficent amount of practice there as well.) Anything I can imagine, I can usually get on the page (though the BLEACH slash that's running around in my fevered brain may not make it onto paper, if only because I'm not sure I can really make it as satifying in text as it is in my head, as it were.) At any rate, I'm a fan artist at best -- though to be fair to the fan artist community out there, there are some ridiculously professional-level artists out there, who clearly are beyond the "cover band" stage that I'm at with my drawing.

Writing also... relieves the pressures in my head. If I get a story that's burning up my brain out, on paper, it's gone. I'm done with it. Art, for me, spawns a stronger desire for MORE.

Mason and I finished the Soul Society/Rescue arc of BLEACH. Very awesome (also, for those who were sad that I gave up on FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, I didn't. I've started watching those again as well.) We're continuing on with BLEACH, though I am very afraid. The storyline seems to be doing to Abarai Renji what George Lucas did to Han Solo. That is to say, they're taking a cool, rough-edged awesome dude and making him the butt of a lot of jokes.

So, like when Lucas sullied Han for me, I am reaching out to try to find prequel bits of uncorrupted Abarai. Unfortunately, in searching for this, in fanfic I stumbled across Byakuya/Renji. This disturbs... and fascinates. (There is some VERY SERIOUSLY sexy fan art out there of this pairing, which I will leave you to discover on your own. It's not particularly hard.) I think one of the reason some of the slash works for me is because Renji and Byakuya come from such completely different worlds, they're a very classic odd couple -- not just in the "couple" sense, but also in the: WTF, how did Renji *ever* get the gig of fukutaichou to Byakuya in the first place? Hey, for you super-fans out there, does anyone know who was Byakuya's fukutaichou before Renji?

Also, what is the story behind Renji's tattoos? They're apparently "new" to Rukia when she's brought back as a prisoner, since she teases him about his eyebrows (as well as his promotion to vice captain.) And is it cannon that he was in the 11th Division/Squad previously?

Mason and I went to the public library because we had some overdue books to return. While there, I picked up some of the manga. I wasn't expecting the story to deviate too much (it doesn't,) but what I was looking for was some images to draw.

This is what I drew:

1. Kisuke Urahara



2. Renji Abarai and Zabimaru


3. Renji Abarai vs. Ichigo Kurasaki


4. Jushiro Ukitake and Sōgyo no Kotowari


Yeah, I really need to get back to work.

Especially since there are a few things that need doing. I was given a great idea on what to work on next by naomikritzer, and I found what I needed to start that. Plus, I have proposals to write. I don't think I can find a publisher interested in Bleach fanfic, alas.