Thought about going to the DE Furbowl this Saturday. Hmm... would really like to see Renashe again, and Hossifer, and meet Rexxie, all of whom will be there. But... I guess I'll stay at home. I have an opportunity to go swimming, and if I do that, it'll burn me out. Also some local bowling maybe, so I guess I'll stick around. Would have been fun to hang out with the fursuiters again, though. One of these days, hopefully.

I did not go to Anthrocon this year. But, I have been following the news reports and photos and videos of the con, and am happy for all who were able to attend, and hope you all had a great time. Sounds like you did.:) I will be there next year.

I will not be going to any more cons for the remainder of 2013. I've got some important matters to take care of so I can have my life back, so that, and I need to save my money for next year's exotic cruise vacation, if I decide to attempt that again. Additionally, I will not be attending any more cons period until I have my full fursuit, and no more local meets until I at least have my feet paws. I was really excited when I debuted my lion partial last year at AC12, but now looking at it, the partial I made seems a bit lame (by my own standards), as it needs refinements and more to balance it out. The head also is long overdue for some much-needed internal fitting adjustments and electric wiring. So, I must find motivation and get to work on this. Hopefully, the full suit will debut in 2014.

Went to the eye doctor today (again). Went pretty well this time. My vision went south for unknown reasons in April, in both eyes (and I had just gotten new glasses in February!), and I've made many treks to the eye doctor since. Today got a prescription for new contact lenses, and for glasses, so now I should not have to return again, God willing, until my regular exam next year.

Have been trying to back off of stuff and have been lax and trying not to worry and care about stuff less. I was starting to have chest pains every week, if not every day, and let me tell you, that scares the hell out of me. Too much worry about recent events and the future. Trying to calm down and care less about stuff, and let things slide. For this reason, was glad my cruise was cancelled, and was glad I decided to stay home from AC this year. Feeling a lot better the past 2 weeks. Blood pressure is good (or so I am told), never had any problems with that, and let's keep it that way. If I make it through 2013, I think I'll be okay.

AC13 had been uncertain for me for the longest time, mostly for $ reasons stemming from potential alternate plans. I was toying with the idea of attending the Furry Cruise this year for a very special vacation, but due to its location, and timing with work/school schedules, I decided not to pursue it. Long story short, ended up booking a full blown 7-day Royal Caribbean cruise out of a local port instead of out of Florida, which was convenient, but would set sail July 5! This was right over Anthrocon, so that settled that, I would not be going to AC13, nor would I now be able to afford to do so. I contacted the few friends I had tentatively inquired about rooming with, so they knew I would not need a room and that I would not be coming to the convention.

On his "Rising Force" CD, Yngwie Malmsteen (a neoclassical heavy metal guitarist) did an instrumental piece titled, Now Your Ships are Burned. Why I am I mentioning this, you ask? Well, guess what? That's exactly what happened. The ship I was supposed to be on burned at sea. Holy freaking crap! Another one bites the dust! And not even a Carnival ship this time!

So, my cruise to the Bahamas has been cancelled, and I will not be going this year. Getting my money back sometime in mid-July (a full refund). Might rebook for next year, don't know yet. I was slightly disappointed but actually mostly felt relief, as I wasn't well prepared anyway and this was all happening too fast for me. Important, again please note that this was NOT the Furry Cruise... that is a separate event that sails in Dec... this cancelled cruise was my own private booking.

Did not plan on going to AC13 at all, no room, no registration, and the cruise line has my money... but... now thinking about maybe trying to stop in to the con for a day at least, Friday or Saturday, with a 1-day registration. It's a lot to run all that way for just a day, but I know if I don't go I'll feel sad when the weekend arrives two weeks from now. I mean, I've been there many times, I don't HAVE to go, but would like to if I can swing it. I hate to ask for favors (not gonna beg), but it really would be helpful if I could find a place to stay for ONE night, to crash on somebody's floor, so I can head out for home the next morning instead of 11:30pm that same night. Not for free, of course, I'd pay my appropriate divided share of the room. Also thinking about avoiding the turnpike to cut costs, but we will see... that may make getting there a real pain. And, I have to decide if I'm coming for Friday, or for Saturday, or not at all.

UPDATE: June 30, 2013:

I have decided not to pursue AC13 at this late date. I am simply not prepared (because I wasn't planning on it), and after re-evaluating the whole trip, it's going to cost me more money and stress than I wish to handle for getting just one day's experience out of the con. If I was closer, I might reconsider, but it's just too far away. Sincere thanks to the friends who kindly offered me a spot in their rooms, in response to this journal entry, which I have regretfully declined. I hope to occupy my time constructively with working on my fursuit stuff over the time the con will be going on.

Fun wishes to everyone who will be at this great convention next weekend! All, have a fun, safe trip, and a fantastic time at AC13! My thoughts will be with you all.

Went to another furbowl on May 25, 2013. Only got 10 pictures from this meet, but here they are:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/51079.html

Saw a local con was coming up and so I went! April 6 and 7. Had a great time! Full report with pics is on my LJ, at:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/50839.html

Yes, success! Finally. LeoSTARR saw comet PanSTARRS tonight at 8:10pm EDT. Used a pair of 7x50 binoculars, had to wait for the sky to darken enough to spot it. Was on the roof to get a decent view of the western horizon. It has a nice little very discernible tail pointing upwards. Haven't seen a comet in a long time! Attempted to take a pic but did not come out, so I'll just have to sketch what I saw.

I've had great aspirations for an online comic/graphic novel featuring my characters, but not sure I have the skills to pull it off. I was thrilled with a color drawing I did 2 years ago, but now as I look at it I can see where the linework can use improvement, and it would look a lot better with shading. Still, this would be good enough for me to pass quality-wise, but would have to move a lot faster to get multiple frame comics done in a reasonable time. So, I don't know. I really need practice and I say I want to draw but yet never do, so I wonder about what I really want and enjoy. I could start writing this story in text today and do a fantastic job with it, but I'd much rather present it as a visual comic because I personally like reading comics far more than reading plain text. I've never been much of a reader in that regard, I just don't enjoy it. But comics are great!

I think what I'll do over the next year is put out a bunch of short comic strips playing around with my characters in completely different roles and settings, unrelated to my planned story, to see how it goes. If I can do that, then there is hope for my graphic novel. If not, then I guess I'll just have to write it in text or not do it all, which will be a disappointment. I won't be commissioning others to do all that comic artwork for me... because money issues aside, if I don't do it myself, is it really mine?

Well, Happy New Year to everyone, and hope you all had a Merry Christmas. Mine was okay. The holidays are way too busy for me anymore. I love the Christmas season, I really do, so beautiful, with music and lights and magic, but the rush and busy-ness this year were like a crushing weight that took much of the fun out of my holidays, which I like to celebrate from Dec 1 through Jan 1. Wish I could have done some furry stuff; in fact, I did none. I miss it.

I have not been on FA for the past 2 months. As November began, I was already struggling to keep my head above water just to keep up with FA in a bare minimal capacity, logging in every couple days or so. The holidays further compressed my already busy schedule, and I finally just... let go, and pretty much stayed off the computer at home throughout November and December. Not totally, but as far as any social networking was concerned, I was completely off. I was also depressed in November, and so I just stayed away from everyone.

Speaking of stress, 2012 has been the year of fear for me. Started out that way actually, at the very end of 2011. Let's just say that I have not been happy most of this past year. I hope 2013 is different, for the better. There is some more stress headed my way, coming to a head in about 5 or 6 months. If I make it through 2013, I think I'll be all right. Oh, I'm not sick or anything like that, in case anyone is wondering.

On the positive, there were some good things that happened in 2012, including:
* I successfully made a partial to go with my fursuit head (still need feet paws though);
* I had a good time at Anthrocon;
* and also at FA:U, where I met several new friends, including 3 really nice girls!

Over Thanksgiving, a family friend introduced me to an anime show called One Piece, and I've watched a handful of episodes. Actually I'm not an anime fan, but I am also not against it, so it's just neutral ground for me. Never quite knew what anime really was, but it seems after looking into it now there have been a number of shows I've enjoyed over my lifetime which were actually anime, and I didn't even know it.

Went to a dog flyball competition in early December, and saw a corgi there I really liked, so I drew a sketch of him. Was looking really good, then I got busy with other stuff, and now I'm afraid to do anything more to the sketch, lest I ruin it. Guess I'll scan it and go digital tablet for the rest, that way I won't mess up the original pencil work. Had a couple of good ideas for furry drawings over the holidays, but did not have time or motivation to get started on them. Hopefully eventually, all in good time.

Hey, someone gave me their old web camera which I've installed on my laptop. Low res, but it works and was free. I'd like to set up Skype or even a livestream thingy as an occasional alternate way to interact and keep in touch with my online friends. In fursuit, of course. Sometime this year, anyway. Any suggested livestream sites? Any to avoid?

Haven't been very active on here for a while as far as submitting anything or writing journals or commenting, though I do surf this site regularly, every couple days at least, even if I remain silent. I began 2012 with a high level of stress and anxiety thrust upon me, for the last 10 months, and this past week part of it came to a head and has finally been taken care of. Hoping I can soon start enjoying life again. But, not going to get into all that just now.

I went to DE Furbowl 39 one month ago, and hopefully will finally get those pics posted this week, before the next meet comes. I enjoy making these nice reports with photos, but uploading the photos are always such a pain (time consuming) for me to do, which is why it takes me so long to get it posted. I haven't done it in a couple of months, so then I have to re-figure out how the photo site works all over again (I should take detailed notes I guess so I don't have to keep re-learning how to do it) and then, after I have the pics uploaded, I have to figure out how to access the album and then bring each pic up individually and copy the url code for it, and then code it into my LJ report (I write them in HTML), then double check it with previews and edit mistakes as needed, THEN finally upload the report. Geez God. And THEN I type an FA journal with the link for my LJ report, so that the word gets out. The FA journal post, is of course, the easy part.

Many of you I'm sure would not bother with all that, and just post the pictures to FA with a quick description and leave it at that. But, I'm a very detail-oriented person, and I like arranging the pics with respective captions and writeup all in one batch, like a news story in a magazine might appear, and LJ lets me do that. Hopefully no one gets pissed off that I only upload 600x800 res versions of my pictures... perhaps there's a better way to use Flickr, but for now that's the way I do it. If I caught a pic of you that you would like the full size original of, my pics are available upon request, and I send those specific pics via email. At least that's how I've been doing it up to now.

Well, I thought that the furbowl last month was going to be my last outing for this year, but today I went to RocCon PA, which was a Sci-Fi/Comic/Anime convention, very local for me. And only $5! It was a new con to the area and was rather small, and was not furry... however, they were not anti-furry, and encouraged costuming, so I brought Leostarr along and transformed into him in the parking lot, in my car. I carefully considered my decision to enter the cosplay costume contest, then boldy went for it and signed up. It would normally be somewhat intimidating for me to stand up and be interviewed in front of the audience, as I was today, but as Leostarr, I had little trouble doing so. Two other local furries were also in the contest,  red13nanaki and  otto042, and Otto actually won best of show! His dragon suit really does look good, and I was happy to see that he won. Nice prizes, too!  kaahl was also there in his new red kitty fursuit, but did not enter the contest.

Leostarr was very well received at the con, getting numerous requests for photos by attendees, vendors, and parents. I'm curious to see where these pictures end up, if I ever see any of them. I also made my rounds earlier out of suit, and talked individually with almost all of the dealers in the artist's alley. Very nice people, polite, and enthusiastic about their creations. Met an artist by the name of Dani Kaulakis, who does steampunk stuff and was dressed to the "tee" in Victorian attire, not to mention she was very attractive, too. Also met an interesting author who wrote a new space sci-fi book called Sanacion. And there was a local chapter of a Star Fleet Star Trek fan club. I did not mention "furry" to anyone, did not bring up the subject. The art I saw was very good, but some of the comic books I saw were way too violent and demonic for my liking. So, while a lot of what I saw I was genuinely not interested in, I could still appreciate the artist's skill that created them, with their amazing attention to anatomical detail in muscles and shading, as I also see regularly here on FA. I really like furry art a LOT, almost exclusively in fact, and I saw none of that here at this con, except perhaps the "Anubis" character in the book The Hounds of Set, who may be anthropomorphic.

Overall, it was worth my trip and I had a good time.

My third and final pictorial report from my FurAffinity:United 5 convention trip, covering Sunday, August 19, 2012 (see my 2 previous FA journal entries for Friday and Saturday):

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/49704.html

In summary, FA:U 5 was a fantastic convention. I got to show off Leostarr among the fursuiters (who was well received), danced, met some new friends and socialized a fair amount, got to spend some quality time by myself taking pictures and attending panels, and saw some new fursuits that I liked a lot. I felt very loved at this con. I felt alive, like I was actually living for a change, doing something I really enjoyed. I want to do this again in the future!!

Got another pictorial journal done today!

Saturday at FA:U5 was full of more fun and fantasy, with a drawing panel, the fursuit parade, more trips to the dealers' den, dining with new friends, dancing, and more. Party on, dudes!

Saturday, August 18, 2012:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/49577.html

I was pleased with the number of pics I was able to take at the con, considering that I was suiting part of the time. It took me quite a while to compile all my pictures from Friday & Saturday, and the work week begins tomorrow morning, so it might take a few days until I can get around to Sunday's report, which will be the final one. See my previous FA journal for the link to Friday's report & pics, if you haven't already seen them.

OMG, what a fun convention it was last weekend! I went to FurAffinity:United's 5th con (my first time there), and had a blast with friends and fursuiting and taking in all the fantasy come reality. Finally started journaling my experience- here is the link for my pictorial review & writeup for Friday, August 17, 2012:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/49340.html

Such a good time! Reports for Saturday and Sunday are to follow, and will be announced in my FA journal when they're ready.

Stayed up late last night finishing off my annual LJ reports detailing my experience at Anthrocon, so these two links now complete it:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/48784.html (Saturday, June 16, part 2 of 2)(16 pics)

and

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/49023.html (Sunday, June 17)

Once again, thanks to all the staff, security, guests, artists, authors, panel hosts, fursuiters, and polite enthusiastic attendees that made this convention happen, and made it fun!

Finally got some more of my AC12 journal done:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/48596.html (Saturday, June 16, part 1 of 2)

This covers the first half of my Saturday at the con, including the fursuit parade. Contains 17 pictures, along with a link to my parade pics.

Well, I debuted my Leostarr fursuit (partial) this year at Anthrocon 2012. Got there Thursday evening and had to leave the con on Sunday at about 2pm, so it was one of my shortest AC stays. It was different for me this year for a number of reasons, mostly because I was doing the fursuit thing for the first time, so I didn't take many pictures this time around. Half-done my AC12 journals with pics... here are two of them so far, on LJ:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/48057.html (Thursday, June 14)

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/48137.html (Friday, June 15)

My vacation to AC this year was very much needed and very happy to say I felt the magic! Hopefully I added some myself, too.

For my birthday this year (which was way back in September), I went to a furmeet called the Delaware Furbowl. I had been to two of them before, and this was their 30th meet. What an excellent way to celebrate! Just finally got around to posting these pictures:

http://leostarr-lion.livejournal.com/46345.html

The latest furry-related news on my end is that I attended Anthrocon 2011, which was 1 month ago. Happy to say I had a great time there. I finally finished going through all my pictures, and uploaded 172 of them into detailed pictorial reports of my convention experience, as I usually do:

Wednesday, June 22

Thursday, June 23

Friday, June 24

Saturday, June 25, Part 1 (fursuit parade)

Saturday, June 25, Part 2

Sunday, June 26, Part 1

Sunday, June 26, Part 2 (dead dog festivities)

These pictures are all reduced size images. If you are in any of them and would like to have the original, full size image from my camera, contact me via a PM and I'll be glad to send it to you. I only ask that if you post any of these, please credit me, Leostarr, for taking the original picture. Thanks!

I hate it when someone I like and care about gets harrassed by a bunch of dirtbags. As requested, I am linking the following journal entry about it here:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2411219/

When I first came into the furry fandom, I considered myself a writer only. I did not feel worthy of identifying myself as a furry artist until I develop my innate artistic talent with some decent drawing that passes a certain self-set standard. I really haven't been doing much drawing, but know that if I did I might surprise myself with what I am able to accomplish. Practice does make perfect. But really, I would like some guidance in this area, so I don't waste time doing things the wrong way... I'd love to have a mentor or a tutor to point me in the right direction, to develop/refine my skills. But local art schools and art classes don't seem to have what I'm looking for. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, or not looking for the right things, or maybe I need to just jump in and do it all "on my own". The FA artist Zavian gave me some valuable advice a year or so ago which has helped me a great deal, but I know there are many more secrets and techniques out there that I need to learn and embrace.

I liked to draw throughout elementary school. I started drawing my own comics in 3rd grade. No doubt I did some earlier than that, but 3rd grade was when I started doing them on a regular basis. Now, I have to clarify the quality of "art" in these comics. Although I could make half-decent drawings if I applied the effort, that took too long, and I was more interested in getting the stories across, so my characters were pathetically simple stick figures. But this worked for me and accomplished its purpose, and I had fun with them. They were an escape for me, and a way of making a statement. The last year I drew comics on a regular basis was 8th grade- by then the pictorial quality of my characters had improved, but were still fairly simple.

Now, when I began 9th grade, I discovered that I could convey a story or scene in far more vivid detail by writing about it instead of drawing, so my use of comics as an outlet pretty much went by the wayside. But I still drew a comic strip of something every once in a great while... and as my high school years progressed, the artwork got a little better. But I wrote much better, and later on after college, I wrote a series of various bizarredly humorous short stories soley to entertain myself. These made me laugh hard as I wrote them, and I felt successful in that I was able to artfully arrange words in such a way as to make something funny even more hilarious. And, make myself laugh!

Point is, up to now I have pretty much entertained myself by writing rather than drawing, but that may be changing. I had recently been working on a multi-chaptered furry fan-fic novel based on the characters from Madagascar, and am in the middle of writing chapter 20, where my work has suddenly stopped. Don't know if you can call it writer's block, but it's just not fun anymore. I know where the story is going and what I want to say, but how to do it is eluding me. For whatever reasons, it is getting harder and harder for me to write. Just writing someone an email will take me hours, literally... I agonize over how to say it right, then I evaluate what I have written, whether it might unintentionally offend the recipient in any way, and whether it is linguistically and grammatically correct, and make changes as needed, then repeat the process. Couple this with constant distraction going on here at home, noise and conversations, and frequent interruptions directed at me... makes me want to scream. I don't multitask, not when it comes to writing. I don't want any music playing, no conversation, no interruptions... otherwise I can't do it.

On the other hand, drawing frees my mind. As far as I've come through life, right now as an artist I consider myself just a beginner. But I have potential in this area, and if I work on it, perhaps I can get a LOT better, and maybe even create some fantastic scenes. Unlike writing, I can listen to music and audio messages while I draw, and they do not distract my work. So I am thinking I may be returning to drawing comics once again as my creative outlet. I'd like to improve a lot more over this next year, and then, maybe I'll start my new comics which feature my lion character, Leostarr.

I haven't updated this journal for 6 months, so thought I better do something about that! I've not been active on FA for much of the fall and winter, as things have been consuming my time here at home. I do miss hanging out on FA, haven't had time to review artwork, etc.

Well, looking back on 2010 art-wise, I finally broke into using color. I did 3 color drawings... yeah, only 3, but it could have been none, so I am happy I did at least do something, and learned some techniques along the way, too.
* First, I colored my drawing of Clarice the reindeer, which was my first successful use of Paint Shop Pro to color artwork. I completed her at the end of February, and uploaded it in December.
* The second was coloring my sketch of Island Rainbow, a My Little Pony, which was completed at the end of March. I held off posting this one for the longest time because I was going to do a background for it, and never did, so I finally uploaded it last week with no background.
* The third was a full color drawing I did for Dingopatagonico of his characters Dora and Kurfust... for a contest challenge, actually, and completed in October. This was the first time I included a background, and the first time I ever painted the ocean, and I am very pleased with how it came out.

I use my laptop for my art computer. When I bought it, I originally only intended to use it as a simple writing tool, but now that has changed. It's newer and faster than my living room desktop setup, so the laptop is the choice computer for art, and I'm pushing it to its limit with all these graphics. I've discovered that if I attempt to work on a drawing at 5000 x 7000 resolution, th_e__c_o_mp_u_ t_e_r___i__s____v__e_ry__s_l_o_w, and functions take forever. But, if I drop the res to 3500 x 5000, then it seems to be able to handle it okay. Never zippy, but okay. I've added a Wacom tablet (Bamboo Pen), which works fine with the system. Current memory is 1 Gb; I'm planning to up that to 2 Gb very soon (the max it can go), and am curious to see what kind of boost that will give to the functionality.

I've been using Paint Shop Pro version 7 as my main art program. I was recently going through some tutorials for GIMP, but then saw something in there that said, "this is not a painting program, just an image manipulator," which pretty much discouraged me from continuing my attempt to learn it. But if I understood her correctly, Electrocat uses GIMP for her digital work and I love the stuff she puts out, so maybe I won't give up on GIMP just yet.

Currently working on a simple self-portrait of my fursona.

Well, last evening I ran over to Best Buy and got myself a Wacom digital tablet. Yay! It's installed on my laptop and working. Haven't had time to play with it much but I did go through the tutorial and it works fine.

Today in Paint Shop Pro 7 (the graphics program I am using) I brought up a scan of one of my pencil drawings, but it took a very long time to come up, and everything functioned very sluggishly afterward (ridiculously slow delays). Now, this was a high res scan, so I'm thinking it might be an insufficient memory thing. So, will try to upgrade my laptop memory I guess, and up it to its max, whatever that is. Supposedly easy to do, never did this on a laptop before. Processor speed might be an issue too, but there's nothing I can do about that.

Well, I made it to Anthrocon 2010 and had a great time, and made it safely back, but that is very old news now. Doesn't seem like that long ago, though. I'm detailing my experience at the convention on my LiveJournal, so check that out if you want to see the myriad of pictures I took there. I'm still posting more there about AC, gradually, hopefully will get it all finished before September. I was thinking about adding one more convention to my visit list this year, as Anthrocon is the only one I attend currently. I'm considering the WPAFW (Western PA Furry Weekend), or maybe FAU 2011 (if one is held). Also considering holding off on any more cons for the time being to better fund my fursuit, which I hope begins to take shape within the next year. So, we shall see.

Also visited the beach in July, loved it there. Attempted another chakat drawing right there on the beach- my goodness there was certainly a lot of beautiful subject reference material there for the upper part of my chakat's body, many in very skimpy bikinis that looked great! Rawr! But right when I was drawing, they were all lying down in the sun instead of running around, so I was unable to use them as reference material anyway... had to draw from memory again, which really doesn't work that well when you're inexperienced at drawing anatomy!

Trying to prepare for Anthrocon, have not had a good week and have been terribly busy. A bunch of unplanned, non-furry-related stuff dumped on me this past week, now I'm behind on everything. Need to get some reference sheets done of my female cat characters to give to the artists I'm commissioning this year at the con, haven't done them yet. Might have to take Wednesday afternoon off from work in order to get everything ready in time. I leave for Anthrocon Thursday afternoon via the train, and will be arriving at around 8:30-9:00pm. My itinerary is more art-oriented than it was previous years, but I'll also be attending panels and taking tons of pictures with my new camera that hopefully will be arriving on Tuesday.

Yesterday I went to the zoo. Brief details of my trip are on my LiveJournal, but I finally got to see a live lion in person... a male lion!! Beautiful, handsome, I didn't want to leave. Was having camera trouble so don't know if my pics came out yet or not (haven't had time to check them yet). It was the National Zoo in Washington D.C. Maybe I'll try and draw him in a few days. Seeing him made the trip so worth it, even in the rain! Saw some other cool cats there too.

A more positive report today, for a change. After some struggling with some other pencil drawings I've attempted recently, I went back to my Clarice the Doe sketch and continued with my computer assisted efforts to color her. It was very enjoyable work, like it's supposed to be, while listening to great music the whole time (a rocking band from Washington D.C., streaming live from a concert in Harrisburg). I love doing detailed work. Finished her a little over an hour ago, my first colored drawing... success!! She doesn't have shading variations or shadows, etc.; maybe in time I'll add these as I develop these skills, but I am very happy now with how she turned out. Down the road, I plan to make a nice background for her (colored, of course), and then my work on this drawing will be complete. Since this is a Christmas-themed character, I'm going to hold off uploading it to FA until that time... around early December, 2010.

By the way, I did all the coloring work described above with a mouse. I've made my selection and expect to be buying a digital pen tablet in about a week, and I hope that it helps me out a great deal with art on the computer.

I also need to get myself a nice set of colored pencils, and learn to do some coloring the traditional way. I have seen some very good work here on FA that was colored that way.

I just attempted to draw my first chakat... and it is turning out horrible. But, I can see a number of things that are wrong with it, so that's a good thing I guess. Maybe I can fix hir up.