Welcome to Thallos
brought to you by Laurie Ellis
My art, my rants, my thoughts, and my dreams...
By Laurie
I couldn’t think of a witty post name for this.
Dante is currently residing in California with Miss Susie Christian. He’s a cute lad with pretty green feathers coming in! I think his tail is just adorable.
Dante is an eclectus parrot, specifically an Aruensis Red-Sided Eclectus parrot. Eclectus parrots intrigued me several years ago when I was studying companion parrots for a future friend. I was initially interested in African Grey parrots, but when I saw an entry in the book I was reading about Eclectus parrots, I was immediately drawn to them. They just seem so calm yet personable. They also have a good range of speaking ability, and while that’s not very important, it’s good to know.
So here I am, waiting for Dante to grow up and come home to his new playground. I’m hard at work making him a play-gym and buying him toys, and in general, getting ready for his arrival. I think Bruce is going to be VERY jealous. Heh!
By Laurie
The past few months have been calm and collect. Spring is here and that makes me a happier person. Tons to do around the house, because of this. I have to figure out how to plant things. CRAZY. Nothing terribly new is going on, really. Today is “birthday week” and we’ll be celebrating Kris’ birthday this weekend ala pizza and cake with some presents on the side. She’s spending today(her birthday) with her cousins, doing who knows what.
There’s a new man in my life! I met him in January and he’s very charming. He can be a bit opinionated, but he’s also sweet and somewhat cuddly. We talk a lot and he seems to really like me! I think he misses me when I’m not around and often calls me. Sometimes we have breakfast together, too!
Hee! Bruce is a trip, he’s going to be a pain when he hits puberty, I just know it. :P I didn’t plan to get a cockatiel at all - we had one when I was a kid, so I’m familiar with them. I was browsing our pet store back in January and was saying hello to the ‘tiels and this one boy was just totally adamant that he was going to fly out of the aquarium(they keep the almost weaned babies in one for display) and go home with me. I later picked him up when he was weaned and he’s my new buddy. He can get pretty loud sometimes when he wants me to be around and I’m not. He’s kind of an “air-raid siren”, heh, heh.
Bruce will hopefully be joined by another baby boy in the next few months. A baby boy I’ve been looking for for a few years now. I started studying them some time ago in hopes to learn more about them, and I think he’ll be a good fit. I found an amazing breeder in California and her assistant has been a huge help! I’ll post more later when I can!
By Laurie
Just a gallery update; two wallpapers were added to Digital Artistry. They’re WOW based.
By Laurie
I gotta say, the last four months have been interesting. I’m not sure what’s going on with “Laurie”, so much as I know what’s going on around me. Dragon*Con was great and I still have to get the pictures off my camera… I lost the cable in the move somewhere. Grargh.
Unfortunately, I went through a small depression afterwards. I don’t think it was “post-con blues”, just bad timing, especially since we moved into our new house.
“Hey, you’ve got a great new house! Be depressed!”
Haha. I’ve recovered mostly from that and am trying to buck up, so to speak, completely. On top of that, I’ve learned that my mother may be fatally ill. Well, I know she’s fatally ill; we just don’t know how immediate it is. That situation has come with a bucket of sadness, anger, bitterness, confusion, and turmoil. She’s putting her estate “in order” and that has caused some strife.
Underneath my goofy exterior, right now, I’m dealing with personal darkness. So, excuse me if I seem distant.
On a happy note, I fixed Thallos, finally… I had forgotten I left it in disrepair some months back. Yes, I’ve also switched to Wordpress… I’m so flighty, huh? I like it, though.
*waves*
Happy Yule
By Laurie
I’d been working on that WOW related artwork recently - and this is just an update on it. I’ve moved it to its own progression page here.
I’m sidetracked by some other projects and will get back to it soon!
By Laurie
When I set out to color this piece, I knew two things: the figure was a redhead and she would wear blue pants. I may have had more ideas when I DREW it. It IS an old sketch, so… yeah, I forgot the rest! So, some colors, at this point, were decided on the spot. It’s easier to ignore “color” when you’re sketching in monochrome. Then, for me, it’s more about depth and form. I generally don’t like using heavy pencils to simulate color - I never know if I want to digitally paint it later, and minimal shading confuses my process less.
Anyway, there’s even more shading in this one, and I’ve started laying down some closer shadows. Demondude has had some more color work done, and that will be evened out as well. I have to add some shadows to the hair, then start on highlights before “bringing it all together” and adding a BG. I’m getting ahead of myself, though!
By Laurie
Just added a few images created from my Second Life work to the 3D Design gallery. Just a little update!
By Laurie
I spent a few hours on this today, trying to finish my flats and start on some shading basics. My tablet is being a pain in the ass, for some reason so I didn’t get a whole lot completed. In fact, somehow, one of my flats groups got deleted, so I had to redo the skin layers for the figure. I’ll be picking it up again next week if I can figure out what setting is going wonkified.
Finished flats!
Here, I started some shadows… These are nowhere “done”, I’m merely configuring their placement before tweaking them near the end.
Woo!
By Laurie
Not much time to spend on it today. Tomorrow, if I can, I’ll finish the base colors.
By Laurie
Gah, yeah, well…
I hadn’t picked up my tablet in quite a while, now, and since I had to wrangle up some logo love for a relative, I dusted my tablet off.
Today, I decided to rescan an old piece of artwork and get back into the groove with some practice. I’ll be posting updates to it, like I have done so with previous pieces in the past.
This is some standard-fair fantasy artwork inspired by WOW. I think it’s from ‘05, I’m not sure… for some idiotic reason I didn’t date it.
I’m taking a different approach to coloring sketches, this time. So, the first step is to recreate the linework here, it’s too messy to use on its own, plus the scanner picked up the paper texture too well. Basically, it means I just redraw the whole thing again. Kind of tedious, but it did give me a chance to fix the warriorwoman’s head, as well as remove the horns from the demondude. I may add them again later; I just didn’t like the ones that are there now. I only have to fix a couple of smaller things, and then the coloring begins!
By Laurie
Okay, so Funcom has announced “The Secret World“… after cute little puzzles surfacing on the ‘Net were solved. I’m happy to see this project moving forward, to say the least. Age of Conan is just around the corner, afterall, having another game on the burner is a good thing. Though, for those looking for an AO 2, guess we’re out of luck, not that I’m surprised. Remember, Anarchy Online was initially only supposed to be around for the “4 year story arc”. Hehe.
In any case, this is DEFINITELY making me want to go back to reading Simon R. Green. Man I love his stuff… I have I think two of those laying around here somewhere. I see I will be taking one of these with me to the airport.
Monday I leave to go to Sweden for 10 days or so. I’ve mentioned it before, but ya know, I’m excited. Granted this isn’t really a vacation, it’s more of an opportunity. Dean will be heading to Sweden for work-related things, however I opted to go to make his travel less miserable, and to finally get out of the country for the first time. Sweden sounds wonderful, and I’m looking forward to it. The jet lag will suck major monkey nose, but that’s the price of seeing the world, right? We’ll be landing in Stockholm and staying in Uppsala.
I won’t be around online much at all this weekend (shocking, I know), so if I manage to die in a fantastical plane crash caused by gremlins tearing off the wings - HEART!
By Laurie
1. Peter is still freakin’ hot, even if I can’t hear him next to the stage.
2. Kenny made me so deaf.
3. I think I did a bit too much head banging during Brand New Sin’s set.
The show in atlanta was superb, even if there were a few more sound issues than usual. The Masquerade is such a great dive. It’s awesome to see TON back in action. I am a bit saddened that I couldn’t hear Pete, but what do you expect when you’re 3 feet from Kenny’s speakers/amps? It was just too cool to be that close and to finally get to see them.
Brand New Sin was their best opener, I gotta check those guys out.
I hurt so much. At least I avoided getting bashed in the face by those stupid fuckers crowd surfing to the stage. :P
By Laurie
So, I’ve been moody this last week. Yeah, okay, so maybe the fact that all those kids died in VA makes me wonder about the world. Not that it’s worth wondering about, longterm. The world sucks, the asshats in it suck, and they’ll make it suck for everyone else.
Dean’s in California.
I’m here alone wondering what to do with myself. I guess I’m weak!
I hadn’t been in IRC this past week, because I’ve felt like isolating myself for whatever reasons. So I logged back in to help distract me from the fact I’m kind of angry about something. Either way, there was some 17 year old kid that I’d seen like, every day in there… talking away, we maybe exchanged words twice. I’m an op and a voyeur, so I pay more attention to people than they do me. He was killed in a car accident last week… he lived in Kentucky.
I mean, I didn’t know him that well… but it really is one of those straws on the camel’s back. Despite my total mushiness whenever I was on the air with GSP, I really am not an outwardly emotional person, goofy and happy maybe, but not *emotional*. I lock things away and tend to like it that way. I can’t help but shed some tears for Jesse, though.
Time for some loud music.
>:(
By Laurie
I spent 13 hours in labor, albeit wonderfully drugged labor, and all I got was this lousy…
Bratface! :P
Well, the one on the right, anyway. Yay, I survived another birthday!
