I should never be allowed to draw early in the morning

Mostly because it will look like a 5th grader's art project. Not say 5th grade art is bad...


Just saying that my imagination tends to be a little stupid this early in the morning. You're probably looking at me like I'm a retard saying that it isn't early at all. Well, I woke up at 4:40 this morning. I'm in Louisiana and I live in New Mexico, so to me it's more like 3:40 in the morning.


Waking up that early should be illegal.


If it was....well...I don't now, but it would be interesting.


Anyway, back on subject.


I woke up at 4:40 this morning, determined to draw SOMETHING. I don't know what, but I was gonna draw.


So me and Boyfriend woke up, played with the dog for a bit and wandered over to our computers. I attempted to draw with just the touch pad of the laptop, but that proved to be rather frustrating. So I found my tablet and began doodling.


Now, mind you, there has been a certain creature that I've been meaning to draw for quite some time now.


Beware the very rare.........


































....keep going....












































Derposaurus.

UPDATE:

Guys.....I'm terribly sorry for this post. I don't even remember writing it, to be honest.

But look! Someone drew a Herpasaurus!

Christmas

Ahhh, Christmas. A time of giving instead of receiving. Of course, when you're a kid, all you can think about is what Santa will bring you and making sure you dad wont eat the cookies, strategically set by the fireplace, for Santa.


I vaguely remember my childhood, but I do remember that Christmas was indeed my favorite holiday. Not only did we get two glorious weeks off from school, but we also got new stuff to add to the collection of other stuff. It was great!


I do remember one year that I made up my mind that I would see Santa, no matter what. I tried sleeping on the ouch, but that didn't work out all that well, as mom just told me to sleep in my room.


I tossed and turned on the top bunk of my sister and mine's bed, wondering if there was a specific time Santa would show up. I didn't want to miss it for the world.


Everyone was settling in for the night, the lights were turned off and my sister was asleep with her earphones in, listening to music that was garbled to my ears. I decided that this would be the perfect time to sneak out of my room to wait for Santa.


I shimmied quietly down the ladder of the bunk bed and tip-toed to the door, creaking it open just enough to fit my body through like a ninja. I jumped over a creaky spot in the floor to the adjacent shelf covered wall and peeked around the corner.


I was infuriated.


There was my step dad, eating the cookies I had left out for Santa. And he even ate the carrots I had left for the reindeer! I wanted to march over to him and slap his hand, scolding him that those were for Santa, not him.


But, I knew that if I did that, I probably would have been grounded. So I remained in my hiding spot and watched the mutiny continue to unfold. My mom then brought out a couple of gifts, and I had extreme suspicions.


When they finally went to bed, I did my little ninja thing and peeked at the tags. Sure enough, the gifts mom brought out were indeed from Santa.


I just put in my head that Santa called and said he had a flat and couldn't make it this year and went back to bed, awaiting the surprises that the next day would bring.


Merry Christmas all, and just remember that gifts aren't everything!


Here, have fun with this! PG-13 for language!

The Road

I don't think I will ever understand why people move from one side of the country to another. Mostly because I don't understand how they can survive the drive. I can barely survive a drive from New Mexico to Louisiana myself, so something like moving from New York to California or whatnot is hard for me to comprehend.


So, we started our journey with a foot of snow on the ground. We were supposed to leave two days earlier, but New Mexico really is the Land of Entrapment. It had other ideas for us, giving nearly 24 hours of continuous snowfall. 


My boyfriend was having the time of his life. 


Being one that grew up in Louisiana, he almost never sees snow in the humidity. And when it started to snow, you can bet he was out there playing in it. There wasn't much on the ground when he first went outside, but that didn't stop him from building a dinky snowman. I wish I would have taken a picture of it, but I didn't want to go outside and get even more cold (I'm always cold). 


Then as we prepared for bed, i peeked outside and noticed that all that was left of his tiny snowman was a single twig arm, pathetically reaching up from the pile of snow covering it. The sight was actually quite comical. Here is my rendition of it:

The next day, we scrambled to get packed so we could leave at least relatively early the next morning.


The drive across half of New Mexico was uneventful and rather boring. Nothing got interesting until we reached Texas. Let me tell you, that state....is crawling with cops. Every corner you turn, there will be a cop. 


There were several occasions when a car speeding by us was pulled over instantly by a cop that would seemingly appear out of nowhere. Turn a corner and there would be nothing, but as soon as someone was speeding, a wild police car would appear from the piles of tumble weed and zoom in on that speeding car.


Now, I'm actually very surprised our car made it as far as it did......with a caliper screw missing. For those of you who are not car savvy, a caliper is what holds the brake pads on and pressurizes the pads to the brake drum with the brake fluid.


Well, the screw that was missing is the one that holds said caliper in place. I was getting off the freeway so I could stop and get gas. As soon as I hit that brake pedal, the caliper sprung from its spot and assaulted the rim. We didn't know that was what was wrong at first, and I was terrified. I thought I had broken his car and all the while I was thinking that I just somehow managed to throw out his transmission. The transmission was having some issues with shifting, so it really wouldn't have surprised me if that was the issue. 


So, I tried to inch the car into the parking lot (we were still on the side of the freeway) and the car refused to go anywhere. The boyfriend told me to throw it into neutral, thinking he could push it into the parking lot. The car went nowhere. So, he pulled me out of the driver's seat and floored it. The car (Betsy, from now on) lurched forward in a flurry of pitiful banging noises.


We managed to get Betsy off the road and to a decent spot, yet we somehow couldn't figure out what was wrong. So, the boyfriend thinks its because the tires are loose, and yes, that actually was a problem because all the nuts on the tires were loose. But that wasn't the proper solution. 


I got out of the car and had him try to drive, and that's when I saw the bright, cherry red caliper dragging against the rim.


We didn't have tools to fix it, nor the missing screw.


We were told there was a Wal-Mart nearby, but they lied. We walked up a hill, freezing wind blowing in our faces and didn't see a Wal-Mart in sight like the guys at the gas station promised there was. Though, we did see a Lowes, so we went there instead. We couldn't find the proper screw, but we did find the correct tools we needed. And so, the long walk back.


Much to our surprise, there was a cop there. But not just one car. There were like...two cruisers and a state. The state trooper had his lights flashing obnoxiously and the woman he was talking to was in hysterics. She stared at us as we walked by, as if begging us to help her.


The only bit of conversation we heard was because she wanted us to hear it, I believe. It went something like this:


Woman: "I'm sorry! *sobsobsob*"


Officer: "Would you calm down! I just wanna make sure you have no weapons on you!"


And that's about all we heard, actually. I looked back as we walked up the hill to see her fighting against him as he tried to shove her in the car. I found it quite comical.


So we got back to the car and hammered the caliper back into place and tightened one bolt, thinking that if it made it that far, that it should be good to go.


We were horribly mistaken.


Barely tapping the brake sent it off carving a deeper groove into the rim. It did this for another three times before we decided to rig a smaller screw to fit by wrapping it in duct tape and screwing it into place.


We always say that duct tape fixes everything, and this is no exception. It's still holding strong, even though we now have a replacement bolt and have yet to do the replacing.


Typing this just reminded me that the part we ordered came in today, oops.


Anyway, on with this not-so-fascinating tale.


While we were rigging this screw, hammering and wrenching it into place, who would have guessed that a police officer would pull over to help....at 10 o'clock at night. He had a nice cruiser too, a dodge charger. He didn't really help all that much, he just had a brighter flashlight than we could ever dream of having and let us borrow it while he put our information into his computer to make sure we weren't runaway convicts.


Finally being done with our brake problem, we headed on our way.


I'm sorry...but Dallas is a horrible city to drive through, even at night. I sat in the passenger seat, stiff with panic. My claustrophobia and vividly overactive imagination was currently ruling my mental state, and I could do nothing more than maintain a death grip on the door.


But once we got out of the city, my heart beat normal again and I was fine. My boyfriend, taking me up on my promise (I said that if he drives through Dallas, I would be willing to drive the rest of the way), pulled over a few towns over and let me take the wheel.


I got pulled over, of course.


But, it was Betsy's fault, as the license plate lamps were out. The cop was nice, probably taking pity on the two teenagers driving through Texas at midnight and just gave me a warning. I'm just glad my insurance covers any vehicle I drive (thanks mom!). I didn't have my proof of insurance with me, and I'm glad he didn't point that out. 


Mental note: take insurance wherever you go if it includes you driving your boyfriend's car.


The last leg of the journey was rather uneventful, but all the while I was driving, I was just waiting for that unsuspecting deer to prance out into the road, staring at me with blank eyes.


It never happened, but it was my imagination trying to keep me awake after all.


That's when I began to notice what looked like smoke billowing around the car. Turns out, it was just Texas/Louisiana early morning fog.


We finally arrived at my boyfriend's mom's house...at 3:50 in the morning- 6 hours after the initial time we were supposed to get there.


And that, my friends, is part one of our 'epic' journey.

Evolution

Well, in case you are wondering where I came up with Limizuki, I will tell you.


My freshman year in high school, although I don't remember it much, was an interesting time for me. I was starting to draw seriously, rather than my usual doodles. It was also the first time I had ever tried drawing a wolf. How I came about drawing wolves, however, was because of a friend I had along with an anime called Wolfs Rain.


Here's a general synopsis of the conversation we had:


Me: "Oh hay, you has a wolf?"


Friend: "its a fox..."


Me: "I want a wolf!"


Friend: "Its a fox!"


Me: "I'm gonna draw a wolf!"


Friend: "..."


I blatantly ignored the fact that, yes, indeed, her character was in fact a lime green fox. But from that point on, I declared that I would draw wolves.


My first attempt was pathetic, and I am frankly embarrassed by it.

This thing right here was Limizuki's very first design, an attempt at the Wolfs Rain style of art. After this design, I thought she looked rather bland, so I added a splash of blue and a few accessories on her. Unfortunately, I do not have the original file, just some fan art someone made for me.

Yes, she had bows and leg band things. She still retained her spiked collar, however. I was still unhappy with her design, though. I felt she was lacking in major ways, and I really didn't know what to do with her. So I decided to redesign her once again, this time with a 'demon form' and a 'chibi form'.

I remember the days when I didn't know that there was a such thing as digital art. But once I joined an online art community, I knew that i had to try it. It took nearly a year to convince my mom to buy me this mysterious drawing tablet, and when she finally did, I couldn't be happier. It came with two programs too, Photoshop elements 5 along with corel painter. I first experimented with Corel, but soon found that Photoshop was easier to handle. I didn't know there was a such thing as layers, so all I really knew is that it was a smoother version of the old MS Paint. I used the paint bucket tool, just as I would on MS Paint.

It took me nearly four months to realize that there was a such thing as layers. But when I found it, not only did I feel like a complete idiot, I also started to do more and more digital art. With that new found knowledge came Limizuki's new design. I reverted back to simplicity, as I couldn't remember everything that she had on her.

You have to remember that I only had PS Elements 5, and the pen tool had yet to exist in my world. This was a time where Limizuki had yet to get a past life, or even a reason for having a demon form. But as I grew older, I got more inspired to draw a comic. I was pathetic and made it similar to one of my favorites artist's comic, as I was too uncreative to form my own ideas. I drew them traditional, as I had quite a few colored pencils, and unfortunately, I don't have any evidence of their existence. 


From there, I discovered a magical thing called shading. I couldn't do it all that well, but I tried my best.

It seems I also had a strange obsession with purple, though i will admit that this strange obsession is still in place. I'm a total tomboy, you see, so this was indeed a strange obsession for me. From there, I experimented more with shadows and highlights, and even tried a picture without a lineart. Well, lets just say it didn't go all that well.

Then I had fun experimenting with transparent backgrounds.

You don't see it now...but the background is transparent. I even tried more detail in my pictures. Though, I only did two of them with extreme detail, finding it to be too time consuming for my tastes.

I went further with my experiments by trying to do real backgrounds, instead of just gradients. My first attempt just had to be one of the more difficult things- rocks and clouds.

Needless to say, I went back to doing simple backgrounds, preferring to make cool designs out of gradient colors. Mostly because I was too lazy to care much for backgrounds. I started to download brushes that people had made and using those, for example, stars. I can't tell how many times I tried drawing stars, and failed miserably. By now, however, I was utilizing my school's superior photoshop (elements 6 lol) to make my pictures, as it was cooler looking and I could use it more than at home. Then only a few months after i first used Elements 6, I recieved CS 2


And here we come to the last stretch of our journey, the art that I create now. Limizuki, after 4 years, has a past now, and ShadowFang ( the demon thing) has a reason for her being. And we also come to Limi's final design, a simple black and blue dire wolf.

And if you're wondering how I came up with the name Limizuki, it's a rather simple story. I made a fail. Her name is a mix of Chinese and Japanese. Li (chinese) means Black and Mizuki (japanese) means beautiful moon. Put them together and you get Beautiful Black Moon. Well, let's just leave it at Black Moon. I put a black crescent moon on her front legs so compensate for her name meaning.


Well, this is the end of our little reminiscing party. I thank you for reading~


So long, and thanks for all the fish~ (if you understand the reference, I give you 10 brownie points!)