This Game of Business

Bring on 2011! 

My life is going to get epic this year and I can’t wait!  Will be selling my house in a few months.  Finishing some home improvement projects and then it’s on the market!  I will then have like $20k profit in my pocket.  How is that for awesome?!?  Then I am moving.  Where?  IT’S A SECRET! :D  Hahaha, you’re all welcome to guess :)  Actually, I might move back with my parent’s for a short while first to save up even MORE monies.  I will be buying a new car, too.  Something with black leather.  I miss my black leather :) 

Also, one of my favorite people ever will be visiting from the UK in like a month!  I have to keep pinching myself!!  I absolutely can’t wait, I’m soooo excited! 

My little sis is now engaged.  My second niece is on the way, due May 12th.  I was secretly hoping for a boy (and apparently they were, too)  but it will be loved anyway.  They’ve named her Clarissa. 

I hope everyone had a great time during the holidays!  My brother got me an Xbox 360 for Christmas!  I’m super excited!  Will probably get Xbox Live on it even though most people I know don’t play much anymore because they have kids.  How am I getting so old so fast?!  (I’m not really old, but it makes me feel old that everyone I know has little munchkins running around.)  Seriously people, slow down! Plenty of time for that later in life :) 

I’m so excited for this year.  I feel so thankful right now to be me and be living my life!  Right now I feel greater than I think I ever have, it’s such a wonderful feeling :D  Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everybody!

I’ve been sick.  Ugh.  Finally feel somewhat alive again.

Getting another niece in March!  Already picking out baby stuff for the shower (whenever that will be).  Need to ask her what all she got rid of from when Gabby was little so I know what she needs. 

Have decorated the shit out of my house.  It looks incredibly cheerful and festive at the moment :D  Love decorating!!

tee-anna:

Hey guys! So never went out on Black Friday before, and I’ve heard all these horror stories…and it was tame as fuck.  I heard some people started a fight in Walmart at like 10pm before the sale even started, but that might be just a rumor.  It was a “my friend heard from this guy who heard from this other guy” thing.  I haven’t heard anything since, so I’m assuming it was a rumor.  The stores all gave vouchers for the big ticket items so if you came early you were guaranteed to get one of the limited items.  They had routes planned for everyone and everyone lined up all nice and neat with no arguing or anyone trying to cut in line.  Everybody was talking and laughing with each other in line, too, even people who didn’t know each other.  I thought that was pretty awesome.  Way to go, Tusc county! :D

I went to get a laptop.  A buddy of mine gave me a heads up and told me to go to Staples if they had something I liked because most people crowd over at Walmart, Best Buy, or Radio Shack.  I went really early to make sure I got a spot (they open at 6am and I was there by 11pm! Crazy!) and I was the 2nd in line, a guy with his 3 kids were there maybe 1/2 an hour before me.  We all agreed on using our chairs as placeholders and sat in our warm cars in front of the store.  Everybody who came after us was just as cool about the rule so it was a pretty painless experience.  Plus I got to use my Russian with a Russian immigrant woman who ended up two spots behind me.  That was SO COOL.  I got back in line at 5am when the employees started showing up and around 5:30 they came out with big stacks of vouchers for all the bigger stuff.  I could’ve left after that and had breakfast or something since you’re guaranteed to get your item until 11am. (For the bigger stuff, you HAVE to have a voucher to buy it until 11am.) Buuuuut, I just sat back in my car again, got back in my place in line at about 5mins til they opened.  Inside the store was super quick, I was in and out and back in my car by 6:05am.  Staples had their shit down!

See, originally I had bought an Apple Macbook from someone who sells refurbished ones cause it’s cheaper that way, but they mixed my order up and sent me a refurbished iBook with JAGUAR installed, which is outdated, and only 384mb of RAM!  I was not pleased.  At all.  Needless to say I packed it up and sent it back.  I wish I would’ve checked out the Black Friday ads sooner, because I got a KILLER laptop (this thing has serious balls!) for less than half what I paid for a Macbook!  And it’s even got slightly better specs, too!  It was more than a good enough deal to persuade me to get a PC instead of a Mac.  It’s almost criminal how cheap I got it!  It’s even got a built in webcam like a Macbook.  So cute!

Also, I’m pleasantly surprised with Windows 7.  I was expecting it to be like Vista, but it’s way better.  It’s simplified and streamlined for a much better experience.  It looks and feels very inspired by Mac and I’m sure it’s meant to be a direct competitor with Snow Leopard.  It’s also VERY tablet friendly, it would take forever to explain but just take my word that it’s very cool the way it works.  I can do stuff with my tablet on there I never could on Windows XP. 

My Intuos arrived today, too, so shortly after I got home and started getting my computer all set up I was able to hook it up and test drive it.  I was kind of skeptical that there would be much of a difference, but all I can say is WOW.  I’ve gotten by fine with my Graphire4 for years and decided to get an Intuos just because I was curious (and decided since I’m gonna be playing with the big boys now, I might as well have the big boy toys), but I’m definitely glad I did!  Well worth the investment!  Intuos tablets are so damn expensive, but now I see why.  It’s SO MUCH EASIER to blend everything.  I can get the same effect (more or less) with the Graphire, but it would take a lot more work.  Especially to get everything that smooth!  I’m definitely blown away by this thing.  It feels different, too.  The Graphire line (not sure how it is with Bamboo?) just has a plastic surface.  The Intuos is plastic, of course, but there is some kind of coating over the drawing area.  I still remember when I first got my Graphire2 and then my Graphire4.  It takes a while to get used to because the surface area is pretty slick.  The coating on the Intuos makes drawing very smooth, but it isn’t slippery.  I have to say, I’ve only had this thing for less than 24 hours and I’m already a rabid fan!  LOVE IT! 

Wow, this is certainly a huge wall of text! Haha, kudos if you read all the way through!  I’m going to stop there for now.  I have some artwork that I can actually show you guys in the works, I’ll be sure to put it up soon.  Until then, au revoir! :)

Ok, so…as an artist, I not only want to keep improving, but I want to help others improve, too.  I remember how clueless I was over certain things when I was first starting to take art seriously way back in the day.  That was before I ever had a computer (we were very poor T__T ) and I had to figure out most of the basics myself. I try to spend a little bit of my time when I log on to DeviantART browsing randomly around and leaving comments and critiques for people which is always appreciated, of course.  Only sometimes, more often that you’d think, it suddenly leads to someone sending you a message that usually starts as “Thanks for the critique, could you give me some more?  I really want to improve!” and ends up with them wanting you to basically tell them how to change every little thing to make it into SUPER-AMAZING-ART-WORTHY-OF-THE-GODS! 

I know, right?!

It’s either that or they suddenly want you to drop everything you’re doing and make them a tutorial.  Everybody and their brother makes tutorials nowadays, there are a million duplicate tutorials on DeviantArt alone, go search for one if you want one so badly!

Year after year it seems like people just keep getting lazier.  They want shortcuts to everything or they want somebody else to do their work for them. 
I’ve even had people get indignant because they want to know what the “secret” to becoming a great artist and they feel like I am “holding out on them”.  Ok, fine, you want the big secret?  Well, here it is - there is no secret!  Get off your butt and draw!  Every day!  Every. damn. day.  If you don’t put aside a few hours every day to draw you are NEVER going to become good. Definitely not good enough to become a professional.  I have even gotten some messages from people saying “I’m an art student but I’m not improving very much, help!”  Hey, guess what - being an “Art Student” isn’t going to magically make you any better, either.  Adam Hughes is a high school drop-out, for Christ’s sake!  If you ONLY do what’s required of you in your art classes then no, you are not going to get much better.  You STILL need to draw for a couple hours OUTSIDE OF YOUR SCHOOL ART PROJECTS every day.  If you won’t devote that much time to art, how do you ever expect to become a professional artist? 

Seriously, take all that time and energy you spend on trying to figure out a shortcut to getting better and just go make some art already. 

Guys, I had so much fuuuuun today! :D :D  Oh God, I don’t remember the last time I had so much fun in one day!  It was a complete blast!  I love my sister and my little niece so much!  T____T 

(And of course, her cousin Brit, too!)

She invited two of her preschool friends, Isabella and Teegan, and they were just so adorable!  Teegan’s outfit about killed me, she looked so cute!  I love her mom’s fashion sense :D 

Joe’s mom (who is a FANTASTIC cook) made most of the food other than the cake.  It was a complete foodgasm of win!  The cake was perfect, too. 

And WOW did that kid make out on presents this year!  I feel sorry for Jess who now has to listen to Zhu Zhu Pets and munchkin guitars 24/7 now, lmao!  (Of course, by now she’s probably used to noise making toys!)  I think she’s still at an age where she likes unwrapping stuff more than what’s inside, lol!  She had such a fun day, I hope her 5th birthday is just as good!