Happy New Year!!!

Christmas was really strange, so we'll just say pink snuggie made my arms break out in terrible rashes and I think I got food poisoning.

But New Year's was...sorta fun!

Birthday!!!

I turned 20 on the 1st of January, so huzzah for that.

To celebrate, John and I threw a party that was a slight disaster. Hardly anyone showed up, and then my dog found a new lover. The lover was not female, nor was it of the same species. Apparently my male dog favors tall redheads with beer guts. Who knew?

Johnathan did end up getting me season 1, 2 and 3 of The Office (season 1 was for Christmas).

But the best gift I received (not including the amazing Canon camera bag), was the wacom tablet. I have struggled to paint with this evil brick of a mouse for years and last night, I installed the tablet and experienced its.......

....well for the first two hours I pretty much just screamed at it. It wouldn't stop right clicking or activating when I wasn't touching the "active area" (that's what she said?). We went out to dinner, I came back and actually tried to paint something real. Attached below is what I eventually was able to practice painting.

The demon box and birthday boy were my first drawing while I was trying to get the right click evil to excorize itself.

VVV --- This was only about...one hour of actual painting. I will attempt to figure out more today.

I have been:

~Cooking
~Cleaning
~Working
~Celebrating birthdays
~Celebrating holidays
~Screaming at my broken wireless
~Battling lots of art theft
~Playing xbox

I admit it, I haven't been hard at work the entire time I was gone. I killed some irradiated mutants and ghouls, then I kicked some butt playing a fake guitar, and then I killed some bears and shot fireballs at people.

Halloween was terrible. - Creepy people...

Thanksgiving was interesting. - Three thanksgivings.

Four Birthdays. - Oh...jeezus...

Coming Up. - Christmas, my birthday, New Year's party, brother's birthday, mom's birthday.

Hopefully. - Collaborations and awesome people whose pictures I can edit!!!! I <3's it.

I also challenged myself to make a beautiful picture out of a snapshot stock pic:

She was divinity's creature...

And I got bangs.

(I was tired of seeing more and more 14 year olds getting the same hairstyle over the last two years, something had to change.)

Thank you for putting up with me, newgrounds!

I am so excited!

Johnathan decided that I haven't been showing enough skin, so this year he bought me a Little Red Riding Hood outfit that is incredibly short. I will have to stand up straight all night or wear a petticoat.

It's a tad bit too big, so I will have to do some adjustments this week on the sewing machine, woo-hoo.

But, we're deciding how I should do my hair! We bought a bright red wig, and it's pretty cute with the outfit, but I'm worried that it's a tad bit red.

I also have a photoshoot planned for next weekend, but unfortunately, no male models. We will be shooting in some woods with my good friend, Teresa. I really want to do a fantasy like shoot, but I may end up having to do that some other time. We really just want to play with my new photography equipment that I finally got in the mail.

And finally, I spent 3 hours on a vector skull today in photoshop and it disappeared before I had the chance to save. *sigh*

I will have to try again tomorrow.

Enjoy my crazy red hair!

I have always wanted to try this effect after I saw The Fountain starring Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman.

Of course, I wanted a slightly rougher approach, I really love raw detail and extreme lighting.

I tried multiple tutorials with no luck.

I tried multiple photos with those multiple tutorials with no luck.

It just wasn't working for me, and then today something miraculous happened.

I was editing a photograph as usual, removing the background with a special technique when I had an idea! I changed the background to white and bam, white out. I was so surprised. I then spent the next few hours tweaking the details and removing unwanted parts. I changed my eye color, it's way too dark to really stand out, so green eyes it is.

And ta-dah. That's all for today.

It's finally anniversary time again, woohoo!

But John is keeping everything a secret, the reservation and the surprise...I have no idea what to wear. So I will just sit at home and play The Sims 3 until he gets home. I doubt anyone will read this in time, but throw some ideas at me on what I should wear.

Oh, and my TV isn't displaying anything, but I can hear audio. Help me if you can! We have one of those giant "big screens" that sit on the floor and take up a lot of room and COX digital cable. I've already tried resetting it...speak of the devil. It just started working.

In that case, let me know if any of you have had similar problems with these older TV's and let me know if you came up with any genius solutions. I'm about to blame the cable company, this isn't the first time they've screwed up.

(No Data)

Awesome. Gotta love COX =P

(Insert perverted, stupid humor giggle here ----> <----)

Finally, check out John's tattoos that he gets to cover up again! He's thinking about joining a police force. If he makes it, he has to cut off his beard and cover up his arm tats. Luckily he only has tattoos on one arm (all the way up to his shoulder), but it will still be ungodly hot for him. But at least he gets to have a pornstache.

The picture below is just the two that he has on his forearm. The rest on his upper arm (bicep and shoulder area) are more skulls and evil things. We're trying to get some good ideas for fillers (I want naked demon chicks flying around, but that's probably slightly inappropriate for future jobs.) He just wants something that will fit in nicely.

I recently won second place in a photoshop contest, and I was a tad bit confused.

The theme was Future Views, not a big deal. I made a robot lady thingy, I have no idea what she is, but I think it ended up looking really nice. The third place winner did a beautiful cartoon like image, all painted in photoshop. Everyone else did photo-manipulations using...you guessed it, photoshop.

But the artist who won first place used Bryce to create renders, then put them together in photoshop. I thought this was completely unfair that the contest was listed under photoshop and yet someone who let a 3D program do all of the work won.

So I went to contact a moderator about the issue.

Oh look at that, no way to contact anyone unless you are having technical issues.

I guess I'll just flag the image and see what happens...

Oh? No flagging? What is this?

I guess I better comment on the image and see what's up, oh what's that? I really strict comment rules? I guess I can't do that either.

I will have to accept 2nd Place until I can find a way to cheat the system.

Below is a close up of part of the image. I painted blood, I am proud. (Image is a GIF so there's some color issues, just pretend that it's beautiful.)

My boyfriend, John, just recently got out of the army. He finally found a job that he can deal with, but a lot of our other plans have pretty much fallen through. School plans and living arrangements have changed more times than I would even like to think about.

On top of this, John began having extreme stomach pain. We visited the VA Clinic here in town, and they were worried it was something serious. So we drove for an hour and a half to a VA Hospital where the doctors made us wait for six hours until they told us that it was probably just ulcers.

During all of this, John and I have been switching back and forth between our parents' homes. Sometimes because of a needed location and sometimes because of fights. (My parents are divorced and I do not have that great of a relationship with either of them.)

We figured it was time to take a break.

John ended finding a ski boat that we rented for a few hours. We invited three of my friends and off we went, (hour and a half drive) to Grand Lake.

Too much fun, we went skiing and innertubing, I took lots of pictures and got some great video. I wish I could show you guys, but we can't find the proper cables to upload the video to the computer.

I put together a small collage of photos for fun:

Top Left: Tyler skiing

Top Center: Me being squinty

Top Right: Bob being...Bob

Top Center/Middle: John driving and having a blast

Bottom Left: John and Me

Bottom Right: Tyler wiping out and hurting himself

I can't remember a time that I couldn't read.

But I can remember being in 3rd grade, sitting at my desk with Jane Eyre open, reading away while the other kids were counting pop can tops. I remember reading my way through the classics and finding an extreme dislike, if not hatred, for Shakespeare.

And while I read, I wrote. Idea after idea, I scribbled it down in my childlike handwriting. As all the great authors do, I stole ideas from writer's and refined them to make something 'great'.

"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal." ~Pablo Picasso

As I got older, I changed my writing technique so that I would appear more original. I tried to come up with ideas on my own, this was the beginning of my decline.

I published a short story when I was 14, and then entered high school. High school was a whole different world, no more creative writing sessions, no more reading sessions, just DBQ's and standardized tests. AP classes were thrown at me by my parents' prodding. I was thrust into an advanced world of 'education' where I cried myself to sleep everynight from exhaustion.

I was balancing theatre, orchestra, church and advanced classes with a 5 hour sleep schedule and nearly 1.5 meals a day. I began writing in journals.

My dreams of becoming a real author, not someone who publishes simple short stories, but publishes novels, was drawing to a close. "College is coming up soon, you need to decide if you want to be a doctor or an engineer."

Strange choices to be made for me...

I turned to my journal. They lie when they say that writing your feelings will help you, it made me a more introverted person who was prone to self harm.

When I look at the journals now, I feel a burning in my chest not unlike an anxiety attack. Each entry was crying out for help, for everything to stop. I laugh at myself, I call myself childish, when in fact, nothing has changed, save for one thing.

I began writing again.

That's right. But I still write the occasional comedic, sarcastic or ironic article every now and then to keep up the fun.

I discovered that my psychiatrist from high school was wrong. My parents are still wrong. My friends are wrong. I'm wrong. And it's so human.

"It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill- it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy."
~Vincent Van Gogh

But photoshop is still my friend. We get a long quite nicely when writer's block sets in.