One sheep, two sheeps, one elephant, three lions....

I can't sleep =_=''............................................................................



And here in the Netherlands it's almost 2 am in the morning...so yeah...I'm a vampire tonight. I think it's because I was sick the last couple days, so I messed up my normal routine hehehe. Don't worry, I'm feeling much better again! Hurraay for all the vitamins and juices and tea and cookies ^_^!!

Well I guess you guys are also familiar with the occasional insomnia. There are a few tips my mom gave me when I was younger, to make sure I could sleep. First of all, to drink a cup of warm milk....yeah I'm not a big fan of warm milk. Hot chocolate...well that's another story!! But wasn't allowed -_-...
No noise, enough space, no napping during the day are a few other tips that can help you sleep better at night. Also going to bed at a fixed time can help, well in my case, my days can be so filled up with the things I need to do, that I find it difficult to say 'Okay! It's 10pm now. Im going to stop working now, put on my pj's, brush my teeth (very important people) and go to bed'...yes this just doesn't work for me.

Another one and this is the one where my post is about and that is counting sheep. I never really thought of the origine of this story. So I looked it up (You gotta love the internet!). Okay I clicked on the first link I saw and that was Wikipedia. And yes I know, that there are people out there that may consider this source not so reliable...gimme a break here...I'm searching information about counting sheep at 2 am in the morning. I'm not able to do a analytic research about this subject at the moment....

And this is what I found:

Yan Tan Tethera is a rhyme used by shepherds to count sheep in many parts of England and in southern Scotland. Until the Industrial Revolution, the use of traditional number systems was common among shepherds, especially in the dales of the Lake District.

The Yan Tan Tethera system was also used for counting stitches in knitting. Though most of these number systems fell out of use by 1910, many are still in use and the word yan continues to mean "one" in some northern English dialects. The monotonous and repetitive nature of the rhyme may also have given rise to the notion of counting sheep to lull oneself to sleep.[1]

Source: Wikipedia.

Interesting huh? Well, I have another story about counting sheep. I told my story about counting sheep to a few friends of mine (some laughed...some saw the seriousness in it and we had great discussions about it, some simply agreed) and tonight I wanted to share it with you (In case you were wondering; the drawings were made in a flash! and I didn't use much watercolor....so I kept it simple haha)

Well whenever I was younger and I couldn't sleep...I started counting the sheep. No harm here. You just imagine a wooden fence and some sheep. Well, let me tell you...here is where it went wrong...

Yes, it starts out very innocent. Trying to find a solution to sleep

You see, I always had to laugh first. I mean, come one, a wooden fence in a large grassy area and suddenly out of the corner of your eye....you see a sheep.

Oh cute sheepy!! Come on...Jump!

After a while it I thought it was a bit scary...I mean...you are trying to sleep...but in your head you see only this fence and what soon would become like a thousand of sheep just hopping over it...no music...or dancing just sheep :|...I mean it's just like Silence of the Sheep (whahaha how lame is this...)

It's getting a bit crowded here...

....and what if one sheep trips and all the other sheep are falling down behind it and you just have to start all over again...

The sheep aren't jumping...what are they doing?!!

Okay, you see at this point, that is just simply stressing!




















Instead of falling asleep you are trying hard to save the hopping sheep so that you can count...to fall asleep....You see! That doesn't sound right at all!! With this scary image in my head I will leave you now...


Oh yeah! If you have some strange stories about counting sheep as well...I would love to hear them ^_^.

A wave from Holland!

One Wedding card...coming up!

Hey guys!

Aarghh...I thought that I already posted this blog...turns out that something went horrible, horrible wrong...I forgot to plug in my adapter for my laptop hehe....sooo suddenly all I saw was darkness and I could almost hear a sad tune on the background....byebyee nicely made blog...

@ Hevn: very sorry! The idea was to upload this new blog when I replied all comments, soo then you would have seen the final result. Haha I bet my comment didn't make much sense did it? *Hmm where's TJ's blog then? I was supposed to see the final result -_-'...* To all other readers, who don't know her blog...please check it out! She writes really cool!

How are you all doing? Sorry it has been a while since my last post…had big fights with my PC and my thesis took up a lot of time. And usually at the end of the day I was too exhausted to do anything else. Very annoying and the thing is that these fights or sudden workloads usually happen when I want to do a lot of other things...fun things....Don’t you guys hate it when that happens? Anyway, everything seems to be fine now (little bro fixed it ^_^) and I placed on my wishing list to buy a new PC/laptop. Yeah…that can take a while though...

So what’s new? Well, besides troubles with my PC (I’m giving it a stern look right now, can’t do anything more though…what if it gets offended and stops working again!?) I finished my card!! Woohoo! It’s finished and given away!! Yes the wedding was last Friday and I made a small picture show for you guys so you can see how it eventually turned out. But first a bit about the wedding day itself. It really was a beautiful, they both looked very handsome in their suits and I have to say...it was like a normal wedding, only instead of a bride and a groom, you had two grooms hehe. And it was a day filled with happiness and love from everyone who came. I was really happy for them! And funny thing! I already saw the suit of one groom, because I met them a week before the wedding and they just bought his suit. It was dark grey, so I decided to give him in the illustration a dark grey suit, it only make sense right?! Well, I didn't know the color of the other suit and I couldn't come up with a reason why I it would be nessecary for me to know the color of his suit...I would only make him suspicios. So to avoid all of that, I gave him a dark blue suit. And you know what! He wore a dark blue suit and his hair in the same way I drew him!! I felt so in touch with my psychic abilities haha ;) *floats on a cloud*

But lets have a look at the pictures! First I made the card with a wedding cake, two glasses champagne and a champagne bottle. But still I didn’t get the right vibe from the drawing. Wanna see?

Well, yeah, not sure if you can see what I mean, but something wasn't right. I made several sketches and in the end I decided to leave the cake out of the drawing. I think it was just a bit too much. So I was left with the couple, champagne glasses and a champagne bottle and finally I was happy with the final sketch, so I drew the lines with a waterproof marker and gave the first watercolor wash.
Then I gave the drawing a second wash. Just to intensify the colors a bit. You know I always have the idea that a drawing looks childish or...I don't know...not quite right when I color them. Perhaps it's because I like rough sketching more than colored pieces, at least not colored by myself...there are many other illustartors/artists who are magicians with coloring. But okay, I was quite happy with the watercolor, I just wanted to give a touch of color. When it all dried up, I gave it a touch of gold here and there and then I assembeld the card. See the final result *drums*....

Tadaaaa! Well? What do you think? I have these really cool gellyroll pens 'Gold Shadow' from Sakura. I used this to give it a subtle touch. The inside of the card I wrote an inscription for them and not a whole story with how happy I was for them...I wrote that in a seperate letter hehe. But the inside looked like this:

The two rings you see as a watermark is from the back. There I drew two intertwining rings and colored it in with a gellyroll pen. These pens ink very fluent and the end result was pretty cool! Around the rings I wrote their names and the date of their wedding. The back looked like this:
















Soo do you like it so far? here you can see the card in its full glory.....


After this I wrote a separate letter, inserted some goodies for them and placed it all in a fancy envelope and tied a ribbon around it...and yeah I forgot to make a picture of the final FINAL result....please forgive me ^_^"....

I hope you like it. I will tell you about my other projects in my next blog, which will be posted tomorrow, I hope...

Write you later!

Doing things differently

Good morning, evening, after noon everyone!

Okay I decided to put the main focus of this blog on my drawings and arts. I think things would get a bit too messy and chaotic with all my random stories and updates ^_^...soooo here you guys will find lots of drawings, my ideas, my problems (hopefully you will help me out with some feedback/tips) and so on. If you want to know more about a certain subject, just let me know and I will answer you the best I can! I will make a new blog thread if I want to start a new subject, but for now, I will focus on my drawings!

Now I'm working on a few sketches for several occasions this month. I have a wedding coming up. Usually not a big problem, to buy a wedding card, but this is a same-sex wedding. Also not a big problem, but you can't find wedding cards in the store. Okay you can find the standard wedding rings, cake, champagne glasses, groom suits, brides dresses. But I find these a bit cliche and a bit on the safe side and usually the printed text on it, is aimed at the bride and groom. So the problem arise to find a suitable and fun wedding card for my two friends. Let me show you what I came up with:

So what do you guys think? Its a quick sketch featuring my two friends in chibi form and two champagne glasses on the back. I was thinking to add a sunrise or to keep it more simple and add a champagne bottle instead. I will think about it. Do you have any suggestions? Also, not so sure if I will use watercolors or edit it with Illustrator. Decisions, decisions....

I will keep you up to date with my new ideas about this project! So stay tuned!

Cyaaa

Part 1: A little bit about me: Drawing

Let me tell you a little bit about…drawing! I love to draw!

I will only tell a few things, because I can go on and on and on… Not too long ago, I just drew what I wanted, made cards for friends for birthdays and so on. Lots of people love handmade cards and my friends were really happy when they got one, but I have to say that when I see the cards back (I make a picture of each one, just to remember what I drew, don’t want send out double cards hehe), I got annoyed by the technical mistakes. (Really, I was like looking around to see if my friends weren't in the room, so that I can snatch the card and throw it out of the window....okay, I've never done that before, but I would do it, if I could, but I can't -_-'. But I guess, it's like that for most people who draw and see old drawings and are like "Did I really drew that and gave it away :|" The horror....

So the last months, I’m reading up drawing books and learning about techniques and so on. I try to make a few sketches each day, just to stay in the drawing mood and practice is the best way to learn drawing. The first time I seriously drew something, was Bambi ^_^, I was like 7 or 8 years old. I remember sitting in front of the TV and stopping the videotape and a pretty image ofcourse, I had a lot of paper and a pencil and I started to draw (and got annoyed every time the image unfroze). I eventually become pretty good and I could draw Bambi from the mind and it became my first real drawing. My friends always asked “Hey Tahira, can you draw Bambi for me?”. So during lunch break I was usually drawing. The strangest thing is, even though I’ve drawn Bambi so many times, I can’t find a single drawing from that time! It would be cool to see how I drew Bambi and if it really looked like the Disney Bambi (because everyone said so...).
Ah well, the years that followed I developed an interest in anime/manga drawing. I have an uncle who draws soo cool and effortlessly! I will post a few drawings of him soon!

But okay, the last few years I’ve started to drawn more and more and I love to create small stories with cute images and make cards for friends and family. My main goal is to get very good at this, so that I can draw up many images effortlessly and that when I have ideas that I can put them ‘normal’ on a piece of paper and not with vague lines haha. And also that I can edit the drawings on the PC and that I can use them for future cards. But what I really love to do most, is making pencil sketches, rough sketches. But okay, enough talking, let’s go to the pictures! I think, you guys do want to see what I’m talking about instead of reading words all the time...I think...I hope…. Well, hope you like it! If you do (or don’t also possible ofcourse), please leave a comment with feedback/tips.





















Perhaps you guys recognize the images...perhaps not...even so...I love Kei Acedera! She is part of the Imaginism Studios (The link you can find somewhere on the left) and she is so good! I often use her drawings as a reference. Her drawings are very cute and with so much detail! Another person I also like is Bobby Chiu, also from Imaginism. they are one of my favorite illustrators/designers. A few of my own card designs are here below. I usually use watercolors, to add a touch colors, but it's a another goal of mine to get better haha.

This is a card for a good friend of mine, I transformed my friends and myself in chibis ^_^.

This was for another friend. A birthday card. Okay I will leave it at this, I have a lot of pictures of drawings, but I think that my blog will get toooo long. Ow yeah I also have a DeviantArt, with a few old sketches (link is on the left somewhere too), so if you are interested you can have a look at them. I'm in the process of updating everything, so I will add new stuff very soon!

Hope you enjoyed reading this! Till next time!

Cyaa Xoxo