It snowed a bit today. Only a little, but it is the first snow of the year. It is so cold too. The pond in our garden has frozen over and my cat keeps stealing my hot water bottle from me.

Yesterday I picked up the key for my new house. I start my new job in 3 weeks o.O... so exited... and a bit nervous ha ha
The house is very nice. I'll be sharing with 3 others. And they are tidy! So nice.

I also want to thank everyone for the recent +favs, watches and comments. I've been around for quite a few years now and I know I'm not always the most active of people here so I am always surprised when people show interest in my work. Also I am pleased that for the first time a piece of my artwork that I've done recently is more popular than a piece I did 5 years ago XD
It has taken a while, but it is good to know that I am improving. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it


So how do other people manage to stay focused on the art they are working on and manage to finish it?
Often it takes me a month or more to finish a piece of art. Sometimes because I don't have much time and sometimes just because it's hard to concentrate for long periods of time
x

Hello fine people. I'm assuming that *most* people have realised that the Groups system has gone into Beta now?! Although I only found out second hand, I did not get a message in me message centre
Oh well it is still early days and EVERYONE is finding bugs.

I'd just like to promote a few Groups that I'm part of:


So this group has been around for 6 years (started up just before I joined DA. The club has had it's fair share of activity and inactivity over those years and passed hands a couple of times.
I thought I'd revive the club since it has so many watchers and back in the day when people were active it was a great place to hang out.
We've still not quite worked out the bumps of running it as a group, but I hope that people will enjoy being a proper group.


When this group was being set up I was excited about it since Traditional Media is one of my passions (you might be able to tell from my dire attempts at completing any digital art). So naturally I was very happy to be invited to help out with running the group.
I'm sure this will be an excellent group.


Where #anime-artists is a group to bring a general fan group together and #Traditional-Media is more of a specialisation group for quality content, #MonotoneRainbows is like a proper members club. This works well as they are able to create their own community and encourage each other to improve. It's the kind of club when you want friends to talk to, rather than a huge group of people.

So my recent poll is basically because I've started trying to finish a few games recently and have been playing a mixture of Eastern and Western RPGs.
I enjoy both types, but to me they have distinct differences.
Western RPGs seem to run more on the idea that you have a blankish character who you can build to reflect more your own pesonality or that which you want your character to have.
Japanese RPGs seem more like a storytelling device where you immerse yourself in a very set out story and watch the characters evolve.

Probably for me I enjoy the Jrpgs more since I like the storytelling element and don't have to worry too much about making decisions that change the story drastically.
Also because you don't get huge open worlds in Jpgs (usually) they can spend more time and effort on polishing off graphics and making things look 'next gen'.

But I'd like to hear your opinions on games. In particular have you heard of/ played/ what did you think of the following games

- Lost Odyssey
- Last Remnant
- Infinite Undiscovery
- Star Ocean IV
- Tales of Vesperia
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Fable I
- Fable II
- Oblivion

Don't feel you have to give an opinion on all of them. Or alternatively I'd just like to hear about any game you'd recommend playing.

So it's just gone past Expo weekend. I went over for the day. The general atmosphere was kind of crazy. Big queues, lots of people, luckily few and non-agressive free huggers.
I actually managed to miss most of the people I'd gone there to see DX
But I did make a new friend. These guys were very cool. Especially the lineart. I'm a sucker for really thin lines and things drawn big.


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Anyways After Expo I've been working on colouring in this:

I am full of cold. I need to get up and bother to find the hot water bottle.

But it's Autumn. I love it! Night's are longer, it may be wetter, but it has that cosy feeling.

I've been doing a bit of experimenting with digital colouring, trying out different things. It means half a dozen drawings that don't seem to have any stylistic contingency.

So I want to work on some traditional art. Something that I can finish without questioning whether it's finished. Something that's stylistically me.