I haven’t been up to much lately, other than constantly trying to come up with ideas of things to write here. I am beginning to suspect that I should stop trying so hard. (Really, who reads this anyway?) But anyway, lately, I have been…

• Listening to Brain Failure, a punk band from Beijing. Yeah, really! Just that fact makes them awesome, but if you give them a listen, you’ll be even more impressed. They sing in both English and Mandarin (not amazing English, but punk singers don’t really have amazing pronunciation anyway! Rock on!), and have performed with THE DROPKICK MURPHYS, THE CASUALTIES, and DILLINGER FOUR. BRAIN FAILURE is also credited with starting the punk movement in China, and is the first Chinese band to tour in the US! Since I like them so much, I uploaded my favorite song of theirs for you to enjoy. It’s a re-release of their song, “Coming Down to Beijing” - this time with cleaner vocals and - drum roll! - featuring Dicky Barret of THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES. You don’t get much cooler thain this.
  DOWNLOAD: “Coming Down to Beijing” - Brain Failure

• Reading Desolation Jones, a Wildstorm comic by author Warren Ellis (author of Hellstorm and Transmetropolitan) and artist J. H. Williams III (Chase, Promethea). It has all the elements of a good story: cranky British protagonist, cast of quirky characters (including a porno connoisseur named Filthy Sanchez), awesome artwork, and horrific experiments (being forced to stay awake 24/7 for an entire year while being force-fed images of horrific images, anyone?). Pick it up at your local comic book store, if you get a chance! It’s worth it.

• Re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, because honestly, I whipped through it the first time and don’t remember much of anything, except, you know, a certain white-bearded main character dying in some kind of… lake, or something. I figured I should reread it before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out (on July 21st!) I can’t believe that the Harry Potter series is ending! I remember reading it for the first time in the fourth grade, because my classmate Cameron was and I thought they looked pretty cool. I kind of miss the less gloomy and more school-oriented ways of the first few books, but I suppose war is the only natural course that could be taken with Voldemort and Harry and all.

• Going through tons and tons of old stuff in preparation for a garage sale my mom and I are having! My mom and I are both going to Oahu for a shopping spree in two weekends (so I won’t be home to pick up my copy of Harry Potter on the opening night :( ), and we decided to hock all our old stuff for a little extra cash! Plus, it’s been about time we freed up some space in the house. My ulterior motive, though, was also to find all my mom’s old photos that I’ve been hearing about but have never seen. We found a few, and I fell in love with them. I love the look and feel of old photos - they all have rounded edges and a matte texture. It feels so amazing to hold them in your hands.

See more of my mom’s photos here!

And that’s all! I’ll see you guys soon. I can’t wait to go to Oahu~

I did a little bit of art, but it’s pretty terrible and therefore, I don’t think it actually has the right to be called ‘art.’ It was a quick sketch I was doing on a sheet filled of character doodles, but I liked it enough to crop it and color it. I am really pretty proud of the shading on the skin, although the hair leaves a lot to be desired. We’ll pretend it doesn’t exist. :)

Since I haven’t really been coloring with CG lately, so it’s about time I tried to develop a style again. That’s why I colored this; I needed the practice. I like how I shaded the skin, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to do the hair. I guess I’ll just keep experimenting with different styles until I come up with something I like.

Anyway, the character himself is from a comic idea that I made up in the sixth grade or something. There will be more details about it later, but for now I’ll just tell you that this fellow’s name is Hybrid. And since all my main characters are pretty much based off of Ex, I made his hair red. I don’t know what color it’ll actually be, and I doubt this is what his hair will end up looking like in the comic itself.

In other news, I have a lot of spare time on my hands, as I recently broke up with my boyfriend of seven months. Yeah, that sucks. It really sucks. I’m really depressed and lonely; there’s also a lot of family drama going around which revolves around my brother’s poor health. But I’ll save the drama for your mama, and she can keep up with all of that at my LiveJournal. Until next time!