Old Coot Azzy

Let's see...what have I been up to for the past few days? Well, we played so much tennis on Wii that my right arm hurts like hell. The tricep to be exact. What a workout! I think I'm going to try playing with my left hand for a while to balance out the muscle development. :p All kidding aside, the Wii game system really does provide some decent exercise. I'm glad we bought it. My hubby got a new cellphone with gobs of bells and whistles on it so I swiped his old PDA since he really doesn't need it anymore. I'm going to mess with it in a bit. I need to install the software and see if I can get it to sync with my computer. I mainly want to use it for ebooks and to read (and type up) word documents. I walk a lot so it'll be cool to have the pda with me when I stop at the park or the local restaurant. It's a lot lighter than the notebook and the book I'm currently reading that I always carry with me. On Saturday we went to a neighborhood festival and pigged ...

More drawing practice using, "How to draw wizards, warriors, orcs, and elves" as a reference.

I've decided I need to work on a new web page before I forget more of what I've learned about html and css. So, I'm now slowly putting together a page that will list the books I've read since getting into the fantasy genre some 25 years ago. I started the page with a simple html format but plan to convert it to css once I finish typing in the authors and book titles. This will definitely keep me busy for a while because I know I'll have to constantly refer to my notes and a couple of css books I bought a few years back. I haven't started working with Daz Studio yet. The program intimidates the hell outta me. Maybe it's something I'll save for the winter months when I find myself sitting in front of the computer more often. Summer is flying by and I want to take advantage of what's left of it. I even pulled out my bike this morning and took a long ride. Go me! Speaking of exercise...I'm really impressed with Wii because it kept me on my feet and m...

We got a Wii yesterday. Then I kicked my husband's arse in bowling. *snickers*

More drawing practice using a "how to draw" book for reference.

Last night I download a 3-D graphic program similar to Poser from this link. Daz Studio It's "Tell-ware" which means I have to tell 2 people about it. So I'm starting off by mentioning it on my blog. I guess they make their money from the various 3-d models and other add ons you can buy for the program. The program looks mighty intimidating since I've never worked with 3-D art before. It reminds me of the first time I opened paint shop pro and freaked because I had no idea what to do next. lol I keep telling myself to go slow, that I don't have to learn it all in one day. There are several tutorials to follow so I guess I'll start there and try to tackle a little every day or so to keep myself from getting overwhelmed. I think I better get to work on coloring one of my drawings soon too so I don't forget how to do it. When you don't use something for a while you tend to forget the necessary steps...at least I do. At one time I used to zip through ...

Picked up this book from Borders over the weekend. I thought the 3.99 price was very reasonable. Now I have almost one small shelf filled with "how to draw" books. I'm such a sucker for books. lol Anyhoo, using characters from the new book as a reference I managed to draw the following... One day, I hope to be able to draw something without using a reference, but I think it's too early for that yet. I still spend a lot of time drawing circles, cubes, cylinders, etc.

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself because I managed to do something I didn't think I'd be able to do. A friend of my husband's knows I like to play around with graphics and asked me if I could somehow eliminate people from a photo. I told him I'd give it a try but that he shouldn't expect much since I'm an amateur when it comes to things like this. Well, I worked on the photo for about 2 hours and this is the result. (the pictures are reduced for ease of loading) I hope he likes it. Original picture: Manipulated in Paint Shop Pro X1

Had a mess of computer problems yesterday that left me with a major headache. Don't you hate it when things suddenly start to go wrong with your pc and you have no friggin' idea why? Things started off with my getting the blue screen of death right in the middle of outlining a drawing in psp. Then I played a game of turn off, turn on pc. After the third try, windows finally loaded properly. That's when the fun started. *groan* First, Internet explorer preformed an illegal operation and had to shut down. I wonder how many times IE has been arrested for such illegal operations? *snort* Next, yahoo messenger did the same, shutting down as I was about to say howdy to someone. Then McAfee pops up with a warning, telling me my computer isn't protected, and that I must hit the "fit" button to make things right again. Okay, so I do that, and it works for like all of 10 minutes...then I get the warning again followed by the fix it notice. Now, I'm starting to get r...

Last night, we watched several hours of "Live Earth." Bon Jovi gave another fantastic performance. The band is tight. They make live performances look easy. And they really know how to work the crowd. Bravo to them for an excellent job. I was bouncing around in my chair and wilding flapping my arms around to their music. Hey, at least I got a little exercise! *laughs* It looks like it's going to be another day spend indoors since the temperature is suppose to hit 95. Ugh! Too hot for me. I guess we could catch up on watching the anime we put on hold yesterday. This week I'd like to get back to practicing my drawing. I've been at a loss for what to work on but before I fell asleep last night I started thinking about trying to draw pictures of all the characters I created for my old storyboards. So, yeah, that's what I might do. I'm been feeling quite bored when I come online lately. I guess it's because I don't have anyone to talk with or write wit...

Live Earth Concert...all day long on Bravo. I know what I'll be doing for the next few hours. :D

Right now there's a "Dead Like Me" marathon on Sci-Fi channel. So, I'm off to watch for a while. It's a shame this show is no longer around. Why do they always take off the things I like?

Once again I'm rearranging the spare room where I have my computer and a table for practicing my drawing, along with shelves and crates of stuff like books, photo albums, psp tutorials, html tutorials, etc. I ran across this picture of the hubby and I taken at my nephew's medieval wedding about 8 years ago. Of course it left me wanting to be younger and thinner again. lol After my friend Dave mentioned starting a button collection, I immediately began hunting for a bag of buttons I saved from a button factory I worked at 10 years ago. It took me awhile to discover where I stashed the thing because I'm great at putting things in safe places then forgetting the location of said safe places. I'm going to post a few of them on his forum but thought I'd add a couple here too. Happy 4th everyone!