It's almost May, have a day!
I want to be able to sketch out cute little cartoon guinea pigs as quickly as I used to draw cartoon cats all over my math homework. I don't want to copy other people's cartoon style, so I'm practicing from pictures of my real guinea pigs instead of borrowing from other people's drawings. I probably should have tried drawing more short haired pigs first instead of miss Abyssinian cowlick queen Zelda, but I think it looks alright considering she's all fluff and no real shapes. Whenever I draw I tend to start with a character's face. I made Zelda's too narrow and her ears are... well... I don't know what to do with guinea pig ears. But it's a start and I like it! It's almost May, have a day!
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βOn Monday I received a drawing tablet I bought online. I spent some time with it, drawing mediocre Hamtaro fanart mostly, and it's been so much more fun than trying to draw with a computer mouse.
If you are interested in digital art, I recommend trying a drawing tablet. There are smaller models available that come with a smaller price tag, but this is the one I have:
(affiliate link)
I had never had one before, but this one seems pretty nice. It has Bluetooth capability (which isn't important to me, but it might be to you) and a rechargeable pen stylus. Pen pressure allows you to make the lines you draw thicker or thinner depending on how hard you press down on the tablet (I didn't use this feature when I was playing around, but plan to in the future). The drawing area on this thing is huge! It's 11 inches across, giving plenty of space to make detailed drawings.
I have only had a couple of minor issues with the tablet. First, the driver disc that came in the box doesn't do anything and I had to download what was supposed to be on it from the manufacturer's website. Honestly it wasn't a big deal, just weird. My other problem is really a problem with Adobe Photoshop Elements, which lags slightly sometimes while I'm drawing. When I was sketching in plain-old Microsoft Paint there was no lag at all, but of course Paint doesn't have all the advanced features of Photoshop.
ββ Tuesday was the sixth anniversary of the day I brought Zelda home from the animal shelter. We took a few pictures together, though she probably would have preferred not to.
Guinea pigs can live ten years or more, but on average they live between five and seven years. Over the past year or so Zelda has slowed down quite a bit. She doesn't stand at the cage bars and beg as often as Peach and Lilly, and she doesn't try as hard to get away when I try to pick her up. Despite this, she is still a pretty healthy pig and enjoys all types of vegetables, hay, and even those boring looking food pellets.
Wednesday I bought and assembled some wire shelving to put the gerbil tank on.
The tank is a little bigger than the top shelf, but it's sturdy so I'm not worried about the cat being able to knock it over. The gerbils don't seem to care about their new location, but it's good that they're not hogging the craft table anymore and their supplies now have a central location.
Well, it's Thursday now, so time to clean the guinea pig cages. I hope to post again soon. Until then, have a day! Today I worked for a while on the book I have been writing since the eleventh grade. I don't hate it the way I used to, so I think that's a good sign that I might eventually finish it, but it seems to get shorter, not longer, every time I open it. I keep over-editing it, probably because I leave it alone for too long and have to re-read it to remember what I was doing before I can continue it. So far the book has five short chapters, the first being over 2000 words and almost half the entire length of what I've written. I plan to beef up the other chapters eventually, or just combine a few of them together. I read somewhere that a decent novel is around 100,000 words long, so my 4,500 word piece still has a long way to go. It is VERY hard to write a book. I think part of the problem is living in this culture where we spend so much time consuming, we lose some of the ability to create. Or maybe I just have ADD. I don't know. Just a thought. Randomly, my guinea pigs are behaving very well lately. Even Elli hasn't been running away when I try to pet her. They still don't like to be picked up very much but any small improvement makes me happy, even if it confuses me as well. Since I have been unwell, I have also noticed less fighting between the pigs. Before, I would often hear Peach squeal when one of the others (usually Zelda) chased her out of a hide out or away from the hay rack. Now, they seem like best buddies again. Their rodent politics will always remain beyond my understanding, I suppose. I don't want to go to work tomorrow... My nose isn't running away like crazy as it has been for the past week and a half, but I'm still tired and my throat is a bit sore. Running around carrying cardboard boxes all day generally makes me feel worse.
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