Happy Holidays everyone!  Have..a...Bronze Age Denmark?  Not too far off from the little!Iceland picture I was toying with drawing for the hoidays.
     (Hat is optional: )

Should I have made it smaller a'la WW2!Denmark's adorably awesome mini hat...?  Ahh well, more on these another time.


I've been lazy, busy waiting for people to start hiring again, lazy, working on cosplay, sketching, lazy, writing, researching, being lazy, and working on a certain gift picture.  thecurtain and I had a photoshoot in the snow with gryfeathr as our amazing photographer a few days ago <3  We're also plotting for another one with some more cosplayers, totalling Prussia, Austria, Hungary, Norway and either Denmark or Iceland depending on the shot.  *can't wait <3!*  I haven't even seen the photos from the snowshoot yet though, and I'm not sure I'll be willing to put them up here...we'll see ;;   I'm playing around with a Viking!Norway cosplay aaaand am going to be doing Eurovision!Norway for a Hetalia dinner.  I'm even trying to learn to play "Fairytale," if only the main riff, for the heck of it.


To be fair, I was busy working on a different sort of holiday picture.  I jumped in on a Secret Santa amongst my RP group and got Finland.  The finished image for him is this, very much PG-13 and not much fo a general holiday picture, though I'm pleased with it ^^;


I'm hoping seeing how a picture evolvs will hep me get over my perfectionism, and putting up sketches is a big part of this LJ anyway.  Japan looked so cute in the second sketch ,and I suck at profile views so much, why do they keep cropping up in my Hetaia fanart? |D;;  But I did manage to get to improve it in the end.



Now for something completely different.  I've wanted to do a post for a while on some Folk Metal, and some relatives were curios so I finally cobbled together something to share it.  Not for everyone, I suppose, but it's literally the melding of my two favorite music genres: culturally rich world songs with the energy of electric guitar <3  It's somewhat common for the music to be at least based on traditional ballads, stories, songs, history, etc, and the vocalists often sing in the piece's original language.

I also respect the band members since I still kind of see the metal scene as head-banging delinquent tough guys, yet here these guys are in fantastic or traditional clothing, headbanging to bagpipes and digging out old or uncommon instruments like the hurdy-gurdy.  Band members tend to use a stage name that's either archaic, fantastic, or ties in with their role in the band, e.g. Yellow Pfeiffer for the guy on the pipe instruments.  My favorite is the lead singer of In Extremo calling himself "Das Letzte Einhorn" (The Last Unicorn).  He has a rough voice and the name choice goes so against the idea of a the metalhead stereotype to me that I find it fascinating and cool.

Another thing I love about it is the exposure to old pieces and how differently each band handles the same core song. Take "Herr Mannelig," a Swedish ballad about a troll woman trying to convince a knight to marry her: Swedish, Italian, Swedish as sung by a German Folk Metal band, and their acoustic version.

Also.  It snowed.  A lot.  I made snow tunnels <3  Pictures to come soon, hopefully, along with a more regular update schedule.  Night, all!

dnfjsgs I can't believe it's been a month since I posted here. I updated DA and joined an icon family as Norway, but then I got sucked into my Norway cosplay ^^; Must get it done in time for Otakon!....which I am no logner able to go to. I don't think the non-pre-reg line is worth it.  So that's $2-300 saved for smaller cons.  My family's visiting Williamsburg the week before Otakon, and since cosplay doesn't have to be finished before the trip, I'll definitely be able to go. Historic costumes....! *can't wait!*  Mm, I also...sprained my ankle.  Twice.  In the same week.  Ow...


But anyway, all this means I've done very little art or writing in the past month or so ;-;  I posted this up on DA, but I'll put it here too~  A messy glance over some of the stuff I've been doing.


Left: Zodiac Lolita concept work.  Up top is Aquarius as a very blue Guro lolita, below the random skin tones are Capricorn (Classic) and Virgo (Country), then hte water trio of Scorpio (Ero), Cancer (Sailor), and Pisces (Wa). 
Middle: that HRE and Chibitalia picture, and behind that in blue is a..borderline R-18 DenNor picture.  Beneath them are photographs I want to put up and a young!Norway sketch.
Right:  "A Swede, a Dane, and a Norwegian are stranded on a desert island..." joke 4-koma,which has been waiting since December to get done.  Below them is my Nisse for the Norway cosplay <3  It;s outfit is still the test one, the final version will be better.  Then there's Iris & Arke from greek Mythology, and a photograph of a waterfall ;P  The texts are some fanfics I started for the Nordics, but it's not intended to be very readable since they're so rough there's still spelling errors.


Whoo, I've been busy.  Must wrap up the cosplay and pack for Williamsburg!  But I'll try to keep up here better x.x;;  I can do this once a week!  I might have many photgraphs to dump (like I don't already have a ton of those).

Only I think drabble doesn't mean what I thought it meant.  And I can't find the word-count feature in the new version of Word yet, but I like "drabble" better than "short fanfic."  Anyway, [bracketed text] marks my own notes.  My main concern is how the characters and the story come across, and if they make sense outside of my own head-cannon.  And if any of the text is clunky, since I have a bad habit of run-on sentences ;;  But general commentary of any kind is greatly appreciated~!

If I remember right, this entry is just PG.  Denmark, Norway, and Sweden get most of the attention, but Iceland's in the background and Finland, the Faroe Islands, and New!Greenland all show up too.  Pairings so far are Denmark x Norway, Sweden x Finand, and possibly Norway x Iceland if you interpret the drabble that way.

( All Iceland is told is that Denmark has bad news for Norway before the door is shut in his face... )

...which I just graduated from.  Now I have a good idea of what I want in a school and what I'd like to do as far as studying Japanese and going abroad, but...too late.  On the upside, I have a shiny new laptop and I graduated!   The laptop's pretty nice (a hopefully durable Lenovo in hopeful hopes that I don't break it) and I'm actually quite pleased with Vista.  It's also really nice having working speakers and a fully mostly intact keyboard again!  The L key's already broken off.
 

On the downside, having all my stuff back also means I'm realizing what I lost with my old laptop.  The writings, art, my freshly organized reference folders...I spent all of last summer on organizing that thing.  And my backup CDs are from January '08 _-_;;  The lesson here: never slack off on getting an external hard drive.  Or making new backup CDs.  Especially once the screen starts to go.  Hmm, I'm also a little worried my scanner might not be compatible with the new laptop since it's apparently from the Windows '95 era.  I lost Photoshop, but I got a larger pen tablet and dazzlin_denny  introduced me to Sai Painter, so at least digital art's gotten more natural to me!


Okay, time for art!  Next round will have pencil work and maybe some good photographs of my fine art from the past few years.  For now, digital.  I've always wanted to draw Holy Roman Empire & Chibitalia, and this one came to me while at Den's house last weekend.  I'm still somewhat pleased with it, even.  I've probably put in four or five hours on it already, though.  I'm so sick of lineart...




Somewhat related, I'd like to do MSN doodles a little more often, e.g. what I poked Den with instead of a simple 'Hi' one day:




Now, off the Hetalia track, the blondes of the sea: JELLYFISH MERPEOPLE!
tempythetempest and I had to make a demo level for our final in Advanced Game Design class.  We came up with making an underwater dating sim, as in you're a merperson going to high school in Atlantis.  Figuring out what to do about clothing was a pain, amd I settled for G-nudes at the time.   Sketching out a few varieties of merpeoples instead of the usual half-fish types was a lot of fun, and helped break up my block.  Octopi, sea turtles, starfish-but my favorites were the jellyfish!  I never did finish designing the guy to the left: the bell-shaped bottom makes for a gorgeous pseudo-skirt on girls and effeminite boys, but making it look good on more masculine characters was too challenging at the time.  I remembered an artist or two on DA who did good male mer-jellies though, and I found at least one of them!  It was Chael, with characters like these two and this kid.  I definitely want to design more merjellies, so I'll have to look her work over again.





And so the  artist's block exploded.  It had been such a long time since I'd gotten so into a piece that I didn't even want to stop to go eat!  It was an immensely refreshing experience.  Temptest also loved the idea of them, but pointed out that they were too alien so I reworked the girl into this:



And then we never reached scripting for that encounter of the game T-T  I did put the girl into the demo/title screen though!


Ahh, it feels good to be back on this thing again.  I want to update at least once a week, so time will tell how well I keep up with that.

The Buddhist definition of suffering: "Clinging to that which changes."  And yeah, if I'm anything I'm a Buddhist, and I'm much less upset over this than I expected.  There's just a few things I would really, really like to get back, and the last time I really backed everything up was a summer or two ago...plus, I haven't been able to find those CDs lately ;;  So time to look for a new one.  On the upside..the bottom half of the screen'll work again, I'll have an X, V, and even a " and ' key again!  And the speakers will work, and the headphone jack won't be super fussy anymore...no, my laptop was not falling apart, how can you even say such a thing?!!

So yes, posting from a computer lab, and shopping again for a new laptop.   Sigh.  Been doing more writing than art lately, and a decent amount of it was still on paper at least.  Dunno when I'll be able to put more art up here now, though, so blarg.

I have my good scanner again!  Huz~zah!

In other news, I know I got sick, then I had to pack everything up and move back to school, but man, why`d I let this thing go for so long?!  Arg, I have to get over this resistance about updating DA and this blog.  So!  Art!

Design sheet from last year:

In Astrology, the Moon is emotion, instinct, irrationality, and half the inner self.  Her personality is pretty much whatever Zodiac sign the Moon is in, which changes every two to three days >v>;;  She`s so lovely, and can be anything from serene to crazy, so I end up drawing her a whole frikkin lot. 


She`s the berserker <3  Once she gets going, her method is to grab anything she can and bludgeon the threat with it repeatedly.  Of course, she also has a sort of water magic and can alter emotions.  I need to think of what she`s swinging around in that top right picture.  Ah~h~h, I`ve always wanted to draw that shot, and I`m almost good enough tyo get it right now~

IN OTHER NEWS
I was able to convert dazzlin_denny  into Denmark-Norwayness, so she`s teamed up with me for the history project <3   So glad I have help, even though we can disagree on what should be done with it.  Pictures for the first part, the Viking Age, are due Wednessday, and should be put up on the Hetalia comm by the weekend.  So yeah, I should update by the weekend >v>

Viking!Sweden, Finland, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine~

April 1814.  After the Treaty of Moss.
 

Sweden just wanted Finland back.  He hadn`t really want to come between their four hundred years of partnership, like how Russia had come between him and his Finland, but his new king had absolutely insisted Norway was a more desirable acquisition than Finland.  His new, French, king had sided against Napoleon, placing Sweden right alongside Russia.

 

Iceland had really grown, he couldn`t help but notice.  But then Iceland was hard to ignore today-he was the only one who didn`t avert his eyes from the Swede.  No, even when Norway would hug him goodbye the young boy kept his gaze locked on Sweden, magma under his eyes.  He could believe the boy`s island was ice and rock built up over volcanoes today.

 

Faroe was little easier to look at, bawling his eyes out the whole time and always grabbing at Norway`s hand or latching onto his leg until the final, truly-for-real this-time-final hug goodbye.  Greenland, at least, simply looked more bewildered than anything, clinging to Denmark`s side and half-hiding behind him all day.

 

Denmark just didn`t say anything to his old rival for once, for perhaps the first time ever, and watching him bury his face in the crook of Norway`s neck, pulling him close one last time, Sweden was vengefully sympathetic.  It had been barely five years ago to the day, that Denmark had been standing alongside Russia, Poland, and Saxony as Finland was taken away from him. Mocking him bitterly, as if the Dane didn`t know or didn`t care how badly Finland had suffered the last two times Russia got his hands on him.  So this, this was almost justice.

Norway`s family was slow to board the stagecoach for Copenhagen without him yet, in just another minute, even Iceland couldn`t be seen in the coach windows anymore.  Norway hadn`t bothered to wear a coat, so Sweden half-heartedly draped his own cloak over his new…partner`s shaking shoulders.  He considered the bandages that lay hidden beneath clothing on all three of their bodies, the injuries they had dealt oneanother over the past twenty years.  A deep breath, spring air-he hereby considered his centuries-old score with Denmark settled.  Sweden didn`t think he could stomach another war, not for a long time to come.
 

Norway broke into his thoughts, didn`t wait for the coach to roll out of sight before turning to affix the Swede with a smile that was all teeth.  ``So tell me how long the ride to Stockholm is.  There are still so many issues with our new union that we need to take care of, about the flags, and how I should reorganize the Parliament.  Oh, and will you force me to adopt your language now, or can I use my own?  Just, there will be so much re-writing to do if all government documents have to be in Swedish.  And how will my people be represented in foreign affairs…``

It would be a longer ride than necessary.

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I `m still toying with the later half and the ending ;;  Not sure I got across Norway`s anger and rebelliousness; he`s just come out of two weeks of fighting Sweden for his independence, and failed.  But this is roughly it.  The drabble just flowed off of the picture, while I was trying to figure it out, and man, it`s been a while since I`ve really written...!  It`s super short, but I like it thus far.  The 1800`s are a really interesting time for the Scandinavian nation-tans since the characters change a lot during that century, but I really need to start the history project at an earlier time so you can get a better idea of how much they change by the 1900`s ;;

*Deep breath*  So I`m now down $200...but it should be worth it.  </a></b></a>dazzlin_denny  let me try out her Bamboo tablet, and E-bay had just given out these 10%-off-anything coupons, so I bought one.  I`ve had a tiny Intuos for three years now, but I can`t seem to get into digital art.  Compared to the more natural ``pen-on-paper`` feel of the Bamboo, no wonder-the surface is way too slippery and the pen`s too thick.

Maybe I`ll finally get back to work on the comic this is from too.


Sketching felt easier and so much more natural <3

Milt also gave me mochi, a chocolate bar from Finland (<3 and the jokes that ensued from that,  well...), and showed me how to upload images directly to the post.  Running a sketchblog`s a little easier now that I don`t have to run over to Photobucket~~




...That means I`ll have to start doing more frequent and interesting posts now, though.

Zodiac and Planets-much, much older than the Lolitas of the Zodiac idea, and still lacks a name ._.;  Astrology based, but much too big to really do justice to this very second.  The ones named after the planets are humans possessed with the energy of that particular god, the zodiac are a sort of demi-god and are religious or political figureheads.   Aquarius is the only society that`s modernized, the others vary from hunter-gathereres up to early industrial.
Benefics-Sun and Leo, Moon and Cancer, Mercury with Gemini and Virgo, Venus with Libra and Taurus, and Jupiter with Sagittarius.
Malefics: Mars and Aries, Saturn and Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Scorpio, and Chiron. 

Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are another brand of god far more unpredictable and impersonal, and when they show up they work on a much larger scale.

The Moon in this icon`s from this story.  She`s so pretty and serene looking, but she`s actually the berserker .v.;

The Son of the Sun and the Daughter of the Moon- A fairy tale from either the Sami people in Russia or Russia itself involing the people of the Sun, Moon, and Northern Lights <3 I`d like to do a reinterpretation of it.

Culture Tanget, off of this post, because Danes have some awesome wedding traditions!

In a traditional Danish marriage celebration, dinner will last at least four hours and is filled with lots of alcohol, scathing speeches, games, etc., and is only cut short by the rule that the first dance must be performed before midnight.  The bride and groom perform a traditional Danish waltz while the crowd circles around them and claps to the music.  The crowd gradually moves closer until there`s no more room left to move and the bride and groom must kiss. 

Cheap 2-koma here.

Then the other men seize the groom and cut his tie and the tips of his socks off...!  Something about making sure he isn`t cheating and that his wife can sew.  Hence the scissors.  Still, run, Denmark…

 

 There are other great kissing traditions too, quoted from here:

``Whenever the groom leaves the room, all the men in the room rush over and queue up to kiss the bride. Whenever the bride leaves the room, all the women rush over to kiss the groom. The use of tongue is discouraged.

 

The bride and groom can be compelled to kiss one another by the guests at any time. If the guests strike their plates with their flatware, the bride and groom must step up on their chairs and kiss. If the guests pound their feet on the floor, the bride and groom must go under the table to smooch. (If the guests strike their feet with their flatware or their plates with their feet, all bets are off.)``

If you want to watch such a Danish wedding, this Earthoria video`s good.

 

Norway has some elegant traditions that I wanted to do something with, especially involving the bridal crown, but I ran out of time-for now at least.  Apparently, there`s also an old Norwegian tradition of the bride and groom performing their dance on a tree stump.

I decided to revive my old DA account rather than start a new one.  Haha, for such old pieces they`re really not so bad after all!  Scraps might need pruning, though.

I did a Hetalia art project of sorts, but I was supposed to be done by yesterday ;;  But it was worth taking an extra day, I got two more pictures out of it!  I`m much happier with it now.

I worked at such a small size on some of these...!



So tiny.