Kara's Blog

I recently came across an artist on Instagram that I really liked the style of. They used a lot of pastel colours and they had a way of using contrast in a way that makes the darker colours still look very light, and I admired it a lot.
So I decided to try it out myself.

I’ve kind of started getting more into a “cybergoth” style, and even though I don’t dress outrageous (even though I’d like to), I still feel like the style is starting to leak more into my art. I’ve been using pastels (not to copy or “plagiarize”, but I’d say more to work with contrast and also because seeing it seemed to stem my inspiration)
I feel like this is a really good thing for me because recently I’ve been experiencing a lot of art block, and getting inspired just by some artist on Instagram seemed to help. I’ve been working more with stylization and likeness (because I like to draw real people and it’s important to make them actually look like themselves) instead of just one or the other.

I haven’t really started messing around with proportions, but I have with how things are shaped (eyes, mouth, etc.) and some other creative liberties with my own style instead of focusing on realism (because I’ve focused on it for so long).

Anyways, that’s mostly all I wanted to say. See ya.

June is usually a very exciting month for me. There’s field trips, both my dad’s and I’s birthdays, and the end of school. Even though I don’t go outside, the weather warms up and it’s sunny. There’s just something really appealing about summertime. You feel happier instead of down, like how winter can get people down. There’s more colours and life and it’s generally a better seasonal feeling.

I’m kind of excited for my birthday because I’m broke and I usually get a lot of money on my birthday. Last year on my birthday, I had a therapist appointment, so it kind of made the day feel a bit more strange, not in a good or bad way, just a weird way. Our class has a pool day the day before my birthday so that’s exciting, even though I hate swimming (because I can’t).

I already bought my dad his birthday present (his birthday comes before mine), so I hope he likes it. We also have a field trip the same day as his birthday. I get to go to the city for school and come home and eat cake. I think it’s going to be fun.

It might sound kind of crazy, but I’m planning to go outside more this summer. I’ve always been a basement-dweller, so it’ll be kind of strange to go outside a lot. My mom bought us canoes, so she’s planning on going out on them a lot. We live next to the river so it won’t be too big a problem hauling theme around unless we want to go to the lake or something.

I’ve been working on a few different things that I’m actually interested in this time, so I’m hoping to get those rolling into something that might be more profitable as a series or something I can post online, or maybe publish properly when I’m older.
I’m also working with a new art style, so I can kind of branch out if I practice more with that. Right now, it’s more pastel-ish colours because I got inspired by an artist I saw on Instagram, but I want to eventually work with more warm colours and maybe some contrast with things later on.

That’s really all for now.

I’ve been doing a lot more writing recently, and I’ve really been enjoying it. I’ve started posted some of it on the internet, too.

It’s kind of nice coming back into writing, especially when you have something good on your mind and you feel really inspired by it. That ended up happening to me and I wrote an entire first chapter of a series about it with 4000+ words. I don’t really know how I did it; it just happened.

I’m planning on adding way more to it and the story, and maybe finally getting back into regular updates. Last time I wrote something that I regularly updated (that also wasn’t for school) was around 2 years ago, so it’ll be nice if I can get back into that habit.

I’ve been listening to some new music recently, too, and by new, I mean that I started listening to some songs that I used to listen to 24/7. My music taste is already all over the place, and I ended up just going through my Spotify and listening to whatever I feel like I want to listen to. I even made a new playlist, which is very unusual for me.

I never make playlists, even for my favourite songs. I think one reason I even made the playlist in the first place was because a song I was listening to reminded me of a character I like. This only happened a few days ago, but it’s still very relevant to me.

School’s been school. Also, me and my friends made plans literally within like 5 minutes to go for a sleepover at one of our houses just because I obtained wasabi and they want to try it. I now have to remember to bring the stuff so that it’s really not pointless. That’s happening this weekend.

I’ve been trying to draw more, because I took a small “hiatus” almost. It really wasn’t a hiatus, more that I was just doing things I didn’t like and I wasn’t really enjoying my art, but I’ve tried to do this thing where I draw what I want, and even if it doesn’t turn out how I want it to, I still keep it and add to it. I feel like it’ll be a good exercise for me.

Whenever there’s weather, like rain or snow, I always associate something to that kind of weather. I don’t know why, but there’s just that feeling. Like if you listen to a specific song during a thunderstorm, that memory is kind of encapsulated by that feeling you had when you were listening to it. It can’t only be weather, it can be a time, a lighting, where you were, etc. I have this with a lot of things I listen to, or a drawing, or some thing else of that nature.

Recently we’ve been getting a lot of snow and the river has risen a lot. We’ve had to postpone our Easter supper at least 1,000 times because our relatives that live farther away are scared of lowland flooding. It’s kind of hectic. It almost May and we’re getting snow. Mother nature must hate us or something.

Other than that and me getting mad at the fact we’ll being have snow in August already, I think my favourite kind of weather is when it’s raining around mid-day. The ambience and just the general knowledge that it’s actually raining is very comforting. It has to only be rain, though. If it turns into a thunderstorm, I won’t like it at all.

I’ve had a massive irrational fear  of thunderstorms for about 4 years now. I don’t really know how it started; I used to love thunderstorms when I was younger. My entire family would be inside and I would want to be outside looking at the lightning. Now I’m the one that cowers in the basement if I hear even one thunder boom.

I don’t really go outside a lot, so I don’t really have much interaction with the weather. I don’t do a lot of activities and I never see the sun. Everyone after summer has nice tans and I walk into the classroom like a vampire or ghost. It’s kind of funny. Whenever I compare “tans” with people, I become a sheet of loose-leaf. My mom will have this golden colour and I’m just white. That’s literally the only way to describe my complexion.

I’m planning on going outside more this summer, though, so hopefully I won’t be as pasty as the previous 5 years or some. My mom bought us kayaks and I’m kind of scared to try them out with her. I haven’t been swimming in a while, and I’m sure if I fell out a boat or had to go swimming at any time for safety, I’d just drown. It’s been so long, I kind of forget if I can swim or not. Last I remember, I could, but now I’m kind of like “Ehhh..” whenever someone asks me if I can swim.

Other than that, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Do you ever have this thing where you don’t know what the heck to wear or what style suits you?

I get this a lot and it can be kind of annoying. I don’t really know what style fits me or what I really like. Some days I like more “girlish” things and others I can be completely rock ‘n’ roll. Most of the time, I just wear things that I wouldn’t get judged in, when in reality, I would want to be wearing something completely different.

It can be kind of a hassle to keep telling yourself not to wear things you like, or realizing you don’t really look good in the things you like, and I think it’s more of a confidence issue for me. I also have very bad paranoia about everything, so I’m constantly thinking when shopping for or wearing something like “What will my mom think? What will my friends think?” and it’s a very bad habit to get into. Being self conscious about every little thing or thinking about what they’ll say when in reality, they could probably care less, is really a tough situation.

Whenever I’m home alone, I do the classic dress up thing because it’s when I feel most comfortable to wear whatever the heck I want to wear without judgment (except maybe from the cat).

I’m still trying to get out of the habit of what I think people will judge about me, so maybe I can update on this topic soon.

I recently had a revelation of what I really want to do when I grow up, or as a hobby, or just in general.

I recently started working on a comic “dub”, almost, and me and my friend are planning on working on it together and voice act in it. I think it’ll be really fun. I’ve always liked the idea of voice acting, or acting in general, and being able to make my own project and have the freedom to put anything I want into what I have a passion for, I think that’s really cool.

Also, my friend group came up with the idea for a band. I think it’s obvious from my previous blog posts that I love and want to be in a band. I choose the role of vocalist and bassist, and we put one of our other friend’s as the ominous stander.

We decided we should start out with covers of songs to get used to instruments and working together before we make our own original songs. We also need a band name, and we came up with some cool stage names. It’s been pretty cool.

As for my comic “dub”, I’m thinking about posting it as an actual story as well on a comic platform or a writing platform. Originally, I was going to do that, but my friend’s came up with the idea to voice act in it and post parts on YouTube. I’ll probably update on here when I start posting parts of it properly.

This is probably subject to change, but I want to write about my current favourite song, Sleep, by My Chemical Romance.

One reason I like it is that it’s loud. I think the fact that you can just listen to it and burst your eardrums makes it an amazing song in general, but also the fact that you can actually make out the drums and guitar, along with the vocalist screaming behind all the noise. It’s really not how non-metalheads see it, aka, just straight up l o u d, apparently.

Another reason is the lyrics. It’s hard to assign a meaning behind them, and it almost feels lonely even though there’s so much noise happening. I’ve been listening to this song for over a year and I still haven’t really found out what it means, though, I have tried to come up with what I think it could be about.

This song has strong grounds for a good music video, too. You listen to it and it has the right amount of “ominous”, along with quiet, loud, emotional, and almost “dark” themes. The weird noises along with how the guitar builds up at some parts is definitely something that ideas could really bring out in the song. I think the fact that it also has a bit of dialogue throughout, almost like a post-war feeling or someone suffering PTSD from war, also contributes to the fact it’d be great for a music video. I’m actually sad that the band didn’t make one for it.

This is definitely a song I could listen to anytime, anywhere. It’s not necessarily “sad”, nor happy, it doesn’t really affect my mood when I listen to it. It’s good background noise but also something good just to zone out to. I usually listen to it while playing games or doing something mindless.

I think a big con to this song is my favourite part of it. The ending which has all the build-up and the loudness really resonating in it. I always end up having to rewind the song to where the, quote-unquote, “end” of the song starts, and I usually skip the beginning parts of it, which is kind of a shame because it’s really what ties the song together. That’s the only part I don’t like about it, not everything in the song is my favourite, and I have to skip good parts to get to my favourite part.

I like this song mostly because I can associate the things I like to it. Like I said previously, not only is this song grounds for a good music video, but also almost a story, in a way. Maybe it’s just my creative mind getting ahead of me, but whenever I get into something new, and then I come back to the song, I always can imagine something cool for the franchise/game/person or whatever when I listen to it. It’s kind of fascinating to come up with so may stories for only one song.

If you want to listen to the song, click here.

One of my hobbies is writing. I like to write stories I come up with, or add to an existing franchise, or expand on my own on-going stories. I also like reading stories that are probably under my reading level, or whatever I find cliché, or something I used to read and like. It usually is fun to look back and read the cringe things I used to, or also just to look at the things I used to write and think, “Phew, thank God I’m not like that now.”

Something I really like to read is fanfiction. Sometimes it gets a bad reputation, especially if it’s of shipping with real people, which could be considered very immature and weird, or disrespectful, but I mostly just read thing I’m into that are fictional. I find it quite comforting to read something that’s from a franchise I already know a lot about. It kind of reels me more into the story rather than starting from nothing and learning about the characters over the course of, like, 17 sequels.

I like reading complete books because I can get through them in an hour or so, sometime more if their longer, but I get so caught up in them, it feels like 5 minutes when it’s been 3 hours, but I also enjoy on-going books. They add more cliffhangers and it can be exciting to have a new chapter out a read what happens next, without just rushing through it in one night and having no real waiting period.

Some of the things I like writing  have a lot of detail in them. I think since I’m so inclined to drawing, I like to make a proper image and scene for my readers to imagine. I find it really centres the story more to have a detail setting, and also detailed interactions and actions of characters.

Do you ever listen to a song and make up a music video for it? I kind of do that, too, sometimes. I’ll come across a song that would be perfect for a music video I envision, and it kind of turns into a writing prompt or something like that. It makes me want to come up with a story for the thing I envision.

I haven’t posted a blog in a while, but pretty much everything has stayed the same. I’m supposed to go to my friend’s house today, so that’ll be fun.

I recently started listening to MCR again on repeat, so that’s also something.

I haven’t really been working on much art, though I’m still really interested in it. I think it might be a seasonal thing or something. I tend to distance myself from my art sometimes during the spring. I also get writer’s block and feel like poop, so that’s fun.

I think I’ve been reading more, though. I kind of like more fantasy stuff that really has that detail and “adventurous” vibe, almost. Those kinds of reads are always interesting, that’s probably why I like creating my own.

I’ve been thinking more about what I want to do in the future. Especially since the whole thing with Russia and Ukraine have started going down. I find it dumb. It kind of makes me question everything that’s going to happen, so that’s also just peachy.

School’s been school, so I can’t talk much on that.

I started playing Minecraft more ever since I showed my friend’s what I’ve been building. They said it’s really cool, so it kind of motivates me to finish and work on it more and expand on whatever I’m doing.

I dyed my hair, and I hated it, so I used a colourant that’s semi-permanent to change it. It’s not meant to be used on blonde or bleached blonde hair, so it ended up coming brownish-black. I’m not complaining, but I’m kind of scared to walk out of the shower one of these days and have ginger-blonde hair again. It’s ugly.

Writing this now makes me remember how boring my life is, so that’s ALSO G O O D.

I stayed up late last night because of whatever reason, and then I went to sleep by 1 or 1:30 in the morning, and I had a really weird dream about my friend and I, and about what we’d do at the sleepover. The only way I can really describe it is nightmarish and “slave-like”. I don’t know, but I know we, eh, more than likely won’t be doing anything “s l a v e – l i k e” at the sleepover… I hope.

I then woke up at 5:30 in the morning and I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I’m G U A R R A N T E E D to be able to stay up late and play games with my friend tonight… Totally.

I’m kind of always hesitant to actually go to sleepovers because I have this subconscious feeling that someone’s going to judge the way I sleep. It’s really weird.

I just remembered that I bought a movie recently. I hadn’t watched it for a few months because Netflix. Decided. To. Remove. It. I was very mad at that, so I just ended up paying like $17.00 of not my own money to watch it. It payed off (haha pun), because I’ve watched the movie a good 271,029,405,302.7777392 times since I bought it, and I plan on finally watching it with my friend at the sleepover because he keeps making fun of it because, and I quote, “BrItIsH HaHa“.

This was kind of more of a life update thing, I guess.

I have a new favourite song. It’s called “The Kids From Yesterday”. It’s good.

Also, it comes off the album with a spider as the cover image. That’s pretty cool especially because I don’t know what the spider symbolizes.

You can listen to it here if you wanna know what kind of music I like.

I think that’s all for now. See ya.

I think I wanted to post a blog about this mainly because I’ve been trying out something new with my art recently, and I wanted to express it.

Finding an art style can be tricky, as most people who don’t do art just expect you to become better and better at normal human forms and expect everything to be perfect. Finding out how to draw in a way that;

1. You like.

2. You actually enjoy doing.

and 3. Are comfortable with.

are all coming from the same knowledge on if you know the human form.

Once you can get down something that actually resembles a human person, that stylization can come to you easier and you can test out proportions and different colour tricks once you feel more comfortable knowing your stuff.

I have a very, more realistic style than some. Some people prefer cartoony or anime ways of styling characters and different landscapes or animals. I think mine is more about uncanny valley, which, isn’t necessarily a good thing, but I enjoy drawing this way. I most draw fanarts, and when doing that, you have to think about taking a cartoony style character and making them look like a proper person (this is at least what I do for my style). It can be hard when, from reference, that person clearly looks fake and animated, and converting it to a person who looks alive an not like an AI generated thing, or a robot, can sometimes be hard.

I don’t really work fro references, I just make up my own thing because it’s better work flow for me. So, if you dont want your characters to look like a robot or a fake human, use a reference of someone or something, just to help make them look more real.