LynSmall

Hello all!  The first 5 people to comment on this journal will get featured along with a link to my favorite piece from their gallery.  

1- This is =chiyokins  Here is my favorite piece she has done.   chiyokins.deviantart.com/galle…;
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After you comment please pay it forward and do the same thing in your journal so more people can get featured.    


Hearts y'all!

Lyn

Okay... talk about strange but interesting.  I can't believe I ended up watching the whole series.  I loved all the plot twists.  Now I really really want to draw L.   Guess I'll add it to the list.   

Hearts y'all

-Lyn

Yep, thats right.  This journal comes to you from mainland, awesome land China.  

    I definitely went through a phase of culture shock for a couple of days after moving in to my apartment and finding that the previous tenants had left it filthy.  I wanted to cry it was so dirty and abused, but instead I rolled up my sleeves, muttered a couple of swear words under my breath and started bleaching the whole place down and fixing it up.  The first two days of living there I didn't even unpack my suitcases because it was so dirty and cockroaches were everywhere.      
   For being someone who has barely stepped outside the states before, I think I did pretty good at getting over the culture shock and I now officially feel like I'm nicely settled in.  All it took was a clean apartment and a couple of very welcoming chinese teachers who showed us around.  
    I am very quickly coming to love China.  The people here are kind, the food is unique, and the landscape is spectacular.  I also love how people live in apartments instead of spreading out in houses.  It is so much more efficient and cozy.  The only things I haven't gotten use to yet is the heat, the lack of garbage cans, and the lack of good clean water.  You either have to buy bottled water or get it from a filter at home.  I have this alternating bottle thing going on right now where I fill one up with filtered water and freeze it, than use it the next day and do the first step with my other bottle.  
    Anyway, now that I'm here and settled I am going to get back into drawing mode and start posting stuff again.  

Hearts people!!!

-Lyn

Auugggghhh!!  It is just a day away!!  I am so excited, nervous, stressed, ecstatic, and totally freaking out!!!!!  Hence the gagillion exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!  

Anywho... anyone reading this who lives in China, or has been to China, I would appreciate any tips and love.    I'm going to be living and teaching in a city near Hong Kong but in mainland China.  

Wish me luck you guys!  I will try and keep up with deviant art stuff while I'm there but it will depend on if deviant art is not blocked in the area I'm going.  

<3

-LynSmall

Okay, this is something I've never really done before.  So I decided to apply to join a group called Jingduo which is a break off of the Avatar the last Airbender universe thing.  For the group you design a character and do missions(drawings) to level up in the gang you join.  This is my first time totally designing and creating a character and I am having more fun with it than I expected.  Here is kind of an outline of my thought process...

At first I wanted to create a girl character, but then after browsing through the other character sheets in the group I decided they needed more dudes and less girly girls.  So, a guy it was.  Then I went and explored the Avatar wiki and perused the pictures looking at the style and outfits people had.  I was also on a look out for cool names because I always have a hard time with Asian naming.  I came across some old side character named Pao and decided to use that.  (my character in no way looks or has the personality of the avatar character Pao, I just needed names   Then I remembered the owner of a chinese restaurant I used to frequent whose last name was Ying so I decided to use that for the last name of my character.  Hence Pao Ying was born...  After all that I started doing little sketches in my book for the kind of outfits and such that I wanted my character to have.  The group had a style guide and color guide so that gave me a good foundation to work from.  I have this strange addiction to the chinese pointy hats so I just had to give one of those to my character.  I also have always really liked the idea from other manga of having a character with smiling eyes (Gin from Bleach, although his was more creepy.) Eventually what emerged was a travel worn happy-go-lucky kind of guy with a desire for action and adventure.  I also bounced around the idea of making him bald and possibly a traveling monk, but then decided his moral code and personality didn't fit that prerogative.  Hence I gave him a no nonsense braid and some pretty bangs to go with his quirky youthful smile.  

Suffice it to say, Pao has kind of taken on a life of his own.  Ever since I finished his character sheet he keeps getting into wacky adventures in my head.  He even started crushing on another character in the gang before I realized what was going on. (if you are in that group I'll ask about it later... for now he is just gonna hafta deal with unrequited and hidden love.)  Pao is energetic, funny, and has developed a little artistic side that I initially didn't instill in him.  

Anyway, this adventure has been a lot of work but a lot of fun as well.  I am so wrapped up in this character that I'm getting ahead of myself and impatient as heck.  I'm so excited about it.  More so than I ever thought I would be.  

I finished the character sheet for Pao Ying and now I am working on a detail sheet showing more details of his clothes, weapons, face, and hair.  Oh, and a cute chibi   fav.me/d5b529y

Until next time,

-Lyn