A Chilly Day

Good afternoon everyone:)

I hope everyone is doing good and taking care of yourselves. It’s a cold day today as always, but guess what? Today I finished my final exams yaaay!! Well kind of, I still have one more exam to go on Monday, but it’s the first period only so…

Anyway, I wanted to go somewhere fun but all my friends still have classes to attend so here I am, sipping cafe latte. To be honest, I haven’t been up too much for the last, let’s say 2 years. As you know if you read my last post, I had some trouble finding what I want. I still do if you’re wondering. But lately I started to find joy in drawing again, and I’m slowly starting to get back to drawing again. I don’t know if this is a phase and it will die out again, but at least I’m enjoying the moment. I got an iPad for my 21st birthday and I’ve been using clip studio to draw. Also, I’m back on deviant art after like what? Maybe six years? Wow, that’s…a long time ago. And I’ve been trying to browse in DA for about 30 mines to an hour every day, of course, some days are less, but I’m trying to be active again. I will try to write more on this blog, but I still can’t promise you that I will upload regularly and I hope you understand 😀

If you’ve been following me for a long time, you know that I was writing a novel called sleeping memories, and I finished writing it about 4-5 years ago. I don’t remember if I ever said that. But I didn’t publish it. Because, I thought the story is soo complicated, and what I wrote was like an introduction, so a second volume had to be there if I ever want to publish it. And I don’t have the slightest idea how to complete, because the story is so big and complicated. So I never did. If I know how to complete the series, I will consider publishing it. But since that time, I’ve been eager to write some more, but I don’t really have a story to write. I have pieces here and there, but it won’t make a good storyline. Then after years, finally I started writing my second novel “Essence”. I might change the name, but this will do for now. I would like to write about this novel in another post ( more reason to be active here right?). I’m in chapter 4 and if my plan goes smoothly I will be finished by the end of the year or the early months of 2020. I haven’t thought about how to publish it yet, however, I plan to design my own cover and so on.

I’m actually waiting for my friend to call me so we could have a chat, but I think she’s busy. So when I finish my coffee, I’ll stop there and go home.

Little update, I’m going to be a 3rd-year student in April. Times is surely flying. I usually take 20-23 credit a semester. But this semester I took 15 credit, so I have plenty of free time to focus on my studies and my other things like the novel. But I have to make it over in the next semester and I’ll be busy again. So I’m so unsure about what’s going to happen you know? My teacher told me to start doing my portfolio, and I didn’t ^^” so I have to do it at some point. But I just got my spring vacation so I don’t wanna think about that >\\<

I just finished my coffee so I’m gonna called a day and end the post here. I will go for one more stroll and go home.

I think it’s a pretty decent post after a long time don’t you think? Anyway, talk to you soon.

Have a lovely evening.

~Mikan

Drawing Box Updated [Special Post]

Hello viewers and reader and welcome to a special post! I rarely write any special post; because it won’t be special anymore, am I right? I believe if I’m not wrong, the last special post was (3 years ago?) about my drawing tools. Today I will share updated drawing tools storage or now “Box” and I will try to be nice and detailed.

If you subscribed to me from long time, I used to have a baby pink box I got it on my birthday and I stored everything there, but it was so cluttered and hard to find stuff, especially I did not put the tools in boxes, I just throw them there. Then I repurpose my giant pink box and stored my clothes in it, I switched a small white bag that had pockets and compartment inside, which made it a lot neater and easy to grab. However I kept buying new stuff every so often, so my bag did not fit everything in, so I realized I need to upgrade my bag. The pink box and white bag stayed with me for a long term, especially the pink box.

So I bought a tool box to store all my drawing tools in one place! And it’s fairly new, I bought it second year of high school. Here what it looks like.

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It’s a simple tools box [356X215X200mm] [14.4” x 8.5 x 8”]. It has a clear lid, with clear compartment/ trays organizers, and black handle/clasp/bottom, all made of plastic. I think it’s a very good size.

This is how it looks when it’s open.

It has three trays, the middle and the last tray have removable dividers, so you can customize the way you like to suit your everyday needs.  I didn’t try and change it, I like the way it is.

In the first tray I have my wooden pencils and two compartments filled with my water color pencils, and in the squared compartment I have plastic sheets and soft pastel instruction and small notebook. I use the plastic sheets for tools that will mess up my box like charcoals and soft pastel, and it’s useful for travel. The small pink notebook doesn’t have the best paper quality but I use it as my markers chart. Each compartment I label it and used a clear masking tape to prevent damage.

The second tray I have promarkers set 1, mechanical pencils, inking pens and promarkers set 2. I have 12 pro markers and for some reason I separated them and put them into “sets” but the labels don’t have a clear tape on it, because I might change it in the future, the only one taped is inking pens.

The third tray has promarkers set 3, sharpeners, eraser and unlabeled compartment. I had a lot of sharpeners but I ended up using them or losing them, so for the moment I own only one sharpener and I put in in my travel drawing pencil case 🙂 That’s why there are cute erasers I bought it in Dubai mall in a bookstore called kinokunyia where I bought Pandora hearts artbook. The last one currently has no use; I just put a really old note pad I use as a pallet.

The bottom has the bulky items! Such as my Faber castell 12 color pencils, my rotring ruler, manga bubble speeches and frames, promarkers instructions, plain paper [to prevent smudging], Faber castell 36 bright pencil color set, soft pastel large 12 colors, copics basic set, Faber castell 24 small color cubs, Perocil pencils soft pastel, perspective rulers, Brushes, water colors, pencil charcoals, empty micron inking pens case and finally a pencil case. I do have a new promarkers set that doesn’t fit my drawing box, but it case its own case so it’s not a problem

All of these items in my drawing box can be easily purchase in your local bookstore or stationary store.

If you want a detailed drawing tools, leave a like and comment and I will humbly write it for you 😀

Hope you enjoyed reading, and happy Thursday.

~Mikan

Three New Videos! Videos Talk :)

Good morning everyone!

I hope you all doing good 🙂 I uploaded three YouTube videos for the past few days, and today I will talk about them, hopefully you will like them all.

Let’s start with watercolor pencils tutorial:

I lot of people struggles with watercolor, including myself. However this tutorial may help you a lot to learn about water coloring, even a kid can paint a master piece!
Pencil watercolors are unlike the palette and tube one, they’re easy to use and you have more control.
If you have any questions, please ask in the comment section below 🙂

To be honest I did not put any remarkable effort in this one, the character is so bad and the video quality is just awful, the whole thing was poorly made and rushed; because I was late from the schedule 😦 Even myself I don’t like it anymore, and I feel this won’t help me or help anybody. I will do it again after long period of time with better qualities.

Tool:
Watercolor pencils
Watercolor paper.
Tape
Water
Brushes

Music:
Capo production Above Everything.

Next one is actually not intended, but I did it anyway. It’s a sketches of the latest article I wrote “How to spend summer vacation”.

I thought people might be interested to see how things are drawn including my articles sketches, I will try my best to continue doing these type of videos if the next articles have sketches. Nothing much to say.

I only used Manga Studio 5, no reference used.

Music:
Emancipator – Vines

The last one I uploaded yesterday is Oz from Pandora hearts ❤

I brought Pandora hearts Artbook in Dubai just before I go to Brinannia! and when I saw Oz with this cool outfit, I just had to draw him!!
To me this was a big challenge, I don’t have a big varity of copics and pro markers, which made the shading a lot harder and I had to use my trusty pencil colors to shade. I really wish to have a bigger set of markers, especially copics, but I still cannot afford it just yet. I may go to store to buy more promarkers, even though I don’t like it too much in the beginning; because it doesn’t have the brush tip like copics, but they really did a great job with Oz! Now I’m starting to like it ❤

The Artbook was expensive, no joke! but for me it worth it!! I will do a review about it so stay tuned<3

Tools:
Copic markers Basic set.
Pro markers 2 sets.
Soft pastel.
Faber Castell pencil colors 36 set.
Napkin
Cotton swap
Eraser
Ruler

Music:
Pandora hearts- A shadow.
by Yuki Kajiura (Composer).

You can see the full pic here:
http://nna12.deviantart.com/art/Pandora-Heart-Oz-550856889
As you know this is not my character, fanArt. I used this pic from the art book as a reference:
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/pandorahearts/images/f/f8/Chap28.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121112125119

I don’t own Pandora hearts or the music clearly 🙂

Have a nice day ❤

~Mikan

I Graduated From High School!!!

Hello world!! How are you all? I seriously seriously missed you so much<3 ❤ ❤

During the final exams until now, there’s many things happened and made my head feel dizzy as If it’s going to explode! When I had my final exam I was thinking ”Tomorrow is the final exam in high school, then I will be free, an eternal vacation. I can play as many as I want, I can stay late at night, I can draw more, I can finally watch anime for hours. There’s so many things I can do. So go for it girl!” But I was naive. I know there’s university preparations, but I never thought it will be so soon. Since I know what I want to study and where, I thought it will make the process easy as breathing, but again it turned wrong. I kinda forget the ABC plan and its aspects-I will talk about it later- so the third day after the finals, I went to fill the external scholarship form, I found that the requirements are a lot and so complex, so I have to get all the required documents ready -which are 14 document + the Institute documents +  some documents need translations.  then I have a meeting to attend to sum up everything.

I already decided from long time that I want to study in the institute for 2 years in April 2016, but since I don’t want to stay free that long and I don’t guarantee what will happen until April, I figured it out you know, I should be moving toward my dream soon. I will be studying in October this year for a year and half. This decision actually just made few hours before this post published.

Before talking about the majors in-depth, I want to talk about the ABC plans. I divided the ABC plans into section-It will be useful for me to too :P-

ABC plans for Majors:

Plan A : Graphic design and Digital Design.

Plan B: Interior Design

Plan C: Architecture

Plan D: It

So as many people do, I do have backup majors. My first choice is graphic design, but when I looked up on the majors in the form, there is only Graphic Design and Digital Design, so I took it as the first choice. second is Interior design, I always loved building decorating houses from playing The Sims – I’m awful at it in real life- but better then engineering. The third one is Architecture not Architecture engineering, it’s related to design so why not? The forth one is sadly is IT ( please god don’t let me take IT T-T) I hate IT so much!

The ABC Plans for Universities:

In Japan:

Plan A: Tokai University

Plan B: Tokyo University of Technology

Plan C: Takushaku University

In My country:

Plan D: King azz

If anything happened to my scholarship, I’ve already filled the form of the uni here just in case, If my scholarship is certain I could withdraw easily. The plans for the Japaneses universities may change. ex: It’s a possibility that Tokai will be plan C an Tokyo Uni of Technology will be plan A, and so on.

Anyways, that’s my week, full of work. I’m going to Britannia on 6th July for nearly two weeks, so on Thursday we will be going to get our Visas, and get some docs translated 🙂 I guess this month is all about completing papers and documents, If I were lucky, maybe I will finish everything before going to Britannia, then I can go to the meeting in August. (Pry for me!) and as always I’ll post some pictures for you guys 😀 and guess what? I will vlogging too 🙂 I don’t think I’ll post it here; because it’s private 🙂 but I’ll put pictures. Lately I’ve been hocked with my Wacom tablet ❤ Oh btw the drawing above is by me. I tried to draw myself graduating 🙂 and I’m doing another digital one, and I will upload it tomorrow!! Probably I will be drawing digitally for quite a bit I’d say 😀

What else? Oh anime and games!

I also hocked on anime after finals, now I’m watching Owari no Seraph, Plastic Memories, Naruto (of course), Ore Monogatari, and Fairy Tail. I still want watch the previous one if I got time or break from what I’m watching now. For games, I’ve hocked to a game called Life is Strange, if you don’t know what it is, you’re seriously missing out. You should check it out, and I promise it won’t be disappointing.

So tired. I will end this post here, hopefully I can talk to later

Good day

-Mikan

3 Years in WordPress + Drawing Videos And More!

Hello viewers!

I bet you didn’t know, so I’m just gonna tell you! Yep finally I’ve completed 3 years in Yume no Michi!!! That’s so cool! and I’m finally active on YouTube. I know some of you don’t know that I do have a a YouTube account, I don’t blame you because I don’t use it. But know I decided it to use it for real! I draw a rough sketch every Thursday and I film on Saturday and upload on Tuesday. so far, I only uploaded 2 videos. And it’s been a while since I ever talked about any of my drawings. so I’ll just do that now.

First one is Drawing Elle:

Go ahead and watch the video. The girl I’m drawing in this video names Elle le Marta, she’s a main character in Tale of Xillia 2. I didn’t like her at first, but I did found her really cute<3 I already drew Elize – the girl on left – and unfortunately I don’t have footage of me drawing her.As you may notice the coloring is a bit different from the original artwork of the game, I guess That’s because my coloring set is different. She look way to bright! But I don’t mind, she still look cute. Sadly I didn’t notice the cut off, so I apologize for that =_=

I wish there’s Tale of Xillia 3 so bad, they can’t just end like this, I want more moments of Jude and Milla and everyone T-T

Tools:
1- Regular eraser.
2- Campap Sketchbook.
3 -Faber castle 36 colors set.
4- Soft pastal.
5- Pigma Micron inking pens: 1,2 and 3.

Music:

Tale of Xillia disc 3- track 1

You can see the full pic here: http://nna12.deviantart.com/art/Elize-and-Elle-507886827

The next video is Monokuma!

I did played the first game of Danganronpa, and it was intense! and my bro told me the second game is more insane!! I have the game but I didn’t get the chance to play it >< pray to me to have more free time >\\\< But who hate Monokuma? He’s a criminal I know, he’s so cuuuuute! I want a doll of him so bad! Isn’t he the cutest?! Monomi is cute too, but way too girly ^^” I don’t know, I didn’t play the second game. I do love Kyoko and Naegi and Togami and everyone, and I will draw them in future too, But I’m a bit disappointed they aren’t in the second game 😦 but Togami is there! …and fat. I still can’t believe…Seriously?

Yeah I angled the camera to point exactly downward, which some clips captured my hair, hope isn’t a bother 🙂 Oh and I did switch the ink pen from point 3 to 4 because I ran out of point 3.

Tools:
1- Campap Sketchbook.
2- Pencil.
3- Eraser.
4- Pigma Micron ink pens point 2,4.
5- Copic Markers basic set.
6- Pro Markers.

You can see the full pic here:
http://nna12.deviantart.com/art/Monokuma-509476207

Music:
1- DANGANRONPA OST- Disc 1- Dangan ronpa!
2- DANGANRONPA OST- Disc 2- Monokuma’s lesson.

Yeah I did update the blog and my gallery! I haven’t update the rest yet. Soon I’ll write a review on the book I mentioned in the past post, put your dream to a test by John C. Maxwell. I linked his book in my links page if you wanna check it out here. It will open in a new window.

About The novel Sleeping Memories I finished, but I don’t know if I’ll publish it, I’m not sure. The only left is the cover and the illustrations, when I’m done with that, I ‘ll think what I’ll do with it.

I wanted to talk about umm my future plans, BUT I decided not, I want to finish high school first; because changes my happen.

By the way do you have any idea for articles? if you do, please comment below.

Thank you for listening to me today.

Have a great afternoon with cup of tea ❤

– Mikan

AlterEgo Productions Competition

Good afternoon!

Sorry I didn’t post for a while, I missed you so much ❤

I thought it’s selfish to keep this to myself, so I though it will be a good thing to tell you that 🙂

I supposed that I finish my light novel in December, but I failed. I’m so so sorry to disappoint you, I didn’t mean for this. Today I want to Inform you that I’m going to submit my work to AlterEgo Productions Competition, you can see the details in the link below:

http://instagram.com/p/jOQTWHNqX5/

I think is really good chance to see how they will react to my story, even if I didn’t get the reward, I will keep creating stories and try to publish them or submit them in competition like this 🙂

If the results of the competition’s out, I will think about publishing it, so don’t worry about it 🙂

I hope to keep believing in me more.

Thank you for reading my post.

-Mikan-

 

How to draw background (part one)

Good afternoon!

It’s 6:25pm, I just uploaded my awaite YT video how to draw backgraound:

I felt it will be better to have another part of this video While I’m editing the video. The video is soo long and I put all the information and explanation you need to understand well and able to draw. I’m not perfect in background, beside this is my second time drawing a background. Let’s learn together!

Sorry there’s a word mistake in the video, I tried to corrected but it tells me error everytime! So the first word if I remember is “hanged” I didn’t mean hanged, I meant hang it. And “size fits”, only “size” .I do not know why I put fits in the first place =_=

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Atsuhisa Okura- How to Draw Backgrounds:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kdihB…
The book my big bro bought from Amazon.com

Drawing backgrounds isn’t hard once you have the basic lines right, the picture I drew have two point, however, the lines doesn’t follow the picture, that makes me confused If anyone know please tell me.

Tomorrow I will wake up early this time!4:00am ! I need to wake up 4 o’clock tomorrow so I will have enough time to write my novel. Today I wake up 7:45am T_T and start filming 10:00 and finished 11:30. Then I charged the camera and start editing the video after lunch at 2:15pm. Then I finished 4:00pm. The uploading took 1 hour. and it’s 6:40 now. I’m so tired -_-

Today was really full! Oh and I found a reaaaally beautiful topic! I will write it and see when I can publish it tomorrow. I don’t feel to move now -_-

I will just eat my dinner and watch Sket Dance, before bedtime I read manga or anything, and TRY to wake up early! Help me god!

Well I’m off to have some rest…

Goodnight to the country if is already night.

Much love,

~Mikan~

Near to end!!!

Good afternoon reader.

I have really good news! I’m near to finish my light novel! Probably will end in chapter 20 or 23. There’s still many things unknown, it will continue in Vol.2

So my light novel will be in two volumes, I don’t know if I can make it three or four volumes; because I’m afraid to be late in publish because of my school, so two volumes is the best option for now. I’m writing now chapter 19.

After I finish, I will check the spelling, grammars, writing style, story process, rewrite and finally search a publisher.

I’ll do my best in this novel, please look forward for this novel.

I totally forgot to say something very important! I will stop doing cell phone novel, because I’m near to finish the light novel, so the cell phone novel is unneeded.

~Mikan~

I have an instagram

Good morning!

I mad an instagram account before my exams, but I haven’t used yet. Today I added my drawings in this website. I hope you visit.

I have a problem while submit in DA, the categories section cannot appear, so I can’t submit anything without selecting the categories. I don’t know why. So I submit here first till I find a solution.

I will take a little about the drawings:

I was touched by the art of Arisa manga! I love the both twins! I draw this by during the school.

As you all know! I’ve been playing virtue’s last reward game. This character from the game, she called Phi. I love her soo much, she so mysterious! I draw her in her animated version and add little of my style; to be close to her real animated version.

Yeah, she looks way better than in the OVA ^^

Quark from virtue’s last reward too. He’s the only child in the game, however he’s really clever! I did the same with Phi.

My instagram link: http://instagram.com/sakuramikan

~Mikan~

Win

Yes I’ve won!

My results came out really really good! I’m so happy. Sorry I didn’t write soon because I was so happy to be free like this ^^” sorry. I missed so much.

I bought new camera yesterday! I can film anytime! However, I didn’t draw too much during the school, so my hand getting harder, I mean it’s not very flexible. I need to draw more to get my skills back ^__^ Then I will start making videos again.

The novel process going pretty well since the vacation started. Now I’m writing chapter eighteen, I only write 2 pages and half, and I will continue today.

Yeah about the articles, I need to start writing it T_T and make a video about too.

If you have anything, share it with me, okay?

I’ve been craaazy about playing (virtue’s last reward) game on PSP VITA. it’s survive game, the story and puzzles are coool. I got many idea from this game for my novel.  I will continue writing the cell novel again too.

I will be active again in DA and start drawing everyday, please look foreword for it. Thank you!

 

Have a nice day!

~Mikan~