5 years ago today I joined DA.

because of that:
-- I have a record of most the art and writing I have done in the past 5 years.
--I have done much more art and poetry because I could share it.
--have have been inspired to do more by comments, contest, and other's work
--i have met many wonderful people who helped me grow in many ways.

thank you all for being my friends here on DA, those I have known for 5 years, and those who I am learning and sharing with now. It's been a great 5 years.

below is the lazy me version of the 2003-2009 see how much I have improved my art skills Meme thing.

2003-2004
I wasn’t on DA. I probably did some drawing but I didn’t save any of it.

Since I do a weird variety of different art media, I am showing progress here only on Drawing and Digital coloring.

2005




digital




2006




digital



2007




digital



2008





digital



2009



Digital

Edit Jan I 2010: this edit is just to warn you that I am answering old comments and deleting those I won't answer, so some of you may get a sudden flood of replies, feel free to not reply to any or all of them unless you really really want to. I have 391 still left to answer or delete.

Edit: later, jan 1 2010...I have now replied to or deleted all old replies (some from more than a year ago)...well...I saved a few long ones which were part of long discussions... but I still have 146 comments I haven't looked through and answered or delated yet. I think I'll waid and do those tomorrow


DA birthday:

In a few days, I will have been on DA for 5 years.

It’s been an interesting 5 years. I have learned and grown and changed a lot in that time. created many things I never would have created had I not been here, and learned to know and love many people I would never have met otherwise, and enjoyed lots of great art and writing.

Lots of good discussions and inspirations.

Many Thanks to all my DA friends for all we have shared these 5 years. Those who have been with me that long, those I have met more recently, and those who were here and now are gone, I love you all.

Next week I am hopping to have time to do a little birthday feature of some of the DA friends who have been most important to me.

2009:

It’s been a good and bad year for me. I started out this year making progress, making straight A’s and getting ready for graduate school. I had plans and hopes. Then all my plans fell through, and I drifted and struggled through the last part of the year trying to maintain hope with no plans and struggled to get the help I needed to go forward and come up with new plans.

I end this year and began the new year still struggling to figure out where I am going in life and what I am going to do.

My goals are up in the air, I am still in Graduate School but with very little commitment so very little chance of success. I am still writing Destiny of Dreams. It is one of the few areas of my life in which I still have goals, that’s might be all it is ever worth, but at least it keeps me going forward when everything else crumbles.

In my family, there have been some events this year. My son Neil became an Eagle Scout turned 18 and went off all of his medications rather suddenly. He’s been having a difficult transition to life without medication. Both of the teenage Girls in my family now have boyfriends. My 17 year old daughter Angie learned to drive… not much longer before I have only one child left at home. (not counting my husband as a child)… My sister Gloria left her husband just recently. My niece Nami is almost through her social work degree. My 22 yr old son David is back on DA, with his glass art ( )

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I want to do the year in review art meme thingy but don’t have photoshop on this comp. I’ll do it approximately with thumbs. Some months I did many different things, some very little of any value because I was busy with school.

January bubbles and Paragangians



February: portraits and animal flakes



March: HW short story abt a father and son


April Napo and the literary chatroom


May more poetry


June camping in Nebraska:



July church talk

I also made tiny mouse plushies at girls camp but never posted them.

August
sketches for commission pictures. agreed to make for me. it was so much fun having her make this for me. it was finished in November and looked like this in the final version:

HARRIS AND JASON commission drawing BY BLOODROSEANGEL not part of my art, but here to explain that sketch.

September spiderflake and poetry, (posted on SAN) [link] [link]
cell phone photos (posted here later)


October: redos and wesker:


November: Destiny of dreams world creation. and fog photos


December: Jonathan and Alexandreil and hawks


I was surprised to find that I did actually post something somewhere every month of this year. I haven’t been totally uncreative, in spite of all else going on in my life

It is snowing and my kids have a snowday from school and I have only one more final project due this semester, not due till next monday

I am taking an incomplete in one of my courses so I can spend more time on the paper, so I'll be working on it next semester.

Next semester I am taking a fiction writing class. That means I will have to write fiction but not sci-fi short stories. It will be good for me being forced to write something unrelated to Destiny of Dreams for awhile.

...and I will be finishing that Essay (which is about the owl service, mythology, and colonialism, and is entirely different than the one I wrote this summer even though it was also about all those things)

I think I am still getting a C in my culture studies class and I think I will get a B out of the one I am taking an incomplete in, so I feel like I have survived the semester, even though it is not entirely over yet...and won't be until I finish that essay next semester.

Between now and then I am going to get caught up on DA (answer the comments and do whatever other projects I have been putting off till I had more time)

and I am gonna work on Destiny of dreams

and I am gonna do some art, just for fun cause I haven't had time to do much this semester

and I am going to set goals for the rest of my life, and clean house

that's the plan.

For November Novel writing month I wrote backstory for my Destiny of Dreams Novel, about Jonathan and Alexandreil and I ended up also writing about Sen'tran and about Jonathan's biological mother. I only finished about 10,000 words of the required 50,000, and although I had written out an outline at the beginning of the events in their life together, I did not actually write the most important parts of that story, probably because the story of Jonathan's birth interested me more, even though I didn't really need it for anything in book one, and it is probably going to turn into another prequel, because it turned out to be more interesting and detailed than I intended.

So...I still need to write out the story of Jonathan and Alexandreil going to D'zeron and the events surrounding the birth of Tark and Tersh, so that I will have Tark's relationships with the dragons, Quetzal and Alexandreil established so I can know what Tark would say to Jason when they meet in the dream plane on Jason's first night in Jai-ten. Writing that part was the main goal of my Nano project, because I was trying to write a completely finished version of the first several chapters of book one but I can't get past that chapter without that backstory established. In that sense it was not a very successful Nano project even though it did produce some useful backstory.

However I also reorganized all my old Destiny of Dreams files which will be very helpful...now I can find all the things I have written in the past about any given character because they are in a file in order and clearly labeled so that will make my work easier in the future. So my next goal on that is to go through all previous files on Tark and Alexandreil and the dragons, and write that bit of the story.

I have come to the conclusion that I need to stop trying so much to write finished parts of story now, and get the whole world created and the basic plot outline settled upon for the whole series before I complete any given part. That way things which change in the past or future won't keep making me have to re-write things. so for the next year of so I plan to be working on the big picture rather than perfecting the writing style on any given chapter. but I will still be working on improving my writing skills, so I'm sure I will edit a chapter or two here and there just for fun, and for practice.

My goal is to have the whole world-creation and story line events for the entire series (which is currently about 15 books, grouped into 5 trilogies) and character definitions established in the next year(2010), and then write the whole first book in the next year after that (2011), and have it to the point where I am ready to try seeking to publish it by the time I turn 51 years old (March 17, 2012)

EDIT: as you can see, I have now managed to at least return to the plan DA default background, which is better than dysfunctioning background, I guess.

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I had this nice plane blue background a friend gave me but she has left DA, her account is inactive, and so an announcement that her account is inactive now appears on my journal background?

what's up with that?

and so I went to just take it off and go back to the default one, but I don't know how anymore...

it tells me I can't replace the skin because it is unsaved, I have to save it, so i save as directed and it gives me same message over and over and over

what's up with that?

I never liked journal skins, I dislike them much more than usual at the moment...grrrr...

anybody have a really simple plain journal skin they can tell me how to use?

I don't have time to mess with learning how to do this and finding a different one and all that. I'd rather spend that time writing comments or drawing or something.

DA can be so annoying sometimes.