I'm working on drawing, but why is it I can't work without reference photos?  Show me anything and I can draw it... and many people tell me my drawings look like b/w photographs at first because they're so realistic.  I can't draw unless I have something to base my art off of though.  My brain refuses to draw from memory and anytime I try to draw something without a reference I feel like I'm going through withdrawal.  I feel slightly confused, like things aren't making sense.  I start to get depressed because my art isn't progressing in the direction I want and I quiver slightly from feeling stressed so suddenly. 

Gah!!  I think I just need to draw more, and as I get more familiar with my subjects I won't need references as often.

Hello!  I'm finally back to posting...  I was busy suffering under the constant complaints and guilt-trips of my family in Virginia and North Carolina until yesterday and I must say I am so glad to be back.  I love my bed and no guest bed will ever compare to it.  The lack of internet was also a big pain in the butt. 

There's so much snow here in Spokane!  The bus I got on to ride home from the airport had to take a detour because of an accident... then we had to take another detour because the turns we needed to take to get back on route were too small for the big bus to corner without hitting the snow bank.  The snow is melting slowly, but that just means we have huge snow banks, no sidewalks, and deep puddles anywhere it's only mildly dangerous to walk.

I'm starting to draw again and I've made a new account for hosting my drawings:  http://www.furaffinity.net/user/ravenskunk/
In case you want my photography account here it is:  http://angel-skunk.deviantart.com/
With the exception of today, it's been awhile since I've posted anything there.  I have pictures, I just have to edit them to size and crop and all that spiffy jazz.

The new house is a little cold...  We're heating it with body warmth and computers in the basement, but it's a big basement so I have to wear a hat, two pairs of pants, socks and slippers, and a shirt (the shirt is rare when warmth permits).  It's a decent house, but we're hurting for money and I still haven't been able to get a transfer to my new job.  There are very few openings but I need more then part-time work.

I may have forgotten to mention my move from Bellingham to Spokane...  Well, I've moved!  I still have things that need unpacked and it was so boring living without the internet.  Our ISP could not come to our house because we got so much snow they had to cancel three days worth of appointments for the area.  The nice thing though, we're just a few minutes walk from the grocery store, fast food, and the bank.  Running outside in the cold is painful.  The air is so cold it hurts your lungs, and if you take a deep breath, you just might get brainfreeze.  There are a few pickup trucks running around with snow plows attached to the front grill, and one person a couple days ago was driving a snowmobile in the streets (lots of snow that day).

I'm drawing a few pieces of art for family members for Christmas and birthdays.  It tends to be a fairly cheap present (just takes time to do) that they appreciate.  I am a bit behind schedule though, but I may just be able to finish the art by the time I arrive in Virginia Christmas night.  My parents are flying me home for Christmas and all my sisters are going to be there as well.    I arrive back here in Spokane January 6th.

I don't technically have a job at the moment, I'm on leave of absence because I couldn't get a transfur earlier in December.  One of the stores has an opening now, but I won't be available untill a couple weeks later so I mostly have to hope they still need me by then.  My prime choice isn't hiring at all, in fact, they're in the process of laying off about 40 people.

Well, I suppose I should report on all the new stuff in my life.

*goes back to read what he last uploaded*

I got my name changed back in July!  There's a hell of a lot of paperwork to go through and I'm still telling companies and bill-sending people that my name isn't the same anymore.  My new name is Kaelin Latchna.  Kaelin has it's origins in both english and gaelin, oddly enough, but Latchna is only gaelic.

I love stuffed animals...  I have so many I lost count, though I know the number is over 100.  They're scattered around the house so it's hard to count them all.

I think I'm finally over my video game addiction... not cause I've conquered it, but mainly just cause there's no really awesome games out to play that I haven't already.   I'm a PC gamer all the way, so I miss out on all the PS3 and XBox and Wii games, but I do love my computer oh so much.  On the bright side, I've been doing more writing as of late, and a little bit of drawing (I really need to do a lot more drawing).  A few months back I ordered everything I needed to make a new computer.  I bought everything piecemeal so I ended up putting everything together myself.  It was quite a bit of work, but it only took me two days to figure out all the wiring, put the cpu on the motherboard, apply thermal paste, add a heatsink/fan, install everything in the case, and all that fun stuff.  It's a little expensive, and I ended up paying about $1,200 for all the parts.  I bought a pretty much new everything (except monitor and speakers, cause those were already awesome).  It's so nice to put your own computer together, makes it feel that much more personal.  I also have a huge pen tablet, but I've been using it more for storing things on then drawing. *shamed*

I still work night-shifts at Wal-Mart, but I'm pretty well-adjusted to the schedule, and I have some night-time friends now too.  I'm gonna be moving mid-december over to Spokane on the other side of Washington.  Looking forward to a better house, but not all the work and cost of getting over there. 

Just this week my bank account is down to negitive $300 due to a bunch of crappy overdraft fees.  I usually have a lot of extra money in my savings, but I bought a new vehicle recently and that stripped me down to the change in my pockets.  I'll be fine next paycheck, but that's still a week and a half away, and I have practicly nothing to pay for lunches at work.. *cries*

I hit the paste command before anything was copied or cut... I am gravely disappointed that the information lodged in my cranium has not materalized onto the internet with but a mere button, therefore I shall have to do this the long way, vigorously pressing a multitude of buttons hundreds of times over to convey a simple thought to you, the reader.

My dreams no longer have a line at what won't happen in them... I've had dreams in ultra-vivid color, like some midget taking enough drugs to get an elephant high, I've had low contrast dreams in mostly greys with little color. I've had normal dreams like you go through seeing normal life, and sometimes like you would see in the movie theatres. I've seen my dreams completed in pure detailed anime style, and once even chibi.Also, the genre and subject matter as well as perspective of my dreams changes as the swarming bees move. Suddenly, without warning and yet, looking so natural as that I should not question it my dreams may be from top-down view, like when playing one of the old mario games on the map, or like zelda! I was playing a video game in my dream... I moved my imaginary mouse over an axe I just found, and a tan cardboard box popped up out of it telling me how deadly it was, and how fast I could swing it and what the axe was worth. I've dreamed in third-person of being in a shoot-out in an abandoned airport (that really scared me and got my heart pumping). I could see over the table I had my back against simply because of a well placed perspective angle. Sometimes the perspective is like that of a movie. From no one's perspective per say, but rather just around where the drama/action/dialoque is.

It was a varation of the Matrix... but instead of being woken up in a world of machines, you were brought back to a world in medieval times where the technology was very primitive. Instead of machines, it was demons, ghosts, and what-have-you. This was a world ruled by Cthulhu, and very few humans remained alive... Don't ask me how without tech they were still living in that fake world... the dream didn't explain that to me. Whenever you saw a ghost or a monster in real life, it was because they were there, they came from the real world and were searching for something, or someone... For some odd reason the main star of the dream was (you guessed it) Keannu Reeves... he was in my dream catching demons, and so was my best friend, Jed!  We were in a castle of stone, with rusted metal ceiling beams that drove upward from the walls to all form a wicked point together.  After catching one very powerful demon and imprisoning it behind magical bars that couldn't be broken, he went to his tinkering workshop and made as device which Keannu only explained as,"a device for storing things in their naked form for later use!" Why naked? I have no clue... it was a dream :P
Jed: "It's a refrigerator?"
Keannu: "It's a cold statis device, with which we can freeze the demons!"
Jed: "It only has room for a few sandwhiches, a side of turkey, and some water..."
Keannu in an annoyed tone: "I'm still working on it."

My dream ended with the cthulhuoid manipulating one of the guards to give him a blueberry muffin and let him out of the prison... because we all know blueberry muffins hold the key to unlimited power!!!

I was in my backyard standing next to my own personal playground... a layer of chicken wire covered the entire thing though, with no way to reach my fun.  I suddenly hear a howl.  There are fat snakes all around. Their body must be five feet around, but most are only 15 to 20 feet long, rather stubby for a snake. They are colored as if in a finger painting contest. lots of bright colors dotting the scales all around... an epeleptic would pass out but to see that sea of changing colors. A lot of them are hungry though, and they sense you. You desperately run forward and find yourself in dense jungle. With a final step you hear a wet splash as your foot lands in the water. All along the bottom you can see the corpses of those snakes you though were after you.... the river is lined with them as far as you can see, nearby you hear a snake howling and decide it would be far safer to keep running (my dream self is an idiot by the way, snakes are very good at sensing movement, and they don't howl, but you'd probably be screwed staying still too).

One time the planet Earth (pronounced Eeeyarth!) was being invaded by octopus aliens...  They first appeared friendly and we welcomed them. The normal green, yellow, red stoplights were all replaced with blue and red, which somehow put a limiter on how fast our machines could travel. I remember driving a motorcycle through empty streets along cliff sides, and I arrived near one of their spaceships (a 100 foot tall dark green rocket ship; it looks quite like two cones put together with a bunch of sphirical pods on it). They were disgusing their plans for invasion while I hid in one of the bushes.

In another... the background was normal... the setting was high up in a hidden mountain town in the north hemisphere of the globe somewhere. There was dry snow all around blurring the vision, and you could see small buildings around made of wood. The people though. They were there as if drawn by a pen. Anywhere there was an edge of something there was a black line tracing along that path. Anything inside the black lines was a non-variable unchanging (don't those two words mean the same thing?) pure white. My dream was about anthropamorphic creatures.... lions, canines, seals, reptiles, all standing upright and wearing clothes like human beings, and I was one of them.
One of the odd things is that you didn't see them right away, you would look, and they would slowly start to appear, as if being drawn by hand right before your eyes. Probably my sub-consious telling me good drawings don't happen instantly...

The ability to control clouds and turn them into coffee was another dream I had.  I lived in a city like Venice, except it was out floating on the ocean.. My special technique is conjuring up a fluffy tasting Triple-Berry-Rocky-Highway-Duel-Fudge Expresso with extra cream and milk that puts the mind of whoever drinks it into a coma. I would summon broiling coffee to char all the armored knights who oppose me. I would summon a cloud mount to ride out of danger's way and flood the ground below me with coffee black as the soul of the devil. Oh what sweet victory would be mine after I conquer the world with coffee! The aroma would saturate into every pore of the globe and none shall be safe... (PS: I don't like coffee, so this dream is really weird for me.)

I've bought a guitar!  It's an electric guitar... and it's hello kitty themed!   I've wanted to play guitar for a long time, and when I saw this one I just couldn't resist myself.

I'm slowly learning, and I can tell it'll take a long time, but I'm willing to practice everyday (plus I have headphones for the amp so I can play without waking everyone else upstairs.

After handling the real thing and then seeing one of those guitar hero controllers... it looks more like Ukulele Hero to me... but that doesn't even begin to underline to difficulties of playing the real thing.  I was going to say it's hard to put into words what it feels like to play a real guitar, but that's just me being lazy... not a lack of diction.

After 15 seconds of trying to fret the smaller strings my fingers felt like they were on the verge of being sliced in half... (the high E string is nasty, and I have softish skin) You have to pretty much handle the strings every day to start building up callouses on the tips of your fingers.  You also can't just touch the string, you have to hold it down against the metal frets for it to actually play, otherwise your finger just mutes the string.  The amount of manual dexterity required is amazing.  Even looking at the strings and my hands, I can't always move my pinky exactly the way I want, it's a lot harder then it sounds to hit a chord requiring all four fingers because you have to be accurate to within 1/7 of an inch (otherwise your finger rubs against the other strings, muting them) and apply the correct pressure with all of them and then strum just the strings you need.

The dream I had when I was younger and I wanted to be a guitarist started with me standing up on a stage, a guitar in my hands with yarn for the strings...  I just slapped the yarn and it made sweet music.  Yeah... ^_^

I made a point of not believing it was as easy as it was in the dream... All I know is that with practice, I'll improve, and one day I will be a proficient guitar player.

I have a new job so I can finally start earning money again.  It's a job at Wal-Mart, but it's still a job and on short notice it's better then some of the others out there.  I've worked at harder jobs for less money so I can't complain too much. 

The catch though, is that I'm working overnight shift, so I'm working from 11pm to 7:30am.  Getting home about 8am I grab a quick dinner before sleep, which happens to last all morning and a good deal of the afternoon.  This of course means that since my roomies wake up around 9am I get to see a lot less of them.  I get to talk and watch TV with them after I wake up, but I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of the day that we normally would have spent together.

Ugh... When I have too much time to think my head starts to hurt... I guess I haven't fully adjusted yet.

As for the name change... My future name will be Kalen Slaine, but at the moment there are things slightly more important to buy with my money.  Things such as food...  and a refrigerator... and food to replace the stuff that spoiled in the old refrigerator... and a car...  *sigh*  My old car was totaled in an accident so I'm borrowing my friend's car in the meantime.  It works out fairly well since I drive it at night and they drive during the day.

Edit:  I forgot what I was going to add... damnit! :(
I think it had something to do with either furries, plushies, or writing.

I've been thinking about getting a name change...  Not just as a "oh, that might be cool to name myself after this or that."  I've disliked my real name for the past ten years.  I hate being named after someone or something and people always shorten it to be twice as annoying as the full name. 

It's only now that I'm starting to have my own money and I can take my case to the law and change it.  One of my older sisters actually had her name changed, so it's not something that's new to my family.  Some people just aren't well-suited to their names, and they don't feel in-tune with the moniker they were given.

I'll likely be renaming myself Kalendae, or Kalen for short, but I'm going to wait a few months.  This way I'll have a feel for the name, before I change it, so I know I'll like it farther down the line.  I've actually used it as an online alias for many years now, but it feels slightly different hearing it spoken from the mouth of a friend.  I feel it's a name that I will only grow fonder of as time passes.

I wrote down a list telling me what all I needed to do in the next few days, and I can only remember half of what I wrote before I lost the list.
I'm useless without reminders telling me what I need to do.   I paid off property taxes, took care of the animals, and just lounged around the house as all my roommates went out (I didn't really feel like spending the entire day out elsewhere).  A few animals to keep me company while I have a day to exercise, watch movies, and make food out of the abominatible collection of supposedly edible substances around the kitchen.

All in all, I could have been more productive, but today was an excellent day that went quite smoothly, unlike some of the previous few.  I had to setup a paypal account yesterday, which, I already had.  The only problem was that it was about five years old.  I'd also gotten two new drivers licenses (one for turning 21, and then another for moving) and switched banks twice since I last looked at the website.  The security questions I had were impossible for anyone in my family to guess the correct answer to, including myself.  I called paypal up (the call took 14 minutes to get in touch with a single human), and they couldn't do anything since I couldn't verify it was truly my account, so I had to make a brand new email address to setup a new paypal account.  I'm not mad, it's just frustrating. 

I've still not decided which costume I want to work on.  They're all quite so alluring. 

Cubone has always been a favorite pokemon of mine.
Hooves just seem like they would be so cool to make.
My fursona, and the animal I feel most closely related to is a raccoon, so I feel like I'd be betraying myself not to make it.  I have modified his coloring a bit to be more interesting.

On the other hand, the raccoon also seems like it would take the most money.  My designs for him are a tad complex, especially the tail.  He also uses three different fur colors at the minimum.  I'd upload a picture, but my scanner is utterly rubbish.  I need to buy ink for it because when the printer portion is out of ink, it can't use the scanner portion cause it only cares about the absence of ink.  The planning that went into technology boggles the mind sometimes.

Ugh... there is so much work to do around here.  I barely have time to do half the things I want to in an individual day, let alone all the things I need to.  I still need to make a userpic for LJ.

I really want to start working on a fursuit, but the only problem is I don't know what I want to make first!  I can't make everything right now, and I wouldn't have enough to do so.  Money is a bit tight around the house I'm at.

Any animal with hooves (I love goats, horses, deer, moose, oryx, klipspringers, etc.)
Raccoon
Lizard (How the hell am I going to do scales?)
Charizard (I want two versions of this one, a chibi plushie fursuit version, and a slim anthro version which would be partials with regular clothes on).
Cubone


Bleh... I've been staying up until 2-4 in the morning the past five days so I could get things done, and I wake up at 7:00am to get ready for work so I'm really starting to get tired.  8pm hit me today like a brick in the face... I'm gonna go get some decent sleep tonight.

Well, this is the first post in my new LJ account.  I used to have a journal, but I didn't post in it for a year, and a lot of things changed since then.  I felt it was better to start over as a lot of things I said then are no longer true, and I wasn't really watched by anyone.

Anyways...  I'm making this account so I can write at least a little more often to help myself get in the mood of typing random ideas and memories for keeping later.  It'll also help in talking to other communities (mostly furry).  I'm a furry myself, and my avatar is a raccoon (I'm working on a few drawings now, so you may get to see some piccies soon).  I love being barefoot, but I have poor blood circulation in them so it's only in warmer conditions that I can keep them warm without help.

Washington is the current state I occupy, and I don't plan on moving out of it anytime soon.  It's beautiful here and that anyways helps when you're an aspiring photographer.