Half of my heart belongs to a wizard

Do the words butterbeer, Honeydukes, Fluffy, or snitch ring a bell? If not then I feel sorry for ya son because those words have filled up over half of my life. In first grade I was sitting on the ground in the assembly hall listening to our principal talk about a fundraiser. At the end of the presentation he held up a book I had never seen before and said that the student who raised the most money would receive that book as a prize...and you know what, people got excited. So I went home and looked up that book and we bought it and I started reading it and from that moment I have been a different person! Harry Potter took over my life and engulfed me in a magical world of spells, mythical creatures, and good vs. evil. Thank you Harry for making my days happier!

So, while on Pinterest I realized I had a lot of Harry Potter fan art, and being the fan that I am I want to share it with you! It also makes me want to pull out The Deathly Hallows, but unfortunately I left it at home for this semester:( Bad Jenika! So enjoy some of my favorite HP art and be amazed at the talent these fans have!

Character designs! My personal favorites:

The trio! So perfect! (the hipster one makes me happy:)

And everybody loves some Hermione/Ron lovin and some Harry/Ginny cuteness

I hope you love fan art as much as I do! I know I can be a total nerd, but at least I am a happy nerd:) Oh, one last thing before I go! My friend walked into Krispy Kremes and lo and behold she found Vernon Dursley in the flesh-well not in the flesh, but this man could be his clone-and because I love you so much here is the picture she snapped! Enjoy!

Perfection isn't it! klovesbye...go read some Harry Potter!

My Motivation Quilt

Ok so here's the deal. This semester is gonna kill me, especially my grades, and this makes me unhappy. I am not one to rejoice in a B+ when A is an option. Plus, my next scholarship depends entirely on how amazing I do this semester...so I'm in a stressful situation. Do I give up my sleep and sanity for hopefully half-decent grades, or do I let myself have some free time and watch my grades slowly go down the toilet? It's a difficult decision. I decided on giving up sleep and sanity. My motivation? This quilt:

If I manage to get a B or higher in Every. Single. Class. then I will reward myself with this quilt (and by that I mean that I will have my mom help me make it, because there is no way I could do that by myself and she could probably whip it out in an hour.) I think it's a pretty good deal. My theory: when school stinks reward yourself for going. This is just another version of that! 3.85 GPA here I come!

Art and stuff

So my life is a living heck right now and there's really nothing I can do about it. I am up until 3 or 4am every single night, and with classes starting at 8am I am starting to go crazy. So, that is why you haven't heard from me in a while...sorry. #Collegegirlproblems. Something good that is coming from this lack of sleep and social life is some pretty fun artwork though. Behold my latest projects:

My first oil painting! Pretty good I must say. Although, this is a horrible picture because I hadn't even varnished it yet, or matted it. Oh well. I would love to try photo rendering again, but it might have to wait until this summer when I will actually have a life and maybe some free afternoons.

An oil liftout of my roommate Diana. Yes, she is Mexican and gorgeous and totally has the best profile ever even though she hates it! This painting is totally overworked, but you know that's okay because it was my first one and I kind of lost control of the upper right hand corner when I started pouring Gamsol on it hahaha. Pretty fun!

A texture study for my advanced watercolor class in preparation for this assignment I am about to show you. I tried to stick to the limited palette I would be using just so that I could get used to the colors.

 Took a little trip to the Wildlife Exhibit in the Benson building to get some photo references of baby foxes. I am a sucker for foxes, and doing a texture painting of them was just waaayyyyy too tempting.

Started off with the fallen branches.

I used multiple natural sponges and salt for the texture of the log and the base of the fur. 

Almost done! I decided to add some more branches just to add a little more shape and variation.

The finished product. I went in with Q-tips and cotton balls to soften things up, then used some more sponges and water droplets to get that blue smoke texture in the background. Overall I think it came out pretty good and looks really nice. The limited palette I used was Yellow Ochre, Indian Red, Cerulean Blue, and a hint of Burnt Sienna. It's amazing the amount of variation in color you can get with just four different pigments!
So yep, those would be my main accomplishments so far. Figure drawing is going well and computer arts is kicking my butt, no surprise there. Muse is on repeat every day of my life( Madness anyone??? Favorite song ever!) and cookies have become a staple. What more can I say, my life is boring. Until next time I guess. klovesbye