New year

Every newyear I think "wow how fast this year went by" but looking back at how much has happened I realise it was quite a long year.
Things like I moved to my own appartment, quit my job and started school. I lost a bunch of weight, met a whole lot of awesome people and friends, I even got a damn cat! Very much has happened indeed.

For instance this happened this year:

Happy new year, I hope 2013 will bring much joy to each one of you. Live in the present and appreciate life, look forward to your future goals but remember the past and think about how it shaped you and the experiences it brought!

Much love /Adam

Merry christmas!

I hope you all had a great x-mas, I know I did. Been seeing old friends and spending time with my family (I normally live in another city).

Have not been drawing anything these past days but I thought I'd post an old favourite.
Almost everybody I've asked says this is their favourite portrait of mine. I've never thought that myself but I start to see the charm of it. It has a look that non of my other portraits have, it's more "blurry" looking I think, a result of the reference photo beeing very low resolution which also made this portrait very difficult. It's also the only portrait I've done with more than just the head and the neck, this one is more like a roman bust but that was fun and challenging.

From my favourite tv-series: Charles Dance as Tywin Lannister (Game of thrones)

Movie recap 2012.

So per tradition I will do a summary of the movies I thought stood out and were the most enjoyable from this year. I will also go through the movies I disliked the most and the best acting of the year.


Best comedy: Ted

Seth McFarlane's new screenplay comedy is one I really enjoyed. Truly a comedy for adults and who is not afraid of stepping on anybody's toes. About a boy and his living teddy bear who grow up together, one becoming more vulgar than the other.
If you've seen family guy you will recognize some elements and so on here but that's ok in my opinion. I laughed out loud a couple of times and some dialogs were really smart and thought through.

A different and interesting comedy, not everybody will like it but I sure did!
Score: 7 out of 10.


Another movie which falls under the category comedy but is really mainly a drama is the french film called The Intouchables.

An old rich guy who's paralyez from the neck down needs a new assistant. An unexpected man gets the job, a black man from the poorer parts of Paris. They have pretty much nothing in common but it turns out they have much to learn from each other and in the end they become lifelong friends.

Based on a true story and a heartwarming and funny such.

8 out of 10.


I've seen a lot of horror movies this year. Most are like usual crap but here are three I found interesting and watchable:

Sinister:

A bookwriter moves to a house with his wife and children to get inspiration for his new book. The house is the old crime scene of the horrible murders where a whole family got hung in a tree in the gardens. In the big attic the writer finds a bunch of old super-8 film-tapes whom he soon starts to go thorugh. They all contain the horrific images of a number of similar murders where whole families are killed. He soon sees the connection of them all but what he didnt anticipate was that he was soon to be part of it.

There were many times where you jumped in your seat and the suspense was great. The plot was easy to follow yet interesting and creative. Over all a very watchable horror movie and one of the best in it's genre this year.

My score is 7 out of 10.


VHS:

One of the self-perspective movies where we get to follow the characters in action filmed by them selves on their respective taping device. There is a red line in this movie but it's thin, a gang of burglars break into a house to steal some old VHS tape. They don't know which one is the right one and are forced to watch through a bunch of them, each apparently containing paranormal and disturbing events.

One of the scarier horror movies of this year and a pretty original one. Nice use of the first person-perspective and some unecspected mini plot twists.

Score also 7 out of 10.


The cabin in the woods

Starts out as a very boring "a bunch of teens go out in the woods to get slaughtered" film but after a while a twist of a magnitudes I've never witnessed takes place. Not a movie that I liked because of the thick plot or the vast SGI, brilliant acting or anything like that, I liked it rather because it was different. It was entertaining because I couldn't forsee almost anything and that's one of the rarest things nowadays in a movie.


Score 6.5 out of 10.



Best movie: The dark knight rises

The last in Christopher Nolan's batman series. I love dark and dystopic movies, the dark knight rises is very much a such. Batman is part of a small group of super heroes who actually don't have any super powers (the title "super hero" may hence be a bit misleading) anyhow Christopher Nolan creates a world for us that is of course very unrealistic but that we still can relate to. Bruce Wayne is a torn man and not unbeatable by any means, he has little to live for and has put away the cape. New threats in Gotham emerge and he has to put aside his own afflictions to save what he calls home.

What makes the Dark Knight rises so great in my eyes is it's ability to put emotion and a deep touch of reality to a genre that is otherwise too shallow and afraid of anything new. Great script and acting, superb screen setting and a mood that flows thorughout all the movie and sets the bar high above all who will try to follow in it's footsteps.

Best movie of 2012, score 9 out of 10. Has it's flaws too but hey, nothing is perfect.


Second best movie: Lawless.

Also based on a true story, about the moonshining industry and corruption in old America. Tom Hardy (who's slowly becoming my favourite actor) plays the oldest brother of three who runs the business. The youngest brother (Shia LeBouf) has a hard time trying to catch up. One day a sleek dude shows up to the ranch and demands a big percentage of every sale the brothers make. Forrest
(Tom Hardy) refuses to give in to the demands, setting a whole bunch of events snowballing into chaos.

The biggest surprise for me in movies this year. I thought it would be very mediocre but I really enjoyed it. Actually my second best/favourite film of all of 2012.

8,5 out of 10 is my score.


Worst movies:

Coriolanus

Based on an old shakespeare play. It is set in modern day but uses the linguistics of the 17th century.
Everything is just wrong here, it's like launching a caveman into space or making a duck head of security at a nuclear power plant. I would have been totally fine with them using the old play but only if they'd adjusted it to the time they desided to put it in, used psynonyms to old mossy words and made it flow better. Now it's like watching an eighty years old man skateboard, if you catch my drift.

Horrible movie for a very very narrow audience.

Score: 3 out of 10


Hunger games

Many love this movie and I never set out to see a something with the mindset that it's probably going to be bad. I wasn't the targeted audience for the hunger games but I know a good movie when I see one. It was over two hours long and the build up time for the main event was over half the movie. A build up that made no sense to me and didn't make me feel anything for the characters.
Once the tournament started after a too long wait and the action got going a bit it only felt like a bad, censored version of battle royale.

Score 4 out of 10.



Best acting: Matthew fox (Alex Cross)

I could really see how much effort Matthew Fox had put into his character, it was really amazing. He had lost very much weight and was really ripped. There is a scene where he is cage fighting and every muscle fiber and vein under his skin is visible. I've never seen him play an evil character so it was surprising how well he did it. He really looked sinister and aligned with his evil self.

The movie "Alex Cross" was a real crappy turd, very dissapointing considering how good Fox's acting was, It could easily have been one of this years best movies of its genre had it had a different director and a better screenplay.

The movie Alex Cross 4 out of 10, Fox's acting 9 out of 10.



This year's most overrated: The Avengers

It was ok but I didn't feel that it brought something to the screen we already haven't seen. It felt like a fruitsallad with all marvel characters, a fruitsallad left in the fridge for two-three weeks that had lost all it's charm. When I watch a movie I want to be in awe, supprised or for some other reason very amused, with the avengers I wasn't. For me it was just plain "ok".




Other movies worth mentioning are

Skyfall
Prometheus

Two movis I really liked but weren't good enough to be in the top three this year. (The third best movie beeing The Intouchables, after The dark knight rises and Lawless)

I did not see Bilbo yet but I expect it to be really nice, It would probably be in this list somewhere if I'd seen it, from what I've heard from other people. Ben Affleck's new movie "Fargo" is also supposed to be very good.



That's it people, hope you like this year's summary and feel free to put a comment down below with your own opinions, I'd like to hear them :)

Merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

Angel

So for the past years I've been drawing this war-angel (or something). I think it's fun to draw the same pictures I've done before to see the changes.

So this year's angel:

Took like one hour to draw and the pose is not very dramatic. Didn't draw any flying piece of clothing and so on like in the last pieces because I wanted to try something new, other than that not much to say.

Compared to last year and the year before. Haha I almost think I liked last year's picture better than this year's. Some proportions got better though, the stomach looks more realistic for example and the lines are a bit cleaner.

More wips

Work in progress (wip 1)

There's not enough art here nowadays! Yes, I agree to my own statement and respond by posting the outline of a new portrait I'm doing!

Motivation

"Be motivated" is the title of my blog and I thought I would speak a little about motivation today.
To find inspiration and motivation is hard. I myself just went through a long period of about two or three months where I wasn't motivated to work out at all. I forced myself to go like twice a week just to maintain some strenght but it was harsh. I felt "why do I work out? It's exhausting and pointless"

I think about becoming a personal trainer after graduation or something similar. I want to help people endorse the lifestyle they seek or perhaps need but don't have the motivation for. How do we make motivation sprout?

For me it was just a matter of getting back to old habits. As I started working out more often again I regained some old stamina and I started feeling more happy again. Last night before going to sleep I even thought to myself "man, I want it to be day now so I can go work out some shoulders".

"Unmotivated" cat

Anyhow, feeling motivated is nothing that comes by itself. I think setting your own goals is necessary, watch videos online like these:

For me when I started getting into training and fitness was as late as 19 years of age. I was assigned to the military and I knew if I wasn't in shape when I got there I´d be screwed. During that year I spent in the military training and exercise became part of my normal daily rutine, something that still follows me.

Make working out a part of your life, set small goals like "I want to be able to do 5 pull-ups" or "I want to be able to run 10 km without stopping" and then just go out there. Get rolemodels, watch people on youtube, read fitness bloggs. I watch countless diet shows on tv and after each one of those I just feel like going out in the tracks and running.

Find your way to motivation, you'll be glad you did!

Epic Battle!

Haha don't think I've shown this here. Long time since I posted a picture so why not this random thing.

Bulk

Haha ok so in desperation to gain back some manliness points since that last post with make up and all that I'll post some pictures of my current shape.

So far I've gained about two kilos since my diet ended. I've done this on purpose, I'm eating more carbs and my training schedule is not focused on high reps now but rather to do max-reps and try to gain strenght. During the spring/summer I'll go back to the more high rep schedule and focus a bit more on endurance. Right now though I'm trying to go all-in Schwarzenegger haha.


I take these pictures to compare results, this is the only way for me to see the difference.
My main goal with the training is not to look one way or the other etc and to post these pictures is very embarrasing for me. I've always been a quite shy person and to do embarrasing things is my way to deal with it and to become more outgoing.

Anyhow at my lightest I was 78 kg, now I'm at around 80. I feel a little bit stronger because of the extra carbs I'm eating and put on some exess fat, not to wurry though it's ok I will lose that during my next diet.

Taking a picture of your own back turns out to not be the easiest...

Compared to one year ago hahaha. Still can not get over this. I hope I can inspire atleast someone to go out in the tracks and run a little or whatever. Health is a resource! To be frank I felt like shit before I started working out, I didn't even realise it myself.


Now im heading out for a hardcore leg-workout :) Take care people!

Self humiliation

So my friend thought it would be fun to put make-up on me. I was very hesitant but agreed eventually for some reason. This was the not so sexy result:

So I thought why not go all out with my not so awesome photoshop skills and see what I would look like if I were female...

Well ok enough self-humiliation for today. Now I need to go do something manly like drink beer, arm-wrestle a grizzly bear or build a lumber shed with my bare hands...

Fight the power!

Today I thought I would take the time to list some of the best kind of fight scenes from movies. Just "regular" fighting so no battle scenes or war-scale stuff (and similar), but not just martial art fights but rather some cool and memerable violent fight/brawl scenes from different movies.


Oldboy

 My first one is probably the most artistically and well made fight scen I've ever seen. Shot in a single take and with a high level of realism compared to most other similar ones. From an asian and not very well known movie called "Oldboy"

Rocky IV.

Not the most beautiful and artistically well made fight but one of the most epic movie moments of all time. Rock - the american hero against the evil soviet fighter Drago. Ridiculous in many ways but I love it anyhow.

Sherlock Holmes
Guy Richie's Sherlock Holmes is not the one we are used to. Seeing Holmes in a cagefight feels kind of strange, like a teletubbie wrestling an alligator. What makes me like this though is how his intelligence is incorporated, even here in the most no-brain environment he can use his intellect and beat his opponent. And of course a very well made and "beautiful" slow-mo scene, enabled by modern day technology. What modern day movies lack in genuinity they make up for in visual effects, for bad and for good, in this example I think for good.

Troy

It's not often we see a spear duel so this fight is somewhat spectacular. I also like how thay incorporated the greek sophisticated techniques with the shield and all that. Not to mention the emotions infused to the moment, the good guy has become the bad guy and much is happening at once. A very important moment in the movie to express myself shortly.

The Matrix

How can we have a list like this without the matrix?
The scene I shose out of all the possible ones actually includes very little fighting, it's more a shootout. I can't explain why I like this scene more than that it's spectacular and over the top, just like it should be.

Way of the dragon
Chuck norris aka "mr hairy chest" vs bruce lee in the possibly most epic fight of all time, do I really need to say more?

Jackie Chan

Just in general Jackie Chan's fight scenes are awesome. I love how he always uses objects around him and there are almost always some portion of humor in his fights. The scene I shose shows this.

Star Wars

One of the best movie trilogies of all time also has some of the best fight scenes.

So those were all I could think of right now, I hope you found this list interesting and that you enjoyed it :)

Other movies with a lot of good fighting worth mentioning are:

Crouching tiger hidden dragon
Kill Bill
Fight Club
Underworld
Mortal Combat
Ong Bak
Gladiator
Safe House
The book of eli
Kung fu panda ;)
Blade
Etc etc...
 
Spartacus (tv-series)

All movies with:

Jet Li
Jason Statham
Jean Claude van Damme

Digital art...

...is a pain in the ass to make but now this is done at least :) Turned out ok, could have looked better but this is probably as good as it's going to get at this point.

Wips:

Final product:

Face

Done a lot of work on this today, not yet done but here is a close-up of how the face is progressing so far.

Work in progress

Drawing in photoshop again, a commissioned picture. Still not used to PS and all that, I'm more of a traditional arts guy but this goes along ok I think.

First wip

New camera :)

Well I finally got got an actual camera! So from now on there will be better pictures of my portraits here :D My old crappy 3G iphone camera is offically retired!
To celebrate is a new photo of my most recent portrait.

Rihanna:

New schedule

Hello people! I thought I would write a little about my own training since it was a long time since I did :)

I have not been training regulary for the past weeks for various reasons, time shortage and lack of motivation beeing a few. But!, there's no excuse for beeing lazy and I will now try to work out more.

It's winter time and in opposite to the pre-summer season where I lost a bunch of weight I will now try to put on some weight again. I will not try to gain back thos ten kilos of fat I lost during the diet of course but I will try to eat more to enable more muscle growth.

My approximate daily need of calories is currently around 3000 on days I work out or do something other physicaly active. I will try to eat around 3000-3300 kcal on those days and on resting days probably 2700-3000.

My goal is to go to the gym four times per week. Cardio is still important even if you're not trying to lose weight so I will try to incorporate one or two sessions of those each week. The reason cardio is still important is beacuse it helps strenghten lung capacity which enables better oxygen circulation in the blood, helping your muscles during intense workouts.

Impressions

I saw a picture today and thought I would share some thoughts about it.

The comments are basically about people calling the upper two people ugly and roid-abusers and freaks and all the comments on the girl at the bottom are "you go girl" and how great she looks etc etc.


What started out as a moviement agains unhealthy, malnurished and skinny models that are bad ideals for people has evolved into a "big people are pretty-movement" and now apparently beeing riped and in shape is an abomination.

My mentality is that I don't judge people on apperance and if someone is totally satisfied with their body then good on them and I couldn't be happier for them. Although beeing overweight has as many disadvantages to your health as beeing underwieght and I can't even list them all here, a few though are: risk of diabetes, less stamina and feeling down/tired, higher blood pressure and risk of hearth disease, shortness of breath, infertility, trouble sleeping and the list goes on and on.

A big/oversized mannequin in a shop window is just as a bad ideal or rolemodel for young people as a size-zero one. People are to fixated with appearance, you shouldn't strive to look good but to feel good and not exercising or eating a balanced diet atleast makes me feel like shit.

My point is, do whatever you want with your life and your body that makes you happy, just don't tell someone that works hard and lives a healthy lifestyle that there's something wrong with them. The benefits to your physical and mental health in an active lifestyle are unparalleled. I've been there myself so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Tutorial

Here is a tutorial on how to draw a portrait. Hope this helps.

Rihanna

Done! At last, though this one went quicker than expected, approximately 8-9 hours.
And I have to get a better camera...

Rihanna

The process

Mustasche?

Wip 4

Another day, did some more on the right eye and started on the nose.

I think it's getting quite easy to see who it is at this point :)

Slooowly

This is like 2-3 hours in. As I said, this is going to be a slow one :P
I draw on an A3 paper too, don't think I mentioned that.

Wip 2

So the eye is coming together pretty neatly I think. Man this drawing is going to finish all my pencils, the whole background is going to be pitch black and everything else for that matter :P exept the face itself...

Guess the face :)

First wip of a new portrait who's going to take a long time probably. Well good for me I'm not in a hurry :)

Finished piggy!

So it is finally finished after like 7-8 hours of estimated work time.

Here are all the wips I made. Could have done more since the painting is done in many layers and so on but ah well.

Finished product with background and all the rest.

This was made for a friend in the army who needed a new coat of arms for his platoon.

I can helpz?

Continuing  my drawing. Bruce (my cat) isn't helping as much as he thinks...

Wip 2

Piggy

Sorry for the inactivity lately, lack of inspiration... Here is a recent project though, trying to draw an angry boar in photoshop.

Hello

Hello again friends. So today I was inspired to write because I was browsing facebook and got annoyed by all the bad grammar. First world problem I know but come on, how can you make like five individual grammatical errors in an individual sentence? These are people like me over 20 who all attended public school and all that, spelling and building simple sentences should not be a major difficulty. Well I suppose I just revealed myself as a grammar-nazi :P I don't point it out to people when they spell wrong and so on because that's very douchy and rude in my oppinion, but it annoys me inside my head. Haha but feel free to mock any grammatical errors you find in this text now.


So I'm doing a request again, I'll be talking briefly about some movie scenes that don't make sense.
Scenes that will make you shake your head or clench your fists in frustration and cry.



Horror movies are at the top of the food chain when it comes to plot-errors or holes in the logic.
The "let's split up" logic/cliché has caused more deaths in horror-movies than probably anything else.

I cry inside my head every time this happens. Nothing ruins a horror movie more than an old cliché in my oppinion. How hard is it to fight a fat slow zombie if you are five against one?

"Jurassic park" (1993). I always wondered about something from this movie. The creator of the park claims to have "spared no expenses" multiple times. Yet he hires only one guy to handle all computer programming and such for the entire park, that person beeing his own sloppy, mildly retarded son, who later goes on betraying his father for no apparent reason and goes on a suiced mission through the park alone and dies... Creating a disaster. Just wtf...

At first I was like....

 But then I was like...

Last but not least, Frodo just take a damn eagle and fly to mordor ffs!