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So I'm blogging in the morning for once :) 

Here is some sweet wake-up music.

I think there are two types of people when it comes to music;
those who listen to the lyrics and want a meaning with each song.
Some people I know love sertain bands but can't listen to some of their songs just because they don't "agree" to the lyrics or whatever.
I'm the exact opposite, I couldn't care less about the lyrics.
For example one of my all time favourite bands - Rammstein sing in german of course.
I don't understand half of the lyrics I just love the music and the singing and the mood.

The same goes for anything I listen to, Kent (who is in the first video) sing in my native language but if you asked me what their songs are about I couldn't answer, because I just don't think about it.

I imagine the first category of people - the "lyrics listeners" are mostly into rap, hip-hop, raggae, pop, RnB etc. My category the "music listeners" are into rock, metall, techno etc.
This is of course a large rationalization and not true for everybody or maybe just half-true, but in general I think this is the kind of music the two "groups" lean towards.

Here is another awesome song that I heard a long time ago but just got reminded of.
Lay down - Pristess, you guitar hero fanboys out there might know this one :)

So what do you think? Do you also think there are two types of music listeners?


I'll see you around :)

Back at the gym

So I've been ill for a while as I said before. Today was the debut at the gym and it felt good to be back. What a terrible workout though, felt like I had applesause in my arms. The diet in combination of beeing sick and on medication took it's toll I believe. I'll be back on track though very soon :)

Tomorrow I'll start the power walks again and I plan on doing some long distance running too.
Not so much more to say I suppose, have been playing guitar hero for hours and beeing all around lazy.
Until next time guys!

Do you watch game of thrones? This was clearly the best quote from the last epsode.

Hello blogg

Was a while since I last wrote here, have been away over the weekend to Stockholm with some friends.
We watched the Dreamhack Eizo Open Starcraft II tournament which was very enjoyable, you have probably heard of starcraft if not it's a real time strategy computer game.
A swedish guy won and the crowd went wild, was a special feeling to be there, really enjoyed it.

Here is a short clip from that:

So a small update on my diet.
Have been a little sick the last weeks so couldn't work out or anything as I wanted.
As a result I'll probably have to extend my diet for 1-2 weeks.
I seem to have lost like four or five kilos already wich is really nice though.
I hope I can keep it up.

I don't have a new drawing going but I will probably pretty soon.
And of course it will be posted here.

Have a nice day everybody!

Jennifer Lawrence done :)

Wow I had forgotten how fast it is to make an A4 portrait! After "struggeling" with large A3 pieces and watercolour and stuff It was nice to be back on "home turf" and do a more comfortable piece again.
So here it is:

And yeah I still don't have a decent camera so sorry for that...
Jennifer Lawrence from the big hype movie "The Hunger Games". I haven't actually seen the movie but I just thought this picture was nice for a portrait.
This movie better be good now!

Decided to take many wips this time :) As you can see I make it darker and darker all the time. When it is as dark as I want it to be I use a rubber to mark out highlights.
Hm what more to say, hope you found this intresting and I hope you liked it :)
Comments and critique is always appreciated!

Good evening folks!

Wip 2

Here is my progress so far :)

As you can see here quite clearly is that when I do hair I first just shade out darker areas like I have here. Later on when the shading is all done I go over it with a sharp rubber and "erase" out highlights in the hair. Darker hair like those popping out a little here and there is easily done with a normal pencil. My next portrait is definitely going to be a guy with short hair xD Long hair is so tiresome most of the time.
The most fun part is of course the eyes and the face etc. Hair and background is most times just boring.

I expect the picture to be done tomorrow or friday so keep an eye out here :)

P-p-p-p-ooortrait time!

Oh well time for yet another portrait I suppose. What am I doing with my life?

If you can guess who that is by this picture I would like to congratulate you, I can barely see myself at this point.

So some of you may wonder what kind of tools I use when I do a normal portrait (A4 graphite).

Some fancy drawing paper which is a bit more "rugged" than normal let's say printing paper.
Other than that just a range of graphite pencil with various hardnesses, a mechanical pencil, a normal rubber, some paper tissue and a small (whatever it's called) "paper-pen" for evening out small surfaces.

See you around bitches!

Battleship

So I saw the movie Battleship today. For those of you not familiar here is a trailer:

Another motion picture from Hasbro, the company behind Transformers. Battleship has many similarities to the previous mentioned movie. A monstrous amount of destruction, shooting and fighting going on.
And yeah this probably is a guy flick, if I may be prejudicious.


So the story is basically that alien ships are launched to earth and they establish force fields which can't be penetrated by any kind of vessel or projectiles.
Three hunter ships are traped inside the forcefield though and it is up to them to try to defeat the aliens.

Battleship was both pretty entertaining and ridiculous at the same time.
Many holes in the logic etc but there were many factors I liked as well, which I can't tell you about without spoiling the movie.

Over all a pretty intresting movie with much action, humor and intensity. I thought it was worth watching.

6,5 out of 10.

Trying out watercolour pencils

Here is the newest portrait!

Singer and acress Ashlee Simpson. Done with watercolour pencils. For those not familiar with watercolour pencils you draw on the paper like normaly, then you take a brush with water and flaten out the surfaces. Half this picture was made using a q-tip though, didn't have any brushes at that time :P Had to go buy them the next day.

The intresting thing about watercolours is that the code of conduct is the exact opposite of let's say oil paintings or normal graphite drawings. Since the colour is all transparent you must do the lightest parts first and then paint over with shadows and such. Once painted on it's there, can't be erased or painted over (many frustrated moments here...)

The skin tone was made by blending various yellow, brown and red parts since there wasn't a "skin-colour pencil". So yeah tis was my first attempt at a coloured portrait. It was definitely very fun and a lot faster than a graphite drawing. The whole thing was done in about five-six hours I estimate.

Infernal times

So I'm all up in a nex exam that I have to study for. The result again not much time for drawing :(
The new portrait is about half done though, it looks quite neat so far I think :) I want to post a wip of it so badly but I think I'll post them later all at the same time when the picture is done, in that way I won't ruin the supprise ;)

Also I've been tydying my appartment now for over 9000 hours, no but for two days atleast.
Since I moved in about two weeks ago I haven't been taking out garbage or vaccum-cleaning or anything so as a result there was some work to be done.
Even washed all the clothes and all shit so now it looks like a freakin hotell-room here.

Ok so sorry for beeing so boring but that's what's been up lately (not a whole lot of fun stuff)
Soon I'll be able to post some more intresting stuff though, the new portrait and so on.

But for now I'll just post a older picture which some of you might/might not have seen.

The same demon I showed here some days ago, the coloured version. Looks ok i think.
Draw on paper then coloured in photoshop CS5.

Cheers!

First of all this song is awesome. So it's kind of old I suppose (november last year) but I just found it and love it. Just a good party song :)

So the portrait that I posted a first wip of yesterday is going to have a little twist :)
I'm not going to tell you how but it's not going to be your traditional black and white graphite drawing.
I am trying something new out, could turn out great or just aweful, we'll just have to wait and see.


And a little update about the diet. In week four now of estimated seven-eight weeks.
Don't know what I weigh now since I don't have a functional scale. Some people say I look a bit thinner though.
Have been slacking a bit on my morning power-walks since I have school so early in the morning and I am super lazy in the morning, going to start again tomorrow though! No more excuses!
Also have been running some, did like nine kilometers in 45 min the other day so I'm definitly picking up speed :)


And a funny and informative youtube channel I've been obsessing over lately is "Tipsybartender"
He basically makes drinks and screams a lot :P Take a look for yourself:

Smell ya'll later!

New portrait!

I'm in a flow! New portrait coming up, this time back to normal size (A4).
And a woman this time, a singer/celebrity.

Guess away ^^

Also, sigh for that much hair, well could have been worse I suppose.

Doodles

So in my boredome I doodled a little. Here's the result:

So my friend is giving me "objectives" to draw. This objective was a "butterfly with rose wings" in tattoo art style. Ah well it didn't exactly become your traditional butterfly more like a magical creature or something but I think it turned out ok :)

Happy easter!

So I went home to my hometown over easter to meet family and relatives etc and eat food all day.
Times like these are hard beeing on a diet and all, it's almost like you are forced to eat candy and drink sodas and stuff. I got easily a kilo of candy but I'll just save it until my diet is over or give it away.
The other swedish easter food is really good though, potatoes, eggs, salmon, herring, sallad etc. As long as I can keep myself from eating all this candy things will be great.

So speaking of my home town, there is a great band from here which I've liked more or less for a few years.
They are switching some band members but are going to continue as a band and are releasing a new album and a single. I like it atleast, here it is:

So this was a quick update, I'll write something more when I get back to where I normally live.
Happy easter and have a great day :)

Done I suppose

All done! And so yeah this was supposed to look like Jim Carrey. I wasn't all too pleased with the result but ah well. This was a very hard portrait to draw for many reasons. All the black everywhere and the hair was a bit frustraiting as well, but mainly because it so big!
Well a lot training atleast for the next one :) By the way who do you think my next portrait should be?

The whole process!

Gym idiots

So as a guy who has been going to the gym for a few years I've seen many people who don't know how to use machines correctly. Some morons are (for example) putting way too much weight on when they do standing biceps-curls with a bar just to look cool. The result is that they use their whole body to rock the wieght up and by doing so losing the whole purpose of the exercise.

When doing biceps-curls you can only put on so much weight that you can still do the exercise motion correctly. You only want to engage the desired muscle (in this case the biceps) as much as possible and avoid the other muscles because by using your back or something else to pull up the weight (well this speaks for itself) you lose the whole point of a "biceps" exercise.
I would rather recommend to use less weight and do more reps and always use full-range motion to engage the whole muscle and by doing so avoiding making it shorter and stiffer.

When I started working out the first thing I did was to speak to a personal trainer about how to use the machines correctly. I then did that workout for a few months and when I felt comfortable I started to test out other exercises and I watched a mega-ton of bodybuildning videos and tutorials for diffrent machines on youtube. Not that I want/wanted to be a bodybuilder but it's an awesome way of learning how to conduct certain exercises correctly and learning new ones as well. Plus it's a great motivation, atleast it is for me.

My point is don't hurt yourself in the gym! Learn before doing, it's the same principle as thinking before speaking. If you don't know how to use a machine or do an exercise ask somebody.


Some basic rules of all exercises:

1. In every exercis you should arch you back, this brings more stability and is very very important in dead lift for example where the risk of injury is extra high when doing it wrong.

2. Focus on the muscle, don't engage unnescessary muscles and ruin the exercise.

3. Don't use too much weight, this leads to doing the exercise incorrectly and can also end up in injury.


One of my favourite sites on this subject is gymidiots.com which essentially is a video archive of people who are useing machines incorrectly. Some are just sad and others hillarious but the essence of them all is they are all wrong.

Here are some of my favourites:
Also have a nice day everybody :)

What did we say about full-range motion? ;)

Not much to say here...

This is the textbook example of how to you ruin your back. The back should be arched and he should use the legs much more, this isn't a pure back exercise despite popular belief...

Music!

Hm when people ask me what kind of music I listen to I would probably say "mostly metall" which is true sometimes. I generally have periods where I like certain music more than others but I still like a whole range of other genres. I also think that songs of any genre can be good even if you don't listent to that genre or like it normally.

As an example; I don't really like reggae or reggae-pop like shaggy but this dude has made a song I really like:

On the other hand my absolute favourite tune that I listen to every day now is this:

And then I would get tired of that and listen to this instead:

So yeah I listen to "mostly metall" but that doesn't mean I hate other music.
I even like classical music sometimes etc. One thing I hate though is every radio channel in sweden.
If I hear "livin on a prayer" or lady gaga or something else played to parts 5000 times a day by every radio channel I feel sick almost.

Biology!

Ok so today my new class started - biology, which is going to last for ten weeks and have three exams.
So you could easily say I have a lot of studying ahead of me, good though that it's quite intresting, intresting stuff is always more easy to remember.

Today I went to the gym after a weekend of resting. Started by doing chins. Five sets to fail (which is like 6-7 in my case, think I managed to do ten the first set though). We then went on to benchpress four sets plus warmup. I did two reps att 90kg which is a new personal best! That's crazy to pull off during a diet, maybe I eat to much carbs... Well more cardio and less carbs in the future!
We ended the workout with five sets of dips. I rode the stationary bike for 20 minutes at the end too since I was too lazy to take my power-walk this morning.

I was featured in my friends video blogg today too, check it out if you wish :)
http://billobull.myshowroom.se/videoblogg-2-dips-sista-setet/

For breakfast dark bread withliver paté and two eggs.
For lunch tunafish sallad.
In the evening som kiwi, rice-biscuits, a protein bar and some curd with frozen berries.


I also managed to draw some more on the portrait! It's starting to look more and more like the person I'm drawing. And gosh I will have to buy new pencils after this one, so much darkness going on!! (remember this drawing is 297 mm × 420 mm = A3). It's like half-done now I think if even that.
Now i will soon start doing highlights, this is where you'll really start to see the hair take form.
At this point probably 4-5 hours of work I estimate.

Good evening everybody!

About dieting

So a quick update on my diet. 
Two weeks have passed as of today and I feel some great changes already.
I don't know exactly how much weight I've actually lost but I feel energized, more alert and I don't have a crawing for sugar or sweets at all any more. I have to admit I've been eating a bit one-sided with chicken or fish of some sort every day but that's ok as long as I complement it with various vegetables and fruits for vitamins. I'm also eating omega 3 which is like lubricating oil for the brain.
Studies show that omega 3 prevents psychic diseases and actually makes the brain bigger in size!
The brain is made up of diffrent fats and eating omega 3 for the brain is the equivalent of eating protein for your muscles. It also helps prevent heart disease which is primarily the reason older people are recommended to eat it.

The greatest profit though of eating healthy is the change in my mood. Before I would always be tired and then I would eat something with high carbs because it tasted best. I would then get more hungry because sugar increases the apetite. Well I've always been thinking about what I've been eating since I have been working out or going to the gym almost every week for the past years, in that sense that I need much protein to get strong, which I did but also fat and lazy. I never thought about avoiding the bad stuff too and eat healthy food besides protein.

Lately I've been finding myself just happy and in a good mood for no reason, something that's never happend in many years. I strongly believe it's the effect of me starting to eat healthy.
I still have a long way to go though before I reach my goals of the training, but as they say; the journey is more important than the destination.

I don't only draw portraits or people as this blog probably has made the impression of.
This is a demon I drew some time last year :)