Happy Christmas? And zombie apocalypse.

Happy Christmas to all of you :)

Here's a preview of recent 3 pieces I painted last two months on and off (meaning when I had some time after work and studies) for Taylor Holloway's "The Living Dead" story for Irregular Magazine, coming there soon (January, I think). I just wanted to share something new, as few people wondered if I'm still alive (although on deviantart, but I have no patience for writing journals there). Still not taking commissions though, it was just a favour for a very good, old friend :)

Anyway, it took me a long time to finish those (I'm still not sure if I won't touch them up a bit, though) and I learnt a lot during fighting with bits in it. I have many work in progress shots saved, but I need to organize it first a bit. Some refs used, though not very direct (mostly for hands, and quite a few various ones for backgrounds).

Photoshop CS4 - my first pics done in it and it rocks. Especially with Windows7 64bit, 6gb ram. First time ever I can paint on A3 file size, 300dpi, without having to wait for a single brush stroke to appear on screen, guessing how it will look in the end. Which directly reminds me that I recently managed to damage two hard disk drives during one week. Go, me. Well, kind of. One was working fine one day and the next day it was dead for no apparent reason. Which sucks a lot, because it was my disk at work and I have honestly no idea what went wrong with it.

But the second one was my backup drive with almost all my files archived since, like, 2005. And it's gone. Including many .psd files, work in progress shots not to mention just many random things, photos and music (my works) I had there. And no, I wasn't storing it all just in one place, I'm not that stupid, but I was just reinstalling system and formatting hard disk that day, so for few hours my backup drive was the only place I had those. And during this short time it fell down from the table. Ha. ha. ha. Bah. Anyway, luckily I still have some of those backed up on CDs and most of them in high-res with pencil sketches somewhere in my room, but well. It's a shame. I know I keep babbling how I hate my older pieces, but losing all of it is still a big sentimental loss for me. I'm waiting to learn how much would data recovery cost, but they said for that kind of damage (mechanical) it's a LOT of money. So for 99% it's lost for good. I just hope the second disk's recovery will be more managable, as it seems it's a digital failure.

As for some other news the current score of My Car versus Winter is 0:1. My car's battery is dead yet again. Every winter the same story (it has some failure since 7+ years I drive it, I have to change its battery every single year when the temperature drops down below -15 degrees). But right now with my 22km everyday route to work it's pretty irritating.

But well, Christmas is coming. Although I won't have much time to do anything special, I'm still happy I'll be able to cook something. I miss cooking. Sometimes I think I should actually start to share some recipes here. Not that I'm very good at it, but I certainly have some passion for it :) Just expect no salt or fat in it, I hate those. And for those just thinking to ask this question, yes, I like vinegar (even though this is not the origin of my silly nickname).

So, all the best to all of you who stopped by (and managed to read it up to this place)! And sorry for the long text, I guess I had the need to babble a bit ;)