Moved to Wordpress

I moved my blog over to wordpress, I will no longer be posting on this blogspot!  :)

http://mylamalinalda.wordpress.com/

Tolkien Artist Fridays: Angela Rizza

I'm actually getting my Tolkien Artist Fridays post up kind of early this week! This week I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite artists, Angela Rizza, you can visit her official website here. Her style is very recognizable, she has a real talent for lines and making it flow within each piece of work, and the colors she uses! They're vibrant and make the subject matter really "pop." You can read more about Angela in this interview I did with her for Middle-earth News.

This illustration of Bilbo is one of my FAVORITES. There's something so fantastical about it, like I can feel the wind blowing through the grass and flowers.

Seeing Lothlorien

Last week I finally made my way over to Lothlórien in LOTRO, and I love it!! The quests are pretty easy, mostly due to the fact that I'm about 5 levels higher than the area (because of festivals mostly). I got to meet a lot of characters including: Haldir, the Fellowship, Galadriel and Celeborn. I've already seen the Fellowship but that was in Imladris, so it's been a while!
Lothlorien may be the most beautiful place I've been to in the game (not counting the Shire!!), the colors change drastically throughout the "day." I completed most quests so now I'm going to move onto Mirkwood, and then Enedwaith and Rohan. I must get my war steed!

More photos below the cut.

Reading Goals for 2014

I used to read a lot years ago. When I read Harry Potter for the first time, I breezed through them in no more than two weeks. I banged out The Hunger Games once in just a night. I loved reading, I'd sit or lay down for hours reading. It was just nice to be quiet and relax while losing myself in another world. Because of many reasons I don't want to go into, I slowly stopped and now it's difficult for me to just take time out of my day and read. (Though I read A Storm of Swords pretty damn fast!)

I've started many books and never finished them, and now my list of "books to read" is getting ridiculously long. Today I logged onto my Goodreads account in lord knows how long, and cleaned some things out and added some...

I NEED TO READ MORE. So I want to make a goal for myself, to make more of an effort to read for the remainder of the year. My class schedule this fall semester will be keeping me busy, but I'll still have time to read. I mean, if I manage to have time to watch cartoons on Netflix I should have time to read, right? Right.

The majority of books that I want to read are in the fantasy genre: A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams, The Death Gate Cycle series by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind...and books by Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, Jim Butcher...and more, I have to do some research.

Gotta tear myself away from Netflix and spend some of this summer reading.

Book Haul: July 25, 2014

Went to a bunch of second hand shops with my dad today and got six books! There wasn't much in term of Tolkien, but I'm pretty happy with this haul.

Tolkien Artist Fridays: Matthew Stewart

It's Friday which means it's time for another Tolkien Artist Fridays post, and today I'll be talking about Matthew Stewart. I don't remember exactly how I came across his work, but I do remember feeling incredibly impressed. It put a huge smile on my face when I found out that he got hooked on fantasy after reading The Hobbit. He has done a lot of work in the fantasy world, you can see all of it here.

Below is an oil painting depicting Boromir from The Fellowship of the Ring. Just look at all of those details in everyone's clothes, all the branches, all of the different faces!! Great, great work.

Collection Tour

WOOT IT'S PUBLISHED

Tolkien Collection Video Completed!

What did I do today? Finally got around to making that video of my Tolkien collection. It ended up being about 40 minutes long, dang. Anyway, I'm saving it now (it's taking foeverrr) and will be uploading it to YouTube sometime tomorrow. :)

Tolkien Artist Fridays: s-u-w-i

WHOA, I did not realize it was Friday. Okay I did because Fridays mean new episodes of The Legend of Korra bUT I forgot about Tolkien Artist Fridays. It's a little after 10 pm, it's okay I can do this. Just in time... MOVING ON. Welcome to another week of Tolkien Artist Fridays, this week I want to talk about s-u-w-i's work. Her style is really cute and honestly her work is so fun to look at. I wish I could own a copy of The Hobbit that was illustrated by her.

This was the first drawing I saw by her and I couldn't stop smiling when I saw Bilbo, look at those rosy cheeks!

Catching up with Myla.

It has come to my attention that I have not updated my blog in over two weeks and I have missed Tolkien Artist Fridays three weeks in a row. I done messed up. What's my excuse? I don't really have one I'm just lazy, and it's summer which basically triples my laziness. But I have had a really annoying cold for over two weeks. Being sick during the summer? Nopenopenope no thank you. So what have I been doing these past three weeks?

No Tolkien Artist Friday this week.

It's been a hectic week, so I'll be back on schedule next Friday!

Those Little Moments #2

Gifs help me see and appreciate small moments from movies/television shows that I never really noticed before. I've been giffing LOTR for a few years now and though it is extremely annoying and tedious (and makes my wrists feel like they're breaking) I've discovered many new things and it made my love for those movies even stronger. So I'm just going to include from gifs from the trilogy that tug at my heart strings the most.

Aragorn's coronation turns me into an emotional mess but to be fair I'm already an emotional mess by the time this scene happens. I only noticed this moment this year and it....it makes me want to cry. It looks like Elrond is saying "Go to him." And he looks at her with so much love and sadness because he knows she and Aragorn truly love each other but he knows he will eventually need to leave her. And he won't be there for the rest of her life, to see her children, to be able to spend time with his daughter and I'm going to cry. "None saw her last meeting with Elrond her father, for they went up into the hills and there spoke long together, and bitter was their parting that should endure beyond the ends of the world." This post sums up my emotions pretty well.

Tolkien Artist Fridays: lauren-draws-things

Welcome to week four of Tolkien Artist Fridays! Who else is surprised I have actually been keeping up to date with this? Okay so this week I wanted to talk about Lauren, lauren-draws-things on Tumblr, and her absolutely perfect and hilarious Tolkien drawings and comics. If you ever need to smile or get a laugh in your day you should go through her "I'm sorry Mr. Tolkien" tag. I've seen all of the posts but I still go back because they're just that good. Some of the drawings have swearing, just a warning if that's not your thing. And don't forget to read the captions under the post, because they're always just as funny as the artwork.

Here's one of my favorites. I still laugh so much when I see it.

Through the Years

I've been collecting Tolkien memorabilia since early 2002, starting with my dad's old LOTR set and random pickings he found in used bookstores. And since then it has grown much more than I ever thought it would! So this post will be about my collection's journey over the last 12 years.

Tolkien Artist Fridays: Liga-marta.

Whoa, I almost forgot that it was Friday, that was close! Anyway, this is now week three of my series "Tolkien Artist Fridays." For today I chose Līga Kļaviņa (liga-marta), I have admired her artwork for a few years now. She has artwork about a variety of subjects, but of course the ones that interest me the most center around Tolkien. The colors Līga uses aren't very bright, I would say they're subtle, and her use of watercolor and ink is an inspiration for me because I love working with ink.

This work on Eowyn I really like, especially all of those tiny folds and details in her dress.

The Legend of Korra: Book 3 TRAILER

On my commute home a couple days ago I got a text from a friend in all caps that read "THE NEW KORRA TRAILER." I was on a train around people so I had to somehow try to bury my excitement until I got home. My friend was texting me screenshots from the trailer and soon after I caved and watched it on my phone, bracing myself to not yell or dance around over what I would see. In only just about two minutes, so much happened.

Tolkien Artist Fridays: Petitpotato

Welcome to week 2 of Tolkien Artist Fridays! Last week was dedicated to Gerwell and today I thought I'd talk about Natalia, also known as petitpotato. All of her art is amazing! Her work on the dwarves from The Hobbit may be my favorite, I always find myself staring at the hair not believing how she managed to draw all of those braids perfectly.

BookCon and Books

Today I met up with a friend to go to BookCon at the Javits Convention Center. We didn't really know what to expect but we each had plans to go to specific panels. I wanted to get Cary Elwes' autograph and go to his panel for reasons. One of the reasons is because I've had a crush on him since I was a kid I mean what. Anyway we got there around the time it was opening so we had to wait in line outside. Looking around we noticed that there were a lot of teenagers, we guessed it was mainly because John Green and Cassandra Clare were guests.

We thought we would get to see a lot of great books, get some cool freebies and buy a bunch of stuff. This convention was not what we had in mind AT ALL. BookCon was basically a convention just for YA novels. There were some books for children and a section here and there with art books and other stuff like that (which I would have GLADLY bought but they were pretty expensive). Young adult novels everywhere, they all ended up looking the same. The only thing I bought was an Adventure Time book with 20 art prints, totally worth it. Twenty beautiful prints for less than $20. YES PLEASE. My friend got that and a book of story board art from Star Wars. I bet all the good stuff was at Book Expo.

Tolkien Artist Fridays: Gerwell

Since I'm currently in summer vacation I thought I should do some more blogging and one of the ideas I had was so showcase a different artist every week until my fall semester begins. I make no promise that I will not miss a week or two (or three or five) but I'll try my best to keep up with it! I thought that I'd start this series off with one of my absolute favorite artists, Gerwell. I did get to interview him for Middle-earth News a little over a year ago, and since then he has posted so much beautiful work. I admit that I don't know much about the earlier ages of Middle-earth, most is foreign to me, but Gerwell's work just gives me more desire to try and tackle The Silmarillion again. I see his interpretations for characters like Eönwë, Varda, Sauron, and immediately feel like I need to know more about them. And since these characters haven't been in movies it gives artists more freedom to decide how they want them each to look like. I've seen Silmarillion artwork from a lot of people, and what amazes me is that no work looks the same. Everyone has their own vision, it's amazing!

Gerwell has posted many pieces of Eönwë and not all of them are the same. Look at the amount of detail! I pretty much want one of everything he is wearing.

Ashamed of Being Asian

This post is going to be a little different from everything else I've posted on this blog. It's something that's been on my mind for a while now and I haven't had the chance to fully express it. And as I was trying to go to sleep I kept thinking about this thing that has been troubling me so I figured it was time to write about it. What is this thing that I can't stop thinking about? It's this whole idea that being Asian is something to hide, something to be ashamed of. I didn't realize my feelings until about a year ago, and it came to a surprise to me. I guess I've always been a little ashamed, but it didn't seem obvious to me. This is going to be difficult to write about because I am not even sure how I feel.

Plans for the summer.

Now that it's finally summer vacation, I want to spend more time on my blog so I'm going to be setting some goals for myself.

I want to showcase a Tolkien artist each week. Just show off their work and talk a little about them. And I plan on doing a couple Goodwill runs for books with my dad this summer, so hopefully I'll come across some good stuff that I can show off.

Sound good?

Good.

MAPS - Comic Project

My spring semester ended last week, and now that I finally have some free time I can post my graphic novel final project. I'm not totally satisfied with it, but after working on it for over a week, I lost most of my cares.

Programs used: Paint Tool Sai and Adobe Indesign CC. Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet.

Our Long Expected Party

This past weekend I met up with the other US members from Middle-earth News and we had SO. MUCH. FUN. I'm so upset it's over, I miss them!!

Okay, let's start at the beginning. Rachel and I met up the day before and headed into NYC on Friday early in the morning because our bus to Philadelphia was at noon. Since we were so early, we hung out at Port Authority with our Starbucks and sat around texting everyone else to see how they were all doing. Rachel and I were texting back and forth with Britta, laughing so hard over Spongebob lines. You know, adult stuff. Well, while we were laughing a group of cops walked over and one approached us kneeling down and said "Don't worry, you're not in trouble!" Even though Rachel and I are 21, he thought we may be runaway teens.  Haha, he said we look young and to Rachel, "YOU especially!" I kept looking over at Rachel mouthing "WHAT is happening???" We had to show him our IDs so he could take down our information. This was a very interesting way to start the weekend.

Bookcase Tour

Aside from my bookshelves that I use for my Tolkien collection, I have another book case where I store all of my other books. For a while I kept it in another room but yesterday I decided to move it into my room, so now my space is kind of crowded. But totally worth it.

The top shelf is for my various YA novels that I read, including Harry Potter and The Hunger Games trilogy. As you can tell I only have the dust jackets for those, a cousin of mine is borrowing them.

Tony Award Nominations soon!

Today I found out that Tony nominations come out on the 29th (one day before my birthday!) and I am SO EXCITED, I've been looking forward to the Tonys.... since the last one. I'll have to wait till June BUT I CAN MAKE IT.

I wonder who will be nominated. The shows for this season that I have seen so far are:

• Aladdin
• Big Fish
• First Date
• If/Then
• No Man's Land/Waiting for Godot
• Rocky
• Romeo and Juliet
• Soul Doctor

Am I doing this right

I hardly update this blog and it upsets my slightly because there is a lot of topics I could talk about, thoughts to express...WHERE DO I START?

I'll brainstorm.

Birthday Wishlist 2014

My 21st birthday is in less than a week how did that happen?? So now it's time to look at a bunch of stuff online... stUFF THAT I NEED.

Look at this shirt, it's beautiful. Who doesn't love some good ol' Hobbit pixel art?

Ponies!

This has been a pretty good week for Alellea, she got three new ponies, a bunch of new great maps and some other goodies from the anniversary festival.

This first pony is the Steed of Odogil which I actually really really love. I was bracing myself for another tablecloth mount that would make me feel unimpressed but that didn't happen this time. The colors are really nice, and so is the subtle design in the caparison. Then there's the gold part on the bottom...love love love!!! His name is Astral.

MoCCA Fest Goodies 2014

Today I went to the MoCCA Arts Fest, it was AMAZING. It was my first MoCCA Fest and I'm disappointed that I didn't go to one before! I came in with a good amount of money because I knew that I would be tempted to buy a lot of great artwork. I ended up FORCING myself to leave because if I stayed I would have spent all of my money. All of it.

Here is all of the art I got. So much art. Beautiful, beautiful art.

Graphic novel final project planning.

This week my graphic novel professor told us that for our final project (that isn't due till late next month) will be a 12 page comic about anything we want. Right away I knew what I wanted to do: a story on Alellea, my main LOTRO baby.

I'm so excited! I ended up neglecting projects and papers due next week...oops. Well now I have 20+ different panel layouts printed out, pages and pages in my sketchbook full of floating heads trying to decide what Alellea looks like, and a bunch of loose leaf papers with scribbles of half assed story lines.

Still not really sure what kind of story I want. I'm thinking it will be about her family, mainly about her late father.

We shall see.

BLOG REVAMP

This theme looks nice but it doesn't work well with my posts, especially for photos.
I'm going to be hunting for a new theme, in the mean time I apologize for the messiness of my blog.

Learning new programs.

I'm FINALLY taking graphic art classes which means that I'm learning how to use programs I've never used before like Illustrator and InDesign. I really enjoyed using Illustrator, I've never worked with vector shapes before. Still can't get over how it doesn't get pixelated... IT'S GREAT but weird because layers work differently in Illustrator than Photoshop. Each shape is its own layer but it's still part of a layer??

Anyway, during my winter course we had to do a self portrait with this program and you know what? I think I did a pretty good job, considering I've never used Illustrator before. I wish I had more time to work on it so I can fix up the colors and shapes but it's okay.

Moving on to InDesign...THIS IS WHAT I LOVE TO DO. Formatting, text, layout, I love love love doing that kind of stuff. I'm using InDesign a lot in my courses this year and I hope I'll be able to learn it inside and out.

Sorry for making you look at my face. Even if it is a vector version.

Dorming worries.

This is only a small portion of my stuff.

I'm going to be moving into my college dorm this weekend and I am excited, terrified, and nervous. This is my third year of college, but I have yet to get that dorming experience. On top of that, this is my third college. Yup. I've transferred a lot, but the school I'm finally going will allow me to pursue my interests in graphic design which I'm very relieved and happy about. I can't wait to take my classes this semester! In addition to a couple of literature courses I'm going to be taking a typography, color and design, and a graphic novel class. I'm really hoping I'll be able to draw and create stories for my LOTRO characters.
My schedule is a bit weird since I'm transferring in and kinda of had last pickings, so I have a class during the weekend which sucks but oh well, I'll do it if I must.

I'm very scared to meet my roommates... what if they don't like me? What if I'm too eager? What if they don't like LOTR???? These thoughts run through my mind constantly throughout the day. I'm planning on putting up a Middle-earth map poster, so hopefully they don't mind. HOPEFULLY THEY DON'T HATE TOLKIEN.

Okay, so back to the exciting part. I'll be dorming! I'll be independent! Well I'll only be like an hour from home BUT STILL. Hopefully I'm not over packing... but I probably am.

LOTRO Character Bios

**Yes. I am aware not everything I've written is canon.**

 Alellea "Inkwell" Fairbloom (guardian): To help her mother, Alellea took on the role of second parent (only at age 20 - barely in her tweens) to her three younger siblings after her father died. Like her father, she studies the art of cartography and hopes to be as good as he was. She spends her time pouring over her father's maps and making her way across the Shire. As a few years went by she decided she wanted to see as much of Middle-earth as much as she can, something her father never got to do.
After her mom assured Alellea that she and the little ones would be okay she started her journey. She is often found in shops buying supplies for maps or silently sitting in taverns listening to live music by the fireplace. Alellea a fairly quiet hobbit and isn't quick to talk to new people but she's very kind and open to make friends. Though her surname is Fairbloom she has started to use Inkwell when meeting strangers, but once she becomes comfortable around someone she'll reveal her real name.

What I've been up to in virtual Middle-earth.

I've been pretty productive this past month....in LOTRO! I got Alellea, my guardian, to level 50 FINALLY. It seemed like it took forever. I've been questing in Forochel since I didn't feel like the Trollshaws was that much fun. I really really do like Forochel, especially at night! It's taking me a long time to become kindred with the Lossoth, I only just made it to ally this week. I am determined to get all of the cloaks! And the prized tundra steed.