Currently I'm working on over a dozen pieces, most by Russell Platt (*rplatt), a few not. I shall post these on an as-I-finish-them basis. I will no longer be specifying which pieces I'm working on because while in the process of working, I all too often find that I reach an impasse in coloring a particular piece, and thus, rather than bang my head against the wall (so to speak), I have to move said piece out of my works-in-progress folder for the time being. I have too much respect for the original artists and (in the case of commissioned work) those who commissioned the pieces to post colorings which I do not feel represent my best effort.

To all those who have already faved the pieces I end up redoing or improving: I hope you like the revamped versions, and my apologies if you don't like the new as much as the old.

Thanks for visiting.

The following is inspired by perusing ~Beelzebubba666's latest journal entry. So as to minimize ranting on my part, I'm going to be aiming for something akin to the Proust Questionnaire on the back page of Vanity Fair.

1. What does your deviantart name mean andwhy did you join this site?
My deviantART name is my name. I joined DA (at the risk of sounding cliched) because of all the amazing and inspiring art I saw when I first visited here.

2. What fandom were you obsessed with when you joined and what are you into now??
I'm a fan of Star Wars, Final Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, and others, but it's fairly low-level fandom.

3. How many watchers do you have now?
I'm being watched by 86 people at the moment. <_< >_>

4. Name three of your favorite artists on DA?
& &

5. Do you comment, fave, or both?
If I like something enough, I'll comment. If I really like something, I'll comment and fave.

6. Do you participate in clubs' contests here on DA?
No; I haven't come across any that I could afford to set aside time for.

7. What is your most popular deviation?
My most-faved deviation is "Cavewoman 2" [link] . My most-viewed deviation, however, is my coloring of *rplatt's "Rangiku Mastumoto" pinup, which is unfortunate, since I think it's not my best work.

8. What are your favorite non-anime TV shows?
("Non-anime"?) Mystery Science Theater 3000, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Survivor Man.

9. What are the things you wish you could do better artistically?
I wish I could draw like I could when I was a kid. If I hadn't stopped drawing (so as to devote time to learning guitar), I wouldn't have lost the modicum of skill I had acquired in the first 12 years of my life. On the other hand, learning guitar has afforded me a good number of opportunities for musical creativity and interaction with many fine musicians.

10. Summer or winter?
Summer.

11. Rain or Sun?
Sun.

12. What's your favorite type of music?
Anything that's subtly intense or intensely subtle.

13. PC or Mac?
PC. Steve Jobs is not, in my mind, a deity.

14. Anime or Manga?
Anime, only because it's in color, whereas manga generally isn't.

15. Coke or Pepsi?
Coca-Cola.

16. Read or TV?
Read.

17. How many hours a day do you spend on DA?
Approximately 0.67 hours per day on average.

18. Name a hidden talent.
If it's hidden, how am I supposed to know I have it?

19. Flash or traditional cartoons?
Traditional.

20. What is your favorite fast-food restaurant?
In-N-Out.

21. What are your top three favorite books?
- "Anatomy of the Orchestra" by Norman Del Mar
- "The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien.
- "Conqueror's Legacy" by Timothy Zahn

22. Wii or Playstation?
Both.

23. Name three of your favorite bands.
- Rush
- Planet X
- Spyro Gyra

24. Are you a fast, slow, or medium typer?
Fast. I type for a living.

25. Do you like Denny's?
Occasionally.

26. What is your favorite emoticon?
lol I love that the tooltip says "poems" (as opposed to some other form of textual art ).

27. What is your favorite type of pie?
Strawberry rhubard pie.

28. Have you ever stayed up for 24 hours?
Yes.

29. Do you go on YouTube a lot?
Not a lot, but not infrequently.

30. Are you a member on any other sites besides DA?
Yes -- you can find me on the Battlefront.com forums (as Dietrich) and at the Relic.com forums (as Loewenherz).

31. Do you cosplay?
No.

32. Fruits or sweets?
Sweets, unless the fruit is mango.

33. Name three artists you admire.
Andrew Loomis, Maxfield Parrish, William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

34. Buttered, plain, or salted popcorn?
Buttered, if at all.

35. Have you skipped school?
No.

36. Have you been on a plane?
Yes, though not to any farther away than Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

37. Have you swam in an ocean?
Yes, the Pacific.

38. Have you been iceskating?
Yes, once. I prefer rollerskating.

39. Favorite vacation spot?
Southwestern Montana is pretty nice in the summer. I haven't been to any of the more archetypally vacation-y places like Hawaii.

40. Ever been on TV?
No, but once, when I was 17, I performed the solo guitar piece "Leyenda" by the 19th-century Spanish composer Isaac Albeniz in front of about 1300 people at a benefit for school music programs in my county.

41. Favorite salad dressing?
Balsamic vinaigrette.

42. What do you do to relax?
Color things in Photoshop.

43. What is the last film you saw in the theaters?
Valkyrie.

44. Favorite Sandwich?
Peanut butter and blackberry jelly.

45. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
England, Germany, Spain, and Finland, in that order.

46. Favorite time of the day?
Late afternoon.

47. What did you want to be when you were little?
A fighter pilot.

48. What do you want to be now?
Creative.

49. If you could eat with one person, who would it be?
Nigella Lawson.

50. What character would you hate to be stuck in a room with?
(Fictional character, I take it?) Padan Fain from The Wheel of Time series (of which I only read the first couple books) by Robert Jordan; I would rip off one of his legs and beat him to death with it, even though he's supposedly basically a demon in the body of a wiry little peddler.

51. When is your birthday?
28 years and 17 days after the birthdate of Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of my favorite guitarists.

52. Favorite type of ice cream?
Ben & Jerry's Vermonty Python.

53. Last book you read?
"A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

54. Which store would you max out a credit card at?
Borders.

55. Do you buy / sell / both on ebay?
No.

56. What is the most annoying thing people ask you?
"How come you're so tall?" (I'm not really so tall, just 6'4".)

57. Favorite all-time TV show?
Mystery Science Theater 3000.

58. What was your favorite show as a kid?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

59. What are you listening to right now?
The clattering of keyboards from adjacent cubicles. <_< >_>

60. What is the last thing you ate?
A peppered bacon breakfast sandwich from Starbucks.

61. If you were a crayon what color would you be?
"...my yellow, in this case, is not so mellow..."
-- Jimi Hendrix, "Bold As Love"

62. What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
Her hair.

63. Favorite sport to play?
Basketball.

64. Favorite Day of the Year?
The longest one.

65. Hugs or Kisses?
That would depend on who would be doing the hugging/kissing.

66. Chocolate or vanilla?
Chocolate.

67. Favorite Board Game?
Risk.

68. Favorite smells?
Jasmine.

69. What inspires you?
Music, beauty, flora and fauna.

70. Do you have any piercings?
No.

71. How many siblings do you have?
A younger sister.

72. Bacon Bits or croutons?
Neither.

73. Favorite Day of the Week?
Whichever day I have off work.

74. Favorite phrase?
"It's not as simple as that."

75. Favorite Restaurant?
Any Indian restaurant with a lunch buffet.

76. Favorite animal?
Horse (Hanoverian).

77. Favorite thing to do outside?
Ride my Gary Fisher mountain bike (whether offroad or not).

78. Favorite thing to do when it's raining?
Play some immersive computer game like KOTOR II or Tomb Raider.

79. Favorite Disney character?
Aurora (a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty).

80. Do you like coffee? If so, what is your favorite brand?
Starbucks venti Mocha Frappucino w/o whipped cream.

81. Tag six people.
You, you, you, you, you, and you.

I predict that my coloring of *rplatt's "Rangiku Matsumoto" ( [link] ) will go on to be my most-faved piece ever. (For some time my most-faved piece has been my coloring of Russ' "Full-figured Woman 3".)

At the risk of sounding judgmental, is it just me, or are a large number of people here on dA anime-obsessed scribblers?

I may very well decide to not do any colorings of anime characters in the future.

(P.S. Perhaps it's a symptom of not-yet-worked-out bugs of the new interface, but I couldn't get the emoticon list to open, hence the somewhat out-of-place 'mood' below.)

Photomanipulation?! *gasp*

One of the things that struck me when I first visited deviantART was the concept of photomanipulation. Ever since, I've kept a keen eye out for such works. For the past couple months I've been collecting stock and slowly but steadily honing my skills (thanks in large part to the numerous and insightful tutorials available on DA).

Today I submit my first photomanipulations, with plenty more (I hope) to come. One thing I cherish about the whole photomanipulation thing is the collaborative aspect of it -- without the stock provided (diligently and generously) by the numerous stockers of DA, no one could fashion these varied works. (To name just two good manip-makers I've discovered, check out =night-fate and *aphostol.)

Thus I give a big thank-you to all the stockers for the raw (sometimes often inspiringly not-raw) material and to the photomanipulators for the inspiration they give.

Sincerely,
Dietrich

The lovely and illustrious got tagged (see [link] ), then turned around and said "I tag EVERYONE!" So, since I suppose that includes me, here goes.

The rules are (as reiterated by LongStock):
1. Post these rules.
2. Each tagged person must post 8 things about their self on their journal.
3. At the end, you have to choose and tag 8 people and post their icons on the same journal.
4. Go to their pages and send a message saying you tagged them.
5. No tag-backs.

My eight things:
1. Once, in introducing myeslf to a girl at a party, I grinned and said with utmost sincerity: "Hi, I'm Bob -- short for Bobaghanoush."
2. The countries I would most like to see are England, Spain, Germany, and Finland (not per se in that order). I have friends all but the last of those countries.
3. I've only been outside the USA once, and that was only over a three-day weekend in Saskatoon, Canada.
4. Whenever I meet a person whose native language is not English, I ask him/her how to say something simple in their mother tongue. (Except when the person speaks Spanish, since I already know a fair amount of Spanish.)
5. I taught myself Spanish (and also took one college class and picked my Costa Rican friend's brain) in order to write my own flamenco lyrics.
6. I've had grey hairs since I was 16, and they're only growing more numerous.
7. Eighteen years ago, my first words to my best friend were: "You have a Nintendo?!" lol
8. While out and about with friends one midsummer afternoon, I was in the process of quoting the bit from What About Bob? where Bill Murray says "There are two kinds of people in this world -- those who like Neil Diamond..." and my friend Tina chimed in from the backseat: "And those who pretend they don't." Raucous laughter ensued.

Since I'm on first-name terms (so to speak) with only three or four people, I can't quite adhere to the rules in that regard, but I tag them (since they know who they are).

Sincerely,
Dietrich