Hello, dear friends! It's been a long time since we've talked, longer than a year. Life happens.

What have you all been up to? I am glad to see some of you still going very active here. Lilyas in particular is going strong as ever, with a seemingly inexhaustible power to share her art, her wisdom and happiness around. Hi Lily!

To friends who were similarly taken away by the tidings of life: I hope it's all going well for you guys, wherever you are. ^_^

How to sum up the past 16 months in a few paragraphs? Lists and milestones!

1. Married life is great.
I don't know who invented that parody of couch-potato husbands and bickering housewives, but  luckily it did not happen to us at all. ^_^ Cherry and I love each other just as strongly as when we were dating a few years back.

2. From the mountain to the sea
After she finished her PhD, she became a lecturer at a university near the sea, so we left the northern mountains and got our little place here down south. Since I could not get a position as a researcher, my hobby of freelance webdesign/graphic design gradually turned into a full-time occupation. I enjoy it with all the ups and downs that comes with this lifestyle.

3. Art development    
When one does his hobby for money, one danger is that it might kill the fun aspect of it. Luckily, that didn't happen with me yet. I still enjoy doing art for art's sake, experimenting with different styles and programs. Fireworks is still my No.1 though. I've got third place on yet another Fireworks competition, one of whose prizes was a bit of cash that came in handy for a lil' DA subscription.

Just recently Cherry surprised me with a Wacom Bamboo tablet for Christmas, which is taking me to new, exciting possibilities I didn't know before. Hopefully I can post the results of this journey here.

4. New Year resolutions
I don't make a big deal out of such things, no formal stuff. But it's always a nice opportunity to take a look at how we live our lives and where we're heading with it.

One of the things I intend to do more is to be more active here on DA again. Reconnect with old friends and get to know new ones; share my visions and feelings with a wider world. I hope it will be as fun as I remember it used to be.

There is a lot more stuff I could write about, but that shall do for this time. Now it's time to head over to Deviations and look through all the wonderful little windows to your lives.

Until next time!

^_^

DeviantArt is eight years old, and for us this means contest time! There are all sorts of cool birtday contests to participate in. Below are some of my favorites:

The 8th Letter of the Alphabet
This digital art contest is simply about illustrating the letter H. With a deadline of two weeks and some really cool prizes, it's my first choice to play.

8 Legged Freaks
If you are into Nature/Macro photography, this contest will be right up your alley. It's about taking photos of creatures with eight legs. I think creativity is the key here, so I won't submit spider pics... The one month deadline gives plenty of time to think of cool ideas.

8 colors for 8 years.
This is an interesting vector art contest, where one has to come up with a DA/8/birthday theme using only one of the provided 8-color swatches. This one is a bit short on the deadline - Aug. 15 - so I'm not sure I'll participate, but still worth a look.

8 Days a Week
A weird fan-art contest. One has to pick a Beatles song title/lyric as the theme of the artwork, and gotta be relevant to DA's 8th birthday. This one also has a short deadline (same as the previous one). Well... maybe.

Anyway, these are my favorite ones. Will you participate in any of these too? Or different ones? It's gonna be exciting times, a great opportunity to get to know fellow artists and make friends!

It's always been my opinion that conveying pure emotions is the most beautiful thing an artpiece can do. It's also probably the most challenging aspect of art - at least it is for me. So I'm always delighted when I find a masterpiece that does it well. Like the other day when I found this beautiful pencil drawing titled Roaring for Help, by Wolfattwilight The raw power and emotion radiating from that picture, expressed in a perfect pose and proportions, makes it one of the most superb drawings I've ever seen! Here, take a look:

I'm lucky to know an awesome couple here on DeviantArt: WazzuOtaku and STAT1STICK - Sarah and Rudy. They're having their fourth anniversary today!

If there are inspirational relationships, theirs is truly one. Through their journals and notes, I've seen them going through hardships together, relying and supporting each other, sharing every triumph and defeat.

Seeing their marriage going strong after four years shows a promising future for Cherry and me too.

Happy Anniversary!!!
  :thumb38547609:

I still remember how we first met. I just finished one of my first deviations, the Kokiri Emerald, and I was searching for similar entries, when I spotted Rudy's artpiece of the same theme. I was astonished. It was stunningly beautiful image; mine looked rather simplistic in comparison. Besides the usual oohs and aahs, I voiced my disappointment over my skill, but Rudy encouraged me, and showed me the true potential of Fireworks. It's a gift I'll always remember.

It was about that time that Rudy persuaded Sarah, a successful fanfic writer, to post her work on DeviantArt, and I'm glad about that; I got to know a sweet person with profound thoughts. It's mainly her journal that gave me a glimpse of their everyday life as a couple and got me inspired beyond art.

Sarah, Rudy: I'm very lucky to know you guys... I wish you a happy married life for many, many years!

It was difficult to choose only a few, but let these great works show you the diversity of their artistic talents.

Sarah's works:

Mature Content

Mature Content

Rudy's works:
:thumb30200243: :thumb52572130:
:thumb37980041: :thumb72080336:

It's been a while and there is plenty to talk about, both good and bad news - which one I should start with? Let's see the good ones first.

As part of my slowly growing Fireworks website, I started writing tutorials, when I spotted news on Adobe's Fireworks website: they announced the first-ever Fireworks Tutorial competition, hosted by Fireworks Zone. Just for the heck of it, I entered one of mine - and it won first place!   Whoa.

The prizes were quite useful: a color-management program called GenoPal, and a Fireworks command panel called DistriFusion Pro. I found good use for both - in fact, I just used them today for the site!

Cherry came back from London! She spent another month and a half there, finishing up the last bits of her research. So now she's writing her thesis and I'm proofing it.

Since our research project ended, I got a job as a webmaster for the pharmacy department of a small medical college in the northeast. I never thought I'll be making a living out of my hobby! But, life produces strange turns sometimes.  

I like it a lot. I've designed sites from scratch before, but not of this size and complexity. So, the initial task was challenging and the deadline was sharp, but I managed it. Now it kinda mellowed out; all I'm doing is periodic updates and implementation of the occasional new features my supervisor asks for.

The best thing is working at home and the flexible schedule. I can spend time with Cherry whenever she has free time - this is very important.

...has to do with DeviantArt, and just happened today. As a result, my opinion about the site plummeted halfway down.

You might have noticed that the beautiful styling of the previous blogs, the kind gift from my friend Lilyas, is gone* (not anymore... see the update below)

Just a couple days ago I thought I'll get a short subscription, but the DA store refused to process my credit card. I wasn't shocked, I thought I know how this works. Since my card linked to a Hungarian bank, but I'm residing in Thailand, their automatic fraud detection process must have "rung the alarm", so to speak.

It happened twice before: first with my US-based hosting company, and then with the domain registrar. In both cases, I was able to resolve the issue simply by explaining the situation and sending them a photograph of myself holding the credit card and a picture ID (to prove that the holder of the card is the one whom it was legally issued to).

Help Desk to the rescue! or not?
So, I contacted Help Desk and proposed the same solution. You know what I got back?

"If you are connecting from a location other than your billing address, you will not be able to make purchases directly through deviantART with your credit card. [...] it is our policy to not accept orders which trigger the fraud detection system."

In other words, there is no case-by-case evaluation here. They flat-out refused to give me a chance, simply because of where I live.

The world is not ready for a lifestyle that knows no political boundaries. Perhaps it will never be. I know it, and yet, every time I'm confronted with it one way or another, it saddens me.

But anyway. If they refuse to do business with me because of my location, it's more their loss than mine.

*UPDATE: just a couple days after this was published, my dear friend Lilyas showed me that her kindness doesn't know limits: she helped me get a subscription through her Deviant Dollars! Thank you very much, Lily!

Hello everyone! I'm finally back and writing these words from Thailand. Actually, I got here weeks ago, but until now I've been terribly busy with sorting out all the issues that come with settling in for life in a new country.

The journey was long, and I felt very happy to hug Cherry again after spending such a long time apart. After a short recovery period I went back to work again and since then, life goes on as if this one-year European interlude were just a fleeting dream.  

For now our main concern is about getting everything ready for marriage. The paperwork is about to be sorted out and that should be the last step. Other than that, we spend most time at the uni, working. Luckily we always find quality time to spend together, and some time for family as well. But when all that is done, there is precious little time left for online stuff...

Too bad... just a quick glance at my DA messages shows that lots of interesting things have been happening with my friends.. can't wait to share the excitement! Until then, a big thanks for all the faves, comments and feature too! (Just found out that my lil' blue flower pic was featured by my dear friend Lilyas in her Big PURPLE / BLUE Feature - just before my birthday too! Such a nice birthday present, isn't it? )  

Took a bunch of new Thai pics and I have some still un-processed European pics I'd like to share with you. I also found my old collection of real pencil drawings, so I gonna scan some of those eventually. As usual, I had some more fun with Fireworks, the result of which I hope to post here someday soon as well.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the fun of checking out the great artwork you posted since I've been away, and catching up with your journals too!

I'm glad to be back, both in Thailand and here on DA.