My main dwelling place these days is DA where I post most of my drawings. http://leochi.deviantart.com

Scanning can be a real challenge for an artist. Colours rarely are rendered the way they look in the originals, and watercolour is particularly difficult to scan properly. Even after adjusting colours in Photoshop they hardly ever match the RL paintings.

I've been planning on purchasing a new scanner since quite a while. My old scanner is now 7 years old, it has served me well, but I've never been completely happy with the way my art looked after scanning.

After lots of research and waiting for a few months for the Epson Perfection V600 Photo to become a bit cheaper, I've finally caved in and bought that marvel. Oh, my! It does make a HUGE difference! So if any of you LJ people need a good scanner for art, go for that Epson. It's not cheap, but not yet as expensive as those professional scanners.

You can see a comparison between the old Epson V350 Photo and the new Epson Perfection V600 Photo here: http://leochi.deviantart.com/art/Comparison-between-scanners-460390855

For all those who like fantasy novels, you might like the Bartimaeus trilogy.
It's different from anything I've ever read and I really loved those stories. They're told mostly from Bartimaeus' POV, but sometimes also from some of the younger humans' perspective.

Bartimaeus is a few thousands years old djinni from ancient Uruk. He's a boastful, feisty, cocky little fellow with a lot of dry humour and spunk. He regards humans with lots of disdain, but also tends to form a kind of reluctant bond to some of them. I especially loved the parts where he provides witty and dry comments, in the worst of situations, mainly during some dangerous fights or tricky moments. I also enjoyed his bickering with his various human masters.

Here's a little bit more about the series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartimaeus_Sequence

I think my favourite book was "The Ring of Solomon", but I also liked the three other books. Next to Bartimaeus himself, I really liked Kitty Jones' character.

Warning! May contain spoilers, or anger MI-fans.

The three first books of the series are OK, I suppose. They're fairly rounded and nice for long rainy afternoons. (Or, if you listen to the audios, as I did, to help you ease the boredom of ironing, washing dishes or other household chores.).

IMHO the author should have stopped there.

But she obviously decided to make fanfic of her own creation, which was, I'm sorry to say, quite detrimental to the whole story.

The fourth volume already wasn't what I would have expected. Too much teenage angst that got only worse in the fifth. The lengthy and overly frequent descriptions of "golden skin and hair" of "glistening abs" and "darkening amber eyes" and of long, hot kisses were slightly wince-inducing. Even worse were the repeated detailed descriptions of garments of all kinds, that seemed to stem from a bad fashion catalogue. The battle scenes were also frequent and quite boring and seemed to fill up the pages non-stop.

All that heavy teenage angst was simply too much and seemed to occur in a regular loop. (I guess I'm not much into that kind of drama, it just annoys me, lol.)

But what annoyed me most was the barely veiled "reference" to the Potter series. Too many characters just reminded me of JKR's creation.
Luke, the friendly caring werewolf just screamed Lupin.
Father/Son Valentine/Sebastian reminded too much of Lucius and Draco Malfoy, even the platinum blond hair was there.
Redhead Clary seemed a "better" Ginny Weasley and her mother Jocelyn a living Lily Potter.
Other elements made me think of various other fantasy books or of Wikipedia sites about mythologies.

Should you be in search of good, interesting fantasy, you'd probably be better off sticking to Neil Gaiman or Sarah Brennan. If you like lots of teenage love drama and descriptions of incredibly perfect teenage bodies and fashion, as well as battle scenes including daggers, swords and monsters of all kind, go for it. ;)

Oh, and yes, there are lots of vampires, werewolves, angels and a few interspersed muggles, er, "mundanes" there, too!