Life Musings
-
Catching up: Character Art & Sketchbook Musings
I finished that mercenary digital painting back in early May. I’ve also been sketching more in my portable sketchbook and picked a few highlights to post. Since my post last spring, I’ve been waiting to post more until I’d figured out a more cohesive plan for how I want to make art, but that is just a laughable goal at this point. I’m far, far too an inuitive person to have a “cohesive” plan. A plan, sure. A plan that goes mostly out the window when the rubber hits the road. The more I wait to think up the perfect plan or perfect order in which to learn and practice…
-
Digital Painting WIP
It’s so much easier to make time for digital painting when I also have a TV show streaming on my other monitor. That’s the trick, I think, to getting myself to work on paintings at a computer, after coming home from working at a computer all day. Shading of the flat layers I’d left off with is going well – I feel like between this piece and last summer I’ve gotten a better handle on keeping the light source in my mind’s eye and having it be a three-dimensional lighting situation. I completely credit most of my progress to regularly dashing off quick life studies in my sketchbooks; even if…
-
Sharpening Pencils
I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of using a single-edge razor to sharpen pencils. They really do work so much better to have a variety of line, but I’m still fond of cheap mechanical pencils too – nostalgia is a strong force. And of course a consistent line weight has its advantages on occasion. I feel a little silly, showing fundamental drills/practice work like value bars, but honestly, even if they don’t look very special, putting the time in on simple exercises really does make a difference. I’m getting more confident with graphite, but dip pens are still rough. The ink feathers so much on most paper. It…
-
Drawing redux fun
Decided to redraw a super old sketch from high school (so…2003 o_O). I was kinda lazy about my scan quality, I won’t deny it, but I kind of like the rough smudgy texture of how it turned out. Plus I’ve inked it digitally (WIP of digital painting further below), so I didn’t need the scan to be perfect. Cleaning up scans is just…ugh, it’s annoying.
-
Misc art update
My sinuses feel like a million bees having a rave in my face. It’s not a happy rave. In spite of that, I want to post a bunch of art because I made it and it makes me sad when I don’t share my work. It’s a pretty random collection of art from (mostly) the last couple weeks, with an old drawing from Winter Solstice thrown into the mix.
-
Zen or stressed out, still making art
Well, it’s been long enough since I painted digitally that Windows is once again bugging out and not correctly interpreting my Wacom tablet’s pressure. Hooray >_< I forget how I fixed it last time… a text file added somewhere in user config settings? Gah ~_~ adding it to the To Do List of Doom. Been stressing this week – trying to find energy after work has been kind of monumentally impossible. But hey, I’m all caught up on The Magicians. Which means *wipes a tear away*, I have to wait until Thursday to watch S4E7 (because Amazon Prime adds it later than it airs and we don’t have cable). I…
-
I am sick of cold and ice, but hey pixels to warm the soul
Totally not having it with this weather and feeling trapped indoors, wanting to go hiking or, I don’t know, see more sunlight in a given 24 cycle, is that too much to ask? I feel like I used all my energy up at work today, so there wasn’t much left by the time I got home. I have been recharging with…you guessed it, more Magicians. I finally got to the episode where Margo and Elliot speak in fandom references, and the GoT wiki note killed me. I too started with only reading the wiki, bwahahahaha. At the least I have some new pixel art. Pixel art – the new comfort…
