Mac Studio and Studio display

 

My six-year-old i9 iMac was showing signs of wear and tear, slowing down and crashing more often, and it was becoming harder to run newer apps that were designed for Apple Silicon. I was getting really worried and decided to get a Mac Studio before I couldn’t work at all. Since it wasn’t a brand-new 27-inch iMac, which I’d been dreaming of for ages, I needed a monitor and went with the Studio Display. I’ve always thought Apple makes the best screens, and this one had features that others didn’t.

Specs:

• M4 Max chip with a 16-core neural engine
• 16-core CPU
• 40-core GPU
• 64 gig RAM
• 2 TB hard drive

This machine is a huge upgrade from my old iMac, which was already pretty powerful. With the M chip, many of my apps run much smoother. It’s super fast and completely silent—no more noisy fans! I was also surprised to find that my Huion tablet works perfectly on it, something that had become impossible on my Intel machine. I was able to update Blender to version 5, which is only available on Apple Silicon, and the workspace is a huge improvement. My first animation render was over three times faster than a similar one I did just a few days before getting the Studio.

I wanted to get a new Mac while they still offered a variety of ports, something that’s likely to change soon. I have a lot of accessories that I can’t afford to replace, and they all use USB 3 connections. This setup has two USB 3 ports, six USB-C ports (plus four on the monitor), a spot to plug in my internet connection and a card slot for my camera cards—in the front! It also has a headphone jack and the display has a camera. 

Overall, this will really take me into the future and give me the tools to tackle more complex projects, especially in 3D and 2D animation. 

Animation update: 28 Young men by Walt Whitman

 Six years ago, I made an animated short with my writer pal Michael Z Keamy. He narrated. We had planned to do the poem live action at a secluded part of the beach in Provincetown but getting 28 young guys to splash around naked on the beach in Provincetown is harder than one might think. I decided to animate it instead. 

The original version was OK. Extremely limited by my version of Cinema 4D and my computing power at the time. Turns out having 28 young animated men isn't all that easier to get on video. 

Now using Blender and my older but still powerful 10 i9 processor imac, it was possible to improve on it. The structure is the same but the sets are better made and there are actually 28 men and the woman in the poem in the animation now. The people look less cartoon-y and all the characters move, something I could not accomplish before without crashing the computer. 

It's coming along and I feel I am doing more justice to the poem and Keamy's narration. 

Poster project: The Deady mantis

 

I watched this old sci-fi film this week and it was much better than I remembered so I decided to add it to my little movie poster project. I painted the mantis in Krita. Luckily, that was my plan, as my Huion tablet was all over the screen in Affinity and only less so in Krita. Huion has not updated the driver in years and the image started at 24x36" so it was LARGE. I had to cut the size in half to get decent performance on my 10 i9 processer iMac.  Irritating but I did it anyway. I used shots from the film and references of real praying mantis for pose. 

Illustrations: patates. mettre à jour!

 Updated the look of the cartoon versions of my oldest grand-nephews for future use. The youngest got much better illustrations and I want the older ones to get improved avatars. The little and big potatoes, or the younger and older brother. Maybe I will do thier parents as well and really get myself in trouble. 

Illustration: Death as a Friend

 

Another in this maybe series. Made in Blender this one I had a very strong idea for based on an engraving my friend Jeannette showed me decades ago. Well, sort of... it turns out the engraving "Death as a friend." Looks nothing like this and then I thought it might be  from another old illustration, "Death as a friend to the poor" which was a little closer to what was in my head. Could be I saw something and just associated it with a title I like better. 

In any case, this is an old woman holding hands with death in a lonely room that doesn't look like it's had many visitors recently. I tried two versions: colour and black and white. They both have strengths and weaknesses. Did post-processing in Sffinity Studio and discovered that the NIK plugins now work in them, as they did in the older Affinity suite! 

Illustration: Bejamin

 I did a portrait of a friend's cat not that long ago and, after the recent death of someone close to him, he inherited another - Benjamin. Benjamin is girl cat I was told after sending this image to him. I thought both cats should have portraits and I hope that this is a positive gift that helps him through this very sad time. I can't offer much so I do what little I can. 

She's a pretty girl! 

3D Illustration: untitle mortuary art

 I have had an idea of doing something like this since the '8-s and have never found a way to get what I wanted. I t was going to be a photo then an ink drawing and then back and forth between those until recently I decided learning more Blender was a way to get an image out of my head. Of course now I might do a small series. 

I have a good amount of resources with Blender now to accomplish something close to what's in my head. I thought I would learn some techniques like depth passes and isolating parts of a scene with other passes but as I worked on this, none of those things would have been useful. 

The large cryptlike building behind the figures is based fairly closely on a structure in a huge cemetery in Budapest. The mourning figure is based on a mourning angel statue, I really liked the pose. The skeleton already had wings so he didn't get any. 

I had some buggy issues with Blender that were pretty annoying. I use a Make Human plugin integrated into Blender and Humgen to make more realistic humans but Make Human was missing some features somehow and Humgen wasn't working for the cross-legged pose. I settled on Make Human and it worked out but I need to figure out what went wrong. The skeleton and wings were models from my C4D days. I did post processing in Affinity Studio. 

Illustration: Phare Canal Lachine Juin 2024

 

This came along quicker than I thought. Mostly because I had a day (seriously almost 12 hours) with no electricity so no internet, phone calls, or other distractions. The iPad did run out of power despite having an external batter backup. 

I wasn't trying to mimic watercolours or anything this time and just used whatever brushes I thought might work for what part I was painting. The foreground, like my last painting, still seems off a little but much less this time. The lighthouse has plenty of details so I didn't skimp on that. All in all it was about 15 hours of painting. 

Illustration: Parc La Fountaine septembre 2025

 

I finally had a day to work on my own stuff for once and managed to get this digital painting done. It's mostly gouache brushes and a couple texture brushes. The last was an isolated tree and this is an entire scene so it was more challenging in that respect. It's still loose compared to my other work but it took about 8 hours of work to do. The forground path still looks wonky even after repainting it a few times. My main focus was the blurred/ditorted reflection on the water as I didn't want to have it look like a mirror. 

Illustration: arbe automne 01

 

Hopefully, I will do more of this practice work and get some of my painting skills up. This mostly watercolour brushes in Procreate and I hope is looser and more spontaneous looking than my usual stuff. I went to the park for ideas, took some reference photos and want to make a small series just for th hell of doing it.