31 October 2012

Nomi

It's always hard to look back to when my dog Nomi was still with us, but after starting my "dog" series of drawings I had to make one of him and make it the best one (in my opinion).  It was also a good way to show a little of the process which involves some careful sketching of guides for me to keep proportions and hair flow in order. A couple people have been under the impression that my drawings are somehow just a photoshop filter over a photograph. Of course I use photos as reference but every line and dot are drawn by hand. I like to work from darkest to lightest tones, just a habit more than anything else. The blue pencil for the sketch guides are a leftover from my days working with reprography, blue didn't register as visible so if you didn't remove it all before making a print, it wasn't a big deal.



23 October 2012

Sketchbook Pro 6 first project


I've been wanting to start using Sketchbook Pro as my primary software for drawing and painting for several reasons, not the least of which is it's dull to be stuck in photoshop all the time. Other reasons are Sketchbook pens, brushes and pencils seem to have a more natural look to them and the interface, while missing some useful functions, is less cluttered and geared solely towards drawing and painting while Photoshop is huge, complicated and geared for photography work.

Version 6 of Sketchbook had a major drawback at first release... you couldn't rotate the canvas which is as essential in digital art as it is on paper. This is working now but there were other problems and very frustrating ones. The worst 2 I've encountered are a problem with the layers... locked layers no only would unlock themselves every time I opened the image but while I was drawing. This lead to me drawing on the reference image, not on the sketching layer. The software also crashed and lost over an hour of work. These 2 things alone forced me to redraw the image almost from the start 8 times. Happy to say I've been using "Forever Save" to keep backups of my work every 5 minutes and the crashing has stopped, but for no reason I can discover.

On the good side... if these problems go away for good, I managed to get an image I am happy with without having to think much about software and what function is where or search through long menus to find the tools I need. While this image might or not not be finished... I can't decide until I've put it away for a day or so, I am already looking forward to trying a second image.. maybe a colour one once I can come up with an idea.

(I know the image of my dog is a little goofy and hardly fine art but I like it).

13 October 2012

embrace


I am often treated to all sort of behavior outside my office window. It ranges from funny to disturbing and can be outright frightening. If I think about it fast enough I can take out the camera and capture what's going on.. sometimes to send to the police if I have or in this case because I think it might make an interesting photo or drawing. The couple was not nearly as romantic as the drawing suggests... I don't dare tell you where the hands were among other things.

06 October 2012

Peabody Award


"American Experience" won the prestigious Peabody Award this past April. 2 of the three episodes singled out were ones I worked on "Triangle Fire" and "Freedom Riders". While my work certainly isn't the sole reason for the award, it is part of it in the end so I'm very content to be associated with such fine productions!