Dad (Mom & Dad's)

Last week's Everyday Matters challenge, something to do with dad. I have a great idea for something else, but that's going to take a while.

I went to Mom & Dad's tonight, and Dad made me a burger on his new grill. Then I sat with them for a bit, talking. That consists mostly of my dad trying to get a rise from my mom. He's good at pushing the buttons, and she lets him get to her a lot of the time, so there was a lot of "Shove it, Brad!" from my mother. Only, she tells him to shove it by his last name and not his first.

This is the view of their living room from where I normally sit. Usually I face the television, but this view had a bit more to draw as it includes part of the hall and the kitchen nook.
In my big sketchbook, 8 1/2" by 11", Staedtler Pigment Liner, .05, about ten minutes.

My Desk

I've spent most of the afternoon playing with Painter. The gouache brush makes some nice lines, especially if you try to vary the pressure. I'm still not to the place where I'd like to be, meaning that I'd like to be much more comfortable using the program and my drawing tablet. But, it's getting better.
Painter, about ten minutes, using the gouache fine detail brush, size 5.

Stages of Geekboy

This is the digital sketch that I made in Painter, using the Cover Pencil at 8% opacity.

Stage Two

I copied the sketch and pasted it into an upper layer. Then I made the top layer with the sketch 50% transparent, and started using the gouache brush to lay in the color.
Then I added a third layer on top for the black line work.

Stage Three

Next I added more color, drew the shorts, socks and shoes in gouache. I added the line work onto the third layer. I was going to add other colors for dimension and shading, but instead used the eraser tool. I used the Eraser: darkener for the shadows and the Eraser: gentle bleach for the highlights.

Finally, I deleted the sketch layer, added the super powers as a text layer, and then flattened it all to save as a Jpeg.

Geekboy

Illustration Friday Hero
Painter 8, three layers, and way too much of my life spent coloring it.
Still, I'm pretty happy with my first digital cartoon image.

Living Room Lamp

The prompts for this week for EDM and Illustration Friday aren't working for me. EDM is "Dad" and I Friday is "Hero". I've been thinking about the dad thing for almost a week, and I've got an idea but it's not working so well.

I'll have to mull that over a bit more.

The above drawing shows a floor lamp in my living room. I have things stacked on things stacked on things, and I'm very lucky my living room doesn't look like a rubbish heap. Or not much like one. I recently got tagged for a book meme, and this book case shows a few of the 500 or so books that I counted the other day. Pilot Razor Point, brown, about forty-five minutes.

I should have a "dad" or "hero" post tomorrow, if all goes well.

Living Room Chair

I drew small sketch, in the upper left corner of the top of one of my bookcases. Then, I drew the chair on the same page. After I'd done the chair, I decided to do the background, and it ended up overlapping the first drawing.
Pilot Razorpoint, again. About thirty minutes.

May 1946

I have no idea who these people are. I'm related to them in some way, but I couldn't tell you their names. I took it from my parents photo collection last year because I thought it looked cool.

On the back of the photo, it only says "May 1946" in pencil. That kid could be my mom, who was born in 1940, or my aunt born in 1943. I'm not even sure that if I asked my mom she'd know.

Drawing Links

I visited Michael Nobb's the drawing club today, and found some great sites.
Thanks, Michael.

First, some web-based drawing applications:

Typedrawing

The Scribbler

Draw Toy

ArtPad

Flipbook


And last, a truly odd art site, Eric's Portfolio.
A warning: If you don't like the idea of seeing paintings of furry animals bloodied, don't visit. If you suddenly feel curious what that might look like, go see. But don't say I didn't warn you.

The Duomo, Florence

Still playing with ArtRage, but the way it works with tracing photos it feels like cheating.
I spent about two hours on this, using the tracing paper function and automatic color choice. I like it, but I think that I'll take some time and refine it a bit more.

See the reference photo below.

Duomo Reference Photo

Self Portrait

Illustration Friday - Black and White
I've been experimenting with some photographic self portraits recently, like Cindy Sherman. I love to dress up, but don't often put on costumes except for Halloween.

I was looking at a Kevin Aucoin book the other day. He's done some amazing makeup transformations. So I got out some of the makeup that I never use, and also a scarf someone bought me that I thought hideous. It's gold and black with stripes and leopard spots. Not my style at all, but little kids and their parents give weird gifts to their teachers.

I made myself up to look a bit like Clara Bow with heavy eye makeup and tiny lips. I took some digital photos in the mirror, but since I don't have three mirrors and four hands some of them had weird angles in them. I quite liked the angle of this photo, but decided to run it through some software with filters.

So, color digital photo, with a Thumbs Plus drawing filter, and Photoshop torn edges filter. The torn edges really seemed to create a mood.

After the Ride

After riding around the pond the other day, I also took a photo that looked a little like this. Since the sky appeared colorless and the pond simply grey, I took a little artistic license.

ArtRage again, using the pencil to trace the photo and then the markers to color it. I really like that software. That's my roommate's arm in the photo. He That Shall Not Be Named, but that calls me a wimp for not keeping up. That's okay, I get him back in a thousand little ways, all the time.

Something I Made

Everyday Matters Challenge #19
In college, I took jewelry making. I thought that I'd end up teaching secondary kids, and learning jewelry seemed much more fun and useful than pottery. Wrong on so many counts.

My jewelry teacher (who attended the same middle school as I) told me a rule of thumb that held true. It takes about three times longer than you think it will to make the object you really want to make.

These earrings took that long. I was obsessed with the comic Sandman at the time, and the character of Death. In that comic, Death is a cute girl who dresses in black with heavy eye makeup and wears an ankh. So, I made her eyes as earrings out of silver. Sterling silver wire, two gauges, and silver disks in the center.

My instructor insisted that putting the earrings into the tumbler to polish them wouldn't damage them at all. Wrong also. One of the wires broke, so I have a pair of earrings that I made but can't wear.

Drawing in Pilot Razor Point (again), took about 40 minutes 'cuz I did it twice. This is the second version.

Egret by the Pond

Bear and I went riding bicycles again today. I didn't expect to see as many birds as we did. This egret, and a grey bird that might have been a heron, and a mama duck with about nineteen ducklings.
I've posted the photo that I used for this below. This piece is entirely digital, using a free program called ArtRage. I used oil paint. Next time I'll do the background first. Putting the water in after the grass sucked.

Egret Photo Reference

At the pond, this bird didn't spook as easily as some of the others. Still, I would have liked to get closer.

Memory Map of Bike Trail

I have this book called Writing and Illustrating Children's Books for Publication. It's by Berthe Amoss and Eric Suben, and it's very well written.

In it they have an exercise called a memory map, to get back to childhood, or at least remember some of the things about being a child.

My roommate and I went on this really great bike trail the other day, and neither of us brought a camera or sketchbook with us. So, two days later I decided to make a memory map. This is in Pilot Razor Point. Green just seemed the right color after all of the trees and the big fields we saw.

You may notice some weird blurry spots. I filtered some of the names in Photoshop to remove clues to where I actually live. At this point, trying to keep my teaching job, I prefer to remain anonymous.

Fountain in Rome

"Summer" for Illustration Friday.
In 2002, I spent two weeks in Italy. It was about 95 degrees there, every day.
Rome seemed especially hot. In all three cities we visited, tourist and locals would congregate around the fountains to get cool.

This fountain sits at the bottom of the Spanish Steps. It's not a drawing, but a manipulated photo. I used Photoshop, increased saturation, used Median to blur a little, then the Watercolor filter. I tried to combine it with Poster Edges or Ink Outlines to define the edges of the people and objects, but it changed the tone and made it seem less summery.

Branches and Wall

I have six or seven trees on my property. All of them need to be trimmed to keep the squirrels off the roof, but also so as not to annoy the garbageman. The other morning I could hear a couple of rodents chasing each other across the roof. At least they weren't in the attic.

Tree and Stones

I decided to make some small, quick drawings in my backyard, and came up with two decent ones out of four attempts. That's not a bad ratio.
I've got to get some of the junk in my backyard cleaned out though, it's almost a jungle back there.

Illustration Friday - Digital
Done in Painter 8, reed pen and prnt scrn.

My useless fireplace and hearth.
Sakura Pigma Brush pen, black.

What's Out My Window
Pilot razorpoint, black.

Drawings and other stuff

I've joined a yahoo group called everyday matters. It's inspired by DannyGregory, who writes a blog called everyday matters.

They issue a drawing challenge every week, so I'll be attempting to fulfill that starting this week. The challenge is "What's out your window?"

I'm also going to try Illustration Friday, and possibly add some challenges of my own to get myself drawing.

So, I'm hoping tomorrow will be my first illustration post, What's Out My Window.