More painting practice, still working closely from an photograph. I’m okay with that… for a little while longer. Pretty soon I’m going to have to start building the entire picture from the sketch on up, but I have a bit more to learn about creating a palette first.

The original picture is here. I chose to work from that particular picture because of the limited palette and because of the luminosity.  (Hey, just ’cause I’m a little scared of color doesn’t mean I don’t prefer intense color.) Also because it’s a picture of me that I like, which is rare. Using the photo for color reference and layout, I made this:

Not so great, right? I’ve never had much trouble getting to this point in a painting, (photoshop or actual) but then I hit a wall called ‘I dunno what to do next.’ Which is why I never really got into painting until recently.

This time when I started flailing, I called in my guest expert *coughfiancecough* and had him take a look.[*] As usual, he made me face what I already knew:  I wasn’t done yet, and he wasn’t about to let me pretend this was ‘good enough’.

So I did this:

and this:

and this:

And then played with opacity and layer order for a little while. Plus a few tweaks, I now have this:

Much better. Hopefully, I’ll remember how I did it for next time…

[*] A word about letting someone look at your work before it’s finished: Don’t do it lightly. Particularly don’t do it if you don’t have a strong sense of your direction in this particular piece, or if you are at all dependent on praise. Sometimes you need to see something through to its end in order to learn, even if you’re pretty sure it won’t work. That’s doubly hard to do if someone’s sitting on your shoulder saying it won’t work give up now. (Sure, they’ll actually say something like ‘I think I’d like it better if you smoothed the edges a bit’, but that’s never what you actually hear.) An extra eye and a careful word can give you perspective when you need it. But it can also totally derail your process, and your trust in yourself as an artist.

Well the Virginia Rennaissance Faire is over- for me anyway. It’s still going on,  but I’ll be attending two weddings in the next two weeks, so I couldn’t vend for the full run. (Updates may be spotty until July, as sometime in the next month I’m also supposed to be moving!) Since the ‘make chainmail 24-7′ pressure is off for a little while, I’m getting back on the horse with one of my naked ladies.

…

On second thought, it’s probably best to stay away from Ungulate metaphors when discussing nude women.

Well, I’m back.  My next two weekends are still dedicated to the Virginia Renaissance Faire, but since I’ve done almost all of the necessary work for it I can start doing other things like, oh, drawing again.

Things I’ve learned so far about Renaissance Faires:

-It’s easier to not stuff yourself on Scotch Eggs if you just don’t eat that first one.

-Talk to the organizers (on the phone or in person, so tonal subtleties come through) early in the planning stages. It may be that you’re being way more dedicated to editing out modern stuff than you need to be.

-Apparently, lots of people go to Ren Faires in order to soak up the ambiance. And not to buy anything. Crap.

Photodump! (As always, all pictures courtesy of my dear technologically inclined fiance.  Further photos of his over at his flicker.)

P.S- Best overheard Ren Faire quotation, delivered with full pirate accent: ‘Aye, I’m the Scottish Pirate. You can call me Arrgyle.’

Sorry for the radio silence, but I’ve had a load of bricks drop on my head. It’s name is The Virginia Renaissance Faire.

My first reaction upon learning I was accepted into the Faire was to start giggling hysterically.

Y’see, the Faire is not one day. Or a whole weekend. Oh no. I’m signed up for all the weekends in May. That’s six days, 9am-5pm. This means I need to make more inventory, pronto. But oh wait, this is a Renaissance Faire, which means my fancy-pants new Easy-Up tent isn’t going to cut it. It needs to be covered in fabric, top, inside, and legs. Plus it would be good if that covering didn’t look like shit.

So I’m basically sewing a tent. Did I mention I can’t really sew?

Further updates as events warrant.

Guys! Guys! Lookit, look what I did!

Let me explain why I’m so excited.

I have a historical problem, loosely referred to as line addiction. I draw edges. I draw them first, and hang the rest of the picture on them, like scaffolding. When my college painting teacher told me to build the image from the inside out, my first thought was literally “but- it doesn’t work like that.” [*]

More recently, this has meant that I’ve been doing line drawings before making digital color images. Which shouldn’t strictly be necessary. If I’m making digital paintings, shouldn’t I be able to do an underpainting as my laying out and on-canvas ‘thinking’, rather than a line drawing? (Trust me, this isn’t through lack of trying. It’s part muscle memory, part training. It’s like putting an accomplished downhill skier on cross country skis and expecting them to not go whup!SPLAT. [**])

Last week, inspired by Three Panel Soul, I decided to give this ‘painting’ thing another try. Miraculously, something clicked. I know what I want to do differently next time (bigger brush, for one thing) but this is an encouraging start in a direction which has previously been mostly blocked to me.

The subject is a Wolpertinger. I was surprised to learn from wikipedia that Wolpertingers have a historical basis, and were not simply created as an amusing Brewfest pet. (Dear non-WoW players: Brewfest is an in-game holiday involving a lot of drinking. When drunk, you can see Wolpertingers. ) Apparently, “The Wolpertinger is not a typical cryptid, as local people likely never believed in its existence. Rather, it is some kind of traditional prank belief, as is evident from the many stuffed Wolpertingers displayed in village inns along with real hunting trophies, which have been fabricated deliberately in order to make fun of gullible foreigners who may want to go hunting for this remarkable animal.” I find this hilarious.

[*] Convergently, I listened to a TED talk after I painted this which suggests that edges (and motion) are the foundation of human vision. Very interesting stuff for visual artists, video here.

[**] whup!(SPLAT) is the direct transliteration of the sound you make when your skis fly out from under you for no reason, and you land on your back. For people from warm locals: Downhill skis have a rigid connection between your ski and your foot, plus your ankle is mostly immobile. You walk like a flatfooted duck, but the ski does not slip out from under you while you’re standing around. Cross country skis, on the other hand, have soft boots and connect to the ski only at the absolute toe of the boot. This greatly increases your independent mobility, but also that of the ski. Which occasionally chooses to exercise its freedom when you’re standing around not paying enough attention to staying centered over the ski.

In the words of Randall Munroe: “You’re a kitty!”

I used to draw a LOT of horses.

For about four years, I drew practically nothing but horses, dogs, and dragons. Understandably I got good at drawing horses, dogs, and dragons. But when I reached the end of that stage and developed an interest in drawing people, I suddenly hit a wall. Though I’d developed a great anatomical understanding of animals, little of it applied to people. (Look, I think that people are animals. But there’s a big difference in musculature and movement between a digitigrade quadruped and a plantigrade biped.) It was like I’d lost about a year’s worth of gains in drawing skill just because I switched subjects.

That was a bit depressing, as you might imagine. But I kept drawing people and anything else that I was in the mood to draw, and I got better at it. As I got a bit older and a bit more varied in my drawing diet, horses gradually dropped out of my regular drawing rotation.

Ten years on, and now I’m on the other side of the same wall. I’m now much better at drawing people than I am at drawing horses, and it’s a bit depressing. When I sat down to draw this horse, it was sort of like my hand contracted a sudden case of terminally stupid.

Le sigh. Tortured artist is tortured, I suppose.

Last week my buddy Mike called in a artistic favor I owed him to get something pretty for the top of his soon-to-be-live blog. He didn’t really have any firm ideas, other than he wanted it to be something that would be appropriate for both his musical and computational pursuits.

It doesn’t always happen, but it did this time: I had a brilliant idea. Punchcards. Musical score. Both covered in dots. BAM.

I think I still have a few tweaks to make though. I like the partial transparency on the punchcard and musical staff details, and I think the dots come off a bit too ‘hard’ in contrast. Also I’m not sure about the background. It’s copied from an aged piece of paper, but it doesn’t actually look much like an aged piece of paper.  I may have to do something about that.

Welp, I’ve gone and dug myself a hole again.

See, I have in mind to do a little project. I self-published *coughKINKOScough* two trades of a comic in college, but I haven’t done much with the form since then. Of course now I’ve got a comic idea in my brain, and it’s not letting go. Unfortunately, this idea is relatively specific about the drawing style it wants.  And it’s not a style currently in my repertoire.  Dammit.

So I’m going to expand my repertoire. (And yes, that does hurt, even if you go slow.) I’m going to accomplish this by the time-honored tradition of copying until I understand how the hell the artist does whatever it is they do.

Today, I’m embarrassing both him and myself by attempting to learn the ways of Mike Mignola. Well,  Fritz Leiber as done by Mignola, anyway.

So here’s what’s going on. Awhile ago, I got it into my head to draw a Tauren lady, and thought it would be traditional/fun to make her a hunter, and draw a pet as well. So I got some WoW references together, gave it a try. And well, it sort of sucked.  You can tell, right? It’s that one at the top. The weighting is just wrong. The figures are carrying their weight in a way that would make sense in game, but as I was drawing something a little more realistic it just looks odd. And it’s not like there’s one spot that’s a problem, it’s basically equally odd all over, which is pretty much unfixable.

I was understandably a little depressed by this, and put the drawing away. As I was in a mood to do inking this week (rather than sketching) I was looking through my file of unfinished things, and saw this poor girl. Rather than going back in and attempting to fix the drawing I already had, I decided to use it as primary reference for a new drawing.  So even though I was in an inking mood, I wound up sketching anyway. Don’t believe it when people tell you art is all about doing what you want to do.

Digression aside, the second drawing went much better. See how they seem to be actually standing on the ground now, instead of vaguely hovering?  I also fixed a few narfy things, like changing the side the quiver was on, (because that’s the side the free hand would actually pull from) and making her braids extra long (because that’s about how long my hair is, and I like it better that way).