For the past few years I’ve been creating a calendar to send to some of my clients, family and friends. The clients get the version pictured below which is shamelessly self-promoting, including banner ads at the bottom of each month showing examples of the various work I do. (The family version has no ad banners but lists all the family birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) Knowing what I like in a calendar I designed this for maximum note taking space in each day block. It is printed on 12″ x 18″ sheets of 80 lb. white stock, printed, hole-punched, coil-bound and fitted with an aluminum bar hanger, personally bent to shape by yours truly. Very much hand-made from start to finish.
While I’m on the subject of calendars here are photos of a project I did this year, creating fun caricatures of fork-lift trucks for NMC, Nebraska Machinery Corporation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtrnRYaAzXQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oVL9qiHj9w
Another day at the Indianapolis Art Center, Sunday afternoon open model studio. Today was somewhat unusual in that for the first time in memory I completely ignored the model and didn’t even draw the other artists in the room. I knew who today’s model was and I knew I wasn’t all that interested in drawing him. Nothing at all against the model, he’s an excellent model, you’ve seen him on this blog many times. Many, many times. And while I acknowledge and understand the benefits gained by drawing from life, no matter how many times one has drawn the same person, there is always something new to see. And training the eye to accurately reproduce the distance between parts of the body, etc. to accomplish a pleasing result and a representational drawing or painting of the figure is invaluable.
Still, I ditched it today. But I didn’t ditch the class. I thought about it, but I didn’t. I took some photo reference of a British actor I’ve intended for a long time to caricature.
Why go to the class to do drawings I could have just as easily stayed home and done? For company. Social interaction. (On a limited scale, but that’s just me - I’m not that outgoing a person - never have been.) Many call it Fellowship. That’s a term that gets tossed out at church regularly. But I go to the IAC for my jolt of fellowship. In the general sense I get it from the 20+ other artists that sign up every session because we all share the love of drawing from life and the desire and need to hone our varying level of skills. More specifically I get it from another artist of similar desires and goals as mine. Scott Story is a comic book artist who publishes his Johnny Saturn comic on the web and as printed comics and graphic novels. When I’m sitting near Scott and I feel the need to lean over and whisper “I feel like I’m channeling Carmine Infantino today!” I don’t have to say anything else - he knows exactly what I’m talking about. He’s a little younger than me (but then these days I’m finding more people like that than the obverse!) but we share a common knowledge base of comics, films, TV and popular culture in general. We also share the knowledge of the pitfalls of being an artist. Today he asked me if I ever had days where I felt I just didn’t know how to draw. I responded with, “Not quite to that degree but I sometimes think of my ability to draw as a super power and there are days when I’m closer to the kryptonite!” Scott, and his lovely wife Benita, go to the Art Center on Sundays, and as long as he does and I can, I will.
Enough sentiment - this is Christopher Eccleston, the ninth Dr. Who.
Our furnace went kablooey last night (actually the igniter module
finally died). We spent the night at a nearby hotel. I’m now waiting
for a repairman. This is what the well-dressed work-at-home artist
wears while trying to stave off frostbite!
The space heater is about 3 feet behind me. I feel like I’m on the terminator of the Mercury - hot on one side, frozen on the reverse. Can’t get a space heater under the desk, too many cords and cables.
One of many things I’ve learned in a 30+ year career in commercial art is that you should always try to learn new things and regularly brush-up on things you’ve learned long ago. (Or kidded yourself into thinking you learned!) At this point in time I’m both learning and brushing upon watercolor painting, as demonstrated by the seemingly unending posts of what I’ve been doing at the Art Center Open Studio session. Another aspect I’m about to embark upon is a “brush-up” on human anatomy. To that end I ordered and just today received something I’ve always wanted in the studio… 
Not just any cardboard box - look closer.
Creepy, no? Yes! And that’s how the box was delivered in today’s post, with a strategic rip!
This is the box within the box…
You can get this model from two on-line vendors, Biovere, from whom I ordered this one and
Who apparently makes them and then sells them to Biovere who sells it for less.
Now, in case you didn’t click the Freedom of Teach link which is the above photo, FoT offers this model in two other versions…
The one on the left is the one I ordered because it was cheaper. I figure that if later I decide it would benefit by being the neutral gray color I can just use one of my 25 airbrushes and repaint it myself. The detachable head wasn’t worth the price increase nor was the turntable. I can rig up a lazy-susan for mine if I wish. (And, even though not pictured, the basic model has the detachable arms and wing-wang, all done with magnets!.)
This what I got when out of the packing and assembled.
Now I have to use it.
On the off-chance that some other artists may read this blog I offer a tip for those using Corel Painter X and to a lesser extent Photoshop. A file that has lots of layers and/or a large background image the real-time usage of the painting tools may (and in my case, definitely did) slow down to an annoying level. (Annoying meaning anything less than real-time!) How many layers are too many? When the tools slow down, that’s when! Your computer may have more power than mine and thus be able to accept more active levels. I encountered this today working on a large commission piece.
(The blue dots are because this one isn’t finished and won’t be delivered until next week)
To fix this I did two things. I collapsed as many layers as I could and I removed the large background image into a separate file until I need it after all the rendering is finished. One or both fixed the lag problem. I’ve encountered the too many layers problem on previous commissioned pieces so removing the background may not have been necessary but it only took a few seconds so better safe than sorry.
I have encountered this same problem in Photoshop but not for a long time so I’m guessing Photoshop handles lots of layers better, but if it starts getting wonky you might investigate this fix.
Last weekend we had a dealers room table at Inconjunction XXVIII, the local Indianapolis, IN science-fiction convention. This was our second year in the dealers room at the convention. My wife and I were involved in the first Incon 28 years ago. Actually we met at that first convention. We lost touch with it during the years we lived in Atlanta and for several years after we returned to Indianapolis in 1991. But for years she mentioned to me that we should get a table and try to resell the inevitable accumulation of things we’ve acquired in 30+ years of attending science-fiction conventions. (Things that make regular yard sale crawlers scratch their heads.) Last year I decided it was time and luckily I made the decision in a sufficiently timely manner to reserve dealers space. I also decided that I would try to sell some digital “Body Shop” caricatures. It worked out well enough that we reserved two tables this year. All things remaining equal we’ll do it again next year.
This is my digital set up. The crowd can watch me work on the external monitor slaved to the laptop screen.
(That’s not a bandage on my hand. I wear a white cotton cut away glove so that my hand glides across the surface of the Wacom tablet.) The printer that prints the 8.5″ x 11″ images on 80lb. paper is on a small table behind the screen.
One of the new bodies debuted at the convention. Soon to be up in the “Body Shop” area of my web site.
Tending the table is pretty much a full time job so I rarely left the dealers room. Here are some “hall costumes” that came within camera range. (Hall costumes are sometimes different than what you’d see in the formal Costume Competition in the evening.)
U.S. Agent
Rock Critter of some sort.
A stereotypical wizard.
“Steampunk” is a genre that imagines if the Jules Verne Victorian era was when technology took off.
A panorama of the dealers room from our vantage point. That’s a book dealer not quite ready to open, hence the blue cover sheets over his wares.
Gaming dealer, sword dealer in the far background, costume dealer.
Beautiful wood box dealer, Dr. Who dealer, T-shirt dealer.
Our tables.
And the lovely wife. We managed to move a lot of SF Fan Garage Sale stuff but there’s more left for next year!
I’m putting together some new signage so I need some new celebrity caricatures. A new client was looking through the blog while I was on the phone with her and she saw the original posting of the LOST boys which reminded me of their existence. Here were 3 new celebs with half the work done so I found the files and inked them.
The art show at the Indiana State Fair is a relatively big deal. I’ve heard some artists at the Thursday night painting session say that getting into the Fair art show is more difficult than getting work into the Hoosier Salon, one of the local state art associations. This year I submitted 6 pieces, 3 drawings, 3 oil paintings. Two of my drawings were accepted. Sunday night they had an open house for artists to come in, see the show and learn what, if any, of their pieces were accepted. I took the camera and snapped shots of my 2 pieces on the walls.
Just some beginning sketches of characters from LOST
Sawyer;
Jin;
and Locke;
I’m enjoying the NBC show “Heroes”. I saw the results of this quiz on Shelly’s CyberChocolate blog so I took the quiz.
(Those links to the quiz won’t work any longer. The site exceeded it’s bandwidth so I replaced the provided HTML with a screen grab image. If you’re interested just Google it.) Not a big surprise considering the questions they asked I was pretty sure I’d end up as Hiro, which is fine, he’s the character I enjoy the most. I thought the heroin fueled artist was a very dangerous model to be putting on the airwaves but they’ve cleaned him up so he can paint the future without resorting to drugs now. Still - bad idea to present. I wonder who is actually producing those paintings and how long will it be before something like that is the next “gallery sensation” in NY or LA? Credits on TV shows these days are a waste of time since they shrick them down so small no one can read them.
Almost a year ago I took down my drawing board. I’ve had a drawing board since my Granddad built my first one for me when I was in high school. We needed to relocate my wife’s craft desk out of the living room to make room for the Christmas tree. But when I looked at the level of dust that had accumulated on the surface of the drawing board I realized that I was indeed doing all my drawing within the computer using my WACOM tablet. (Except for the onsite caricatures and when I warm up and practice for those sessions I use the lap desk I designed and built.
That lasted until about two months ago when I realized I was using the excuse that the computer wasn’t on to draw up a concept that had come to mind. Plus, when I’m drawing in my Monday morning life drawing session and painting on Thursday nights I found myself having “control z” moments. Lay down a line or a brush stroke that I immediately regret and the computer bred instinct is to hit Control Z which is the “Undo” command for most computer programs. Doing most of my drawing in the computer was giving me some bad habits.
My last drawing table was set up on a cast iron pedestal that was mounted to the center of the table top. Almost everytime I slid under the table to start drawing I’d bang my knee on the metal central column. When I decided it was time to go back to the drawing board after my totally digital experiment I designed a wooden base based on the Scandanavian writing desk I have.
I built it out of oak so it’s quite sturdy with wheels on the back and legs on the front so I can roll it around by picking up the front.
From now on I plan on trying to distribute my drawing between the computer and the drawing board.
There’s a web site where you can answer a list of questions and it tells you which super hero you are based on the answers. I took it with this result:
You are Superman
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You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
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| Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz… | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I’m kinda glad the DC characters all came up before any Marvel characters. I don’t know what I answered that caused “Supergirl” to be included!