Sunday, February 23, 2014

Dogs Skating - Work in Progress


I had this idea for a dog walker walking dogs, but having them all skating instead of walking. Cute, right? Yeah I thought so too.

I started with a really rough drawing of my idea, with different dogs in different skating postures, in a 'clump', with the human walker behind. (Actually, there were some rougher ideas before this one, but this one is the first one in the process I'm willing to share.)


I knew I wanted to do a bulldog, and the wiener dog out front. I also wasn't sure how many dogs I wanted - there could be more, but I also wanted to be able to show enough of each one to make it worthwhile drawing them. Too many dogs would hide too much of some of them, so I kind of weeded them out a bit from my very first ideas. 

I work 'old school', on tracing paper, and make a lot of overlays. Here's the next one, (again, with some 'in-between' ones left out), with some of the dogs tightened up a little bit.

I had a poodle in there, and the bulldog was doing that kind of gliding thing. The little guy in the back got cut off in this scan, but really, he's still there. 



I started playing with some outfits (oh yes ... they have to have outfits!), and had scads of little individual dogs re-traced and cut out and re-traced again, all over the drawing table.
Here are some bits hanging off my drawing table lamp.



And here I plopped all the ones that I liked down on a piece of paper and scanned them. You can see that I have two sets of "Mom and pup", because I'm not sure which one I like better. I also took out the poodle.




Here's where Photoshop comes in (yay, Photoshop! What did we do before Photoshop?)
I placed each of the dogs from the scan above into a new blank image, and started playing with placement, and also scale. I love using the Edit > Transform > Scale (and also Rotate) tool to fiddle with things. I ended up cutting and pasting (Lasso Tool > Cut (or Copy) > Paste) one of the Mom dog's head onto another dog altogether. 

I also used my Wacom tablet and stylus to draw the 'guy' in the background, the leashes, and the horizon and top crop lines. All the dogs, as well as the guy, were on separate layers. I erased around each image so they were all kind of 'free floating', and could overlap each other. 

I decided the crop the top half of the guy off, because its not really about him, its about the dogs. We don't need to see who he is I don't think. I want it to be all about the dogs.

Here's where I am with the drawing. Its not "there" yet, but almost. 




I love telling a little story with each of them. The wiener dog (with short legs) is racing out front. The Mom is helping her pup. The bulldog is just this really solid mass floating along. The bull terrier and other little hound are looking back to see how the little guy (you have to say "little guy" with a kind of quavery voice) is doing. And the little guy is just that - the little guy, bringing up the rear.

I have lots of work to do figuring out their clothes, but that will be fun. When I get a final drawing, I will transfer it to my paper and start the finish. This will be done with colored pencils, and I think I'll try out my new Gamsol (odorless mineral spirits) and of course my new handy dandy electric pencil sharpener!

~~~~~


In other news - 
its SPRING here already. I know, totally crazy, considering how much of the country is ice and snow bound. 



We've had juuuust enough rain to get everything going, but are still in a drought. We will all have to be creative about how to keep everything watered come Summer. 


I would love to fill in some gaps in my beds with new plants, but don't want to have anything extra to water, so I guess I'll just let them be a little bare for another year. 


Hey, I just had this idea. Someone could start a business painting 'fake' flowers and bushes on some kind of outdoor-friendly material, that people could put in their yards. You know, like those painted fireplace screens, but on stakes, that you could just stick in your flower beds. Yes? No? Maybe. If you do it, please send me pics. :~)

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Looking Sharp


I finished the paint tubes! These were fun. They look like they're standing around, maybe gossiping about the other colors. :~) I don't know. The things your mind does when you're sitting, sitting, sitting, and drawing. Maybe they don't like the greens, or blues. 

I actually had this idea last year and was going to make it into a Christmas card. I have some reference shot of green tubes too. I still like the idea. Maybe this year ...



This is 7" x 7", done mostly with Polychromos, and some other brands for the reds.

These were an experiment on Arches Hot Press, which I've never used before. I like it about 99% as much as I like Stonehenge, so that's pretty good. I seemed to get little 'flecks' or spots of color, especially after a couple of layers, which I didn't like. Not sure what that's all about - something about the paper surface, obviously, but I couldn't tell you what. There's not as much tooth on the paper as with Stonehenge, but for something like this, which didn't take too many layers, it was fine. I will use it again!





But THIS is what I really wanted to share. I bought myself a new pencil sharpener. 
ITS THE BEST THING I'VE EVER BOUGHT IN MY LIFE. 



The Bostitch Super Pro 6 electric. Its a little (OK, maybe a lot) pricey, but if you do a search you can find the best deal. (I'm always amazed at the difference in price for these kinds of things.) I got mine on ebay for significantly less than some retailers. They go from $70 or so to over $100 (with most selling for $80-something), so it pays to shop around!

I've been using an Xacto School Pro for 5 or 6 years. When it was new, I thought it was great. Gradually, over time, it got duller, and duller, and was eating more pencils (mostly Prismacolors), until it just became a wood chipper. Even my harder pencils like Polychromos were breaking in it. 

I had stopped using Prismacolors altogether for the past couple of years, because at first I just thought they had gone downhill. I had heard about them changing their manufacturing, moving things to Mexico, and had several people say they were experiencing problems. So I thought it was just the pencils. Then when my other pencils started to break too, I realized it was time for a new sharpener.

So let me illustrate.
On the left here we have the new Bostitch, and on the right, the old Xacto.




And here are two Prismacolors, both of which were sharpened in the sharpener they're modeling in front of. 


HEL-LO!!! Do you see what I'm talking about?
Let's do it again with two more pencils, shall we?




I could do this all day long. The old sharpener takes them to a really dull point, then CRACK! off snaps the lead. The new one just zips it into a needle-like point, lickety-split. Its a beautiful thing.




The only thing you have to be careful with is that it doesn't have an 'auto-stop'. Which means it will just keep going, if you let it.

So now after I've re-sharpened all - I don't even know how many - hundreds! - of Prismacolors, I have an art 'to-do' list as long as my arm. It will be a joy to 'color' again!


Sunday, February 02, 2014

A loaded Sunday

As I'm writing this, we have just learned that the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his apartment of a drug overdose (with the needle still stuck in his arm); Woody Allen's daughter is revealing that he molested her when she was a child; everyone but me is watching (or getting ready to watch) the Super Bowl; and we here in California are watching the skies for rain, any rain, anything at all, to relieve this drought, and are all not washing or flushing or watering or doing anything with water that isn't absolutely necessary.

LIFE.

I could write a lot about all of those things, but don't really feel like it, and besides, I have stuff to do.
So I will just share some art instead.


This is a fun little piece I just did for a client. It will be a logo for a quilt shop. 




I used all kinds of colored pencils for this - I started with Coloursofts for the wood grain, then used Polychromos and Pablos for the rest of it. I had to strike a balance between 'realistic' and 'graphic', since it will be shrunk down small for a logo, as well as used larger on tags, and some signage. 




It was super fun to do! No reference, really (well, I have quilt books for ideas). 
I made it all up out of my head. 




And here is an update on the paint tubes. I'm really enjoying this one too. The colors are soooo subtle - just warm and cool greys, really, in the tubes and their labels. I started with a warm and cool grey value drawing, then added some Ivory and Cream to the labels, and Sky Blue to the tubes (all Polychromos). 





I'm going to leave off all the type (there's a lot!) and just have these be blank. Its not that I'm afraid of doing type (I can do it, and actually love letters) but I think these make more of a statement this way. I think they look like they're either taking a bow or doing a curtain call, or maybe just chatting. They seem almost animated, don't they?