Days of Shades

I'm close to done with the sketch I've posted process pictures of, and I want to be damn sure of the anatomy before I start playing with digital coloring/shading processes*. Any and all feedback is welcome!

Even something as vague as "something bothers me about the left arm" can be really helpful, so don't be shy just because you're not an art/drawing person.

( critique, please! )

I'm staying at work a bit late tonight to play with the tablet, working on the sketch I posted yesterday. The big thing to figure out is where the guy's legs go, and, me being me, the easiest way to figure these things out seems to be to *do* them.

I'm glad my coworkers aren't here to see me repeatedly posing myself on the floor of my cubicle.

ADDENDUM: the cat-enforced stillness the other night is probably a big part of why I had such trouble with the original sketches.

So many skills are slipping away. It's especially obvious since I've been spending more time in fandom, which seems to be populated with people who can not only draw, but draw fast (which has always been hard for me). Incidentally, that also makes it clear how far away from the cartoon/illo/most-fan-art style I am, and how far towards classical fine art.

Those of you (Hi, fenmere!) who know how far I've always been from fine art will find that pretty funny, I'm thinkin, but the fact is almost all of my recent drawing has been sketch portraiture/gesture. In theory that kind of practice should help you draw beleivably alive people from imagination, but no. I can't tell if my skills have gotten that much worse or I've just gotten more critical; possibly some of both.

I'm still a reasonably good critic. Finding stuff to fix in other people's work is always easier! But I kind of despair of my own skills.

On a rational level, I realize that I have a house, a yarden, a trio that's getting more and more gigs even without putting any time in marketing or a demo, and a for-fun writing project that has become both more time-consuming and more fulfilling than I ever thought it would be. Something has to give.

But art's the thing that's given for so damn long.

I suppose it means I should knuckle down on the studio project, but that's seems so damn far away.

Read On the Importance of Stabbing Your Readers in the Brain.

Oh, and happy new year!

My little brother is off to school! YAY! Folks dropped him off in Ellensburg yesterday, and Saturday night we had a going-away dinner at the Olympic Club in Centralia, where we had a blast playing pool. Reasonable games for everyone (bearing in mind that both Doozer and I are total n00bs), and then an EPIC GAME OF FAIL for Andrew and I. Apparently a single game of 8-ball is not supposed to take more than an hour. Who knew?

It wasn't that we couldn't get any balls in. It's that they kept coming out! Everything but the 8 had been in at least twice. Mom and Dad were very patient, and Erik only suggested I intentionally sink the 8 and Please-End-this-Misery once.

Brad and I had a lovely ride Friday, and he showed me how to clean my drive-train Sunday evening. Result: Sparkly clean drive-train! Woo!

In appartment-vs-house news, I finally finished chipping the old paint off of the bedroom register cover, sprayed it white, and reinstalled it. It only took me a year, and now I fix it right before I move (I've my eye on that deposit). I suppose living in my folks' project for years has made me blind to things like gaping holes in the walls with register covers leaning next to 'em.

Acting kind of like I'm moving even though I'm still waiting for the appraisal...*twitch*

In art, all the dinosaurs are stuck down, and I painted a soccer ball on a squashed partial-sphere, which is ridiculously tricky. Erik read quite a bit to keep me going, and we're now only two or three Points-of-View away from the end of A Game of Thrones. The next book is already borrowed and waiting for us.

I finally pulled out my Trusty Ames Lettering guide.

It is trusty because everyone says "Trust us, you NEED this" not because I've ever actually used it.

For those unfamiliar with the cartoonist's arsenal, the Ames Lettering Guide is a little device made of two pieces of clear plastic dotted with small holes, somewhat more mysterious and difficult to calibrate than stone henge. When used by a master, it allows you to determine the next weekend on the Mayan calendar and your position in degrees north of the equator using only a pencil.

I have no idea how to use this thing.

I turned to my shelf of reference material, and since the rabbit is out and my room-mate isn't, I narrated in pleasing, bunny-friendly tones, thusly:

"Let's check Encyclopedia of Cartooning Techniques, bunny! Contents, L, Lettering... Encyclopedia of Cartooning Techniques says that the Ames Lettering Guide is immensely helpful for all hand letterers and other practitioners of the occult. It doesn't say how. Maybe Eisner can help us! Eisner can always help! No, Eisner is only talking about meaningful stuff, not how-to. I know, Bunny! Mr. Scott [McCloud]! We love Mr. Scott! Oh...it's not here. Neither is the other one. Does Erik STILL have ALL of Mr. Scott? Poo.

Oh, you have. Under my desk, again. I love you too."

westrider came down yesterday, and he brought me the bestest present ever, a light-box! I was rendered non-verbal and did a little glee-dance. It made me want to comic, but it's been so long I decided to re-do an old Second Thoughts rather than start something new, just to work on rusty skills.

This evening, Otter's Holt played the last of our two charity gigs for the SPSCC foundation. I was a tad concerned, since we haven't practiced recently, but we did a great job -- some mistakes from both Gerald and I (mostly me), but nothing we couldn't play right past with no one the wiser. Towards the end I did my little educational thing, which is a brief run-down of all the tune styles we play, with examples. The last SPSCC auction dinner was the first time we'd done it, which makes this the third or fourth, and I'm getting clearer and more organized. I also picked tunes that were representative of their styles in advance, which helps. I hope it interested people -- it seemed to, and I really enjoy doing it.

The coolest part of the educational-bit was when I went into Reel Saint Antoine. I started with the podorhythmie, that is, playing the feet, and then started fiddling in time. Hooray for totally unpracticed firsts in front of an audience! Usually I have enough trouble starting my feet second. Perhaps the constant refilling of my wine glass had something to do with it. I've only been able to play and do Quebecois footwork at the same time for a few months now, and it still comes and goes, but I LOVE it, because it's something I never thought I'd get.

The capping oddity on a fun evening was that two of the guests were the parents of a high school friend. We hadn't been close and I'd had no idea what they looked like, but high schools came up in conversation and they asked if I knew her.

"Anna? Yeah, she was a friend! I last saw her at Kat(e)'s wedding! Um...I think I've been to your house!"

It's official. I'd gone too long without making art. Painting today felt soooo good.

Now I'm printing out the 'sketches' for the twins' DINOSAUR! paintings/collages.

I think I might have to learn something from fenmere and set myself a ten or 15 minute drawing per day -- at least per weekend day, of which I have three. My art hasn't advanced much, and it's really only from lack of practice.

I usually try and be fairly energy conscious around the house -- turn of lights when I'm not in the room, that sort of thing. But that's not always a viable option, for instance when I'm prepping panels for paintings and I need the gesso to dry in my cold dank basement. Everyone knows paint won't dry quickly without light. This is because it's afraid of the dark. If there isn't a light on, it wets itself.

I've started adding some of my musician sketches to Skellington Art.

It's a fairly slow process, since I have to dig through sketchbooks to find sketches, scan them, and then edit them for web. There are about nine sketchbooks, and given that many of them are light graphite, a considerable amount of re-scanning involved. Oh, and I don't have a scanner.

There IS an RSS feed for SkellingtonArt.com! You can choose to see news, new art, or both. I think I'd need a paid account to make a feed people could follow on LJ, though.

Does anyone know whether feeds made by a paid account last indefinitely? I could buy a month worth of paid LJ use, set it up, then cancel, if the feed was still there.