Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Made Art!

This has been an eventful week. The storm knocked our power out from a little after 10pm to nearly 3am, and I don't handle power outages very well. I stress out because I don't like being cut off from my friends. That's the Millennial in me, I suppose. But yeah, the whole day was pretty wretched, and yesterday had me very anxious about the power because the wind was still high.

And yet, I still managed to do art! I was given a few prompts (Vegetable twice, Animal once) and I filled them!

"Roots"; ink sketch; 2023 [VEGETABLE]

"Bunnable 0.1" pencil sketch; 2023 [ANIMAL]

"Bunnable 1.0"; pencil & ink sketch; 2023 [ANIMAL]

"Bunnable 2.0"; digital art; 2023 [ANIMAL, VEGETABLE]

As you can see, I kind of got stuck on the bunnies this week lol! I love rabbits. Lop-eared rabbits are my favorites, and little loppy buns with pink noses are the best.

I used Krita to trace Bunnable 1.0, which I had scanned (which was a pain, the scanner did *not* want to work) and then I filled it in with color. Honestly, I think I've just been using the wrong brushes to trace in the past. I used a watercolor brush this time and I think it turned out well! I based the clovers all over the bun on a tablecloth my mother has, and I had a lot of fun working on it.

If you'd like to see me work on something, feel free to shoot me a coffee over on Ko-Fi and tell me what category you'd like (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Location, Dedbert, Geometric, or Word) and I'll work on that category! Sometimes, if I'm given one category and I can see how it would cross over with another, I'll combine it like I did with the Animal/Vegetable crossover for Bunnable 2.0!

As for next week's Guaranteed Category, we're looking at LOCATION, so I'll be doing at least one piece of art based on a location next week. What location will it be? Well, we'll just have to find out next week, won't we?

For now, I'm going to continue my new trend of getting ready for bed amazingly early and not falling asleep til about 2AM.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

PS:

"Lights Out, Dedbert"; Pencil Sketch; 2023 [DEDBERT]

There is text on the page I drew this on in my sketchbook. That writing reads:

"BC of course the power went out at 10PM on a Tuesday... 3/14/2023)"

At the bottom of the page, I scribbled:

"And right in the middle of work!!!"

Thursday Art Walk 326

In Which I Do The Work

In my continued quest to learn more about digital art, I've begun a larger-scale painting! This was a friendly request I received - a scene from my yard:

"Chippy" base sketch and blocked-in colors; digital art; 2020

It's not, I'll admit, even quite approximating what I want it to look like, but I think I can get there! The canvas, by the way, is HUGE - possibly 20" x 20". Usually I'm working on, at max 800 pixels square.

Colorstudy 3; digital, 2020

Now the second piece I started on a 50"x50" canvas, but it turned out I needed way less than that. Think maybe 10 x 24...

Regardless, I like the peaceful green and purple tones to this semi-grayscale painting :)

My final thoughts on today: it was hot outside. Like, 80℉+ (26.7℃+), slightly more humid than I like, so it was banaaaaaaanas. I could barely concentrate, and I just now realized that all I've eaten today were a handful of animal crackers and a couple of umaibo snacks... thank goodness dinner is coming up soon lol.

That'll about do it for me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 323: Learning To Draw

In Which I Have Been Practicing

So, I was given an XP-Pen Star G430S for my birthday by my incredible partner (who also got me a yarn ball winder and a mug with our favorite bunny Tato on it but we're talking art today lol). I've been experimenting with it, and I'll be sharing my progress as I learn how to use the Paint.net program. I've never used a stylus-based drawing tablet before this year, and my exposure to digital art-making was almost exclusively MS Paint until recently. This has made for an... interesting learning curve.

I know how to draw. I know how to paint. I know how to do both of these things pretty okay. But I only really know how to do them in the analog pen-or-brush-to-paper world. Drawing with a touchpad, which is how all of my previous digital art was produced, is very awkward, but fairly intuitive and fairly easy for me to do. Using a stylus and tablet is a whole different animal from either pure analog or pure digital.

See, if I'm drawing with a pen or a paintbrush at my kitchen table, I'm watching the pen as much as the work, but... that's not the case with the Star G430S. You watch the computer screen, not the pen. The work is not below you but before you, and there is a definite difference in the way you control a writing implement you're looking at than one you're using on a screen separate from the point of contact. It takes a lot of getting use to.

Add to that the fact that I barely understand the program I'm using and you end up with some frustration.

But there's also the joy of discovery! I'm learning something new every single time I play with the tablet, and today I made a multiple-layered, gradient-backed drawing that, while incredibly childish, is still cute and still makes me happy!

"Bunbun" digital art; 2020

Holy cow, guys! I made that!

It... kinda looks like a NeoPet.

Were the NeoPets originally designed in Paint.net?!

But yeah, I'm pretty happy with how that turned out (though the gradient and flowers are a bit low, and Bunbun looks like he's levitating...)!

Would you believe I did all that while my arms felt like they were going to fall off? Because that's how they feel. I think I have a touch of inflammation in my tendons right now because while typing doesn't hurt, gripping and holding and pushing do. The pain is in my thumbs running down to my elbows, far worse on the right (dominant hand) than the left, and it feels like the time I hyperextended my elbow but much calmer. Like my body is warning me.

I guess this means I cannot play Breath of the Wild today :(

Part of the discomfort could be that I failed to stretch before I moved a large, heavy tent outside the other day, then got myself sunburned because I'm stubborn, but it could also be that I've been making test images every day for up to three hours a day using the tablet. Even with regular art, I try to take a day off between sketches because I developed repetitive motion soreness in my college art classes.

All in all, though, the tablet is a dream come true, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. When I'm not drawing with it, I've been using it like a mouse, because you can actually use it as an input device! I love that! I've been using it to play PokefarmQ and scroll through Facebook. It helps me figure out the sensitivity, the maneuverability, and the right way to hold the stylus.

What a blast this has been so far! I'm looking forward to using this inexpensive tablet literally to death.

How about you folks - are you trying anything out this week? Learning a new skill? A new craft? Trying out sketching or something? Let me know!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 321: Hippity Hoppity I Can't Use Photoshoppity

In Which I'm Getting Better at Paint.net!

Three things:

1. I'm 31 now. I am going to try much harder this year. At everything.
2. That includes trying to figure out how to do shading in my free paint program on my computer
3. I really, really liked the Bunnicula series as a kid. What's not to love? It's a book series supposedly written by a fairly silly dog about a vampire rabbit and a theatrical cat and a sweet numpty of a Dachshund!

So now you know what I started painting today:

Bunnicula 1, digital; 2020

As you can see, I'm still not 100% confident with the use of transparencies and layers, and I haven't even begun to cover backgrounds. I'll work more on this piece in the future, I think. It's based, of course, on one of the millions of stock photos of "smol bunny" in Google, but I hope I've changed it up enough that while the pose is similar, it's its own thing.

I'm actually kinda okay with the gray shading around the eye, and I'm looking forward to brushing in the floof and highlighting the ears so you can tell where the ear starts and stops. I'll be adding more shading to the inner ear, too.

I'm really happy with that eye, though. That's a really good eye, in my opinion.

I really can't use Photoshop, though, guys. I can't afford it, first of all, and secondly, it's... super complicated to me. I don't understand 99% of the tools available, and, to be honest, it just feels like a gross cash-grab from Adobe. So no Photoshop or Lightroom for me. No thanks. I'll find free alternatives and do my best to master them.

So expect a lot of progress shots from me learning digital this year.

I'm about to go scramble an egg into some leftover Thai food from dinner last night, so I'll just leave you with this:

Whatever art you make is awesome.

Yes, even crayon doodles.

Yes, even potato faces.

Yes, even the doodled genitals in the margins of your notes (but make sure those don't end up with your teacher or boss).

Yes, even fingerpaints or random Play-Doh sculptures.

Yes, even glued-together popsicle sticks.

Your art is great and valid and I love it.

Make your weird poured-paint organs and bones.

Make your ugly monster dolls.

Make your hyper-realistic insect paintings.

Make your super-simplistic line sketches of plants.

Splash some color on some canvas or paper.

Go monochrome.

Just...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Thursday Art Walk 313

In Which There Is A New Friend

So, for a while now, I have been bringing you pictures of my boy, Dedbert (seen at the top of basically every blog for a while now), but he's usually by himself. I don't want you to get the wrong idea, though. He's not a lonely birb. He has friends.

"Friendship"; ballpoint pen on sketch pad; 2020

I plan on coloring this in later, and if I can get my drawing pad working, I'd love to start doing digital art of this pair.

... it's also now occurring to me that I have never asked Dedbert his friend's name. This isn't the only bunny he's friends with, either - he's got a small brown and white adoptive brother named Benjamin, after all. (I've had BB since I was very, very young, almost as long as Patches, the plaid-pawed bear, and Mr. Bear, the white bear with the red bowtie).

I think I may start making pictures of all of Dedbert's friends and family, actually :)

That might be a lot of fun.

Anyway, it's pretty crummy out today - cloudy, drizzly, not that warm. Thankfully, this drizzle should stop soon, but it's still going to be hovering just above freezing (and it will feel colder) tonight. Thank goodness for gloves and hats and scarves.

I'm also thankful to everyone who pops in to check out what I'm doing, lately. I see you in my analytics, and even though you're all quite quiet, it's good to know you're swinging by. Dedbert and I are grateful.

I think that'll about do it for me, today.

I'm going to go check out how my Dedbert's siblings are doing, since most of them moved into the closet to hoard the VHS tapes...

Enjoy Something!
FC