I got in some work on it this morning and got the background done, a neat border created, the color scheme, floor, baseboard and wall color. Yay and good! She likes it.
The next, and one of the toughest things, was creating a three dimensional object on a transparent layer -- the bed she's in. The blog is "Mamasick" and the author is a wonderful, warm funny woman with chronic illness, a very young son and a great way of writing about her daily life. Think Erma Bombeck with hospitals and too many doctors involved?
As usual when leaping into digital art, I wound up learning a new Gimp trick and getting pretty good at it by repetition. Straight lines at any angle are now a LOT easier and I did successfully get a brass headboard and footboard onto that cool cartoon bed.
Next it's putting the lady in the bed. I might leave that till tomorrow since I'm starting to feel a bit wiped out and just spent two hours doing a simple drawing that if I was doing it by hand would've taken me all of ten minutes with Pitt pens. Ah, the joy of working with a weird new nonintuitive medium.
I may want to get a Wacom tablet if I'm going to do this often, because it'd help to have a drawing instrument that I could hold in my fingers rather than my fist. lol
But it's coming along. I'm going to keep plugging away at it till it's done. The weather bounced me up and down today. Down right after I did my email, then up again after the kids went to bed and I did some random time-distorted posting on forums. Time distort -- a three paragraph post mysteriously eats three hours and I deleted it several times in sudden insecurity of its readability, then wrote pretty much the same thing, deleted, wrote, etc. I did that with a lot of the lines on the bed too.
But that part's done and I think drawing people is going to be easier than geometric objects. It always has been in other mediums.
- Location:Lawrence, KS
- Mood:
accomplished
Proud member of the Oil Pastel Society
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robertsloan2- Robert A. Sloan, author of Raven Dance
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- (Anonymous) : People Drawing [+1]
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Comments
Irregular shapes that can be done freehand aren't as bad because I can zoom in on it once the basic size is blocked in, say by an oval.
Since I sorta left digital art by the wayside, now my Waqcon is comfortably used as a glorified mouse pad. I use the stylus for fine work on photo-editing, but don't draw much with it anymore.
(I suppose I really ought to have just practised more with it and gotten used to the differences, but at the time, I grew frustrated with things easily, and haven't come back around to giving drawing on it another shot. All in good time. provided it doesn't die on me any time soon. *knocks on wood*
Zooming on scans is something I'm used to anyway, it's much physically easier than getting up and walking away from the art for me.
This is a flashier version of the tablet that I have right now, though in looking at it, I think they've increased the drawing surface in more recent redesigns. Anyway, that square in the centre? That's your drawing surface, and that's what represents your whole computer screen. Having the image zoomed while you're actually drawing would probably help a lot with the size problem, come to think of it.
I didn't realize that they had the new Cintiq versions out, which actually have an LCD screen so you see what you're drawing right on the surface of the pad. Now that might be something I'd be interested in, since it would clear up the old problem I had in a heartbeat! (Shame the cheapest one's almost $1000, though. :/)
Also in my latest pastels I'm shifting from working in detail by area to blocking things in roughly and then layering and refining, doing the details last. I used to use details to size and proportion and scale elements. Now instead I'm blocking in rough and then detailing, so working on the full screen area being small would probably help with that.
The only thing that'd be annoying would be that I like having several applications open in small windows, working on art while browsers and journal et al are open. If that area is always the full screen and not the image area of the art, it could force me to use full screen windows for the application and be very annoying since I never layer full screen windows. I like seeing corners and bits of all the windows that are open.
BOY did that sound familiar! I thought I was the only one who did that ;)
I'm looking forward to seeing what you've accomplished with the digital art, especially drawing people.
Annie
I rested up today, but today was also a major mental resting up. I unwound, deep and real. I have been driving myself into flares and if I take my time and do these things well, they will come out LOTS better for it than trying to do everything all at once.
Also, Lauren may be really happy about my pastels class because the things I'm learning in it WILL apply to Cat/Wombat. :)