drAnn's Art

A New Avatar

I brought my drafting table down to the new place, but haven't set it up yet. 

  

 AVATAR KAT
 

An Example of How I Use my Wacom

I have a Wacom Intuos 3 graphics pad and people who hear I am an artist often think that I use it to draw.

Well, not exactly.  I use it more for playing online computer games than for drawing!

But it's real function in my life is for retouching line art and photos.  Generally when cartooning I start with a soft pencil on newsprint and then transfer the image by hand to white paper where I ink over the pencil.  Next I take a picture of my drawing with a digital camera.  My Canon Powershot has a 1Gb multimedia card that I can insert into my laptop's card reader.  I open the file with Paintshop Pro (the last version before JASC was bought out includes PSP and Animation Shop) and that is when I start using the graphics pad.

Here is an editing sequence showing how I got from the hand drawn cartoon to a drawing I posted previously:

 

A New Avatar

 


Got my shiny new Google Wave invite and had to play! Should be riding the bike instead, huh?

I Finally Found a Planner That Might Work

Life got a little more hectic than usually recently so I have all these lists I make up and they have boxes to check for things like "exercise" and "draw" or "paint."  Sometimes next to the box it says "eat."  Yes, lately I've been so busy that sometimes I forget to eat.

Well, no more, because I've found an online planning/calendar/list-making service that is going to make sure that I get everything done that I need to do and still have time to smell the roses.

It is called GTDagenda and if you want to check it out, here is my link:  Check GTDagenda Out for Free

The lite version is free, but they also have a 30-day money back offer for those who want to hit the ground running.   The problem I have had with planners in the past is that they are sort of rigid, and being an artist I just could not fit my data into their cubby holes.   This one is different.  It is goal-oriented and you establish your basic needs (like ART!) first and then plan around them.  The calendar is integrated and there are lists.  I'm still in the learning curve, but I love it already. 

A Distelfink

James Michener's The Novel is about a writer who is also devoted to art, and especially to the rescue of old Pennsylvania Dutch barn designs.  No doubt it was the impetus for a revival of interest in the "barn  flowers" as the hexagonal signs used for outdoor decoration were sometimes called.    Although a number of fakelore artists of today are busily attributing magical properties to the art of this genre,  hexagonal simply means six-sided, ergo the name "hex signs."  Can you picture a farmer using a pitchfork to help measure out the patterns?   

Speaking of barns, this link has some nice barn photos, including that of a delightful star barn:  Star Barn  

This brings to mind that the barn flowers were also called barn stars.  Well, I could not resist making some fakelore of my own:
I did not have a pitchfork, so I kept the figure six-sided.  That way nobody can say it is not a hex sign :-) 

Art at the Beach

Some creative people stacked these rocks above the pier along Ventura Beach, giving me something fun to photograph:

 
People's desire to "do art" can express itself anywhere.   Ventura is a nickname for San Buenaventura which is the town's real name. 

Cutter Bee Bugs

I drew this yesterday:
 Not a big project, but I had been away from my drawing table for a while and it felt great to get back.  So great, in fact, that I decided to reward myself today by buying some new art supplies.  Double-ended Sharpies were a must, but I also bought a blister pack containing two cute marking tools called Cutter Bee Bugs.  They come in two shades of pink with polka dots and are retractable. 

They may or may not work for the purpose I had in mind, but they rate 10 on the cuteness factor.  Hey, anything to keep me motivated. 

I also bought a couple packets of Zebra's new pocket sized pens with the lanyard ring.  It was a good day. 

Me and My Shadow

For some reason this tree fascinated me:

Its shadow looked lovely on the sandy ground, but I couldn't figure out how to get a good shot of it without me in the picture.  So I went with the flow.

 This was the result: 

We pass that rest area frequently, and I always find something interesting to photograph.  Little did I know that this time it would be me.

The "Andy Warhol" tile bit was done with PaintShop Pro 9, which was the last version of Paintshop released under the JASC name before they sold out to the other guys, and therefore the last one that still included a free copy of their excellent Animator, alas.  I've skipped a few years, but have used Paintshop from its inception, and always considered it high-end in features, despite what used to be a diminutive price.

The picture was taken with a Canon PowerShot SD600.  Canon "elph" has been my camera of choice since one day near the end of the previous century since someone who will remain unnamed here dropped mine in a gallon of water and instead of telling me, left it there until I found it and fished it out three or four hours later.    I left it on a window sill to dry out for three days to dry out and turned it on only to find it still worked perfectly.  This is not something I recommend other people trying.  At one time, the PowerShot was the only full-featured wearable digital camera, but now there are smaller ones that probably work pretty well.  Nevertheless, I'm sticking with Canon.  I wouldn't mind upgrading to 10 megapixel, though.  We saw one at Sam's Club for about $250.  Ahhh, but that would buy two more Aerogardens.  Choices, choices...

It's Too Hot to Draw!

  I love hot weather, but we are used to dry heat.  Our vacation place is humid in July, so unless we crank up the A/C (and then it is too cold to draw!) my arm sticks to the tablet.  Well, I could deal with that, but the computer also starts overheating.  Besides, it is so pretty out.  Guess we'll go out and play instead. 

The Little Green Babies are Keeping me busy

... so I haven't drawn anything for a few days.  But we are getting lots of nice reference photos:
  

The more reference photos, the better!

Some of my cyberpals has Blogger accounts, so I put something up over there to facilitate their finding me here.

This is what I have on Blogger so far:

Janet Ann's Art Blog

And I particularly like the detail from that first photo, the purple pepper plant we grew, which is here:

Purple Pepper Plant