All I Want for Xmas --

My husband is a mean ol' man. I adore him. And I'd rather draw him a thousand thousand times than keep his photo in my wallet. He's a patient model, and very game for anything.

And did I mention he's a mean ol' man?

He came home from work on the 23rd with a bag from Best Buy which he put under the tree, after informing me that it was for me. I was a little surprised, simply because earlier in the month he'd asked me what I wanted for Xmas, and I told him. As far as I know, downloadable audiobooks don't come in Best Buy bags. I looked askance at the package.

"What is it?" I asked.

He smiled at me brightly. "It's a present!" he replied in a chipper tone designed solely to annoy.

No matter how much wheedling, whining, whinging, asking, prodding, needling, pouting or otherwise making a pest of myself, he remained stalwart and refused to answer my question.

Though he did offer to let me peek. But really, where's the fun in that?

So, I waited (im)patiently, until the husband came home from Midnight Mass, at which time I was permitted to (finally!) open up my gift, which was way cooler than what I got him.

The marvelous bastard got me a Wacom Intuos 4.

Dear Barnes and Noble:

I understand that when I place an order and check on the free shipping thingy that you'll hang on to my order until it's complete.  It's a fact of mail order that I know well.  I can be patient and accept this.  But why must you hold my entire order until the day my pre-order comes in, and then proceed to ship the pre-order separately from the rest of the in-stock items?  You're very silly. 

So far, I have received Donato's very pretty picture book, Stephanie Law's gorgeous instructional book and Jim Butcher's latest oeuvre.  They all arrived yesterday in great condition.  But really, my time could have been better spent in poring over them lovingly these past three weeks while I eagerly await Jim Gurney's Color and Light.

I think it very shameless that you should tease and taunt a poor bibliovore like me.

Yours sincerely,

Pat

Improvement

Just to show how far I've come since May of '09:

(stock courtesy mizzd-stock)

When I did this piece, it was the best thing I'd done to date digitally.  This was done in OpenCanvas 1.1 with a graphics tablet.  I didn't know how to floodfill the canvas in OC, so in order to introduce tone to the canvas I had to ruddy well paint it in.  I did this in a single layer, in one hour.  Even then I was aware that the likeness simply wasn't there, but I was quite happy with it.  It looked sorta-kinda-almost realistic.  Yay me.

Recently I discovered OC's ability to create event files of the paintings one creates in it, so I went back through and watched myself paint.  When I came to this piece though, I was horrified by how bad the initial drawing was.  Was I --?  Did I --?  Eek.

I'd forgotten how that drawing looked since it had gotten painted over in the process.  Compare to the drawing of my recent self-portrait:

Granted, painting the self-portrait took several hours, and as a result, it's a great deal more polished -- but my drawing technique's improved quite a bit. Even now, with my hour-long (not quite) daily sessions of painting, my drawings have more information; are less . . . slapdash.

Thank you, Evil Professor Rex.

(note to self:  must draw a portrait of Evil Professor Rex as the supervillain he is.)

Fall Self Portrait, Complete

After several hours with the GIMP  I've finally finished my self-portrait. It took more than four hours, but less than six, I think, for the color stage. So, all in all, I think it might have taken somewhere between seven and ten hours. Not all at once -- there's a lot of getting up and walking away involved.

Of course, now that I've slaved over it, I suddenly feel the desire to become an abstract expressionist.

Self Portrait, Fall 2010

Self-portrait, about three to four hours on OpenCanvas 1.1 and a Wacom tablet. Digitally painting a grisaille with the intention of digitally glazing later. I did this looking in a mirror instead of working from a photo. The process was a great deal less grueling than working with oils, but I don't think I could have done it without that prior traditional experience. Thank you, Evil Professor Rex, for your strict instruction and insistence on drawing our self-portraits for homework.

I'm not entirely comfortable letting an image of myself float about in the ether, which I guess means that I did a passable job on likeness.  I was just disappointed that I didn't look more like Tia Carrere.

Life Drawing II

Quick post to show off a little of what I've been up to. Warning -- nudity abounds!




Pencil and white chalk on brown paper, from life.

I later scanned this in and futzed with it to make a line drawing that I could transfer onto my silverpoint surface.

Oh, and the writing on the back -- "This space intentionally left blank" -- was for the prof's benefit, as he was reminding us to consider the backgrounds of our compositions.

It's a wonder I haven't been slapped with an F for life!

The actual silverpoint piece isn't finished, but I'll try to get a progress shot posted soon.  Pinkyswear.

Summer School

I'm currently in Life Drawing II this summer. On a lot of levels, I'm rather surprised at how unstressful it's been. I've been in classes all summer, from Maymester to Summer II, and everything's been so stressful. Interestingly, I'm taking two classes during Summer II, and my life-drawing class, four hours a day, four days a week, is so. Incredibly. Unstressful. Dare I say, nigh relaxing.

Evil Professor Rex is making the drawing II students go the extra mile, experiment with materials, and so on, so this week and next week, I'm working in silverpoint. It's something I've been wanting to do for quite awhile, so I'm incredibly happy to have the opportunity to work in this medium. On prepared paper. Utilizing rabbitskin glue. Which stinks. But hey, pretty, pretty surface to draw on. I kinda don't want to draw on anything else now.

I'll post what I've done when I have a bit more *snort* time.

Reappearing on the Face of the Planet

School sucked out my soul, chewed it up, and spit out the gristle. So now I have gristle for a soul.

Year in recap: school, school, school, more school, life drawing, school, school, and a bit more school, life painting, school, school, schule, more life drawing and school.

And let's not forget the school.

Also, in a great abuse of irony, I promise to post more art here in my copious free time.

I see that my last post talked about the 9X12 show -- I missed last year's show, but I have plenty of time to consider this year's show. Of course, I have nothing that will fit neatly into a 9X12 envelope, but that's what copious free time is for. Or so I'm told.

I wonder if the ancient Greeks had myths about free time, copious or un.