Photoshop, wacom grahire tabet, and a lot of tears. 

I had to share this because I’ve drawn peeps before, I saw this on CuteOverload.com-

kw: moleskine, sketchbook 

Sunday night we went to Denny’s (again) for a late-night dinner.  I drew this while looking at the sugar holder (rather than while looking at the photo) but I almost always at least take a photo in case the subject disappears.  I mean, you never know, right?  One time M. and I were at a Chinese Buffet and he cracked open his fortune cookie and AS it hit the plate, a server came by and swooped the plate away SO FAST.  He never even got to reach for the forture, let alone read it.  So, I took a pic, because you never know when the server will come by and replace the sugar holder w/ one that is more full or something, thus changing the drawing subject.

Drawn in my moleskine.  I hope/plan to go  back and color it w/ colored pencil.

kw: moleskine artwork drawing sketch sketchbook 

My flat tire.  While going to the vet to pick up my Pug, I got a flat.  While waiting for AAA, I took photos and drew in my moleskine.

EDITED TO ADD: Check out this blog post to see what was found inside the tire!  The guys at Tire Choice put it up on their "Wall Of Fame"!  LOL   

kw:  moleskine, sketchbook, sketch, drawing, artwork, flat tire.

Ok, well I finished one of the many things I am working on. It’s a drawing of my Paul Frank monkey watch that I did using ArtRage2 on my Wacom Graphire drawing tablet.  This for Everyday Matters challenge #8; "Draw your watch or other piece of jewelry".  Actually, I did most of this drawing using ArtRage2 on my tablet laptop with the touchscreen (Fujitsu P1510) so that it was like virtual drawing, and then finished it off on the Wacom tablet connected to my main computer.

EDITED TO ADD: I wanted to say THANKS SO MUCH to all of you who comment here on my blog, it really gives me a lift and inspiration!  Hugs to you all!   

I hate to write a post w/ no artwork, but I wanted to say I have some stuff in the works and I’m psyched.  I drew an illustration today that I am proud of, and just have to finish coloring it on the computer.  I don’t know why but I’m really pleased with it.  I also have to finish my watch sketch that I am doing in Art Rage.  Then today I took my dog to the vet to get sedated and have his ears cleaned.  Not only do I have fantastic scope photographs of his inner ear to use on a journal page, but I also got a flat tire on the way to pick him up.  While waiting for AAA to come and assist me, I drew my flat tire and just want to finish the coloring before posting it online.

So I’m drawing!  Images coming soon.   

I picked up a boat load of Sharpie and Bic markers.  I wanted to do a moleskine journal page where I filled every square inch w/ color.  I did this in Sharpie Markers and colored pencil.

Photo of moleskine:

Scan: 

kw: moleskine artwork drawing sketch sketchbook marker sharpie colored pencil

This is for Illustration Friday.  Topic = "Total".  I went with "total eclipse".  I did this on the computer using ArtRage2 and my new Wacom Graphire 6×8 tablet.  Illustration Friday link viewer for current topic, here.   Illustration Friday archive of topics, here.

kw: illustration friday, wacom graphire 6×8, 6 x 8, art rate, artrage artrage2. 

I wanted to do another Peep drawing in my Moleskine.  This time a single peep that I spent more time on.  It’s pencil, colored pencil, and white pastel.  It’s hard to get different values when the peep itself, even w/ shadows, isn’t really very varied.  I’m also going to share some fun PEEP LINKS below.

Photo of Moleskine:

Scan:

What is a Peep?  Basically extruded marshmallow in the vague shape of a chick, covered in colored sugar.  There are other shapes (like bunnies) and many colors. 

Official site: MarshmallowPeeps.com

Here are some of my favorite pictures taken by other people of peeps… some artistic, some funny:

..  .. ..  ..  ..

It’s fun to go to flickr.com and look at all photos tagged "peeps": flickr.com/photos/tags/peeps 

A couple years ago, we decided it’d be fun to grill a Peep.  Here are photos from that day/experiment.  You can start at the first photo and see the progression of the Peep sample. 

kw: peep, peeps, marshmallow peeps, moleskine, sketch, drawing, sketchbook, colored pencil, pencil. 

Peeps make me smile.

kw: sketch, sketchbook, moleskine, pepps, drawing, pencil 

I was inspired by this photo WHICH IS NOT MINE but I admire it a lot:
www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=313031360&size=s
… and so I painted this in ArtRage: 

I still have a lot to learn, but this was fun doing.

EDITED TO ADD: Now that I look at it more zoomed-out, I see that my brain really likes symmetry!  The big cloud is orbited almost perfectly by smaller clouds in a circle.  It’s amazing what my brain does when I’m not paying attention! 

kw: art rage, artrage, artrage2, usb tablet, art tablet, drawing tablet, computer tablet, paint, painting. 

I have been playing w/ ArtRage2 Free and just tonight decided to buy the full version so I can have all the toys.  ArtRage is SO fun and I have a bit of a learning curve to make my computer drawings look as good (good?) as my analog (paper and pencil) drawings.  But it’s fun.  VERY fun. 

I’ve decided that the paper in the "Black And White Patterned Sketchbook" is WAAAaaaay too thin for drawing (or writing!).  My pencil poked straight through when writing my phone # on the first page and drawing on the paper was like drawing on a napkin.  Don’t think I’ll be using this one much!  My favorite is still my Moleskine.  But anyway, I did a little journal entry / sketch.  I’ve been thinking "I want to draw this one church" and then tonight found a photo of yet a second local church that I’d like to draw.  I want to draw these churches because they are weird.

flickr.com/photos/laserone/420865463/ 

I’m going to re-draw this on some better paper.  Oh, by the way I am working on EDM #8 "Draw a Watch", I am doing in ArtRage2 on my tiny tablet laptop.  It’s not done yet tho’.   

The Moleskine is my favorite sketchbook.  But  because I wanted to try out some different types of paper, I picked up a few other sketchooks from Barnes and Noble, ones w/ dark and/or textured paper.  On this blog, each post has a category.  To keep things organized, and mainly for my own reference, I’ll create a new category for each sketchbook.  (If I end up w/ a million different sketchbooks in progress then I will have to change the system.)

The Pink leaf sketchbook has really rough paper.  The "B&W patterned" sketchbook has tan, rough paper, and the "Leafy Bamboo" sketchbook has rough paper.  So I guess I’ll create these categories for when I draw in these sketchbooks. 

Here’s one from the archives.  1998.  A drawing exercise for drawing class. 

Edited to add: By the way, is this photo too big?  I have a large monitor so I may be posting images that look okay to me but are too large for people with smaller screens.  Leave a comment or contact me (info on sidebar) if you think I should post smaller images.  Thanks!   

Found another neat website, these people make illustrations based on children’s monster drawings:
 

http://drawergeeks.com/Kid_Creatures/Kid_Creatures.html 

Wow this is really neat, it’s a movie, a drawing from start to finish of a "woman from inside out":

www.pelourinho.com/movies/c003702/ 

I drew this last night in a different sketchbook than my moleskine.  It’s one of the ones I got at Barnes and Noble the other day.  It has rough, natural-looking paper in it.  It’s from the cover of a book I am reading called "The Caliph’s House".

Don’t blink.

M. and I were walking the dogs tonight and noticed a lot of people milling around two streets over, and cop cars. We talked to a neighbor and it turns out a man who was in his early 40’s died, and they think he took his own life.  It’s sad. The truth is we may never know how he really died.

Don’t get so caught up in work that one day you realize you have no memories. One day you may be hit by a bus, or one day your better half may be hit by a bus and then you’ll be alone, wondering why you didn’t say “I love you” more or spend more time taking walks together. Sad. And just tonight I was at dinner and found myself w/ tears running down my face because a song that was playing in the restaurant was one that “the band” used to play when my brother and I would drive down to the beach to watch them play. Now he’s dead, in his 40’s, of cancer. Life is short. Don’t blink.

This is just a quick-sketch I did while the image was still in my head.  It’s quick and childish-looking.  But I just wanted to sketch it out while it was fresh in my head. 

For those who use Picasa or need space to host photos of their art, I saw this article online and thought maybe you’d be interested:

"Major Update for Picasa Web Albums
Today Picasa Web Albums has the most important update since its
launch, in June 2006. Basically, it adds the most requested features
and even some obscure features that will make you very happy. First,
the free version of Picasa Web gets 1 GB of storage…"
googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/03/major…

I did a sketch for Illustration Friday’s "Hide" theme.  I have a photo of this somewhere in my photo trunk.  I dind’t feel like looking for it, so I did this sketch from memory.  My cat Sasha had crawled into a Record Bar bag, it’s a flat paper bag so when she got inside it the bag took this odd shape and ALL you could see of her was her eye!  It’s such a cute photo if I can ever find it.  I took it w/ a film SLR and if I remember right, the only thing in focus in the photo was her eye, very cool.    I did this in my Moleskine.

kw: moleskine artwork drawing sketch sketchbook illustration friday 

When I am trying to get a scan of my artwork just right, I notice that the richness of the color, the contrast/brightness, etc. depends on what angle I have my laptop screen at.  I’ve been working with photos in photoshop for YEARS and have not pondered this question much.  I HAVE thought about it, but there just seemed to be a natural place for the screen to be.  But for some reason w/ the drawings it’s bothering me a lot more.  I suppose this is also an issue with regular flat-panel monitors.  And also crt monitors that are set to real bright or real dark.  Heh, back around 2000, while looking at my online photos from a computer that was not at home, I noticed that all my photos online were over-brightened.  Turns out I forgot that my CRT monitor at home was turned way down, the brightness, so I had been overbrightening my photos to compensate for that and not realizing it. 

So anyway, I don’t know why, but now that I’m dealing w/ scanned artwork, it seems that the image changes more when you move the angle of the screen just a little, whereas it’s not that drastic w/ photos.

Here’s an experiment I did- I took photos of the screen as I changed the angle of the screen and nothing else:

(that’s my trying my hand at coloring a sketch in photoshop w/ my new Wacom tablet, LOL, terrible) 

Small:   http://myotherstuff.net/pookieart/comparisonsm.jpg 

Large:   http://myotherstuff.net/pookieart/comparison.jpg 

I know you can get monitor calibration spiders and such, but I am have spent too much money on stuff lately and am just not going to go there right now. 

Idunno.  It just seems that with scanned artwork, there is more of a visible change with a small angle change in the screen.  One of my drawings will need just a little tweak of brightness and I don’t know whether to adjust it in photoshop or move my screen.

I know, everyone sees different things because of monitor types, monitor settings, monitor calibration, system (macs see color differently than PCs!) **, and more.  I need to just go to bed, LOL. 

** = "found the link!" 

I’m really happy with this.  I finally got away from coloring my drawings in so hard, I’d just press SO HARD and then there’d be no definition, no depth, no vasriations in "value".  I didn’t have anything intereting in my kitchen so I found this jar online and changed it a bit.

For some reason the scan looks "dirty" to me, like my drawing is messy.  Maybe it is.  I just look at it in my sketchbook and feel very pleased with it  But the scan… idunno.  I tried taking a photo of it but unless the camera is perfectly centered and angled perfectly it looks like I drew it askew.

Generally I like to draw in my moleskine.  Moleskines are convenient, they go anywhere.  I got a Mead Academie sketchbook last week or so which has slightly textured paper.  I draw in that sometimes.  Today I picked up a couple drawing/writing journals at Barnes and Noble that have unique paper; textured, colored.  One of them I swear smells like a barn (in a good way), like Hay or Wool.  It actually smells just like my Wool Sweater that I bought while in Ireland.  Like a barn.  MMMMmm.  Yummy.  But I won’t draw in it until I finish the drawing I started last night. 

kw: sketchbook, paper, sketching paper, drawing paper, moleskine, moleskines, journal, diary 

I got this really great Pencil Wrap (or "pencil roll") from Cheap Jones Art Stuff.  It’s made by Derwent.  It holds 30 pencils plus one double-wide slot for an eraser or something.  I just love it.

kw: pencil case, pencil wrap, pencil roll, derwent, cheap jones art stuff. 

I’m trying to draw people more.  I did this at Bob Evans the other day.  I’m not sure it looks… complete… finished.  But I’m happy with it.  I think.

kw: moleskine artwork drawing sketch sketchbook 
 

I had a really good idea today, check it out!

I had a revelation: Install ArtRage2 on my tiny TABLET laptop ! It’s such a surreal and dreamy drawing experience! Virtual painting! Laptop: Fujitsu P1510… www.FujitsuPc.com  

EDITED TO ADD: ..::VIDEO::.. 

Kate on the EDM board reminded me of this neat website at The British Library: 

This is very cool-

Leonardo Da Vinci notebook at the British Library. You can even "Turn The Pages" of the book, zoom in on the images and writing.
bl.uk/onlinegallery/highlights/tour/leonardo.html

To turn the pages of this book, check out these links:

Standard Bandwidth:
click here

Broadband:
click here

I’m a Moleskine fan and user (those little black notebooks) and this reminds me of a Moleskine. I think Moleskine users would get a kick out of this.

kw: leonardo, leonardo’s notebook, da vinci, davinci, moleskine, turn the pages,  the british library.

Another cool Moleskine Hack:

"The icPod, A hundred of index cards in your pocket. A customized Moleskine Memo Pockets suit for index cards mobile box."

flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/sets/72157594189436372/ 

and also

flickr.com/photos/16932577@N00/sets/72157594532133094/