Wow, I made it.

Still alive after the past couple weeks. The amazing thing is, in logging my hours, I learned that the whole project took about 27-30 hours total. It just felt a lot longer, what with paid work sneaking in now and then.

I'm prepping a post about the how (including the final result) in a bit. But in the meantime, here's a little nugget of fun I put together on my first day off since I started this whole endeavor. See you soon!

Building a Cathedral to show a ruin

This past few days I've been relearning how to draw.

Not paint, but draw.

Most digital painting is really just drawing. Sure, you have color, tones, you can 'mix' colors and apply 'wet paint' etc, but in the end you are drawing. There are some guys out there who realize this, like Justin Gerard here, and begin a piece of work by painting the undertones and then digitizing the rest. And you know what, it still looks like a painting!

This past few days... yeah, I told you already. I'm loopy. I'm drawing EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL. for me to later obliterate it for that 'naturalistic painting' effect. Eventually I'll get to that second step without the first step, but it's important to note that even Picasso had to draw photorealistically before he could know which corners to cut. I'm re-learning where the corners are this week.

Oak trees and chrome plating were invented to punish illustrators, I'm almost sure of it. No amount of photoshop brushes and layer effects will effectively fake a realistic oak trunk. Leaves, maybe. But not the trunk and branches. Same goes for chrome; try as you like, there is no function key for effective reflective surfaces. And I have both in my latest painting.

Anyhow, I'm loopy from the radiation coming out of my monitors, and all the staring. There WILL be a resolution, I assure you. The hard part is over, now is time for details, which is the bestest most funnest part of any painting, and I speak for the entirety of painterdom when I say that. Excepting the words that don't exist.

Sigh... Can you imagine all this WITH linseed oil and turpentine?

Crunch week!

This past week has been spent trying to finish an illustration to send to the Spectrum annual call for entries. Thus far I've been wrestling with moss, ferns, slacks, raincoats, rigid poses and brushes brushes brushes. It's amazing what you can learn when your back is against the wall.

At some point I'm going to have to post some progress shots, but honestly I'm too slammed to do it right now. I will have a full accounting of the whole horrid experience! ;-)

The Lady or the Tiger, publication version

Researching online mags for story submissions, the rule seems to be that if you have an epub available for not-free, you can still submit to them for reprint status. As far as original work is concerned, if the story is available, anywhere, for free or pay, then it is published.

Good to know!

The plan now appears to be to send the story to a few online publications (not at the same time, of course) and those stories that fall through the cracks can be made available for free or not-free as an epub on ibookstore or amazon, etc. It's worth the wait to try for publications to buy it, for the exposure (not the money, max for a story seems to be around $350 or thereabouts).

On the art side, today I went to grab some reference shots for the illustration I'm working on (see thumbs below), it was good to see the great outdoors again. More updates soon!

Find your posse

This morning I'm off to a writing group I've been a part of for a few years now (really? Wow, time flies) and we're all starting to move on from what we're doing to do to HOW we're going to deliver it to the world at large. One of us has a novel, one of us has a graphic novel, and I have my collection. For the latter two of us, we're thinking epublishing is the way to go, at least until a large enough following has been built to warrant a printing. Our novelist is on his way (in the other's eyes) to getting his novel noticed by a large publishing house, just have to see how it works for them.

But the thing is, even though there were stretches of several months in between meetings for a bit there, we always tried to produce for each other, to show progress. Like having a workout buddy, it helps to be held accountable to some type of deadline, and nobody does that better than your peers. Go find a writer's group that matches your genre. If you can't find one, start one up. Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist; go gather your posse.

'Enhanced' thumbnails

Today's post is a look at some of the thumbnails shown previously, all grown up. They aren't pencils, per se, but they are rather thumbnails developed within an inch of their lives.

I wanted to see what my favorite little scribbles would bring once I added lighting and a little more thought into the composition. What I found was that while I enjoyed some more than others, sometimes there are roadblocks that don't come into view until after you've done a little development and exploration. A couple of my favorites in the group just fell apart when the light of day (no pun intended) was brought in. This is going to help me immensely when the time comes to put this baby together.

Also, it is kind of fun to look at as a whole, in a storyboard kind of way.

This week I'm all thumbs

In school at SJSU I was required to produce a couple hundred thumbnails for each new piece. Here is 100 give or take, and it took me at least five hours to do. I'm definitely out of shape.

BUT the piece is shaping up nicely. I already have several from here I'm going to want to elaborate on, and ideas from others that will fold nicely into the best ones.

Onward and upward!