There
is a cruel irony to this
post. I was ready to really
start pounding away at the keyboard and manning the sketchbooks— I
wanted to show you my working process as I started work on several
projects. I even managed to pull this off with a portrait
I had done for my friend. Then…
silence for nearly two months.
What
happened? Well, first
on the list of hobby-crippling events: I moved into a new apartment
with my brother and old
roommate from college. This
happened right at the end of July and carried through into the first
half of August. Needless to
say, there was a good bit of unpacking and cleaning to do; the
previous tenants left us the absolutely lovely
gift of an under-sink cabinet encrusted
in black mold.
Yeah, my brother and roommate did a much better job of cleaning that up. |
In
addition to the woes of moving — nothing ground-breaking there —
I visited my parents a couple of times. While that did not
inherently prevent me from drawing, it did take me away from my
set-up. Actually, I just forgot to bring my clipboard, heh… That
and their scanner has a little story of its own, below.
It looked a bit different from this, but I'll spare you the details. |
The real issue came shortly after I finished the final sketch, below. I was having some major problems regarding my lower digestive-tract. So severe were they, in fact, that I ended up missing three days of work and going on medical leave. Yay! Time away from work that I can spend making art! Right? Unfortunately, given the nature of the illness, I was… precluded… from any of my hobbies. I’ll leave that to you’re imagination. It ended up being chronic, which is also fun.
That
leave lasted about a month — the last half of August, and the first
half of September — which
brings us to now. I
finally got that old drawing uploaded, and I managed to get something
done while I was out. I’ll let you see them, below!
You can find this on my DeviantArt, here. |
I
am a nerd. There is no avoiding that fact, I’m afraid. And, being
the nerd that I am, I joined an online role-playing site.
Essentially, I can play D&D with random strangers without having
to worry about coordinating a sit-down game. My
character is a tribal ranger, and her companion is a large hound. I
drew the dog first, using a mastiff for the pose — I wanted a
monstrous-looking form — and worked in the fur of a bearded collie. A
big point for me was to have the braided fur along his sides. It's a tribal thing. The
style is pretty rough and sketchy, but I think it might be alright
for a graphic novel — provided I can work out the problems with the
cross-hatching.
You can also find this on my DeviantArt, here. |
And
here is my character, herself. I stayed up a little too late working
on this one and am still trying to turn my sleep-cycle around,
heh. I wanted to mix my detailed shading with heavy outlines to make
the drawing a bit more “stylized,” I suppose the word would be.
That’s a topic I’d like to cover some day; I have what you might
call an unpopular opinion of it. Mostly, I am happy to have
had more portrait practice, and D&D characters always make
interesting subjects.
I
should also thank my mother, as she provided me with the materials
necessary to draw those pictures above. I didn’t have my truck,
nor did I feel well enough to drive out to buy anything. I am
blessed to have a family that cares so much about me, as well as
friends and acquaintances that are all concerned with my well-being.
I’m not sure if any of you will read this, but if you do, thank
you.
This
brings me back to the issue of the scanner. My parents use a Kodak
ESP 7 All-in-One printer and scanner. As I’m sure every artist
knows: printers and scanners are some of the most frustrating
pieces of technology ever devised. This
is doubly true
for
printers and
triply
true for all-in-ones. Further
aggravating the issue, I exclusively
use Linux for anything productive,
and Kodak is not a decent enough company to provide drivers for the
operating system. It took
about three hours of work,
but I got the open-source ones working — to
a better standard than the proprietary Kodak photo-center-thing,
might I add (smug smile) — and could finally scan things from my
parents' house. Oddly, the
scanner refused to function when directly connected via USB to the
computer, and only worked over my home network… This
is particularly befuddling because one would think scanning over a
network would be the
harder of
the two methods. Oh well.
I’m
definitely going to do a post one day about my experiences as an
artist that uses Linux instead of Microsoft’s Windows, or Apple’s
macOS (I think that’s what they’re calling it now). Most
have actually been quite pleasant, and I would never consider
returning to either of the others — particularly not Mac. No one
should use Mac. It is objectively
inferior both in terms of software and hardware to essentially any
other offering. Needless to
say, it saddens me to see that the company has entrenched its grossly
over-priced products in the art community — a community that is
certainly not
known for its ability to accumulate wealth. I’ll
stop here before the rant takes off, and
I’ll share the details
about why
I feel this way in a later post.
This as well, here. |
And
finally, we get to that drawing I’ve been wanting to show you for
the past two months. I
was finally able to scan it and upload it after returning home.
It only took about two hours to
draw and
finally
gave me a passable result with cross-hatching. I should clarify: I
can crosshatch with pen a lot
better than I can with pencil. That’s not to say that I’m good
at it… in fact, I think cross-hatching is still one of the weakest
of my skills. But
finally, I am not completely unhappy with the result. The
saddest part of this entire story is that the drawing’s really
nothing special. It
certainly wasn’t worth waiting two months for.
That’s
about it. I’m afraid. Sorry
about the long post, but I felt a bit of explanation was in order.
Looking ahead, there doesn’t appear to be much of anything in the
way of my old, regular schedule. However,
I have learned my lesson about optimism and I am not going to jinx
it! Suffice it to say, I am hoping my
luck holds out.
No. It says "no." It always says "no" unless a "yes" would be more damaging. |