Hello everyone. Today I drew Stewie Griffin (the evil baby from Family Guy) on Microsoft Paint. This is my first time, so it’s not the best. I followed a video I found on YouTube, but as I drew the picture, I looked at a picture I found on another web site.

Here is the picture I drew (click to enlarge):

And the picture I used:

Tell me what you think of my picture.

Vékriarralyn jaschryl!

~Zaeriuraschi 11098

Esse é o sketch original, sem os acertos de perspectiva e proporção que fiz no photoshop.

While I’m getting my next painting together, I thought I’d do a post about my studio.

My studio is located on the 2nd floor of the Old Firehouse Art Center in Longmont Colorado. There are five studios on the 2nd floor.  The OFAC used to be a working firehouse.  It’s located in downtown Longmont, just 4 blocks from my home.  Now it’s an art gallery, with exhibits from all over the country.

I go in through the side door.

Then I go up the steps.

Turn left.  My door is in the center.

This panoramic composite shot makes my studio look bigger that it really is.

Here’s my drawing table, and what I worked on today.

Study of Archie Brown.

The parody revels in the truth.

These pieces were started in July, but I set them aside during my move to Dallas. I felt compelled to finish them this weekend. Why?…

I gave my students a lecture on my art and found that a disproportionate amount of attention was given to the ‘buckshot‘ piece. It seemed to be the most shocking art piece to the students and the hardest to define in rational terms. If it was all a joke it would be forgivable, however this golden stag was not an abomination, but a symbol of power.

The conversation centered around icons, phallo-centric worship, and Cultures of Honor.*  I described the work as an investigation of the trophy mentality, where men associate their worldly prowess through their masculine appearance and actions.

After all that talk I had to admit to my class that part of this is parody and part of it is reality. No, I don’t have a snake in my trousers, but I do associate manhood with the ability to take action and a presence of physicality, attributes often related to animals. The difficulty is knowing that violence, posturing, and manhood should have little to do with each other in the 21st century, but we find them intrinsically linked. Overcoming this ‘beastly’ side is a struggle for men, who are often rewarded for releasing it.

These pieces continue in a more blatant way, if that is possible, the series of pieces I created in Germany this summer. I concurrently think of these works as a reflection on my childhood and value systems as well as a societal observation.

Anyway, the conversation with my students renewed my interest in this line of inquiry. And it is also quite fun to draw something ridiculous.

*(A Culture of Honor is usually found in rural areas where honor is paramount to survival, therefore violence is swift and necessary. see Richard Nesbet and Dov Cohen’s book “Culture of Honor”)

Second and final drawing of my short sketchcrawl yesterday, which was interspersed with getting hair cut, shopping for Christmas cards, and generally cycling round thinking, ‘oh I’ve drawn everything in Davis, I’m so uninspired’. So I stopped for lunch. A beer (New Belgium 2 Below, if you’re ordering), and a mountain of garlic fries.

I made it a little over halfway through the mountain of garlic fries – I’m still suffering, next day – before going home. A big trough of garlic fries, it’s so unlike me. But I came in here – Uncle Vito’s, on the corner of E and 2nd – to draw the bar, so draw it I did. You can see me in the mirror there. There’s a bit of beermat philosophy that was going through my head as I made my way through the garlic fries surplus.

This place is fairly new, and occupies the space formerly tken by the Davis Driving School, and a little (cheap and not particularly good) chinese place called, I kid you not, Wok and Roll. They didn’t do garlic fries, but I can’t say they didn’t do stomachaches.

.

As with all images on this site, click on the pictures to see the added commentary, silly dancing, or other compromising material.

.

.

Lena Grove stole hearts left and right, and just like last time, I had a couple folks tell me later they’re either in love with her, or are still in love from the last time.  On a side but related note, because Windows can’t make an operating system that can’t run for 5 minutes without crashing, I’ve been working on this blog post for three days, and, well, there’s a lot worse things in the world I could have been looking at that than a photo blog of last session.  Alexis is in Phoenix at the moment doing whatever people do in Phoenix, grilling armadillos and whatnot, so it’s up to me write this post with little to no adult supervision.  This means, 1) there’ll be more typos than usual and 2) someone somewhere will probably be offended shortly.

Anyway, let’s get this going.

Lots of sketches got sent in this time around.  This first one is from Michelle Murphy…

Our first contest was the opposite hand contest, where “if you’re right-handed, you draw with your left, and if you’re left-handed you draw with your right, and if you’re ambidextrous pretend you’re not so you don’t make anyone cry.”  Russell made up some mystery shots for the two winners; he actually messed up the first set and made us drink the horrible concoction . . . don’t ever say Team Sketchy isn’t willing to take one for the team.  If you thought we were a little more tipsy than normal by the end of things, you were probably right.

Near as I can tell, no one sent any opposite-hand drawings in from that contest, unless they were cheating, which I doubt, since the crowd looked to be a good, wholesome sort.

That last photo MIGHT be the judging of the opposite-hand drawing contest.  Hard to tell though.

This next sketch is from Steve Peters, he and Andrea Grigoropol (you’ll see her stuff in a minute) drove all the way down from Philly just to see Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore.  I can not tell you how much that tickles us.  Unless they’re spies from the Philly Dr. Sketchy’s.  Advance scouts for some sort of Dr. Sketchy’s gang turf war if you will.  If that’s the case, if they’re making a move on our corner, well, we ain’t scared of Nicola Black’s posse.  Just in case though, if some of you could pack your heat for the next couple sessions, we should be alright.

That’s a joke.

It just occurred to me this IS Baltimore, somebody might take me seriously.

Michelle Murphy next . . .

Brian Dugan

And here’s Andrea Grigoropol from Philly . . .

The first contest was a special request from Lena – she wanted the best interpretation of her as a zombie, the winner getting 1000 Pinup Girls by Harald Hellmann, Charles Martignete, Louis Meisel from Atomic Books.

A whole bunch of folks gave her their drawings at the end of the night, which we were lucky enough to get a chance to scan.  Unfortunately, that means we don’t have the names of the artists.  If you see your sketch, email us, and we’ll be happy to tack your name under it.  On the off chance two people claim a drawing, the two can come to the next Dr. Sketchy’s (this Monday with Sugar Ann Spice!) and settle it with a rousing bout of fisticuffs during a break.

ANYWAY, these first two are from that stack.

(I had some trouble with the scanner on this one. . . that’s only half of it.   The scanner just ain’t big enough.)

Another Steve Peters . . .

Brian Dugan

The next contest was the random noun contest where folks in the crowd shout out a random . . . well, noun.  Obviously some drinks had started to make themselves known since we somehow ended up with “Mexican wrestling badgers”.  No, I don’t know either.  I don’t even know what a badger looks like.  I can’t even imagine trying to draw one with a Mexican wrestling mask on.  The crowd definitely had my sympathies, though they did bring it on themselves I suppose.  The prize was Miss Mindy’s Sassy Paper Doll Bonanza by Miss Mindy from Baby Tattoo Books.

This first one is Andrea Grigoropol again, at least I think it is.  It has AG on it and was in Lena’s stack.

Brian Dugan

Another unnamed . . .

A couple more sketches to finish us out . . .

Michelle Murphy

Andrea Grigoropol (next three)

Steve Peters

EM Kuker

And one more unnamed . . .

Special super-duper thanks go to Lena Grove of Baltimore’s Gilded Lily Burlesque who without none of this would be possible, to Russell of the Windup Space for putting one more nail in everyone’s livers, Jeff for talking all these nice pictures, Bill for taking video for the Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore documentary while simultaneously watching the door, and our generous sponsors Atomic Books, Artist & Craftsman Supply, and Baby Tattoo Books.

The next Dr. Sketchy’s is tomorrow, November 23rd, at 7:00 (doors at 6) at the Windup Space with Sugar Ann Spice!

If you haven’t already, check out the previous post to get a peek at Monday’s prizes!

]]> http://spaceintext.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/chhuy-ing-ia/ Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:09:00 +0000 itsthatlady http://spaceintext.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/chhuy-ing-ia/

.

Nothing gets you more in the spirit of drawing than some intense Preston Blair drawings. I haven’t finished those, but I had done enough to get me really focused on a nice sketch of this Bengal kitten, called Kimburu Filfil Falconer.

The sketch wasn’t really constructed, just drawn from reference, as-is. Of course, I had to measure some of the parts, like the overall length of the body, compared to the size of the head. With the Preston Blair drawings still fresh in my mind, including the requirement to see proportions (without that, you cannot make those drawings), it was actually not that difficult.

It seems if you want to improve your art, the best thing you can do is to give yourself a really tough challenge, that requires your complete concentration (no music!), and then return to what you thought was so hard to draw. It suddenly is much easier.

That is all.

I did a quick drawing in part of my lunch break, sitting in the foyer looking across the Parramatta River because it was too hot outside. I’ve done some more scribbling and added more colour since I got home. Composition terrible, but it was a rush job and at least I DREW. I started working from left to right, without any planning (no time) and that little shrub just ended up in the middle.

I ‘enhanced’ the drawing with more colour when I got home. In fact because it was so hot, everything was very dull and grey, so I’ve used some artistic license.

That’s right folks, my hiatus is ending.  I’m going to resume posting sometime this week.  I’ll start by posting at least once a week for now, though hopefully more, provided I can draw enough material to keep posting stuff.  Anyway, if anybody’s reading this, feel free to make requests for drawings you’d like to see.  To contact me just leave a comment, send an e-mail, contact me through myspace or seatails or deviantart, or use AIM, or send a telegraph, or smoke signals, or my youtube account.  But DO NOT use semiphore.  I will not reply to messages I receive with semiphore.

Check the info here. This is my second project for the newly relocated Art House Co-op. They moved from Atlanta to Brooklyn and are going to open their sketchbook library there. Exciting for me as my little moleskin will be housed in NYC now!!!

Inside flap, and first 2 pages:

My assigned topic was “Outside of Myself”. Which is incredibly open ended. I decided to create a story without really thinking about anything specific. From a perspective that’s outside of myself, like I’m just letting things happen. The first page started to look like a landscape cross section, so I decided to make the whole sketchbook into weird landscape-like environments. Which is another aspect of being outside oneself, as in, the environment surrounding someone/thing. I’m adding little cut out characters to each scene, I’m thinking they’ll be recurring throughout the book.

The pages of the sketchbook are not bleed resistant at all, the marker comes through almost identical on the back of the page. So instead of fighting it by adding more blank pages or collage, I’m just going to go with it, create fresh compositions on the backs of pages using the color from the front.

It was long but I’m really proud of the result: a Gorilla playing drum.

This digital drawing is based on an old sketch realised in 2001 for the video game “Zoe va au zoo”.

This character was one of the animal met by Zoe in the spaceship. Have a look on the post “Zoé… and a mushroom” for more information! The drawing of each character was coloured in Photoshop or directy in Flash before the animation step. Here is the result:

I tried to follow some advices provided in SOS Factory’s Blog like adding some light reflection on the skin, changing the layer blending options and drawing the strokes wit the pen tool. Finally I worked 2 days on this drawing… I still need some more practice to get efficient. But it was a good exercise for discovering, learning and training more on using Photoshop.

Featuring Allan in critique mode, another fellow Sketchcrawler, a violinist, a really awesome gentleman reading Infinite Jest (!), and a tree.

Introducing ArtCart!

ArtCart: A free online Google site template to help artists sell their art. You will need a free Google checkout account to set it up properly. With the help of ArtCart, artists and small manufactures now have an easy way to update their inventory and sell directly to their clients. This is made possible by updating a simple spreadsheet. Create as many ArtCarts as you want, you could sort your artwork by theme, media, type, style you name it. Once you set up your ArtCart you will want to set up another one. But before you do, share it with the painttwits group! We love to see how our inventions are empowering you and your artwork!

Here is how it works:

Step 1) Make some art! Uploaded it to your site (For example a blog, a flickr.com page or your own domain. Basically, anywhere where you can find a direct URL back to the image file. If you are not sure what I mean by this, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to explain it there.)

Step 2) Create a web site from our easy to use template. Visit this link to do that. There is a little button that says Create a site from this template. Make sure you click that.

Click the 'create site from this template button'

Step 3) The rest is pretty self explanatory once you get your site rolled out. A suggestion, keep your new site separate from your image files. If you have any questions please post them in the comments. I’ll do my best to answer all of them. I’ve set up a few example sites here:

http://www.blancopaintings.blogspot.com/

http://corporateartstyle.blogspot.com/

http://towardscubism.blogspot.com/

Lucas

Fantastic drama. Holding on to one’s virtue. Which role do you choose? http://www.flickr.com/photos/grasenoll/sets/72157622712252352/

"The blood that flows through my veins is cursed."

I learned recently of a personal art gallery website, Ikusa-Otome (戦少女), operated by Na-Ga, one Key’s artists and a character designer for Little Busters!. The gallery itself can be accessed here. I wouldn’t have normally opted to write an article about this, but the image featured on the front page featured a gorgeous Tohno Akiha from Tsukihime and Melty Blood… a series I’ve inexplicably neglected to so much as mention in any article thus far. There are fewer than seventy pieces on the site, some of which date back to 1999, but I enjoyed perusing it. Na-Ga seems to have picked up the PlayStation 2 version of Actress Again which elevates him to personal hero status in my book.

Ten times the same bear head, all slightly different. It was a fun exercise, but each head required lots of concentration and roughly 10 to 15 minutes. I had to do it in 4 sessions, because I can’t keep concentrated for such a long time in one session.

That is all.

“COMMANDO” Pen on paper – Ali Gill 2009