It has been quite a while since I have updated this little corner of my life. Yet there has been a lot of work put into this corner that has yet to be seen.
So far I have been working on a copy of the promo art for the new cross-platform Prince of Persia (c) game from Ubisoft. It is a pencil drawing on 18"x24" poster board. I really wish I took some pictures of it or at least scanned in the initial work and the WIP stages. I can honestly say that after putting in about 22 hours or so that I am starting to see there is great potential in my skills as an artist. I will post this up most likely in a week because it is so darn big it'll take a bit to scan it in and I want to put up as much of a polished piece as possible.
I am using the grid method and then sketching by hand by eye-balling everything. Both of my instructors, Tim and Megan from The Artist's Corner (http://www.LiquidLeadArt.com), have been most gracious to critique, instruct, and generally scrutinize every stroke and tortillian blend. I am sad that my initial grid was off thus making everything elongated; but it still looks good. I am especially pleased with it because I have never done anything like this before and I am actually drawing! I really feel bad about talking up a piece without anyone being able to actually look at it. But then again, I have had less than 150 page views in the 7 or so months I have been on here so I don't think anyone will actually care that it's not up.
In the mean time, I want to give a shout out to one of my favorite artists, Adam Hughes (http://www.JustSayAH.com). If you haven't seen his work, you really need to see his stuff, he is phenomenal! If I could describe his skills, I would have to say that it is scrumptulescent. From what I understand, he does most of his work via traditional pencil/ink/paper, etc, then digitally colors with a mouse. Yeah I know, a mouse! I told one of my fellow art students about him and his mouse work, and her response was "Drawing and coloring with a mouse is like using a brick!" Then I showed her some of Mr. Hughes's work and she was dumbfounded! It is almost as if Mr. Hughes's hands were blessed with cloven tongues of fire; his pieces are like visual symphonies. Very Inspiring.
Also, I recently purchased a used Cintiq 12wx and it is amazing! Looking at other artists' use of the tablet and what they are able to produce gives me ideas of how I might be able to use the tablet. I have Painter X as a download copy from one of the local universities and it has the manual in PDF format but not the physical one. I don't know if you have ever tried to find the manual but Corel only sells the manual; they do not have one you can order for a nominal fee. The manual costs $50 plus tax/S&H but it is cheaper to print it off yourself. So I decided to go to one of the local universities' student print shop and print off the manual in black and white at 5 cents a page, then bind everything. This would have cost about $24, half of what Corel would charge me. Well, I have never had any luck with this particular department, even as an undergrad and even as a high school student. But I thought, "It's been a few years, all of the bad employees are gone and there are bound to be new employees who have better customer service skills than the others..." Yeah, try that one out you could fertilize the lawn.
I took my file on a jump drive and tried to print off the document to a specific printer. One would think that there would be a print window that would have you specify where you wanted the file to go, any double siding to select, etc. Instead there was no print screen and my file went immediately to another printer. I was shocked! No double siding. No Black and White option. I ran quickly to the printer the file was sent to and tried my best to stop the print job; I didn't want to pay for something I didn't want. Much to my dismay, no matter how much I pressed the "Cancel" button, the printer kept printing. I was really worried. But what shocked me even more than my mistake was the fact that the people at the help desk did the little they could to help. There I was, frantically smashing the cancel button with my fingers, and the employees looked up from their screens and said nonchalantly "Oh, did you need the print job stopped?" No, I just make scenes in public because I was neglected as a child.
The good news is that the printer printed everything in black and white. The bad news is that I am now the proud owner of an in-print copy of the Corel Painter X User's Manual. In two volumes. In the end, it cost about $31 which isn't all that bad when you think about it. I still saved money doing it my self and now I have plenty of paper for note taking
