Bedtime Bestiary, part 3.

My deadline doom has eased for the moment (and like a good freelancer, I've shifted from fretting over being too busy to fretting over not having enough work coming in), so I'm hoping I can get my lazy self into the studio to do some hands-on old-school art in the next week.

In the meantime, here are a few more digital dalliances from my iPad, with the help of Paperby53.

El-Ahrairah, from Watership Down by Richard Adams.
One of my favorite books that is as enjoyable now as when I first read it 40 years ago.

April is Wind month here in central and northern Arizona. Junior doesn't like it much, and neither do I. 

When the full moon rises on our street it looms upwards through a stand of ponderosa pines. And we do have owls...  

Memory raven portrait.

Bedtime Bestiary, part 2

Another month has evaporated like a pensioner's investments in a rigged market. March was when I was going to wrap up several jobs early on and have time to start on some personal projects but instead those jobs went on and on and now it's the freaking 3rd of April and the next two weekends are already booked up with obligations and more deadlines loom on the horizon. (Also, eventually, some paychecks. Freelancing means getting paid every two or three months, so the successful ones are good savers.)

But I'm not complaining, since the last few years work has been sparse. Feast or famine, baby, that's how it works. I do look forward to a temporary lull. I did a lot of physical painting last year but so far this year, only in pixels, in the few minutes at the end of the day before my sandpapered eyeballs go on strike for 6 or 7 hours.

This past month I've been using a new stylus on the iPad, a stylus provided by my philanthropic friend and neighbor, Ida, a fine artist and fine business owner. This stylus has an authentic brush tip and is a delight to use. All the drawings below were created using it with Sketchbook Pro. Thanks, Ida, you're a peach!

The power of layers. Same drawing, different layers visible.

The look of innocence, i.e. birdseed thief.

Easter/April Fool's day scribble.

Tiger after a fish or just not happy with her reflection.

I mistakenly hit the 'flood fill' tool on this sketch of a Przewalski's, blanking out most of the area with white. I like it.

Bedtime Bestiary.

'Bedtime Bestiary' comes from my tendency to do these in bed just before (attempting to) fall asleep. Most all of the sketching I've done on the iPad to this point have been 15- to 30-minute sessions, sometimes going back later to fiddle. The latest update to Sketchbook added a time-lapse feature which should be fun to try since I mostly just slap colors around until they decide what they want to be.

These were all done using Sketchbook Pro on the iPad, finger-style.

Wolf beastie.

Dragon-goat beastie.

Horse-dog ghost beastie. This started out as a brush test, which then morphed into a horse sketch (below) but that was threatening to be too cute. So I fixed it.

Not a beastie. An imaginary landscape inspired by hiking in the Granite Dells.

Post 200 and old tech.

I started this blog in April of 2008 without any clear plan of what it was going to be about. Nearly 5 years later I still don't have a consistent theme, so I'm consistent in being inconsistent. On the other hand I'm averaging about 40 posts a year, which for me is the epitome of consistency. (Doesn't say much for my epitomes, really.)

So. This evening, while scanning some paperwork, it struck me that we have an unintended shrine to old technology in the office, seen here in the glow of orange Xmas lights. 

On top is our old 'snowball' iMac, the first iMac that came with a flat screen. And it swiveled! Which was cool in 2002, and still is. This little guy processed hundreds of pages of manga and Disney pages in the 2.5 years I used it as my main machine. After I moved over to a G5 it sat in a corner for a while with a bag over its head, but when we remodeled our home office it took up duties as a scanner server and continues to be a good work-pony, almost eleven years after we bought it. It even traveled to Maryland and back in 2003-4 with no hiccups. 

Underneath Snowball is my Sanyo stereo receiver with dual cassette tape-decks. This was my dad's housewarming present to me when I moved to Prescott to work for Gladstone/Another Rainbow in August of  '87. Not seen, the two gigantic-by-today's-standards speakers, up on shelves to either side. This thing has served faithfully since the day I set it up (with G's help) and is still our main music machine in the office when we're not playing stuff through our desktops. Originally it had a turntable but that was given away a few years ago (we got a better one). 

Sitting on top of the Sanyo is our 2004 iPod, which still gets used as a music delivery device, although not so much the past year and likely it'll get permanently retired before long. Its display is crapping out, and even as a back-up hard drive it's just too clunky. 

Sitting next to it but not quite visible is the first CD player we owned, a Panasonic portable that was my Xmas present to G in 1991. It too still serves well, if not often. We have file boxes of cassettes and CDs, but these days we mostly stream or play MP3s. It's just…easier. Maybe that's why Americans are fat; we don't get up to turn records and cassettes over every 20 minutes like we used to. ; )

UPDATE:

As of last weekend the 2004 iPod has gone to silicone Elysian Fields to join our first Mac (a 1992 llci with a 256mb hard drive). 

It must have given up the ghost sometime in the past several months, but its time had come. When I tried to use it only to discover its demise, I spent a couple of seconds swiping my finger over its LCD screen before I remembered the scroll wheel. How soon we forget.

  

More painty bits.

My only real New Year's resolution was to get back into the studio to make more art (along with the requisite staring at the walls, rearranging of the file cabinet, tearing illos out of The New Yorker to cry over, organizing the paint tubes by height and popularity, etc.)

Naturally, January is almost done and not until this past week did I do any 'real' painting; the kind that requires cleaning brushes, changing water and yanking wet canvases out from under the muddy paws of Junior, as opposed to sliding my fingers around a touch-screen. I'm not keen to work big right now, just make little things with no pressure. Done-in-one sorts of things in watercolor and gouache.

Back in November I took a one-day watercolor class as a refresher, and one simple thing I was reminded of was the importance of using better-quality pigments and paper. Acrylic and oil and even gouache can be forgiving even in cheaper 'student' grades, and can go on almost any surface with some success. But watercolor is high-maintenance. And it really likes good paper. So I pried open my wallet and bought good paper (and a wet-media sketchbook -- watercolor on cheap recycled sketchbook paper is a recipe for aggravation.) It makes working in watercolor a lot less intimidating, although I have years to go before I can say I'm proficient.

Statesman, son of Secretariat. Watercolor, 3.5 x 5" 

This is Twinkie, who was Secretariat's second 'test' offspring. His mama had draft horse in her pedigree, and Twinkie (official name, Statesman) got the best of both parents. He was a sport-horse and accomplished in many disciplines including dressage. In his later years he lived in Arizona, and for several years he lived with a dear close friend of mine, who like me, grew up loving horses and cheered Big Red on during his Triple Crown. Having Twinkie 'in the family' was a like having Secretariat looking over your shoulder. 

This little painting of Twinkie (above) is from a photograph I took to accompany an article Tobi wrote about him for the Blood-Horse many years back. Twinkie passed away a few years later, after a good long life. He was big, calm, kind and smart, and I'm proud and grateful to have known and ridden him. 

Przewalski's horse, 4x6" 

Big bear and cherry tree, 4.25x8.5"

'Wings', gouache on New Yorker page.

The horse and bear are based on photos I took at the San Diego Zoo years ago, but the backgrounds are pure whimsy. The bottom piece was me looking at stuff on my bulletin bard and doodling ideas for Illustration Friday. (The fish just horned in of its own accord.)

More pixel painting

Wild Hare, using Sketchbook Pro.

In addition to SketchbookPro for iPad, I'm using Paper by 53. Both apps have been enjoyable and frustrating in their own ways. The frustrations are minor and are lessening as I practice more (which also increases the enjoyablility. I get caught up looking online at what other people are doing with this stuff and despair of equaling the beauty and imagination of their work. But then I remind myself it isn't a competition and to just have fun, dammit.

Clicking any image will bring up larger versions.

Year of the Snake, using Paper53. This became our New Year's card.

Moby, using SketchbookPro.

Id monsters, using Paper53

Horse sketches using SketchbookPro. Top image is a Prezwalski's horse, from a photo I took at the San Diego Zoo eons ago. Below is a portrait of Ruffian, from a 1975 official track photo.

quick psycho bunny, using SketchbookPro.

Season's Greetings!

Once again I haven't made a Christmas card, or finished my New Year's card (and by not finished I mean not even started). Fortunately I have the Gladstone stash to delve into.

William Van Horn drew many fine Duck comics for Gladstone during its run, as well as for Disney Comics during their license and many many more for major European publisher Egmont. Bill does gorgeous work and I always enjoyed coloring his stories--even the ones with five billion snowflakes.

Bill sent two hand-drawn Christmas cards to us comic wranglers, the one top to the office staff in the mid 90s, and this one to Gary and I not long after Gladstone stopped publishing for good at the end of '98. They're great mementos of a memorable time.

To all who celebrate Christmas, may it be peaceful, content and relatively stress-free. 

New toy, new art.

Junior in orange and blue

Last month we finally jumped on the tablet train and got a couple of refurbished iPad 2s. They do everything we need them to do, for about the same cost of new one. Still an indulgence, but so much fun. We're calling them combo birthday-anniversary-Christmas-St. Swiven's Day presents for the entire year.

One reason I was looking forward to having a tablet was as a new art toy. So far it hasn't disappointed. Here are a few things I've banged out in the last month using the Sketchbook app, getting the feel of 'finger-painting' again.

Pupster

Junior after Thanksgiving

Imaginary landscape

Orange kitteh

Self-portrait

Babe the Partly-blue Ox

Ferdinand the Bull

(Finger-painting is fun, but I've got a stylus on order which I'm hoping will give me better control. My tiny fingertips are just broad enough to make painting small details something of a crapshoot.)

Free the elephant.

Today is finally election day. I'm not watching any of the returns. I hope President Obama is re-elected, although considering the horrific treatment he and the rest of the country have received from the right wing nut jobs over the past four years, it's frightening to think of what crap they're going to pull if they lose again, especially if the results are close, which they show every sign of being. It'll be 2000 all over again, on steroids.

We'll see how it goes. I feel like I'm too old to emigrate, and I'm not sure there's anywhere to go where the worst side of human nature won't ultimately prevail. 

Human nature has always been iffy, and it seems like the more of us there are, the dicier our behavior gets. We're in a race against time whether we take out every other living thing with us before we finally wipe ourselves off the face of the long-suffering earth, or leave some life behind to pick up the pieces and clean up. It didn't have to be this way-–we can be nice little meat sacks when we want to be. But our taste for violence and horror seems to outweigh our desire for peace and harmony. Too bad.

Dear Universe: next time, give thumbs to the whales. Maybe things will work out better.

I was compelled to make these little pensive-elephant sketches as a reaction to the insane political cesspool we've been in for what seems forever, thanks mainly to the antics of the above RWNJs, the Tea Party Republicans, who are hell-bent on turning my country into a live-action version of 'The Handmaid's Tale' as punishment for electing a bi-racial President who can spell and string words together in coherent sentences, the elitist bastard. 

As you can tell, I truly dislike these people, and I'm sure the feeling is reciprocated since I voted for the bi-racial president AND I have this ridiculous notion that I'm an autonomous human being and not livestock to be impregnated at 'God's will'. Sorry, scary people.

The GOP has used the elephant as its symbol for a long time. I think it's time they picked a more appropriate symbol (maybe an Ebola virus with a machine gun) and stop maligning the elephants.

(Top illo on Arches paper, bottom on bond paper.)

Illustration Friday 11/2 -- 'Shy'

The IF word for November 2 was 'Shy'. So me.

I had Arches paper left over from a watercolor workshop, and I've been experimenting with it. I haven't done much watercolor outside of old-school color guides, and the last one of those I did was in 2003. So I need the practice.

Here's the doodle I made on crappy bond paper first. (Naturally I kind of like this one better).