At least I'm using my new toy

[rowyn]

I played with the tablet some more this morning, "finishing" the picture of Floosh I started yesterday. I put "finishing" in quotes because (a) I never finish a picture, I just give up (As telnar would put it "Victory is ours! The south Vietnamese can take it from here."), and (b) I really ought to put a background on it, as opposed to a crappy gradient fill. (Yay, gradient fills. A crappy gradient fill is, nonetheless, better than blank white space, which is the sort of background I often produce, left to my own non-electronic devices.

I like the way the face came out best, so I did a close-up of that. (Click on the thumbnails to see the larger versions). Actually, it's not so much a close-up as "actual size" of what I was working with. I crunched down the full image for display purposes.

The rest of the picture is .. eh. I thought the oven mitt came out (what you can see of it) surprisingly well. I like that the apron says "Floooooosh!" on it and has a poptaloop, but I don't particularly like the look of the poptaloop or the lettering. I spent about five hours on the digital part. The original pencil sketch (available here) was maybe half an hour. I dunno, I'm not good at paying attention to the time art takes me. My time-sense on sketching is usually "That didn't take long. Hey, how did it get so late?" and on painting it's "I can't believe how long this is taking. Forget it, I'm going to bed." And, as in this case, "Forget it, I'm using a crappy gradient fill for the background."

I installed Painter Classic and, briefly, attempted to use it. But ... learning curve ... too ... steep. Must ... go back ... to Photopaint. There are just too many little tricks that I finally figured out how to do easily in Photopaint, like which brushes I want and adjusting brush size and working with objects and masks (those last two took me years to get the hang of). And I simply don't want to go through all of that again. Maybe if I had someone teaching me how to use it, it'd seem more worthwhile. But, in fact, I don't even know for sure that Painter Classic is a marked improvement over Photopaint v 8.3. It's newer, granted, but it's also the lobotomized freebie version. So ... ummmm .. for now I'll stick with what I know. The only thing that really annoys me about Photopaint is that it has this tendency to muck up the brushes. There are a couple of brush types that have a nice streaky quality to thm, good for doing fur and hair. But there's either a bug, or a feature that I'm using by mistake and can't figure out how to turn off, that causes all brush types to become the basic type at occasional intervals. So I'll go to select, say, "Wispy Light Wash" for my brush type, which, fime minutes ago, would make faint streaks in the canvas. But now, it acts just like the "Quick doodler" brush type. Even exiting the program and re-entering with new file doesn't fix the brush type. Maybe rebooting will; something fixes it, or else by now all my brush types would be permanently "Quick Doodler" which would be pretty aggravating. I wish I knew why this happened.

Anyway, my plan for the tablet itself is this: I need to make at least three colored pictures that I like using this thing, in the next 30 days, or I'm taking it back to the store.

I haven't decided if this one of Floosh counts as one or not.

Comments

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Well, now I have an icon for IC comments in sythyry's journal, and for my occasional cooking posts! I'm very pleased.

[rowyn]

Y'know, I thought I'd replied to this. Anyway -- I'm glad you like it! The idea of using it for cooking posts made me giggle. :) Maybe I should do a little Sythyry-icon-in-chef's-hat -- there're quite a few cooking posts in both sythyry and bard_bloom, come to think of it .... :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well done! I'd count it. The colors look quite good.

[rowyn]

Thank you. :) I don't like it as well as any of my finished oil paintings (not that I don't have problems with all of them, too.) On the other hand, it's probably the best digitally-colored piece I've ever done. It certainly took less time than most.

I really need to do some work with clothing, though. The shirt is just ... yugh.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

The fur, including its contours, seems quite nice indeed. You mentioned a disatisfaction with the shirt; I saw a "Drawing Wrinkles and Folds" (or similar title; "Wrinkles and Folds" was in there) just recently. It may be useful.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

A book, or a website, sir?

I have done some reading and study from art instruction books; I do not know that I have found it to be all that helpful. I think I've learned the most working from actual live models and drawing them. Working from a photograph is the second-most useful learning experience.

Random doodling is the least useful. :)

Of course, one disadvantage of art-instruction books over working from life or photographs is that the books tend to be *really dull*. My artist's anatomy book would be good bedtime reading: it'd knock me right out in seconds. :)