Fiddly bits

I've just had two prints of my "building portraits" delivered and have stuck them in IKEA frames and put them on the wall. One of them looks fine, the other one looks rubbish. In the case of the latter the print is good quality but somehow it's getting lost inside the frame, which is particularly galling as it is one of my better pictures and looked fine on my computer. It just doesn't benefit from having a thick black frame enclosing it.

My limitations as an artist: I love the act of drawing pictures but don't enjoy the design aspect. Turning a pretty picture into a physical object that can be hung on a wall is particularly tiresome: getting prints done, working out the size a picture needs to be to fit in the frame, deciding on the colour and thickness of the frame - these are all tasks that I'd like to hire someone else to do. I'm currently trying (not for the first time) to pull my finger out and get some business cards done, although that is proving just as fiddly as the framed prints. Moo.com allows you to put one design on the front of a card and then up to 50 different images on the back. Naturally none of my existing images fit the dimensions of a Moo business card.

Razorback Synopsis

I have put any further writing of my Razorback story on hold while I work on a proper synopsis, as the thing has got a little out of hand recently. The longer a story is, the harder it is to keep track of certain details - who is where and doing what to who at any given moment - and plot holes and inconsistencies are more difficult to spot and keep control of. I badly need to step back from it and focus on the broader brush strokes.

WIP - Assessment

This pic is mostly finished now - the shadows were a pain to put in but help to make the picture look less flat. In the end I decided to add a bunny to the group of guys with clipboards (not for any particular reason, I just felt like drawing a sinister-looking bunny - maybe the influence of Easter).
There's a nice big space in the picture for a pithy punchline or maybe a verse from scripture, but I can't at present think of anything.

I've stopped posting pictures on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook recently, having become disillusioned with the whole social media thing. This leaves the question of what to actually do with the pictures that I produce. I've been putting the finished ones on my website, but still have the problem of how to direct people to the website.

I've had some outstanding jobs on the back-burner for ages, like producing a business card and ordering prints of my pictures to put in frames. It seems important to have something in the real world to show people, otherwise they just don't bother looking at your stuff. I was having a conversation with a friend recently who said that the reason she doesn't look at photos posted online by her friends is because there is too much too look at online as it is. On the internet your stuff can get very easily drowned out by the noise being made by the multitude of other artists, writers, podcasters, etc.

Lars Walker quote

A wonderful quote from Lars Walker in his review of The Star Fox by Poul Anderson:

What I liked best about this book was that it’s a military science fiction novel written before political correctness. Thus, Poul Anderson’s The Space Fox is blessedly free of tiny little girls with mystic ninja skills who throw 200-pound men around in the manner of Summer Glau.

Portrait

A picture of the lead actress from the TV show Orphan Black. I've realised that the best way to draw a human face may be to start with the facial features and then draw the head around it rather than doing what I've always done (starting with the head and then struggling to fit the facial features inside it). The latter is yet another technique learned from "How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way" which may work for John Buscema but which really doesn't work for me. Constructing human figures from boxes and cylinders is another example.

I don't normally do drawings from photos of celebrities, feeling that there are a multitude of artists out there in Instagramland and vending such pictures on London pavements who are much better at that sort of thing than I am. However, one of the young people who I work with requested it.

WIP - Juggler

Some progress on the "Arnold juggling" pic that I posted on previously. In the picture, Arnold is being watched by a couple of sinister "examiners" with clipboards, although I feel that there is a third examiner needed to complete the group. I'm just having difficulty deciding what species of animal that third character should be at present.
The unicycle and chainsaws were both Poser models that I rendered using Poser 10's improved toon rendering facility. I had to seriously modify the unicycle to make it fit Arnold's proportions.

Finishing

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

Francis Drake