A painting done for a friend of my wife's, to give to her mother, to celebrate the life of Myles: the pony she loved and who recently passed away much too early.
I'm still in that self-conscious stage where I'm not sure if it came out well or not. Hopefully it did. I'm having it framed and will give it to my wife's friend next week.
Life is still frenetically busy, with writing, family, and art. I'm polishing up and finishing a few things though, which the small break from the blog has helped with. On the plus side, some original art for the site. Hope you enjoy!
Adrian.
The last couple of months has been pretty tough with the household getting sick and us shifting to 'survival mode'. My posting has suffered, partly because what little energy I have, I put into my writing, which I am determined to finish. I've realized that I've stretched myself too thin, with the baby, writing, and art and have to give myself some slack to approach these things one at a time, without a schedule. As such, it is tough to commit to the blog, with new art each time, even on a monthly basis.
With that said, I like having a website, and like posting my art to it when I can. I also like sharing writing thoughts, in case one day anyone particularly cares about how I think about things (ie. if I eventually get published).
So, I guess what I'm saying is that I plan on posting a little more ad hoc, when the art is done, rather than on a monthly basis, and I think I'd also like to reformat the site a bit, separate the art and writing sections, and possibly see if I can link to a blog or hosting option that makes it easier for me to post things (the current way is a bit time consuming and unwieldy, but I haven't had the time/ energy to put into fixing it).
So feel free to browse around, this won't be the end of the site, but as I said, changes are coming.
Isn't that the way of the world? Until then!
Adrian
PS -- an old picture recycled--see above time constraint. :)
The second image shows the tracing of the castle pic I've started on. I find that the clean line of tracing (ie. tracing the finished line drawing on to a new piece of watercolor paper) is a better mental and artistic place to start with, when I'm ready to start coloring.Mental because it's nice to see it all cleaned up, very motivating, and artistic because a traced line has a lot less lead that will smudge and bleed into the watercolor later on, making for a more professional final look.
I'm so tired I'm about to fall over, but wanted to put something up on the site. I don't have a lot of spare time right now with work, the baby, and the house (our renos went bad, causing repairs that were even longer and more disruptive--very tiring). We have a vacaction soon, that will be nice.
On the positive note, the baby seems quite hardy and resilient, despite his brand new parents. Who knew how many ways a chronically busy little baby could bang his head? And on so many things?
He also just discovered the carbon monoxide detector. You'd think that pushing the little white button and hearing a squealing, ear splitting alarm inches from his face would cause him to cry and stop doing it, right?
You'd be wrong.
I found it a bit depressing when I realized that I was going to have to hire a 'Geek Squad' guy to come and fix my Frankenstein-style wireless network. Otherwise the internet was going to be something that only worked for other people. That admission of technological inadequacy made me feel old and useless--until I realized that the Geek Squad guy was at least as old as I was, which meant--
I was just 'useless'. Grrr.
Oh well, I paid me my money and got me some internet, so the computer is happily humming again and I can post something that may look familiar: it's a drawing from a old post, a pretty detailed one, that I've finally got the motivation to return to and (hopefully) finish. Whoot, whoot.
The first image is the entire castle, done with some fairly extreme perspective (which is what took so long, with all those annoying crenellated walls, even though I wasn't as anal as I could have been on it) and a close up of one of the sections of detail, a woman leaning over the wall, watching some knights leave. Hopefully it'll be interesting in its detail and overall impact when it's done, although it's still early to tell for sure.
On the writing side, it's a very good thing I went into this fantasy novel with the right mind set. Yikes, it's taking a lot of hours to plow through. It reminds me of trying to clear a path from my front door to the end of the driveway after a heavy snowfall, using only my boots (yes, it is winter in Canada, how did you guess?). The first struggle down the driveway loosens up the snow and creates the shape of the path (it also soaks my jeans and makes my socks all soggy), but the snow is still deep and makes for tiring slogging. So I have to go back and forth a bunch more times, stamping down all that loose snow, one small section at a time, to make it all smooth and pretty. All that stamping is tiring and time consuming. (For the record, I do have a snow shovel, this is just an analogy.)
In other words, the second draft is a lot of work! I'm guessing that it will take considerably longer than the first draft, even though the rough plot line was laid down in the early effort. Oh well.
Hmmm, I could use some sunshine!
On the upside, my copmuter escaped being left in the snowbank at the end of my driveway. Thank you Geek Squad guy! :)
...now I'm going to drape those wet socks over it to dry, he he he....
I thought I'd combine a writing and art thought today, because it applies to both, but a good lie requires a good detail.
Huh?
Let me explain. :)
Any young person knows, if you're asked where you were at a certain time and the real answer is going to get you grounded for decades, you have to come up with another one. But your Mom is pretty smart and starting off suspicious. So how do you throw her off the trail?
1) You stick as close to the truth as you can (this has nothing to do with art or writing, but might help some children survive to actually practice my other tips).
2) You add in some very specific details, which adds in the ring of truth. For example: You don't say: "I spent the day at the park, um, looking at trees and stuff, and then came home", you say: "I rode my bike to the park and then stopped to watch some of the soccer game going on. I actually made this one kid cry, because I wanted to kick his soccer ball back to him, but I hit it a bit hard and knocked him over. His mom gave me a good lecture."
So why is this lie better? (assuming your assualt on soccer kid actually didn`t happen) Because it has some creative, concrete detail. This is the same idea in both writing and art. Specific concrete details, that the eye and mind can appreciate for a second, then flick on to the bigger picture, produce more enjoyment.
In this Santa image, I spent a bit more time on certain sections of the beard, hat, and coat to give the eye a place to stop at for a brief second before moving on, and used some color and contrast to draw the eye to them more surely.
Of course, I should also point out that you shouldn't get in trouble with your Mom. Or kick soccer balls at little kids. Just FYI. :)
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