Tag: painting

#oneaday Day 581: Another experiment with references

I present you with the author's self-portrait, in which he is a bit more generous to himself than he normally is, and which was based, once again, on a 3D reference pose. This was also an experiment at adding noses and ears to a character.

I still have a lot of fundamental techniques I need to work on — getting my pen pressure consistent as I draw something is a big one, though there are tweaks one can make to one's tools to mitigate that somewhat — but I'm quite happy with how things are going, and feel like I'm definitely learning some things every time I draw something. And I'm not taking a ton of time over these right now, as is probably readily apparent — so I'm sure if I were to take a lot more time over a single image, things might come out better.

I'm actually keen to experiment with some other ideas, too. I have vivid memories of "Computer Art" classes back at school, where I got very good marks for a digital recreation of an Impressionist painting, achieved on an Archimedes computer. The toolset on the art package we were using there was limited, but I was able to make creative use of it to produce a satisfyingly good image that looked vaguely authentically Impressionist — as close as one can achieve with a limited resolution and colour palette, anyway!

One of the nice things about Clip Studio Paint is that it has a lot of nice built-in tools — virtual pens, pencils, paintbrushes and painting methods. Thus far I've been keeping it simple for the doodles I've been doing on here, but I kind of want to fiddle around with drawing some completely different sorts of images — maybe something more abstract, maybe something a bit more landscapey, maybe something completely imaginative. That will be a project for another day, which I will chronicle on here for sure, but for now, I'm definitely having fun dabbling in the visual arts.

I recognise that I will almost certainly never be as good as someone who has been practicing this stuff their whole life — but you also never know what you're capable of until you try it, which is partly what this was all about. I haven't even really tried drawing of any description outside of a few idle doodles since I was a teenager; I didn't study Art or any related fields at GCSE, so my "formal" education in such things stopped around year 9. And I tended to find Art classes a little frustrating at times, since I never really got on well with real paint. I was bad at mixing colours — whatever I mixed, I always seemed to end up with brown — and I didn't have particularly good command over brush strokes. My paint would drip and dribble and my eventual compositions would end up looking a bit messy.

There were parts of it I enjoyed, though. I do remember enjoying sketching still lifes with pencils, and the brief period we did a bit of technical drawing was something I took to quite well. I'm sure I will rediscover some other things eventually, too. For now, though, like I say, I'm continuing to feel like this tablet was a good "investment". And by "investment", I mean "put on my Amazon wishlist so someone would buy it me for Christmas".

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

1574: Oh, to Click One's Fingers

In case you missed the news, Andie and I now own a house. This is exciting and etc. etc. but it's also a big ol' pain.

To give credit where credit is due, Andie has been working a whole lot harder on the house than I have been. This is at least partly because I am woefully incompetent at DIY and will normally end up hammering a nail into myself rather than a wall… and that's when I'm supposed to be painting it. Oh ho ho ho.

No, but seriously, I suck balls at DIY. I wouldn't want to put anything on a shelf that I put up, I'm afraid of climbing ladders beyond the second step, I don't know how most tools work and I'm the sort of person that will stand in the paint tray, flip it over so it splatters all over the carpet, then fall on my arse, bringing the curtain rails down with it and smashing the TV in the process.

I hasten to add: thankfully, none of that has happened, and I successfully managed to apply a coat of paint to our new living room earlier without anyone dying. It is quite satisfying to know that I am at least capable of this.

Where the frustration comes from, though — and this isn't by any means exclusive to residences — is when you walk in the front door and it doesn't look like a habitable place to live. (Because it isn't, usually.) The only things lying around are paint pots and various tools, the fridge is empty, there's rubbish everywhere and regardless of where you try to get to in the property, you'll trip over something. It's demoralising to see, and it's something that doesn't really go away until you stop dicking around with paint and start putting furniture in there. Only then does it start to feel like a home; a process that really comes to a head once you get your TV installed. I sometimes just wish I could click my fingers and it all be done.

Things are going quite well, though. The painting is proceeding apace — since Andie has this week off work, she'll undoubtedly be doing some more of that without me over the course of the week — and I'm starting to get a mental picture of what goes where. Of course, there still comes the part I'm really not looking forward to — packing up all the shit in the flat I'm writing this in and transferring it to our new house — but at least this time around we're hiring professional removal people to do all the really hard work. We just have to stick it all in boxes.

I am excited about having a place to call our own, I really am; the trouble is that with the bad news I had regarding my job recently, it's taken the edge off the excitement somewhat. It's hard to be super-excited and positive about it all when you're not sure where your next paycheque is going to be coming from after June.

But I have to remember that I have a few irons in the fire and it's possible that any of them could come to something. The next few months may not end up being particularly easy, but they're probably going to be interesting, if nothing else.

Oh, and did I mention how much I appreciate the hard work Andie's putting in to the new house while I mope around being miserable? I do. A lot. And now the Internet knows it. So there. <3