Robots Under Pressure

It's been a slightly packed couple of weeks.  It was my Son's birthday yesterday, and that will be the focus of this post (completely skipping over two other things I need to blog about, not including the sketching posts I have still failed to get to). The day before I had an important presentation at work (I wasn't doing the presenting, but it was my work - along with others - being presented, if that makes sense), and that might eventually be the focus of a post in about 5 years time.  Anyway, those two things were a day apart, and I was given the task for each of them a day apart as well, about 2 and a half weeks ago.

For work it was that I'd taken a screenshot of something from just the right angle that it looked good, and it was suggested that it be shown off at this presentation. Except not a still shot from just that angle.  What I was working on was in no-way ready to be presented in that way, but I said sure anyway, and then set out to make sure it wasn't horrible.  It was more work than I'd anticipated, but such is life.  I can't go into any additional detail, except that getting it to a state I was (fairly) happy to show took late nights and last weekend. This is not a complaint - it's just something that goes along with the job sometimes.  On it's own, not a big deal.

The day after this came up my wife suggested I do something for my Son's birthday.  He's been on a kick to get a picture of a Cute Robot for a while, and she's been looking at pictures on Etsy and such.  I'm generally loath to buy something I could do just as well myself (which isn't much to be honest), so she said "well, why don't you do one...  Or more?"  We ended up deciding on 7. She said 4 to 6, and I pointed out that since he was turning 7 it should be 7.  You may note there are only 6 below - explanation to follow.

Just a Couple

Hello, good evening, and welcome, to another enthralling post.  Yeah, I had trouble keeping a straight face over that too.  Anyway, despite the title there is only one picture for your perusal today, but there are two people in it - plenty of step by step stuff though, if you're into that sort of thing.

I still haven't compiled all the sketches from October to December to show, and now of course I have January's to do, and then February's in a couple of weeks.  I'll get to it, and probably not all in one post either, but this weekend I'm working on another painting (digital), and then there's another facebook portrait to do, and I want to get a traditional piece done and work on my perspective skills and speedpaints too, so as you can imagine, things are a little cramped for time right now.  Also, TV show season, not helping...

Anyway, on with today's performance.

Social Profiling № 7: Sunset Bear

It might be a puppy, but Sunset Puppy sounds vaguely rude to me for some reason so I'm pretending it's a bear.

It's been a while since I made one of these posts, mostly because I thought I was done with them.  If you want to read the preceding six you can go here and work from the bottom up.  If you'd rather skip six bland posts from history the basic premiss was this: ask for people on Facebook to volunteer for me to paint their picture. I got to choose the picture and the theme (if any), and four people, randomly chosen, would get a full best of my ability painting, and some of the others would get something too if I could be bothered.  Of the people that signed up I ended up painting seven of them, and it was quite fun.

This year (two years on) I decided to do it again.  Same message on facebook, and twice the number of people signed up.  Again the pictures were randomly chosen, although there were some surprising coincidences in the people who ended up getting picked.  This time I let people pick their own photos for me to do, and all of them will be painted with a more speedpaint mentality than before because, y'know, free work?  I'll get to the coincidences later, but here's the first of the paintings, which I did a few weeks ago.

Speeding Toward 40

Some of you may have noticed there was a bit of a gap between the last two posts. Since I started the blog there have been only five occasions that I haven't succeeded in posting more than once in a month. Last December was unusual in that the sole post was on the first day of the month, and then I didn't post again until almost two weeks into this month, so I think that's the longest gap in posts so far.

 Fortunate then that I wasn't just twiddling my thumbs the whole time, but managed a reasonable amount of productivity. I did some sketching, went on holiday, did some cool things at work, built a reasonably big Lego kit, knocked out that cover for Phil (it was basically finished already though), completed a commission (which I can't show for reasons I won't go into, but it took a reasonable amount of time and turned out reasonably well - it was reasonably challenging as well), and did a handful of speedpaints, the sharing of which is the focus of this post. For a change, I'm reasonably happy with the amount of work completed. There's that word again - I think I use it a reasonable amount.

Let's get started then eh?

A Psychochronography in Blue (Part...1)

There are many fictional conceptions of time. Quantum Leap postulated it was like a ball of string, many other shows and films conceptualize a river, with the future being down stream. Doctor Who simply says it's, well, 'timey wimey' (says it a lot actually, even I'm beginning to think it's getting old), but in the case of this post we can think of it as an Ouroboros; the serpent with it's tale in it's mouth. The end as the beginning.

While this is part one of this increasingly lengthy saga there is a part zero of a sort, you can read that here, and the posts for part 2, 3 and 4 if you click the numbers. The tangentially related A Golden Thread can be found by clicking its title. I highly recommend you do read part zero if nothing else - time travel is complicated enough without you skipping all the slow bits.

A Psychochronography in Blue (Part 4)

As is suitable for a TARDIS Eruditorum cover post the story begins in the past.  If you want to go right back to the beginning you can check out the previous posts for volumes 1 2 3 (click the numbers) and the tangentially related A Golden Thread before we continue.

But those are not the beginning of the tale of this book cover, except in the way that my parents being born is the beginning of mine.  No, this books gestation began way back in Phil's Blog, but the cover began back in June, when I had the idea for the cover.  Except it wasn't to be this book's cover, because both I and Phil both agreed it would make a better cover for Volume 5, and thus it shall be.  This left me lacking an idea for this book though, so I went to do some roughs, which after a surprisingly small number of adventures would eventually lead to the following.

Slow Cooked Speed

I'll be honest up front.  Three of the speedpaints that follow pretty much stink.  Whether the other three do I leave to you to decide.  One thing is certain though; the relative quality of these things is usually based on the following:

1) Whether it's based on a photograph
2) How long it takes to do
3) Whether I'm using a technique or software I know well

If it's based on a photo, I took a little time over it, and I'm using tools I'm comfortable with, the results will usually at least be acceptable.  Anything else and quality becomes a complete crap shoot.  Worth noting for future reference I think.

Oh, and before we proceed to looking at pictures, you might wish to come back on Monday as well - I can pretty much guarantee another new post then.

Painting Class: Painting Still

Well, I'm sort of amazed how fast the last few months have gone by, and how little artwork I seem to have done in that time.  I was worried at one point that I was slipping back into the mode I entered that eventually led to the creation of this Blog - that of not being fussed to do any art, a state that lasted close to 10 years.

Thankfully though I am doing art - less than I probably should, but vastly more than I was during those 10 years.  The stresses of the last couple of months are wearing off too, so more is likely to be forthcoming.  After this post I have one more planned before the end of the month (possibly 2, but the other will be quite personal and have no art in it, so you likely don't care).  Which brings me back to this post, and why I'm commenting on how time has flown:  It's an art class post.

The last post I wrote on the subject was after my last class waaay back in August.  It doesn't seem that long ago, yet it was almost 3 months.  I started another class about 10 weeks ago and just finished it.  I didn't attend all 10 sessions (I think I missed 3), but I painted a reasonable amount in those sessions I did attend, and at home when I missed one of those 3.  As a result I have 5 new paintings of vastly differing quality. They are all on canvas board, painted in Acrylic, but the sizes vary.  Incidentally, all the photographs but one are from angles other than that at which I was painting as I took them as an after thought rather than during the process.

A Psychochronography in Red, White and Blue

And here, sooner than planned, a new book cover.  This time though there's a twist - despite the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who being in less than a month, this is not a Doctor Who cover.  In one way it was far simpler than those, and in a couple of others gave me some pause for thought.

While not a Who cover, it is a cover for Dr. Sandifer (or Phil as he's known to his friends (I assume - I've never actually spoken to the good doctor except via i-correspondence (that's email to you (and yes, I did just do, and am still doing, a run on sentence with four sets of nested parentheses - hardcore). It's for his latest exploration into psychochronography, titled A Golden Thread: An Unofficial Critical History of Wonder Woman.

Which subject led to the first pause for thought: Given the legendary litigiousness of the US comics industry, how do you do a cover for a book about Wonder Woman without actually featuring Wonder Woman on it?

Read on oh truthful reader, and discover the answer, and more...

Sketching for July/September '13

With over a month since my last post, you'd think I'd have lots to show.  You would be wrong.  It's not that I've not been active (though I've not produced anywhere near what I should have - almost no speed paints for example), just that much of that I either can't show, or can't show just yet.  Mostly though this month (and the end of the last) has just been a fairly tough slog.  Long time followers will know that October 5th marks an unhappy anniversary for me, and  as such the two weeks around that date are usually a pretty horrible time for me emotionally.   This year though I also had two friends pass away in the time since I last posted.  The latter was very close, and died on Thursday.   I won't post my thoughts on that here - it's best left to other places, but obviously it's affected me deeply.

But on to happier things, at least for this post.  We've had a house guest for a few weeks, and he's likely to be around for a while longer.  While his presence is obviously a minor distraction from the art thing he's also the model guest, and we're very happy to have him. I do also have some things coming up soon - I'm taking a new painting class, and I'll be posting the results before long.  One of the pieces seems to be fairly popular, (though of course, being me I can't see why) and overall there should be three or four paintings by the end of it.  I've also been working on a new book cover for Dr. Sandifer, and that should be hitting the electronic store shelves in the next few weeks - I'll have a post about it ready when it does of course.  There are also another two covers that are essentially done, and just waiting on a final page count.  Those I'll probably blog about in December and January when the books go live.  So yes, things are happening, even if it's not quite in the places I would hope (anatomy practice, sketching, that sort of thing - I've had no mental time for it the past few months, but hopefully that will change soon).  For now though, let's get the sketching up to date...