my wrist hurts

Here is another digital drawing, but now my wrist hurts, so I will not be doing anymore today. I wasn't feeling well, so I've been home today, being lazy, doing digital drawings. I will post the gorillas, first in their natural state, then with the "clothify" filter, which I seem to like. I still have a difficult time drawing lines with the laptop mouse, especially when my wrist hurts from trying to draw lines.

Digital Rhino

Here is my GIMP effort for the day. I just can't draw a straight line with the laptop mouse. It's like I've been drinking coffee all day. Since I don't have my scanner or my PC connected at the moment, I'm just going to concentrate on digital drawings for now.

a digital image created with GIMP and a rant about political correctness...

So, as all of my furniture (excluding my bed)has been moved out of my bedroom so my carpet can dry, I don't have access to my PC (so no photoshop)and my scanner. Therefore, I thought I would try to create a digital image with GIMP. GIMP is a freeware program that is a lot like Photoshop and recently it has been added to the computers at the library where I work. Even though I've known about GIMP for quite some time, I never felt compelled to download it since I do have Photoshop. But when they added it to the public computers, I wanted to try it as I like to know a thing or two about the software that is available at work. I had a photo editing software on my laptop already (PhotoImpact), but I've never liked it all that much, so it is nice to have GIMP (as mentioned, it is a lot like Photoshop)on my laptop.

Anyway, on to my rant about political correctness. I think most political correctness is about peoples' fear of looking bad, not about actually caring about the matter or people at hand. For instance, when GIMP was added to the work computers, there were all these posts on the public blog about how we should change the name because the word GIMP has negative implications. Blah. How silly is that? This is a software that has existed for years and it is an acronym name (I'm too lazy to look up what it actually stands for). You can't just go and change it. But these people are just oh so caring and they want to put themselves out there as empathetic, elevated human beings who are so worried that someone might be offended. The fact that they had to write about it on the public blog just showed me that they wanted everyone to know that they thought about this first and they needed to educate everyone else on the matter. It all boils down to ego. Blah again. Blah blah blah... I just tend to get myself worked up about these things because I can spot pretentiousness and insincerity from miles away. And oh, the burden of that;)

Anyway, enough of my ranting. I will now just talk about my elephant. As I've stated before, I don't think a laptop mouse is an ideal drawing tool, but it's fun to play with and I kind of like my little elephant.

A pachyderm paintings picture...

I just arranged my recent pachyderm paintings on the floor and took a picture. I thought they looked cute all together there, on the floor. As you can probably see, it is mostly elephants. I haven't given up on rhinos--I just wanted to give elephants their turn. Today I used a liquid medium with my acrylic paints. It makes them dry slower, so you can blend a bit more (the red elephant in the middle was the result). I look forward to experimenting with this in my future paintings. I also used a varnish on the painting after it was done and I didn't like the result. I have only used varnish once before on some teeny tiny paintings to be made into magnets that I gave to Julia. The effect was fine on the teeny tiny paintings, but I don't like it on this elephant. It's not all that visible on this teeny tiny photo. I just hit publish post for some reason, so this is posted right now, incomplete. Why did I do that? I am going to finish it now and repost it. For anyone that subscribes to my posts via e-mail, you never see the final post in the e-mail. I almost always edit after first posting.

It's kind of a nice day to be sitting inside, but I've accomplished quite a bit. I cleaned my kitchen, (and that includes scrubbing the floor--I rarely do that), did laundry (including the sheets), picked up a bit, vacuumed and made bread. I also painted the red elephant and started reading a 1474 page book by an Indian author, Vikram Seth called A Suitable boy (yes, I have started this book before, but this time I plan on finishing it). I only got to page 25 the last time I started it, but I was busy at the time. I love books that are set in India, and this one has glowing reviews, so I'm sure I'll like it once I get into it. I'm only on page 22 now, so I have a long way to go. This is one of those books that would be easier to read with a Kindle. It's kind of awkward to hold. But then there are other books that I would never want only in digital form. For instance, I was looking for a version of Alice In Wonderland with Arthur Rackham's illustrations, and Amazon had all of these Kindle versions. If I'm getting a book for the illustrations, as I would be in this case, I want a print copy. I don't have a Kindle, or any reader for that matter, anyway.

Midnight elephant

I painted again tonight. I was thinking about painting while I was at work and when I got home, I was still thinking about painting a bit, so I thought "why not?" This elephant is nothing to write home about and if I did write home I would only be writing to myself or one (or both( of my cats, so what's the difference anyway? It is one of those paintings that does look better in person, I just thought I would let you know. It's strange that some pictures look better scanned and some are better in person. I feel like I haven't had an interesting blog post in awhile, but then again, I did just get back into blogging regularly recently, so I'm rusty. As for being rusty, my writing, in general is rusty. I'm thinking seriously about doing NaNoWriMo again in November and I'm trying to come up with an idea before I start this time. Last year, I just started at the last minute and I winged it. It's still September, right? So, I still have a month and a half to think about what I'm going to write about. I won't do all those annoying word counts again this year, I promise. I can hear my neighbors sitting outside my window. I can't wait until it's too cold for them to do that. Am I bit antisocial? I certainly am when it comes to And by the way, this elephant will have to do as face #11. How many days has it been now? Will I make it to 5o in 50?

Piggies on a fence

Like ants on a log? I would hope that people wouldn't call a food item piggies on a fence. What would it be? Sausage on a waffle? Anyway, as I'm getting a bit sick of doing pen sketches of human faces (yes, the face project may be petering out), I did say I could include animals, so I will. I suppose the rhinos could count as well, but I won't cheat in that way. These piggies are 9 & 10, I guess. I did re-do my #7, but it is in my sketchbook and I will post it later.

Tomorrow is a work day, so I'm in for the night. My neighbors seem quiet tonight. Let's hope it stays that way. No partying tonight, please. I forgot to buy coffee today. I hope the tiny bit I have left in the can mixed with the grounds from today will be enough to get me started tomorrow. Getting a good night's sleep would help.

The Three Amigos manipulated

I decided to revisit the three amigos tonight. Unfortunately, they weren't very cooperative and didn't let me paint them very well, so I manipulated them a bit with one of my many photo editing programs. If you're familiar with the three amigos, you will see that I did something different with them. It wasn't planned, but when I was drawing them on the canvas, I did not have enough room for the amigo on the right. So, what I did was flip him. In other words, he is facing the opposite direction. I think the next time I revisit the three amigos, it should be with a different medium.

The scanned version of the oily elephant

Here is the scanned version of the oily elephant. I was really surprised that it was already dry in just these few days. The 2 or 3 times that I used the water soluble oil paints, it took them a couple of weeks to dry. You would think that a paint that contains water would dry quicker than one that doesn't. Hmmm... I really wish that oil paints weren't so messy and smelly. I think they're more fun and more user friendly than acrylics. Aside from that, I don't have much to say tonight other than to mention the fact that we've been having rain and sporadic thunderstorms today and this evening and I have loved every minute of it. I heart fall!

I'll skip #7, for now...

I scanned face #7 along with #8, and as suspected, it was too crappy to post, even as a sketch. She had kind of an alien head. Doing quick sketches with no erasing sometimes means major failure. I will do a new number 7 next. For now, here is number 8. It is a sketch based on one of Hans Holbein's paintings. I did it with Inktense and water. He looks a bit less harsh in this one than he does in the original. He has kind of a scary face actually and is wearing quite a bit of bling. I had assumed from his attire, that he had quite a bit of power and I just looked it up and discovered that it is a portrait of Thomas More, so yes, he did.

Right now, I'm thinking of going back to bed for awhile. Loud crashes of thunder woke me up and then I felt like getting up and drawing, so that's what I did. Now that I've done the drawing, I think I need more sleep. In fact, I'm feeling too sleepy to type more text, so this is all, for now...

Face #6 and an uncomfortable attempt at oils

Hello everyone. I'm back with face #6 and an elephant that I painted with oils. I decided to try real oils (I've had a set for ages) and not the water based oils that I've used a few times before. All I did was make a huge, oily mess (and not a very successful painting that I photographed with my phone in not the greatest light, so it looks even worse)and I managed to make myself feel ill. I don't think my place is ventilated well enough for turpentine fumes. Blah, my tummy is in a bit of turmoil. I am someone that tends to like a bit of chemical fumes, but I was breathing them in for too long. I hope my cats are feeling o.k.. I think I'll have to stick with acrylics and the water based oils that I use on occasion. You should have seen my hands when I was washing up. They were coated with slimy brown oil. Yuck. And who knows if the brushes that I used will ever be the same. I do have to say, they're fun to play with, but more trouble than they're worth.

In other news, I went to my friend's house today and we watched 6 hours of television. I haven't been to her house in the past 2 or three weeks and our tivoed (I don't know how you spell the plural of "tivo") shows were building up. To me, that's too much time to sit and watch t.v. when you're not doing anything else along with the watching. I felt a bit antsy by the time we were done and we're still behind. We will have to do another marathon watching to catch up.

I think I'm starting to feel a bit better now. I didn't use any cadmium yellow, so I probably won't go crazy like Van Gogh, but I may have killed a few brain cells.

Cow and Face #5

Just as the title says, I have a face and a cow. I know the cow should technically count as a face, but she was painted before I started my faces project, so she is just a cow. Could a cow by any other name be a face? Yes. But, what else would we call a cow? Mooey? Machinski? I think I prefer "cow." I don't want to change the name. And I still will not count this cow face as one of my faces.

The man is bearded. I'm not a big fan of beards(or curly haired men, for that matter--waves are nice though), but I tend to like to draw beards. This guy was fun to draw and I'm thinking I may actually like to do a proper drawing of him, not just a sketch. Maybe sometime. For now, he'll have to just settle for being a sketch. I should mention that all of my sketches have come from photos from the wetcanvas reference image library. I love the reference image library. I even have a few of my photos there.

In other news, what would I do without a library card? Really? It's such a great thing for a person with not much money to have. Tonight I started watching a cable t.v. series on dvd called "Damages" that I got from the library and I'm really enjoying it and there are always books and c.d.s and they all make me very happy. I feel so bad for library patrons that come in with fines of $80.00 that they accrued years ago (maybe even back when their parents should have been ensuring that their items were returned on time)and, therefore, can't use their cards. I can tell that many of them are poor and that they'll probably never be able to pay off the fines, thus, they will never be able to enjoy the many wonderful resources the library can provide. Life is just not fair. If it were up to me, especially with kids, I would love to establish a read down your fines program. I developed one of these programs for a library school project. Too bad that library school projects seem to be too idealistic for a certain library system. There are library systems that do use these programs, but alas, not ours.

A not so great little elephant with characteristically scrawny legs...

So, I did squeeze out a small painting tonight. Unfortunately, I'm not overly thrilled with it, but I will post it anyway. The one thing that stands out for me, after painting or drawing several elephants, is that they have incredibly scrawny legs. I wonder how they hold up all of that weight on such scrawny legs? They don't seem wobbly or weakly, so the legs must work fine. But, I would think that they would benefit from legs with a bit more heft.

boy and girl faces

Here are two more face sketches. I did the two of them together in about 20 minutes. I'm trying to not spend much time on them. The boy I developed a bit more with shading, but I wanted to keep the lines on the girl sketch to a minimum (that's actually more difficult). It's so hard when you can't erase. You just have to work with the mistakes and keep on going. I think at the rate that I'm going, I dare to say, unless my enthusiasm peters out, the project should be 50 faces in 50 days. That's what I'll shoot for. I may be back later with a painting, but then again, maybe not. I've already taken my car for an oil change, done the dishes and vacuumed. I think I deserve a bit more play time.

Hope everyone is enjoying the nice weather. I went into work yesterday and said to the people in the break room that it was such a nice day. It was about 58 and cloudy. Most agreed that it was nice, but we there should be a bit of sun too. Yesterday I got my clouds (it has been sunny so much this summer--let a cloud lover have a day or two of shade) and today they got their sun. I do have to say I do even like this sun. Balance is always good.

Faces #1 and 2

As I said, fall appears to be here. Even though I know summer could come back any moment, with its sunny disposition and easy to please, uncomplicated nature, I am going to take full advantage of fall this week, and start a new project. Yes, fall is the time for projects, isn't it? Anyway, I would call this a Face Per Day, but I don't think I can stick to something like that even though I can be fairly disciplined when I want to be. Maybe a few faces per week would be a more workable goal. I just want to do this because I have felt very rusty when I have attempted portraits lately, so I want to sketch and try to lose the rust. Anyway, these are going to be quick sketches, mostly with a pen, just to loosen myself up and get a feel for faces. It won't just be human faces, even though I'm going to focus on them, so animals will be part of it. As these are quick sketches, I will still be posting whatever else I am working on. There is this painter who has a painting per day blog and has lately been posting faces that she has been painting of mugshots. They are really interesting and I suppose the photos are public domain, but I will not be using mugshots. Anyway, this is face # 1 and it was about a 5 minute sketch. Not very lovely, but it was quick and loose and I enjoyed it.

Edited to add, now that I think about it, what I am going to do is work towards a specific number of faces. How about 50 Faces? 50 Faces in two months?

Edited to add another face. I guess this guy thinks he is Jack Sparrow.

Blue rhinos on a cloudy afternoon

I have been fairly prolific this month so far, especially compared to last month. I even have a couple of things I have done that aren't scanned yet. It's the taste of fall in the air. Fall is a time when the creative urges really come a callin'. As everyone here knows, I heart fall.

These guys are fairly small and as you can see, are monochromatic. They're not bad, but they could be better. I just feel stuck as far as painting goes. I think I need to look through some books and study techniques. I tend to not like to do that, but I think it would help. I like to just dive in willy nilly. Who wants to read the instructions?

I'm now feeling the urge to bake some brownies, but I would have to go out and get a mix for that. I have flour, cocoa, sugar, etc, but not baking powder or soda and I'm sure one or the other is needed to bake them from scratch. I never have those two items in the house. In fact, I've probably never ever bought baking powder. I guess I can live without them. It's not like if I did bake them that I would eat them all. I'd bring them to work tomorrow, but I'd probably stuff at least a couple of them in my mouth today, I am very much enjoying not laboring on this Labor Day. Although I'm sure we'll pay for it tomorrow, with the library being a madhouse and all. People can't handle it when the library is closed for a day and we always end up suffering for it the next day.

Edited to add, wow, I actually found a recipe for brownies that doesn't call for baking powder, so I guess I'll be making brownies after all!

Edited again to add that the brownies turned out great.

One more edit, just so I can link this fun little thing to play with.

Two portraits, one leonine...

I'll let you guess which one...



I started drawing the lion yesterday, but then today felt like drawing a person, so I went through the wetcanvas photo archives looking for a photo with character and found a photo of this man. It says in the description that he's a railroad worker. How about those ears? As I've said before, it's always a little strange just picking a photo of a stranger to draw. I'm sure he has no idea that someone has been studying his face tonight. But then again, hopefully the photographer let him know that his image was going to be added to the wetcanvas photo archive. In that case, maybe he does sometimes think "oh, maybe someone is drawing me right now."

In other news, right now I'm starving. All I've had today is a couple of small pieces of bread and a tomato. I've been busy all day long (not just drawing) and just kind of kept forgetting to eat. I am going to have to scrounge for something now. No more bread though. I ate it warm from the oven (yes, I said oven. I just used the bread machine for the dough this time and baked it myself) and ended up with a bread tummy ache. That might be the more logical reason why I haven't eaten much today.