Mourning dove chicks, more Corel Painter 9.5 experiments

For the past couple of days, several mourning doves have been hanging out in our front garden. I didn't mind, as long as they left my crocuses alone (unlike certain neighbourhood demon squirrels). Then I noticed the larger mourning dove feeding the three smaller ones, and realized the latter were mourning dove chicks!

And suddenly I panicked, aware of all the cats and other creatures in the neighbourhood. Those dove chicks just seemed to be stupidly standing in the open; they might as well have had a big sign above their heads reading: FREE FOOD! My friend Tanya says they call them "lunch birds" in her area, and I can so easily see why. Happily, however, I woke up the next morning to find them gone. Jeff has helpfully pointed out that this might have meant they were all eaten, but I prefer to think that they all flew to a Mourning Dove Sanctuary & Resort where they're being pampered with lots of...well...whatever mourning doves like to eat.



I've been getting a surprising amount of positive feedback to my Little Nightmares drawings. Thanks, everyone! Also a number of requests for prints, yay!! I've set up a Little Nightmares page with thumbnails and where people can sign up for my mailing list, if they're interested in being notified when prints and new Nightmares are available. Your information will only be used for Little Nightmare mailings, which will be sent out one or two times a month at most. You can opt out whenever you'd like.

I've found a number of good printing places, but I'm still looking for a reliable service that will print AND sell prints and other merchandise for me. I'd much take a smaller cut than have to worry about the hassle of packaging, mailing, customs, etc. Suggestions welcome!

Image above and to the right: A Corel Painter 9.5 experiment with the Airbrush tool. I was trying out a technique I just learned from one of their movie tutorials, where you can use the Flat variant of the Pen tool to paint shapes on different layers, then use Preserve Transparency on layers to turn each of these shapes into masks. MUCH less hassle than using the Lasso tool to outline.

Photo below: I love tulips. These are the last remaining tulips from a bunch I bought as a treat for myself. They've opened up and will probably only last a day or two more, but I liked how they looked in the sunlight late one afternoon.

Apr/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Selling prints online, seeking Europe advice

Above: newest addition to my Little Nightmares set. Yes, it's a monster squirrel!

After advice from Beckett, I've decided not to go with the convention art show idea...there's not enough money in it, plus I don't tend to attend general sf/fantasy conventions anymore, just filk events.

Instead, I'm investigating online services that will sell prints of my digital artwork. Why go with a service rather than do it myself? Because I don't want the administration hassle (packaging, mailing, customs fees etc.); I'd rather spend the time writing and drawing.

Anyway, I was considering DeviantArt, but their copyright policy makes me a tad nervous. From the Wikipedia entry on DeviantArt: "Historically there has been sporadic unease regarding deviantART's potential usage of uploaded art. Posting requires assent to dA's Submission Agreement, which grants deviantART the legal permissions to re-use and even modify any artwork posted on deviantART (see in particular Section 3. License), as well as the right to sublicense any of that artwork to a third party at dA's sole discretion." In order to sell a print through the service, you need to upload it to the regular database.

However, some respected artists use the service, and it would hurt deviantART's reputation quite badly if they abused the copyright clause.

There's my Cafepress store, of course, but it's not really a venue for selling prints. Flickr sells prints, but only to U.S. citizens. They recommend QOOP for non-U.S types, but the service only seems to offer books and posters, not prints.

There seem to be a zillion services online that enable photographers/artists to sell prints; I have no idea how to choose. Hm. Maybe this would make a good magazine article. :-)

Anyway, if any of you have experience or advice, I'd appreciate it.

Seeking Europe travel advice!

Meanwhile, I'm getting more and more excited about our Europe trip. We'll be visiting places I've never been, including Paris, Florence, Tuscany area in Italy, Rome. Jeff and I have been getting a lot of useful advice from friends and family who have already travelled in those places.

As I've mentioned in a previous Blathering, Jeff and I tend not to be as interested in the standard tourist attractions as some others may be (e.g. we will probably opt NOT to go up the Eiffel Tower, though I do plan to look at it :-)) and we both hate long line-ups...the pain of the latter weighs heavily against the lure of the former. We only have two full days in Paris, and would rather spent the hour or two people-watching at a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysées than standing in a queue. We plan to spend one of the days walking along the Seine, checking out art galleries, parks and other interesting sights along the way. We'll be spending the bulk of our visit in the Tuscany area of Italy, courtesy the generosity of my mom-in-law (thanks, Ginny!).

Anyway, I welcome suggestions from any of you with travel experience in the above-mentioned places. I'm especially interested in interesting culinary experiences, preferably inexpensive and authentic to a region. One of you mentioned a particularly good chocolate shop in Paris a while ago; sadly, I've lost the note I made, and can't recall who it was or the name of the shop. I promise to paste the info into my Notetaker file right away this time!

Miscellaneous links and news:

An obituary about Dan Gibson appeared in today's Toronto Star. As I mentioned in a Blathering several weeks back, Dan Gibson passed away on March 18th.

To "tigertoy", "chriso" and "avt-tor": your LJ icons are next.

Apr/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Writing, monster bunnies, and mortality songs

Above: Our quince tree is just starting to show leaf and flower buds. I took this yesterday in the early evening when the rain was falling in a fine mist.

Now that I'm nearly finished my current YA novel (Ruth and Jeff are both reading my manuscript right now), I'm overwhelmed with ideas for my next fiction projects. It seems like so long since I've had new ones that it's going to be an interesting challenge deciding what to do next. I'm currently leaning toward an early chapter reader series; writing the first one, including a pitch for the rest of the series in the package.

I'm very, very happy that after several years, my tendinitis seems to have improved enough that I can work on my fiction without being conscious of pain/keystroke effort every few minutes...the latter made it nearly impossible to work on a work of fiction, I found, which is why I focussed nearly exclusively on nonfiction, temporarily abandoning my novel.

BUT I also have a bunch of ideas for nonfiction books for young people, so I'm gradually working on those proposals as well.

So many books I want to write, so little time.



Above: This is the first of my Corel Painter 9.5 drawings that I've liked enough to print out and frame. It'll make a cheery addition to my office wall, don't you think?

;-)

I'm toying with the idea of doing a series of Monster Bunny type of prints, a few to donate to Interfilk auctions, and perhaps some limited edition prints for art shows at sf/fantasy conventions. I'll need to work on more designs and do a lot more research before I attempt this, however. For one thing, I need to find out more about digital prints and how expensive archival quality prints would be. Are the prints that are sold at these sf/fantasy art shows of archival or non-archival quality, for example? According to this Web site, the lifespan of non-archival prints is about 10 years without fading and colour shifting; I assume this means a lower price. I'd appreciate advice from anyone out there with experience in this area.

My newest Monster Bunny drawing:



In one of my FilKONtario reports, I mentioned that Robert C. sang a song at FilKONtario called "The Mortality Song" which I found pretty amusing. Robert has posted the lyrics in his Livejournal, if you're interested. His intro:

"I started on this song soon after GAFilk. It was at GAFilk that someone who shall be nameless (but whose initials are Brenda Sutton (g)) outbid me on the Debbie Ohi Surprise Pack, which included (among other neat things) a guest appearance in Debbie's current strip 'My Life In a Nutshell'. This event left me quite dejected and depressed, and it really made me question my own purpose and the meaning of my life. I ended up writing the following ballad in an effort to come to grips with my own questions and doubts. It's really quite ose, but it did me good to get the feelings out."

Apr/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Monster bunny art recipe

Do check out Kate Parkinson's illustration blog, which I just discovered. Samples include her oil paintings as well as drawings done by hand and computer images. I love Kate's illustration style.

Today's Blatherpics are more Corel Painter 9.5 drawings, this time with a darker tone. I know that illustrators are encouraged to eventually settle into a particular style, one that art directors will identify with them.

I still feel I'm too much of a newbie to choose a style yet, which is why I've been experimenting with a wide variety in Corel Painter. I have noticed, though, that so far the drawing styles that tend to feel most natural to me is a cheerful cartoon-illustration style but also a style with a darker tone and with looser lines, like my Ancient, Snow Clones, and Rolling Head drawings. And the drawings on today's page, of course, which were SO fun to do.

I've joined the Art Recipes Flickr Group, in which members post finished pieces of art along with the "recipes" (step-by-step process) that go with them. Some of the process recipes are quite detailed and enlightening, like the one for this impressive Illustrator drawing of an Asian girl.

Anyway, here's a sample of one my process recipes, which you can find in this Flickr set. You can click on any image to see a larger version. I'm using the finished drawing as one of my LJ user icons.

	I filled the canvas with a dark brown colour as a base. My usual method is usually just to leave the canvas colour as white, because I like how bright the image looks. This time I wanted to try a different base colour.
	Next, I used the Loaded Wet Sponge to get some interesting coloured textures on the canvas.
	Using the Croquil brush, I sketched the monster bunny shape. The body was done quickly. I added the claws because I wanted to add a bit of menace.
	Next, I used Chalk to fill in the drawing, purposely left some fuzzy edges for visual interest and an extra nightmarish quality. Then I used the Lasso Tool to outline the shape of the mouth, filled that with a different colour and texture. Used the Lasso Tool again to outline the two sets of teeth, filled it with white. Used the Leaky Brush and Airbrush to create the stains.
	Used Croquil to add the red eyes and the pupil. The eyes looked too bright to me, so I softened the look a bit with some Charcoal.

I used the textured background technique in my drawing for this week's Illustration Friday. Topic: "Robots."



What does it say about me, I wonder, that I enjoy both the fun cartoony style above AND the darker style below?

Apr/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments

Corel Painter 9.5 experiments

More Corel Painter 9.5 experiments.

Above: My first attempt at using Corel Painter 9.5's "paint on photograph" tools. Interesting idea...you start with a photograph, but then paint over top of the photograph using the original colours, but with brushes of your choice. Depending on the size and type of brush, you can make the photograph look as "painterly" as you'd like. The picture above still looks a bit too much like a photograph, I think, but I found it time-consuming to go over every pixel. I may give this another go at some point in the future.

Although it's not nearly as creative as drawing from scratch, I can see the appeal for certain types of projects. It would be an interesting project to take a regular portrait, for example, and then "paint" the figures into a fantasy scene. I could have put Michelle and Tony in medieval clothes, for example, added flowers to Michelle's hair, etc. Hm...I may still try this.

Below: A combination of the Image Hose and Artists' Oils. I still suck at drawing pictures without doing an ink outline first (e.g. cartoon-style is far easier for me) so figure it's something worth practising. Plus I LOVE the feel of the Artists' Oils in Corel Painter 9.5 and am highly motivated to learn how to use them properly.



Also, I keep forgetting to mention that I have a poem in the current (short verse) issue of Snakeskin, a UK-based poetry Webzine which I first read about here. I've only recently started to submit poetry. So far, I've had poems published in PKA's Advocate (print magazine), Ideals (print magazine) and now Snakeskin.

Apr/2006 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments