It's not all that new - i started up How to Draw People about two weeks ago - but i've been a bit slow to mention it. Well, here it is. New blog, new demo, new humanoid-drawing awesomeness.
I'm not so shallow as to still be holding a grudge against everyone who ever teased me in elementary school. (Which is just as well, as if i were, i'd go insane trying to hold grudges against 109 fifth-graders.)
But i am shallow enough to be pumped when anything i do is considered even remotely cool by anyone. And "Watering the Garden" is cool enough to be on the Imagekind blog. Not just any post on the Imagekind blog, but the "Some of the Coolest Robot Art on Imagekind" post.
Hey, the coolest thing i ever did as a kid was carry around spare floppy disks in case anyone needed to borrow one. This is a step up :D
I've started a digital art lens on Squidoo, and added links to a few of my favourite tutorials. I'd like to get some more tutorials up there, though, so if anyone knows of any good ones (or even if you just want to promote your own), feel free to add it!
The way Squidoo link lists work, anyone can add links and anyone can vote on which links are best. Just go to the list and click "Add to This List" to add your favourite tutorial.
First: i’m temporarily discontinuing the prints-for-comments drawings i’ve been running the past few weeks. Many reasons; none important here; move along. Point is, i’d still like to do something for visitors who care enough to comment.
One thought i’ve had is to upload some sort of special art in a password-protected post on TornCanvas, and e-mail/note the password to anyone who leaves a comment. The question now becomes: What’s the special art?
It’s for you guys, so let me know: what kind of art do you want? Desktop wallpapers? Avatars? Something printable - a poster, some origami, stickers?
Leave a comment, be one of the first to get the Special Art. You know you want it ^_^
I've set up a print account on a new site, Imagekind. I'm still testing it out a bit, but i think it may end up replacing deviantART as my main print account.
There's several reasons why i want an alternative to deviantART - the biggest one is gift certificates. I'd like to be able to send people prints once in a while, but, understandably, not everyone is keen on handing over eir mailing address to "that random artist i met on the intarwebs." Gift certificates would be a nice alternative, but deviantART doesn't seem to offer them (they do offer deviantDOLLARS, which their FAQ says will be available as gift certificates in the future, but no word as to when or whether or not they'll be available to people who aren't already members of dA.) Imagekind? Offers gift certificates. Right now. To anybody with email. w00t.
That's not to say i'll be passing out gift certificates right and left - i'm already planning on cutting back my weekly drawing to something more like monthly (Imagekind has higher base prices, so even with the artist's discount it'd cost me more to send out "free" prints) - but it will certainly make things much easier for people who don't want to hand out their mailing addresses.
In sticking with an Earth Day theme, i'd like to recommend two of my own pieces, "Watering the Garden" (left; print available here) and "Polar" (image here,print here). If Earth Day themes don't quite appeal to you, there's plenty of other images in my shop.
I decided, as an experiment, to write a business plan for Torn Canvas. I actually finished a (rather shoddy) business plan before realising it was going to take me in an artistic direction i didn't want to go in. The weird thing being i wasn't sure what direction i did want to go in – just that it wasn't the direction i'd end up going if i followed my business plan.
Which led to me sitting and thinking for a while about what direction i do want to go. After all, it's pretty hard to get where you're going if you don't know where it is. I'm not going to get into some big GTD/Simple•ology/Steve Palina "Discover Your Goal in Life"-type post here but basically i narrowed things down pretty quickly just by thinking about what i don't like in my current life, how i want to change it, and why i'd change it like that. (side note: I think most people, trying to decide what they want to do in life, will do better off looking at increasing the things they like, rather than how to get rid of the things they don't like. But, at the risk of sounding really cheesy, i love my current life so much, focusing on the things i like would leave me thinking i ought not change anything, even though there's a few things i really don't like. I'd think i ought just put up with them. And i don't wanna.)
The thing i like the least about my current life is where i live. I live in the suburbs. I've lived in cities before and i much prefer them. I started thinking about why i prefer living in the city. Which led to a thought process kind of like this:
I have to drive to get anywhere. I prefer the metro.
I prefer the metro because i can draw on the metro.
I'd rather draw on the metro than draw at home because i like drawing people.
It's not really that big a revelation. I've always known i enjoy drawing people. I just don't normally take into account how much i love drawing people. Obviously, i have other reasons for preferring the city (and even other reasons for preferring the metro – i love the metro!) but the people is what really pushes it from "preference" to downright "love one, hate the other."
I'm not really sure where i'm going with this. Like the title of the post says, "nonsensicalness." But i will certainly be re-writing the "business plan" and doing my utmost to add many, many more faces, people, and portraits to my upcoming work.
Starting up blog drawing contest type thing. See the pic and some details here and leave a comment if interested in winning a print. It'll probably be a weekly thing sooo… pay attention. ^_~
I've been taking art classes since pretty much the day i was old enough to sign up - all in traditional media. So of course i'm a digital artist now. I update my site every day with new sketches (currently, i'm trying to master Oekaki, and the sketches are mostly wretched.) I sleep next to my computer.
And now i'm maybe going to break this by trying to integrate Twitter, because otherwise you'll only see this page change once a week at best:
*You know you spend too much time on the 'net when you start a new blog with "first post."
