This and that (etc. and stuff)

Will colour this tomorrow. EDIT: No, I don´t.
And I just realized
that this bird has a very large bum.


Pretty mixed today.
I tried to do another piece in biropen (with my
traditional "I have no idea what to draw but I´ll
draw anyway"-method, which is risky on days like
this one), resulting in nothing but brainfarts and wasted
paper. So I switched back to fountain pen
again and therefore back to my previous way
of drawing (notice how I avoided the term
"style"?), which worked much much better.

I am still very split on which way to turn these
days, which style to work on - you see, I could
as well accept both, but damnit, I can´t have two
styles at once because I am weird. I want to
identify with one style totally. Maybe one day
I´ll be less anal rententive about this.
I mean, even the content of my pencil case
must be in a certain way - there are maybe
eight metal mechanical pencils I never use
but HAVE to keep them in there because they
add a nice weight to the case.

And besides, it´s enough with that
grey sky winter. I want to have some sunlight.
I never care for it that much during the whole
season till maybe january, but at the very
end of the winter I am pretty burned out
and is affecting my mood. Leaves on the
trees and sunny days - I don´t demand
tropical climate. I am SO glad that I don´t
live in iceland or something like that.

On a sidenote:
I started another blog account at
Wordpress, after reading a
sarcastic rant at Idiottoys.com,
but unfortunately importing Blogs
from Blogger is more complicated than
they claim on their front page. It is
supposed to be way more user friendly,
though I never had very serious problems with Blogger
yet - but I know my blogpartner Ariel had sort of
"lost" his old blog (and couldn´t edit it anymore).


On the other hand, after those disastrous
experiments with Linux (which was pretty cool
except NOTHING WORKED) I am a bit cautious
with trying new stuff for the sake of it.
"If it ain´t broken, don´t fix it."

Running up/between that hill(s)

Oh, I just see that I didn´t adjust the contrast
setting right - the picture is a bit grey. You´ll only
notice if you have an elite monitor as I do, though (the cheapest
one they had at the store)!

Did this one in biro pen again, and I noticed
an interesting thing - across all brands, the blue
ones are always a LOT smoother and work better than
the black ones. This one is drawn with a blue one,
too, as after scanning it in grayscale it doesn´t make
a difference anyways. Plus, it is a really nice blue tone,
somehow satisfying to use. A nice change from all
the boring black.

Kulli solls sein / IF: Communication

Rrrraaaah Bwaaaarh Graaaah Bubba Wubba
(Communication is the key)

Uuh baby!
Dug out some biro pens today.
You know, there are plenty rational arguments
to prefer some art tools over others, but the
emotional connection I have to plain cheap
mass-market biro pens is hard to describe.
Instead, just look at this picture and if you
can´t feel the joy I felt when drawing it,
you are cold and lifeless inside.

I am also pretty surprised how a couple
of well placed tones can lift a plain b/w-sketch
to a full illustration.
Unlike the last one I posted:
that was just uninspired.

EDIT:
Just checked this week IF topic,
and boy, I can be a cheap bastard sometimes.
But you have to admit, it fits! Communication!

EDIT EDIT:
As Maarit told me (check out her freshly linked
blog), "Kulli" means something naughty in Finnish -
something between the legs of a male to be exact.
Well, in German it´s just a abbreviation of
"Kugelschreiber", which means biro pen.
Thinking about it, a biro pen COULD be seen as
something phallic, but, well... let´s just end this
train of thought here.

Capture the flag(s)

Solid colour didn´t work in this
one - it somewhat drowned the lines.
It´s weird, but some pictures are harder
to add colour to than others. And you can´t just
add the same colour scheme to any picture you want...
I am glad that digital editing enables a lot of
experimentation. I´ve learned a lot through it.

Post #100...APPROACHING FAST!

Yeah bay-bee! This is post #91 and
it is entirely up to me how fast or slow I am
going to reach this "goal". Anyways, this is
the second version of my calendar project.
I like it much more than the old one; and one of
the reasons is that I edited white dots for eyes
into the heads. You can´t image how much difference
this makes.

Reminds me of an experiment they did
with monkeys - they made several masks and tested
to which ones the monkeys will show emotions.
One mask was a human face but with eyes and mouth
removed, and another one was a plain "dot dot line"-smiley
face. The monkey reacted to the smiley, not to
the anatomically more realistic face.
I believe that by inserting "eyes" into those
heads, the reaction to this piece changes in a positive
way.

Sadly, I don´t feel as inspired when working
on the calendar assignment as I do when
drawing just for fun - I think the Gravity piece is
a league better than this one. But we still have time,
thank god. This is a very prestigeous project,
I wanna give my best. MY BEST!

Oh wait, they didn´t test monkeys but
babies.

And check out this crazy music.
I can´t get enough of it.

Parachute

Well, the parachute looks more
like an onion, but well...

I really like the grainy look
of graphite once in a while - it
is a strong contrast to the
plain, flawless computer colour.

IF: Gravity

An anchor defying the laws of gravity.

Click to enlarge - in case you
didn´t know already


This is one of the pieces where the colour
had an enormous impact on its quality. After drawing
it yesterday, I thought it was a bit mediocre,
but after adding very strong tones to it, I am
happy with it. I feel that I finally got a proper
grip on colour.

Start working, you piece of aaargh

This is how I feel right now.

Okay, so I bought a very sweet
discounted Linux distribution called
"Ubuntu" and installed it after making a
backup of my major files. I am not a tech geek,
but Linux can be had for free (since it´s open
software), and with Microsoft slowly tightening
the grip on user rights (or something), I thought that
I better get used to this whole alternative software thing.

Plus, the main programs I use (GIMP, Firefox, and occasionally
NVU if I would only finally update my homepage!) are windows
ports of Linux software, and since GIMP ran a bit slow and crashed
once in a while, I figured that it would run a lot smoother on its native
operating system. And since Linux is claimed to be very customisable
and transparent, well, better today than tomorrow!

The downside of this was that I had no idea how
Linux worked - it has a very intuitive interface, imagine
a cross between Windows and Mac OS - but following problems
occured:

1) I missed a couple of important driver discs. OOOPS!

2) I had no idea how to access our internet router.
In fact, I did it only SOMEHOW, and remember
doing...stuff...and it just worked. And without access
to the internet, I was pretty much screwed - no software.
OOOPS!

3) Now that I re-installed Windows XP, I found out
that the missing driver discs still pose a problem -
I can´t install my scanner, and the drivers I loaded
from the web don´t work somehow. My soundcard
doesn´t work, the USB detection doesn´t respond, and
I have no idea how to access my homepage ( I remember
having the needed data SOMEWHERE).
OOOPSIE DAISY!

And being unable to scan in drawings, I can only
pray to get it working again, since another assigment
is drawing near. How is it possible that PCs are so
widespread today, but handling them is still so
incredibly cryptic? I still believe that installing
our internet connection was some kind of black
magic.

I am also missing all of my website bookmarks
(which is way more annoying than I thought).
Maybe hitting against the screen and clicking the
mouse real hard will make everything okay again.

...

No, it doesn´t. Too bad.

Pobbes!

Today is Valentines day, and
Merle and I are a couple since 3 years now!


I did pencilings on this one first, and kept it
in a very strict, clean style with only a few
colours. I am very satisfied with how it turned
out. Well, I have to, since Merle is going to frame
it and hang it on her wall, where the christmas
piece is hanging, and her birthday piece will hang
too (which is the 9th of March, pretty soon!),
so it´s a trilogy of cats with lots of red in them.
She decorated her room with many red tones,
and those images should fit in.

woman,bird,man

I almost overlooked a piece
of paper at our front door
that announced that between 8 and 8.30 am
some random dude will show up at our house
to change the water...meter, thing.
So instead of going to bed to sleep four hours
and then have to get up and get dressed just
to let this guy in to change the water...indicator...
regulator-machine, I decided to simply stay awake.
Merle should come home some hours later, propably
with similar sleep deprivation, and join me in
my sweet dreams.

A man must post what a man has to post

Again, a couple of days with no
substantial effort, and it shows.
After a certain break I really need to
warm up my gears again, and it takes a
couple of days to produce good results.

Self-motivation is a hard thing, and un-
fortunately I am not one of those who just
HAVE to draw all day. I like drawing, but alas,
other things get in the way all the time. I am
still figuring out how I should work - today I did
short drawing sessions alternated with short
periods of doing something else, and it worked
somehow - I learned to always come BACK to
drawing again, even if I had my Nintendo running
at the same time.

Draw - play - draw - play -
draw - play - play - internet - play - draw a bit - play -
internet - some more internet....
Well, I am learning.

Oh god, I haven´t even been outside
the whole day, and now it´s 00:53 am
already. Time for a walk in the frosty night!

PITTfall

My love for the utterly brilliant,
aforementioned Faber Castell PITT artist
pens with brush tip is growing. It takes a
pretty rapid slowdown of pace and I started to
put together each line by doing a lot of small,
concentrated brushstrokes, and I am pretty
pleased with the results.

(Yeah, this looks a bit similar to the last one
I posted, but I am trying to get a grip on
proper faces and heads, as opposed to the
"lazy excuse" for heads I did in the past.)

I am also planning to do another
take on my calendar assignment, as I am
pretty unsatisfied with it now. It´s obsessed
with unnecessary details while looking boring
and lifeless - it´s too technical (in lack of a better
term to describe it). But on the most basic level,
look at the lines. They are DEAD. Totally uninteresting.
I can´t imagine anyone who wants to look at this
for a whole month. And besides, I couldn´t
shake the feeling of ripping off Elizabeth Siegel
the whole time. See-through bodies are her
idea, and I have no right to copy it.

______________

There is only a tiny number of pictures from the past
that I still like, no matter how old they are, but they are rare
and show me how seldom I really nail a perfect image.
Most older stuff tends to bore me quickly.

Whenever I do a drawing I really like, I get
a quick rush from it, an unmatched satisfaction. But
it wears off quickly, which forces me to keep on
working on my style.

I am still slacking around on
too many days (bare in mind I don´t have a job
on the side or anything, so it´s really just pure
laziness), but my main motivation is
to impress and surprise myself
and - hopefully! - others.

February 21 is the next assignment deadline,
and I am planning to share my progress on the
planned new contribution with you this time around.
I am looking forward to it!

Maybe I´ll print this on a shirt

Or maybe not.
Only time will tell!

And if you don´t watch
this very short but extremely
funny video, you are really
missing out on something.
Hey, it´s your life!


(Alternate version)

Another one!

Jump!

Okay, I am not entirely sure if
I need a new scanner or better crayons
(propably both), so please excuse the pretty
blurry scans and distored colours for the next
few days. I am currently drawing with
okay-ish crayons, but I am planning to
buy a couple of really good ones in my
local insider-artshop tomorrow. They
have a much smoother quality.

On a sidenote, I am trying to
work more consistently again. The last
weeks were pretty weak considering the time
I spend on doing random stuff instead of working
focussed. I mean, on some days I didn´t even
sit down on my butt and tried hard properly.
Working on your own needs an amount
of self-discipline I have yet to fully develop.

And most of the time, the things that
get in my way the most are pretty dumb, too -
mostly TEH INTARNET and Nintendo.
(If I would live in America, I would try
sueing technology.) I mean, at least it´s not
TV, but it´s pretty generic nevertheless.
If would waste my time with at least more
individual things, like uphill jogging or
shark-wrestling, but no... Internet.com
and silly games for kids. When I grow old,
I don´t wanna look back on my life and see myself
playing videogames and surfing the web all day.
I´d prefer seeing myself drawing pretty pictures,
no matter if anyone buys them or not. In the latter
case, I would be BOHEME. In the former case,
just a dirty lazy slacker, playing DS while other
people have to move around rocks or sit in a grey cubicle
or whatever the heck real working
people do.

Funny how I always tend to imagine
how I would live as an artist (of whatever kind)
later on when this is EXACTLY what I could be
doing RIGHT NOW.

.....

Maybe I should make myself a nametag and
put on a tie before I sit down at the desk (wait,
that´s "drawing table"). And be my own boss.
I mean literally my own boss.
"You have to finish five drawings and I want
those on my desk at 11 am!"

IF: Sprout

Here on my blog, it´s an ongoing
tradition of taking pictures I did and modifying
so that they fit each weeks Illustration Friday
topic. So yeah, it´s a pretty cheap way of being
able to submit something.

This one turned out a bit blurry and
the colours are still a bit of a problem -
I need a better scanner someday.

__________________

Oh, and JeaNnette
tagged me. I am not feeling like posting
comments on six blogs right now, but I´ll happily
state 6 weird things. I´ll quote from her blog:


Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post
of their own 6 weird things and clearly state this rule. After you state your
6 weird things, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their
names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you're tagged" in their
comments and tell them to read your blog for information as to what it means.

Weird things GO GO GO!

1. A couple of days ago I played Castlevania:
Portrait Of Ruin on my Nintendo DS for almost 16 hours
with only minor breaks and ate cake and drank a beer.
Oh wait, that´s not weird, that´s just pathetic.
Not as pathetic as playing World Of Warcraft and
peeing in an empty soda bottle, though. I am
more sophisticated than that.

2. I do push-ups even though I hate
sports. But it´s cheap and effective.

3. I like both green tea
and coffee. WEIRD!!!

4. I had a Playstation 2 once, then
sold it, then bought a new one, and sold that
one two. Don´t ask for more details.

5. I fell down the stairs when I was
a little kid (you can probably tell already), and broke
my arm, and the upper arm bone sticked out in a
a gory looking way.

6. I made my own "radio station" by
making tapes of myself talking and playing music -
till I was about fourteen or so. But I still like to
talk a lot.

Chansons, croissants, accordeons

I didn´t make this title up.
I once knew someone who had a french
music sampler with this title. If I was french,
I would take this stereotypical way of thinking
about France as pretty racist.


Look what I did today!
I coloured a drawing...BY HAND! With real colours!
They actually EXIST and aren´t some digital, virtual
computer-cyber-robot colour. Its a very touching
and moving feeling to see this drawing hanging on
my wall right know being completely done
traditionally. I am by no means an antimodernist
(hey, the internet, you know? Good stuff to some
extend), but it gets really funny when you´re
not astounded by what you can do with
computers and photoshop, but by what you
can do with your bare hands and a couple
of crayons.



I like to believe that when people first used
Photoshop or Corel Draw (or whatevvva!) they propably
though "Wow! That´s like really drawing... but on
a PC! Wow! I can undo and save anytime! I have
every colour of the universe at my very fingertips!"
But after all the sensory deprivation I feel the
backward effect - colouring an image with
crayons is like "Whoa, this is like Photoshop...
but this is actually, physical colour!"
Modern times are strange for sure.
No wonder many people are looking for
the "authentic" experience. And even when
you´re one of those "I do everything in vectors because
it is SO perfect and SLICK", you should feel the
experience of applying actual color on actual paper with
actual pens and brushes (and no layers), when the only
way to UNDO is not to press Ctrl-Z (or whatever the
Apple equivalent of that is) but to either cover it up
or deal it with.



Screen capture of the month!
"Minister of drink" really has a lot of charisma.


It´s like in real life (not that drawing ISN`T
real life): When you fuck something up, you can´t undo
it. It happened and you have to deal with it. And even
if you throw it away, the picture existed. Tell me what
you will, but digital images aren´t real. (Unless, of course,
you have a different concept of reality, but I am not writing
about philosophy here.)

I am not saying all digital art is bad; just look at utterly excellent stuff
like my blog-partner McRae does - he does is with a
lot of historic reprise like art deco, with an ironic twist -
I mean, 50 cent looking like a 1920ies painting?

WHAT I am trying to say is that the real experience
can´t be substituted by menues, editing windows,
programs and Wacom tablets. Because it´s always
a simulation. You´re drawing, but you´re drawing
in THE MATRIX, dude! It´s not the REAL THING.


And you might think you can live with all the commodities
and do without the stimulating tradititonal way of
shaping images (which is as old as mankind itself;
how long does digital image editing exist? Maybe
twenty years?), but when nobody is going through
traditional drawing and painting anymore
and learns everything in front of a flickering
computer monitor and not making piles of
papers but storing everything in folders on the
harddrive, then something important is lost.



Advertisement: Frederik Jurk uses
Faber Castell PITT artist brush pens.
Only the black one, though.


I am not joking here. Don´t tell me asian
brush painting can be experienced on the same
spiritual level when imitating it in Painter
with custom brushes. I am not so much pointing
at the RESULTS, but the process that leads
to it. Looking at a blank, new piece of paper
is vastly different from opening a new files.
Drawing for me isn´t all about realizing pictures
in my head, but about the physical feeling,
moving my hand, my arms, feeling the pen,
smelling the paint, feeling the structure of the
paper.