So hey there readers! I know a lot of you do art, and sometimes post it in the comments, so why not an open thread where you can post it to your heart’s content.
Also I thought maybe we could talk a bit about the hardware and software and other resources/websites you all use and/or recommend for doing digital graphics and art.
Ok, I have an eensy teensy bit of an ulterior motive for that last bit. See, I would like to up my graphics game (and do some other computery art stuff too) and I thought you all might have some good recommendations. One basic thing I need is a drawing tablet. Any suggestions for decent ones that don’t cost too much?
And while I’m at it here are some other recent filter experiments of mine to accompany the kitty above.
@David
Thanks! It’s a Godin 5th Ave Kingpin II that I picked up refurbished. It’s my first electric (well, acoustic/electric) so I’m still getting the hang of how the heck that works, but it turns out it’s a lot easier to record one-takes with than my acoustic. I can just set my mic to bi-directional and put the amp behind it and fiddle with that distance/volume rather than trying to fine-tune both vocals and guitar coming from the same direction. (Also, yes, it’s gorgeous *_*)
Edit: Also, power metal isn’t exactly my jam, but congrats on the new album! The recording sounds super solid.
Ugh, I was outlining with a mouse almost two years ago. Sketched it in a sketchbook, scanned it and then put it through Paint.NET and shit to line and color crap. It was a tedious thing of passion. But one of my friends gave me their old Intuos tablet since they got a new one and it’s amazing. I use to use a free version of Photoshop when they put that out for free but now I pretty much exclusively use MediaBang, which is a free and lightweight program that gives pretty nicely clean lines and has cool features.
I really love working in a digital media. The Almighty Undo Button. Top notch. It’s nice to not feel afraid that you’re gonna mess up a sketch you worked hours and hours on when inking it.
But I don’t really have the money for more fancy pants stuff but I would like really, one day, to have one of those cool tablets with a glass screen, if only because it feels better to draw directly on the thing you’re viewing rather than looking at a monitor while drawing on the tablet. Also it’s annoying when you accidentally nudge the tablet and a really nice line comes out crooked. :/
Yes yes yes.
Post it post it post it!
Here. let me post some fan art I’ve done:
This is a cleaned up version of the ice cream thing I posted in the other thread. It’s not the whole thing and it’s not complete (there’s 2-3 other pictures to do with this) but I really like how the ice cream looks at least.
http://i.imgur.com/3PVaVxe.png
His eyes are creepy tho. I need to redo them.
But before I do that, I wanted to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a few weeks.
http://i.imgur.com/EgH8jd5.png
Peedee and Ronaldo bonding time! (I love drawing family members bonding.) Ronaldo is teaching Peedee origami. Originally Ronaldo was gonna teach his baby bro how to properly protect himself from sneeple rays by making him a tin foil hat but the poses were too similar to a Mabel and Ford peice I did so scrapped it and changed it up.
(Oh, geesh, I just noticed Ronaldo has two left feet omg XD)
I have to say I’m really grateful for you guys even if I don’t post much. you’re one of the few genuinely friendly feminist spaces online, and you don’t abide by ableism either.
http://i.imgur.com/gEuag2y.png
I fixed it, I’m competent.
On the topic of being a complete failure with art, one thing you gotta learn is that it’s alright to scrap crap and you gotta learn that sometimes you just gotta tear it all down. You can’t be afraid to start over and digital media really helps instill that IMO because you’re not spending a shit ton of money on it.
(if you can’t see it well, right click and open the image in a new tab…if you care and stuff.)
Here, the image on the left I started with but I scrapped it and started a brand new drawing on the right.
http://i.imgur.com/1fssJ8H.png
Never be afraid to try again from scrap because 11 out of 10 times, it’s gonna turn out way better, I promise.
But you also can’t be afraid to not put out amazing masterpieces, too. Don’t scrap a picture a million times because it isn’t just right, put it out there and start something new. You aren’t gonna get anywhere trying to do something absolutely perfect.
In the wake of every good artist is a mountain of shitty art (relative to their best work). The fundamental truth is that the more you do a thing the better you get at that thing, and almost nobody starts out good at a thing. One of the hardest yet necessary parts of art is consistently producing work that you wish you could have done better. It can be really demoralizing, especially as it’s difficult to quantify progress when you’re in the middle of it, but pushing past that feeling and producing anyways is a skill that can also be practiced, and will get easier.
I write novels, you’ll get to my Amazon USA page by clicking my name. They’re also available from other ebook retailers.
But I also make cursors, like these:
[img]http://orig15.deviantart.net/3956/f/2014/222/f/f/glass_cursors__up_to_64_pixels__by_jollygreenjustin-d5cb4ws.gif[/img]
and these:
[img]http://img02.deviantart.net/f1dd/i/2012/296/f/5/atomic_blue_cursors__32__48_and_64_pixels_by_jollygreenjustin-d2osshl.gif[/img]
If you would like some Citizen Justin cursors of your own, they are here: [url]http://citizenjustin.deviantart.com/gallery/9601592/Cursors[/url]
I don’t do digital art much anymore, but when I did I used paint.net. I did just finish a acrylic/pastels mixed media piece, though.
I am going to go back and look at everyone’s art. My own is shamefully old, a year or so. I’ve been both depressed and overworked and can’t get up the energy to do things.
Doesn’t help that I have no idea how to link on here.
If this works, there should be a kelpie on the other end (the horse, not the dog).
http://steampunktoy.tumblr.com/post/145502350793/madewithpaper-fiftythreecom-kelpie-a
Trying to get back into video editing, which is a pain because instead of the decent laptop I used to make MLP videos way back when I just have a shitty tower I bought for $100 three years ago off craigslist. The only quality video editing software I found that works on it is in German, which I don’t speak.
Anyway, I made a quick practice video combining two scenes from “Escape From The Bronx” (It was called “Escape 2000” in the MST3K episode) with a snippet of Hannity audio to change the presidents name.
It could use more editing to shorten down the second scene, but the underlying music made that too much of a pain.
I use paint.net, but I pretty much just crop images from comics with it.
I like to write flash fiction and two-sentence stories, since my inattentive-type ADD makes longer projects difficult. I lean toward horror and fantasy. Here’s a few of them.
Thanks for the advice and thanks for sharing your art!
I knew you all would come through. I’ll check out some of the software you all mentioned and prob will pick up an Intuos tablet.
I am thinking of starting a podcast, but I literally have no idea where to start.
I guess my sewing, quilting, and crocheting count as art, but I don’t really think of myself as an artist. I’m currently working on a big scrap afghan (>1200 two-inch squares in all different colors). It’s been going for years, but it will be a huge accomplishment whenever I get it done.
OT: Does anyone mind if I vent about some incredibly frustrating sexism on television?
@dr. ej
The floor is yours.
As for the art stuff: I can second the recommendations of wacom tablets and Paint Tool SAI. (You can find SAI for free, but you should buy it.)
I can also recommend MediBang Paint Pro, I use it for lineart. (Totally free)
If you need a program to create a reference for other art, I use the free version of DesignDoll. (I’m planning to upgrade to the paid version later, it’s got way more features)
And if you can afford the price, I’d highly recommend going with the Adobe Creative Cloud. It’s only ten bucks a month for the Photography package (Lightbox and Photoshop, as well as a portfolio website), which is what I think would work best for what you want to do David. Photoshop is used for photo manipulation and drawing art by lots of different artists, though it works primarily in rasterized art, so my advice would be to work bigger and then go smaller.
Or, if you only want one of the Cloud’s apps, 20 bucks a month for a single app, a portfolio website, premium fonts, and 20 gigs of Creative Cloud storage.
I mostly use Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign in my work though, so I’m hoping to eventually spring for the 50 dollar a month plan, which would also give me access to stuff I need to work with more like Dreamweaver (web design) and After Effects (video editing).
Pokémon Go players: Easter event is ON! Double XP, double candy from hatching eggs, and 2K eggs can hatch a wider selection of Pokémon. Also, Lucky Eggs are 50% off.
I’ve saved up coins for a while now, and just bought a bunch of incubators. Gonna go out walking tomorrow. I have eight 5K and one 10K to hatch. I’m hoping to hatch a Chancey, Dratini, Larvitar, Snorlax, etc, and get a billion candies!
Another thing to do is power level by mass evolving. Double XP + Lucky Egg means quadruple XP! I will do mine on Sunday, combined with getting both 7 day streaks. 🙂
Anyone hyped?!
OK, so my mom was watching Grey’s Anatomy. There are two characters who have had an off and on romance and they are sitting near each other on a plane.
He tries to start a conversation; she says she’s trying to sleep.
He keeps talking. (Red flag #1)
She says she wants to stretch her legs; he follows her into the bathroom! (Red flag x infinity)
Her reaction is obviously, “WTF, dude?” He claims that she asked him to follow her “with her eyes.” (Nope, not enough red flags for this guy.)
She says she certainly didn’t do that and then they somehow end up having sex in the airplane bathroom. (I don’t even know how that happened.)
Most of the middle part of the show was medical emergencies on an airplane, but the frustrating sexism came back at the end.
They get off the plane (having saved everybody). She says that she doesn’t want to have a relationship. He pushes her a little bit more (blah, blah, blah, something about her dead husband) and they end up going to a hotel together.
Like, really? REALLY? It’s things like this that let men think they can get what they want if they just keep pushing other people’s boundaries. At one point during the episode, the guy even says that he will respect her decisions, despite the fact that he hasn’t ever done that.
The worst thing was that at the end of the episode my mom claimed that the woman in the show was “being difficult” and that the man was “doing his best.”
http://38.media.tumblr.com/5c8b1a8a5d51f34adb0abe6057f3abe7/tumblr_nel1hrtr9Z1qlshxyo1_500.gif
No. No! NO! NONONONONONONONO! That is not how this works. He is blatantly disregarding her wishes and ignoring what she is saying because it isn’t what he wants to hear. But he still gets rewarded for it! Not OK. Not romantic.
TL;DR: Pushing someone’s boundaries is NOT romantic. You should not have to convince someone to be in a relationship with you. It’s not cute. Please stop writing this story line.
Also, if anyone needs a dose of cute, here is a live feed camera of a barred owl nest. There are three baby owls who hatched this week. The adult female is there right now and it looks like she might be feeding them.
WHERE IS THE OWL CAM?
@ IP
Wow. I feel silly now.
Here’s the link:
Or it can embed. That’s cool too.
Here’s what I just finished. I’m thinking of putting it in the fair, unless I do another mixed media piece I like better.
http://i68.tinypic.com/2wgstop.jpg
Why is my tablet claiming everything is misspelled?
@PaganReader
Ooo, nice. I do love silhouette pieces. I especially like the transparency on the frills of the dragon.
(Although Rick and Morty ruined me for bright green and yellow swirls. It feels more alien than fantasy to me, even with the dragon. >< Bad brain.)
EDIT: Oh, another cool thing about MediaBang is that it creates backups every so often, not that it ever crashes. I've gone hours and hours without manually saving without worrying that whatever I'm working on will suddenly freeze and be gone forever. It's really nice.
@dr. ej
Thank you. 🙂
@dr. ej
RE: Grey’s Anatomy
Ew, just ew. No, why? Why do dis?
EDIT: Owls
That’s a welcome form of brainbleach.
@Pagan
That happens when I accidentally set it to “German” instead of English, so if you have another language, or accidentally changed the settings… everything gets marked misspelled except for loan-words (like Kindergarten from German)
@all
I’ll probably get yelled at for mentioning this, but for starving artists who can’t afford Adobe’s ridiculous $120+/yr just for a photography package that tries to convince you to upgrade to the full $N/yr at every opportunity… GIMP! (Graphic Image Manipulation Program) User-friendly, but it’s very careful about choosing its friends. Photoshop equivalent, but the UI isn’t the same.
ImageMagick for batch converting between multiple formats (and other much weirder things, it’s as powerful as GIMP in some ways, but not really mouse-interactive)
MyPaint, or Krita, for more artist-friendly open-source programs, though I’ve only used MyPaint, looks like Krita might be good for those who enjoy customizing the shortcuts and stuff.
@OoglyBoggles
Not my choice, but I was sort of fascinated by the blatant sexism and how the ignoring of boundaries was being played as romantic. I don’t watch much television these days (and, since I’m living with my parents, I don’t usually get to choose what we watch), so I wanted to see how bad it would get. I once tried to write down all the sexist/racist/homophobic things in an episode of the Big Bang Theory, but I had to stop because I couldn’t keep up and it made me sad. I had kind of the same mindset watching this episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
I don’t want to criticize anyone for their choice of TV shows (we all enjoy problematic things), but it just goes to show how pervasive these ideas are in our culture. The show tells us that this is “romantic” so this is how people come to think romances work. We can enjoy problematic things, but we can’t pretend that they exist in a vacuum.
Also, I’m glad you like the owls. If you rewind a bit, you can see the adult bring back some fish (I think. It’s hard to tell.) and a frog.