So here is a painting that suits the holiday.  I actually started this many months ago and just no finished it.  See, I decided to buy some clayboard to see how painting on it was.  In a word, it’s not for me.  It’s too smooth.  Anyway, I decided to finish this guy anyway.  This will also work as my entry at the super awesome art challenge for this month, as it has something to do with people having boo-boos and well, having your face scraped off seems to count.

Enjoy (if that’s your thing):;

8″x8″ Acrylic on clayboard.

Oh, look, more digital painting.  I suspect this might be the last one of these for a while, but who knows.  Unlike most of these digital things, I didn’t do this all in on sitting.  No, I’ve been plugging away at this here and there for a week maybe.  This is using the bare-bones version of Painter that came with the tablet.  Its a fine little program for this sort of thing.

That’s all for today, probably.

As much as I enjoy playing around with digital painting, it doesn’t hold a candle to the real stuff.

This is just an excuse to try and paint fur.  It looks a little more like a wookie than I had planned, but that is OK.

Acrylic on Paper in the 8″ x 4″ range I’d wager.

Here is another digital painting with the ol’ Sketchbook Pro.  This one is a bit more reserved perhaps…  I think I finally made a custom brush I am happy with doing ‘doodle’ paintings with.  Here it is.

A side note on the new Wacom Intuos4 tablets:  Pretty slick with one glaring flaw.  They changed the surface of the active area, they made it slightly textured, the theory apparently being it is more like drawing on paper, which I guess some people like.  The reality for me is I wore through a nib in 2 days.  Wore it down to a weird half flat half point thing, that was noticeably scuffing up the surface..  My old timey intuos 1, one nib for 8 years of use.  So, you know what I did?  I pulled the surface off my old tablet, cut it down to size and taped it on.  Much nicer, though slightly ghetto looking.  You can but replacement nibs and surfaces via Wacom.  But they arn’t the cheapest, and I don’t feel I should have too, so a little annoyed, but them’s the breaks.  For now its perfectly functional.  Here is hoping they release a ‘smooth’ surface replacement.

I have been using Wacom tablets on and off for years. But really, I mostly ditched them for all but the occasional use several years back when I started doing a lot of vector work. However, as vector work as waned in my personal work I have been having a hankering to try some digital painting again. But wouldn’t you know it I lost the pen to my old tablet. So I finally got a replacement. And this super cheap software called sketchbook pro, which is basically what it says, a straight sketching program. Its got some nice features like a straight edge and protractor/ellipse template thing, which is way handier than using a line or ellipse tool in photoshop. Anyway, it seems pretty slick for concepting. So I will probably be posting a bunch of silly digital painting stuff over the next couple months while I am still under that new-sheen spell. Here is my first pass. I swear I meant to make something less scary looking… I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Sketchbook pro.

Here is a weird little painting.  It ended up being mostly about the background I suppose.

7″x10″ Acrylic on paper

*Which was clearly a quantity of time,  not quality.  Well, maybe not…

Anyway, I flew to and from Minneapolis this past weekend for a kick-ass wedding between my amazing friends Chris and Lindsay (links in the ol’ link area, check ‘em out).  Now, normally I might read or something but I was without book and I didn’t have the where-with-all (is this the correct phrase?  It’s not like intensive purposes in my mind and intents and purposes in reality? hmmm….) to play video games.  So I doodled.  Normally I doodle for an hour or something maybe fill a few pages before getting bored and quiting.  But for some reason I had an epic doodle session over the two days I actually flew.  I filled up 26 pages (13 front and back).  So I decided to scan all of them and post them here.  You can see how I doodle if you care.  Maybe some of this will become a painting, who knows…  Without further ado:

One: This is where it began, and where I assumed it would end…

Two: Oh, wait, no, it keeps going…

Three: Here is where I attempt to draw from observation for a while.

Four: Here is where I gave up on that.

Five: This page is sort of lacking in coverage, maybe it’s cheating…

Six: Am I on the plane yet? I don’t remember…

Seven: That dog looks sort of familiar, maybe…

Eight: I am pretty sure this is when that dude spilled his OJ. Good thing I had all those napkins in my pocket.

Nine: Oh, and now he is trying to talk to me… So I quit.

Ten: This is day two, a few days later.

Eleven: Hey, I’m on a plane again!

Twelve: I tried to slow down so I drew lots of tiny hairs.

Thirteen These are mostly pairings of people who annoy each other. Hey, that dog is back.

And that’s all.  Hmm, seems less prolific when I caption it all.  I’ll probably never do another post like this again, so don’t worry.  It’s over now.

I recently dipped my toes back into the twin peaks waters of yore. I got a request to do another Agent Cooper. These are the results:

5″ x 8″, acrylic on basswood. “Diane, last night I dreamed I was eating a large, tasteless gumdrop…”

Somewhat similar to the first one, even though I did a new drawing from scratch. Funny how that works. here is a tiny side by side while I’m at it:

I am thinking this is probably the end of the Twin Peaks paintings for me. I do like painting on the wood though. Maybe I’ll do a new series on the same surface…