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Saturday, February 18, 2012

no more distractions!

I am going to DRAW!!

right after I eat a bit of chocolate, go to the bathroom, check my email...post to Facebook...read a couple art blogs....no no! Concentrate!!!


Thursday, February 09, 2012

WHAT?!

Okay listen up (if you want)! It's true I disappear down the rabbit hole from time to time and this time isn't exactly an exception, but I brought back a chunky nugget: I landed my first hired illustration gig! It's for the locally owned company Next Step. Lorraine started this company ummm ten (more?) years ago to refurbish technology that would otherwise end up in the landfill. Next Step does outreach, training, and a host of other pretty amazing things. They've hired me to create an iconic figure and a sidekick for print and web (including tshirts..ahhh I can't wait!). The figures will be robots.

Have I ever drawn a robot before this project? (searching memory banks......) NO, I think not! I've drawn a few now though!

It's a very fun and challenging project, and I am learning tons on lots of levels. The thing that launched this was the picture I drew of Yona which is in this post. Yona posted it as her FB profile pic and Lorraine of NextStep saw it and BAM the rest is the history we are making right now. (massive thanks to Yona for connecting the dots on this)

I have obtained a copy of the PEG (you know? no? Graphic Artist Guild Pricing and Ethical Guidelines).

I will be learning Photoshop. And will be learning Illustrator.

I have been reading lots of blogs and websites about the business end of things (that could be misconstrued in other contexts).

I am open to anyone who can assist me.

I'm doing trade for this. WAIT! Don't judge me! ehh heh heh

I now have a kickass 11 x 17 Epson Expression 1640xl scanner (donated to NextStep, routed to me).

I now have a Wacom Intuos3 tablet (donated and re-routed).

CS4 was delivered today (I have not installed it yet, because I spent too many hours fiddling around trying to get the scanner and my Mac to communicate properly and I am burnt on the tech end of things for today).

I have a better chair to sit upon and my back isn't screaming at me so much.

One bigger better filing cabinet, and one other on the way.

And a partridge in a pear treeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

The people at NextStep and the owner Lorraine have been AWESOME to work with.

Here is my first project in PSE (which I had already thanks to Yona's generous sharing, and will now be transferring skillz to Photoshoppe).


I'll save the critique, except to say that I think this is a great first effort and I learned some stuff. I have a lot more to learn - about painting, color, dpi, file size and kind, and software. Oh by the way, this is not the robot I'm doing for NextStep....it's line art from a doodle I really liked and decided to flesh it out a bit...so to speak ehhh bad joke it must be getting late.

yuk yuk!

*ps I really mean it, if you can offer suggestions as to what size I should import my line art and what format, should it be at least 600 dpi (I think so), and in TIFF, and in greyscale? I'm using Photoshop first, and the image will be for web, but also tshirts. Do I need to learn color separation for tshirts? I have a lot to research still. arf!!