New Painting!

As I already had the colors mixed for another painting I was doing, I decided now was the time to work this painting up. It's a bit of a micro painting (which one of my artsy friends had told me that I should try out) If you do a painting a day and all that. This is a 12 by 12 canvas (museum bound so I had to paint the edges) I shot the apples on a red down blanket about 5 months ago meaning to paint this up. The light was shot a tad hot but I'm not super picky about it.
This experiment leads me to believe that there is something I'm lacking in the art realm or in life in general. I feel like I need more artists to chat with on a regular basis OR do I need to ignore that and go it on my own. I do miss my college days only because I had a small group of really great professional friends who are still artists to this day. It's not like friendships are that easy to acquire as it is. You have to mesh with your artist friends just as well as your day to day friends. Where are all the artists? They certainly are somewhere in Chicago but the problem is, they are so in one direction and I'm in the opposite when it comes to seeing things eye to eye. Here's me being a moody artist. :)

Mermaid and Merman ( no Ethyl, just a plain merdude )

This is a sketch of a painting I need to start right away. I've censored it just in case there is someone who may be offended by it. I was going to crop it but....honestly, it just looks like I've drawn a nude couple if you can't see the tails. Anyway, I had to redo this as the painting needs to be rather vertical so I had to un-curl the merman's tail to sort that out. I'm busy coloring it so that the painting can go smoothly. I am not liking the man's face just yet as the first sketch had him much more handsome. Now he just looks plain silly. I'll fix it, I just wish I had some reference to work off of. This is from several people. I took one arm from one picture, the face from another, another arm from another picture. It's almost barbaric the way I've "frankensteined" this together. But that's what I need to do to get this looking good. I hope I can do the color in the same way as that's crucial. I still have some shaping to do so I'd better get to it.
The background is awfully beautiful. I didn't have to do too much trouble photoshopping out the divers that littered the lovely undersea pictures that I found. Hopefully I can throw in all the lovely details into the painting. :)

Man Versus Digital

When I first got into college, one of the first things the recruiter said to me was "the computer is going to ruin your business as an illustrator" The conversation was overheard and supplanted with even more grim fortunes of how I was going to be starving for the remainder of my life (as soon as I paid for college, of course!) One other recruiter piped in "The Photographer has already taken 50% of your business and now the computer will be taking even more." I think I remarked that as my mom was a photographer, this wasn't bad news to me. Nevertheless, I was a bit stunned to say the least. I took those words to heart and for a long time, refused to even go near a computer never wanting to learn it. I've since changed my ways. In fact, I'm going through more training to learn more than maybe I need to learn. I have to admit that in my heart of hearts that I had never wanted that prophecy of SkyNet taking over to be true (Terminator reference is appropriately scary enough) It is a ditressing age for an illustrator/artist/painter so much so that I don't even want to mention it for fear that the age of clipart, stock illustration, and digitally frankensteined images will grow even faster, shrinking my business evermore. Through the years, it's been interesting to see that some folks (clients) really are not so thrilled with digital art and prefer more handmade work. In fact, a friend recently remarked that even asking "is this done by hand?" would have never been a question hardly ten years ago.

Well, I did get an interesting call. An interior designer wanted a real person to draw an interior of a room for her (not liking the AutoCad look) and needed some examples. In lieu of me searching through stacks of CDs looking for potential, I opted to just ink another example to show. I sent it on to the representative and she sent it on to the client. I'm glad that she was looking for something different in order to stand out. I was appreciative of this. Not that I'm totally against AutoCad. It does a decent enough job.
This ink rendering is more than just an inked version of a room ( that I drew up rather quickly, a paid job would, of course, demand a higher level of perfectionism. It is a testament to how some people do not prefer the look of digitized work. Wherever you all are, clients who like artists who actually use tangible medium, I respect you.