Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Artworks”

[drawing every day 2024 post one one seven]

Published April 26, 2024 by taidoka
taidoka 0

Okay, technically, this is Photoshoppery, and not a drawing, but it is my art, and it is 2:41am, and I would like to simultaneously announce that if we make $20K on our Kickstarter, we're definitely doing a sequel anthology, and also to announce that I'm very behind on Camp Nano, so I am going to bed.

One thing to note on this (which is composed of our existing art, plus public domain NASA images) is that it can take a variety of different layered images to create the above effect. I cut the original cover artwork into three different pieces to create the original backdrop, and added two more (with 50% opacity erasure of the edges to make the starfields blur together). The stars needed a similar treatment (that's two copies of the binary stars, tilted to make the swooshies work well, which themselves also had to be faded). The cover itself had some filters applied to make the art look like something, but a nonspecific something.

Lots of techniques. Real drawing resumes tomorrow - two of them, to keep up drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one one six]: a quick sketch

Published April 25, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Focusing on WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY, so here's a quick sketch. It started out as a rando, but I think it evolved into one of the "big three" characters from f@nu fiku---I think this was The Warrior.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one one five]: more foot bones

Published April 24, 2024 by taidoka
taidoka 0

Interestingly, not the same as the previous drawing (see below) - another drawing from the same page, which seems like it might be on the opposite side of the foot, as the tarsals are laid out differently.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one one four]: lovebirds, redux

Published April 24, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Drawn aaalmost completely from memory ... I could see a blurry image of the previous day's drawing through the previous sheet in my notebook ... but this time, with construction lines to help guide me.

I think it turned out far better than the previous effort, even though elements of the previous drawing were more accurate to the original photograph.

You start off drawing what you think you see, then move to drawing what's there. But at some point you should transition beyond that to drawing what will make the viewer see what you saw, which is not necessarily the same as replicating what a camera would have seen in the place of your two eyes.

Drawing every day, even when flying.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one one two]: late again

Published April 22, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Woke up at 2:45 am realizing I hadn't drawn today. Same idea as two days ago, informed by the comic-book style from one day ago, but done in a consciously cartoony style that abstracts away the details, like a Bill Holbrook drawing. I like how it turned out, though it isn't a substitute for planning for success.

The drawing at the top took not much longer than the drawing at the bottom left, even though it looks way more like the drawing at the bottom right.

Drawing every day, even if I've forgotten to.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Cinnamon. It took about as long to draw this one

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh eight]: phalangus interruptus

Published April 18, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Got interrupted twice when finishing this drawing - once when I tried to finish it before the trip, and the second time when the plane landed and I had to pack up. So, it is what it is. Might tackle this one again.

Drawing every day is a discipline. I wish I was better at that.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh seven]: more kickstarters

Published April 16, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

SO! Our Kickstarter for the Neurodiversiverse is live at neurodiversiverse.com (which just links through to the Kickstarter page for the duration of the campaign). And I'm proud to say that we are number one of projects if you search for neurodivergence!

For this project I had to create about fifty images in Photoshop - mostly by remixing other imagery we had, admittedly, but sometimes it took a bit of cleverness to make everything work out, as in this physical picture of most of our books and flash fiction postcards - not all of which I had on hand for the picture, and some of which don't even physically exist yet, like the softback of The Neurodiversiverse:

Liza and I (with the help of Betsy and Keiko) put a lot of time into this and I'm proud of the result:

So, please check it out and back us ... we have reward tiers everything from $1 for token support, to early bird ebooks at a discount, to the book and the ebook themselves, all the way up to getting your name listed in the acknowledgements at the back of the book:

And, while I hope to get in some real drawing today, I am unabashedly using this as my Drawing Every Day post, because I spent hours and hours on art today and that should count, dang it.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh six]: more sticks

Published April 14, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

More stick figure studies from "Wizard: How to Draw". They look simple, but part of "planning for success" in drawing is creating rough sketches to help find the right composition of the piece - and you can't do that if you have to do a full drawing every time, or if you don't know how to draw a simplified sketch.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh five]: footbones

Published April 14, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Another study from Goldman. It's interesting how different the structures are INSIDE the body from the landmarks they create OUTSIDE the body. So much complexity, in something as simple as a heel and its joint to the rest of the foot - a joint that enables you to waggle your feet independently of the positioning of your ankle and the wriggling your toes (try it). Yet all that complexity must exist inside for us to achieve something as simple on the outside as stretching your feet a little bit.

Drawing (on average) every day, posting every day if I can.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh four]: all my berks cards

Published April 13, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Alright, one more not-drawing drawing while I am scrambling to get ready for Clockwork Alchemy. If you're not using the Internet in its most basic form, it resembles a countryside where roads to infrequently-visited towns frequently get torn up and you have to either reroute - or build your own.

Case in point, link shorteners. Google used to have one called "goo.gl" - used to have, before Larry Page took over at Google and led it through the Google Plus debacle, where Google really started to get the reputation for killing products that ultimately led to it being called the Google Graveyard.

But, before they killed it, I used it on the book cards that I hand out at conventions! I had been using that shortlink to point to my Amazon "Anthony Francis" author page, but I don't trust link shorteners anymore. So I created a new link, dresan.com/blog/books, which has all my books on it (now in the top menu):

But, that means my book cards needed to be updated. I of course updated the link, but also took the time when I was in there to enhance the contrast on the top title so it was more legible. Hopefully these cards will arrive in time for the Clockwork Alchemy convention next week, where I will be Author Guest of Honor.

Drawing (or graphic design) every day.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the back of the "book cards", and the "book page" which also shows the book card fronts.

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh three]: the neurodiversiverse kickstarter cards

Published April 12, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

So, no drawing-drawing today, as we needed to complete the Kickstarter for The Neurodiversiverse, which goes live early next week - and we (and by we, I mean I) had to ALSO complete the graphics for the book cards we will be handing out at the Clockwork Alchemy and Con Carolinas conventions. Have a look!

While Photoshoppery isn't the artistic skill I wanted to refine when I started Drawing Every Day, it is a skill that also needs to be perfected. I had to generate a LOT of graphics by today so we could submit the Kickstarter, and then these two cards - by TONIGHT, to get the order into Moo in time.

But, we did it! Hopefully the cards will arrive in time. Cross your fingers!

Drawing (or Photoshopping) every day.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Front and back of the Kickstarter cards, based on a draft of our cover, itself based on art from Barbara Candiotti, one of the contributors to The Neurodiversiverse. More information on The Neurodiversiverse Kickstarter will come shortly before it goes live next week.

[twenty twenty-four day one oh three]: more t-shirt tests

Published April 11, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Zazzle for the win. I think this rendered pretty well (the color difference is in the lighting):

Admittedly, Zazzle were late shipping this to me, but this t-shirt design came out better than the Cafe Press take on the Embodied AI Workshop t-shirt:

Even though both shirts are fairly dark, and both of these images are drawn from the same Adobe Illustrator template, the text on the Cafe Press one came out a bit grey and worn ... and actually a bit small, whereas the Zazzle one looked white and solid and was sized pretty much like the text on the preview image:

I wouldn't close the door on Cafe Press - the t-shirt itself was solid, and I've used them successfully in the past. But I think for this iteration of t-shirts I'm going to go with Zazzle.

Onward!

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one oh two]: jeremiah willstone logo sketches

Published April 11, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

What a long fricking day. No real drawing for you ... just sketches of a proposed Jeremiah Willstone logo. I created these as feedback to a fellow artist I'm working with who will design the actual logo in a form suitable for putting on pins and stickers. We started with an old logo idea I had a few years back:

But that's kitbashed together from a number of different public domain images and my own quickly hacked logo designs in Photoshop and Illustrator. However, Kimchi Kreative did such a good job with the Neurodiversiverse logo I asked her to apply some of her magic to Jeremiah. We're iterating on it now, with super rough sketches to bounce ideas back and forth.

You know, it's great to learn to do things on your own - and I focus on doing most of the work that I can myself, especially for my own creative projects. But when you have access to an expert, it's foolish to forego that for things in their area of expertise - and learning how to work with others on creative projects is a skill all its own.

Drawing (and learning) every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one hundred and one]: stick figures

Published April 10, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

Back in the day, I felt embarrassed about practicing with stick figures, always wanting to move on to the actual drawing. But now, I see real value in learning an approximation, so you can test ideas out and get proportions right with rough sketches, rather than ending up with an unbalanced or malformed drawing.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one hundred]: footbones

Published April 9, 2024 by centaur
centaur 0

More Goldman studies. Interesting how many fiddly bits there are in something as basic as the heel of the human foot, much less all the bones that make up the rest of it.

How much of this do you really need to know to draw? Conversely, how much does knowing this at a muscle-motion, stone-cold sketching level give you an invisible substructure that helps you get the shape of the outer structures correct?

Time will tell. Drawing every day.

-the Centaur