My friend Christy (@chrstyilstrates on Twitter and https://www.instagram.com/christyillustrates/ on Instagram) and I are doing a new series! The series is called Monday Montage.
Every month we are going to create one full illustration due the last Monday of the month. Even though we are only posting one final image, every Monday we'll be posting process posts. We will be sharing these images with you on our blogs and social media. Christy's blog is here: https://creativejourneycafe.wordpress.com/
YOU CAN JOIN US! Just make a post on Mondays and use the tag #mondaymontage on your post. This will help us find your posts and comment on them. I'm also hoping to set up a few things so that we can all grow our audiences!
Are you in?
The first prompt is: Goals
You can interpret it as you'd like. January 7th (The first Monday in January) will be our first post. I'm thinking I'll be doing some character drawings first. What are you planning on creating?
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2018
Thursday, December 13, 2018
My Christmas Wish List #4: Rebelle 3 -- Digital Art Program
My Christmas Wishlist #4
This year my Christmas Wish List includes Rebelle 3 from Escape Motions. You may know that I already have Rebelle 3 on my computer. So why include it on my wish list? Right now I don't have full capability of the program right now. It
To read more about the program you can go here: https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/ There is both a downloadable demo, and an online demo for this product.
I like Rebelle 3 for many reasons. I have used Photoshop extensively. At this point I cant afford to buy a subscription for Photoshop. I'm not sure that Photoshop is right for me anymore. I'm use to using traditional methods for my art and Rebelle 3 seems to be the best at mimicking watercolors. If you are talking about oil painting Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter are decent digital substitutes.
Watercolor: Rebelle 3 has a fascinating way of creating realistic watercolors. It allows you to put water on the canvas and your colors to blend in a way that's very much like actual watercolors. You can pause the reaction with the water and instantly dry or wet your entire canvas. There is more of a chance for mistakes and fun discovery with this program compared to other programs I've seen.
Pastel: I think this is my favorite for black and white images. I don't use pastels much but I love how well you can build up the pastel color. There is also a blending tool that allows pastels to look softer and (of course) blended.
Ink: I like the options that you have for inking. Much like the watercolors you can use water you can blend the inks. With these digital inks (like traditional inks) the colors are fairly fixed after they dry. India ink is the same way, so if you want to be able to change the colors after the fact, then you'd go with watercolor rather than ink. If I could change anything about this I'd want a bit of a stabilizer for ink so its easier to draw using a tablet.
Eraser: This one is fun, because it basically reverts your paper back to normal! It's not that impressive when it comes to pencil, but when you have 15 layers of watercolor down it's kind of awesome to remove them and start back at the beginning.
Other Media: Rebelle 3 also has acrylics, pencil, markers and spray paint available for use. I have not used any of these extensively so will not comment at this time on their uses.
The "bad" thing about the program is it is very memory intensive (see website for more details on system requirements). You have to have a lot of RAM on your computer for it to run well. I have 8 gigs of ram on my computer and a decent graphics card. While it can run on 8 gigs, this program is best with 12 - 16 gigs. The amount of undos are limited to 1 with a 10.5" x 16.5" image with 4-5 layers (the size I use for picture book spreads). An 8" x 10" (or slightly larger) doesn't seem to have many issues. I'm hoping to get more RAM soon!
Edit: I also forgot to mention that with 8 gigs of ram it's not possible to run Chrome or other software. You can, but the Rebelle software is very likely to crash or have other problems if you do so. Often I'm running near the top of what my computer can handle without opening anything else!
Where to buy:
Both Escape Motions and Smith Micro sells this software. The difference I've noticed between the two is the availability of software download after the fact. With Smith Micro there are more sales, however the digital download is only available once with Smith Micro. An extra $13 is required to download the software for only 1 year. With Escape Motions you can download the software indefinitely so I strongly suggest ordering it through the company. For $90 USD it's not an expensive program!
This year my Christmas Wish List includes Rebelle 3 from Escape Motions. You may know that I already have Rebelle 3 on my computer. So why include it on my wish list? Right now I don't have full capability of the program right now. It
To read more about the program you can go here: https://www.escapemotions.com/products/rebelle/ There is both a downloadable demo, and an online demo for this product.
 |
| Created digitally with Rebelle 3's pastels and inked with Clip Studio Paint |
I like Rebelle 3 for many reasons. I have used Photoshop extensively. At this point I cant afford to buy a subscription for Photoshop. I'm not sure that Photoshop is right for me anymore. I'm use to using traditional methods for my art and Rebelle 3 seems to be the best at mimicking watercolors. If you are talking about oil painting Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter are decent digital substitutes.
Watercolor: Rebelle 3 has a fascinating way of creating realistic watercolors. It allows you to put water on the canvas and your colors to blend in a way that's very much like actual watercolors. You can pause the reaction with the water and instantly dry or wet your entire canvas. There is more of a chance for mistakes and fun discovery with this program compared to other programs I've seen.
Pastel: I think this is my favorite for black and white images. I don't use pastels much but I love how well you can build up the pastel color. There is also a blending tool that allows pastels to look softer and (of course) blended.
Ink: I like the options that you have for inking. Much like the watercolors you can use water you can blend the inks. With these digital inks (like traditional inks) the colors are fairly fixed after they dry. India ink is the same way, so if you want to be able to change the colors after the fact, then you'd go with watercolor rather than ink. If I could change anything about this I'd want a bit of a stabilizer for ink so its easier to draw using a tablet.
Eraser: This one is fun, because it basically reverts your paper back to normal! It's not that impressive when it comes to pencil, but when you have 15 layers of watercolor down it's kind of awesome to remove them and start back at the beginning.
Other Media: Rebelle 3 also has acrylics, pencil, markers and spray paint available for use. I have not used any of these extensively so will not comment at this time on their uses.
The "bad" thing about the program is it is very memory intensive (see website for more details on system requirements). You have to have a lot of RAM on your computer for it to run well. I have 8 gigs of ram on my computer and a decent graphics card. While it can run on 8 gigs, this program is best with 12 - 16 gigs. The amount of undos are limited to 1 with a 10.5" x 16.5" image with 4-5 layers (the size I use for picture book spreads). An 8" x 10" (or slightly larger) doesn't seem to have many issues. I'm hoping to get more RAM soon!
Edit: I also forgot to mention that with 8 gigs of ram it's not possible to run Chrome or other software. You can, but the Rebelle software is very likely to crash or have other problems if you do so. Often I'm running near the top of what my computer can handle without opening anything else!
Where to buy:
Both Escape Motions and Smith Micro sells this software. The difference I've noticed between the two is the availability of software download after the fact. With Smith Micro there are more sales, however the digital download is only available once with Smith Micro. An extra $13 is required to download the software for only 1 year. With Escape Motions you can download the software indefinitely so I strongly suggest ordering it through the company. For $90 USD it's not an expensive program!
Monday, December 10, 2018
My Christmas Wish List #1: "Make Your Marks And Splashes Course"
MY CHRISTMAS WISH LIST # 1Okay, I've thought about it long enough and I'm starting on my Christmas Wish List. It's a bit late, but most of the things on this list will (hopefully) be things you can still get before Christmas!
I absolutely love Mark Mitchell's newsletter for artists. I have learned so much from his newsletter and his blog. I have a few of the posts saved and refer back to them often. If you go to his website check out the post 'Charging' up Your Watercolor. It just changed my life! You can help me with the number 1 thing on my Christmas list by signing up for the class yourself here: https://marksandsplasheslearning.thrivecart.com/make-your-marks-and-splashes/?affiliate=daniduck
Here are reasons this children's illustration course is #1 on my Christmas list this year!
1. FREE INFO
Mark gives out great information free on his website. No purchase necessary or expected. People who freely tell you useful information
2. EXPERIENCE
Mark is an experienced illustrator. He has illustrated over 20 books (20 from other authors, 3 he wrote himself and tons of magazines. This experience gives those who take
3. COURSE OFFERINGS
Everything is covered in this course from design and color to how to market your work!
4. ART COMMUNITY
There is nothing better for being creative than joining a good community of artists. I have tried creating art in a vacuum and my art suffered greatly for this. I have found being part of a good creative group is essential to being a great artist!
5. EASY PAYMENT
The cost of the course is really inexpensive for an all inclusive course. It's only $249! If you can't afford that much at once you can do a payment plan. My favorite thing is that you can use Paypal to pay. I love finding any excuse NOT to use my credit cards.
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Still not sure? Here is a preview of some of the things you'll be learning. Sign up to his FREE news letter and you'll receive 4 short videos and a .PDF lesson! http://howtobeachildrensbookillustrator.com/drawingsecret/
Things are tight this year. If you join the course using my affiliate link I'll be able to afford to take the class with you! Let me know if you are taking the class and I'll give you some extra bonus help and motivation!
If you use my affiliate link here: https://marksandsplasheslearning.thrivecart.com/make-your-marks-and-splashes/?affiliate=daniduck
Friday, December 1, 2017
The Right Tools
I was getting my haircut the other day and my hairdresser (Diane) and I got into a discussion about the tools we use. I was fascinated by her insight on this, because what we do is so different. Fundamentally hairdressing and art is the same in many ways. You need to have better tools for better results.
Buying Higher Quality Tools Can Cost Less Overall. This seems counter intuitive. How can I possibly justify spending $100 over $25 on the exact same colors of watercolor paint and paper? The paint tubes may have less in them, and the paper may be the exact same size, but they are not the same! Quality matters over quantity.
1. The Frustration Factor
In my conversation with Diane, I said it might be okay to buy cheaper supplies when starting out. Diane corrected me right there. She said that it doesn't make sense to start out with cheap supplies because if you become frustrated with the limitations of the tools then you won't continue creating art. I know that this is 100% true.
I had some older acrylics that I was attempting to paint with, but unfortunately I was just becoming frustrated with them because they were old and the binder had separated from the colors. I could not get the paints to move across the canvas like I knew they should. It wasn't until I bought new paints that I felt like I could paint. With the frustration gone I was able to create work faster and better.
2. Better Paints Paint Better
When I first started using Daniel Smith watercolors I just bought one tube of red paint. I didn't have the money to be messing around. What I found was not only did the color flow across the page better, but I was using less of it to cover the page. Since I'm using less paint I'm actually paying less to paint!
3. Substrate is Everything
Okay you get these fancy colors, but you are actually wasting money if you are putting them on cheap paper. I bought a brand that I thought was going to give me good results. I think there was a problem with the sizing on the paper, and this could have been a factory problem, so I'm not going to name the particular brand I used. The problem was the paper got to the point where the paint wasn't soaking into the paper anymore. I wasn't able to add any more color to certain areas! The company I bought it from was able to replace the paper (I paid for the upgrade), but this doesn't make up for the amount of work that went into paintings that aren't usable anymore!
4. Acid Free Isn't Archival
One thing that you might not think about when you're illustrating is how long is your work going to last. You may just want to make work that you create and you don't care what happens after that. If you are buying acid free, know that that it is likely a limited time deal. I've made the decision to use archival for most of my illustrations now because I want them to last a long time after I'm gone. Also the paper I'm going to use most often, because it works so well (Arches), is archival.
5. Time is Money
One thing that you need to remember is your time matters. When you are creating something to sell this is so important to consider. Say you paid $10 for your supplies, so selling your work at $20 may seem like a fair price. Well, what if that item took you five hours to create? You are making $2 an hour when you sell your item. I don't know about you, but my time is worth more than $2. Working retail at $7-12 an hour seems like a better deal to me. If your supplies cause you to spend 2-3 times the amount of time on a project than you should spend, then those cheap supplies could be costing you money!
--
I'm hoping this is something you will consider when buying art supplies! Buying more expensive supplies may just not work for you and that's okay. This is something I want people to consider because it will end up saving you money in the end.
I will make a post about where you can cut on expenses. There is so much in this post already I feel like I've got a lot in this one post. Please ask me questions and remember to enjoy making your art!
 |
| These are a few of my favorite brushes! I generally just use the tallest one (angled) and the big round brush on the left. |
1. The Frustration Factor
In my conversation with Diane, I said it might be okay to buy cheaper supplies when starting out. Diane corrected me right there. She said that it doesn't make sense to start out with cheap supplies because if you become frustrated with the limitations of the tools then you won't continue creating art. I know that this is 100% true.
I had some older acrylics that I was attempting to paint with, but unfortunately I was just becoming frustrated with them because they were old and the binder had separated from the colors. I could not get the paints to move across the canvas like I knew they should. It wasn't until I bought new paints that I felt like I could paint. With the frustration gone I was able to create work faster and better.
2. Better Paints Paint Better
 |
| One of my paintings that I had trouble with. The darker colors just wouldn't stay on the paper. |
When I first started using Daniel Smith watercolors I just bought one tube of red paint. I didn't have the money to be messing around. What I found was not only did the color flow across the page better, but I was using less of it to cover the page. Since I'm using less paint I'm actually paying less to paint!
3. Substrate is Everything
Okay you get these fancy colors, but you are actually wasting money if you are putting them on cheap paper. I bought a brand that I thought was going to give me good results. I think there was a problem with the sizing on the paper, and this could have been a factory problem, so I'm not going to name the particular brand I used. The problem was the paper got to the point where the paint wasn't soaking into the paper anymore. I wasn't able to add any more color to certain areas! The company I bought it from was able to replace the paper (I paid for the upgrade), but this doesn't make up for the amount of work that went into paintings that aren't usable anymore!
4. Acid Free Isn't Archival
One thing that you might not think about when you're illustrating is how long is your work going to last. You may just want to make work that you create and you don't care what happens after that. If you are buying acid free, know that that it is likely a limited time deal. I've made the decision to use archival for most of my illustrations now because I want them to last a long time after I'm gone. Also the paper I'm going to use most often, because it works so well (Arches), is archival.
 |
| My favorite pens! |
5. Time is Money
One thing that you need to remember is your time matters. When you are creating something to sell this is so important to consider. Say you paid $10 for your supplies, so selling your work at $20 may seem like a fair price. Well, what if that item took you five hours to create? You are making $2 an hour when you sell your item. I don't know about you, but my time is worth more than $2. Working retail at $7-12 an hour seems like a better deal to me. If your supplies cause you to spend 2-3 times the amount of time on a project than you should spend, then those cheap supplies could be costing you money!
--
I'm hoping this is something you will consider when buying art supplies! Buying more expensive supplies may just not work for you and that's okay. This is something I want people to consider because it will end up saving you money in the end.
I will make a post about where you can cut on expenses. There is so much in this post already I feel like I've got a lot in this one post. Please ask me questions and remember to enjoy making your art!
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Call For Cover Art for SFU Anthology
Emily Stringer, a friend of mine, just told me about this Call for Art. Emily works in the The Writer's Studio, in Simon Fraser University's Creative Writing program. The cover artist they choose will get their artwork on the cover and receive two copies of the anthology. Here are some of the details below:
- Open call for Cover Art, seeking art that considers the theme: "places where stories come from." Variations on theme, including creative interpretations of broader themes such as “emerging” or “discovery”, are encouraged
- Deadline: noon, July 20th
- Please email submissions to: emergecoverart(AT)gmail(DOT)
com - The image should have the highest dpi possible, the minimum size being 400 dpi, in TIFF or JPEG file format
- More details are at https://emergetws.wordpress.
com/cover/call-for-cover-art/ - emerge 16 is a student anthology from The Writer's Studio (TWS), SFU's Creative Writing program; the anthology launches in October, 2016
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Starting With Thumbnails
When my mom taught herself to draw she started with the simple things: portraits and still lifes. Her favorite by far (and mine too) was portraits. She learned to draw the right eye first and draw the rest of the figure in proportion to that -- a method that's not wholly wrong, but proves problematic when applying to illustration.
The good part of this method is that one learns how everything in the body relates to everything else. Using the eye's width one can determine the width of the nose, the distance between the eyes, and the basic shape of the head. Read Jack Hamm's "Drawing the Head and Figure" to learn more about this and other important aspects of drawing the figure. It's very inexpensive (about $10-$13 usd) and is an excellent reference.
There are many problems with starting with the eye in Illustration. For one, you usually don't have a perfect model to work from. Even then, if you start with something as small as the eye you won't be able to place the figure correctly on the page. To correct this I start by creating thumbnail sketches so I can get an approximation of where everything goes on the page. 
If you are a writer think of a thumbnail as a story idea you get in the middle of the night. You scribble it down quickly so you can go back to sleep. Thumbnails aren't perfect -- especially mine. It's okay for these to be sloppy since no one will ever see them. Unless you write a blog post and display the sloppiness on your blog! Note: I have much sloppier thumbnails for my dummies, but couldn't show them here.
Check back soon for more information about how to make laying out the page and making better images. I will be writing about gesture, character design/emotion, and anything else I can think of this week. I will also be having a few other people with posts to help you get thinking about Smart Dummies!
Sign up for Smart Dummies here: http://daniduckart.blogspot.ca/p/smart-dummies-sign-up.html
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Old Art
Monday starts the "Bad" Picture Book Blog Hop! Keeping with the theme of the blog hop I wanted to show you some old work. Most of this is college work except the first cat painting. That one was done a few years ago. I find it's fun to see other people's old work to see how far they've come.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Some New Work
I've been working on a lot of things lately, and I haven't had time to show it all. This first bunch are just things that I've put up in my shop lately, but they are fun so I'll share them with me. I'm planing on doing a bunch of arceos (2.5x3.5 artwork) so I'll be posting them here in the between times as I get them done. I have about 7 inked and ready for colours already. Look for those in the near future!
I'm showing you two of the duck cards because both of these have sold! I did the best to show these cards, but most of these are metallic so I don't think it's possible to show them in all their shiny glory. Maybe if I did .gifs you could see them better?
All of these are in my Etsy shop, so click on the link to the right if you want to see more!
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