A foreshortened arm. Not ... terrible; could be better.
-the Centaur
Posts published in “Artworks”
"There's no individualist so rugged they were born being able to change their own diaper." That's a quote from a story in progress that I thought was good enough to hoist up into the blog, just in case it turns into a "darling" and I need to cut it. The point is not to be against individualism - our world is better if most people are capable of pulling their own weight most of the time - but that none of us, literally none of us, are truly autogenic: self-made men who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.
You cannot fake reality in any way whatsoever: No matter how rugged an individualist is, no matter how much a person has made with how little, there was a point in their life where they could not clothe themselves, feed themselves, or change their own diaper. And yet we've cultivated a mythos in this country that deifies the self-made individual to the point where it has become fetishized - and signaled through purchases and action, as in the residential construction worker who purchased that huge truck, parked it on our grass in the rain, and proceeded to rut up our lawn and track our driveway with mud on the way out. Not even the neighbors doing that construction want this to happen - but it keeps happening, as this patch of our driveway is just out of sight from the office where I work, and we don't often catch them.
In contrast, we have no problem working with our neighbors across the street. When a package was mis-delivered due to a missed digit, I could have kept it, or mailed it back (to Ohio!) with the note "No Such Person At This Address". But I took a few minutes to find them by phone printed on the pacakge, and we quickly worked out that they were a short walk away. On the way out the next day, I dropped the package off, hidden slightly behind their porch columns so it wasn't visible from the road. Working together, we made sure they got their package quickly without it having to be shipped halfway across the country.
I'm all in favor of individualism, even the rugged kind. But we shouldn't fetishize it to the point that we run roughshod over each other to the point that we pretend that other people aren't there or don't matter - we should work together to make sure we have the best world possible.
-the Centaur
Pictured: a construction truck, for which our responsible neighbor apologized - yet once every week or two, the construction trucks creep back onto our land when they think I'm not looking, leading to torn up grass as in the second picture; also pictured, the package I left for our neighbor, rather than shipping it back.
More Goldman studies. Not sure what went wrong with that bottom foot - it's too wide.
-the Centaur
This small portable notebook has been working very well for me. I've augmented that with a small book of art examples (hands and feet, Goldman, right now) and a roll of the kinds of pens and pencils I use most:
The whole setup fits nicely in my bookbag, so there's no real excuse not to draw every day.
Onward!
-the Centaur
Pictured: Wow, those took a long time to upload, even after I shrank them. I've had this happen before, where the network just decides it doesn't like certain images. It mostly happens at coffeeshops. I wonder why? Anyway, they uploaded now, so I'll stop talking. Enjoy,
More studies from Goldman. Something went askew with the width of that leg there.
-the Centaur
Another Goldman study.
-the Centaur
Now this is what happens to yesterday's idea if you take just a little time to draw pencil roughs first.
Onwards!
-the CEntaur
As it says on the tin. So many hours today, so little time.
-the Centaur
Super quick sketch as it is late and I am tired, and no post-processing as my computer is applying updates.
Don't break the streak, hit send.
-the Centaur
So, another, "super quick sketch as it's late and I'm tired but I don't want to break the streak".
Nowhere near as good as the original, but I think I learned something about its composition, so yay me, I guess?
Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
A Passenghast, or Ghost Walker, an alien from a series of stories I am working on.
-the Centaur
As it says on the tin: no real drawings for you. Gotta run one errand, then I crash.
-the sicktaur
Cat, when it's raining: "Let me out! Let me out! But not this door, it's wet. Let's try another door. And another! Or another! I gotta get out! Just hold the door open until the rain stops!"
Also cat, when it is nice and sunny: "Who cares about going outside? Ima gonna havva nap."
-the Centaur
Pictured: the cat-shaped void, Loki, actually using his void-colored cat tree for once. Image taken in infrared bands and color enhanced by NASA to show surface detail.
Drawn from an image, not a screensaver, so I had more time; but no construction lines, so the face ended up kind of kwonkeldy. I believe that construction lines help close the loop; but the exercise here was to carefully pay attention to the hair shapes to see how it flowed. For that purpose, it came out okay.
Definitely room for improvement on my end!
-the Centaur
I had a somewhat ruined piece of paper, not a lot of time, and there was an image of Belldandy from Ah My Goddess on my computer's screen saver, so I decided to draw that. Unfortunately, the screen saver kept changing, and even though there were several pictures of characters from the franchise, I couldn't quite keep the image straight.
Ah well, it's late, I'm tired, scan and send - keep drawing daily, no matter what.
Don't break the streak.
-the Centaur
A barista noticed my Green Lantern ring, and gave me a Green Lantern mocha. :-D
-the Centaur
Another hand, after Goldman. I thought I was doing quite well until I tried to close the loop on the hand, and realized I'd messed up the spacing, making the hand too wide, which I partially fixed; but that in turn messed up the webbing between the hand and the finger - leading to that dark line I could not fix.
Oh well, next time. Drawing every day.
-the Centaur
More Goldman studies. Like an AI, I kept drawing this foot with six toes, not quite sure why. Mostly fixed it, but it could have been better, if only I had learned to count.
-the Centaur
More studies from the Goldman book.
-the Centaur
We have a black cat, so we got a black cat condo (just barely visible to the left). But of course, our cat-shaped void is a cat, and so prefers the blue couch, where its voluminous shedded fur is easily visible. My wife caught him in the act, so, enjoy this picture of our cat-shaped void, doing cat-styled things.
-the Centaur
Pictured: Loki on our couch. Interestingly, this picture was taken at an angle, so I rotated it, then used Adobe Photoshop's generative fill to recover the outer edge of the picture. The very outer edge is ... mostly right. Some weirdness is visible in the carpet patterns on the lower left, the brick pattern on the upper left, and whatever it is on the table on the right isn't there in reality. Otherwise, not a terrible job.