Press "Enter" to skip to content

[drawing every day 2024 post one four nine]: the shape of the hand

centaur 0

More studies from Goldman. I'm liking how these are turning out. Apparently repeated practice is doing something for my ability to render - whodathunk.

I'd say, "I'da thunk" except I am actually a bit surprised that there's a cross-training effect going on: that is, I'm getting better at things I wasn't really trying to get better at, just because I have to do them in order to do the things that I really want to do - sometimes improving in surprising ways.

But the drawings are turning out well, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Drawing every day.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one four nine]: master of all he surveys, redux

centaur 1

Our big butch cat - Loki is 16+ pounds of fur and muscle, with relatively little flab - is actually a little scaredy guy. I mean, I might be a scaredy guy too if the situation was reversed: I'm approximately 6 times taller and 11 times heaver than Loki, and I'd be freaked to live in a world where 35-foot-tall, one-ton creatures felt like picking me up at random times for no discernible reason.

But he's scared of other things too, like his shadow. And I think that happened because once, when he tried to go outside, a baby rat snake was coiling by the door. He ran to the nearby French doors to be let out, but the rat snake had also fled - to the same doors! And then, both of them again fled to the next door down. He was pretty freaked, and a little more cautious going over thresholds since then. Not this guy, though:

Regardless, Loki frequently gets animated, starts looking outside or in the yard to see what's going on, and stares at it for a long time, before settling down and chilling out. Even when something is really there, though, it doesn't mean that the cause is always actionable. Sometimes things are just passing through, and worrying about them or doing something about them can only lead to more disruption.

I'm not saying to ignore real problems, of course; seeing the fox requires different reactions than the deer.

But how often do we stress out about things which will ultimately pass us by?

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, the snek, and the deer. Fox was not available for comment.

[twenty twenty four day one four eight]: it sees

centaur 0

It's late, I'm tired, so here's a friendly reminder that if you can see it, it can see you.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the Moon, which sure looks creepy right after reading There Is No Antimemetics Division.

[drawing every day 2024 post one four eight]: more wza y’ei

centaur 0

More studies of negative space from Goldman. Yes, yes, I know "wza y'ei" means negative conceptual space, not negative visual space, but these hands really do look Lovecraftian to me.

So tired. Onward.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one four seven]: positive and negative

centaur 0

ACTUALLY, there are no more "positive" and "negative" shapes in the real world than there are actual "lines" in the real world (well, even that's debatable, but ...) as the right diagram illustrates: yes, you can say that the hand has a shape, but its "wza y'ei", the negative conceptual space surrounding a positive concept in the Aklo language, does not actually exist for the hand: that negative space itself is both limited and shaped, broken up into negative and positive shapes like the stands for the hands or the frame of the picture. Or, to riff more on concepts from Alan Moore's version of Aklo, defining negative space can be seen as the extended creation of a new positive form.

A little punchy after that debugging session.

Drawing every day, posting every day my website works.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one four eight]: red herrings

centaur 0

Okay, it's not a red herring, it's a grapefruit, but I am able to upload images to the site again. It appears that when my hosting provider said I had "15 gigabytes free" what they actually meant was "0 bytes free". So I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix permissions on the directories when the real problem was that I was out of disk space (which causes the same error).

I already knew I needed to change hosting providers. I guess it's time.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Not a red herring, which I don't eat for breakfast anyway.

[twenty twenty-four day one four seven]: the art and its model

centaur 0

Photoshopped version of the "C Lion" neck pillow that I drew the other day ...

It is interesting how strange shapes get compared to what we imagine things to look like ... it took conscious effort not to cartoon this and to try to make it match its referent, even given that it was a quick sketch.

Even then, I moved the binder clip in the drawing to aid the composition. Breakin' the law!

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one four six]: that hand

centaur 0

I wasn't satisfied with the fingers on yesterday's drawing, nor with the fact that I didn't have time to render it, so I tackled it again, as a subject in its own right. I think it came out better, though the thumb is pointy.

Overall, I feel the shapes of the fingers I draw tend to come out fat or thin - I don't have a great grasp of their shape and thickness yet, and perspective is particularly hard.

But then, that's why I'm drawing every day, starting from Goldman's Drawing Hands and Feet.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one four six]: chocolate oakland

centaur 0

Another Photoshop study, of a chocolate shop in Oakland. Here's the original:

Pity that most chocolate isn't vegan, but it sure is a nice storefront with the chocolates and the origami.

-the Centaur

[drawing every day 2024 post one four five]: no rendering for you

centaur 1

No rendering for you - I got the line drawing finished just before my late-night walk with my wife, and was about 50-50 on whether I would shade this when I got back - but it was raining, and we did a short walk, and, to our surprise, after our short little walk, the fridge in the kitchen was leaking.

So! Instead of rendering this, I helped my wife move all our food out of the dying fridge and into alternate refrigeration - fortunately we had enough room to save everything except for some freezer-burned home-made ice cream that really wasn't ever good enough to eat anyway.

Drawing every day; adulting as best as we can.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Another study from Goldman.

[twenty twenty-four day one four five]: so convenient

centaur 0

It's good to be home, but Loki sure doesn't make it convenient. Cat, I have work to do.

Still, I guess you're going to do you.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, in my lap as I type this (likely because, right now, I'm not letting him sit on my recently-filled-in whiteboard desk) and Loki, eating with his feet in his food bowl, because ... ?????

[drawing every day 2024 post one four four]: mom, back in the day

centaur 0

It's late, and I anticipated a cat would end up in my lap, so just a quick sketch for you. This is Mom, from a photograph back in the day - this is actually the photo we used for her funeral. We think the photograph was colorized and retouched, which was the style back in the day.

Interestingly, the photo was so blurry due to movement that I had to retroject the cleaned sketch back onto the notebook page, which I think turned out pretty well, though you can see a bit of the blurriness left in the notebook page texture. (Update: hit post too soon, thanks to cat, fixed now).

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one four four]: picturesque doorway

centaur 0

Another Photoshop study, this one based on a doorway on College Street in Oakland.

So many wonderful shapes and patterns present themselves to us every day, but if we don't stop to look around once in a while, we might miss it.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day one four two]: he’s a little guy

centaur 0

I'd gotten out of the habit of doing these quasi-comic style art pieces based on photographs, but I've taken a few really good candidate pictures with the right layout for it, so I hope to get back into doing that. This is a picture of one of Sandi's art pieces she completed this weekend at Silicon Valley Open Studios, and it will now be on display at Kaleid Gallery in San Jose. Neat fact: this little guy is actually a cabinet!

Still, he's a little guy.

-the Centaur

Pictured: One of Sandi's sculpture cabinets, to be on display at the Kaleid Gallery.

cherry blossoms, photoshopped

centaur 0

Digging through my photos, looking for things I had forgotten to blog, I found some nice pictures of some cherry blossoms, and decided to Photoshop-rendition them into an illustration.

Please enjoy this bonus illustration!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Um, I said it already, cherry blossoms, seen through a window, then Photoshopped. This is about 8 layers of perspective tweaks, color / tone / contrast adjustments, filters, masks and layer effects.

[drawing every day 2024 post one four one]: quick now, jeremiah

centaur 1

Long day helping clean up after Silicon Valley Open Studios and taking art to Kaleid, so here's a quick sketch of Jeremiah, based on a drawing of Jeremiah that happened to be sitting near me, after I had mostly assembled the furniture which goes in my new home-away-from-home office out in California:

You can barely see her next to the chair there, but it's the same drawing I have used for a variety of JW things, including the upcoming Jeremiah Willstone audio dramas:

Still, kind of appropriate that a character whose catchphrase is "Quick, now" (and who complained about her author reducing her strategies down to just the quick-strike) would be rendered in a quick sketch.

Drawing every day, even if I am shy of time.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Quick sketch of Jeremiah, with a little photoshoppery to jazz up the red scribbles around the Kathodenstrahl pistols, and my new home office, plus some of Sandi's sculptural furniture - believe it or not, the freaky egg thing is a combination hatrack / cupboard / jewelry case.