continuing self portrait and dreamscape (both near completion) 3/26/12

Top: painting I started a while back (based on my animation themes) and picked up to rework. (photo is a shot indoors..a better lit one outside will be taken at its completion.) 2 feet wide, acrylic ink and paint on wood. Bottom: there is a very narrow margin of a specific type of light (afternoon to sundown) which draws this one out longer than I had hoped. I do think it will likely be resolved tomorrow. Likely. I know better than to promise.


These are a rather extreme range of styles I work in. I suspect my hardcore-work-only-from-life-painter colleagues  would find the top piece (and others in the same vein) frivolous, and others who would think that working in these two styles simultaneously as evidence of being less focused or "serious" about my work. To that I can only shrug. They satisfy two different ways of expression. The top starts with a stream  of consciousness type of markmaking and it evolves into a story that reveals itself to me which I may layer with more ideas. The lower one requires me to get out of the way and observe (though the multi arm idea is a bit of concept I'm playing with). They may meet up on some level someday (perhaps some of the silhouette pieces are already) , but they don't need to. Both are important to me on their own terms.

Dreamscapes on paper and wood 3/23/12

Top to bottom: Dreamscape 18"x12" acrylic ink and watercolor on watercolor paper. Next four- assorted dreamscapes all approximately 10"x5.5" acrylic ink and watercolor on watercolor paper. Bottom- acrylic ink treescape on assembled wood panels approximately 8"x2"

two self portraits in progress

 

more shifting of smaller areas and tone differences in vertical painting. Lets see what happens in the morning.

finishing small decorative dreamscape/treescape and starting new self portrait

started mapping quick sketch and sienna underpainting self portrait--about 12"x30"


...and some completed minis from my stay with my sister.  I seem to trade more than sell, but that is a help too.

acrylic ink on assembled wood panels--about 2"x7"

4" round wood panel. acrylic ink

4" round wood panel acrylic ink

 3"x3" acrylic ink on canvas

2"x3" acrylic ink on canvas

animation tutoring session and prepping my third project

I spent a good deal of yesterday going over some basic concepts of animation with my nine year old niece, Skye. We started with the most simple stuff...comparing a ball moving frame by frame vs. using a blur effect for a sense of speed. By the end of the day she created her own simple GIF looped animation in Photoshop and ImageReady. I could open the image right here, but it may be a little distracting to have running nonstop on the post. Check it out here.  

I was hoping to start the opening credits to "Eight" during my trip, but my brand new just out of the box (however---unfortunately not unpacked out of that box until after the exchange deadline at Office Depot) computer is busted during my travels (I was careful...not sure where or when it was damaged. My sister thinks the shell feels too lightweight and not really suitable for travel, despite it being a laptop. Who knows.)

So, my buddy/ex sis in law/niece's mama is lending me her reliable if smaller and less memory/RAM old sony laptop for the time being. I loaded my old Adobe CS on it and am looking at freeware/inexpensive animation programs. I was going to just go with what I used on Four (see second animation to your left on this here website)- Photostage Slideshow. However, I will be using a lot of rotation effects which it doesn't provide. I may use it for certain kinds of editing, but am considering a freeware 3d software in order to combine a 2-d characters with more traditional types of animation effects with a 3-d landscape environment. If this computer has roomI will download and test some programs out like Blender to see how easy or difficult it is to use for a fairly newbie animator.