Nov14, 2014

This sketch is done in Painter again, in the oil painting mode. I'm still trying to figure out how the program works, but I am learning a lot just playing with it. 

This was done from a photo that I took this summer of my nephew and his girlfriend. They were driving to Washington state and had stopped by just long enough to say, "Hi."

Nov 16, 2014
I sketched Tulip today in the Painter program. I wanted to see if what I was doing with the other pictures would translate into a simple image and help me to sketch faster. I was able to finish this one in 40 minutes. I'm beginning to figure out more of how to use this program. 

Now I'm thinking "How far can it take this?"

Nov 15, 2014
I didn't do a sketch today, but I did put my time in trying to finish up a poster for Creative Action Network. I wanted to show diversity in a community garden for the quote, "There is no power greater than community discovering what it cares about." 

Nov. 13, 2014

I'm still working in Painter, trying to figure out how to use it and what it can do. 

I found a photo that I took of mom earlier this year at an old train depot on the outskirts of one of the towns along Highway 49. It may have been Sutter Creek. It was late in the day and out of season. This is a park that has a railroad museum and an old steam trains that take tourists along the tracks about four miles out and back again. The engineers and conductors wear old time clothing, to keep the illusion alive. 

There were a few men, volunteers who love trains, still around, wrapping things up at the end of the day. They were nice enough to answer my trivial questions about the trains. Mom, wanting to go back to the car, walked ahead of me as I loitered behind her talking photos. 

This sketch took longer than I expected. I could have worked on it more, but I tried to find ways to work faster.

11-12-14

I've been playing with Painter all day and experimenting with the brushes. This is a powerful graphics program that will allow paint and draw like renderings. I am beginning to see the possibilities, but I am far from being able to control the process with any real accuracy. I needed a subject that would offer me more concrete representational as well as abstract imagery, so I used a photo that Noel sent me of herself. Sorry, Noel. You were my experiment. I thought of her name, "Noel", the cold winter conditions there in Utah, and most of the states to the east and I thought to make her a winter angel, of sorts. A divine being to kiss the skies with frost. 

11-9-14

I sketched the same bowl of cherry tomatoes. This time in Photoshop. Photoshop is pretty versatile, but the image is not a vector. It can create a vector like image, but not like Illustrator. Photoshop is best for photos, in combination with other image-making programs and to create non-scaleable images. 

I created two versions of the subject. The first one I approached as I would in Illustrator and the second one I just painted it with a brush. 

All of the versions look different because all of the programs handle image making differently. 

I still have one more program, Painter. I am not as familiar with this program because I just got it, but I will try to create the same subject in Painter tomorrow.

11-10-14

I tried working with Corel Painter today using the same subject, the tomatoes in the bowl. For those of you that voiced favor for a more organic looking rendering, this program is the best for that type of rendering. It has several types of brushes but not really knowing how to adjust things, I just played with this picture. Unlike Illustrator, creating an image in this program shows process and the hand of the artist. You can see everything that I did as I did it. It is not mechanical, but it is most like doing a real painting, barring the fact that I am working with a stylus and a Wacom tablet, so it doesn't have the same feel. There was a slight lag in the rendering, so the brushstroke appeared slightly after I applied it. I suspect that it was using a lot of resource and the more that I use this program, the better I can adjust for that. 

11-7-14

Today it is really a sketch. Yesterday I was too ill to get out of bed. I slept all day and ate nothing. At about 5:30, I tried to do a couple of things, but it was the first time that I've ever had to call for my mother to help me to get back to bed. I had started to black out. Everything was going black. 

Today I still felt feverish, but much better. I felt good enough to eat some oatmeal this morning. After being in bed all day yesterday, the house felt stuffy, so I took my watercolors and sat outside to paint that same bowl of tomatoes. Not my best effort. I had to sit back often and close my eye awhile. 

I had thought about Deb's interest in the programs that I was using and wanted to show that drawing things out on paper can be just as effective. 

Each of the programs, Illustrator, Flash, Photoshop and Painter have their own uses. So it depends upon what she wants to use the programs for. Among all of the programs, Painter was created to do just paint, but Photoshop can do that too, but it is much more adapted to photo adjustment and compositing. Illustrator creates images that vectors, meaning you can make them larger or smaller without distorting the image. It is also better at utilizing text with the image, because it is a vector as well. You can draw in Flash, but it was made for animation, including an animated website. Code, Action Script is used to assign actions to the images. 

Going back to bed now.

11-5-14

This year I planted four tomato plants, but only the cherry tomatoes gave fruit. I suspect that I planted the other two too late. With the days shortening and the nights getting colder, I think that these may be the last of what will ripe on the vine. 

The best temperature for ripening tomatoes is 70 to 75F. 

Temperatures below 50º F can destroy some ripening enzymes, and when the thermometer dips below 40º F, the chill can actually cause the tomatoes to decay more quickly in storage. I had better pick the rest of the green ones soon. 

I created this image with Illustrator. 

11-4-14

The Cosumnes River Preserve, south of the little town of Franklin,  is a host to a variety of wildlife, but it is the birds that are the most valuable asset. On November 8th there will be an organized bird count and hike on the trails and now is the time to watch the Sandhill cranes roost at sunset on the marshy bogs. What a treat! 

For this sketch, I wanted to see what I could do in Photoshop to create an image of the bog grasses blowing in the wind and birds flying up from them.

11-3-14

Today was beautiful! After the rain that we had the night before, it was nice to see the sun again. It was muddy, and the dogs had to be cooped up for awhile, but the rain washed everything clean. There were beautiful, billowing clouds and some patchy rain that still lingered. I was inspired to draw this in Photoshop, with all sorts of brushes.

11-2-14

This is another Photoshop painting with brushes, no photos. I wanted to show what I saw, driving back from Paso Robles to Sacramento again. The Central Valley is wide and open, with mountain ranges in the distance or hills nearby. It reminded me of the Eastern planes of Colorado, where I lived for six years. You could see the weather coming from miles away. You can see it here too, the sky dominating the field of vision. Today the sky was clearing. By the time we got to Sacramento, the clouds were mostly gone but cold and windy in spots. In Colorado the strip of land below the sky was dotted with low grasses and cactus. Here in the Valley, when there were no groves of fruit or nut trees, it was often dotted with tumbleweeds, turning a rusty color in the cold. 

October 31st, 2014

We are spending the weekend in Paso Robles to attend a Halloween party tonight. i had a number of things to get ready yesterday and we did leave until late Thursday. Much of the drive on I5 was uneventful, but when we turned onto Highway 41 we noticed that the moon was up and very bright. Mom thought that it looked like a orange wedge, but I said that it was too pale to be an orange, so it must be an iced lemon! The sky seemed clear so I was glad that we wouldn't be getting rain while driving, but once we got to our destination in Ranchita Canyon, I saw that there were veils of clouds across our friendly moon. Perfect for Halloween. I was inspired to create this Halloween image, all in Photoshop.

October 29th, 2014

This is a simple line study of a fuchsia. I don't have much luck with them in this environment. They usually do better closer to the coast. This one is struggling. It did give me a few fruit that were very good to eat. It tasted like a cross between a strawberry and a blueberry. This one is a species type that gave pretty big fruit for a fuchsia, about the size of a small olive. 

October 29th, 2014

This sketch is dedicated to Linda and her beloved horse, Cody. Cody passed away last week and he will be greatly missed. He was a rescue horse who was so gentle and sweet, there must be a heaven for him.

October 27th, 2014

Mimi, a friend from choir sent me a picture of her for me to sketch. I drew it in Flash so that it could be scaled to any size.

 October 26th 2014

Mom and her cat, Necko. I brought her this cat when it was just a kitten, to replace the one that had died. Necko is almost one year old. Now mom looks at him and says that her is so large! "Why did he have to get big?" Babies are all so cute when they are young. Now he is older, he is bigger. Now Necko is pretty with his long white fur and bushy tail!