ArtCtrl

So this is the first page. Welcome. Kia Ora. Currently I have no net and I'’m just sitting in my room thinking about going out. It’s getting late so don’t see that happening.

Today has been positive. My brother on the other hand has been negative. Wont go into that though.

Spent the day in town drawing the world around me. I said to myself this morning - No bus! Managed to keep to my promise too, even though I was close to getting a bus home since it was so damn cold.

Town was really busy today, maybe because I’ve been in Levin for the last month and Wellington is giant compared. New Zealand arts show was on this weekend so that would help the numbers. First stop was French Art Shop. I was on the hunt for some oil paints and a new journal. I got two oil paints, Burnt Umber and Raw Sienna. Both of them in 38ml tubes - better to go for high quality and smaller tubes then cheap and large tubes. I haven’t used them yet but looking forward to seeing what they can do :)

Gorden Harris was my next stop. I never enjoy it as much as French Art but sometimes their sales are very nice. They had a green in oils on sale so I grabbed that. It’s Pebeo brand so not expecting much from it. Didn’t have a green so might come in handy. It’s a English Deep Green. Fancy. Tube of gouache was on sale also, the colour Rubine. Which is basically pink. Helpful to have around for using in my journal. Finally Permanent Green in watercolour. Had a go with that tonight but not too sure, i think I rather use acyclic in my book. The watercolour looked good when I mixed some white arcylic into it.

When I was in Levin I spent some time practicing perspective. No ruler was used today of course. Loose and focused on the angle and size. I wasn’t worried about getting things ‘wrong’. On most of my drawings I mixed the elements up - Added a beam where there wasn’t to make the drawing more interesting.

Three girls were busking on Cuba st, violins. I did a sketch of them in this book and gave them it along with two dollars. Also did a sketch of the Nirvana guy. He’s always doing Nirvana covers, not that there is anything wrong with that. Quick sketch of him and 50 cents :D Really inspired me to go out and draw people

Popped into the Wellington library too but was close to closing time. Read a few books on street art. One had good interviews with the artists. One artist made a good point about being labeled a street artist when really they are Artists. What label would people give me? Going to  UCOL was the first time I really remember drawing. Before then it was just design at high school (and high school design is basically - get font, turn pretty colours, win). My work then was mainly in charcoal. Portraits were a focus - celebs, music, actors. Expressive marks. I would use charcoal and work very black. Mums are great at analyzing art. Recently Mum said to me that some children were scared of my portrait of my sister Holley. Does my art have a sense of fear or evil? It must be the emotion created with the marks. Colour must affect this also as colour is linked to making a person feel calm or fearful. Since I’ve really started to use colour (Thanks Gary) my colours have become bright and colourful. This likely reduces the er… fear.

I’ve recently been exploring yellow - mixing it with bronze and reds to create some interesting effects. Haven’t been very happy with blue lately. The yellows are bright and transparent (very helpful for the book since I use pen before and want my pen work to show. I did have a good blue I enjoyed using in my journal - Persian blue. sadly I’ve left that in Levin with my sister. I hope shes putting those colours to use that I left by mistake!

Is my art getting better?

Nana is one of the most special people in my life. When I was a baby she looked after me and in her old age I spent time looking after her. I will really miss her.

I have many special memory’s with her

As most of you know Nana was a very keen shopper and when I was younger we would often go clothes shopping together - partically farmers. If it wasnt for Nana I would of been a naked child. We often went for milkshakes as well. She really enjoyed being out and about in the shops. A week before Nana died we went on one last outing. I had to purcurch some socks and pants. Walking though the clothes isials she held her arm out touching the clothing. She had a big smile on her face and was doing what she loved - shopping.

Like my father Nana had her run in with the New Zealand Police. One night I was sleeping out in her flat with her and she decided to go for a late night strol, in her BJs and barefeet. Police found her walking down Queen St ignoring the phone number on her walker they used their investagion skills and asked at a home she had stayed at. I awoke with three poice oficers in the room and Nana in a police vest. Nana was quite excited to have these young police officers looking after her. Rebel.

Playing the videogame beatles rock band I would get Nana to sing the songs with me. She partacially enjoyed the song yellow submarine.

After moving to wellington I would come up to visit her. She would greet with me a huge smile. During our hug she would smug my neck like a cat. It was always plesent talking to Nana. We never argued.

I was fortunate to be with Nana when she passed. Holding her hand/stroke forehead. Reassuring her that everything is going to be ok and that everyone loved her. Her big brown eyes staring at me. I will never forget that moment. She looked so peaceful. I love you Nana.

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August 2016 Artwork from Life Drawing Hamilton - Adelaide modelling. RedditGetsDrawn portraits, Pepper&Carrot and the Hamilton Python User Group.

Walking to life drawing takes 1 hour and 30 minutes. I did it in 1 hour and 15 minutes. Still arrived several minutes late and didn’t setup my usual table. Instead joined Peters table.

These are quick 2 minute poses. I think I need more quicker poses. Warmed up from the walk meant the drawing went successfully.

Sitting pose with the model curled up and looking down. It wasn’t partially interesting but it did give me a change to draw the enviorment - including the heater.

I decided to modify the naming system for the art. A series of life drawings or events will have P number. This means the script that builds my markdown file keeps the images in order.

Lying pose. Her right arm rests on her hair. In the distance clouds and a structure joined together with jagged spikes. Unusual shapes decent from this.

Two sitting poses. The first her hand to her mouth and second crunched over with both hands in front of her. Square and circle shapes surround the figures.

Final pose. This was a bit different to the other poses. Lying on her back with her legs crossed and up. An area I often ignore is the legs. Starting at the head and often cutting off areas is not good. On the 2nd drawing of this pose I focused on the legs.

This was reference from RedditGetsDrawn. An arab girl wearing cool glasses.

Stretching arm up. I like the face on this. It’s beautiful.

Drawing of reddit user dylan15766

Drawing of reddit user highgarden-smirk

Ideas for Pepper&Carrot. Been writing a python script to build a Nikola site of the comic. He has good filenames.

This was drawn at Hamilton Python User Group. It was a quiet night.

Currently down in Levin. I dropped into PBtech before I left hamilton brining with my the Pi and portable screen. The guy behind the service desk was excellent. He gave me 5 screws - four of which are currently holding the Pi2b and touch screen together.

Back to working with the larger screen. Found I work best if I can sit down or at least stand rather than walking and drawing. Here are the results of painting this week:

Filling the page with images from my imaganation.

On Monday night I attended WLUG. I missed last months meeting as I was away in Levin/Napier. Lawrance did a talk on Emacs. I think the most useful moment I got out of it was where he covered the emacs-terminal-client - a commandline interface that allows you to control emacs (such as opening and closing files). This could be useful.

He covered the basics of Lisp and I doddled down the code he demoed.

Free statue. Plane. cityscape. Giant robot walking through the mountains.

When I don’t know what to do - visit concentart.org and have a look at some of the challangers of the week. Often I start with enviorment of the week, but also check out character and creature.

Planned on writing a Sept. 11 altenative history novel, similar to The Man In The High Castle. In this altenative world the attacks on 9/11 never happen. The novel follows events leading up, during, and after the certain day. I had planned to call the novel a altenative name of My Chemical Romance since the band was formed before of 9/11. Anyway, more novel ideas to go along with Pepper&Carrot and ItWillNotBeMine.

In altenative world there are digital paintings of the events, but the events don’t really happen. This is the colour layer. Blue for the sky, green for the water, red for thte buildings. Kept the smoke gray.

The grayscale tonal layer. The statue is the darkest, followed by the areas of the towers which were hit. One colour covers the water. A range of lights and darks spread across the skyline.

The line layer. It seems so minimal compared to the tonal layers. This holds the key information that is transfered onto the tonal layers. Compared to some of the other line layers, this feels empty.

Close up drawings of towers. Arab guy and Pepper portrait.

The end of August 2021 artwork. This is a combo of some of July 2021 artwork also - mostly DND inspired artwork, along with some recent comic panels I created with Krita.

Top view of ship in DND. We had to fight pirates, and it was tough.

Side view of ship in DND.

Testing brushes and strokes

Did a one shot in DND and I played a Forest Gnome. This is a sketch of him. In future main campaign I am planning on playing a deep gnome.

Giving the comic templates a go in krita - this is grayscale.

Line version of the headrect comic. Different zoom levels of areas - including the landscape was the focus.

Headstar comic grayscale.

Another Krita comic template sketch. Line version. A head with three spikes, and a landscape behind it, different zooms

The symbol / logo of mystra. Praise!

Praise Mystra! Mystra is the god that my character - Bril follows, along with the group that he travels with Jens and Friends. This is a portrait of her.

A smile character with a landscape.

Sorry for the lack of posts this month. Since WoW: Legion launched I’ve been at my Brothers focused on levelling both his toons and my own to 110. After the burst I am sick of playing it and need to get back into usual patterns.

It’s been weeks since I have attended Life Drawing Hamilton but plan on attending this Friday - so expect another post this weekend with life drawings.

I found out through ccanz that Authors Alliance was coming to Hamilton and I attended the talks. Here are the notes that I took during the session.

Start of the session. I made it to the session just in time. Michael Wolfe the Executive Director of Authors Alliance introduced himself and his organisation and the topics that would be talked about during the workshop.

Wolfe talked about Creative Commons and the licences. Majority of this material I knew but it’s always great and informative to get a fresh perspective on the licences. Gratis vs Libre was interesting as well. I had to bring up the CC Zero licence (it’s something that CC seem to keep quite hidden also). I forgot to mention CC Public Domain which is a licence you can attach to let people know that the content is in the public domain.

Moving on from CC into contracts which is something I have zero experience with - so great learning for me.

I ran out of power part way during the workshop and the other was charging at my Brothers so this was the last of the notes from the workshop.

I really like the idea of the requirement of renewing copyright. This allows works to fall into Public Domain early unless the Copyright holder really wants to extend it.

TPP notes. Interesting but some of it made me sad - especially of exporting of bad American laws such as DRM and extending copyright to life + 70 years. Would love to see Fair Use introduced here in New Zealand.

Drawing I did at Brothers - mostly WoW related references.

After the TPP talk I attend Hamilton Python User Group. Ian spoke about the Evolution of a Python Program, followed by Lawrances introduction to Python. I ended up drawing mostly.

Another sketch completed at Brothers.

I’ve now joined Authors Alliance and volunteered (in much the same way I do for ccanz). You should join also! Expect to see more posts in the future mentioning them.

so i have registered for wikieducator. It offers free elearning resources. I am enjoying editing and adding content. Areas that I was interested in
adding resources were tech, digital citizenship, art. Conferences and Events. I came across a course from Otago Polytechnic on Tourism and Travel. I felt I could contribute to the resources on conferences. It’s always safe to add links. I included a few links - to AV recording talk and to lanyrd - the site that lists conferences and events. I added some education resources on AV setups at conferences and expanded the section on goodie bags.

Here is the artwork that I have created

The beginning. In the right side Conference and Events is written in caps, with learning objectives under. Around the screen are scatted portraits and figures. A skull with drum sticks poking through. Characters with flower heads.

Continue with the flower head - now the figure has several. Border around the edge of lines and dots.

The goodie bag was one area I was able to expand on the education resources. This is a brainstorm of ideas behind a goodie bag.

Main resources page copy of content

Grayscale tonal painting. Makes a nice border!

Exploring ideas for conferences with the idea of tourist focused conference division. For those that do not want to attend the main conference, workshops, and seminars. Often ran as a family even. One parent attending conference, other and kids on tourist activities. Don’t want family stuck in hotel room when attending conference.

Artwork from The Cure concert, life drawing on Friday and even kiwijam.

Standing pose in the centre of the model holding a wine glass. I took the liberty and filled the glass with bubbles. Standing around with an empty glass is pointless.

In the pose where the model is lying down her shoulder blades are very dominate

• a spec of hair comes out the edge. It was quite cool. She lifted her legs up for this pose also - which helped to squeeze the figure in.

Final sitting pose for the day. Creating shapes on the model where the darker areas would be.

I attended Kiwijam in Hamilton. Last year I made it up to Auckland but this year I decided to stay behind. I spent the first few hours working further on the life drawing I had done that day - including a grayscale tonal layer of several of the poses.

Adalaide was the model. I had never drawn her before. This is the same pose from two different angles. I like how large her foot is in the left drawing. It’s really coming forward. Feet are something I often ignore so proud of myself whenever I am happy with them. On the right is a front view. I like how these two drawings merge into each other and the use of negative space - the blanket from the left drawing covers the drawing on the right.

Warmups. I arrived just on time and the group started a several minutes late. I was struggling with the line work but improved as the session developed.

On Thursday night I went to Auckland and watched The Cure with my sister. I had not seen a concert live for years. I did not know at the time how to reduce the brightness on the Pi and didn’t have my cellphone with me in order to look it up online. For the majority of the show I drew with the screen facing down. The lead to me having no idea to what I was drawing. Next time I will reduce the brightness on the Pi (didn’t know how to at the time and no internet).

This was drawn before the show started. We arrived 2 hours before the show started so I had plenty of time to draw.

At Kiwijam my group is making a game about building a wall around Trump. This is the colour layer I completed. Have yet to pass it onto the group yet - and it’s unlikely that they need it.

Grayscale tonal layer for the Trump Wall game. This was drawn today and given to the group. I look forward to seeing if they got much use out of it.

Trump Wall line layer. This was drawn Friday night but wasn’t given to the group until Saturday morning. Again, interested to see if/how this will be used in the game. It will likely have elements of it turned to vectors - but who knows.

The weather has been cold and I’ve been home in Hamilton. Other than a ecommerce business meetup I have not been to any. I have been playing a few too many games, but getting sick and bored of it. Hopefully I make it to life drawing this Friday as it has been awhile since I have made it.

Here are recent artworks. I have been using the Pi on my larger Samsung monitor.

Notes taken well watching pycon2016 videos. The talk was on writing an excellent programming blog. I am going to talk about the talk at the Hamilton Python User Group on Monday. I will take this artwork and turn it into slides.

The title page for the talk I will give. I drew a portrait of the speaker along with the logo of pycon2016

Grayscale tonal layer of the title page.

Along with pycon2016 videos I watched pydata London videos. These are notes I took with a statistic tutorial from the event. Pepper and Carrot draws and notes were started - Saffron Witchcraft.

Begin of concept art for EOW - water treatment plant.