flameraven (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flameraven) wrote2009-07-02 05:24 pm
flameraven) wrote2009-07-02 05:24 pm
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So I promised an update on my recent doings and then lo! I failed to produce one.
It's hard for me to update sometimes because I feel like I'm not doing anything, just sitting around the house. Of course I am doing things, but as most of it involves thinking it doesn't seem very exciting to describe.
Still, though the job hunt continues unrelenting, I've been managing to work on a few projects to keep myself busy.
First, I re-painted an extremely old piece of mine, of a leopard-spotted dragon sunbathing on a branch. The old one was done in 2003--while I was in Japan the first time-- and the change in skill level is definitely marked. There's still a few things I think I'd like to go in and tweak later, but for now I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.
Another current project is doing an entry for Garfield Park's upcoming ARRRT Show, which is (as you may have guessed) pirate-themed. This one seemed like nothing but fun when I agreed to enter it, and then the painting proceeded to be insanely difficult. I've had a hard time pinning down just what I want to paint, and had more troubles because the canvas I initially wanted to work on was probably not the best choice.
I think I finally solved the problem, though; I switched from the old 36 x 24" canvas I was using (which had already been painted over twice, and was almost impossible to draw on) to a diptych of two 15 x 20" canvases. I'm much happier overall with the format and with the new subject that I ended up drawing, which is "the pirate captain playing cards with the kraken". Because I wanted something silly and fun and that's what ended up working. I could have toyed with it a bit more, but I need to get this painted as soon as possible so I can drop it off next Wednesday before I head home for the weekend.
I have two other contests that I'd like to do pieces for, Conceptart.org's "Newborn" contest, and CGSociety's "Secret Agent" contest. Both have deadlines in early August, but I'd like to finish them before that, so I don't die trying to prepare for Gen Con and paint extremely detailed CG at the same time. It's worth trying for at least one of them, though. The prize packages include crazy things like a 12 x 19" Wacom Intuos4 tablet, and the CGSociety one especially gets a lot of attention.
Also, I'm doing some freelance character work, a job I picked up off of DeviantART. Basically the writer of this webcomic had his artist bail on him, so he's doing an animated short based on the comic, (and may continue the comic later with models instead) and he needs artists to do character turnarounds to base the models on. It's not fantastic pay, but it's not a lot of work, either, and it's something to do. At the very least it's a little extra cash, and it is interesting doing the character sheets-- something I've seen done quite a bit, but never bothered to do much of myself. I may do a less exact one for some of my characters just for fun, later. :3
Oh, and also-also... (Yes, there's more.) Well. I was looking through my old Parallel Parchment pages, and thinking that I wasn't doing half bad on the comic thing, and that I should do some new sequential work. I've been seeing a lot of ads for comic artists, after all, but don't have any really recent stuff to show them, since the last PP pages were done in 2007 or so. And... then I sort of did a sketch and did some brainstorming and then I sat down and wrote out two and a half pages of script for a mini-comic. Which, when I went back and plotted it out, got to 11 pages and will probably extend to something like 16-20 pages when finished. Um. Which is a lot more than I was ever intending to do (that's almost a full chapter of the main comic right there) but... is pretty interesting. So that's something I will likely be working on in the background for awhile. (Because I totally need another project.)
And of course, there's prep for GenCon and all kinds of other stuff-- like First Friday tomorrow, and then the 4th of July parties Saturday. And D&D Sunday. ...Yeah.
It's hard for me to update sometimes because I feel like I'm not doing anything, just sitting around the house. Of course I am doing things, but as most of it involves thinking it doesn't seem very exciting to describe.
Still, though the job hunt continues unrelenting, I've been managing to work on a few projects to keep myself busy.
First, I re-painted an extremely old piece of mine, of a leopard-spotted dragon sunbathing on a branch. The old one was done in 2003--while I was in Japan the first time-- and the change in skill level is definitely marked. There's still a few things I think I'd like to go in and tweak later, but for now I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.
Another current project is doing an entry for Garfield Park's upcoming ARRRT Show, which is (as you may have guessed) pirate-themed. This one seemed like nothing but fun when I agreed to enter it, and then the painting proceeded to be insanely difficult. I've had a hard time pinning down just what I want to paint, and had more troubles because the canvas I initially wanted to work on was probably not the best choice.
I think I finally solved the problem, though; I switched from the old 36 x 24" canvas I was using (which had already been painted over twice, and was almost impossible to draw on) to a diptych of two 15 x 20" canvases. I'm much happier overall with the format and with the new subject that I ended up drawing, which is "the pirate captain playing cards with the kraken". Because I wanted something silly and fun and that's what ended up working. I could have toyed with it a bit more, but I need to get this painted as soon as possible so I can drop it off next Wednesday before I head home for the weekend.
I have two other contests that I'd like to do pieces for, Conceptart.org's "Newborn" contest, and CGSociety's "Secret Agent" contest. Both have deadlines in early August, but I'd like to finish them before that, so I don't die trying to prepare for Gen Con and paint extremely detailed CG at the same time. It's worth trying for at least one of them, though. The prize packages include crazy things like a 12 x 19" Wacom Intuos4 tablet, and the CGSociety one especially gets a lot of attention.
Also, I'm doing some freelance character work, a job I picked up off of DeviantART. Basically the writer of this webcomic had his artist bail on him, so he's doing an animated short based on the comic, (and may continue the comic later with models instead) and he needs artists to do character turnarounds to base the models on. It's not fantastic pay, but it's not a lot of work, either, and it's something to do. At the very least it's a little extra cash, and it is interesting doing the character sheets-- something I've seen done quite a bit, but never bothered to do much of myself. I may do a less exact one for some of my characters just for fun, later. :3
Oh, and also-also... (Yes, there's more.) Well. I was looking through my old Parallel Parchment pages, and thinking that I wasn't doing half bad on the comic thing, and that I should do some new sequential work. I've been seeing a lot of ads for comic artists, after all, but don't have any really recent stuff to show them, since the last PP pages were done in 2007 or so. And... then I sort of did a sketch and did some brainstorming and then I sat down and wrote out two and a half pages of script for a mini-comic. Which, when I went back and plotted it out, got to 11 pages and will probably extend to something like 16-20 pages when finished. Um. Which is a lot more than I was ever intending to do (that's almost a full chapter of the main comic right there) but... is pretty interesting. So that's something I will likely be working on in the background for awhile. (Because I totally need another project.)
And of course, there's prep for GenCon and all kinds of other stuff-- like First Friday tomorrow, and then the 4th of July parties Saturday. And D&D Sunday. ...Yeah.