Roomhates and Time Flying

Roomhates #11 @ ComicFury

Just giving y'all a heads-up that my comic's been upgraded to a twice-weekly schedule -- Mondays and Thursdays. It feels like Roomhates is starting to pick up steam, at least in my head.

Meanwhile, the semester's more than half over. Where the heck does the time go?

I Has A Tablet! And a Comic!

Hip-deep in Fall semester, and I'm taking two studio classes right now. Graphic Design Survey is extremely interesting and helpful, even if it's not entirely my "thing"; learning how to use InDesign and Illustrator alone is way useful, and I'm fascinated by the little stuff what I guess you could call Graphic Design Culture (tm).

I don't nerd out over fonts, but I think it's awesome that there are people who do. It's all about passion, and as a geek I absolutely respect people being passionate about stuff that the majority of the population don't even think about.

Plus, my prof is a hoopy frood with the most awesome tiny circle glasses ever.

I'm also taking Digital Painting, which finally got me to get over my fears and get a graphics tablet, a nice Wacom Intuos5. The instructor for this class is a grad student who's spent about a decade or so doing art professional (lots of video game credits), so to say he knows what he's doing is kind of an understatement. Dude is kind of intense, but I've learned a ton of good stuff, and I really feel like I'm upping my game.

For some reason, my self-portraits always turn out vaguely sinister. I guess I'm just not pleasant-looking when I don't smile.

In addition to classwork, I'm still doing cartoon illos for the school paper, and fortunately for me there are two other artists on staff, so I don't have an assignment twice a week like last semester. More importantly, I'm actually doing a weekly comic strip for said paper!

Currently, the place to read "Roomhates" is on deviantART, although I'm experimenting with a couple of webcomic hosting sites as well. (I'm also thinking that a Tumblr mirror in addition wouldn't be a bad idea, either.) I'd like the strip to have its own site at some point... maybe even work myself to updating more than just once a week. (Like, TWICE a week! GASP.)

Also, I splurged and got a new moleskine sketchbook. Are moleskine sketchbooks necessary? Heck no. But they sure are sexy.

Summer I session with Printmaking Survey was both awesome and exhausting. Five weeks (give or take), and each week entailed (a) learning a brand new printmaking method and (b) creating and executing an image concept.

Methods learned, in order: collagraphy (interesting and fun but not quite to my taste), zinc engraving (very cool; would do this again if I had access to the specialized chemicals, not to mention an intaglio-style press), linocut and woodcut (planning to do some more of this on my own this summer), and finally lithography (glad to learn the process... NEVER WANT TO DO IT AGAIN).

Here, in no special order, are pictures of some of the fruits of my labors... taken with my crappy "camera" (hello, trusty iPod touch). ("Decent digital camera" is pretty high on my wish list, though below "large-bed high-quality scanner" and "graphical tablet".)

First, the zinc plate engraving, for which I did a portrait of a fictional character I'd made up for a long-running Werewolf: the Apocalypse online game. I was actually quite happy with the composition of this, though of course there are things I know I could tweak.

The first proofs, which were just line art, came out pretty nice. Adding aquatinting for shades of grey made the composition even better, though actually applying it was like painting with tar. Took some practice to "get" wiping the plate, and several sheets of tarleton were sacrificed in the process.

 

Block relief printing (linocut and woodcut) was the most accessible, though I learned that it does take some practice to get the inking and printing part right. Lots of proofs with "salty" areas (specks of white, which can be cause by (a) not enough ink, (b) too much ink, or (c) not enough printing pressure).

More animal imagery, as you can see, though in my defense, the linocut project actually called for that. The 12x12 square was the main project plate, while the 6x12 was supposed to be for practice. Hah! "Practice." I fell in love with this stuff very quickly and enjoyed the heck out of making these. Especially the werewolfy guy, since he started out life as a throwaway sketch from my Figure Drawing class sketchbook.

Really tempted to print werewolf guy on a t-shirt.

The woodcut was done on a big ol' piece of MDF (medium density fiberboard). Fiberboard = no woodgrain to fight. Also pretty cheap, though I think the linoleum is more convenient to get in smaller pieces.

Always fun to work large, though printing was kind of a pain (though not a quarter of as much of a pain as with lithography...). I'm quite happy with how the wolf's fur came out, especially. And of course the woodcut look is classic.

Finally, lithography. Oh, lord, lithography.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's an ingenious method of printmaking, and in the days before scanners and photocopiers and such, it was pretty much the only way for an artist to make many copies of what looks like a graphite drawing. I absolutely get the historical significance, and as I said earlier, I'm very happy to have learned the process.

I wish we'd had two weeks for this project instead of one, though; one week for the drawing (which due to the nature of the ball-grained aluminum plate and the litho crayons, required some very careful and methodical drawing) and one week for the printing. I draw fast (it's a blessing and a curse) and pushed myself, and I managed to get prints done shortly after class on Thursday, the only person to get prints done that early. (A few people got some done during the weekend, and everyone else was printing on Monday and Tuesday, the last two days of class.)

This rewarded me with being able to focus on previous projects' printing for the final portfolio. It also gave me all-over body aches for Thursday night and a heck of a broken blister on my left hand, at the base of my thumb. Ow.

Yes, suffering for one's art is physical as well as emotional and mental.

Anyway. Donkeys! Because donkeys are awesome and fun to draw. (I wish I could be more poetic than that, but believe me, by this time I felt creatively wrung-out.)

 

Not shown: my collagraphy prints. No real reason except that while I enjoyed the process and got some interesting abstract pieces, I don't find them especially exciting.

And that's my tale of adventures in Printmaking! Very cool, very enjoyable, very tiring.

Block Relief Print WIP

Just did my first proof of this; it's got some "salty" areas that need better inking (newbie issues), and there are places where I want to cut s'more (like between the wolf's eyes). Otherwise, I'm pretty proud of it; for a first proof, it looks pretty spiff, neh?

Just so y'all know, I'm not the only artist in the family. My husband, Kevin, has an MFA in Film and Television from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and for the past two years he's been adding to that body of knowledge by teaching himself computer graphics -- modelling, rigging, animation, the works. Today, after a month's work, he's graduated from test shots to a full short: "Rendezvous."

Needless to say, I'm incredibly proud of him and of all the hard work he's done.

Couple of images from my current sketchbook. The top's done with a Sharpie pen (not marker), which I highly recommend as a cheap alternative to microns or other technical pens (they're not as pure black, but when you scan something in straight b/w rather than greyscale, there's no difference). The bottom's done with ink washes with a brush.

Some small oil pastel studies I did for practice last semester. One random canid and three spotted hyenas.