Daily Photograph - July6, 2015: Collared Sparrowhawk

An uncommon bird, this delightful chap came to visit our backyard. It's a collared sparrowhawk, and the magpies were not pleased!

Daily Drawing - July 6, 2015: Improbable Creature #7

I ran out of time today, so this rapid sketch is all I managed. What did it teach me? Well, I really need to go and study how wings work.

Daily Photographs - June 2015

Well, they happened - again, not every day... and my camera decided to not record the exact date, so I'm going to have to guess the order, but there was a nice variety of things to photograph.

Daily Photograph - July 5, 2015: Galah on a Wet Morning

Today, there was mist right up to nine a.m. The galahs were foraging in my back yard, but this is the only one who stayed when I came out to take pictures. He did not like having his breakfast disturbed.

Daily Drawing - July 5, 2015: Improbable Creatures #6

Today's creature is... hairy.

Daily Drawings - June 2015

Well, it didn't end up being daily - my life went through a bit of an upheaval and the art was one of the first things I had to sideline. The first three sketches were very disheartening and I was convinced I very much sucked.

June 7, 2015

June 7, 2015

June 7, 2015

And then I did this one in pencil, using a book cover as a guide. It was not a bad start.

 

And then I wound out the month with this:

And I was fairly happy.

Now I only have to keep it up.

Daily Photograph- July 4, 2015: Silvereye at Dusk

Here is today's photograph - yes, another bird, and a hard one to catch a clear photograph of. This is a silvereye feeding on berries, taken at the end of the day.

Daily Drawing - July 4, 2015: Improbable Creature #5

Late, today, but here it is. I know... you nearly got a dog, and then I remembered it had to be improbable. Enjoy.

Why Draw Flowers if You’re into Fantasy and Science Fiction?

Because the devil is in the details. No, seriously—learn to draw flowers, and trees, bushes, leaves, and grass. Learn how to get them to look right, and then make up a few of your own. Such things are in the details of book covers, internal illustrations, paintings and playing cards. You need to master them if your artwork is to be complete. This might seem obvious for pictures of outdoor scenes, but offices and lobbies tend to have pot plants, gardens grow outside urban windows, and vases of flowers can be found in hospitals, at grave sites, and on dining-room tables. Think mausoleums and funeral parlours for your zombie or vampire illustrations, that alien funeral. Draw upon plants to lend your futuristic office scene some life—regardless of whether its elves and trolls, or cyborgs and hackers who flesh out your corporate world. Think on hydroponic gardens seen through moon domes, or situated in the heart of your inter-galactic starship. Plant-life of some kind only makes your work more real.

This science fiction cover illustrates something of what I mean.

'Partnership' (Orbit Books, 1994) - no artist credited

Flower detail from 'Partnership' (Orbit Books 1994)

Another of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors.

Daily Photograph - July 3, 2015: Currawong on Alert

It was a toss up between a cute picture of a cockatoo fitting itself into a bird feeder designed for rosellas, or this currawong. The currawong won out, because I couldn't resist its brilliant yellow eyes.

Daily Drawing - July 3, 2015: Improbable Creatures #4

Woke up with this idea, but found it harder to execute than expected. Now I must add 'practice drawing plants' to my list of things to do. I'll add this to the pile of stuff I need to work on. I didn't quite pull it off this time.

Cover Creation: Designing Orb Wielder

For Orb Wielder, I wanted a picture of the orb and the girl. I knew I wouldn't get exactly what I wanted, and I would have to be prepared to play with the image, so I began my search, and I found this work by Boris Stromar at Dreamstime:

© Photographer: Astrobobo | Agency: Dreamstime.com

I didn't really want a gypsy-style cover; My ideal would have been a girl holding the orb in front of her, but I couldn't find anything even close to this. I also wanted a slightly older Liralee, so the first step had to be to snip away the gypsy elements. This also helped make the age more indeterminate.

I used GIMP to change the picture dimensions to 1875x3110, even though that was a little taller than the end goal of 1875x2850. It left room to manipulate the picture.


The second step was to try to get some of the colours described to the orb in the picture... or to remove the colour entirely from the picture. So, I saved the snip and resize and tried a number of tweaks using GIMP's excellent Colour Tools.

 

Tweak 1:

Click Colors

Click Hue Saturation.

Reduce the saturation levels only

Tweak 2: 

Click Colors

Click Colorise

Adjust Hue to 174

Adjust Saturation to 26

Adjust Lightness to -23

Tweak 3:

Click Colors

Click Adjust brightness and contrast

Adjust Brightness to -50

Adjust Contrast to 18

Tweak 4:

Click Filters

Click Artistic

Click Clothify

 Tweak 5:

Click Colors

Click Color Balance

Adjust the Cyan-Red slide to 56

Adjust the Magenta-Green slide to 55

Adjust the Yellow-Blue slide to 15

Once I was kinda happy with the image, I went into GIMP and chose File>New to start my new image. I selected a width of 1875 and a height of 2850, and then clicked on Advanced Options. In Advanced Options, I adjusted both the X and Y resolutions to 300 and then clicked OK.

At first, I thought I was finished, so I added in the title, using Segoe Print Bold at 290, and the byline, using Bell MT Bold at 260.  The result wasn't bad...

...but it wasn't what I wanted.

 You see, the orb is supposed to be this magical glowing ball of multi-coloured light - which the orb on this cover clearly is not. So I added colour to the orb as follows:

Adding Colour to the Orb:

Go to Toolbox

Click on Free Select Tool

Outline the orb

Go to Filters

Click on Render

Click on Clouds

Click on Plasma

This was nice, but I thought I'd see what it would look like if I tried out a few other options.

 The No-Colour Option

 Select the entire cover

Go to Tools

Click on Color Tools

Click on Desaturate

I wasn't too keen on the no-colour option; it undid all that experimenting I'd tried before adding in the title and byline. I tried again.

The Multiple-Orb Option

Go to Filters

Click on Map

Click on Make Seamless

The Greyed-Out Cover Option

Go to Filters

Click on Distorts

Click on Emboss

The Swirling Orb Option

Go to Filters

Click on Map

Click on Illusion

While I was doing all this, one thing kept bothering me, and that was that the edge of the orb looked rough and obviously cut out. As I was getting ready to resign myself to it, I realised that the Toolbox had an Ellipse Select Tool, which would create lovely round shapes with smooth edges. Well, duh. I reworked the  orb's edges using the tool and voila, a nice round orb. 

This is the cover I went with in the end. 

And the story? Well, Carlie tells me it's not the newest idea under the sun, but she enjoyed writing it, and she hopes the younger audience will enjoy reading it.

When Liralee buys an orb from the Shawl Lady’s stall, she opens a path to another world, for the orb is not just a pretty glass ball that impresses her friends; it’s a symbol of power that produces magic for enchantments. And it’s wanted by two warring kingdoms and a sorcerer with plans of conquest. When strangers try to take the orb, and her friends gather to aid her, Liralee begins an adventure that could end in disaster or victory. The choice is hers.

Daily Photograph - July 2, 2015: Young Scarlet Rosella at Dawn

This morning I had quite a selection of birds, but this is my favourite photograph of the morning.

Daily Drawings - July 2, 015: Improbable Creatures #3

Today's improbable creature is a reptiloid with some inspiration drawn from the beaver, and some from the cat, and maybe a little from those dinosaurs with the colourful tails.

Daily Photographs for May 2015

So, while I can't find any sketching done in May, I didn't forget to take photographs, although I have to admit I didn't get to it every day, and I definitely didn't post them every day. Here is a daily sample of what I managed to get done.

Daily Photograph - July 1, 2015: Cold Crimson Rosellas

It was officially 0.2 degrees Celsius when I took these shots at 9:45 this morning. These little guys and gals have been coming to the garden for a few weeks now, and they've finally settled down enough to let me within 10 metres. Today, they looked more than a little cold.

Daily Drawing - July 01, 2015: Improbable Creatures #2

Here is today's sketch, and this time I actually intended to draw a mousething with wings. I also learned that I really need to practice drawing humans... oh, well.

Covers Created in May 2015

Just the one.

When Liralee buys an orb from the Shawl Lady’s stall, she opens a path to another world, for the orb is not just a pretty glass ball that impresses her friends; it’s a symbol of power that produces magic for enchantments. And it’s wanted by two warring kingdoms and a sorcerer with plans of conquest. When strangers try to take the orb, and her friends gather to aid her, Liralee begins an adventure that could end in disaster or victory. The choice is hers.