Daily Drawings from April 2015

Here is the rogues' gallery of drawings from April:

12 April 2015

13 April 2015

14 April 2015

15 April 2015

17 April 2015

16 April 2015

Daily Photographs April 2015

Here is the photograph collection from April's Daily Photograph series:

13 April 2015

14 April 2015

15 April 2015

16 April 2015

24 April 2015

17 April 2015

25 April 2015

26 April 2015

Covers Created in April 2015

Okay, so one upgrade and some new covers completed this month, as follows:

Daily Photograph, April 26, 2015 - Pineapple Sage

Today's photograph - the pineapple sage was in flower:

Pineapple sage blossom, Canberra, Australia - 26 April 2015

Daily Photograph, April 25, 2015 - Morning Sentinels

It's ANZAC Day, and these trees reminded me of soldiers standing guard - and of the Dawn Service. Lest we forget.

Daily Drawing, April 25, 2015 - Swordsman, Attempt 1, Day 1

I guess this is why I set myself the task of drawing every day. I almost regret neglecting my drawing to focus on my writing, but I guess it's just going to take time...

Anyway, my first attempt at something human in a while, and my first attempt at a swordsman. Boy, have I a-ways to go.

Daily Photograph, April 24, 2015 - Spider in the Shower Bay

So, it's cold and wet and the spiders sometimes come inside for somewhere warm and dry, but the shower bay? What is that?

Possibly a wolf spider - not deadly or agressive

So you have an idea of size.

Daily Drawing, April 17, 2015 - Doodling, Day 2

More Doodling - still feeling like my head is full of cotton wool.

Daily Photograph, April 17, 2015 - Dinner

Tonight, I played with photographing food. I'll put the recipe up on the writer's blog. Here's a shot of what we had.

Creamy pumpkin, chicken and pine-nut pasta

Daily Drawing, April 16, 2015 - Aimless Doodling

I was uninspired, tired and short of time, but I picked up a pen, anyway...

Daily Photograph, April 16, 2015 - Australian orb weaver

Today's photograph - this little lady was weaving her web in the evening light. She was around four centimeters long, but that's just a guess. I didn't get closer than three metres.

Daily Drawing, April 15, 2015 - Dinosaur Nomingia, Day 4

Last night's effort:

Dinosaur Nomingia - Day 4, April 15, 2015

Daily Photograph, April 15, 2015 - Art I Admire from a Long-Dead Card Game

I have this poster hanging on my wall. I don't even know who the artist was, but I enjoyed the game, loved the world and its story-telling potential, and of all the things I could photograph inside, it was the thing that drew me.

So, thank you, Unknown Artist, for this piece of work - and may you have had many more successes beyond it.

Unknown Artist - partial image from promotional poster

Daily Photograph, April 14, 2015 - Crimson Rosella (aka Crimson Lorikeet)

And here is a photograph from yesterday, taken during a sunny patch:

Daily Drawing, April 14, 2015 - Dinosaur Nomingia, Day 3

And here is the sketching from last night.

Cover Creation - Designing Ducky

I've had the design for Ducky in my head for a couple of months, but no time to execute it... and we all know what happens during execution, right? Yeah... so here's what I did to put the Ducky cover together:

First, I selected a background picture from Dreamstime.com - a devastated city.You can check it out below.

© Photographer: Asiavasmuncky | Agency: Dreamstime.com

After that, I went out to find a picture of a duck - literally. I took my camera out to the local pond.

...and ended up settling on the first picture.

Next,  I took both pictures and clipped them down to book cover size - I use 1875px wide and 2875px tall.

For the duck, this first entailed enlarging the height of the picture,

followed by trimming the width, 

and turning it blue using the TOOLS--COLOR TOOLS--HUE SATURATION selection in GIMP.

I decided that it was too light, so set about darkening it using the TOOLS--COLOR TOOLS--BRIGHTNESS-CONTRAST TOOL selection in GIMP.

4. Once I was happy with the duck and the ruined city trims, I opened a new picture in GIMP, sized it at 1875x2875 and set it at 600dpi. I then used the bucket tool to colour the base layer black.
5. After colouring the base layer, I imported the city trim and then the duck trim as separate layers. I kept the duck layer on top, but reduced the opacity to 64.3 in the Layers dialogue box.

At this point, I thought the picture was too light, so I darkened the city layer - and then I added the title and author name.

There was still too much empty space between the duck and the title, so I added a short sub-title.

And then, of course, I had second thoughts and tried the cover without the colouring:

And, now, I'm not sure which one to choose...

Until I realised that the duck in the last two pictures was positioned differently, so I moved it...

This time, I think I *do* like the blue one better... maybe.

Daily Drawing, April 13, 2015 - Dinosaur Nomingia, Day 2

So, the learning process continues. Here is what I added to my dinosaur sketch last night.

Daily Drawing - April 13, 2015 - Dinosaur Nomingia

Cover Complete - Ducky, C.M. Simpson

Yesterday, I completed a cover for C.M. Simpson's short story, Ducky. Here it is:

Daily Photograph, April 13, 2015 - Red Wattlebird

And today's photograph is...

Daily Drawing, April 12, 2015: Dinosaur - Nomingia, Day 1

Day 1 of drawing practice, and I turned to dinosaurs. I liked the colours of this one, so I changed its position and thought I'd experiment with a medium I've never used before - coloured pen (fineliners as opposed to black and blue Bic ballpoints). The base sketch was done using HB. Colour was added using Stabilo 18-point 88 Mini fineliners. Here's where I'm at:

Boy, do I have a long way to go...

Taking Stock, April 2015 - Progress and Reassessment

So, in January this year, I stopped and took stock. I was hopeful of moving my art forward, but that doesn't seem to have happened, so I stopped and took another look

Where I was:

• Refamiliarise with materials: using the book Everyone can Draw. That hasn't happened. Once university started pretty much everything stopped.
• Dragons: apart from the Anna and the Rock Dragon cover, I haven't touched a dragon picture since I wrote this piece.
• Beetles: also no progress.
• Spiders: also no progress... unless you count all the photographs I've taken since then.
• Problem Areas: I figured out I needed to work on a lot of things: perspective, colour, plant shape and form, lizard anatomy, weapons and proportion. I was going to start small and work bigger. Hasn't happened yet...
• Sunday Walk Feature: supposed to happen every Sunday; hasn't been happening.

So, not a lot of progress. I'll try again.

Where I'm going:

Lately, I've been studying an awful lot - anywhere from 6-12 hours in a day. That's not going to change much. I've also not been taking as many photos as usual. That will have to change. And I haven't done any sketching or picture-making. That will definitely have to change. Here's what I'll try this time:

• Do some drawing every day: Sounds simple. I figure the time for this is usually just before I go to bed. To keep myself on track, I'll post what I've drawn the day after. I'm thinking of a dinosaur and fighter focus.
• Photograph something every day: Again, easier than it sounds. I might have to incorporate this on my morning walk.
• Sunday Walk Feature: I'm not quite up to this, at the moment. I'll post walks as I manage them.

Action Sequence for Fantasy Art - Ancient Arts Fellowship Training on April 11, 2015

Here are a couple of short sequences I took of the Canberra Ancient Arts Fellowship fighters doing skirmish training on Saturday, April 11, 2015: