Digitally Created Artwork

There's a lot of buzz lately about artiss creating work digitally...as in some companies now have that as a requirement. Here are some examples that I created digitally 100%. But what I'm confused about is why. What's the difference between doing a painting and scanning it, and creating it 100% in Photoshop. I'd flatten the layers anyway. Do they want the "digital" look? Do they think they have better control over color spaces? I don't actually render the same digital vs. traditional. It's not fun to try to make a digital painting look like a watercolor.




Below is an image I painted traditonally and then scanned in and modified in Photoshop with layers and filters. . Is it digital? Why or why not?

Great article!

So well said!

Summer reading

Right now I'm reading DICEY'S SONG by Cynthia Voight

Recently read books: (in no particular order)
BABY by Patricia MacLachlan
THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY by Susan Patron
WE ARE THE SHIP by Kadir Nelson
KIRA KIRA by Cynthia Kadotada
GATHERING BLUE by Lois Lawry
ARCHER'S QUEST by Linda Sue Park
TANEESHA NEVER DISPARAGING by M. LaVora Perry
CRISPIN: The Cross of Lead by Avi
CRISPIN: At the Edge of the World by Avi
SHILOH by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
HOLES by Louis Sachar
RULES by Cynthia Lord


Basically, I go to the library planning on reading Newbery books, and I just sort of browse, and pick up other books that look interesting, or are by an author I know.

It SEEMS that if a book got a Newbery medal, it means somebody dies or something really tragic happens.

Here is an interesting article about this topic.

When people say that they want to "stretch a child's mind", I think they mean more emotionally and socially - not necessarily intellectually. I recall being an excellent reader at an early age - reading at levels a lot higher than my age group. I think I was reading at a college level when I was in middle school. But I didn't want to "stretch" in the emotional/social way. Intellectually, sure. Not a problem. But I could not deal with books about death (my younger sister died when I was a child) or poverty (I had already experienced being poor and it wasn't something I wanted to read about for fun) and politics weren't interesting (a lot of adults don't think they are interesting, either). Or about being black. I wasn't 100% comfortable with my race, and I didn't enjoy exploring things that made me uncomfortable.

For me, books were a way to escape what I couldn't. Children are largely powerless (can't control where they live or their financial status) so reading about faraway worlds, magical creatures, other planets, or other time periods were the most fun for me, and stayed that way well into my adulthood.

So now that I'm "grown up", I'm having fun reading these middle grade and young adult books. I love how refreshing they are. How clean the writing is. No unnecessary details going on about "how she tossed raven-black curls over her shoulders".

I can't wait to read the next book...and the next...and the next. Will I someday read "adult" level books? Perhaps. But not today.

Blue Rose Girls: so, where do I go from here?

Blue Rose Girls: so, where do I go from here?

Doing your best

What is your best?

Doing your best has more to do with getting your mind, body and spirit on the same page at once.
Performers and sports players know how hard this can be. Artists, too. It might seem, on the surface, that if you're a writer or artist, you can go back and re-do, rework, repaint. With deadlines, there's a limit. Or like a student taking a test. An answer that keeps eluding you – then you know it suddenly, hours after the exam.

So when I show my work, is it the best I can do? Yes and no. It WAS the best, at that time. Sometimes I overwork or overthink the art, and the art I did in a different state of mind is actually "better". That's why a lot of art artists do for themselves (as opposed to contract work ) is "better". No one to say what the subject should be. How the character is feeling, what he is doing.

impatiens

Ink and Photoshop Mice Characters

Awhile back, I did these illustrations for a local cable company. They were done in ink, and colored in Photoshop.

8-1-09

The flowers are beginning to really fade now. If I deadhead them, I could get more blooms.