Touching base ... with apologies to J.R.R. ...

Just a ditty to keep contact with this blog while there isn't much to talk about. Yeees, the art started its life in Bing, but I promptly cut it up, rearranged it, repainted it, did a lot of things to it. And yes, I would have painted from scratch, if I had the whole day to spend on this (I don't). And yes, I would have rendered it in CG, if I had a spare hundred bucks to spend on the props (I don't). So we'll embrace the concept of compromise: AI + digital painting.  In this instance, AI is saving me a lot of time and money, and it is being used as a tool, with reason. Argh.

Life has been interesting in the last month. I had intended to invest a tonne of time in art and writing ... nope. Not going to happen. I have done a whale of a lot of editing, yes. (I'm working with the well-known Sherlock Holmes novelist, Mike Adamson). And my romance with my new camera continues unabated. I've entered the wonderful world of Canon EOS technology, and it's amazing. Loving it. I've actually written (yes, written. Don't faint) an invitation guest post for the ANALOG blog (because Firegrounds is in the latest issue, which is out about now). But aside from this, Real Life has been biting so hard, so deep, that any creative juices that might have been flowing in June were quite literally turned off at the taps. Okay ... let's start yet again, right? Right. Never say die, and all that.

So, let's see if I can't get the reins back between my hands -- and possibly the bit between my teeth, while we're dabbling in metaphors. 

And now the aforesaid ditty --

With Apologies to J.R.R. ...

I sit beside the fire and knit
And all the sweaters that don't fit --
All the scarves that fall in mud --
Are made right here, although I could
Be off and roaming 'round the Shire!
But I'm afraid that something dire
Will happen if I leave this hill,
So here I am, and I'll be still:
Comfy by my hearth I'll sit...
And dream adventures. While I knit.

Merry Christmas to all, on Christmas Eve, 2023

 

Merry Christmas

to all,

Christmas Eve 2003

From, our house to yours ...

Hoping for a wonderful 2024, and --

Peace on Earth

"...and then I dropped my cup of tea, because something magical happened that hasn’t since I was a child, no older than Tommy is now. The living room faded away. Every light shone brighter, and snow began to fall gently, silently, around the tree. I’d promised him, if he was very quiet and still, and watched, and watched, it could happen — a ruse, to get Tommy to take a nap on Christmas Eve, while mom snatched an hour of rest where she could. He’d fallen asleep — always the plan … and I hadn’t believed in magic in so many years." 

Elves, winter, misty rivers, Science Fiction heroes ... quite a grab bag!

A grab-bag of goodies today -- we're all over the spectrum. To begin: Beauty, for its own sake. Actually, there's an ulterior motive. I have an idea for a story, a huge story, and I can't resist designing the characters for it! I might write this one. (Yes, I do write. I just finished a movie, in fact. No, I haven't sold it it. Yes, I hope to. Duh. No, I'm not in negotiations with a studio. Yes, I'll blog it here, and on my personal blog, if/when it ever happens ... and it's a one a thousand shot, so...!) So right here is one of the characters from my story idea. Yep, an elf. It's a fantasy ... but not what you expect. Neat texture on the shirt ... made it myself, in Serif Page Plus!

Next ... an actual digital painting:

That one is actually quite neat, and it was unplanned. I set this up as a Bryce 7 Pro render, and waited over two hours for the program to give me an estimate of how long it wanted to render it. TWO DAYS. I said, nuts to that, and turned it off! Then I thought, hmm ... and set it to give me a regular preview image, without even any anti-aliasing. That gave me a very rough sketch, which I put into Photoshop and, uh, painted. (Understand, I can not draw to save my life. But I can composit anything you like. I like this a lot -- and it didn't take long, once I shut down Bryce...

I think the length of the renders is getting worse lately, as the desktop gets closer and closer to having to be upgraded before it becomes useless. I'm under 6GB of harddrive space now, and this means it's waaay short on "swap disk space," or thinking space. Can't go very much further without that upgrade, so -- wish me luck at the dentist, on Friday! If he doesn't take all my cash, the computer is next on my agenda.)

And then...

Figuring out the other day that I can load several trees on the same coordinates, duplicating the foliage to make a much more convincing tree -- well all that gave me an idea. How about deleting the foliage this time around, leaving the winter tree? And how about seeing if we can work out how to simulate snow ... without getting into Bryce, which is soooo slow now. Well, this is about the best I can do in DAZ Studio raytrace, but it's actually not too ad at all.

Rummaging around, I stumbled over this, which I did a couple of years ago and never uploaded here, though I believe I did put it on my personal blog:

And lastly for today ... am messing about with rebalancing techniques, Photoshop work which makes "more" of simpler, old images. Hmm. This is interesting, especially since (and I sob as I say this) I've lost a lot of the 2011 project files. They are just ... gone. I can't get them back, so you're stuck with whatever is online at the gallery etc., etc., and shots like this one, below, need to be reworked:

That's Richard Vaurien and Neil Travers from Hellgate, of course ... two of my all-time favorite characters (especially Vaurien). I would love to tell you I have the project file and was able to re-render this, but that file doesn't even seem to exist now. I'd have to recreate this stuff from scratch. I did this shot about seven years ago, and like so many of the old pictures, they were great ideas, but they could be so much better. The only thing I can do right now is rebalance them, take care of occasional artifacts that got through in the render, add Photoshop "post" work to make them more vivid and interesting. The rest of the work will have to wait ... soooo much other, new, stuff to do first! Including this enormous story idea of my own to pursue.

Magic, pen and ink wash, and a segue into monochrome

Working with textures, surfaces, lights and shadow, around a wild variety of props that go together to suggest a story ... and of the whole lot (I call the picture "Dark Magic"), the element that pleases me the most is this:

Every texture you see on the mask is me, replacing the original materials shipped with the model with my own metal textures, and bump maps. That is so realistic, I'm thrilled to bits with the result! Ancient Greek, or a relic from Mycenae, or perhaps even Atlantic (whoo!) ... and then I thought, "Hang on, that's a vignette, fading out to black. We can do this:

The font looks like the letters were hammered out of gold. It's done with 2D bump mapping and 3D lights applied to the lettering (in Serif Page Plus X3). That's cool too!

Then I wanted a change. What I wanted was an ink sketch, but specifically a vignette, So...

Your eye actually convinces you it can see how the inks were laid down over a pen and ink sketch. It works! I knew it would, but there's nothing like running the experiment.

Lastly for today, an exercise in black and white "photography" --

What this needs is more surface detail in the walls (but no bump maps were supplied with the set, and by this time late in the afternoon I was waaay too tired to get stuck in and make them. Might do that tomorrow, if I can be bothered), and a bit of surface detail on the car -- like, road muck, perhaps. Again, I was too tired to do it today. Maybe tomorrow.

If you're interested to see it in color:

The cat and the Christmas tree

It's that time of year. Christmas tree goes up, Zolie decides it's just the greatest thing in the world to play with: ooooh, shiny! Which inspired a poem. But who could stay may with such a little cutie-pie?

Settling down to paint this afternoon. Or at least to doodle in color, in Krita. If something nice comes of it, I'll share later! Meanwhile, my good friend Aricia has been uploading a few of my pieces to Pinterest! This is so cool. She has a glorious collection of "boards" on Pinterest. If you want eye candy, spend five minutes and check this out: https://www.pinterest.com.au/ariciagavriel/ ... I haven't done anything with Pinterest yet, and I must. I'm actually very impressed.

Oh, if anyone is wondering: the graphic above was done in Serif, not Photoshop. Far easier that way. Photoshop will do it for you, but Serif Page Plus makes is faster, simpler. Easier to work on the fly.

Okay -- painting now.

A spot of romance, 400 years ago

Edit: only the DTP project incorporating the Kit Marlow poem survives. Originally, there were four other images in the series, but ... gone. Thank you, Photobucket, or whatever...

These renders made me think of a poem that was written about 425 years ago, so instead of dribbling on about how the pictures were made, I'm just going to let Christopher Marlow say it all, about the spirit of the images. You'll need to click on this to enlarge it, see it 845 pixels wide...

Way to go, Kit. And since Kit Marlow was fairly openly gay, which was very, very daring for the era, I guess no prizes will be awarded for guessing that this poem was written for a young man! Impossible to believe, isn't it, that he only lived to be 30. He was killed in a fight in a tavern ... he was also almost certainly On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in the days after the Spanish Armada. Have you read Mel Keegan's Fortunes of War?! I had the honor to produce the covers for the hardcover, paperback and ebook. Gorgeous book ... Elizabethan pirates. Must read it again...

Jade, 10 September