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." 

Digital painting for the Christmas season, and other goodies

Reepicheep, the Errol Flynn of the mouse world

A 2023 repaint of the 2017 sketch of magnolias, to fix
a number of resolution issues that couldn't be
addressed with the old hardware 

I've been interested, as we run in toward Christmas, to try my hand at designing Christmas cards. Interesting! And along the way, a number of new digital painting techniques have come my way, and I wanted to try them out. The perfect image to go in and play around was Reepicheep ... my take on swashbuckling mouse from the land of Narnia. That was fun -- and the new techniques worked out well. It doesn't matter how long you've been painting, or how many paintings you've done, there's always sooo much more to learn! 

The idea of using AI to create picture elements for compositing and painting, rather than shelling out pots of money for 3D props, is working out, and I have to credit Bing as being the AI to run with at this moment, if your pockets are not deep. Mine aren't, not anymore. My cash flew away and it's proving very difficult indeed to get it back. I can no longer afford the tons of new models and resources to support CG art, so ... here we are.  

There's not much more to report ... but I will say this: my creative juices are starting to flow again, and I have a yen to get back to the story of Trouble, the rescue dragon who needs to go home, across the mountains, when he grows large enough to start making wrecking of the Consulting Mage's house. Enter the delectable Tomas, and Brianna, the mage's human descendants, and a gypsy wagon, the two magickal cats, Shadow and Ginger, and a quest into the west, and a passage through to an enchanted realm where the big dragons live ... all the elements are in place for a lovely story. All I need is the energy to get on and do it!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Yes, I know, this blog is being dreadfully neglected -- to the point where I wonder if it can be salvaged, or if it would be easier to launch another. But no, I haven't given up art, even though I'm writing more and more ... and it's fair to say, the kind of art I'm doing lately is rather different. 

If you'd like to see almost everything I produce, you can see it right here, where I post to the Renderosity Group on Facebook. And if you're curious about what I'm writing, and where it's being published (yes, I'm being published), check out my writing blog, which is loaded with art as well as free reads, and reprints of things that appeared in print some time ago, plus announcements on those (admittedly fairly rare, still) occasions when a story is being published. 

On this troubled New Year's Eve, let me take a moment to wish everyone a safe New Year, and I'll add a personal wish. May 2022 be a garden, tranquil, restful, peaceful, filled with the scent of flowers, the hum of bees, birdsong, and a cat on the lap or a dog at feet, or both. To family and friends everywhere -- be happy, be safe. And as the saying goes, "See you next year."

Happy Holidays ... and Peace on Earth

The "card" says it all ... Happy Holidays, folks. Merry "Whatever You're Celebrating," and Happy 2019 to all!

(If anyone is interested: I found a free stock shot of Stonehenge, at the moment when the sun crosses the horizon on the solstice of winter. Into Photoshop; make the canvas size about 2.5x the width of the original photo. Some creative painting to create a smooth fade-to-dark at the top; two Photoshop brushes: the biggest. brightest Christmas star (a bokeh light) right on the sunrise, and snow falling softly. Then, into Serif for typographic art: the font is Glastonbury Wide, in gold color, with 3D emboss and effects set, 3D lights on ... and I adjusted the lights to illuminate the golden message with the sunrise.)

Light as art ... Christmas lights, that is!

As promised, I've put together the best of the Christmas lights pictures, and posted to the other blog ... amazing. Light as an art form. It helps that it was a beautiful, warm summer's night with a crescent moon in the sky. Golly, it must be the holidays! I'll just give the link here. If you've an interest, click over and see the whole set of pictures. Art coming soon.

Swashbuckler!

Perhaps I need to get my brain examined ... here's another one I painted over a year ago and never uploaded. Forgot. I call this one Swashbuckler, for obvious reasons! He was designed and posed in DAZ (that's one of my faces, too), then reduced to a sketch and worked up as a Photoshop painting, against a lovely, moody background of stormy skies.

Swashbuckler is one of a series of paintings I did in 2017. At left is another. I was working at the time to perfect a technique of starting with a DAZ render and ending with something unique to me specifically. I was delighted with this way of working ... I just set it aside when ill health, and my mother's death, got the better of me. Right now, I'm trying to get back into the swing of painting every day, running the software, flexing the imagination.

What's next? I have no idea. I work on pure inspiration from day to day. Something suggests itself, and we just go again and see what we can do. The paintings in this post are Photoshop paintings. At this moment I'm trying to master the suite of tools, and the interface, in Krita. Getting there, but it's a slow process. With any luck I'll be able to produce something really good before too much longer.

One thing I must wrap my head around is the new suite of brushes available in Krita, which is a PAINTING program, not a photo retouch and manip program, like Photoshop. I just stumbled over the set of basic watercolor brushes installed in Krita. Oooooh. [Goes round eyed and stares] Gonna play tomorrow!

For now, let me post this and run away to get some dinner. Too hot to paint today. But last night Dave took me out to see the Christmas lights, and I got some great photos, which I'll be uploading to one of my other blogs. I'll link to it when I've done it. They're amazing this year. 😲 Amazing.

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.

Merry Christmas to all ... see you after the holidays!

Merry Christmas to all ... it's Christmas Eve on this side of the dateline, and we're actually celebrating the date already, so --

Have a wonderful time, guys, and I'll be back after the holidays!

Jade, 24 December (which speaks for itself!)