A New Blog

I am sure that many of you have stopped looking at updates from me, however I noticed there are a few people who have gone to this site lately, so I might as well inform you that the blog below (as well as the one you are reading) is no longer active. I moved on after not being able to keep up with it for some time. I am proud to announce that I have a new daily blog! I promise that I will not be changing this any time soon. The website is daniduckart.blogspot.ca.

I do not have a new sketch for every day of week, but I am trying to do a new sketch twice a week. I have other things I do on this blog. Poetry (though quality may be questionable), art techniques, artist/illustrator reviews, and pages from my Wreck this Journal are things I am doing doing to round out my week. Also I'm going to have a weekly paper dolls. I'll have a couple of dolls and I'll do clothing weekly for them, might even do more dolls later. Please join me if you have the time!

The Next Step

I have mentioned before that I would be starting a new blog sometime in the future. Today the future is now! My new blog can be found at: http://artistobscure.blogspot.com/

Thank you for following this blog! I hope you will follow my new blog as well.

Last Post of the Year

I am terribly sorry that I've not been able to post. Just getting ready for this baby has kept me busy the last few months. I was officially due yesterday, but the baby decided he has to stay in there for a little longer.

I have decided not to continue this blog in the new year. I do plan to start a new blog in a couple of months (after all the initial baby care). I decided that this blog wont be so much of a sketch blog as it will be about art and my life as an artist. I will be sure to post a link once I'm sure I have the time to blog.

I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas, and will have a wonderful New Year!

Sonogram Pictures

For those of you who are interested here are my most recent sonograms:

Day Unknown: In Remembrance of a Dear Friend

It's been something like years since I've posted anything. I was hoping to have awesome drawings and wonderful stories to tell. If I wait for that to happen I'll never post again. Instead of waiting I'll ramble about what's been going on with me lately.

With my old computer I'd been working on Photoshop 5.5 (Yes I know, ancient stuff!). I was happy to receive Photoshop 7 from a friend. Unfortunately I didn't remember how evil Photoshop 7 was (colour blending is a pain) so I've reverted back to 5.5. Since I can't get my Photoshop to install on this computer I got out the duct tape and hammers and eventually rigged up something to work. Most people would have given up and bought a new version of Photoshop by now, but I'm too smart to spend so much money on one program (that and I'm too poor).

I'm now at 24 weeks and have gained 5 pounds. I haven't found out the gender of the baby yet. At 19 weeks we went in to check it out but the baby was being modest (the one time you don't want you kid to be modest!). The appointment was scheduled, then re-scheduled because the technician was sick. Friday I went in and the technician said she knew for sure what gender the baby was, but couldn't tell because of policy. Bah them. So I'll know at the end of the week.

I'm moving (again). I think this place will be a more permanent move. It's a nice big basement suite in Surrey. Really close to where Peter works. He'll be living the male dream of living 5 minutes from work. There is a Washer/Dryer room in suite, 2 bedrooms, and a nice big living area (one thing the other places didn't have). We have almost everything we have here, well except for one. I was so devastated about this I wrote a poem:

In Remembrance of a Dishwasher

Oh how I shall miss the way
you did the dishes every day.

I know, the level of my poetic skills is just amazing. I'm available for well-paid live readings, parties and Bar Mitzvahs. 

Day 189: Colouring a Baby

It's been forever since I last posted, and I'm sure a few of you thought I was never going to post again. Even I was wondering if I was going to post again. Though I'm not doing any daily sketches I would still like to share the more detailed drawings I'm working on for my portfolio.

I'm sure many of you remember this one. I did the inks for it already, but I never got around to colouring it. Recently I re-did the inking on this because the resolution was smaller than what I like to use for finished illustrations (I like to keep them at a minimum of 600 dpi for print). This is what the drawing looked like before:

Here it is flat coloured:

Not finished but with more detail:

 I'm still a ways from finishing this as you can see, but I'm hoping to finish it over the next few days. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the background right now. It's maybe a bit too bright, but more than that it's too flat. The only thing that I can think of right now is clouds, but I don't really like that idea. I'll keep working on it and see what I can come up with. If you come up with any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

Day 179: The End of the Daily Sketch

Sadly, I will no longer be doing a daily sketch. I knew this was something that could happen just because of the pregnancy. Now I have a lot of personal, financial and medical things that I'm dealing with and no longer have the time or energy to work on my portfolio and do daily sketches. My choices basically are to continue doing mediocre daily sketches, or buckle down and work on getting my portfolio finished. As nice as it would be to have 365 images I'd rather have my portfolio done. This is not an ending to my blog, but the post will be further apart from now on. My plan is to post at least twice a week with updates and the like. I apologize that I couldn't finish in the way I wanted, but I do hope there are good things yet to come.

Day 173: Under the Sea

Right now I'm working on figuring out what exactly I'm going to do for my illustration portfolio. I have many old images, some the start of illustrations, others simply nice drawings or ideas of what I want to draw. I still have quite a ways to go to finish setting things up. I must have a thousand sketches to go through. It's not the looking that's the problem, it's the determining if they have potential. After that I have to figure out where they will fit in my illustrations (if at all). 

My other main goal, at this point, is to do as much research as I possibly can for my upcoming illustrations. I have to go through my old illustrations to see if there is anything I need, plus I will be going through hundreds of photos determining if I can use the information of said photos in my work. I know for a fact that I don't have everything I need which will require me to take more photos, and do research on the internet and in books to get photos I can work from. As many of you know it's illegal to copy copyrighted material exactly as seen. Instead I use several references to create one part of an illustration (which can be very tedious). I'm hoping I can take most of the photos, but for underwater scenes I'll be mostly using references and memory. 

I feel like I might be coming across as someone who's complaining, or someone who is overstating what's there. For me it's easier to plot out what I'm going to do in words, and then make it reality. For those of you who are bored by little rant: Look at the pretty fishy!

Day 172: For Marking Cellophane

China markers are fun. I found a green one on my desk and wanted to play with it. It is marked: FOR MARKING CELLOPHANE, but what fun is that? Plus, I don't have any cellophane, so I used the almighty paper instead.

Day 170: Patty and Willie

These two characters are staring in one of the books I'm writing. The one on the left is currently named Patty and the one on the right is named Willie. When I first started writing the book they were Patty Puppy and Will E. Wolf. This made the story seem a little too cutesy and a bit trite. Their surnames have been removed, and it's possible their names could be changed at this point. I've decided against them wearing shoes, but this too could change.  I think the final Willie will have a slightly smaller head, but still be fairly tall. I'm also thinking that I should add a little more weight to Patty.

I'm sorry about the quality of these scans. Normally for character creation of this nature I would use a light box and plain paper. My light box is in a box in storage and may not be opened until the end of time. As a substitute I used tracing paper.

I'm not so sure how long I'm going to be out of the house tomorrow. My husband and I are going out with a friend and her son to the park. We might be out the whole day or, because I'm pregnant and tire easily, we might only be out a few hours.

Day 168: Character Sketches

Sorry I haven't posted in the last few days. I'm even more sorry that I don't have a lot to post. I did have some drawings that I wanted to show here, but they have up and wondered off (or were imagined in my head). In any case I'll be doing some more drawings of these characters in the near future.

Day 165: A Sister Person

Since I did my parents the next obvious step was to draw my siblings. I'm starting with my sister. These drawings aren't really detailed right now, but I might try some new ones later that are more detailed.

Day 164: My Parents

I had a few photos of my parents and I thought they'd be good subjects for my drawings for today and yesterday. If you can't tell who is who then I will really rethink my whole life up until this point heh heh. The drawing of my father is from my wedding a few years ago. The one of my mother is from May of 1979, when I wasn't even a year old yet. I couldn't find a good photo of my mother from this decade. The way it was the photo I was working from was pretty fuzzy. 

Day 162: A Strawberry Without a Field

I had a little more time today then I usually do for drawing so I decided to put it to good use and make a pretty strawberry. One of my illustrations in the near future will have a strawberry bush, so I need all the practice I can get. Looking at this one makes me hungry. Note to self: stop drawing food late at night.

Day 161: A Girl

I spent most of my day cleaning. Laundry is done now, and I have a start on this week long cleaning project. It's always a chore to pack up your life and move it somewhere else. I didn't get as far on this drawing as I would have liked. I was going to do a full-body drawing, but I only got so far on it before I was too tired to draw anymore. Hopefully tomorrow's drawing will be more finished.

Day 160: I Think I Lost Count

I finally broke down and bought a scanner today. I spent way too much on it, and I'm not happy about that, but it's better then having a scanner that doesn't work with my computer. I could have always hooked the scanner to the other computer, scanned the images, emailed or burn the images onto a disk and then retrieve the data on this computer.  I think I'd rather not deal with a scanner at all in that case.

Yesterday I had completely forgotten to post. I guess it's better that I waited for the scanner. It was hot, icky, and I was very tired.

I don't know why I thought up this little guy. I often see babies wearing ducky outfits. I thought it would be cute if a ducky wore a baby outfit (though it's not as cute as the former).

Day 158: A Rose

Today I did a stylistic drawing of a rose. I was going to go pick up my scanner today, but it was too hot and I took a nap instead. Someday I shall have a scanner!

Day 157: Oh, So Very Tired

I spent a little too much time goofing off, and not enough time drawing today. Went to the mall, saw "The Last Air Bender". I liked it, but I can see how people wouldn't like it. It was nice and cool at the mall. (Summer has finally come to Vancouver and it's not a pretty thing.) I got the fan put together and now it's time for me to sleep with a little help from the Sandman. 

Day 156: My Bunny and Me

Today I went with my Mother-in-Law to buy some Maternity clothing. I didn't get much, just a few tops, a pair of jeans (they had no shorts that fit) and a band to make my old clothes fit. It was really nice, but seeing the prices for some of those baby things is scary. I'm going to be doing cloth diapers after the first month, and those are over $23.00 (can.) a pop (and that's not including the outer waterproof part which in some cases is sold separately. The down or bamboo baby wrap they recommend are well over $135 a pop (of course they recommend at least 2). I'm not too worried though. My Mother-in-Law is a fantastic quilter, and it just so happens she can make a lot of those things for a fraction of the price. My Mother in Ohio is also a fantastic sewer and will be making me all kinds of cute baby clothing. Yay for Moms! At least now I'll be able to spend my money on other baby things.

I was pretty out of it all day yesterday (or the 6th if you will) so I made sure to do two drawings for the price of one! The first is a toy that I had when I was a baby (or at least the picture tells me it was mine). and the second is me as a baby. Both are a little off from my original sketches. The grain of the paper makes it harder to get a smooth drawing. I'm hoping tomorrow is the big day for a new scanner. Cross your fingers for me!

Day 155: An Owl

Today was a terrible breathing day for me. My chest seemed to ache all day. I spent most of the day sleeping. So much for getting much of anything done. Darn you lungs, you always destroy all my plans!
My drawing for today is an owl in a tree. I wonder if owls ever have trouble breathing.