Who here's a visual artist?

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Art is so much fun! I'm up for anything. I really like using chalk pastels and sketching particularly, because you can smudge it around and its fun

I'm gonna try oil paints on canvases this winter; maybe it will be portfolio-worthy, who knows!

Nice sketch, Asparval!

I'm also into artwork; pencil, pastel, ink, watercolour, oils, and some sculpting.

I've done some work in illustration, graphic design (Corel-Draw), as a courtroom artist a few times and used to design all my Halloween costumes. I also aspired to be a political (or should I say poly-tick'al ) cartoonist but this is not a line of work that many could make a living with. I just wish I had more time to pursue it as a hobby.

It is one thing to have the talent but what really makes it is how good a salesperson you are and that explains why so many seemingly mediocre artists succeed so well in spite of their talents.

I'm not pursuing a full-time career at this time but when I do sell a piece -well, it's beer money

I've found I have zero talent for watercolor.

I like working with just about everything when making 2-D art-pencils, charcoals, soft pastels, oil pastels, oils, acrylics, ink (well, just the kind from pens really ), watercolors, and mixed media, which includes all the previously mentioned media and anything I can get my hands on that can create just the right texture. I don't consider myself all that great because I haven't really taken the time to actually learn the proper techniques (except with oils and sort of with watercolors) I just sort of improvise. I learned the hard way that acrylics aren't good for shading unless you're painting rather fast because it's a fast drying paint I like taking pictures as well. I'm no good at ceramics, but I'd like to try my hand at 3-D art with other types of media. My favorite thing to work with is soft pastels. I often feel a real connection to what I'm making when I use them, because I'm creating it directly with my hands.

I get ideas from music too I often visualize everything from vivid scenes to colors to single images when I listen to music, and sometimes they make good drawings or paintings. Once I got an idea from a dream that I had.

Oh by the way, that's a great sketch, Asparval I enjoy drawing people as well.

LOL. Actually, I suspect you'd been good at watercolor, if you already can draw well. It's just watercolor has its own quirks. There's techniques you have to learn and can't fudge around. Namely you need to learn washes. And it's not that hard - it just requires practice. Learning washes teaching you the most imprtant thing: controlling the amount of paint that's on the paper. If you get the hang of washes you bacisally have the feel of how watercolors physcially work, and from there you can do whatever you want with them. Besides, aside from washes, most of watercolor is essentially like sketching, just with paint and not pencil or pen.

The only other thing you have to know is color and blending, which is pretty universal to any paint or colored drawing. But you can used a monochromatic or limited palette with watercolor and do some really cool stuff. In fact, the best watercolor uses a limited palette anyhow.

The biggest pain about watercolor for me is the support. Good watercolor paper is ridiculously expensive, and loose paper will buckle no matter what. So I just use paper that's mounted to a board already or watercolor paper "blocks" and remove teh paper after the painting dries. This limits what I can do with them, but one thing I've been playing is Golden's Gesso for watercolor, to use on other, non-paper supports like canvas - this seems to have great potential.

This is different style of casting I am working on. More contemporary than the previous artwork posted.
These are just prototype test, what I am learning from them is allowing me to build custom
equipment and develop new techniques. My studio is looking more like a mad science lab.

See, that's my problem. With any wet medium which involves a brush, I have this unbearable inclination to layer... and layer and layer and layer. Which is why just about the only wet media where I don't overdo it are acrylic and oil paint.

With water color, I would definitely need some heavy training because so often I want to use it like oil or acrylic, which obviously doesn't work. Plus, I enjoy looking at some watercolor, but it just doesn't tickle my fancy. For some reason, it doesn't feel visually dramatic. Even India Ink is quite similar and I still try to layer that. Of course, the paper just bends instead of getting darker (I love very black blacks ).

Nice casting btw, GlassFish. How exactly does one go about making a glass casting?

PS- Do you like fish?

LOL. When I read that I had this vision of an autistic person just moving a brush back and forth over the same spot on the canvas as a form of stimming. I can dig it. There's a tactile/sensory angle to doing art that appeals to me. I want to paint on myself because I like the way it feels. Terrible waste of paint, plus some of these paints have toxic ingredients.

Actually, though I don't liek to layer much. I'm pretty anal about that. it's one of the reasons watercolor appeals to me.



You should see the stuff Max Ernst and Paul Klee did with watercolor. Dramatic would be only one fitting description. It was actually Klee that inspired me to do watercolor.

BTW, I'm trying to get some pics of my stuff. My brother has my digital camera - he's had it for six months now. He just went out of town to go see frreinds and took it with him without asking me (typical of him). Glassfish suggesting taking a regular rool of film and having them put the pics on a CD, which is a great idea, but I don't have a regular camera and I'm very broke, cos y job didn't send my last paycheck (and I can't find ut what happened until Wendesday). I couldn't even afford a disposeable camera right now.

Anyhow I will, eventually, post some pics.

Looks like you got a pic up.

Hopefully, you'll get your camera back one day soon and we can see lots more of your work.

I draw using pencils and pens and recently started painting with water colors. I write alot and so most of the ideas for my drawings and paintings come from those characters or landscapes. I'm pretty anal about my stuff. I usually don't let anyone see my work unless it's finished, and I always look back on my drawings every couple of years so I can try to make improvements. What's weird is that I have abolutely no fashion sense yet I can design clothes. Go figure.

yeah I did, and it's blurry, Why is it blurry??? The jpeg file I uploaded isn't nearly that bad, and everyone else's pics are sharper. I tried uploading a higher resolution but no difference (the first was 70 ppi and this one 150 ppi). This blurrification happens whenever I load a pic, and I can't figure out what's doing it. Is it my webspace? My browser? Anyone have a clue?

I think it's my webspace, although I don't understand how. I just know that I've loaded things onto other webspaces and this didn't happen. ANyone got a address for a free webspace provider I can try out an see if that resolves this?

At Dick Blick I bought:

1. 2 different 12 sets of Prismacolor pencils
2. 6 new charcoal pencils: 2 hard, 2 medium, 2 soft
3. 6 woodless graphite pencils
4. another fountain ink well
5. sketch book
6. large pad of newsprint
7. cardboard portfolio
8. gummy erasers and plastic erasers

I'm hopefully going to go buy the electric pencil sharpener today. Hopefully.

Rock on Sophist! Go be your bad self with your Prismacolors and charcoal! LOL

I'm not familiar with Dick Blick stores. They must be a Midwest thang.

I love those big ol' pads of newprint. Super-duper cheap and great for sketching out ideas for bigger paintings. I need a new portfolio too. My old old got wet and feel apart. I have put off getting another cos I want a leather one, and those are $$$$$.

And you just can't have enough erasers, eh? I have a big ziploc of them.

BTW on my last day in Houston, I had some money left over so I ran down to Texas Art and bought a bunch of single Prismacolors in addition to my previously purchased Sanguine and Sepia. They were $1.07 or something each. I got several that were colors I use, but only seem available in the 75 or 120 sets, or were new colors not available in sets at all. These are the ones I got (excuse me while I go all Aspie about this LOL):

-Tuscan Red, a deep, earthy red
-Black Grape, a muted, deep purple
-Green Orche, a muted olive that's like the color of traditional artist chalk crayons
-Warm grey 70%
-Henna, a medium earthy red-orange
-French Grey, a traditional warm beige-grey, a very verstile neutral color
-Mahogany Red, a purplish medium-dark red
-Cool Grey 90%
-Putty Beige
-Sand, a muted medium yellow
-Copenheagen Blue, a medium blue with green-grey undertones
-Canary yellow, a high chroma medium yellow
-Crimson Red, a medium red with slight blue undertones
-Limepeel, a muted yellow-green
-Mineral Orange, a muted medium orange
-Light Peach, a very nice flesh tone that's not too beige or too orange
-Peacock green, a deep teal
-Clay Rose, a mute rose that's sort of like muave but not quite
-Muted Turquoise, a light turquoise, which I prefer to most light blue
-Slate grey, a standard grey-blue
-Colorless Blender, I got both the pencil and the artstix - this thing is so awesome. I don't know how I lived without it before!

Looking at these, I can see my usual palette bias - I don't like using primary or high chroma colors, except for effect. I have a hang-up with blues too. I'm very picky. I like the old traditional blues - Prussian, Ultramarine, Cerulean, Egyptian - but traditionally these were made with very expensive and rare pigments. The pigments more readily available and used today don't look as impressive. I like Cobalt and Phthalo blues, though.

In my non-standard 12-set of Prismacolors (since we're naming pencil shades ), I got:

1. Beige Sienna
2. Chestnut
3. Chocolate
4. Putty Beige
5. Ginger Root
6. Peach Beige
7. Sky Blue Light
8. Powder Blue
9. Muted Turquoise
10. Pale Sage
11. Kelp Green
12. Green Ochre

And in my standard 12-set (these names aren't as fun ):

1. White
2. Black
3. Dark Brown
4. Sienna Brown
5. Crimson Red
6. Orange
7. Canary Yellow
8. Apple Green
9. Grass Green
10. True Blue
11. Violet Blue
12. Violet

God I wish I had these colors in paints, too, right now. Plus a load of (prestretched) canvas and a greater range of brushes. I wish I could paint in my apartment, but even knowing acrylic, my pipes can't take it. And I can't go dumping paint remnants outside.

But I shall be content with my pencils for now. I am wanting to wait and not use them until school begins (two weeks from now) but I don't know if I'll be able to wait that long... For now I'm continuing my piece of Degas in conte. Slow-going atm but looking as I want it to.

PS- I spent over $60 yesterday.