29 June 2005

less asphalt rant

this is a doodle expressing how i've been feeling. and here is the more marketable version:

i travel a lot, by choice, but am so sick of airports and flying. i mean the arbitrary security measures and increasing difficulty in getting visas is bad enough but now we (and by "we" i suppose i just mean america for this example) are creating our own flying problems. here's my example; i was flying home to new york a few weekends ago and had a connecting flight in atlanta. my flight to ATL got delayed because of thunderstorms - plane wouldn't be able to land there. not the first time this has happened to me flying into ATL. so while i'm trying to amuse myself in the airport i find this blurb in the june national geographic as follows:
"In burgeoning Atlanta, green space is giving way to asphalt and other artificial surfaces that absorb daytime solar heat, then release it at night. This heat fuels thunderstorms downwind of the city."

so there you have it. we are creating our own bad flying conditions, making ourselves have to sit in airport, making ourselves miss our connecting flights. or maybe i can just blame the whole thing on atlanta and make sure to books my flights through other airports from now on.

17 June 2005

live trace

i'm done working on this image. i'm not sure if it's finished, i'm just done for now.

my conclusion is that, while live trace and live paint in AS CS2 are not the magical tools i was hoping for, i think this is as convenient as it's going to get for me. i wanted either live paint or live trace to work like the paint bucket tool in photoshop. i didn't see why there was never a vector paintbucket tool. well, live trace did the best it could for me (i gave up on live paint after reading the tutorial and discovering you can't use it with transparency and billion other useful options). when i draw using traditional implements (for me usually pencil and eraser [i draw with erasers as much as with pencils] on paper, then inked using sumi ink) i tend to leave gaps, like so:

with the live trace settings i prefer to use, these gaps make for one continuous vector object - like a big ink spill over one's drawing. so i have to draw the color fill objects by hand. oh well. live trace does help. some of my contour lines are closed so i no longer have to draw all the objects by hand. i get tired of tracing my work over and over. i draw in pencil/eraser, then trace in ink, then trace digitally for colors...snore. however, i realized i do not want to change my inking style, so this is the way it is.

15 June 2005

les giclées par moi

i have finally begun to put together the 'market' section of my website. currently i am selling limited edition giclées of my work. i have a new one at the printers right now. it should be ready in a week or two. it will look like this.

14 June 2005

blogshock

ha! i thought this blog thing was dummy proof. i didn't realize i had to hack the code to customize it. thank goodness i know how to do that. but it'll take me a while to find the time.
i just got a new gig so i'll be really busy the next few days, so from now on it'll be learn as i go for CS2. but so far, i love it. it fixes so many things wrong with CS1. love the saving situation. the new tools are fun, tho' not particulary useful to me yet.
this is what i have done with it so far. it's an ink drawing on paper scanned in PSD CS2 and colored in AI CS2


13 June 2005

new news format

i am replacing my 'news' section with a 'blog' section. same difference right? but maybe i'll post more this way. stay tuned, i am currently futzing my way through AI CS 2. comments so far: definite improvement from the first CS (damned legacy versions), but not the miracle software i was hoping it would be. we'll see how it goes. my hope is that i'll love it enough to finally ditch AI 10; my current favorite drawing software.
the old news page can be seen here.