Anthrocon!

Several of my “acquaintances inside the computer” have recently blogged about outdoor show setup. Maggie posted about tents and the dos and don’ts of outdoor shows, and Casey has a whole blog about it! The tips they give are priceless; if I ever do outdoor shows, all I ever need to know is in the world of art blogs. However, not many folks have mentioned indoor shows. Could be that normal artists stick to outdoor fairs and trade shows, whereas Anthrocon is… well… weird.

Crashoctopus by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache on paper

I have been to a few conventions already. By convention (or con), I mean a get-together for fantasy, sci-fi, or some other “fandom.” Cons usually have big art shows, but they also have dealer booths, seminars, contests, costumes, and music. They’re all very selectively themed… fandoms can get weird. So far, I’ve been to Con on the Cob, run by my good friend Andy Hopp, and DragonCon. Both are general fantasy/sci-fi conventions. Quite nerdy, but tons of fun.

Mauveater by Meg Lyman

9×12″ gouache on Claybord

This year, I’m venturing to a Anthrocon, a “furry” convention. The furry fandom is the weirdest I’ve come across so far. They like anthropomorphic animals – think Disney’s Robin Hood. If you want to know more, check out WikiFur. I never even knew about this stuff until recently, but there are online communities dedicated to furry artwork, and I’m getting a lot of traffic there. I’m beginning to think there might be a market for cute squids and nerdy Linux art!

Football Squid by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache on illo board

Anthrocon has a huge art show; a place to showcase your work and maybe win a few awards. But more importantly, it is a silent auction, and Like eBay, it is potentially very lucrative. There is also an area called “Artists’ Alley,” where artists sit and sell prints and take commissions and doodle in other people’s sketchbooks.

Laurel Lagomorph by Meg Lyman

5×7″ oil on Claybord

I requested two 2×4′ panels for the show. Anthrocon sent me blank bid sheets and stickers. I laid out my two panels on my floor with masking tape and jammed as many matted pieces in as I could, then wrote up bid sheets for the front and stickers for the back. My starting bids are fairly low; although some fine artists can sell 5x7s or 6x6s for $100, my bids will start at $35 for the 5x7s. It’s not just me; even the best artists in this genre can’t charge what they could if they painted still-life oranges instead of upright mammals.

The Halfback by Meg Lyman

9×12″ gouache on paper

Once I got my show art picked out, I matted up a bunch of other originals to sell in Artists’ Alley. I scanned files and had a few prints made. Usually I do this at a local place called Silver Dog Digital, but they are very high quality and correspondingly very expensive. For a convention where I’ll have over a hundred 8×10″ prints, I couldn’t afford their prices, so I went to Kinko’s and got mediocre prints for $1.24 each. I considered print-on-demand, but my friend at Rapid POD is very busy and I sort of waited until the last minute.

Cuddlefish by Meg Lyman

5×7″ colored pencil on paper

I took one of each print and threw it in a clear sleeve, and they went into a binder that will lay open on the table. I have a nice display box for the non-show originals so people can flip through them. I made up an inventory sheet and a table display sign (name, URL, prices). I had little cards made of my “adopt” cat and dog, and cut them into ~2×3″ cards to give away with purchases. They’ll also be on sale for $1, with proceeds going to the local shelter.

Here’s the setup. Now I just have to make sure it all fits in my suitcase.

Hooker Imperial Porter

This week, I purchased a pint of Hooker Imperial Porter. Both the label and the link (which apparently hasn’t been updated in two years) say that it is “full bodied, sweet, with a caramel flavor and a coffee-like taste.” I’d say that description is fairly accurate – caramel was the first flavor I tasted. However, they forgot to mention the aftertaste, which is sour and quickly takes over the sweetness.

The bottle also says “Adds holiday warmth and cheer to any beer lover’s winter.” Ha. It is as refreshing as a dark beer can be, and isn’t too bad in the Georgia summer heat. And one last note – I do know how to pour beer, but this one dumped it head over the side of the glass and I had to wait quite a while for it to go down. This may or may not be related to my technique, but I assure you that my clumsy pouring did not contribute to the problems I mentioned in last week’s post.

Rating:

M: 8

N: out of town

Breezy Wednesday

Breezy Badger by Meg Lyman

5×7″ gouache on bristol

This is the next installment of my nerdy Ubuntu Linux art. I was stumped at first – how does one make a living thing “breezy?” Windy, perhaps… but breezy? At first I tried to envision a badger’s fur rippling in the wind, and wasn’t too impressed with the resulting picture in my head. Then N mentioned Marilyn Monroe, and I was sold.

This one isn’t for sale; I matted and bagged it for the upcoming Anthrocon Art Show. I will blog about Anthrocon, and my preparations for it, this weekend.

The Majestic Tripod

Recently, my best customer ordered four 11×14″ photo prints. I’d never had one blown up that big before. It has been an interesting experience, worthy of sharing.

Looking at a standard-size print gives no insight into what the quality will be when enlarged. Looking at a 35-mm negative with a 10x magnifying loop gives no insight, either. Well, maybe for an 8×10, since, you know, it’s 10x bigger than a negative. But any bigger, and you’re guessing.

Here are crops from two photos I enlarged to 11×14:

On top is a Viceroy. On the bottom is a Fritillary. To my eye, the area in focus looks equally sharp in both. Neither looks perfectly sharp… but the two are pretty close.

At 11×14, the Viceroy looks good. The Fritillary looks horrible. It is compounded by the fact that I used macro on it, which reduces the sharp focus to one thin plane. However, even the sharp area looks bad at 11×14.

I don’t know exactly why I couldn’t tell the difference on the standard-size print, but the best solution to this problem is: sharper negatives. Time to break out the trusty tripod.

Taking close-up macro photos without a tripod is generally a bad idea, even in bright light. The length of the barrel makes it hard to remain steady for even 1/250th of a second. The tripod helps a lot with that. Even though the setup shakes a bit as the shutter is depressed, and holding the barrel is sometimes necessary to keep the camera still, the tripod makes sharper photos almost every time.

Last weekend’s photoing proved the point. Even I can see the difference between the above photos and this one, which used macro; I bet it enlarges to 11×14 nicely.

Too bad insects don’t hold still like blackberries do.

Fizzy Organic Beer

This week, instead of beer ratings, y’all get a warning and a question. When it happened once, I asked the liquor store (and stumped them). When it happened again, I turn to you for answers.

Twice we’ve bought organic beer that was possessed. Two separate occasions, two different breweries. We’d open the bottle, but as soon as the beer reached our mouths, it turned to complete fizz. All air, no liquid. Same if we poured it in a glass – it turned completely to foam. Let it sit for half an hour, and there’d be half an inch of totally flat beer in a glass that had been brimming full of foam.

Both times, the blight affected the entire six-pack. Both times, we’ve had the beer several times before and it was fine. The first occasion was several months ago, and it was Bison Chocolate Stout. The second time was last weekend, with Butte Creek Organic Porter. It wasn’t as bad as the Bison, but still difficult to drink. Beer is much less enjoyable when you have to concentrate on each sip or end up with fizz up your nose and a shirt covered in beer fluff.

So… if you but these organic beers, beware… and does anyone know what the freakin’ heck is going on? Unless you have ideas, I’m going on the presumption that these beers are possessed.

Dapper Drake

Dapper Drake by Meg Lyman

5×7″ Gouache on Bristol

SOLD

I just got a new computer. I love it. It is fast and it can handle large 300+ dpi files without wheezing, smoking, and dying. I selected the individual components and had AVADirect put them together for me. They did an outstanding job.

The major reason I didn’t go to someplace like Dell is that I don’t want Windows pre-installed. I won’t use it, so why pay for it? I run Linux. Ubuntu is my preferred distribution of Linux. They release updated versions every six months, with cool names like Breezy Badger.

I was running Dapper Drake. It worked like a charm. My wireless card functioned properly. With my new computer I decided to try a newer version, Feisty Fawn. It took me two weeks of agonizing and a new card to get my wireless working again. I often yearned for Dapper Drake, and this painting is to celebrate how easy it was to use. But now it works, and this is my first post from my new computer via my new wireless card.

Look for renditions of the Breezy Badger, Edgy Eft, Feisty Fawn, and Gutsy Gibbon soon! And.. um.. I think all those names are copyright Ubuntu, although I coudlnt’ find anything on their website about it…

Non-Secret Pencil WIP: the Conclusion

To continue the Secret Pencil WIP… It isn’t secret anymore! I finished and gave it to my chiropractor, and he loved it. Mission accomplished.

After the last step, I just kept on shading. I hadn’t laid out the darks and lights of the roos in my planning. I just shaded the round forms as if the light was coming from directly overhead and slightly diffuse, just like an office.

I started on the upper left, then went down and then over, since I’m right-handed. This helped me avoid smudging the finished areas.

This photo shows the lovely side-effect of working in graphite – the shine! Once you put down enough layers, the graphite starts reflecting light. The thicker and softer (i.e. 4B, 6B pencils) the layers, the more reflective it gets. You can use charcoal in those dark areas to avoid the shine, but once an area starts shining, it’s hard to lay down charcoal on top of the slick surface. Luckily, the shine disappears with a layer of fixative.

Since I hadn’t planned everything out before I started, I often went back into finished areas to darken and lighten things to balance contrast. The further I went, the more I could “see” the finished product in my mind.

I generally eyeballed the edges, but with the top of the table, I used a ruler. You can see in this shot that I’ve shaded just the very top part of the table base. I held a ruler on the line and scribbled up against it with a dark pencil. This kept my edge nice and sharp.

I had a tough time shading the dark shirt and the light shirt properly. I was trying to convey “black shirt” and “white shirt,” including shadows and highlights, all while balancing the composition and values. The focus is supposed to be on the chiroopractor and his hands.

This is nearly finished. I still need some adjustments to the floor, since it is too darn light. I also need a few final touch-ups. Sorry for the blurry picture…

The Chiroopractor by Meg Lyman

11×14″ pencil on bristol board

The End!

Blacksmith on Tap

We had a blast at an outdoor block party yesterday afternoon, alternating between burning in the sun on the blacktop and hiding in the air-conditioned pub. They only had a few Irish beers on tap, and were charging $11 for 32 oz. That’s a lot of beer, but eleven dollars?!? Aaaack.

Anyway, Nathan tried a “Blacksmith,” which is a mixture of the Guinness and Smithwick’s taps. It was pretty good, although it’s hard to drink down 32 oz of dark beer in the 90 degree heat before the beer starts to get warm.

Smithwick’s is a red ale, reminscent of Killian’s. It is brewed by the Guinness company. Adding it to Guinness makes it a little less smooth, although overall it’s still fairly bland. Adding the ale sort of ruined the nice head of the Guinness, which made me sad. Perhaps it was the warm weather, but having a slightly tangier, lighter version of Guinness made us happy.

M: 7

N: 7.5

Fingerpainting

Handprint by Meg Lyman

6×6″ gouache on Gessobord

This painting was done without brushes. The only tools were my hands. That’s one of the beauties of gouache – most colors are non-toxic and don’t have anything nasty in them, so you can fingerpaint! Maybe not a masterpiece, but really fun to do.

More on the WIP this weekend.

Secret Pencil WIP

I’m doing some art for my awesome chiropractor. This is a WIP of it, but he doesn’t know what it is yet. Shhhhh, don’t tell him.

First, I had the ridiculous idea: Chiroopractor. Get it? …well, you’ll get it when you see it, I hope. I record most of my ideas in one of my sketchbooks, as a sort of visual list. Very rough concept sketches only, just a few inches and a few seconds. Here’s this one:

Now do you get it? I sure hope so. My twisted sense of humor might not fit into a respectable place of business.

Next, I did three value thumbnails. Again, really quick, just helping me plan out large areas of value. I also sketched the scene a few inches wide on a very large sheet of paper (my vanishing points were pretty far away) so I could get my perspective lines right. That’s something I don’t usually mess with… but with walls and tables, this needed to be right.

What, you want a picture? Um, well, I threw that piece of paper away before I decided to do a WIP. Sorry. I’ll be better next time.

Next, I drew it full-size, using my perspective sketch as a guide and being so geeky as to measure lines with a ruler and scale it up with my calculator. Helps me learn perspective, although maybe the hard way… Anyway, I measured all the hard lines and free-sketched the roos, erasing and tweaking until I got it right.

You can see my line of sight (or horizon line) – the horizontal one going through the chiroopractor’s head. I spent some time making sure the wall lines didn’t interfere with the subject or make ugly-looking tangents or intersections. Once I had those set, I played around with the composition. I sketched in the skeleton on the left, but I tossed it out because it was an eye magnet, hogging all the focus. You can also see how I moved the framing around (this is 11×14″ by the way) until I found a composition I liked.

Don’t mind the tape – I accidentally ripped the paper.

At this point, I was ready to transfer the sketch to bristol board. I scribbled all over the back of this sheet with a nice soft graphite pencil, then taped it to the board. Then I traced everything with a blue pen (so I could see what I had traced and what I hadn’t). Ballpoint pens are good for transfer – they don’t rip the paper and they make a nice fat traced line. I peeled the paper up and traced the ball & dumbbell in a better location.

I do all these steps for whatever medium I’m using – it works for pencil, painting, and pastels.

Being a novice at the WIP, I forgot to take a photo after transfer. Take my word for it – it looks pretty much like the layout sketch above. Here’s the first shot I took, after I finished the walls (aaaaaaaaaaag, the endless walls that took forever to shade) and started the first roo.

You can see my tools – ref photos, thumbnail sketches, pencils (mostly used 6B, 2B, and 2H), erasers, a blending stump, and some tissue paper.

See how I scribbled the background into his arm in a couple places? I wasn’t strict about the fur outlines, because I can erase it later, and this makes for more natural-looking fur. Also, it prevents him from looking like a cutout.

More next time!