CrashOctopus Blog

Baseball Squid by Meg Lyman

6×6 Gouache on Cradled Gessobord

$100 - e-mail to buy

I have stopped working on this. It doesn’t feel finished to me, but I can’t think of what else to do. It works well enough, and I’m about ready to give up on it. Bad post-scan color balancing aside, does anyone have suggestions?

They say life drawing is the best practice. I agree, simply because of how difficult it is. Drawing still-lifes is tough. Drawing a person is difficult, even when they’re being paid to stand still. Drawing live animals is just frustrating. They don’t hold still. If you want a dynamic pose, it’s fairly easy to capture the line of action, but details fall into the black hole of “I forgot how that looks.” Plus, at the zoo, you become nearly as big an attraction as the animals you’re drawing.

As a side note, has anyone noticed that most parents say really ignorant things to their children at the zoo? If they just took a moment to read the sign, they’d know that orangutans aren’t monkeys, and the bongo isn’t going to eat you.

Anyhow, I got into a rhythm today. Near the end of my zoo trip, I had my sketch on, and had it on good. I’d appreciate any comments about these sketches - which work best, and why.

Hopback Brewery Entire Stout is another beer that went bad in our fridge. I am wondering if we’re doing something wrong. I drive straight home from the liquor store, but maybe the beer has enough time to get warm… I don’t know. It seems to happen randomly.

Anyhow, as best we could tell, it was a fairly boring beer. As N said, “might as well drink a Guinness.” (It does come from England…) It’s smooth, fairly tasteless, and has a tiny bite combined with a mild sweetness. One interesting note - it’s vegan. It has lots of little brown thingies at the bottom, which look natural enough, but I’ve never seen them in a dark beer before. I wonder if the vegan/organic aspect is related to our flat beer problem?

M: 6
M: 5

Caardvark by Meg Lyman

Gouache on Canson

$45 - e-mail to buy

I made six little ‘varks, and will make them into a set of notecards. Do you think people will be interested? For instance, would you buy some (no obligation here, just hypothetical)? What would you pay?

Yaardvark by Meg Lyman

It is often said that if you like the art you produced a year ago, you aren’t learning anything. But not liking last year’s art doesn’t necessarily mean you’re learning, either. I rarely like what I produce. However, it recently occurred that I wasn’t doing anything about it. It took outsiders to show me how to break that cycle; how to improve and grow.

Dragon*Con is one of the largest fantasy/science-fiction conventions in the country. Nerds from around the world converge on Atlanta on Labor Day weekend, geeking it up with costumes, gaming, seminars, and art. This was my second year attending, and the first year I tried to get into the Art Show. I found out a few months ago that my “work does not meet the criteria” for the show.

I was sad at first, but became more and more determined to figure out why. The three art show jurors were top-notch fantasy artists and fabulous people; all three agreed to take the time out of their busy days selling art to give me portfolio critiques. I also weaseled critiques out of some of the excellent attending artists.

The short version: Ouch. They tore me a new one.

The awesome Larry Elmore says individual artistic knowledge progresses in stairsteps. One day you’ll be happy with your art, and the next, you’ll read something or talk to someone… and BAM! you’ve jumped up a step, and your work is suddenly full of flaws. It’s true. The bad part about that is the ego bruising. The awesome part is the motivation. Once you see that next step, you know you can get there.

In the hour I spent with these artists, I jumped several steps. They made me think about things I’d never even considered. Being a chronic overachiever, the ordeal made me feel sheepish and small. But they were right. And I came home full of humility and motivation, along with the realization that I hadn’t been pushing myself enough. Not liking my results was a good first step, but it wouldn’t do me any good unless I did something about it. I had been trundling along, satisfied with mediocrity.

The painting above was the first I completed after the convention. A lot more thought went into it than my previous ‘varks. I still don’t like it, but it tells a better story.

Get critiques whenever you can. Forget the ego bruising - bruises heal quickly, and the lessons will last you a lifetime.

Okocim Porter from Poland rocks my socks. It is rich and smooth and has none of the usual bitterness of porters. Some are strong and powerful and smack your teeth, but this isn’t; it’s agreeable, gentlemanly, and you could take it home to Mom. It tastes more like a stout than a porter. It’s sweet, delicious, and fragrant, with a hint of honey and little aftertaste.

M: 9.5
N: 9

Snoozy Squid by Meg Lyman

Digital (Gimp)

I doodled a bunch of cephalopods during some down time at DragonCon last weekend. That is, when I wasn’t distracted by neat costumes. A group of people came dressed as huge Tetris pieces!

I haven’t drawn with my tablet in a while, so I colored him digitally. I’m experimenting with non-smudge tool blending. This was done with a hard-edged brush on low opacity and color-picking the two colors, and as they blended, color-picking the blend. I’m really new at this, so any suggestions are appreciated.

Cat Prints II by Meg Lyman

9×12″ ink on Yupo

$45 - e-mail to purchase

Playing around with Yupo has been fun. You can do some very neat things with brush pens on it. This close-up shows the texture you can create using only one pen:

The only catch is, it takes several days to dry. It inevitably gets cat hairs and dust stuck in it, which must be painstakingly removed while you curse yourself for forgetting to cover it while it dried. At the same time, you must avoid touching the dry ink, because it lifts off the plastic like dry-erase marker lifts off whiteboards. But still, it’s fun.

Cat Prints I is here: [link]