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We're halfway through Decemboobs and I'm on track to get a drawing in for every day of the month. Compared to the last two years, I've been doing things a little differently by drawing exclusively in pencils and graphite pencils on illustration board. Initially that was just out of convenience and to get away from computer screens for a while (though my reference photos are still on screens). Then it was out of inertia: I kept telling myself I'd switch to digital soon, but with my pad of illustration board being right there, keeping on doing things that way was the path of least resistance. By now, I've embraced it: I don't want to go back to digital unless I have to, and am trying very hard to get better at drawing in pencils and getting every nuance from the reference images into the greytones that they offer. The only things I might want to change:
1) I might want to add white pencils to my toolset for highlighting, or work with grey and white pencils on grey paper so I can work from the midtone to the shadows and highlights; and
2) I may put the reference photos on the TV screen one day, sit or stand at a distance with a large sheet of paper and draw super-fast with charcoal sticks so it's more like doing life drawings. I don't have access to life drawing classes right now and while they've never been my favorite thing, they'd be good for me.
How do you like this new approach? Which of the 17 drawings posted so far is your favorite? Which ones haven't worked for you at all?
1) I might want to add white pencils to my toolset for highlighting, or work with grey and white pencils on grey paper so I can work from the midtone to the shadows and highlights; and
2) I may put the reference photos on the TV screen one day, sit or stand at a distance with a large sheet of paper and draw super-fast with charcoal sticks so it's more like doing life drawings. I don't have access to life drawing classes right now and while they've never been my favorite thing, they'd be good for me.
How do you like this new approach? Which of the 17 drawings posted so far is your favorite? Which ones haven't worked for you at all?
Commissions, continued
I have now delivered all but one of the latest batch of commissions. Well done, me! I will have room to do more commissioned work in April. Please check the Commissions Price Sheet for more information and terms:
FAWM over, back to drawing
I've successfully completed February Album Writing Month and will now focus on drawing again. I'll be traveling to Portugal without my laptop and without any musical instruments but with my iPad and Apple Pencil. First priorities will be a new Greyfriar's Isle story and unblocking myself from what is holding me back with the ongoing Tess Durban story. I wrote two punk-ish songs during FAWM and by coincidence, my brother posted the only punk song from my The Hooded Crow days, written by me and recorded for our first demo in 1994. As with many of these songs, there was a long time when I didn't want to listen to it. But it turns out that writing new songs is not just a way to express myself, create new things and be part of a community, it's also an ongoing dialog with myself. So writing "Enshittified" last summer, and "In the face of the Eschaton" and "The Planet Spins" this February, has made me listen to my older writing with different ears. The Reinder Dijkhuis Punk Album would
Glaze, and things that AI can't do
The other day, I ran a number of old drawings through Glaze and found that my pencil art from several years ago takes it amazingly well. The header image conveniently focuses on a section of the image where you can see the Glaze artefacts, but only just. Compared to black-and-white and flat-colored images, where the artefacts are painfully obvious, these scanned traditional works with random greyscale tones and paper textures are good at hiding the tell-tale signs that the image has been processed through anti-AI technology. So I'm going to experiment a little more, with watercolors as well as more pencil artworks, and if the results are consistent, I will just go back to traditional art full-time. I know that DeviantArt has an opt-out for AI training on images posted here, and I expect them to respect that opt-out, at least for the time being. But it's easier for me to have one canonical version of every image that I post everywhere, so that's why I've only been posting Glazed
The Hooded Crow - Ravine, and FAWM
It's that time of the year again. I'm doing February Album Writing Month! You can follow my progress via https://write.fawm.org/@reinderd until the FAWM website goes into hibernation again. So far, I'm at three songs written, which means I'm on track but can't afford to slack off (yesterday, I slacked off, a bit). Meanwhile, my brother continues his regular releases of demo tracks, studio recordings and outtakes of our former band The Hooded Crow with one of my favorites and one of the tracks I'd selected as a model for the songwriting project I'd chosen for this year's FAWM: Michel Bouma's composition "Ravine" from 1994, featured on our second demo. Here it is: The Hooded Crow - Ravine It was about time we got to rock out again! Sometimes, a guy just wants a big dumb riffy rocker, and "Ravine" delivers that, but it also has enough movement in it to keep things interesting beyond that. And it's a joy to play! I should know because I still play it frequently.
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