The Ugly Goat » Real discoveries come from chaos

There’s chalk everywhere

The Ugly Goat — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:36:15 +0000

Whenever I say this people’s eyebrows shoot up over their heads, they lean in close to me, only to lean back and squint and say
“REALLY?”
And yes. Yes really. Here, I’ll say it:

I’m afraid of chalk.

Yes, I know it’s not going to hurt me. No, a chalk didn’t kill my father.
It started out as just a dislike. Then an intense aversion. Now a fear.
It makes my blood run cold, and gives me the overwhelming urge to lick my fingernails in recovery. (Yeah, I don’t understand that either).

And you know what sucks? REALLY sucks?
Chalk is everywhere!
I swear that almost every movie, every sitcom, even every documentary that I’ve watched in the last 3 months contains at least, at least one chalk scene.
Can’t they put warnings for this sort of thing on the DVD cover? Or in the opening credits? What if I had a seizure and died from seeing chalk?

Seriously, next time you’re watching a movie, take note of how many times people use chalk.
And if the number is zero, drop me a line – it sounds like the very movie for me!

More to life

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:41:25 +0000

A lot of shitty things have happened to me in 2010.
A lot.
2010′s latest gift to me (a concussion and a cracked cheekbone) caused a friend to suggest that this is the universe telling me I need to slow down.
That I’m working too much, and I need to look after myself.

I thought about this for a bit.
I actually don’t think, as far as illustrators go, I DO work that hard. Do I?
I mean, usually get up and am at my computer by 9. And I’m usually there at 6pm. 7pm. 8pm.
But I DO take breaks. I check the PO Box. I go for a walk. I go out for coffee.
I even spend some time every evening watching some DVDs or documentaries with Seth.

I mean, sure, there’s never a day I DON’T fire up the computer and at least check that no clients have sent me urgent messages. Or maybe just tweak a painting for 15 minutes or so.
And a few weeks ago, when I had a whole weekend away from my computer and work, I almost had a panic attack about it.

I know that’s not healthy, but hey, I’m an illustrator. I’m freelance.
It’s hard!!
It comes with the territory. Suck it up princess and get to work.

Still, it’s been on my mind. So today I asked Seth:
“Do you think I work too much?”
“Yes”
“I…oh. Yes? You don’t even need to think about it?”
“No. Yes. I told you that before. I keep saying you’re spending too much time at the computer.”
“But it’s where my work is!!!”
“I know.”

My initial response was to feel anger.
Don’t people understand what my job is? That I’m a freelance illustrator and designer? Don’t people know how hard that is? Don’t people know what odds I’m up against? Don’t they understand that there are more neurosurgeons about than full time illustrators? Do they know what that means, and how much time it takes to be able to reach that level?
Don’t they care?

And you know, I realise, the answer is no.

No, they don’t care about that.
They care about me.
They couldn’t give a rat’s if I make it into this competition, or that one. But they sure as hell do care when they see somebody they care about hell bent on obsessively working themselves to death.
And while it might not be a heavy workload by ‘industry’ (I despise that term) standards, it is by sane people standards.
I guess I would do well to remember that.

And I guess it might not actually hurt me to unplug my computer one day a week for some rest and recovery and…dare I say it…relaxation?

I’m going to give it a go.

Remembering what’s important at Christmas

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:37:07 +0000

This toddler, followed by a vulture, collapsed in the dirt on the way to a feeding clinic.
Luckily, the photographer chased away the vulture, and this particular little girl made it to the clinic. I shudder to think how many didn’t.

Ok folks, I do this every Christmas, and it’s that time again – me asking you to please make sure you remember charities at this time of year.
This is when many charities are most stressed, and when we so easily get caught up in our own purchases and forget just how much charities rely on donations to get by.

Oxfam Unwrapped is an Australian site I have used for a few years now, and, after seeing the photo above, have been reminded to purchase from again this year.
You can buy something for as little as $10.

Less than it’d cost to get some cake and coffee at a cafe.

Less than a movie ticket.

And it might save somebody’s life.

I can sacrifice an evening at the movies for that.

Oxfam Unwrapped America can be found here.
And Oxfam International is here.

Of course, this year I’m pimpin’ Oxfam, but you needn’t donate there if you don’t want to.
But just please remember to donate (if you can’t afford cash, consider goods or time) to the charity of YOUR choice.

There are a lot of people trying to do a lot of good out there, but they need a little bit of help from us, and can’t get by when we forget about them.

So! A note about this blog

The Ugly Goat — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:35:03 +0000

I have made the decision to change the way this blog works, as you may have noticed from a lack of updates.

Mundane sundries now go to my personal livejournal once again, here at livejournal.

However thoughts on work, art, being a freelancer, misc general interest items and videos of cute animals will be posted here. Oh, here’s one now!

So The Ugly Goat is not dead…just….uh…whatever.
Stay tuned!

You should probably see this

The Ugly Goat — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:29:47 +0000

I’m not ashamed to say I laughed. REALLY hard…

Even the dog thinks it’s tragic. I love that he stands and stares the whole time.

Talking about photo paintovers

The Ugly Goat — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:17:43 +0000

Being a digital artist striving for a certain level of realism in my work, I’m constantly accused of ‘photo paintovers’.

Those other digital artists out there know exactly what this is, but for those not familiar with the term, allow me to explain: a digital painter (like me) paints, but some digital artists pull apart photos, insert them into their painting and paint over the top of them.

Some artists do this to great effect, and some people ruin artworks this way.
Either way, to be accused of a paintover when you claim you have painted it yourself is quite an enormous insult, as a) it’s suggested that you are not telling the truth about your process and b) people are suggesting you don’t have the skill to paint it yourself.

To show I DO have the skill, I created a walk through of my process and uploaded it to my website some time ago.

Now I’m going to show you something else.

The Opposite of a Paintover!

If it is assumed that you do a paintover to cut corners with reaching realism is characters and objects (I know artists who make lovely multimedia work and DON’T use it for this reason, but we’ll ignore this in this instance and discuss just the digital painter who is trying to take shortcuts), then what is it when you put a bit of painting IN to a photo, having not painted over any photo as a base?

That’s exactly what I did for a competition entry for a design school. We were supposed to express, in 25 words or less, why we wanted to win, and I decided to opt for a visual approach.

The design school assumed it was photography. But it wasn’t.

It’s part photography, part paint.

So this image, here, is part photography, part painting. See if you can pick what I photographed and what I painted:

I’d like to think it isn’t too obvious.

So before I show you the original photo sans painting, I’m going to explain why this is different to a normal paintover – I painted the extras INTO the photo without the aide of a photo to paint over.

This is the opposite of a paintover because a paintover uses a photo segment to enhance a painting. I used painting to enhance a photo.

What does this mean?
Well, as far as I’m concerned, it means I have the skill to at least do a reasonably ok job (the people at the design school were fooled into thinking it was all photo anyway!) painting at that high level of realism.

Meaning I generally have no NEED to pull bits of photos into my paintings – in fact, it’d be slower and harder, trying to fit it in to make it look natural, and as I have demonstrated with this photo above, even when I am doing photography the images tend to fall short of what I want them to be, so they’d be useless to me anyway.
Take the rat in my walk through. How the hell am I going to do a photo paintover for THAT? Do YOU have photos of a hairless, wrinkly purple-grey rat in a bottle?

I paint what I can’t photograph.

If I had to rely on photos for paintover, I’d have much more boring artwork, I can tell you! I certainly wouldn’t have rats in bottles, or grapefruit growing in heart shapes or trees with teeth and eyes eating people.
Where the hell would I even find those photos?

In fact, I couldn’t even find the photo above. I had to manufacture it.
And, it should be noted, I am very honest about this fact – it’s not a photo. It’s a blend. And if I ever bring this technique into my painting, I will be honest about that too. ‘Cause damnit, that was hard work getting the picture above to look right!

It actually took more skill and hard work from me than just sitting down and painting from scratch.

And here’s the original photo that shows exactly why that is:

As you can see, the damned goldfish would NOT look out the front of the glass I had him in. And that’s what I wanted for the picture.

After trying and trying to get him to face the front (shaking his food container, wiggling my finger) I realised there may be a reason goldfish aren’t used much in Hollywood (they take direction very poorly!), and figured the only way I was going to get exactly what I want there was to paint it in.

So my major point with all of this?

I’ve learnt to paint like I do because photos don’t capture what I want them to. If they did, I’d be a photographer.
My painting is much stronger than my photography.
So instead of photo elements as enhancement in my paintings, I’ve actually gone and put painting elements as enhancements in my photos.
Taking photos into my paintings would only slow me down, make things a lot harder, a lot slower and result in a worse painting.
Instead, I’ve made sure I’ve developed my skills as best as I can (and will continue to do so) so as to best represent what I could never capture in a photo anyway.

Worth watching

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:34:49 +0000

An artist friend shared this with me (thankyou Lisa!), and it’s worth watching.
It’s a video on TED wondering about how we approach creativity and ‘genius’ but keep our mental health at the same time.

This is a bit fun

The Ugly Goat — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:48:17 +0000

I saw this, nestled amongst overly emotional and dark video clips aimed at angsty teenagers, and found it to be quite cute. And uniquely UNangsty and unboobular for being on a video clips show.

But then I like birds and hate teenagers. Maybe I’m biased.

I’m supposed to be working

The Ugly Goat — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:22 +0000

This is me supposed to be working:

Clearly…uh…NOT working…

I also realised that I forgot today is “Vintage Ad Friday”, and have shortchanged you one vintage ad. Hah! Sorry about that.

On the bright side, I’ve had such a good response from my entries about being a freelance illustrator and selling work wholesale that I am currently in the process of writing more about it – specifically, getting your art out and about into physical places: cafes, shops, galleries, the like.
So stayed tuned.

Happy Happy Happy

The Ugly Goat — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:40:43 +0000

I’m feeling kinda depressed today. Unmotivated with my art or work. It probably doesn’t help that I feel very tired…I feel like I’m slogging through thick molasses to get anything done.

That is, I WAS! Until I checked the post box!

This year I took advantage of Deviant Art’s free shipping worldwide offer, and ordered a bunch of little prints to use little gifts, gift tags, cards etc for people this Christmas. Had I had more money, I would’ve ordered much larger ones, but at least I got SOME, even if they are small.

And, since I was ordering and it was so cheap without paying shipping, I got a couple for me. My favourite being from artist Ravenari!

I’d have taken photos of the other things I ordered, but since they’re not all for me and some are going as gifts to people, I can’t or it’d spoil the surprise.

The above are poor quality pictures (really, my camera is dieing), but I’m VERY impressed with the quality of the prints from Deviant Art. To be honest, I was expecting slightly dodgy, but the colours are good, it’s crisp, it’s Kodak paper – all in all, a lot better than I was expecting.

So now I’m happy, and am going to go about hanging some of these up near my work space as inspiration.