The Ugly Goat » Photos

An attractive couple

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 03:21:19 +0000

Need I say more?

Storage!

The Ugly Goat — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:49:10 +0000

Before I donked by head, I redid some storage behind my desk, in my little work area thingy.
Previously, I had left over old desk bits on cinder blocks and speakers.
But now!
Now I have left over old desk bits on cinder blocks and speakers with random reject shop mini book cases!
And the effect isn’t too bad, surprisingly.

It’s hard to get a good photo, because my desk and the lounge is in the way (half the loungeroom is a loungeroom, the other half my desk area)

and

and me, clearly insane and enjoying the new storage space:

Haiti. And original artwork.

The Ugly Goat — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:44:14 +0000

As I’m sure most of you know, Haiti has been struck by an earthquake. The worst earthquake it’s seen in 200 years. So…not so good. Reports are that there are more than one hundred thousand people dead.

Stop for a second and think about that. That’s more than everybody I know. Dead in one go.

Nothing is going to help those already gone, but the people left behind are doing it pretty tough.

If you feel so inclined, you can make a donation to help the survivors through a whole bunch of charities and methods.
And, if you’re in the mood for buying some art, you can do both at the same time.

I’m selling this original artwork, called ‘The Pointless Nowhere Tree’ and, if purchased, will donate 50% of the purchase price to the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Click picture for a bigger view of the artwork

The Pointless Nowhere Tree, signed original
Pen and Ink
Approx 21 x 30cm (roughly 8.5 x 11), but photo shows size pretty clearly.
Comes unframed, and obviously the ‘toeknuckles.com’ watermark does NOT appear on the original

Postage and handling included in purchase price.

I’m asking $135 (US), which is a significant discount from my normal pricing, and includes shipping.
50% will be donated straight to the Haiti fund.

If you’re interested in purchasing, please just let me know!

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.

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.

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.

Scary stuff

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:39:41 +0000

I attended a wedding recently, and a quick look at the wedding photos on facebook revealed possibly the scariest photo of a wedding guest ever.

And it’s me.

Have a look at this. I’ve cropped the photo as best I can, so as to just show me (nobody else wants to be seen with me here, I assure you):

Scarily enough, this is a genuine, candid photo.

Please observe the way my red pupils are each facing opposite directions the way shark eyes do, and that I appear to have exposed a solid, scary wall of front teeth. All the better to eat you with.

I don’t know about you, but if I met this character in a dark alley one night, I’d shit myself!

Happy Halloween!

The Ugly Goat — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:56:50 +0000

Happy Halloween everyone!

Roses

The Ugly Goat — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:01:00 +0000

I never used to be much of a fan of roses, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to like them mostly because of things they remind me of.
In particular, of my grandparents on my mum’s side – they’ve always had a rose garden, and while I hated it when I was little (if you were playing silly buggers on the lawn and fell in, it bloody well hurt!) now I like it just because it reminds me of being little and being with my grandparents.

Lavender on DeviantArt.

I like lavender for the same reason – it reminds me of my grandmother on my dad’s side. And mandarins, despite the fact we grew them in our backyard when I was little, remind me of my grandfather on my dad’s side. Every time he came around in the summer time he’d pick and eat a mandarin, always asking me “Would you like one, toots?” first.
I never did. I hate eating mandarins (probably because Laurie and I spent more time throwing rotten ones at each other then ever eating them), but now I like the smell, just because I think of my grandfather.

It’s funny, but as I get older, I find myself liking less things because I just like them, and more things because of what they remind me of.

Anyway, because of this, I was particularly excited as I was mowing the other day to find a small, tiny tiny rose bush has sprouted in the middle of the lawn. No taller than a hand, and with a tiny tiny rose bud on it.
I mowed around it very carefully.

Lots of fun things like that spring up in our yard. An older lady used to live here (also called Amy, funnily enough) before it was a rental property, and she must’ve loved her cottage type flowers. The place went to shit with previous tenants, but given a chance to grow, lots of rose bushes have sprung up. As well as a whole bunch of different types of purple flowers (I’m guessing purple was one of her favourite colours?) and two beautiful purple jacaranda trees which litter the yard with purple flowers.

Jacaranda St by poenie123 on DeviantArt

In the past, I think I would’ve just rolled the blades right over that little rose.
But now I can’t bring myself to do it.