This goes for illustrators too
“My 3 magical words now: “don’t be afraid” (every morning a writer is afraid of what he wrote in the previous day…) ”
- Paulo Coelho via twitter
March 9, 2010 Comments Off
Everything happens for a reason
It seems to me that nice, well meaning and otherwise intelligent people like to offer up the phrase ‘Well, everything happens for a reason’ when told of the woes of the world.
Can I just take a moment here and suggest that, despite being said with good intentions, this maybe be the single most fucking retarded offer of comfort I’ve ever heard?
When this is said to me, I try to take it with the good heartedness with which it was said.
But really? I honestly believe it’s only white middle to upper class people in technologically advanced countries who would even so much as entertain this notion.
The way I see it, there’s no way this can make sense. It suggests that reason is inherently good, a lack of reason inherently bad, and that there’s no such thing as a stupid reason.
So, let’s see….little Jonny Thirdworld dies in a sweatshop? OMG HOW AWFUL! Oh, wait, was there a reason? Oh yes, the reason is I need cheap t-shirts! Well, I feel so much better now. Cheer up little Jonny Thirdworld, everything happens for a reason!
A ‘reason’ isn’t the same as a good reason. And a ‘reason’ doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
Try living in a third world slum for a year (or, like many people do, a lifetime), watch the people you love drop dead around you from illness and disease, THEN see how you respond to somebody living it up in an affluent country spouting the wisdom only a fortunate few can afford to hold true: “everything happens for a reason!”
That isn’t to say that good can’t come from bad. That we shouldn’t try to find the positive in what we can, that we shouldn’t try to put what we learned through our negative experiences to good use in future.
But sometimes, there isn’t a reason. Not a good one. Sometimes the only reason is people are petty arseholes. Sometimes the reason is that a nation’s greed took all the food away from another.
Seems to me, saying “everything happens for a reason” absolves us of an awful lot of personal responsibility and guilt, and offers no comfort whatsoever to those who are truly suffering.
It says, in one glib sentence, “I have no understanding of your suffering, I have nothing left to say, I’m at a loss for what to do, I don’t wish to alter my world view to accept that random and pointless cruelty and suffering exist because they don’t in MY personal space, I can afford to remove myself from the daily woes of the average person and am possibly doing so by walking all over you little people and I refuse to accept guilt or personal responsibility for the injustices of the world that I really just prefer to turn a blind eye to.”
So people, for the love of all that is sane, don’t say this anymore.
And especially don’t say this to the people you love.
February 16, 2010 Comments Off
It’s Australia Day!
Happy Australia Day, everyone! Time to celebrate the fact that we are Australians, and that as Australians, we are now joining Burma, China and North Korea in an exclusive censorship club! May we forever follow their shining examples of civil rights and liberties.
I’m aware it’s a cover (duh), but having an Australian sing it makes it especially relevant right now
January 26, 2010 Comments Off
Exposing yourself! (no, not like THAT…)
Something I haven’t yet shared my (unsolicited) advice on is getting exposure for your art in the real world.
Online exposure is all well and good, but by being only online and not paying attention to the world around you, you miss a major chance to get your art ‘out there’.
The key to this aspect of marketing your art, in my experience?
Creativity and persistence.
Maybe good walking shoes…and possibly also coffee (or substance of addiction of your choice), but I think we’ll skip that part. [Read more →]
January 19, 2010 Comments Off
The secrets of painting skin in photoshop
Firstly, the title to this post is deceptive. There ARE no secrets. It’s just boring and straightforward, no hidden tricks, no secret societies, no special handshakes.
But it did sound good didn’t it?
My skin tones and textures are something people compliment me on a bit, and I often get asked what I did to get those results. So, to finally answer that question (and in a manner better than ‘Uh…paint it that way?’) I present:
My list of things that I do when I’m trying to paint the skin to be the good skin, you know, and not the bad skin, when I am painting, like I often do, because it’s my job.
Told you the original title sounded better! [Read more →]
January 3, 2010 1 Comment
Remembering what’s important at Christmas
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.
December 17, 2009 Comments Off
Talking about photo paintovers
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.
November 12, 2009 Comments Off
