Some Dude on the Internet

Look, I'm posting on a somewhat regular basis!

I've spent the past couple days with a case of the congested stupids. That is, I caught some kind of cold from Joshua (who had it on his birthday, poor guy, now I know why he wanted to just stay home that day). It has my sinuses in a funk and took most of my brain with it. I guess that's what I get for wearing myself out helping friends move on saturday, and sustaining myself on the beer and junk food they provided.

It was good though, I'd been lonely and desperately needed to spend time with people I could talk to without feeling strained. Once the trucks were emptied into their new place we all hung around for a few hours talking about whatever and I felt a lot better for doing it, even though the congestion started that night and has not yet let up.

School starts back up tomorrow. There were about a million things I would have preferred to do before it started, but 'getting well' trumps all that. Though I think I am feeling better today, if only a little. I've started going through the boxes in my office, throwing some stuff out, trying to organize others. That's always a good thing.

The old stomping grounds...

This image was part of a project I did last quarter. The project was a get well card with a die-cut. This is the front, except the dinosaur guy was cut out and visible through the back of the card, with the text "The old stomping grounds..."

On the inside, you can see the rest of the dinosaur, and his raised foot is in a cast and he's crying. The inside text reads "they just aren't the same without you. Get well soon!" I came up with the concept and the illustration, and talked to my Pop about the caption, since I knew he'd come up with something good.

Been getting in some illustrator practice lately, but I still feel like I need lots of work with it to get comfortable and fast. Part of my problem is I'm still thinking in terms of lines that are colored in, when Illustrator really shines with shapes. Practice, practice.

I'm close to done with La Luna for Joshua. The moon, roses, and characters are basically done; I just need to finish the sky. Omg its so pretty. It stayed in this really ephemeral blue/green/violet range. I caught Joshua staring at it and drooling a couple times yesterday as I worked. Not really, he mostly played Diablo3 and watched Will&Grace, but he's been a little under the weather. We did go to PF Chang for his bday dinner, though. It was basically the only place open. Good, but overpriced. Oof.

Here, let me recap last quarter at least.

Finished my 4th quarter at the Art Institute. Only two classes, so I wasn't quite as stressed as the previous quarter. Maintained 4.0 gpa... probably have an unhealthy obsession with perfection. I did try to enjoy the projects I had, and ended up with about 2.5 projects that I was legitimately proud of. (OH! Here's the ".5"... I cringe. But look at the little flash comics. And like, the stuff I wrote. I think that part is pretty good.)

Moved 1.5 times since my surgery. Just moved in to a great place with Joshua where we plan to stay a while. Cool neighbors, too! Nice little part of southern midtown sacto.

Oh, Surgery has been healing well. I'm still kinda taking it easy on the physical stuff, and there is like residual chest pain, most of which is from a type of scar tissue that should fade within the 6months-1year range. I'm just past 3 months.

The last 5 weeks of school I was biking regularly, averaging probably 12miles/day 4days/week. I've been kinda slack since break, but I imagine I'll get back on that once school starts back up next week.

I had 5 of my 6 sessions with an awesome creativity coach I did some graphic design work for in March. She caught me saying something like, "if only I didn't get on the computer first thing in the morning..." and we worked out a plan where my computer automatically shuts off every night at 1am, and I don't turn it on in the morning until I've done at least 15 minutes of drawing (or coloring/working on a personal project) for me.

What's the difference? I used to try and feed my artistic soul on commissions, telling myself I was having fun with them. And in most cases, I was, but the problem was, I was pursuing someone else's ideas, rather than finding my own passions. There's a subtle but profound difference when you consistently have a little time to work on whatever it is you LOVE.

Autumn

That's where this one came from. It started with the intention to take up no more than half the page, with the character at the bottom. I got frustrated with the drawing and set it aside. The next morning, I went wild, adding the birds and the sun, fleshing out the trees a bit and adding the cat. I'd started having fun with it. The next day I was delighted to discover a playground in the back, and I started to flesh out the leaves. Bit by bit, it became a finished illustration. I fought a lot with the blue. I really wanted it to be more more monochromatic warms, but the blues and purples just fought their way in there.

Remember how last year I started a Tumblr but then lost steam? D=

http://sethpostsdoodles.tumblr.com/

Well, last week Joshua went around the house and took pictures of all the post-it note doodles that are literally all over the house. Most are in the living room, but they are also in cupboards, closets and hidden everywhere. It's like an easter egg hunt in here.

We set them up as a queue on my tumblr and now there's starting to be a good amount up stuff up there. =] Still not entirely clear on how the queue works lol, but we'll get the hang of it.

I need to get a tip jar on there sometime, but otherwise, there's some art for you to enjoy!

http://sethpostsdoodles.tumblr.com/

Joshua might start posting most of my sketches for me. I want to teach him how to do stuff with photoshop, we'll see how that goes. What do you think?

I drew this dogdogdog christmas morning when Enzo went back to sleep after setting up my new Cintiq. Actually its the only thing I've drawn so far completely with the cintiq- I think I'm in love with Sai painter but my trail version expired so now my method of saving means taking a screencap. Heh, That's cool, though, I don't mind too much. Its on my wishlist.

Speaking of wishlists, after a day of epic stresses and generally crummy feelings both related to money and not, I came home from a small pre-new-years' "Will&Grace" gathering at Joshua's to find in the mail a claim form for unemployment... that showed that I'd been granted redemption basically and would resume getting funds. I guess the universe just wanted me to understand... maybe how much I'd grown to depend on it. It was definitely a fairly hefty reality check.

So now I'm entering the new year determined to be very responsible with my funds, to get my credit card paid down a bit (again... after a couple big purchases to help me with school- camera and computer), to rebuild my savings, to be careful about spending.

I can breathe again!

And I'll still be scanning some sketchbook animals and things to share!

(lol- speaking of timing, one of my old debts- an electric bill from back in Orlando- just called and relieved me of 176$. But at least that will stop being a scrape on my credit score soon...)

Yay, I'm on a roll! If two commissions completed in two days counts as a roll. XD Better than I've done on commissions so far in 2011. That's okay, 2011 has been a pretty awesome year for other reasons.

This one is for meglyman. I hope to put it on some zazzle things too. Its fun to work with some sort of limitation, in the case of ACEO cards, they are so small its not hard to pack in the detail. =]

He has a tiger shark plushie. <3

ETA- My goodness its a lot of fun to make stuff with Zazzle. >_<
http://www.zazzle.com/cuddlepus_sticker-217044060586693290 <- Big stickers
http://www.zazzle.com/cuddlepus_sticker-217678202823319045 <- Tiny Heart stickers
I put it on postage stamps, too, but those apparently need to be approved first before they can be sold.

Createspace seems pretty cool.

I submitted my file last night, this morning it had been approved.

I ordered my proof this morning, and just got an email saying it had been shipped.

Granted, I paid for 2-day shipping, but still.

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Today I found myself basically starting over on my CD project. I scaled down and focused in a lot, though, which should allow me to put out a much tighter finished piece. I think I'm going to need to do an anime-style illustration for it, though, which is a little intimidating; as Joe Thiel used to say, 'Don't draw anime, there's a whole country of people who do that better than you.'

DERP

Here's a picture I drew back in september so this post isn't super boring.

I reemerge, blinking in the harsh sunlight, having again poured about 72 hours straight, barring a little sleep (not enough), into classwork.

Aside from the pacing, I'm loving it.

Here are my digital doodlehacks from Tuesday and Wednesday. The kangaroo was done right before my homework for InDesign class, the Dragons were from last night. Last night I was tired and grumpy and resistant to doing anything, but I'm glad I did.

I'm holding myself to this DAILY thing. Like a birthday present to myself. Otherwise I'd never do anything fun for myself and I'd get really grumpy and resentful of my schoolwork.



I just realized both of these happen to have been doodled 'for' other people. The 'roo was a doodle to figure out some things about a commission I've been sitting on for Fauxpaw. And the dragons remind me of Chaos, but if you look closely you'll notice they are Hexadragons for no particular reason. I do have a commission for him but it won't be anything like this. Had fun with these, wasn't thinking about them as commissions- Just scanned drawings I thought would be fun to mess with.

A thing I drew the other day. Scanned and goofed around with it in PS. Plenty else I'm sure I could think to do with it, but I'm supposed to be working on a CD project.

I'm trying to post art on a regular basis- what do you think?

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CD project is annoying. It's a first draft, so he's not going to kill us if the work isn't spectacular, but I don't want to come in there with nothing to show for the past week, either.

We need 5 different type system layouts. So far I have three... ish. I'm not thrilled with any of them, but I don't feel like I know what exactly I should be looking for to make them better.

The graphic design stuff is pretty humbling. I feel totally lost, like I'm somehow stumbling through my projects as though by accident. It's like it's a totally different vocabulary from illustration, with deceptive similarities. Like Spanish and Italian languages, maybe.

Maybe I'll try to get my layouts into a form I can post so you all can point and laugh at my incompetency critique me. I know I've got a few friends here at least who more than dabble in graphic design. =]

I find myself wishing for an online critique community for graphic design, like conceptart.org style or something. I mean, Yerf's critique groups back in the day taught me a LOT, even if there were eventually bad habits I needed to unlearn. It was a great encouragement to learn, and it was cool having a sense of community about making the art better.

I'm ready for this to be done. Actually I wasn't sure how I was
going to finish it until I tried test-saving it. I love messing
around with save for web and seeing what it looks like with 2,
4, 8, 16, 32 colors only. I like seeing how few colors I can get
away with. This is 32.

I started this 4 1/2 years ago.

[color variation]
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