Added 1 new A* page:My dad and I got my artwork hung on a prominently placed, coffee-hued wall at Couth Buzzard Books at 83rd and Greenwood in Seattle today—the art will be on display (and sale!) there through October. It's mostly some of what I think are the nicer A* original pages, all framed and matted:
The local "art walk" thingy is tomorrow (Friday, anyway) evening, and I'll be hanging out at the Buzzard from about 7 to 7:30 pm. I hope they have snacks. >_> You could come and help me find them! Or you may find me with my nose buried in a book, because there's both a Philip K. Dick and a Heinlein book on top of the bookshelf directly below my artwork. :) Oh so yeah that's Couth Buzzard Books, they also have a little espresso/pizza shop in there, and I believe they said they'd probably have live music of some kind as well.
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You've probably noticed that I haven't managed more than a page a day since I went back to using pencils and a small brush and all that about a week ago. It just takes more time to do pages this way, so I think we'll be stuck at this rate for a while; I wouldn't do it except that I think the improvement in art quality makes it worth the slower pace—hopefully my readers agree! =o
Anyway, the one thing I've actually been able to sell in with A* has been art, so currently my hope of achieving vast fortune and eventual galactic domination hinges on my getting the art to improve to the point where I can make some decent dough doing commissions and freelance work on the side—in addition to selling the original A* art, of course. So improving the artwork is a top priority! Hopefully in another year or so I'll be ready for the commercial market. :o Once I get the original-art-ordering system done—it's coming along pretty well, in fact—I intend to start getting in some regular freewheeling arting on weekends; I'd like to do some paintings/sketches/illustrations in different formats in terms of size, dimension, color, etc, just to practice and I suppose work up a varied portfolio. Although I imagine I'll mostly end up drawing (or trying to draw, I mean) pretty women. >_> I hope that's okay with everyone.
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Oh man art stuff! You may have noticed that the art style has varied slightly over the past week... I'm trying to hit the right balance between clearly delineating everything—the usual black outlines around everything that other comics use do that quite well—and rendering things in more of an expressive, impressionist manner where there *aren't* lines around everything. I've kind of been bouncing back and forth; also I could stand to improve in each type, from a technical standpoint. I think maybe the figure of Caines on page 82 is the closest I've come to success so far—there's actually kind of a mix of delineation and impressionism going on with him there, and it's proving a tricky balance to strike consistently I guess. In today's page, for instance, I wish I'd been able to capture the gray tones of the face more boldly—like, on the first stroke, rather than having to build them up in a few layers and getting a bit smudgy. Ah well, plenty to work on!
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