Post from: Artist Hideout

Hello,
A while ago I was really into digital art. I’m painting in oil pastels at the moment. I did a series of abstracts in addition to some digital art portraits I find the ability to layer images the most satisfying part of digital. I mainly use illustrator and photoshop. I had an old tablet that I never could become one with. I’m sure the newer ones are much better. What do you think?
J.Reinartz

J, I love the work you sent here below.  Many times when an artist picks up digital to any degree, it’s like starting over from scratch rather than an extension of their work.

I too love being able to work in layers to achieve certain effects.  That was a totally new concept to me when I began working in the digital form.

As for the tablets. They are much better than they used to be.  I had tried an old graphire before and found myself hating it.  With the intuos3 they have really improved to the level that it’s worthwhile having one in your art arsenal.

If you have some work you’d like to share with us, submit it by emailing william@b5media.com  I’d love to post your work too.

Post from: Artist Hideout

Issues.
I’ve fully transitioned to using the tablet as my primary pointing device though.  There are times it responds slow when I am using program(s) that are fairly intensive (such as browsing the web with 5 tabs open, installing some software, and rendering a movie in the background).  During these times, since I am using this on a laptop, I just use the little touch pad. 

Drawing.
I am impressed with the pressure sensitivity that this thing has.  I’ve been using it with a fairly cheap (compared to everything else) program called Smoothdraw (which runs at $45 as a download with a nice free trial by the way too) and it has performed admirably.  I can achieve almost perfect pencil effects with the Intuous3.

Price.
Okay, I analyze things to death and initially, I don’t think think I could have justified paying almost $300 for this piece of plastic that sets on my desk and I only use for graphics every now and then.  But after using it and getting through those initial four hours of frustration, I use it almost constantly now.  It begs to be drawn on.  As for the price, well think about it this way:

How much do you spend on paper, illustration board, canvases, prismacolor pencils, watercolors, acrylics, sketch journals each year?

See what I mean, I think I just saved myself around $600 I normally would spend elsewhere to get my sketching fix for the year (I’m the one who always buys tons of sketch journals and pilot v5 pens).  Now, since I take my laptop with me about everywhere anyway as a professional blogger, I just bring my tablet along too.  It’s about the size of a larger sketch book, but with endless possibilities.

The above review was for Amazon.com when they contacted me about reviewing it on their site.  Then I realized that I only could write 300 characters there.  Then I figured out that it would be good to publish here because "hey, Amazon doesn’t pay me to write for them!"

Enjoy.

Post from: Artist Hideout

But I failed to mention color schemes in the process. 

I have found the following to be a pretty good standard for colors.  If the colors appear together in nature, then they will work visually for your project.  Granted, this is a pretty loose judgement, but it seems to work for me.

The color scheme above is entitled Fire Flower, based off of the colors of the following image I took while on vacation earlier this year.

I haven’t worked out how to pull these types of color values out using free software yet such as gimp, but I have found a website that will do it for you. 

By the way, this is the flower I used for that really, really annoying post.

Post from: Artist Hideout

Backwoods Fest 2007

Jay Risner, pictured here with two of his sculpted vultures, took some time to talk with me today about

his sculptures at the Backwoods Fest in Thornville, OH. 

Now craft shows/art markets are more than just a place to go to showcase your work, they also can serve as inspiration and help you innovate your own methods by checking out what other people are using that work for certain effects.

Even though we spoke only briefly, Jay was more than happy to talk about his work and share some great insights into the work he does.

Another Artist who I really enjoyed his work, was more into selling his work than actually talking about it at all. 

But I did like his fountains enough to show a blurred image here ->

Basically they were found item assemblages that were worked into fountains.  He only sells at festivals, provides no information about how to contact him, but advertises lifetime guarantee on his fountains. 

How do you contact the guy to say "Hey, my fountain broke?"

I personally almost bought one of these pet rocks just to say I have one, but it’s amazing how the concept has flourished in craft shows.

So, maybe that will be a future project.

Post from: Artist Hideout

I was asked to sell some old Heisey glass for a friend of mine this last week.

Being that where I live is also home to the birthplace and national Heisey Museum, I am sure she will get her money’s worth out of it.

But as I was looking at these very beautiful works, I wondered if my definition of art extended to that which was mass produced?

Glass artists, for awhile now remain one of the only areas where mass production of a design is acceptable and the works are still being considered art.

With paintings, mainly it is the originals that are worth anything, and prints only decorate your home. But there is something about glass that makes it unique. Two beautiful plates like the one shown here are more valuable together than apart, (even though they are completely alike).

It is also an enduring art.

Glass, when taken care of exhibits the exact beauty that it did when it was first created.

Post from: Artist Hideout

So I’ve started a list of Art Forms and Artists who use them.

My list is now at 25, but I’d love to feature you and your unique art form too if you have something different from what is listed.

These are in no particular order, but have fun exploring each and checking out each artists work.

1. Conte – Aaron Saaco
2. Inkwash – David Hayward (flickr)
3. Acrylic painting – Nancy Standlee
4. Oil painting – Michael Story
5. Charcoal – Erin Fostel
6. soft pastel – Casey Klahn
7. oil pastel – Tonya Bond
8. fumage – Me (sometimes)
9. henna – Khadija Dawn Carryl
10. glass etching – Christine Masters
11. Pen and Ink – Hugh MacLeod
12. Encaustic painting – Brad Ellis
13. Airbrush – Mike Learn
14. scratchboard – Greg Murray
15. watercolor – Ryan Petrow
16. colored pencils – Gayle Mason
17. pencil drawing – J.D. Hillberry
18. assemblage – Deborah Hayner
19. Screen printing – Kristy (craftgrrl)
20. Stamping – Katelyn Thomas
21. Digital Illustration – Bryan Ballinger
22. Digital Animation – Channel Frederator
23. Enamel Paint – Jackson Pollock
24. clay – Viki Hardin
25. collage – Collage Artists of America

Post from: Artist Hideout

After reading probably at least half of the 91 reviews of the Intuos3 Wacom pen tablet and seeing the amazing amount of great feedback that this product is generating, I am taking the plunge.

With the average feedback being four and a half stars out of five with 91 reviews, I am feeling pretty confident about my purchase.

But, I will be using this day in and out maybe sometime next week. I will be putting it to the test in a very real way.

I am going to pack up my mouse and disable the little touch pad on my laptop and see how well I function going back to pen-based input.

Post from: Artist Hideout

Post from: Artist Hideout

Post from: Artist Hideout