http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:ceruleanvii&section=today deviantART RSS for by:ceruleanvii en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:32:06 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/28395407/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/28395407/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:50:05 PST
I've done a lot of drawing with pencils, pastels, and charcoal, a little work with acrylics, zero oil painting, and a whole lotta digital. Digital painting is what works best for me right now, for a variety of reasons. So it irks me a lot when I see comments like these, both of which I saw posted in the comments sections of blogs featuring digital artwork by myself and others:

"It’s amazing what you can do on the computer these days. The only talent you need is an eye for good pictures and most children have that. I wish they would come up with a tennis racquet that would never let me miss a serve or a return of serve."

"Looks pretty but hardly drawn or painted, it's all digital! I would be much more impressed if it were actually hand done."

Not hand done?!? It just shows how many people out there just don't get digital painting. It's not - oh, I let the computer do everything for me, all I need to do is press a button. The digital painters I know put hand to pen to tablet just like a traditional artist puts hand to brush to paper. They apply the same artistic principles - knowledge of anatomy, composition, perspective, color theory. If someone can't draw their way out of a paper bag and has the color sense of a box of melted crayons, then their art will suck, whether or not it's traditional or digital.

And the other comment is a big - huh? An eye for pictures? If he's saying it's bad to use photo reference, well, there are loads of traditional artists who do so too, Norman Rockwell being a well-known example. If he's saying people are just painting over photos, well, yes, that does sometimes happen - but people who do that are a thankfully a very small minority.

Now I will admit - digital is faster than traditional. With digital it's easier to spot and rectify mistakes. With digital it's easier to be more free and experimental, rather than having to be disciplined. I don't think that lessens the value of digital art or digital artists. Hopefully one day the rest of the world will think so too I guess I was just surprised at this perception, living in my little digital bubble

And, speaking of perceptions...

I had a rather rude awakening recently. I discovered that my art is strange and possibly offensive to - most people? I guess this should have been obvious to me. But honestly it was something I just never really thought about, me all wrapped up in trying to capture color and lighting and generally hot anatomy... But what interests Del in her little Del bubble does not interest everyone else. And if I ever want professional work, I need to think differently, to think about more compelling stories with more universal appeal and subject matter.

So once again, I need to decide, do I ever want to attempt a career out of this, or just keep doing what makes me happy? Are you tired of hearing me complain about this? I seem to do so every 6 months or so, so I guess it's my bi-yearly periodic art identity crisis.

And I hate it.

The past week my artwork has slowed from a trickle to nothing. Every idea I have seems lame, weird, offensive, or has zero commercial potential. At night when I close my eyes, I see this weird continuing parade of elves warriors mechs pretty girls robots armor sexy girls giant guns explosions - all the things that are "hot" right now, all things I SHOULD be drawing. And I'm not.

I've always told myself when this becomes more frustrating than fun, time to stop. And I've reached that point. So it's time for me to take a little break and sort it all out. For the past few years improving my artwork has been a consuming passion of mine. But now I think I need to back off and re-evaluate what I want.

Anyways, would love to hear your thoughts, especially if you suffer from similar crises

Take care,
Del

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/27973638/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/27973638/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:54:35 PDT

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Who loves beautiful men? Come on, I know SOME of you do so check out this blog of justbeautifulmen [link] . The October 25 post features some of my work along with the wonderful work of fellow deviant Robert-James [link] . Discretion is advised for younger viewers - but the whole site is chock full of gorgeous photos, poses, and faces for your inspiration

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/27649130/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/27649130/ Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:43:30 PDT
We had shown him the old 3d-cube-in-perspective recently, and he was trying to copy it, but his 4 year old brain was not grasping the rules of perspective. Heck, I have enough trouble with them myself sometimes I wanted to tell him "Baby, just wait until you try to draw a human limb with extreme foreshortening, talk about frustrating" but I just sat down and tried to help.

One thing's for sure, though - the kid can draw. It's scary how good he is for his age. He has an uncanny ability to look at something and distill it down to its most important parts, even if he's not sure quite what he's seeing. I think he's going to be a far better artist than either of his parents.

When I was growing up, no one in my family was into art. I know plenty of others like me, children of non-artists, who end up drawing, painting, designing, whatever. Of course artistic ability also seems inherited sometimes, as I know artists whose mothers or fathers were also artists. In the Renaissance the Brueghel and Tiepolo families are great examples of some serious-ass artistic genes being distributed.

Yes, getting any good at art is the product of a lot of practice and hard work. But I don't think anyone can deny that some people come into the game with an advantage - they have the "art gene". But what would the "art gene" be? Is it something that controls how our brain sees spatial relationships? Perceives color? Some kind of fine motor control? Where do intangibles like creativity and imagination come into it, and is it possible that these things are encoded in our DNA?

Just some things I'm thinking about as I watch my son try again to draw that damn cube...

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If you haven't done so yet, check out the winners of JunkbyJen's Think Pink IV Contest [link] , they all did a wonderful job and deserve some love!

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Fall = busy = less time for painting for me, but I have one in a cold weather theme I'm working on, hopefully some time in the next few weeks he'll make an appearance

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Del

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/27517788/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/27517788/ Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:49:43 PDT
And many thanks for all the responses to my DD on "messenger" [link] yesterday! When I was working on it I was thinking it was a rather strange painting with limited appeal, but it's turned out to be my most popular deviation to date. Lots of interesting comments people have made, ranging from renaissance art to the gender and theology of angels . Thank you all very much, and I will try and get them over the next few days!

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/26832773/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/26832773/ Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:56:08 PDT
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Hi to all my new watchers, and thanks so much for the recent faves and such! The current painting I'm working on is going to take me awhile to finish, so I'm not going to have anything new for a bit, though I may post some things to my scraps folder.

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Saw this article the other day, "20 Stunning & Surreal Illustrations of Male Characters". One of them was my October, which was cool to see. Lots of amazing illustrations were included, some I'd seen before, others new to me, a nice variety of different male faces both young and old. The link:

[link]

And since the author provides credits and links, I have absolutely no problem with it.

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OK, spider season is officially upon us here, in particular, writer spider season. These spiders both horrify and fascinate me. There's something almost alien about them, their vivid markings and super shiny slickness... And they get to some seriously big-ass proportions in my neck of the woods. Here's one of the biggest I've seen, taken outside a local restaurant after lunch (if it would have been before lunch I think I'd have lost my appetite). Arachnaphobes beware!

[link]

Looking VERY much forward to fall

- Del

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/25701553/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/25701553/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:28:53 PDT
Just found out my work is in the reader FXpose section of the August issue of ImagineFX (p. 19). It's not for sale yet in the US (a co-worker with a subscription brought it in to show me ) but may be in Europe already? Looks like I'll be hitting Borders in a few weeks!

Other than that, not much else... been working lots (lighting 3d stuff, which I love doing) and haven't had much time for my painting, though I do have something new in the works, we'll see how it turns out.

It's already super hot and sticky here and will soon been the time of giant spiders... oh, I'm ready for fall!

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/24503477/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/24503477/ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:07:54 PDT
this from DA's FAQ on mature content:

"Nudity-Fairly self explanatory. If your work contains nudity, displaying a penis, testicle, vagina, breast, nipples, or buttocks you should assign this tag."

I guess it IS fairly self explanatory, which doesn't mean I don't find it annoying Personally, I feel a classical nude is a thing of beauty and I hate having them lumped in the same category as somebody's phone camera snapshot of their genitalia or worse.

The question is, is there any way to differentiate? I know there's a strict mature vs. a milder version you can tag with, but that doesn't seem to cut it. Just because something is a nude, doesn't mean it's mature XXX, as in for adults eyes only.

I assume the main reason they have mature tags is because they allow 13-17 year olds on DA. My kids are younger, but I have to admit, we have nudes all over the house. In art books. Paintings. Reference images on the computer. Not pornographic, just nudes as in depictions of people sans clothing. Thus far the children seem relatively unharmed If I did have a 13 year old I'd be more concerned with them viewing some of the self-mutilation stuff I've seen here than some nudes. But yeah, with more some of the more hardcore "artistic nude" things I've seen here, I can sort of see the point...

And another thing - if something does end up with a "mature" tag, someone who's not registered on DA can't see it. This I find particularly annoying, because if you have nudity in your work you can't really use this site to showcase your artwork to others.

Hmm, guess this turned into a bit of an unfocused rant, and I'm offering no real solutions - would love to hear your thoughts though!

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/23466041/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/23466041/ Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:57:38 PST

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Is anyone using Photoshop CS4? I'm still with CS2, there never seemed to be a compelling reason to move to CS3. But now I hear CS4 has that rotate-the-canvas on the fly thing that Painter has always had, that I always wished and wished Photoshop had. But other than that, considering I mostly use PS just for painting, I'm not sure it's worth moving up to a new version, both in terms of cost and new feature aggravation. Anything else that's totally awesome about CS4 that I should consider?

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Ok, off to paint another odd man

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/23350788/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/23350788/ Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:59:36 PST

It's the USA, we have right to bear arms, but I wish there were better methods of keeping them away from idiots who would bring them right up to a school

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I've been reading a lot of fiction lately about Neolithic hunter-gatherer types and it's been quite fascinating - lol, what a change from my every day world. In many ways it seems preferable just having to worry about day to day survival than whether or not I can pay the bills this month, how much our gas costs this winter, whether or not my job is stable, etc. Of course if I lived back then I'd have died as a teenager of that ruptured appendix... So I guess modern times have a few thing going for them If anyone has any book suggestions, I'm up for them - nothing too heavy, please

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I'm definitely ready for spring, this winter has been dismal in many respects and I'll be glad to see the tail end of it. Which is probably why I'm doing a lot of spring/summer themed artwork. I hope to finish up another one soon, it's very... green.


Take care everyone!


edit 2/23: hmm, the "reclaimed" piece I submitted the other day was just reported as a violation because it didn't have "mature" tag... Yes, the figure is nude, but I she's so small in the composition I didn't think it was a big deal. Well, sorry to all those who were offended, and I'll have to be more careful in the future.

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21436113/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21436113/ Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:32:29 PST
Some brushy tips...

You don't want to have a lot of brush sets loaded at once, you'll start pulling your hair out trying to find that one particular brush you need... Best to replace sets as you need them, keep one basic set with your faves. A pain in the butt, yes, but necessary. PS really needs to rethink their brush management...

AVOID PAINTING WITH THE AIRBRUSH. Your work will be mushy and soft. A hard brush is good brush

[ makes your brush smaller, ] makes it bigger. The numbers on your keyboard will change the opacity on your brush (1 = 10%, 0=100%, etc.) - at least on the PC. No idea about that Mac

There's tons more info out there, just wanted to share a little, and my favorite painting brushes, feel free to try them out with a tablet. Remember you can always play with the settings, scatterings, add texture, etc.

Note - I did not make most of these brushes!!!! I've downloaded some from here, some from there, and at this point I have no idea where most of them came from. But I love them, so thanks to all the brush-makers out there for sharing your work!

ceruleanvii_brushes.abr here:

[link]

raggedhardround – I use this brush for about 90% of everything I do. Great for blocking in, general painting, even detailing when scaled way down.

smudger - a crucial brush for blending. I use with the smudge tool, set the strength down to about 10%, to blend between colors. keep the brush size small or it'll take 4EVER.

texturer - good for breaking up large areas, adds a little roughness. try multiplying/overlaying for neat effects

glow_blowout - set the opacity waaay down for this one, use in linear dodge or overlay to glow out areas

tripledot - make it tiny, then it's good for hair detailing

bodyhair - my bodyhair brush

rakebrush - scratchy crosshatchy

scrumbly - set the opacity way down for this one, good for building up soft cloudy noise

bristlyscrub - this one is crazy, just try it.

sumisketch1 - good for paint/sketching, nice and loose

sheffleafy1 - just for fun, my funky foliage brush

flowerfields - just for fun, my cartoon daisies

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21353869/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21353869/ Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:29:53 PST
I guess it's my fault, as we don't have virus protection on it, but we do have a firewall. I thought that would be enough protection, but in reading up on these, apparently trojans can go right through firewalls.

And it's looking like lots of the the antivirus programs don't even catch trojans anyway? Argh.

My lovely live-in IT guy keeps telling me I should should chuck the PC and get a Mac like he has. We're on the same connection but of course his Mac is completely unscathed. I have resisted for years, but I am supremely PO'd right now. I have wasted lots of time that I don't have, dealing with this problem over the past few days.

So virus-savvy type folks, suggestions? recommendations? Besides getting a Mac.

BTW, when I am in charge, all the malignant slime who create this kind of crap will be rounded up and shot.

rant over.

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21228967/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21228967/ Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:17:40 PDT

Just wanted to ruminate on something... I've heard people talk about "art theft", but I never really thought about it much. Then the other day I found a guy's online digital gallery (not here) and he posted a work as his own which I instantly recognized - and it most certainly was not his. I messaged the original artist but never heard back from her. Maybe this happens to her so much it doesn't even faze her anymore? Don't know, but it got me thinking...

Now why on earth would someone do that? What kind of personal satisfaction could you possibly get as an artist by claiming you did something that you didn't? I've seen lots of beautiful and amazing work that I WISH I could have done, but it either just inspires or depresses me, depending on my mood

But to outright "steal" it - well, I admit that frankly I am mystified. Why? How can someone possibly feel good about themselves, their skills, their art, by doing something like this? Not to mention the fact that at some point it's bound to catch up with you. It's all just so... ecch. I don't get people sometimes.

Anyway, enough ramblings. Even though I shouldn't have, I've started roughing out another figure painting - like I have the time... The environmental concept class is keeping me busy (and making me realize what a crappy sketcher I am) but whenever I need a break, I work on it a little bit. Painting figures, hair, skin, all this makes me feel happy, relaxed... weirdo that I am.

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21074494/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/21074494/ Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:32:56 PDT which does make me sad. But it'll be good for me. If I end up with something that doesn't totally suck I'll post it

And thanks for the page visits and watches and faves everyone - I haven't been able to respond to everyone, but if you did have a question I will surely try to answer it.

Everyone ready for Halloween? Yay!!!

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20695358/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20695358/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:23:14 PDT
I'm so happy it's fall

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20518159/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20518159/ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:33:03 PDT
..........................................

So the question comes up, why all the male nudes... and the short answer is, I paint what I like

I paint strictly for my own enjoyment, no plans to try for commercial success. If I was interested in that, female cleavage (and more) would seem to be the way to go, it's certainly quite popular. But the world does not exactly seem to be suffering from a shortage of female nudes...

I also prefer painting skin much, much more than cloth and clothing. It's alive.

So that's the long answer. Now maybe one day I'll try landscape painting or still life, but for now - more male nudes

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20429098/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20429098/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:17:53 PDT

And I've finally finished the digital painting I've been working on through most of August and into this month. It's posted in my gallery, and called chamber. This one has a lot more colors in it than I usually use, which makes me nervous, but hopefully it works.

Time to move into fall!

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20265633/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20265633/ Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:15:06 PDT

Also dumped a bunch of odds and ends from over the past months into my scraps folder. man, I start a lot of stuff that never goes anywhere... I may pick up one or two of them again and try and finish them. I have a bad habit of getting stuck on a hard part, or bored, and then just bailing on the whole thing, there's probably at least 20 unfinished pieces languishing on my hard drive...

And that's kind of where I'm at with my current painting, which I hoped to have finished by now. The fun part is over, the hard part is left... I really need to push myself and finish it.

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One really cool thing I've done for myself this year, in regards to art - I took a few semesters of Artistic Anatomy at a local art school. Wonderful, wonderful class. The human body is an amazing, beautiful, complex thing - and REALLY hard to draw. We learned all the bones and muscles, what they look like under the skin, where they attach, how they move, etc. - so that when you draw the figure you understand what you're looking at and can draw it correctly. In no way do I have it all down yet (the whole forearm remains a big mystery) but it cleared up a lot. Unfortunately the class is no longer offered - much sadness. If I ever see anything like that offered again I'm going to jump on it - if one is serious about figure drawing, I'd highly recommend it.

Happy September !

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20182272/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20182272/ Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:37:17 PDT
I tried to answer questions as best as I could, but they're pretty scattered... so I'll address a few things here...

Yes, absolutely, you can paint with Photoshop! It rocks.

Yes, absolutely, I use references for my figures, sometimes live models, sometimes photographic refs. It would be awesome if I understood all the nuances of the human figure well enough to paint these images from memory, but I don't yet. One really great site for human anatomy/pose reference images (if I may plug them here) is 3d.sk. Models are shot on a turntable over a plain white background, so the only thing to the image is the figure, unlike working from a stock photo, which usually has some kind of background or story built in. Not knocking stock photography at all, I've seen gorgeous imagery here at DA, but they are often art in and of themselves. Which makes it hard, for me, to make my own unique artwork from them, though I find them very inspirational.

So using the figure as a base, I build my own story around it. Often I'll paint the figure from a photo reference in greyscale, so I can inject my own coloring/light into it later, and not depend on how the ref was shot.

Tutorials - I may do one soon on what I've worked out for texturing skin, which is something I love to do, perhaps obsessively Painting skin itself is a separate matter. I've come to the realization that's there's not a real technique to it - it's just work.

Prints - I still have to figure out how the whole DA print thing works :scratches head: So do I re-submit over the same image with a hi res version? Or do I submit the hi res one as a separate deviation? And how big a hi res image can I submit, is there a size/memory limit? Thanks if anyone can help!

]]> *ceruleanvii http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20077160/ http://ceruleanvii.deviantart.com/journal/20077160/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:54:32 PDT
which is very cool. I've never had my work printed before, so this will be a first. plus it's an image of a male, which are in short supply in Exotique-land

I'm wrapping up another digital painting, hopefully I'll have it posted next week... it's a boy in a shell.

]]> *ceruleanvii