Now in stereo

I was doing some experimenting with stereo photography today - anaglyph and parallax barrier techniques - and decided to try to draw some anaglyph images as well. It's interesting, and tantalizingly close to working quite well. I think with a little practice I could make these really pop out. Using grids and other aids would help for sure - these were just eyeballed.

The thing to do seems to be to try and get the shapes set up right first, thinking of the picture as silhouettes at different depth levels and trying to get those silhouettes to match up for each eye. Once you get some kind of frame of reference going it's even possible to sort of draw in 3d while viewing the anaglyph image with glasses. It's not very pleasant, though, what with the monitor glare and the eye strain thanks to the weird colours.

nonsense

If I'm going to update this blog regularly, quality control will necessarily suffer. I'm hoping it's endearing, or maybe it can be thought of as a raw, unfiltered look at my process.

Some scribbles from today:

I'm not dead, just playing ukulele.

About a month ago, I bought an ukulele and decided to learn to play it. I can strum a bit now, but there's a lot to learn still. The playing and work have kept me away from drawing the past few days, though.

I have tried to take some photos as I walk around town, with an eye to interesing light and structure. Reference for painting practice. Reference is important, not just because it teaches you what the dynamics of light in the real world are, but also helps understand what details are important in describing a scene and which can be left out. It's also easier to remember what the defining features of a specific style of architecture are if you've drawn it a few times, and drawing from reference simply helps build up a mental library of things you can put in your drawings so they're not so generic all the time.

So with that in mind, I painted something from photo reference today. This is actually attempt #2, as mypaint crashed on me shortly after I finished the structural sketch for the first one... The first one wasn't as wonky, I kind of didn't have the patience to draw it with as much discipline the second time.

I like painting without blending much. It helps keep the structure of what I'm painting in mind instead of relying on just making a big mess and hoping something resembling what I want comes out.