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.

Toys

I've gotten old. Today UPS delivered my new toy, a TRAKR. It's an RC car with a camera and it runs some flavour of Linux, so it's programmable. It's a toy. It's been a while since anyone thought I was young enough to buy me any toys, so now I buy my own. As I say, old.

Despite that, I find patience is not a virtue I'm always in possession of. This sketch started out quite OK but  ended a bit abruptly. Still, here it is.

I had a dream

Zombies. I occasionally dream about them. Last night was the first in a while. It sucked though. The zombies were smart and able to organize. In fact, apart from the whole biting thing, and the rotting, they were little different from the living. That's cheating!

It's not always fun

Some days nothing comes out right. Drawing feels like you're using someone else's hand. Routine helps, but I've fallen out of mine... Need to get a new one going. With that in mind, something for today. Not much, but at least I got something down.

So empty..

Let's fill things up a bit, give the reader an idea of what to expect.
What kinds of profiles do you see on the street? Here are three stereotypical ones:

Some more older stuff I have lying around: