Drawing Elements

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Some of us are self taught artists while many of us want to fine tune our skills to create a more professional piece of artwork.  Some artists take a while to get back at it when they have had a period of producing little art.  Some skills are rusty getting back into it.  One of the various ways that seem to be most difficult is the technique of shading with graphite.   While in my many first drawing courses, instructors would lend advice of what worked for them. For example, one process is to try out various pencils of various shades for the effects of your piece.  Perhaps it is mechanical pencils.  Somehow I prefer the mechanical pencils but the leads go up to 4B as I have recently searched on Amazon.com.
I tend to go back and forth a bit.  I prefer a toothy to smooth drawing paper such as bristol or other kind of bond paper.  As a frugal artist just looking for angles in my sketches, I just use regular computer paper then tracing paper to make the points of sketches to perspectives of my subject. 

In shading with graphite, it comes down to the direction of light and shade on an object.  I got to experiment with various still lifes to gain more practice and paying attention that each object on the display were just shapes and fabrics and how light fell on them from a window on a sunny day.

To draw shiny objects, lots of practice on metal objects such as wrenches, tools, and I do have letter opener swords as well.  It's kinda like making up a story with your still life as you display it how you want.

As I gravitated from my books to the illustration process, a bit rusty but nothing I can't handle by brushing up skills.  One of the challenges of illustrations in graphite is snow on a mountain slope.  Not deep powdery stuff but a light snow with patches of grass.   

Thinking back on my insttructors tips, if you can draw and shade well in graphite your paintings will be even better.   Keep in mind of the elements of art.  Line, shape, color, form, value, texture, space. I also want to add unity.  Art has unity as in nature.

How has your journey as an artist been similar or different? 

The House of Oreander

For Artemus Jaxson, the close of visiting hours meant his job had just begun. This latest excavation at Pompeii had caught his notice in a journal of history, leading him all the way from England to hide behind stacks of amphorae. Whatever the horizontal urns had once held was long gone, as was a reputed magician called Oreander who dug this basement. But there was a third sub-level Oreander wrote about in his cryptic notes. A scholar like Artemus was able to worm out the details of period Latin, right down to local idioms and current events of the day.

Hearing the gate shut above in the atrium, Artemus crept out of hiding and headed for a boxy stone, on which a corpse sat pensively considering the disaster which had befallen him. When this chamber was cleared of ash, excavators scanned for signs of body-shaped voids. This they carefully worked around, leaving intact a realistic shell complete with melted facial features.

Artemus played his light over the mud mummy. "Sorry, old boy, but I must disturb your master's repose." He set about searching the base for a hidden panel. There he found the lever for an ingenious counterweight, and the gruesome sculpture grated aside to reveal a round hole. Dank cold air rushed out, along with (perhaps imagined) a sepulchral sigh.

Spiral metal stairs reached down to a secret well. Dripping water echoed along a stagnant concourse barely ankle deep; the pending eruption of Vesuvius had dried up the city's water supplies. Artemus tucked his nose into his shirt against the cloying swamp odor, sweeping his light in both directions. Stygian voids presented at either end, but the niche he sought emerged from the gloom.

Carved from rocky soil, the arched chamber featured recessed shelves stocked with rotting tomes, braziers, and a desk. A figure had hands on it as if in the act of rising.

"Quintullus Oreander," Artemus said. "I've come to see what you have bequeathed the world." He tried not to look at the specter, whose toga hung in tatters from parchment flesh. Upon the desk lay an open scroll. Artemus blew away the dust, recognized the writing as an incantation. As he spoke the words, reality shifted.

He was looking down a forum littered with bodies and overturned carts, looming from a nightmare world of black snow. Animals brayed, dogs barked, people shrieked in despair. North, past the old ruins of the temple of Jupiter, there appeared the author of this apocalypse. Vesuvius sent tongues of flame into a black sky that danced with sheet lightning, the roaring thermal vents giving notice of the pyroclastic flow that would soon end all life.

No one paid heed to the oddly-dressed man who staggered under a hail of pebbles and pumice, who crawled toward the dubious shelter of the cloth maker's guild. Artemus had to laugh at the trick played upon him.

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Authorities were perplexed by the man in rich period costume who emerged from the House of Oreander. He only spoke Latin, leading them to suspect he was a deranged history buff. Yet the man wasn't at all bothered at being detained, exhibiting a childlike wonder at everything around him. One of the guards joked about the guy having been asleep for two thousand years.

Archetypes

Never a man to share the spotlight, Horst backed a tanker truck to a remote tributary of the Rhine. He feared neither his quarry nor the need to hunt at night. His reputation as a myth buster swelled his confidence to the level of bravado. He'd lost count of how many mythical creatures and local legends turned out to be freaks of nature or hoaxes.

Horst used a red light, since red didn't carry far in the dark. He waded through rushes, the sloshing covered by razoring bugs and croaking frogs. With the trap set, he quickly covered the water truck with foliage, ready to receive its denizen of the deep. He scanned the waters with night-vision binoculars.

Mixed opinions assailed him as he breathed the night air. The mermaid lore of this backwater village based itself on something. No manatees could survive here, leading him to suspect a hoax. Tonight, some woman in a mermaid suit was due a reckoning.

Horst gave the child mannikin another tug. He counted on the quarry's maternal instincts when it came to children lost in the dark. The ploy bore fruit faster than he'd hoped; a head broke the surface, leaving a smooth wake as it approached. Whoever it was didn't use arm strokes, but rather flippers or some kind of suit.

Now it rose to waist height, an astonishing semblance of the real thing. Was it possible? Greenish scales gradually faded to pale flesh at the sternum. Dark hair sported garlands of aquatic growth. By the time the net enveloped her, Horst knew he'd made the catch of the ages. He dragged the struggling bundle close to the bank.

A hand shot out to grip his throat. A force compelled him to cut her loose. The fangs and burning eyes seemed out of place.

"No," Horst gurgled. "You can't mix archetypes like this. It isn't fair!"

"Neither is it fair," said the merpire, "what was done to me centuries ago."

Outside the Walls

This is a composite, where the foreground figure was temporarily pasted in from a comic book scene. Originally, he faced off with the Lady of the Lake, and it didn't end well; she set a banshee on him. The background depicts an imagined view of the haunted manor of Collinwood as seen from the equally  haunted woods. It could also be a nice safe town, where folks are wise to stay indoors when the sun goes down. Acrylic, 7x10.

About our Blog

Good afternoon and happy Saturday.

Hope all are doing well.  As this blog serves as a multifunction outlet for many interests in art and writing, it's almost been a year since Disqus dropped the channels.  Perhaps this was a good change because we can make up our publications how we want.

Anyways, many of us choose one hill to being a writer or an artist.  A college professor told me to pick a hill.  As much as I thought about it, my two interests could not decide.  To compliment both I chose the Graphic Communications degree since it is a bit of both.    




Did you find yourself in a similar delima?  I know many have achieved that goal and today we have individuals that do both in writing and art.

Please let not this blog make you think we require you to do both skills.  We welcome you with what you have to bring to our little group.  If you have a question on an art technique you would like to work on etc, please ask.  Someone here will answer with their expertise.    Do you have an inquiry about writing or literature?  Please ask because someone in this business knows the answer and has gone through the task of publishing their literary works. Or perhaps you are a student working on an essay.

After twenty five years finished my two books started in high school.  Quite a story to tell and in the last stages of editing last year I lost it on a flash drive.  By some miracle found someone who could recover them at an affordable price instead of thousands of dollars.  I am very grateful...

Changing gears here now as the story is finished, some illustrations are underway.  The art came in for me when I was six, and the writing came in when I was thirteen.  I was self taught for a bit then went off to college to pursue my art education degree.  I learned to hone my skills of the elements of art and design to looking at objects in a different way.   Of course that was fifteen years ago.   


Don't give up on your dream.  Keep on going, do it anyways.  Looking forward to an editor or publisher who will love my story.  They are out there...

Judgment at Galaxy's Edge

It's said that things on the internet are out there forever. The same is true for transmissions carelessly beamed into deep space. If a society is the measure of its art, one needs to be aware of that stranger at the showing. Not all art critics are of the eclectic type; some probe past the surface veneer and into the soul of the artist.

Tonight's exhibition comes to you from fifty light-years west of the Twilight Zone.





Yorgl slithered into the combat action center of the warship. "Captain, we have intercepted transmissions from a star system known as Sol. This is extremely troubling."

"Load them on the viewer," the captain ordered.

Junior officers crowded about to examine a trio of data streams. The language was unknown, as were the creatures depicted. Under the symbols "Funny Videos" marched a series of images. Odd, two-legged beings experienced clumsy accidents.

"What is this reaction," queried the navigator, "in which they bare teeth and emit repetitive 'ha' sounds?"

Yorgl made bold to interpret. "We believe they record their failures for training and punishment. The teeth display is a threat."

"Most brutal," the captain decided.

Next came scenes of space battles under the symbols "Galactica".

"Impressive," said Weapons. "Yet the beings they fight are the same species. Perhaps they wage civil war."

The last series, labeled "Stooges", had the bridge crew in awed dismay.

"Can it be?" the captain mused. "They are impervious to falls from great heights, projectile weapons, and deadly liquids." As he watched, one called Moe took an industrial grinder to Curly's rear quarters. A shower of sparks flew. "Apparently their flesh has a high metal content."

"What shall we do?" asked the navigator.

"Clearly this race is a danger to themselves. How can they care about anyone else their warships come in contact with? Have the fleet alter course."

Two hundred warships began the turn toward a planet at the galactic rim.

Boundaries

King Grafian III drank alone in his vaulted and cavernous conference room. This half hour of solitude remained inviolate to all, including the seven-year-old princess, light of his life. Keeping the kingdom secure meant taking extraordinary measures he once dismissed outright. They were also supremely dangerous, but these were dangerous times. A spirit of lawlessness sought to establish the rule of the jungle.

The assassin reeled down silently on a special cord, unnoticed, and sat cross-legged on the table.

Grafian noticed her after a time, being expectant of certain news. "Jili." He straightened to a more kingly pose. "You delivered my warning to King Carrimon?--the knife next to his sleeping head?"  Carrimon liked to pay agitators to spread lies and discord.

"I though it better," Jili said, "to plant the knife next to his wife's head."

The king nodded. "A good ploy. A man's defiance evaporates when someone he holds dear is threatened."

"There is something else. I caught an assassin, and used truth potion to learn who hired him. That led me to a wealthy merchant, who led me to Duke Tranten. All three of their heads now grace his throne."

Despite appreciation of her ruthless efficiency, Grafian labored under misgivings. Jili operated in disguise, which even gave her access to the princess in her capacity as messenger for a wizardress named Sisra--who furnished trinkets related to fairies, a subject most intoxicating to the princess. Jili had an unnerving way of revealing herself from a crowd with a wink.

"You're right to be troubled," said the observant assassin.

"Shouldn't I be? This calls for a level of trust I find hard to embrace."

Jili rose and paced the length of the table, silent despite her arsenal. "I grew up learning my craft in this castle. I only got caught once, and tossed out on my head.."

"And greatly enriching your fellow thieves in the old quarter. Just how much swag is enough? How far does one go to obtain it? What whispering does he pay heed to?" There, he'd said it, no matter how much it offended her.

"You refer to trust." Jili came back and settled down again, regarding him with shaded eyes. "Money and power mean nothing. I'm very fond of the princess and the queen."

"But. . . .what if I should take a course of action you disagree with?"

"If you ever became a cruel tyrant, I would simply go elsewhere, only taking action against forces in the field--never against the kingdom. There must be lines that are  never crossed. You call it trust, I call it integrity."

As the half hour was nearly up, the princess came skipping into the antechamber, fairy wings bouncing. The assassin folded into a stealth spell and flowed out of sight.

"How met, Pumpkin?" The king hoisted his daughter onto the table. "Have you tired of your fairy toys? Perhaps we shall consider mermaids next."

The princess wielded a toy sword. "Remember those tall women in red armor?"

"The Red Claws? Don't tell me you wish to be an amazon warrior!"

"I want to ride on one of their dragons!"

A double tap on his back furnished Grafian with the assassin's opinion. "I. . . .oh, blast, I suppose the thing could be arranged. But only if the messenger is right there with you."

"Good!" The princess clapped. "That lady is so clever. She knows all about knives and poisons."

"Hrrm, yes, we shall have to discuss that with her, most sternly."