Art Wortd Coop

These cantankerous automata critters were created by Juan Diego Sanin. Turn the cranks on their backs and their arms wave and the stars on their chests rotate. From left to right we have Gato Satanico (Satanic Cat), Oso Maloso (Bad Bear), and Conejo Malgenio (Cranky Rabbit). The free papercraft templates for the evil trio may be downloaded here, here and here.

phattro.blogspot.com

















Keywords: digital concept spaceship art by pat c presley illustration design san francisco california phattro blog imperial hover tank video game concept art

Jeremiah's art portfolio.








Keywords: rusty concept ship series by freelance illustrator artist jeremiah humphries country side spaceship relic

 Today's guest blogger is Christine Throckmorton. I have sent in my photo for her new 30 dogs in 30 days project, hurry and get your photo submitted before her calendar fills up. Read the details of her project below along with what she learned from working in this painting a day format.


Reflections on a daily dog art project
by Christine Throckmorton of i heart dogs studio

In September ’09, I created a project for myself called “30 Dogs in 30 Days/Weeks,” which coincided with my pet portrait business. The motivation behind the project was two-fold: 1) for quite some time, I’d wanted to engage in a disciplined, daily art practice. Many professional artists whom I admire have told me that no matter what is going on in their lives, they draw/paint/etc every day. I wanted to try it for myself. 2) In this economy, it is difficult to make money as an artist. I wanted to continue to create pet portraits that people could afford (I set the price for all 30-in-30 portraits at only $100, regardless of size and medium), and I hoped to keep some steady business coming my way.
There were two phases to the project. Phase 1 involved me drawing one dog per day for 30 days. I accomplished my goal for Phase 1. Sometimes I’d skip a day, then double up the following day, but overall I was on track. In Phase 2, I was to take one of the 30 drawings and translate it into a full-color fine art portrait every week for 30 weeks. Phase 2, however, wasn’t so successful as far as pacing. I painted 30 dogs in roughly 39 weeks. Clearly, no one but me cares about the fact that I was nine weeks over my projected time line, but it bugs me that I didn’t truly accomplish my goal. So I’m now doing it again, determined to finish on time.

Upon the completion of the first try at the project, and on the cusp of doing it all over again, I’ve been reflecting on the challenge and what it has taught me. This is what I’ve learned:


It is not easy to make art every day. At least not for me.
 Pet portraiture is not my primary job. I’m an art teacher by day, professional artist by whenever-I-can-eek-out-the-time. I constantly struggle to keep all of the aspects of my life balanced. Am I crazy, then, for creating a daily art challenge for myself? Actually, throwing this project into the mix forced me to work hard at the balance. Some days, taking the time to paint meant the dishes were staying in the sink until the morning. Or that my e-mails would remain unanswered for a while. And that was OK.


I got better, but not necessarily faster. 
Without a doubt, I have sharpened my drawing and painting skills. That’s to be expected. I also expected to get faster…but didn’t. Perhaps because I would spread the painting process out over a few days, or maybe I became more detail-oriented with my work, I’m not sure. I just noticed that it seems to take me much longer to finish a portrait now then it did three years ago. At times, this would frustrate me. I’d think, “I’ve spent how many hours on this painting, and I’ll only be asking $100 for it?” But then I‘d remember that the money was not my primary incentive. And I get back to painting, and remind myself to enjoy the process.


If I’m not in the mood to create, I shouldn’t force it.
 Some days, I might have had the time to paint, but wouldn’t have the motivation. I’d often force myself to paint on such days, hoping that midway through I’d get in the mood. It worked sometimes, but if I wasn’t enjoying the process, I’d stop and pick it up again the next day. Perhaps that is why I was nine weeks over my deadline! I don’t think any good art is going to come from an artist who is begrudgingly creating it. So I didn’t force it. But, I had to find a way to do something for the project; otherwise I’d never achieve my goal. On days when I just couldn’t deal with painting fur or eyes, I would tackle backgrounds. Gradations of color—easy! Or I’d prime a bunch of canvases, or paint the sides of canvases, or paper the backs of finished canvas panels, or tape up paper for future watercolor portraits. There were always things to be done that were more menial and less creative, but that still supported the project. Those were the things I’d do when I just couldn’t pick up a paintbrush.

Just because a fine art portrait of someone’s pet exists, I can’t expect the person to purchase the portrait—no matter how much of a bargain it is.
 Of the 30 finished portraits, I sold half of them to the person who contributed the photo and/or owns the dog; I gifted a few; I traded one for a portrait of my dog; and I have several currently for sale in my online shop. To be completely honest, I’d be surprised and a bit disappointed whenever a portrait didn’t sell. I just assumed that the people who contributed the photos did so because they wanted an inexpensive pet portrait. Turns out, a lot of people just wanted to help me out with my project (for which I’m very grateful), but ultimately chose not to purchase the portrait, despite the low price. An instant reaction for any artist in this situation is to feel rejection. A few times, I had to talk myself off of my pity potty. I’d remind myself of a few things: that $100 is a lot of money in this dreadful economy—especially for a luxury item such as an oil painting, that not everyone likes or wants to buy the art I create, and that the primary motivation behind this challenge was the art-making process, not profit. And then I’d consider the silver lining: any unsold portraits might eventually sell in my Etsy shop; and if they don’t, I’ll have inventory for an art fair or gallery show in the future.


I adore dog people. 
I’m incredibly grateful to all of the photo contributors for helping me out with my challenge. I couldn’t have done it without them because, for ethical and legal reasons, I only worked from photos that were willingly lent to me by people I knew.  In general, I’m humbled by all of the support and kind words I have received during this process. I got to know a lot of really lovely people who have a deep love for their canine companions. Several of the paintings were of animals that have passed, and I was honored to create memorial portraits of such sweet dogs. 


Good things come to those who work hard at their craft.
 As grueling as this process was at times, it was totally worth it. In a very short amount of time, I added 30 dog portraits to my portfolio (and I love every one). Two of the portraits from this project were chosen for a juried art exhibit. One of the portraits became my submission for a dog-themed wine label contest. While I didn’t win the contest, my art attracted the attention of three women from across the country whose dogs resemble the one in the portrait. All three women bought prints and/or cards featuring the artwork. All in all, I am a better artist as a result of this challenge. And, as hoped, I made a bit of money with my art, a portion of which will be donated to the animal rescue where I adopted my dog.

Mission accomplished, and I can’t wait to do it again, this time a little wiser! I highly recommend creating some sort of disciplined art exercise for yourself. I was certainly not the first to come up with a dog-a-day concept; I just tailored the idea to suit me. A few women have e-mailed me saying that I’ve inspired them to challenge themselves with their art. I hope I have inspired you to challenge yourself in some creative way!


Here is the gallery of the 30 completed portraits from Round 1:
http://www.iheartdogsstudio.com/search/label/30%20in%2030


Here is information on how you can participate in Round 2 of “30-in-30”. I’m accepting photos up to the third week in August:
http://www.iheartdogsstudio.com/2010/07/call-for-photos-im-doing-30-in-30-all.html

Project Update 8/12/2010: Christine has filled her open slots on this project, and a few of her 30 dogs are Art Dog Blog Readers!  Yay, thanks to all of you guys for supporting one of my web artist pals.

Here's some nice stone textured papercraft dice by artist William McAusland. If the templates for these dice are printed one per page, the dice come out rather large, so I printed out four templates per page instead. Doing so resulted in the finished dice being a more usable size. Six different dice are available, four of which are pictured: d4, d6, d8, and a pair of d10 dice that are equivalent to a d100. Not pictured are the d12 and d20 dice. Templates may be downloaded here.

Back in the mid 90's I ran a handmade card business. I was single back then and I would often stay awake all night long cutting paper, and designing an entire line of greeting cards to take to market. A line of cards would be along a theme, and the papers would match within one line while the imagery and collage work would change from card to card.  I have not designed this way in ages. Last week I started cutting glass and sketching out robot bodies in much the same way I once tore paper, and made cards. I found myself obsessed and could not stop. The only trouble is now I have well over a dozen robots to create and sadly they will not go together as fast as a greeting card.

The Reborn! anime series follows the trials of an Italian mafia family by the name "Vongola". In the show, Tsuna, the last male heir of the Vongola family, is trained by an infant assassin so he may one day take his place as the boss of the family. The mafia assassins in the show make use of "box weapons" that may only be activated by using a corresponding ring. These papercraft versions of the weapons are the work of deviantART member "Desubunny". The box weapon templates may be found here, while the ring templates are available here.

Some animated Flash loops from MADOX-01. Better ones on conceptrobots.





Keywords: animated pilot thruster concepts flash loops from metal skin panic (メタルスキンパニック MADOX-01, Metaru Sukin Panikku Madokkusu Zero Wan?) a 1988 anime OAV released in Japan licensed in the United States by AnimEigo mechanic named Koji Kondo accidentally comes across the Madox-01

Gregory Belland sent me this excellent build photo of my Death Eater Mask #1 papercraft. Greg told me he built the mask for a friend then took this photograph which he entitled Death Eater Prepares. Seeing this photo makes me want to do some more Death Eater masks. ;) Nice work Greg!

Mmm, strawberries... This realistic looking papercraft strawberry was created by the folks at the Fragarixie pixie blog. Fragarixie is the home of a online comic about a family of tiny pixies who live in the forest and grow strawberries. The template for the strawberry was offered as a free download in the early days of the blog. As the story goes, Pixie Grandpa found the strawberry template among the ancient Fragarixie scrolls. Click on the picture here to build one of your own.

So...the big project has started! There's been a big lull in between this post and the last...various happenings in the house (decorating, etc.) have kept me away from the drawing board too long!

Middle of the week and I am working on doggy art and trying to organize my desk a little bit. I'll have more new works on the blog soon.

Audrey's original photo was very cute but also very low in resolution.  I did send my client back to the drawing board in an attempt to get a higher resolution file, and even though the 2nd image sent was twice as large as the first 50k image  ... at 108 kb it still lacked a lot in terms of ideal resolution.  Not to worry, I spent a few hours smoothing out the pixels and ended up painting in a bit of detail.You can see the pixelation below that occurs when we enlarge a low res, image for printing.

See the almost square like pattern on Audrey above?  That is what happens when you take a low resolution image ( less than 500K) and enlarge it for printing.  You are asking photoshop to fill in data that is not there and it does the best it can, but the quality suffers.
 In situations like this I will patiently spend a few hours smoothing out each and every pixel before I can start playing with color and brush strokes. I use the smudge tool to do this.


In the end I think the artwork turned out really well and there is no trace of the pixelated pattern or texture that I started out with. You can see a detail below.  After the pixels were finally smoothed out I added some detail with the paint tool, threw on the dry brush filter and then painted on top of that a bit more with my electronic stylus.

Travis' SPACEGIRL book looks hot. I love the one panel per page layout. These panels are just a few selections, please check here for the complete set. Robots too!
















Keywords: comic book style concept ships by canadian born travis charest comic book artist penciller painter spacegirl frames samples wildstorm dc marvel captain america

Set of some nice vector weather icons. Enjoy.
Author unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 4,8 MB

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The beautiful logo of the Kaizer Chiefs football team from Johannesburg South Africa.
1 AI : 1,3 MB

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