Land that Internet forgot…

For a few days i will be internet free – a scary prospect huh! :D This means no blog updates until Wednesday, which kind of screws up my daily blogging thing :( I will write a blog while I'm away and update it on here when i get back. A break will be nice.

Rorschach Mask

For my weekly tip squirrel blog i have written a short tutorial on creating a Rorschach mask – tutorial available from Tuesday the 4th of august :)

A couple of designs

i made for a friend :D

Tepee

Tip Squirrel week 2

My second week guest blogging for tip squirrel - http://www.tipsquirrel.com/?p=1441

Sketches

Somehow these looked a lot better on paper :D

Who watches the Watchmen??

5 word film review – Watchmen

Wow,wow,wow,wow,wow!

Lost in Lost

Spent tonight watching the last 3 episodes of Lost series 4, I'm looking forward to series 6 - should be good :) i saw a trailer for it today - hugo talking about his chicken shack :) looks good.

didnt have time to do a picture today :( bugger! thinking about doing some drawings - i am going to watch "today's nude" again soon. My friend Heather gave me a good tip on drawing hands - draw the shape then the shading rather than the individual fingers. so going to try that :)

Lazy Saturday’s

Went to the park this afternoon with the kids – its a lovely park right in the middle of a load of houses – it’s a bit run down but nice. 

Library card – REACTVATED!!!

A bout 4 years ago we had to move, not by choice but because the land lord wanted his house back, we packed everything into boxes and moved from a big 3 bed house to a small 2 bed flat – oh joy! A lot of things were lost / put away / stored including some library books.  We recently started to talk about having the library cards up and running again – so with a quick e-mail to Portsmouth library we were able to find out what books we had to return and the fine due :)  Luckily for us – they had gone over to a new system – yay – and we didn't have any fines to pay – we had to locate the books and return them (or buy new ones)  but luckily that didn't turn out to be a problem, as luck would have it – they were still actually sitting on the book shelves. 

Today we took the books back and for the first time in ages were able to get some books.  I wanted a book on photography and anatomy for artists – but couldn't find either.  did manage to hire The da-da-de-da-da code by Robert Rankin – yay! 

We also took Darcie to specsavers and had her eyes checked, she now needs them for close up work, Claire also had her eyes checked – which is something she wanted to do for ages – but never seemed to find the time.  Their new glasses will be with us within a week - I have to go to the hospital and get mine done there because of this diabetes thing,  no matter.  will have to look into it soon.

My favourite bit of the book so far….

“one can never be to ccareful,” said the bearer of the truncheon. “The dead don’t always stay dead. Sometimes the turn into vampires, or zombies or booger me.”
“Put it away, you oaf” his capped superior told him.
”Booger men?” Said Ranger Connor.
The Constable sheathed his truncheon in the manner known as Huffy - Which is not to be confused with Buffy..! Who slays Vampires, zombies and probably booger men ,too!

hehehe :D

Today’s Nude

This is the penultimate drawing from the series, charcoal taken about 15 mins

More wine??

Ohhh apparently this was my 400th post – yay me! :D

Glass of wine??

Things i heard today….

A mother and son in Asda trying to find a film with Jacko in it (Moonwalker!) …

 

…What film was Michael Jackson in???

…Wizard of Oz wasn't it!!!

1st Guest blog at tip squirrel

I was asked by Tip Squirrel to write a weekly blog for them – this is my 1st instalment - http://www.tipsquirrel.com/?p=1325

:)

Sweet corn

Raw, cooking and eaten! :D

Today’s Nude

More of the same model as yesterday, i think i like this one best of all.  Time taken about 15 minutes with charcoal.

I’ve been writing this tutorial for PSDTuts.com based on my small-cuts picture – the only problem is i’m still waiting to see if i can get permission from the bloke who’s arm i used.  I could take another picture  - but i really liked the arm.  I’ve also been reading some of the other tutorials on PSDTuts, i really hope i’m not over simplifying mine. I don’t see the point in making it to complex.  we shall see :)

Today’s Nude

Nude of a man, still cant do hands – drawn with charcoal time taken – about 5 mins

Sunflower

My son grew a sunflower at nursery – I attempted to draw it with charcoal and pastels – time taken 30mins.

Tip Squirrel Blog

Tip Squirrel a fantastic website that promotes all things Photoshop.  Tutorials, brushes, fonts, image hosting, magazines, etc.  As well as a weekly podcast called “The Nut Cluster”. I’ve been honoured with them asking me to write a weekly blog for them :)  my first will be this Tuesday. I’m not 100% sure what i will do each week – I'm thinking about tips and tricks, inspiration and hopefully a tutorial.  We shall see :) 

Today’s Nude

This was from the third episode of Today’s Nude, drawn with charcoal (est. 30 mins draw time). I’m going to re-watch them and try again :) This episode was good but the model did move around a lot.  i think this annoyed the artist quite a lot. 

Small Cuts

small cuts in my flesh,
strands of skin and ghoulish mess,
held together by strings of meat,
listening to hearts last beat.

Feeling ill!

Okay i feel better today - a lot better infact. i think my diabetes was playing up yesterday - that and not sleeping well at the moment left me feeling like poo! Yesterday i went to see my daughters school play aka "The leavers concert (This time its personal! - okay i added the last bit, but it would have been good!)" they all had to be dressed in Victorian clothes and were singing and dancing to a lot of old songs etc. All well and good...except half the class were wearing things like "high school musical" clothes or Disney princess dresses. Not exactly Victorian. You had random skipping things and hoop spinning. very odd. I also almost fell asleep during it - which would have been embarrassing :)

As for my daughter - well she was shoved in the back right hand side of the hall so far out of the way i could only see the top of her head. She did do a song on stage with 3 other people - "oh I do like to be beside the sea side!"

The amount of people there balling their eyes out - FFS - they are just changing schools - nothing more - get over it! :D

One thing that i thought was nice - was that they each got given a pen set with "Penhale school" written on them.

 

Charcoal nude

I feel rough today

I’m not sure why but i woke up at 2am feeling like the floor of a taxi. I feel a bit sick and sticky. It is probably due to the shopping trip we had yesterday – maybe a bit to hot, lack of fluid, seeing a man drink milkshake he found in a bin (now that was a highlight!). But on the plus side i picked up some charcoal (3 sticks), a new drawing pad and some soft pastels. We also found a few things for the kids to play with over the summer holidays.

I also found a lone ping pong ball in pound land and liberated it (and drew a face on it), i plan on going back there on Thursday and buying some more. I noticed they also have CD writing pens – so i will buy some of those too. I know it’ll probably only kill 5 minutes – but letting the kids decorate them maybe fun.

I didn't have time to watch one of the "Today’s Nude", will see if i can tomorrow :) i really don't think its a hard concept to understand – but i did get a question from someone who though that you just spend 30 minutes looking at a photo on the TV. now i could do that on the net :D

Today’s Nude – Life drawing

Channel 4 and 4OD are showing a number of shows on life drawing, its been very interesting so far :) granted i’ve only seen 2 episodes – i’m trying to ration myself :D here is the result from watching the second show. The model in the 1st episode kept moving to different positions – but in the second one the model stayed still for most of the show. giving me more time to “capture” it.