penthouse life

From our vantage point let's zoom in. Oh wait, that's the back of the gov photo satellite, whoops, my bad! There's the dot on the glob, I mean globe, a land mass, then....Google Maps photo doesn't show my home there's a glut of trees.....aaaugh! Kids with laser pointers.

I'm getting settled into the penthouse life, a throwback in time.......no, not that far back. I have CRTs because the flat screen video driver boards are shot on my two displays. It cost as much to replace the boards as a new flat screen monitor. There's the hum of the PC box fans on the floor and racing electrons through circuits when the data to the CRT changes. All my art stuff is up here, drawing table, pens, pencils and exhumed technology laying around. The mouse table, the digital tablet and cat hair like clouds or rolling tumble weed. One desk and one chair and room to pace. OK, it's a man cave, but it's a studio to me.

You have to create a place where your world is under your control and your thoughts can rest. A place where you can say "what if" without saying "OH Darn, what now!" The production of art is all about extruding a line of energy under your guidance. Especially, this is true with art on the computer, you are using known procedures to accomplish your ends. Just about every facet has a tweak, an adjustment before you use it. Sort of like using a recipe out of a book. First you follow it to the T. Then you change it slightly to match your "Taste". After you've forgotten where you got it, you say "a pinch of This and a pinch of That", when someone asks.

PC's are all about repeatable results, this is why on-line tutorials are gold to the video artist. You may not discover it, but someone may have and already did what you want to do and has that let me show you gene. To teach is a blessing but to brag is mental torture. Lookie what I can do.......bang, bang bang, the loud music, the talk not clear. Sure the natural state of things are fine for some, but teaching is also an art. I would like to learn your method and prefer my own music turned down in the background, thank you.

On the drawing surface of the video screen, the cursor coaxed by the digital pen on a tablet or the mouse, leaves a trail of pixels. All the principles of art apply plus the added hand-eye coordination. Some have a pen tablet where video display is the tablet but most do not. Especially us casual artist. A mouse driven cursor is awkward for some types of drawing. For engineering CAD work or vector drawing a mouse is sufficient and efficient. For freehand drawing, sketching, painting, a digital pen is best. The digital pen needs a lot of practice to get the adjustments and feel right. I hope to get close to a natural feel like using a pen on paper. It's trusting the media and sensing what it will do when you are doing it. When it becomes second nature, it's right, effortless!

Art on the computer is all about layers. Layers of procedures, layers of operations, layers of pixels. It's how you control things. If you put it all on one layer as with a single piece of paper, you lose the advantage of the computer. That again is your choice, how you work. Layers make life with pixels more manageable. When is all said and done the layers are mashed into one view for viewing or printing. You can see it all from our lofty vantage point, we digital artist have to hone in. That is our daily practice so we can get down wid our content.
Hey a shadow, it's the ISS........is that graffiti on the side? Pimped out man!