Graphics Card Hell

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Buddy can’t find his family. Perhaps he’s the last of the purple-faced Monarch Butterflies!

Today most of my “art” time was spent trying to get a graphics card to work. My intent was to use my 27-inch iMac as a second screen for my Windows computer. To do that, I needed a graphics card with displayport connections. I bought an Nvidia Quadro with two displayport connections. This card is almost identical to the graphics card in my Thinkpad, so I thought it would work.

The cardI bought was in style about 7 years ago. After I Installed it, it showed signs of life for a few minutes then the Windows desktop froze up. The computer was still running and I could connect to the shared directories from my other computers, but the PC desktop was kaput.

When I downloaded new drivers for the old Quadro, it turned out that that Quadro hardware isn’t supported anymore. And my PC’s old CPU isn’t supported, either. After some agonizing, I looked at the back of my PC and saw that the motherboard had a displayport connection that came with the onboard Intel 4000 graphics. I hooked it up and it worked with the iMac monitor. I used the 4000’s HDMI output for my Cintiq. It all works, and it was just sleeping in the shadows all these years. The only downside is that the 4000 graphics are not going to do much for modern high intensity tasks. The upside is that Clip Studio Paint doesn’t need a hot GPU.

All’s well that ends well.

Al Fresco Art Club Challenge: Paint an Album Cover

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My watercolor version of the album art for Vince Guaraldi’s Essential Standards, 2009

Toay’s art club challenge was to look for inspiration in album cover art. I happened to see an impressive black and white photograph on the cover of Vince Guarldi’s Essential Standards (2009). I was impressed with the upward-looking perspective that make his hand and sleeve look gigantic. Guarldi’s marvelous mustache is always charming.

For paint I used Holbein Irodori watercolors. These paints are all semi-opaque, but they don’t hide the ink lines, except for the black, which is almost like India ink.

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Digitally colored with Clip Studio Paint

My Work Setup

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Spending the day hunched over a Cintiq will make you a hunchback. So, inspired by Borodante’s enlightened video entitled This is Why Your Drawing Setup Sucks!, I experimented with duplicating my Cintiq screen on my 27-inch iMac screen. The goal is to be able to sit upright in a posture that will not hurt my spine and neck. It will take some time to get used to using my Cintiq as a plain, but very expensive, tablet, but if it helps my back it will be a great change.

In the picture it looks like the Cintiq color values are green compared to the iMac. The Cintiq screen is actually calibrated correctly. It has a matte screen that’s a miracle to draw on. When I’m sitting in front of these two screens, the images have the same colors, but the Cintiq images are less brilliant. That’s the price you pay for having a matte screen that feels like butter.

Experiments With Text Bubble Opacity

Text bubble with 70% opacity. Looks a little confusing…I’ll try 80% tomorrow.

My part-time job started today. My goal is to spend the morning working on that project, then spend the afternoon working on mybook. The best laid plans often go astray, and today was chaotic, but not because the part-time job interfered screwed anything up—it was my own doing that caused the problem. To organize my work flow, I decided to move Clip Studio Paint to my Windows laptop, which, though seven-years old, is as fast as my hotshot iMac when running Clip Studo Paint, and much faster than the iMac when entering text into CSP’s dialog bubbles. I immediately ran into unanticipated problems with software updates.for my Cintiq and for Clip Studio Paint and ended up spending several hours working out the kinks before I could do any work. All is well now, and tomorrow looks rosy.

The Solution for Clip Studio Paint Text Lag Woes

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Example Clip Studio Paint text bubble

Here’s my problem. Text operations with Clip Studio Paint on my iMac are cruelly slow. In fact anything to do with CSP and text is unworkable. I suspected that the fault lay with Clip Studio Paint. But I was wrong. CSP just sucks on iMac. All week I’ve been cursing Clip Studio Paint, but today I thought, “I should try creating text bubbles on Windows to verify that CSP sucks.” I tested and everything was was snappy and smooth on my seven-year old Windows rig, with no lag and no frustration. So I’m switching back to working my Windows machine tomorrow so that I can get back on schedule. Hooray!

A promise to myself: I will never again buy an all-in-one desktop setup of any brand. In fact I promise myself that I will never buy another computer from Apple.

Chore Day, August 1, 2020: Laundry and Resurrecting My 2009 iMac

At 6 am I started the day with a hour-long walk in the hills around my house.

My main chore today, after doing the laundry, was to connect my retired iMac to my Thinkpad W530. Certain iMacs will work as second monitors and my 2009 model happens to be one of them. All it takes is a displayport connection, which my Thinkpad provides. I’ll be using this setup for my upcoming temporary job starting at the end of August.

The 2009 iMac on the left is my monitor for my Windows PC. On the right is my 2017 iMac and my Cintiq 22.

Here’s what I look like when I’m drawing. Normally I’m in a chair, but here I’m testing a kneeling chair, which I didn’t like.

This chair doesn’t work with my current table. I have to adjust the chair too low for comfort. To make this chair I would have to raise and I would have to elevate the Cintiq on an Ergotron arm. Too complicated!

Back on Track...almost

This picture almost didn’t make it up today. First, network problems. Second, Mac problems. The network problems were fixed with asimple phone call, but the Mac problems were baffling—whenever I tried to upload an image, the browser (Brave/Firefox/Safari) crashed. But the browser didn’t crash when I dragged the image to the upload form.

I’ve finally got Clip Studio transferred to my Mac. What a pain! I hope I don’t regret it. Now that I think of it, I had absolutely zero problems working on Windows 10 on a 6-year old PC that is just as fast as my 2017 iMac.

Enough!. I’m sick of electronic devices…for now. I do, however, love, love, love my Cintiq.

Cintiq 22 Arrives in the Nick of Time

I’ve been waiting for 10 days for this Cintiq 22 to arrive. I had enough will power to wrap up my part-time job before opening the box and setting up the display. Of course, it did. It’s awesome. I can sit in front of the screen without seeing my reflection floating over everything I paint. After working for several years with the Huion, I can fully understand why Cintiq fans are so devoted. They’re awesome. Quality trumps price again.

I also bought the Express Key Remote. It can be customized to work with any application. Again, awesome. I was a little confused when I first tried it. Everything began to work when I re-paired the device to the dongle.

Chore Day, May 2, 2020: Rainy Day Project -- Sell Some Cameras on EBay

Today I did my usual chores, cooking veggie burgers for my pug, and doing the laundry. Besides that I’ve been planning to sell some of my cameras on EBay to save enough money for a Cintiq. Currently I’m using a Huion 22-inch pen display. It works but I want a device that has a matte screen, a better stylus with tilt and rotation, and a better feel. I bought the Huion because it was cheap. Instead of going for quality (Wacom), I went for price (Huion). My thinking was “How could it really be much different? And it’s so much cheaper.”

I’ll be selling a Canon 6D, a 24-105mm f/4 lens, A Polaroid Model 95 retrofitted to use Fuji instant film, and a Nikon F3 with f/1.4 lens. Once I have the Cintiq I’ll sell my Huion. I’m not thrilled about selling on Ebay, but I’ll do it.

Writing the Story for My Next Children's Picture Book

Today I gathered together the sketchbooks, pencils, and pens that I’m going to use for my next children’s picture book. It’s a simple kit: an 11x14 sketchbook for practicing drawing my characters and 8.5x11 Bristol board for the inking. I’ll create the storyboard in the big sketchbook — I like to draw big when I’m brainstorming.

I’ll be sketching with pencil and use my light pad for inking on the Bristol board with Rotring Tikky fine liners. For the color, I’ll do that digitally. I’m going to stick with my Frankentoon Crayon color palette.

There a lot of good reasons for just doing everything on the iPad, but I’m convinced that my traditional media drawings look more interesting. They look like a human made them.

The hardest part of creating a book, and the most important part, is writing the story itself. I’ve learned that just sitting down and getting started requires ignoring all of the reasons my mind is giving me to procrastinate, but once I’ve put a few lines on the blank sketchbook, I can feel the momentum shift. I know that I’m moving forward, an inch at a time, and that I will continue to move forward until the book is published. It’s really cool to be on the road again.

I’m aiming for about 40 pages, the same as the last book. Instead of using the square 8x8-inch format I used in my first book, I’m going to go with an A5 size. A5 proportions will work well for both the portrait layout print version and landscape layout ePub version. I learned with my first book that having a single image size saves time. Engraved in my mind is this truth: “Choose one size to fit all formats…and stick with it!” A5 it is.

For today’s sketches I returned to Jack Hamm’s Drawing the Head and Figure and drew some heads. His style is dated and corny, but he’s an amazing comic artist. I know that I can learn a lot from going through his books and copying his work. I’ll have to draw each of these faces dozens of times to become fluent at drawing heads. Learning a new skill requires repetition, which takes time. Fortunately, I’ve learned to be patient when I’m learning new stuff.

I sketched these faces with a flat carpenter’s pencil. I’ll draw them all again tomorrow.