A taxing day

Besides baking some peanut butter cookies and tempeh coated with cornmeal and spicy buffalo sauce, I attempted, once again, to get the Intuos tablet working on macOS … and failed again. To solve the problem I bought Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo for Windows. Problem solved, I hope.

Speaking of the unexpected, there’s always taxes. When I filed my taxes this year, I forgot to include some income. When I filed the amended tax form, I had to return all of the refund we got. That’s life.

macOS vs the Intuos Tablet

Beside doing chores today (vacuuming and laundry), I spent hours trying to get my Wacom Intuos tablet working on my Mac. Here’s how it went.

I go to the Wacom site, find the instructions for fixing the Intuos/macOS problem. I follow the instructions. I restart the computer, and the tablet works. I turn off the computer, try the tablet, and it doesn’t work.

I figure I must have done something wrong. I do everything over, but I go even further — I search the entire file system for anything named “wacom” and delete everything I find. I restart the computer, reinstall the Wacom software, restart the computer, and it works. When I log out and restart the computer, nothing works.

This Intuos tablet simply isn’t going to work on macOS unless, perhaps, I revert to a previous version of macOS. But, I’m not going to do that. Instead I’m going to stop banging my head against the wall. When I want to work in ArtStudio Pro on my Mac, I’ll use my Cintiq.

Experiment with Clip Studio Paint Automatic Colorization

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Clip Studio Paint EX has a colorization tool. You draw the line art, then set a color layer beneath it and paint “hints” of color. When you push the colorize button, Clip Studio Paint pushes the line art and color hints to the Cloud, processes them and sends back the colored image. Unfortunately, the AI doesn’t really do a good job if there are any details in the picture. It seems to work okay with simple geometric shapes.

I’d say that this “tool” isn’t worth using at this time, unless you like to fiddle around trying to transform a clod into a diamond.

Krita has a similar tool and it seems to work. At least David Revoy can make it work. Check out his Youtube video about the Krita colorize mask.

Success getting my old school Wacom Intuos 4 working with macOS Monterey

After spending the day baking a potato and cauliflower casserole, baking two dozen peanut butter cookies, and cooking a lunch of portobello mushroom tacos, I took a long walk with my Pug. Walking helps me calm down, and having Nacho with me gave me something to think about besides myself. When I got home I was drained. Cooking and baking for 6 hours is grueling work and walking up and down the mountain trails gave me the feeling that gravity had doubled.

When we arrived back at the house, I had and apple and a cup of tea, and collapsed into my chair. I thought, “what the hell. I’ll try again. If it doesn’t work, it may not be in the cards and I’ll call it quits.” I did one more online search and found a solution at machow2.com. WIth having any hope that this solution would work, I tried it and it worked. Fucking awesome! Now I can relax.

UPDATE: Mar 22

Nope. The Intuos tablet stopped working on my Mac. I plugged in my new mini Intuos Pro and it worked perfectly. I plugged in my 2-year old Cintiq and it worked perfectly. I'm going to give up on the 6-year-old Intuos 4, at least with my Mac. It still works great with Windows.

Every time there's a macOS update, something breaks...permanently.

Chore Day, March 19 -- A Day of Spinning My Wheels

Besides the usual chores, which I won’t bother to mention, I spent many hours trying to get my Wacom Intuos Pro L working on my Mac. This giant tablet is my go-to tablet when I’m not using my Cintiq. It works perfectly on my Windows machine, but, alas, I can’t get it working on my Mac. The only reason I’m fretting about this is that I want to try Art Studio Pro on my Mac. It’s an awesome app on my iPad — I’m wondering if the magic will carry over to the desktop. I’m also wondering if the developers at Lucky Clan are putting as much effort into the desktop as the put into marvelous iPad app. By the way, the desktop version costs just $20.

If I can’t get the Intuos working, I’ll hook my Cintiq up to the Mac. It works flawlessly — at least it did several year ago.

Chore day, March 12, and my new gadget -- the Sketchboard Pro for iPad

The Sketchboard Pro makes the iPad easier to use. One of the design flaws for the iPad, where drawing and painting are concerned, is the lack of a wide bezel like what you see with Wacom Cintiqs. The Sketchboard Pro supplies the wide bezel I need for drawing to edges and corners of the screen. Now the the iPad has the feel of using a Cintiq, I’m thinking of doing my next children’s picture book using the iPad and Artrage Vitae or Procreate.

Oh! There were chores today: doing laundry, vacuuming the house, and doing some yard work. Tomorrow I’ll be cooking a ragu with lentil sauce, some millet meatballs (let’s hope they’re good!), some whole wheat biscotti, and apricot/fig cookies. Sound yummy to me.

My digital art workstation

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Here’s picture of my desk. The big change is that I’m now using my 2017 iMac’s beautiful 27-inch screen as a second monitor for my Windows PC. How? The magic happens because of the Astropad Luna Display, a dongle that allows my PC to use the iMac as a second monitor. I give this product an enthusiastic thumbs up.

When I changed over to using Windows, I was able to use my 2009 iMac as a second screen for my PC. The older iMac could work as a second screen by plugging in a display port cable. However, Apple removed the second-display feature from newer iMacs. Using the Luna Display dongle, my PC, or any recent Mac, can now use a newer iMac as a second display. It’s cool, very, very cool. The LG monitor in the iMac would cost $1,200 dollars as a discrete monitor. It was sad to see it sitting on my desk gathering dust.

As for the Apex Pro TKL keyboard, it’s the best keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s got the feel of quality.

Links to products mentioned in this post are Amazon affiliate links.

• Steelseries Apex Pro TKL keyboard

• Cintiq 22 pen display

• AMD Ryzen 5600x

Sunday, Feb 6, 2021 -- Artrage Vitae monkey business and typing 35 words a minute

I’ve tried many painting apps in my haphazard quest to learn how to paint — Painter, Photoshop, Procreate, Art Studio Pro, Krita, Clip Studio Paint, Rebelle, and on and on and on. I know the my slow progress is my fault, not the fault of any software program. First, my knowledge of the skull is civilian level. Even though I have a skill, I’m not clear on how to draw it or paint it. But my ignorance of anatomy doesn’t deter me — I just keep on drawing the same 3/4 head day after day, with one program after another and they all look the same. Today I used Artrage Vitae to paint my daily skull. I like Artrage a lot. If feels like what I imagine real oil painting feels like.

While I was typing this post I made dozens of typos. I’m going to work on improving my typing. I timed myself yesterday. I type 35 words a minute, If I could remove the errors, I’d be able to type about 45 wpm. It looks like my typing is about 25% errors. Yikes!

First Day of my contract job

Testing Artrage VItae

Today I opened the floodgates and the new adventurers began flowing into the building. The first week is the easiest as the newcomers adjust to their surroundings. It gets real starting with week two. Not everyone will make it to the end. How many will survive? Only time will tell.

Besides my job, I’ve been watching some Artrage videos and I’m feeling drawn back into it. The oil brushes, in the hands of real painters, are convincing. Now, it’s up to me to become a real painter. That should be a cinch for me because my mommy always told me I could do anything I want to do. Unfortunately, she didn’t anticipate that the things I would want to do take thousands of hours of practice to become proficient, and a lifetime of dedication to become really good. It’s that old Ars longa. Vita brevis thing again.

But really, isn’t it great to pursue a goal that is so grand that cannot be mastered in a single lifetime?

Busy Day in Southern Oregon

My partner is traveling South to visit here family in the Bay Area. We spent the day preparing for her journey. She did this week’s shopping (so I would have food over the weekend) and she did her Saturday chores (chores are a big thing in our household). Afterwards we went to Medford to take care of some business: going to the DMV to get our clean air certificate for the car, going to the Carhart store to get her some cool overalls (she loves overalls), and going to Chipotle to get some vegan burritos.

My artistic contributions for today were to prepare OBS for the screencasts I’ll be making for my outside job, and I experimented with Clip Studio’s AI coloring, but I can see that it doesn’t know how to paint within the lines — it behaves more like a soft airbrush. AI coloring is interesting concept. I hope CSP keeps improving it.