Jimmy Jay Drawn with vectors in Clip Studio Paint

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This my first vector drawing. I had many before before I could complete this simple drawing. I’ve been practicing using the vector pen tool with Illustrator and Affinity Design, and now with Clip Studio Paint EX. CSP’s bezier curves have some useful features that I haven’t seen in Illustrator of Affinity Design. Jeez! That statement doesn’t mean anything. I know almost nothing about those two programs, I may be insanely wrong.

When I’m learning something new, I really have to push myself to keep going. It’s all too easy for me to say, “Bezier curves are stupid and I’m so talented I don’t need”, and then quit. That’s the way I operated for most of my life. I got enthusiastic, tried and little, and gave up with things got tough. I’m glad I got over that kind of thinking. Even though it took me 50 years, it’s never to late get out of the ditch and get back on track.

August 21, 2021 -- Chore Day and the Impossibilty of Art

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Today’s chores, vacuuming and laundry, went smoothly. Every week I do the same chores and consistently get a sense of accomplishment from them that I rarely get from my art. When the house is vacuumed, it’s vacuumed. When the laundry is done, done. Art — my art a least — is never finished. Even though I pronounce it to be “finished”. I can always find something unfinished or mal-finished about it. My obstreperous art and its frustrations help me to be grateful for completing simple, manual tasks. Art is an unrelenting task master. The way things are going, I don’t expect to ever be able so say, “That is a perfect drawing.” Then again, one of the things I love about Art is that it will always be challenging, a mountain of unlimited height, always there, always alluring, always tempting, always elusive. That’s just the thing I’ve been looking for.

Memorial Day, May 31, 2021 -- A Work Day

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Today I completed all aspects of my part-time job and submitted all of the final results to the head honcho. I’ll be on hiatus from the straight world for three months. My intention is to finish my third book by September. That gives me about 12 weeks to do 28 more illustrations. Wow! It’s so easy to write that, but it’s going to be a challenge to actually create 28 pages in 90 days. Actually, I don’t have 90 days — I have 12 weeks and I work 5 days a week. That means I really have 60 days to do 28 pictures. That’s one page every two days. I’ve never been able to work that quickly. Can I do it?

I’m going to take a deep breath and think about the concept of setting realistic goals. In fact, I’m going to sleep on that thought.

Chore Day, Jan 16, with Feng Zhu Brush

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chore_day_jan_16_feng_zhu_brush.blog.jpg, Victor Staris, Feng Zhu brush, landscape, concept art, Photoshop

Today was a simple chore day. There was only vacuuming and laundry on my TODO list. Next week I’ll be pruning trees, and vacuuming, and doing laundry. I like the groove I’m in.

I’ve been thinking about my work flow a lot. I want to simplify it. Should I do everything in Clip Studio Paint EX, or should I just go directly to InDesign and Photoshop, the eventual destination of all of my work? I’ll decide in the coming months.

Last year Youtube was buzzing with artists who were outraged that Adobe would raise the monthly rental of Photoshop from $10 to $20. They were going to switch to Krita, or Gimp, or Affinity Photo, or some other software. I bought Affinity Photo to interview it as a replacement and all I got was a profound appreciation for the many virtues of Photoshop. Many programs have some features that may be slicker than those in PS, but the fact is that PS is good enough at more things than all of the competition combined. It works.

Chore Day, August 3, 2019

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As chore day rolls around again, I'm taking stock of this blog and how want to improve it.

  • As a writer I must create spotlessly clean text. I must make sure I don't have typos or grammatical errors. But, my posts are littered with typos and grammar errors. I write my posts in haste. To make my deadline every night (8 pm, sometimes earlier), I do a quick scan for obvious errors and then push the Save & Publish button. Then I move on and never look at the post again...until someone tells me, "You've got a typo in the blog post title!"

  • I resolve to write my posts using my text editor (I use Emacs), where I can run spell-check. Spell-check won't catch grammatical errors, so I'll be reading my posts aloud. Twice.

  • I'm tired of writing blog posts. Instead, I'm going to treat this blog as what it is: a Web log of my daily activities and thoughts. That is to say, I want my blog to be a daily journal, a simple diary of things I'm interested in. Nothing fancy. There’s nothing important here, just a record of what I’m doing. I’m writing this for myself, not for anyone else.

Enough of that…

Lately I've been obsessed with Open Source software and Linux. I'm going to shift my drawing from proprietary software (Photoshop, Procreate, etc.) and use open source graphics software whenever possible. I'll start with Krita. Krita is capable of professional quality work. Where there's no professional open source software for what I have to do, I'll use proprietary software on Windows or my iMac. I’ll use Artrage on my iPad because there’s not better way to get a painterly look. Yes, the iPad is 100% locked-down proprietary. Nothing is perfect.

This feast for the eyes was created by Arthur Rackam (1867 -1939).