I had about 45 minutes to work on my book today. I decided to just have some fun trying to paint a background for my sleeping Moai King using Rebelle 4. I used the Rebelle 4 Dry Thick Oil brush that Steve Elliot, one of my favorite Youtbers, used in this video. I’m considering using impressionistic and abstract abstract backgrounds for my line drawing characters.
Bedside lamp and pillow and Monet print, Corel Painter, Sargent brush
Today was a normal chore day. I welcome normal. I love a day when there’s no snow, no wildfires, everyone is healthy. I ask for nothing more than normal.
For the record, I did all of the laundry, vacuumed the entire house, baked some quinoa flat bread for fun, and tested Rebelle 3. Rebelle is known as the best digital watercolor app, but oil painting is coming in version 4. It looks like it will be awesome. I want it!
Even though my day is normal, I have problems: I like Corel Painter, and I like Rebelle, and I like Photoshop, and I like Clip Studio Paint Ex. That’s a lot of likes. Am I spreading myself too thin? Time will tell where I eventually focus my attention.
My other problem is that I have to create a page for this blog that displays my books. That’s a good problem. The next problem is that I have a Tumblr site that gets updated when I publish a post here…but the images are not exported to Tumblr. I have to get into a groove so that I upload every image to Tumblr. The last problem that I’m aware of is that I need to do better with social media, by which I mean post regularly to Instagram. I should be posting there every time I create a post in this blog.
Sketch for front matter
I’ve been staring at this book for so long that I no longer see it as a whole — I see it as a pile of disconnected pictures. I can’t see the forest because I’m always single-mindedly focusing on a single tree. I came to this realization today as I was going to my final proof. As I was reading the book on my iPad, I realized that I had left out the names of the characters. I know them all very well, but anyone reading the book would be scratching their head and thinking, “Who are these people? Don’t they have names? It’s so confusing.”
I decided to use one of the blank front matter pages to introduce the main characters to the reader. The rough sketch above shows them hanging out together. These group pictures are a big challenge for me — managing a composition with 16 arms and legs is tough.
Besides watching The Boys, I’ve been binge watching Alex Tzavaras’ massively instructive oil painting videos. You can watch them on his web site or watch them on Youtube. He’s an awesome portrait painter and teacher. I don’t intend to do any oil painting, but I feel that what he teaches will help me become a better digital painter.
