Thanksgiving & Birthday

one-point perspective and two-point perspective

Every three or four years my birthday falls on Thanksgiving. Today we spent the morning cooking up my birthday feast, which I decided would be a burrito filled with lots of veggies, including soy curls flavored like taco filling, re-fried beans, salsa, hot sauce, and guacamole. My birthday cake was made with oatmeal, millet, and dates, with vanilla frosting. Tomorrow I’ll have the same thing for lunch.

As for today’s picture, there’s no story. It’s just some boxes filled with gradients. One of the boxes is drawn with one-point perspective and the other is drawn with two-point.

Moving on to page 18 where the kids admire a moai

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Week 2 of my part-time job is now history. Six more weeks to go. Hooray!

Today I systematically evaluated 27 proposals and gave it my all for 8 straight hours. Next week I race through the same gauntlet again.

I had a few minutes to work on my book. The idea for this picture is that the kids are staring up at a towering moai. The perspective is wonky, so I’ll work on it tomorrow before I start inking and painting.

Chore Day, Sep 19, 2020: Laundry, Flat Bread, Yard work, and Foreshortening

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I was productive today: I raked up the 6-inch thick bed of needles our infernal Sequoia tree dumped on the house during the last wind storm. This has turned out to be a yearly occurrence that was I didn’t anticipate when I bought the house. Every two weeks I fill the yard waste hamper with those pesky needles. It takes about 15 weeks to clear them out. Sometimes I get lazy and shirk my duty, but I try to do my best.

I also did the laundry. After that I made two batches of sweet potato-buckwheat flatbread. After that I sat down and practiced drawing foreshortened hands. I’ve got a lot to learn. Fortunately, I love learning.

Perspective Problems -- Hands Coming Out of the Page

I’m trying to draw Buddy with superhero hands coming straight out of the page. I can’t get a grip on this perspective. This is humbling and I concede defeat. Drawing foreshortening is a simple concept, but my brain seems to say, “What the hell is this? I’m going to draw these hands like an eight-year old would.”

I’ll have to practice with pencil and paper before I can get this right. Once I get something decent, I’ll scan it in to Clip Studio Paint. Live and learn, one inch at a time.

The Trek, Version 2

Today I revised the jaguar hiding behind the tree and gave him a more active pose. I took a picture of myself spying on my sofa and used it as a reference.

I’m having trouble with Jimmy Jay’s arms — they’re all twisted and painful to look at — I’ll have to work on them. I’ve add some fellow travelers on the road: a large snail, two friendly mice (they may be rats), and a tortoise. In the background a large python is thinking of what he’ll have for lunch.

Tomorrow I’m going to work on the background foliage. I’ll also add a monkey hanging from a vine, a road sign, and some small wings for Buddy Butterfly. I change the size of Buddy’s wings to suit each picture’s composition. Creative license is handy when you’ve painted yourself into a corner.