Life.

Life for me right now is crazy busy. I hardly have time to myself right now. But in two days a friend of mine has a greed to come and let me do some live drawings of her, so I will be posting those after their completion. I think I will do the sketches right on my computer with my tablet. hopefully thid will be some much needed practice in sketching on my tablet.

Concerto!

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. The 20th I went to Mayhem Fest in St. Louis. It was insane so many good bands so many great people and this year it wasn't 102 out. That was really my only free day this week so I didn't have time to finish arting, but I have some projects in the works and I will be opening the online shop soon. 

The Littlest Lumberjack

This is a concept piece that I did for me and my wife's children's book that we are currently working on. I'm not going to go into details, but just saying it's fucking awesome. Thinking that if this is successful I might do more or make TLL sequential.

Custom Computer Part 2

I had to split this up into two parts so that my viewers could actually read this part. I don't know what went wrong, but yeah it should be good now.

 

Let me show you what I chose.

AMD BULLDOZER FX-8120 3.1GHz Eight-Core AM3+ Processor

ALLPCZONE Dual Fan Cooler for Hard Disk (RECOMMENDED)

SEAGATE / WD 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB CACHE SATA 6.0Gb/s

ALLPCZONE Dual Fan Cooler for Hard Disk (RECOMMENDED)

nVidia GeForce GT520 2GB DDR3 DVI/VGA HDMI PCI-EXP Video Card

 

8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel

 

SEAGATE / WD 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB CACHE SATA 6.0Gb/s

 

(2X) "FREE SHIPPING" Asus Black 24" HDMI 2ms Widescreen LED-LCD Monitor 10,000,000:1

Stuff you don't really need to know about, but I included to show you how reasonable the price is.

Corsair HYDRO H60 ENCLOSED LIQUID COOLING SYSTEM

 PROFESSIONAL WIRING W/ROUND CABLE

Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX Socket AM3+/ AMD 990FX/ DDR3/ Quad-CrossFireX & Quad SLI/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ Motherboard

1x - COOLMAX MEMORY HEAT SPREADERS

12X BLU-RAY PLAYER & DVD-RW COMBO DRIVE

16X DVD-RW DUAL LAYER

REALTEK 6-CHANNEL DIGITAL SOUND ONBOARD

Gigabit 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI Adapter (Great for users requiring 2nd LAN Port)

Wireless-N External USB2.0 Adapter

APEVIA X-Dreamer3 Metal Case w/ Side Window-Black

(2X) 1x VANTEC DELUXE CASE COOLER

ANTEC 750W HIGH PERFORMANCE SLI/CROSSFIRE POWER SUPPLY

Logitech MK260 Wireless Keyboard & Wireless Mouse Combo

"FREE SHIPPING" Logitech Z323 30 watts 2.1 Speaker System

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

NORTON 2012 ANTI-VIRUS w/Antispyware (1 - YEAR SUBSCRIPTION)

Microsoft Office Pro 2010 Professional Retail Box

5-Year Limited Warranty Plan with Lifetime of free USA based Support...Custom Hand Wiring For Ultimate Air Flow, Assembled in Cleveland, Ohio, USA

FED-EX EXPRESS 2 DAY AIR (2 BUSINESS DAY SERVICE)

WTF??? I understood none of that! ~ If this is what you are exclaiming then lemme give you the rundown.

Let's go through it in order.

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is essentially the brain of the computer. It interprets and executes instructions and data contained in software programs. The more generic term "processor" is often used to refer to a CPU as well, and the more specific term "microprocessor", meaning CPUs that are manufactured on integrated circuits, is also widely used nowadays. These three words mean exactly the same thing in this article, and elsewhere in most cases. As the brain of a computer, the processor (or CPU) plays a defining role in the total PC system. The performance of a PC system is roughly determined by the processor, so choosing the right processor is key when building your own computer. The other components, such as RAM and hard disk drive, also play important roles, while the video card is crucial when it comes to 3D graphics performance. So needless to say this is one of the most essential items you will need for your computer if you are getting into digital art or graphic design. I also chose one that would be good for gaming.


A video card (also called a display card, graphics card, graphics board, display adapter or graphics adapter) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display (your monitor). Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). This is also essential, because (herpa-derp) I'M USING A COMPUTER TO CREATE GRAPHIC IMAGES!

Hard drives are important for the computer because they store all of your programs files and operating systems (yes, you can have more than one!) I chose two, essentailly the same but of varying capacity. One will be used for my business the other personal. They will run independently using two different operating systems, but I will be able to run them at the same time. This is really just one of those choices you can do without, but I went ahead and went with it because I do run a business and it is a lot safer to keep my work and personal files separated.
The items below each hard drive are fans that keep the hard drive at a stable temperature.

Overheating is purported to be a common cause of drive failure. Overheating can cause the platters to expand. If the disk's read-and-write head comes in contact with the disk's surface, a catastrophic head crash can result.

Each drive has a specified lower and upper bounded operating temperature.

With the other cooling options I have selected this shouldn't be too much of a problem I have added it more as a safe-guard than anything else. 

So what is the price of all these fancy dancy items for the computer?

$2717.00 Including shipping and handling!

Now you might be like "Are you fucking nuts? That's a shit load of money."

Why no I am not, how dare you disrespect me anonymous viewer conjured up by my imagination!

I agree this is a lot of money and I need to complete the project i'm working on to have the rest of the money in order to order this fantastic workstation, but it is an investment that will pay itself of in a couple of months.   

If we compare this price to the previous computer:

I am getting a processor equal to theirs, a little less great video card (but it supports 2 monitors)

2 hard drives with cooling fans, 2 dvd player/burners, 2 monitors of damn good quality, and all the other amenities for  $1978 less. I consider that a success. 

I hope you found this helpful or entertaining and like always I encourage you to leave a comment. Go ahead and tell me what you think. If you have any advice for me or just wanna say "ERMAGEHRD LOLZ" go right ahead the comments are below.

FRAKKIN' COMPUTER!!!

I have decided that if I am going to continue my pursuit into digital art then I need a new computer. So I going to save up and build a customized computer that will suit my needs.

The only reason I'm telling you all this is because I wanted to share the experience with you guys.

Picking a computer can be a simple task for those who just need a few things, maybe it's portability or perhaps you just want to check you facebook. A standard computer is fine enough in those respects, however I need my comp to be a bit more... advanced.

Right now I'm working on a  Acer Aspire 5733z; it has an Intel Pentium P6200 2.1 GHz processor, and 4.00 GB RAM. It's not a great computer. In fact I cannot run Photoshop and Corel at the same time or Photoshop and Flash at the same time. All this leads to a decrease in my productivity. 

I just wanna make it clear that I'm a pretty busy guy. 

With a great influx of commissions, personal work (including a children's book that I will be posting about later), and running a business my days are packed. So I have to divide my time wisely. I do this by overviewing what projects I currently have to do and prioritizing them by importance and how long they will take to complete.

Any time that is spent on a project takes away from all my other endeavors. 

I figure that if I make the investment on a computer that will give me the ability to do tasks simultaneously then the increase in my productivity will go up which benefits us all. Yay!!!

Now I do not know that much about computers, a little more than most people, but that's all so I have been doing some research and I found out that macs are over priced.... That's a joke, well it's true but that wasn't my point. What I found out is that to get the most out of my buck and to get a comp that will be pretty damn perfect for what I need I should make my own (Well no shit) Then I had to look at how to make my own. Well there are some websites out there that will enable you to create a computer to your specifications and they build it for you! 

Ordinarily I would be all about building it myself, but that will just take too much time that I do not have.

So let's get on with it already!

Originally I was going to go with a:

Intel® Core™ i7-3960X Processor

16GB DDR3/1600MHz RAM
2 x Liquid GTX680 2GB Video
ASUS X79 Rampage IV MB
120GB x 2 Raid 0 OCZ SSD
2TB SATA3 7200 RPM Hard Drive
ASUS Xonar Sound Card
Azza Super Full-Tower Case

But this baby would end up costing me $4695.  

Yeah... no. 

But that was the 1st website I visited and I held really no reserves about it.

So I checked out probably 13 different sites and chose one I liked the best.

This was ComputerLX

they offer a free tech support for customers. All I had to do was give them a call and they helped me configure a computer. Also it should be noted that Avery (the guy I talked to) suggested a lot of options that would save me money. So that's awesome right there. I did end up selecting things that I don't really need, but with technology today it's good to get something a little more than you need so that it doesn't become obsolete within a week.

Surealism

I was sitting sketching a spine suffering from severe scoliosis. I do this a lot, and it occurred to me that I don't draw or paint enough of the body twisting on it's axis. So I entered Corel Painter 12 and started sketching out some bodies twisting. Unfortunately my limited skills prevented me from doing something dramatic (correctly). So for the actual painting I settled on a much simpler form (as you can see above). As you may have noticed as I say this a lot, "and one thing led to another". I began to add different elements; first starting with the horns (I have no idea why, but I love to draw horns on people, it adds this totally cliche other-worldly essence), then I dissected the piece that is floating off to the left (in hindsight it probably would look better if a had finished the body then moved the section, but you paint and learn), next I played with a bunch of different stripping, some using white or black lines with angles then some scrubby grungy type textures. then I had the idea of doing the colored lines you see above. I liked the colors initially, but something was off. I decided they looked too clean. So I had the idea of making them look like I had taped over the painting and painted in the lines that way, but as if I did a shitty job with it. I messed around with painter for awhile and found that I didn't like any effect I was getting with the brushes on there so I hid every layer except for what the lines were on saved it as a .png and opened it up in photoshop (every time I save something and open it in photoshop it bums me the fuck out just because my computer is not powerful enough to run both programs adequately, so I have to save and close Corel then open photoshop and I'm impatient) I basically use a textured eraser with an opacity set to 45% changing the brush textures every once in a while so that there weren't any obvious visual redundancies. I saved that opened it in Corel, pasted it and added the text. There you have it, A very simplified explanation of how I went about doing this piece. I hope you like it. I notice that it is incomplete, but I needed to get some sort of finished example done so that I wasn't worrying to much about the lady and forgot where I was going with the entire peice, I plan on going back to it later this week and rendering it completely fixing mistakes and making it a well polished piece. In an effort to get more interaction with my blog and it's viewers I will be offering a free 11"x14" framed print of this piece of art for free to a random person. The thing is for me to select someone you gotta comment and leave your name and e-mail or subscribe. Awesome right! You bet your sweet cinnamon rolls it is! this will also be a limited edition print which the winner will receive the first print out of 150.
In other news:
I have been wanting to make another video for awhile now. I have the technology I can make them better faster, with more resolution than before, only thing is. WHAT AM I GONNA DOOO!
Leave a comment and suggest something that you would like to see. Anything that your wonderful brain could imagine I will try my hardest to do!
As always thank you for viewing my blog I hope you found it entertaining and for all you artists out there teaching yourselves I hope you keep at it and evolve with me.    

So I've been trying not to sketch directly on to whatever it is I am painting on. I still sketch in my notebook, however i do not scan it in and re-sketch on my computer. Instead I tried "sketching" in color trying to get what I want without having to rely on a detailed sketch or even a loose one.

It is entirely rough, but that's how I like it. I didn't want to render anything out, just keep it "sketchy". Like I would do on an actual canvas with actual oil paints and oil brushes.
What do you think about the colors? Me I am unsure, I like them, but I have a feeling i could have selected some colors that mesh a little better. This is incomplete, but when finished will be available in my shop for purchase.