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One week ’til Photoshop World

It’s that time of year again.  A week from tomorrow, I’m off to Photoshop World Las Vegas.

The week before is always a bit hectic, largely because I’ve got a couple of illustration projects to wrap up, and I need to draw double the amount of editorial cartoons to cover my newspapers while I’m away.  That’s the same for any time off I take, so it’s just part of the job.  This year, I’ve got a lot to look forward to, beginning with the fact that I found out this weekend that I am once again a finalist in the illustration category for the Guru Awards!

Great Horned Owl TotemMy Great Horned Owl Totem painting was one of the three paintings I entered, and the one that made the cut.  Considering how much work I put into those feathers, I’m very pleased.  While I would like to win again (why lie?), it really is enough just to be a finalist, because there is an immense amount of talent at this event, and I take nothing for granted.

My latest DVD will launch this week and will be for sale at the PhotoshopCAFE booth on the Expo Floor.  Looking forward to seeing and promoting it at the event.  I’ve also got some industry folks and clients I want to spend time with regarding upcoming and ongoing projects.  The importance of the connections and relationships you make and build on at this sort of event really can’t be overstated.  Email, Skype, and social networking are great ways to stay connected, but none of them measure up with face-to-face interaction.

While I’m again taking  a number of classes this year, (only one of which is on illustration technique) I’m most looking forward to the time I’ll spend with other creatives and industry professionals who enjoy and are passionate about their work.  Every year, I return from Photoshop World initially exhausted, but creatively inspired.  It’s an addictive experience.

You can be sure that I’ll be updating the blog at least once from Vegas, but for more regular updates, you can always check out my Facebook page here or follow me on Twitter.

 

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Tom Richmond

While there are many artists I admire, there are a select few whose artwork continues to inspire me and makes me want to be a better artist.  I’ll consistently tell people who ask me for career advice, to find and learn from artists whose work you like and who are better than you are.

The first part is important.  While it’s easy to find people who are better artists, if you don’t like their work, it just won’t make you want to be better by seeing it.  Consistently, I can go to artists like Drew Struzan, Neville Page, and Jason Seiler and know that I’ll find work I’m not able to do yet, but because I love their work, it inspires me to try.  Better artists will almost always have something to teach you, because hopefully by the time you’ve gotten better, so have they.

Another artist who consistently makes me green with envy (in a good way) is Tom Richmond, a very well known and popular MAD magazine and caricature artist.  I’ve been a fan of his for many years.  If you draw caricatures, and haven’t seen Tom’s work, you might want to take a look.  He’s got a great website and blog.  I especially enjoy his Sunday Mailbag posts where he answers reader questions.  Tom’s got a great reputation in the industry not only for his work, but he’s active in the community and always willing to offer helpful advice.

Recently, he mentioned that he had taken a bunch of limited edition prints of the one you see here to Comic-Con in San Diego and ended up coming back with some.  When I saw the print (shown here, with permission), I knew I was buying one.  It made me laugh out loud.  There’s just something in Tom’s style  of drawing that I’m missing in my own cartoons, some life and action I want to capture but am not quite there yet, and I knew this would inspire me to keep trying.  So it will be matted and framed and hang in my office where I can easily see it.  It’s a great print.  Still some available here, if you’re interested.

Incidentally, Tom’s long awaited book “The Mad Art of Caricature” (which I ordered this morning) is going to be released next month.  If you want to draw caricatures, there are a lot of great books out there, but without even having seen it yet, aside from sneak peeks on his blog, I have a feeling this will be at the top of the list.

Thanks, Tom!

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Tech Stuff

Like many guys, I’m lured by gadgets, things that go click, whir, light up and basically are adult versions of the cool toys we had as boys.  But fortunately, I don’t make impulse buys.  I have a fear of buyer’s remorse, so I will very rarely buy anything without thinking it through.  Took me two months of going back and forth in my head last summer about whether or not the iPad was a toy or something I really would benefit from.  As I use it everyday,  I have no regrets and consider it one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

Here are a few fairly recent buys that I’m pleased with.

ZAGGmate iPad keyboard – To find out all the details about this wonderful little device, head on over to their website.  I’ve known about this keyboard for at least six months and I’ve gone back to look at it every once in awhile, usually after typing something lengthy on the iPad screen, dealing with autocorrect and annoying editing issues.  Love the iPad, don’t like typing on the screen.  I’m quite a fast typist, comes from years of admin office work before I was a full-time artist, so I find typing on the touchscreen to be anything but user friendly.

The ZAGGmate works on Bluetooth, so contrary to what you might think from looking at their site, it doesn’t even need to be touching the iPad to work well.  I’ve often left the iPad in the Apple case, propped it up on its spine on a table and just typed with the keyboard as is.  I bought this great little Case Logic sleeve at Staples, which holds the iPad (in the Apple case), the ZAGGmate keyboard, plus it has a small pouch on the front for headphones, my Wacom Bamboo Stylus, a USB key, and the makeshift glove for drawing.

So whether I want to use the ZAGGmate as a case for the iPad, as a keyboard, or both, I’m very pleased with the purchase.

Canon PIXMA MX870 Printer – Bought this at the beginning of the year from B&H, as I realized I needed a colour printer.  To be honest, this has sat in my office, in the box for the majority of the year.  Finally unpacked it and set it up a couple of weeks ago, replacing my all-in-one Xerox PE16.  While the Xerox was only black and white, it did the job for a number of years, but in today’s terms, it was big, clunky, and finally outlived its usefulness.

I don’t do a lot of printing of my images as I send those out to be done professionally.  While I need to print off reference photos for sketching, and the requisite office documents that go with running any office, for the most part, my experience with color printers had been less than ideal.  Ink that dried out all the time, constantly doing print tests, all of the problems that have plagued home printers for years.  What I didn’t realize, is that over the many years I’ve been using the Xerox, technology has advanced.  Who’d a thunk it?

After checking with colleagues and reading reviews, I decided on this model and so far, I’m not disappointed at all.  Easy setup, very nice printing in both color and black/white, copier and fax work well (can’t remember the last time I faxed, though) and best of all, the scanner is dead quiet.  The Xerox scanner was horrible and loud, so I’ve just been taking digital photos of my sketches and importing them into Photoshop that way (don’t laugh, it works very well!).  But I’ve started using a scanner again, too, because the quality of the Canon is excellent.

Even the replacement ink cartridges are reasonably priced.  If anything changes with the quality or performance, I’ll be sure to post an update, but for now, very pleased.

Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera H70 – While we have a Nikon D60, which is a great user friendly camera for anybody who wants to learn more about photography, but still wants the point-and-shoot option, it’s not exactly portable in a jacket pocket.  As I’m heading to Photoshop World in a few weeks, and don’t want to lug around the Nikon, I wanted to get a new compact point-and-shoot.  Our current model is many years old, a Pentax 3.2 Megapixels, so very obsolete.

While I normally would have done a lot of research before buying another camera, this one was almost an impulse buy on my part, because I did very little research and what I did do was on my phone while comparing prices at three different stores.  Retailing for $250 (much less than our first point-and-shoot cost years ago), I got a sale price of $219.00, and it’s a great little camera.  16.2 Megapixels, 10X optical zoom, takes two different kinds of data cards, and has a lot of options normally not found on a point-and-shoot.  I’ll need to spend some time learning the ins and outs, but so far, pretty pleased with the purchase.

I’m probably done buying hardware and accessories this year, but who knows?  Come to think of it, I really could use a zoom lens for the Nikon.

 

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Bailey

This is my latest painting.  While I treated it like a commission, this was a labour of love, as it was a gift for my mother’s birthday.  Bailey belongs to my folks, but as anybody who has ever met a shih tzu knows, my folks actually belong to her.  She’s a real sweetheart and my parents just adore her.

I’ve wanted to paint this for a couple of years now, but could never seem to get out from under the work.  I finally made the time this summer and I’m pleased with how it turned out.  I couldn’t have done as good a job two years ago, but then I’ll probably want to do another one two years from now.

This one was incredibly tough because it was personal.  While I try to do my best with every painting I do, this one will be done on canvas, framed, and since I already know where my Mom is hanging it, will be displayed prominently in their home.  I’ll have to see this for a long time.  So I nitpicked it to death, and given unlimited time, I could probably work on it ’til Christmas.  Sometimes you just have to hit ‘Save’ for the last time and move on.

While I’ve still got other illustration commissions to work on in the next few weeks, this will be the last painting I work on until after Photoshop World, so sometime in mid-September.  That’s actually a good thing, because I’ve finished three in the past few weeks (including the DVD), so I’d like a little break from it.

But I’ve got big plans for a number of new paintings in the Fall.  Some of them are commissions, some are for my Rocky Mountain Wildlife series, and at least one will start off my Pacific Coast Wildlife series, which I’m very excited about.

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Catching my breath.

Looking back on my career so far, it would seem that I spend most of my time living through periods of deadline panic with large projects, followed by periods of lesser panic where I figure that NOW I can finally gain some control over my life and relax.  This delusion is then followed by the next period of deadline panic with a large project.  I’m a slow learner.

Last week, I finished another DVD for PhotoshopCAFE, which definitely falls under the ‘deadline panic with large project’ category.  While I know that it will be ready for Photoshop World in Las Vegas the first week of September, I would imagine it will be available sooner than that online.  This was a big one for me.  While my first DVD effort was on cartooning, I’m pretty comfortable with that process, so even though the actual recording was hell (why mince words?),  the subject matter was fairly routine, as I’ve been drawing cartoons in that fashion every day for a number of years.

This second DVD, the recording and painting were both challenging, but still very enjoyable.  The editing, however, was just challenging.  I enjoy painting more than any of the other creative work I do, so I wanted the painting in the DVD to be my best effort.  While I’m pleased to say that I think I achieved that, I’m relieved that it’s done.  I ended up taking an involuntary day off once all the files had been sent, because I was completely exhausted.

Finished a commission of a cat painting this week.  There’s a great back story to this one, but I can’t share it, or the full painting, until after the client gives it as a gift.  Keeping secrets is often part of the job.  But I’m happy with how it turned out.   Recording the painting DVD created a little pressure (self-induced, of course) to up my game, and I’m looking forward to my next wildlife painting.  I’ve been thinking about this one  for almost a year and I’m excited to get started on it.

This week, I intend to finish a painting of my parent’s dog, Bailey, a wonderful little shih tzu with a great personality.  Been wanting to paint her for awhile and pleased I finally get to give this gift to my Mom.

I’ve got one more large illustration gig to wrap up in August, but other than that, I’m almost caught up.  I still have my regular editorial cartoons to draw, and five or six extras to get done in advance for my week away at Photoshop World Las Vegas at the beginning of September.  But, all in all, I think I’m finally going to be able to find a few days of downtime soon, gain some control over my life and relax.

Did I mention that I’m a slow learner?

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Of DVD’s and Don Diego

This is my latest painting, one very close to my heart as this little fella, name of Don Diego, belongs to a good friend of mine in Nebraska, and is the subject of my latest DVD from PhotoshopCAFE.  While I still have some editing to do, and am a couple of days away from being completely finished the DVD, the painting portion is done.

I’m quite pleased with how this process went.  I found the last DVD very difficult, but this one felt very natural.  Recording it was a real pleasure, and I forgave myself a few flubs here and there, in favor of authenticity.  I’m really looking forward to seeing this DVD make its debut at Photoshop World in Las Vegas this year.

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The Bow Valley SPCA

We are fortunate to have a wonderful SPCA facility here in the Bow Valley, an area that encompasses the communities of Exshaw, Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise.  Run by very dedicated volunteers, it’s a no-kill, no-cage shelter.  No animals are euthanized there unless it’s a question of age and suffering.  They’re all very well cared for and all efforts are made to find all of these animals homes.  They do behavioral rehab as well.  Community vets and volunteers give their time for these animals and their list of success stories grows larger all the time.  Here is their website, if you’d like to take a look.  http://www.bowvalleyspca.org/

I have a few friends who give a LOT of their time to this facility. We’re talking more hours than a part-time job each week.  While there are many  in this area that support the idea of the SPCA, and do make regular donations, they could really use some more volunteers.  I’ll be honest, I’ve chosen not  to volunteer in person at the SPCA, because even though these animals are well cared for, I’m a heart-on-my-sleeve type of guy, especially when it comes to animals.  I honestly don’t think I could handle it.

I’m a little too judgmental of people who abandon their pets when they become an inconvenience, and some of the animals end up at the facility because of abuse.  I believe that how a person treats their pet is one of the truest indicators of their character.  I know that I would be upset a lot, or I would develop very thick skin, neither of which I want.

But I believe in the great work the facility is doing, so I help in ways that I can, although I wish I could do more.  I’ve done some ads and graphics for the SPCA over the years, and recently one of my connections resulted in a very generous donation of the complete graphics suite from Adobe (thanks again to Russell Brown!),  but I was recently asked to come up with some cartoon T-shirt ideas.   They basically just want funny, cute, pet themed toons.  So I compiled a list, they selected a number of them, and this is the first one, with more to follow in the next couple of months.

Hopefully the T-shirts are popular and it results in continued funding for such a great facility, which really is a credit to this community.

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Second go ’round.

This is a work in progress.  Bailey is my parents’ dog, and the painting will be a late birthday present for my Mom.  This painting served as my rehearsal for the early stages of another DVD for PhotoshopCAFE, because in it, I’m painting another little dog.  At this stage, the rehearsal is over, because every painting is different and digital painting is not a step-by-step exercise.

Recorded a couple of sessions this morning, and I’m amazed at how easy it is this time around.   There are a few simple (and probably very obvious) reasons for this.

This is my second DVD.  I found the first one, Cartoon Illustration Techniques in Photoshop, to be incredibly stressful.  I’d never done a DVD before, I was learning the hardware, software, and was obsessed with making sure I included everything I possibly could for the beginner as well as keeping the experienced user interested.  That’s actually tougher than it sounds, because as in all things, once you’ve learned a skill, you often forget how to break it down to simple steps because it has become instinctual.

I took guitar lessons a couple of years ago.  My instructor is a very talented musician and excellent teacher, but every once in awhile after he showed me a particularly difficult finger picking song, he would go to break it down into a sequence and he’d have to take a few minutes to remember how he did it.  The playing of that song was so instinctual and set into sense memory that to break it down into individual chords and finger movements was tough for him to do.

That’s what it was like teaching all of steps I go through every single day when drawing editorial cartoons.  And while I’ve heard from a number of people that bought, enjoyed and learned a lot from that DVD, I’m glad I did that one first and saved the current one for second, because frankly, this one is a hell of a lot more fun.

This DVD is not for new-to-Photoshop beginners.  Anybody who wants to learn digital painting should already have a working knowledge of the software, at least for the techniques I’ll be teaching.  I don’t have to say, ‘this is how you open a document,’ or ‘this is how you create a layer.’  With the cartooning DVD, if I missed a step that I take for granted, it could really confuse someone who has never used Photoshop before.

With painting, there aren’t many ‘step by step’ lessons possible, because every painting is different and if I tried to do the same painting twice, the end result wouldn’t look the same.  With this DVD, I’m only doing one take for every session, and oddly enough, I’m fine with it.  The painting itself will take 15-20 hours.  I’m not going to redo two or three hours unless it’s absolutely required.

So this time around, I’m winging it, creating a painting from scratch, from the first brush stroke to the last.  Most of the stuff I’m talking about is whatever pops into my head based on what I’m seeing and thinking about the image in real time.  Listening to the playback of the sessions I recorded this morning, yes, I did notice a few uh’s and um’s.  Thankfully, not many as I do try to speak well on a daily basis, but nobody’s perfect.  With the last DVD, I would re-record the whole session to minimize that.  This time around, I’m leaving them in.  Because what’s also in there, which can’t be scripted, is animation in my voice, the excitement that I feel when I paint.  I love that!  Having that in there is worth a few um’s and uh’s, because I know that multiple takes would make that go away.

Recording the last DVD took a long time, kept me up nights, and was one of the most stressful things I’ve gone through in the past year.  This time around, I decided that I’m going having a good time with it.

So if you do decide to part with your hard-earned money and take a chance on hearing what I have to say and teach about digital painting, I hope it’ll be evident to you just how much I love this work, and that as a consequence, you’ll forgive a few uh’s and um’s.

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Art Cards with Island Art Publishers

As of yesterday, I have entered into a licensing agreement for my Totem paintings with Island Art Publishers for art cards!

Island Art was my first choice as I’m a fan of a number of their artists and I’m pleased that they’ll be representing my work.  Island Art primarily supplies a large number of retailers and museums throughout Western Canada, and also distributes through Eastern Canada, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

I believe this region is the best possible market for my current Totem series, as it features animals found in the Rocky Mountains and Western Canada.  When I begin my West Coast wildlife series in the Fall, I’m confident that the images will find their way into the right stores and museums along the coast, thanks to this arrangement.

The first images to be put into production will be the mammals in my Totem series; the Wolf, Grizzly, Moose, Elk and Ground Squirrel.  I’ve seen the layout proofs and they look great!  The cards go into production next week and should be available to retailers a week or two after that.