Illustration Friday: CAKE

For the Illustration Friday topic CAKE.
A mixed media illustration derived from a photograph (the cake), some pencil sketching (the building), and a little photoshop enhancement using a wacom tablet (outlines, signs, and type).

Envy, Pt Dieu

Envy. I'm over it!
Okay, here's the scoop. I've had my Wacom tablet since last Tuesday and I have been so busy at work that I haven't really felt much like playing with it when I get home. But I have fiddled with it just a little bit (about 30 - 45 minutes each the past two nights) and I have come to this conclusion....It's fun, it's interesting, and it can do a lot of neat things BUT....it can't replace a good old pencil and piece of paper. For free-hand drawing it's "clunky" and difficult. It is easy to put marks where you don't want them and I find myself backing up, un-doing, and erasing a lot more than I had anticipated that I would.

The Wacom tablet is a great tool for the graphic artist who wants to put together a design quickly using the pre-sets (pencils, brushes, and shape tools) in the various PhotoShop programs and it is really good for that but ( to Janet ) I think that it might actually hinder an already excellent pen and pencil artist. If you are really good at pencil sketching the wacom just ain't gonna make you better; probably the opposite.

I'm still going to use mine although probably not as an art tool very often. I've found that I can draw right into Excel spreadsheets and Word documents with it and even hand write notes on my computer amoung many other things.

To conclude my little impromptu product review:
The Wacom tablet........great artist tool? Nah, not really.
Neat graphics arts tool? Um, yeah.
Neato computer input device? Absolutely!
Just not (in my opinion) a tool for the creating realistic sketches.

Of course I reserve the right to change this review if, at any time, I do actually figure out how to be truly creative with the Wacom which I am sure will take some time and much patience.

ENVY

I envy people who have mastered the wacom tablet. I treated myself and bought one for my birthday. This (bad) self portrait is my first attempt at using the tablet but I can already see that this is definitely going to be a lot of fun when I master the feel of the pen and learn to control things.
Perhaps I could do a little better if I started to wear my glasses when I draw!

FASCINATING ART

I just stumbled across one of the most fascinating art websites and have to post this link. The artist, Jessica Joslin, creates art and sculpture from small animal bones and they are both elegant and awesome. Check them out at her website http://www.jessicajoslin.com/jessica/index.html

Photo Friday: MASTERPIECE

Creation. A piece created for the May 12 PHOTO FRIDAY subject Masterpiece. Three seperate photographs combined into one then enhanced with photoshop filter effects.

Illustration Friday: FAT

A quick piece for ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY. This is a combination of photograph, pencil sketch, and PhotoShop manipulation. A FAT pencil in my FAT fingers.

Happy Birthday JANET

I know people who merely tolerate their sisters or brothers but I am truly blessed to have three sisters that I can also call my best friends. The oldest of those sisters is Janet and today is her birthday. For the next ten days she and I will be the same age. As you can see from the older photographs we were always close as kids. Now we live several hours apart so we have to keep up in emails, phone calls, and blogs. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Two days and counting

It's almost time to celebrate!