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A few weeks ago I joined the budding art-focused social media site called Cara. I’ve enjoyed building up my presence there and finding some community among those fearsomely talented folks. Last weekend Magdalena Baltes proposed a friendly art exchange, paint her pet in exchange for one of her paintings of yours. Looking at her work,…
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This is just a crab, a sea crab of some sort. I bumped into her looking at references from the Love Life Drawing community monthly animal drawing challenges and got excited about the challenging colors on display. A crab has a fascinating combination of hard edges and organic forms. I think she turned out pretty…
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I tried to take the lessons of that last painting and apply them to a different kind of subject. Flowers require either going all in on detail or finding some balance between detail and suggestion that, frankly, I still haven’t found. I don’t think this painting is very successful. Let’s put on the critical analysis…
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Hell yeah! This is a painting of Aftyn Rose, based on one of the most artistic of her Instagram photos. I have long wanted to do it, but hesitated due to confidence issues around the complicated lighting and shadows. But when I set out to work through my issues with painting brushes, a reference with…
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Welcome back to the amazing rosie_rosie_rosie in the pose (and sentiment) that brought her to my attention in the first place. To be clear, the title of this post came from her. What can I say about this wonderful figure? She’s obviously a gorgeous lady. But even more than that, my eye was drawn to…
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Please welcome Reddit user rosie_rosie_rosie to the site! She is a beautiful young woman who was happy to aid my journey of learning by agreeing to be a subject here. This first work is a study in revelation, showing off her gorgeous figure behind a shroud of denim. I’d like to do more work with…
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I’ve been pretty busy lately and haven’t had much time to create or post anything. I’m hip deep in a branch of the Chimera-md code making a rudimentary user authentication layer. More on that down the road. I have also signed up for a new painting featuring a sexy, new model, so you can look…
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Coming from the C++ world, the process of building Chimera-md has been remarkably smooth. Despite not being an expert at Rust or web development, the breadth of well-considered libraries made available by the Cargo package manager made everything a breeze. The only part that’s at all clever, and therefore worth documenting, is my use of…
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In the last week, I’ve spent a big chunk of time refining the Chimera-md server software and my own installation of it. I’m making progress! The most notable item is that I started working on a logo for the server, which you can see above. It needs a lot of work, but you can see…
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Recently I published the source code for my project, Chimera-md. I think it’s now ready to unveil to more folks. A key challenge there was making it easier to install. Now there’s a Docker image for running on 64-bit Linux servers. (Potentially other platforms would be valuable? But I think this is the current expectation.)…
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Over the last few weeks I have been building my first Rust-based web application. There’s still some work to be done, but it is ready enough for a public debut. I am proud to present Chimera-md, a Markdown-aware web server. My intention is to build it as a Docker image to run on my NAS,…
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My figure drawing work continues. This week’s work spans two segments of the book, so I apologize for the big swing. In these first couple, we’re rounding up the gesture section. Gesture drawings are about curve, animation, capturing the spirit of a movement. These drawings should be fast, and should never look stiff. Mine still…
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Learning from Michael Hampton’s Figure Drawing: Design and Invention continues with a further 6 pages with of sketches. The book isn’t giving work assignments (at least so far), so I’m just following along with his drawings, trying to get a feel for the rhythms and lines. I’m trying to get into the headspace. I feel…
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I have started a new book for learning figure drawing. It is Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton. (The link is to an earlier printing, but I’m sure it’s close enough to follow along, if you were so inclined.) I remember learning about Hampton from a Proko YouTube video and being impressed with…
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This is a portrait of Aftyn Rose, based on a reference that is important to me in a way that made it hard to do justice. This is attempt number four. I have tried to come at this over a span of many months. Each time I try, my style is different, my intentions are…
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I had the chance to visit a place called Spy Pond (near Boston) on a cloudy New Year’s day and took a picture out over the water. I was charmed by that place, which I hope comes through in the painted rendition above. I like all the moody, desaturated colors and organic shapes. With landscapes,…
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A tasty little drawing of a very cheeky lady having fun with a ruler. Color blends in pastel continue to be hard, but I like the results. Fabric folds I’m less happy about, but are at least serviceable. Let’s talk about artistic vision. Many artists are adept at seeing the work well before it is…
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Here’s a whole mess of little portraits to augment my painting exercise! This is the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, apparently taken quite recently. Perhaps a piece of promotional material for that Picard show? A friend shared the reference image, with its wonderful high-contrast photography and marvelous facial expressions, and I knew I…
Dismal.ink
A place to put my stuff
