New website added at heidibada.com

Big news: I have completed basic training in web design. In order to serve you better, my web design blogging is now found at www.heidibada.com.

For art fans, an art section will be created to incorporate tutorials and work in progress as usual.

Thanks for following me there!

More on the ball

Now I've finished adjusting some materials properties to produce dull and shiny metal surfaces, and glossy at the end. What do you think? It was quick and easy, at least for these simple shapes. One must remember to apply metal-effects settings to all the colours on the objects.

Attempted plastic ball 

Dull metal

Shinier metal

Ceramic (glossy) finish made obvious with dim lighting

There you have it. Quick, easy, and right away you can imagine what you could do if your project involved cars, weapons, and other shiny or metal objects.

Blender 2-colour ball tutorial done, and it reminds me of IKEA

Quick summary: the tutorial for adding multiple materials to an object worked fine except for setting the Lamp to 'hemi'; my Blender version 2.73 doesn't seem to have this option where and when the tutorial asks for it. Perhaps I'll find it someday.

For now, I did see how to attach materials settings to individual parts of an object. Very easy! I wonder about all the useful applications of this, where I might have an object or character that has a design or multi-colour aspect.

Observe:

Quick update on modelling in Blender

My 'person' tutorial from a the past few days is finished, with hat in place. I'm going quickly into materials and textures tutorials, so for now I'll just share what you'd end up with if you follow the tutorial I did.

Again, I'd like to share that the wikibook tutorial is well-written and easy to follow.

Blender progress with wikibook: simple person in progress

Simple person tutorial finished

After several short sections, my person is finished. Soon I'll be adding a hat. FYI, the tutorial is found at a wikibook link called Blender 3D: Noob to Pro and it's very easy to understand. I'm using Blender 2.73 and the tutorial works fine. Some older tutorials I found were difficult just because keyboard shortcuts and other instructions didn't seem to work with 2.73, which is currently the latest stable release of Blender.

I'm starting to get an idea of all the modification and sculpting one can do with basic geometric building blocks and "modifiers." Then, apparently, so much more can be done physics simulations, textures, bones, and rigging. Between cgcookie.com's Blender tutorials and the Noob to Pro wikibook, I'm having fun and getting a good, organized feel for the software. I think it's a good sign that already, just a week or so into the process, I'm starting to get ideas for characters I want to model and environments I want to construct in Blender. 

Then I get inspired and get out my pastels or watercolours and draw quick sketches as usual to keep track of ideas and try them out with my trusted tools.

Here's my completed person, at several stages of modification today.

Computer hardware issues

I'd like to mention that I haven't found any hardware problems. I'm using a one-year-old iMac, base model with 16 GB memory, and it works fine. In the olden days, an ordinary personal computer wouldn't run programs that involved 3D calculations, I recall, and we always had extra processors in my family's computers to make sure drafting programs like AutoCad would run alright. 

It's very exciting to me, to see people without any drafting background able to work with an open source program that does extremely accurate visuals without having to struggle so hard and rely on technical math, programming, and drafting principles. 

And it looks awesome! I dare ya to search Google for Blender samples of graphics and animations. Films too, don't forget those! Here's one page of samples that I like: 27 Inspiring Blender Animations.

Blender exercises going well using wiki books

I'm following two sources to learn Blender so far. After some trial and error, I found that http://cgcookie.com and http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/ have good tutorials and information.

Cgcookie has some free tutorials, and many more are available which look useful once you join their modest $18/month membership. I may just join them myself. I'm doing approximately one free tutorial per day, and I predict that finding good ones for free will eventually become frustrating. Rather than seek endlessly for free learning, I'll probably be ready to pay up for some respected course or tutorial membership site. Meanwhile, perhaps like you, I want to learn enough to understand what I'm getting involved with.

Unsurprisingly, learning Blender is invigorating my traditional art practice as well. I have made two drawings that were important to me, in the past two days. I recall saying the same thing three days ago, too! I also want to learn Corel Painter but that one is further down my list right now for practical reasons - I have upcoming projects that will benefit from understanding Blender and 3D animation.

Today's tutorial exercise - modelling a basic human figure

Following a tutorial in Noob to Pro, I was able to produce a basic building-block figure without flaws,  following very clear instructions:

As the day (and week) progresses, I'll add more pictures. The next part of the tutorial starts to look a little more like a normal human figure!

Finished a comic today - Melon and Jelly

I have some plots ready to apply to some cartoony cat characters that I recently developed on paper, after their living in my mind for sooo long.

One image is finished, entirely created in ink. I'm waiting for some camera equipment to charge up so I can photograph it in my highest quality for archiving, in case I'm famous some day. Meanwhile, I have cell phone photos to share.

In the beginning

The idea was an intro to the characters: one cat stuck in a tree, doing what kitties do, and the other patiently trying to get his or her attention. I wanted to try a perspective drawing, so the tree cat would be close up and in your face, to emphasize how animal instincts take over. First I collected photos of plants. I sketched plants. I wandered suspiciously in the garden outside my apartment building, with a clipboard and sketchpaper in hand. My drawings turned out pretty well, but there wasn't really an ideal specimen to practice on. It needed to be a houseplant, like a potted tree or something sturdy enough to (sorta) support the weight of a cat climbing it.

Then I needed images of how a cat looks when clinging to a tree. That was easier, thanks to a Google image search. After that, I had enough technical info to begin drawing on illustration paper. I also knew that I wanted to use ink, because I received so many interesting and supportive comments for my only ink painting so far which hung in a gallery a few months ago. This image will be ink success #2!

Plant shaping up with perspective

Cat body in progress

Background colours starting to appear

Inking gone wild

When working with ink, I have difficulty deciding where to start. So, I usually start filling in some colour, similar to adding mass or tones in an underpainting. With ink, I'm not sure how one does an underpainting, so since I'm using acrylic ink, I treat it a bit like an acrylic painting, where subsequent colouring covers over even the most bold initial marks.

The 'cat up tree' image is only my second ink drawing that is fully painted with ink. I'm not sure ink is meant to be used this way, but I like how it looks, so I'll keep doing some pieces this way.

Unfortunately I constantly forget that some inks are opaque, and many of mine are transparent. It's challenging to lay down colour such as white, to hide a mistake or change some shapes. For example, my little cat standing on the floor was intended to be a beige colour, but once the brown dried, white glazes looked strange, and I found that pinks subdued my harsh brown much better than white did. Between the start and finish of this image, I added white and cool grey to my collection of colours, so that I can make beige, and subtle shadows for occasions like this, where the whole page is going to be filled with colour.

It would also be ideal to take the time to add tones before diving greatly into colouring for these situations. For some reason, I feel compelled when using ink, to just dive right in and colour the items. Maybe it's the nature of acrylic. It dries quickly and you can address one piece of an image at a time, quite differently than working with watercolours.

Subsequent comic panels will probably be made digitally with Painter or iPad apps like ArtRage or ProCreate, or minimally-inked, to save time and get my ideas out quickly.

Green ground balances green leaves perhaps

Still learning colour mixing

Close to finishing

Background became golden to help plant stand out

I decided on blue, no surprise...I like bright colours

Don't drink the water! The coffee is okay, though

Cats are starting to have faces and details

Still not quite finished...and it's been a long process

Finally success!

The finished piece by Heidi Bada

I like how the flying bug turned out; he seems to be glowing and appealing to the blue cat Melon. The little guy on the floor kinda stuck in my mind to be a slower-moving character, so I'm glad he or she (I still haven't decided) looks cute and cuddly in pink, since my attempted beige didn't work. I was surprised how painstaking it was to create highlight and shadow sides to the tree and cat. The shadow portions involved grey sometimes, and other times just more brown, and yellow and white helped produce highlights. With practice, I'm sure this task will become easier. As I said before, acrylic ink dries quickly, including the stock on my palette where I was trying to mix lighter and darker shades for the tree and Melon (the blue cat). Now that I think of it, the pink cat should probably be female. Seems obvious now. But we'll have to wait and see! I guess that's my comic strip cliffhanger for you today.

Images are provided for entertainment; please don't copy without discussing with me first.

FYI- all images everywhere on my blog are All Rights Reserved. Do not copy or use the images in any commercial manner, such as printing to post on your wall or pasting into your website. I will consider requests to use images for academic and personal purposes, and I'm available for hire for commercial image creation and am willing to discuss rights management arrangements for digital, merchandise, and other rights to commercial and personal usage of my images.

New pastel pencils today

I was tempted to try a few different brands. So, I chose a few useful colors in 2 different brands. You can see them in the photo below.

I just was trying out the new tools, and produced a landscape that felt like Parksville. I thought I might as well share it!

I like all of the new pencils. I chose two brands, and one is softer while the other feels a bit harder and faster moving on the paper. Conte a Paris is softer, and more slow moving (I'd say) as it is quite capable of laying down pigment on the page with little pressure. Koh-i-noor seems a bit harder, and more able to keep a sharp point. That could be helpful for slight edging on items you want to pop out of the background or to separate from adjacent objects.

I also purchased one soft pastel stick. I've never used one before, so it was just an experiment. You'll see it in the photo below in the sky and the sandy foreground as a bright sunlight yellow area. The Brand is Schminke and it too is very soft and grippy on the paper. It takes very little effort to get a lot of color onto the page. I will enjoy using these again although I only own one so far, because it will blend beautifully with pastel pencils or PanPastels.

FYI- PanPastels is both a brand and a description. The product is powder rather than in a stick form, and is sold in little plastic containers. You apply the powder to paper using sponges typically.

I will keep practicing with these pencils and you'll see my progress over time. I'll also try to figure out if I can turn this photo 90 degrees counter-clockwise without having to email it to myself from my phone.

Park photo using cell photo

I took some photos while passing by some woods. It was one of those late afternoon, winter scenes that gives golden light. All I had on me was a cell phone, and I'm delighted with the results. The photo is very close to what I recall seeing with my eyes.

Just a reminder to take photos of everyday scenes. Include people you know, or people you don't know. Or, just record the situation as-is, with no story or personal attachment. As far as I'm concerned, this photo is simple beauty and nature. Ironically, the parkland is located next to a busy, noisy highway.

Latest sketching practice - erasing for highlights

Right now I'm working through some materials that teach life drawing. I'm doing this so that I can draw better cartoons. But before I get to life forms, it says I'm supposed to practice using different strokes, pencils, pressures, etc.

Here is a sample of a fun way to create highlights gently using a kneaded eraser. Clearly I'm no expert in drawing plants!