There still seems to be a bit of a stigma attached to using tech to make fine art. When you don’t paint or draw from life; if you use a photo, certain people devalue the finished product. I have had one fine art photographer get very defensive about using technology without even being asked. He told me “People ask me ‘How do you get such bright colors, is that Photoshopped?’ I say it’s none of your business!”

Yikes. That told me not only is he using Photoshop (It was pretty obvious anyway) but he doesn’t want to admit it to customers. It’s seen as somehow you cheated or worked less on the art piece.

I think people should be proud of using Photoshop. After all, it is a valuable learned skill, and not everyone can use the program effectively. I still fell as though I have more to learn than I know and I use the program every day at my day job.

I’ve been working on my latest piece “A Love Story” for about a month. Photoshop just really saved me some heartache on it, and here is how.

This drawing began with two reference photos. A toad in a glass of water and a rose in an empty beer bottle. I couldn’t leave a toad in a glass of water for the 20-30 hours this piece took to finish so I photographed it. Poorly, I think. He’s partly out of focus. I adjusted the toad’s head size to be larger and elongated the glass in Photoshop for a better composition. Because I don’t know if soaking in beer is good for amphibians who absorb things through their skin, I went in and added a yellow tint to the liquid to beer-ify it instead of plunking a toad into a beer. The photo itself was very lopsided and needed more to be any kind of art. Years later, I used a dummy glass and set up a beer bottle still life so I would know where best to merge the two photos. I put them together and adjusted the composition. Thanks, Photoshop.

Jump to me being almost finished with the drawing. I  had worked on this a couple hours a night every other day or so for a month. I had applied several layers to the background and was not satisfied with the color or the effect it was having. I had this:

It didn’t feel right, but the layers of background were getting so thick I couldn’t make another color “mistake” without having to erase the entire background – a daunting task on a 13×19″ drawing. The tooth of the paper; the part that will take pigment from colored pencil was 90% full. So I took the above photo on my iPhone and brought it into Photoshop to play around. I came up with this:

I darkened the background and ground. I wrote myself some notes to add red to the leaves, make the toad’s footpads a little lighter and work on the beer bottle. I went back to work on the drawing. It was tough to add another layer to the saturated background but I did it with the help of an old t-shirt and my finger to blend the new layer. It actually earned me a blister on my pointer finger.

The “finished” product:

It really is a subtle difference, but if I had done this next layer in a color that didn’t work it would have easily added another 4 hours to this piece, and one wrong erasure could mean death for the rose or bottle.

Here is a before and after. Proof that a little can go a long way:

Finishing touches include the bottle label, adding some orange to the rose and darkening the background inside the beer glass. Phew! The smoothness of the Photoshop mockup was lost long ago when I pressed too hard on the background and bottom of the drawing. Next time I’ll go a little easier on the paper now that I know my newest drawing board is a little soft.

I see a couple things I don’t like now. Seeing it smaller on the computer amplifies things I might not see in real life. The middle bottle reflection has to go. There is a distracting unevenness in the ground near the flower petal. The right side of the glass could be less lumpy. The rightmost highlight on the glass needs a little evening up where the “beer” is.

Thanks, Photoshop. It will never be “perfect,” but I let go of perfection a long time ago. The role of technology in my work isn’t to make something exactly like a photograph, but something better than a photograph.

Here is how this one began; an idea poorly captured in my living room before releasing this model back into the wild. I think I made this drawing better than the photo, and I hope you do too.

I had this idea and procured the apple shaped jar from Etsy. It’s a nice jar. This jar sat on our piano for nearly two years. We put rocks in it. The snake I was going to put inside of it grew too large to fit. Finally, with a month left before the 21st Annual CPSA International Show stops accepting entries, I began planning the drawing once and for all.

Snake, apple, jar and flowers all posed and viola~ “Still Life With Apple Jar”.

Hopefully it makes it into this year’s CPSA show. If it does or does not, I am happy with the direction of my artwork lately. I can look around my house and see a complete body of work that all relates to one another. It’s great. My next piece is very similar to this one, and then when I am finished with that, it will be spring.

My spring plans are to catch a frog or two. My work is missing frogs. They’re faster than toads and won’t sit for photos as well, but maybe somewhere out there, there’s a crown shaped jar?

I was totally flattered and sad that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want “The Wrong One” as an art piece to be turned into a book cover. That didn’t seem fair to the people who had bought it as a fine art print. So what I did is re-draw the image with slightly different specifications for the book. It turned out great! And now I have been published, though not in words quite yet.

Here is where you can order a copy. I hate to admit it, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m embarrassed – I want to read it, but time is always an issue. I also already have my “prince” – or more accurately the Mr. Frog to my Mrs. Frog. So, I pledge to read it in the next month and report back. Maybe my prince is still out there? Heh! At least putting this challenge to myself on the blog will help me get my butt in reading gear.

The original VS the book cover. You can see there are differences, but of course they are very similar. Two poor toads who weren’t the “Right One.” If kissing these guys grosses you out, save yourself some heartache and warts and read Gianna’s book!!

]]> http://toadsongs.com/2013/03/28/ive-finally-been-published/feed/ 0 toadsongs rosewood Wrong_oneFinalSM http://toadsongs.com/2013/02/14/winter-break/ http://toadsongs.com/2013/02/14/winter-break/#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:09:25 +0000 Toadsongs http://toadsongs.com/?p=245 ]]> After a winter of writing and re-learning how to knit, I am back to drawing. My interests wax and wane, and definitely turn to other things in the fall and winter. It takes about a week after Christmas for me to be truly sick of winter, and so now I’m working on something springy.

A painted turtle with a toad on top of him with a butterfly on him. First it was just a toad on a turtle, but I added a butterfly halfway through. Here it was a week ago:

The background was lacking. In the reference photo, the pond behind the creatures is gross green. I tried to add some brighter colors but it still looked blech.

This is why I love Stonehenge paper. It takes abuse well. I tried adding some grass to the foreground and didn’t like that, either. So a couple erasers later I had this:

Doesn’t look too much different, except you can see the original top of the drawing better. I erased into the butterfly, toad and turtle so that the end result would blend better.

This is where Photoshop is invaluable. I first tried to colorize the background to see what I liked better. Some more reds helped, but I messed with the background so much it looked pretty messy. Finally I decided it needed to look more like water. A section of photo behind the animals gave me a much better idea of what I wanted to do. So here it is today:

And soon it will be finished. Thanks to Stonehenge for being so flexible and for Luminance pencils for being willing to cover most anything.

This time I immediately thought PRINTER! I have access to great printers at work, but it isn’t always practical or affordable to make a lot of prints at work on the large format printers. I have been lucky this year with good Etsy print sales so far this year and it is great to be able to print on demand and be in full control of my own art prints. Now I’ll have that capability 24/7.

I chose an Epson because I am familiar with them and their papers and ICC profiles. This printer’s inks are rated to last 200 years; more if the print is kept in darkness. Coupled with acid free papers, you get a great quality print that will last.

This photo shows a print on fine art paper next to the original colored pencil drawing. Besides seeing the actual texture of pencil on paper they are very similar. It’s exciting to see them come slowly to life out of this beast.

To celebrate, I am offering 10% off everything in My Etsy Shop for a limited time. So come get your prints! The code is LARGEMARGE because that is the printer’s name, of course. We can’t wait to print something for you!

My first tattoo is pretty bad; a pegasus on my chest. I don’t regret it, though. When I got it, I was a shy nerd and I really think that it helped me be more social in college. No one believed that this shy person who looked like a 12-year old girl had a tattoo. It turns out that flashing people is a sure fire way to break the ice.

So how does this relate to my art at all? Well, since that first tattoo in 1999, I have kept getting more on and off, including a couple drawn by myself, and one drawn by my husband. Here is my toad tattoo. I love him. It is based on my drawing of a toad that really propelled me into drawing only toads. I am thinking about having him sitting on something, but whether that is a leaf, flower, strawberry or other I don’t know. He’s fine now, but I am addicted, so I wouldn’t mind adding to him.

Lately, I have been really looking at tattoos online for even more ideas to decorate my body with some day. I’ve been learning about tattoo styles and all sorts of things I had no idea even existed when I got my first tattoo. Of course, the first styles of American tattoos were mostly meant for men, including a lot of pin ups and naked ladies. Traditional American tattoos are enjoying a revival right now, and I have seen a lot of great examples on the Internet, and in real life.

Being obsessed with tattoos and toads, this had to happen. Here are my toad pin up girls! All proceeds from prints of these gals will go straight into my tattoo fund! They are on Etsy here!

Anyway, I clearly am still enamored with bufo americanus, even if I haven’t been drawing all that much lately. I did finish a small piece just to get it out of my head. “Little Black Dress” is a toad in a little black dress. When people talk about that iconic piece of wardrobe that every woman NEEDS in their closet, I envision myself looking like this gal. They don’t make a little black dress for me, if you know what I mean! So here is my toad in her LBD, looking less than thrilled about it.  You can buy prints of her in my Etsy shop.

This is my first drawing done 100% with Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils. These pencils are expensive but proven lightfast and do not have the breakage problems of Prismacolor pencils. They are worth the extra cost for that reason alone; I have never had one sharpen poorly or lead snap at all. I get down and dirty with my pencils and press hard, so a lead that can withstand the pressure is great.

My other good news that isn’t that the toads are back is that my piece “The Wrong One” was selected to be in the Colored Pencil Society of America’s 20th International Expo! It is in Covington, Kentucky which is in the greater Cincinnati area. We are planning on visiting the Artist’s Reception in August. I can’t wait to see all of the colored pencil works up close and examine the techniques and finishes used by the best colored pencil artists in the world.  They look so smooth on the internet; it is tough to get a read on what the finish of a colored pencil piece looks like.

It is a great honor to have been juried in to this show. It consistently has amazing work. I’m so excited I could sing!

Back on Etsy my shop’s stats went insane. I still can’t believe it. I had a grand total of one view of my shop yesterday. It went up to 1500 in just a few hours.

I am speechless. I’m really excited. Just to think that people like my work or at least were intrigued by it enough to click through makes me so happy. A lot of drawing toads and snakes has gone by with validation coming in tiny little spurts here and there for me in the past ten years. Now I am excited more than ever to find my next amphibian model and craft my next drawing. Pinterest rules! I’ve heard that some people want to sue Pinterest for using their images without permission. For a little guy like me, Pinterest is a godsend. I hope that we can all come to an agreement that makes sharing on the internet easy and beneficial to the creator as well as those the work inspires.
I’m going to make it my mission to find other artists that make great work and pin them; pay it forward. Thanks, Heather for pinning me! I feel like a million bucks right now!

It was terrifying to go to my mostly completed drawing with an eraser and a razor blade and pull away an arm-shaped patch of pencil. The layers were very thick and the paper was rough and abused underneath them all. Thankfully Prismacolor’s Peach pencil really helped blend any parts of the hand back in once I had destroyed them. I think it ultimately worked out. Here is the .gif of the piece from start to finish.

That thumb was too much “blank” space for me. It’s my thumb, and it just isn’t that massive in real life. I am happy with the decision. It shows that a drawing just isn’t finished until it’s finished!

Now the toad looks even more resigned to the sexual harassment he is being subjected to; as if even he has accepted the cliche and it is a given that he will be snatched up and test-smooched from time to time.  Never mind that the fairy tale does not advise the kissing of random amphibians.

This drawing is 100% Prismacolor Colored Pencils – on Stonehenge paper, of course. The finished presentation will be a more vertical crop. Behold:

I am going to enter it into the Prismacolor contest right now.  Looking for a toad arm last night, I think I found my next drawing, too; another view of this guy struggling to get free. I could use the practice drawing hands of all species.

I plan on finishing the background about 90% before moving on to the hand and toad. I think that will take three or four more evenings of work. It feels really good to be getting back into a drawing. Stay tuned to see if I mess it up!