I made a corner shelf out of paper maché ages ago, back when I made the Commander Keen stage. It was actually a part of that video, but it turns out you can't upload more than 15 minutes without giving g00gle your phone number, so it got cut. The big problem with it was that things kept falling off it. So I decided to make another one, but with a lip on the edge.
Continue reading I've been having problems with cerulean pigment for years, and so I did some experimenting, which included asking some of my AIs what they knew. I did solve the mystery in the end, but here are the chats I had about the topic beforehand. First up, ChatGPT:
I was unable to find any information about this, and so for a long time I just assumed it was the cheap Wilko acrylic I was using. I can't varnish it without it smearing. I can't use it mixed with fabric medium without it smearing, even after several top coats of clear medium and heat setting it. The moment you add any acrylic or water on it, it reactivates the pigment. It's just not colour fast at all.
But then I noticed the same problem with cyan printer ink. When printing on photo paper, I can seal printouts with diluted PVA except cyan. Anything with a lot of cyan will smear, just like with the paint, but the other colours will be fine.
So if true cyan pigments are so problematic, why can I not find a single other mention of other artists having this problem? Why is it just me?
I'm sick of ruining my art. I decided to see if ChatGPT knew anything about it.
Continue readingI've been having problems with the rain. More specifically, I've been having problems with my mudguards. They just don't work on my bike. As soon as the roads get wet, my backpack gets covered in mud and it takes ages to get out. I'm already on my third mudguard, and I've currently got a home-made contraption on the back. I decided I'd revamp an old backpack, because fabric paint by its very nature should be waterproof, right? So even if it got muddy, it would be easy to wipe clean. Right?
I was forgetting about the joy that is cerulean pigment.
I mentioned in a previous post about how to turn acrylic paint into fabric paint. I bought the Scola brand of fabric medium, which seems to be the only widely-available and affordable option here in the UK.
Continue readingI think it must have been some server maintenance or something going on, because DallE is working fine for me now. Also, good news, apparently, there's no waitlist now, so you can have a go, too!
Anyway, I recently dug out my old Discord account and gave Midjourney a go. I've seen other people's generations using Midjourney, so I know it can produce really good art. However, you know the saying: a bad artist blames their tools. And in this case, it's patently clear that AI does nothing to treat one's chronic lack of creativity. I just wasn't able to produce anything I was really happy with. Here are the results of using the same prompts on Midjourney and DallE 2.
The original DallE generation from my last post:
Continue reading For the last 18 months, I've been having trouble with watching videos on youtube on my tablet via browser (the app is a joke of an adfest). Most of them will flash red and blue on 360p or above, so I have to watch them at 240p. Anyway, my mum's old Kindle Fire doesn't have this problem, so since she hasn't used it in years, I helped myself to it for watching videos. Anyway, the case ended up looking worse for wear. It started flaking all over the place, so Tiny and I had an ASMR-fest (kinda not really) and peeled all the paint off, and then I gave it a coat of gesso.
As usual, I had no ideas for what I could paint on it. Then scrolling through my tablet's gallery, I pulled up this screenshot that I took from a Chloe Rose video. I can't remember which one. But at the time, I had an idea of trying to copy it for practice.
To be honest, it was a pretty daunting challenge. If you've seen my art, you'll know that backgrounds and landscapes are my weak point (and creativity, and anatomy, and...). But I thought, maybe I can actually do it. Of course I knew I couldn't match the original, but I wanted to see how close I could get. So I started with a rough sketch, and started on the background.
Continue readingI used up all of my DallE credits (for good maybe), and here are some of the more notable results. I might try some of these on DallE Mini and see what I get. Anyway, I'll start with my favourites.
This is one of my favourites. Tiny and I came up with this idea together.
This one came out really nice as well.
I finally have access to the full Dall-E app, and now I've run out of ideas. So I reused an old prompt to see how it compares with the Mini. Dall-E 2 definitely has a more skilled "hand", and has way less nightmare fuel, but how about the creativity?
Let's start with the bolognese dog from my last post. Dall-E Mini:
Continue readingHere are some of the more interesting results I got from messing around on Dall-E Mini. This stuff is nightmare fuel.
Purple dolphin eating a doughnut
Micah and Zaid from Rune Factory 3. I love the dynamic between these two. Micah gets all snarky and acts like he's above Zaid's "man's journeys", but you know inside, he's all "HELL YEAH!". Anyway, apart from Zaid's hand looking a little awkward, and Micah's looking a little small, I'm really happy with how well this came out. This was also where I experimented and discovered this painterly style. I used this technique on later pictures, but I think I forgot to note down the settings I used. So I forgot how to do it.
Micah and Zaid belong to Marvelous Entertainment. This is a fanwork only.
It's time to take another trip down Memory Lane, as I look back at my old artwork. Some of these pictures date back to 2008. So well done me, it's been 12 years since I started Dreamsong, and I'm still not done.
Here is an old sketch of Apollo. This was meant to be the scene in chapter 4 when Palutena asks if he knows what's going on. I didn't use this, because he just doesn't exude enough sliminess. He's supposed to be way more repulsive!
I haven't really done any work on this for a while. See how easily I get bored of projects? So I thought I may as well post my last entries since it may be a while till I do any more.
So here is "Create Hope". Of course, I thought of Star Wars: A New Hope, so I drew moisture-farmer Luke. This was a really hard one. I'm not good at realistic portraits. I had to use the grid method, but even then, his left-eye was so hard to draw. No matter what I did, it always looked wrong. So I quit before I made it any worse. It didn't help that in the source image, Leia's bun was super-imposed over the left-hand side of Luke's face.
I mean to seal this as it's soft pencil and I don't want it smudging, but I can't think of any way to incorporate the fruit rule without cheapening the picture, so I may have to break the rule in this one case.
Next is "Create an Upside Down Drawing". I drew a sloth. I mean to paint this with watercolour, as I've finally dug up my drawing pens, but the Luke picture is on the following page, and I'm so scared I'm going to manage to spill the paint onto it.
That's all I have for now.
I was having a look through my old notebooks to find my old Dreamsong chapter 6 draft (which I did, by the way, and it was as bad as I thought). And of course, I got a little nostalgic seeing all my old art, and a little put out, actually, as it seems that my skill level has gone quite a bit down since then. But I thought it would be fun to share my trip down memory lane. You also get to see just how much editing goes into the lineart after scanning. Even though I prefer the experience of traditional art, digital art is necessary for me, just to fix the worst mistakes.
Anyway, I'm breaking it into two parts. To start, here are the pictures, and a few character development notes, from my AD&D gang.
Here are the original sketches for the chibis. I feel sad to think I can't even draw at that level anymore.
Raven, and a random Itachi:
An oldie, but a goodie. I accidentally gave it a width of 404. This was not deliberate, but it makes me happy. I used to code in XHTML and PHP, I dabbled in JavaScript and Pascal for a while too, but I don't have the patience for it these days. This was for a custom mug for the same person, but unlike the mousemat, this wasn't given to the boss, but shoved in storage. I believe the clipart was from openclipart.
