Fun while it lasted

Guess I'm not going to be tweaking the pathalogically dishonest Pastor Tom at his own blog any more, since he decided to do the dishonest cowardly manly thing and IP-blocked most of his detractors. Pity, they were far more entertaining than he was. I can still read as much as I want though, despite his attempts, and it's pretty easy to get around the block for a post or three, but honestly he's a prat. So I'll mock him from afar now and again, but otherwise leave the poor, deluded fellow be.

Only one page of sketches today, I let time slip away too much this afternoon. I'll shoot for three tomorrow.

Good advice

So life drawing tonight. I think I went up a level, despite not having gone during the month of July.



What was interesting about all this, aside from the unaccountable jump in drawing ability, was the fact that I was talking to one of the animation students going into one of the higher years. She gave me some really good advice on how to stay sane and get a jump on my assignments, which is well appreciated. Apparently my urge to draw as quickly as possible is the right thing to foster, and the daily gesture drawing is really good for learning lines of action, adding energy to drawings, capturing anatomy quickly, and so forth. It's good to have a vote of confidence from someone who's been there, and the advice is valuable. At the very least it's got me a bit more confident about September.

And here's some more of my daily sketches.

The problem is man...a specific man, it seems

So I've still been following the adventures of Pastor Tom after he went a-trolling over at Pharyngula. It's actually rather stunning, here's a guy who supposedly is supposed to uphold GOD'S LAW, and yet here he is making with the pride and conceit and bearing false witness and all the rest. Not really a surprise, but the totally bald-faced manner he does it in, wearing his ignorance proudly and even admitting to trolling, it really makes one take a second look.

Of course he's getting righteously schooled by the pro-science brigade he attracted, causing him to whine that learning something outside of what Answers in Genesis spoon-feeds him is haaaaard! Well of course science is hard, you crybaby. That's why we don't all do it! You'd think a grown man would realize that spouting off as if he was an expert without knowing a damn thing would earn him a few slaps in the face from real experts, but there you go.

In other news, tonight was Sketch Night. Only four left, and due to storms and other stuff I was the only one of my group of friends who ended up going, but that's okay. I got to read a book of Frazetta roughs, and draw a couple of good pages of sketchy stuff. Makes me feel good about this fall.

You're a liar, Pastor Tom

I'm sure a few of you are aware, but I'll lay it out. Like Slartibardfast, I am a big fan of science. Good science, cool science, awesome science, mad science, whatever. I'll never be a scientist myself, but that doesn't stop me from thinking science is a blast. And one place I get to see a lot of it is at the forefront of the war between Creationism and, well, actual science. So I watch places like Conservapedia (not so much these days, the place has gotten dull), the rather unsuccessful YEC spin-off A Storehouse of Knowledge, and so forth.

Well, via PZ Myers, I found Tome Estes, a Baptist minister who seems to think he's got the goods on them evilutionists and atheists and whatnot. So when he set his sights on old PZ, I thought I'd have a look.

Oh boy, what a fruitcake. Bad logic, worse science, repeating the worst fabrications and outright lies we've heard from Creationists for years. But he's not the reason I was happy to find it. No, it's the commenters. The folks who look at the stuff Tom's spewing and say "woah now, hold on a minute, that just ain't so". Sure, it's not going to sway ol' Tom, he's way beyond learning much of anything. But the refutations, that's candy. Go have a look through some of his entries, see what I mean.

If there's one good thing about Creatards and IDiots, they draw a lot of really smart people out of the woodwork to defend good, old-fashioned SCIENCE!

And that said, here's some lips. Mwah!

There's no shame in Googling

In case you need to cut & paste, those names again are:

Stephen Harper
Morgan Tsvangirai
Abousfian Abdelrazik
Jacob Zuma
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Barack Obama

Well, I'm pretty sure you know who Obama is.

Listen!!

Do you smell something?

So starting to get somewhere fun with this stuff, after the past few months of hammering away at the basics. I've learned a few interesting things. One, I love hatching. I mean I really love it. I'm not that good at it yet, but I seem to be getting better. Two, I find angular stuff way more appealing to draw than simple curves. Maybe that's a phase, but it's really enjoyable. And three, although you don't see it on this stuff, I seem to enjoy exaggerating shoulders. Not sure what that means, but I would guess when I get to doing a lot more figure work again you'll probably see a lot of it.

We'll see if those observations hold up. For now, it's just nice to finally start getting some insight into what my hands find fun to draw.

Pressure

So after three months of staying at home and trying to improve, the new term is rushing forwards at a frightening pace. I get my schedule for the fall term on Friday, and in only six weeks I'll be sitting in my first class. Whatever that is.

I know I'll be working a lot harder this coming year than I did last. Not so much that I was slacking or anything, but because the courseload is way heavier. So much for 3 and 4 hour breaks between classes and days off in the middle of the week. This is gonna be real work.

It'll do me good, though. Hopefully I'll improve a lot.

Eh, it's a start

One thing Rich recommended back in April was to spend the summer doing caricatures. I can kinda see why now, so you can expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing.

Speaking of PZ Myers, his blog had a bit of network maintenance or something and as a result it spit up a bunch of old posts. Since I've only been following his blog since pretty recently, I hadn't seen this gem before. It's wonderfully evocative and poetic, well worth a read. That's one reason I always feel sorry for Creationists, by choosing to see the world through such a limited filter, they totally miss wonders like these.

More and more

More heads, as before. Starting to have some fun with them down at the bottom, getting away from just recording the heads I see and making something a bit more individual and appealing. Think I might keep tweaking the punk chick, she's got potential.

Maybe I'll have her fight robots.

Aaaand that's two weeks

So as promised, two weeks of daily head studies. not that I plan to stop or anything, but let's take stock. Certainly a lot of improvement from my first page in just about all respects. I'm starting to get the idea of expressiveness, and at least a little better concept of hair. On the other hand, my profiles suck. Really suck. Need to work on that a lot.

Started studying the work of Pierre Alary a lot more, he's developing into a big influence on where I want to go with my work. I mean seriously, if I can get characters this expressive with such subtlety and economy, I'd be in heaven. Mind you, there's years worth of work in getting anywhere near that stage, but at least I'm starting to figure out what it is I want.

Organized the links on the right there, too. Could use a few more, but it's a start.

Happy Canada Day!

Day 10-12 of head sketches. Some things are improving, some things are getting quite comfy, some things are MAKING ME WANT TO GNAW MY OWN FACE OFF.

But hey, that's art for you.

And for fun, what could be more Canadian than Stompin' Tom. And obligatory "Bryan Adams' nationality" jokes, of course.

Next batch

As promised (if anyone's actually reading), head tilts for days 7-9. They're getting a bit advanced for something I only intended to be shapes with three lines on them. Ah, well. Five more days (and two posts) until I take stock and see where I'm going with all this.

More heads

Days 3-6 of my head tilts. I'll post 7-9 tomorrow once I have them done. A few decent looking things in among the crap, at least.

Legends and Icons

Pretend Indy's hat never happened. That's what I'm doing.

Man what?

Followers of Conservapedia will recognize this lovely chap. Done for the merry band of lunatics at the thorn in their side.