Dennis Jones
eclectic artwork & other random things
Animal House
I haven’t really done very much drawing in my sketchbook over the last several months, but I did manage to kick out this page of animals yesterday as a summer storm blew through our area.
ModBook Pro Digital Tablet
Ok, I think this is probably what digital artists everywhere have been waiting for. Modbook has combined a MacBook Pro base system with a Wacom digitizer that delivers 512 levels of pen pressure sensitivity to create a truly portable digital tablet… the ModBook Pro. There is no price on this right now and I’m sure it will be expensive but at this point I would be willing to sell my firstborn son for one… (he’s in Seattle right now, I don’t think he’ll even notice).
Holy Cow!
It’s the end of the day, I run across this old sketchbook page in a computer folder and I think maybe I’ll just throw a little color on it and see what happens before I go eat dinner. Here’s what I came up with…
My Front Porch
The rockers that sit on my front porch have gone through about 13 harsh winters and the tiny bit of paint that was still trying to hang onto them would come off on your backside every time you sat down in one. I finally got around to cleaning the chairs and table and gave them all a fresh coat of paint.
The table became an interesting sort of project. The center top lifts off and a backgammon board is inset beneath it. Unfortunately, time had treated it quite harshly.
I rebuilt the backgammon board with MDF and give it a little dimensionality.
I also gave it a pretty snappy faux tooled leather surface.
I cut out a new lid from MDF and sawed lines into it to create a weathered slat look. On the flip side I attached a checkerboard.
The checkerboard is the front and back sides of masonite. One side is slick and the other side is kinda furry.
I was surprised at how heavy the table top was when I was done. MDF and masonite are both fairly heavy materials, but I guess the real weight came from the 256 screws I used to attach the 64 checkerboard pieces with.
My Somewhat Unconventional Pencilling Process
Over the course of the last several years, I have worked with a lot of high quality art materials; expensive watercolor papers, high end illustration boards, hot and cold press bristols, you name it, I’ve worked on it… so it was a bit of a shock when I looked down and realized I now work on cheap card stock from Walmart and copy paper from Staples. How in the world did that happen? Here is my somewhat bizarre pencilling process…
I really like the feel of Georgia-Pacific Card Stock to do my loose pencil work on, but it only comes in an 8.5X11 size. That is a bit small and I usually run out of room.
On this picture, I ran out of room on the right side of the page, so I just taped a little more paper onto that side. Then I needed more space at the top, so I taped a little more up there, too.
Very professional, eh? It is now time to do a clean pencil to work from. For this I like the feel of Staples Laser Copier paper.
Of course, it is too small also, so I tape a couple of those together and use a light table to redraw a tighter version of my loose sketch.
I scan that tighter pencil sketch into my computer, fire up Photoshop and I’m off to the races with the color work.
A New Bible Story
I’m working on a new Bible story. Sadly there are no exciting car chases or explosions in it, but the guy does get to drive around on a pretty snappy, late model donkey…
My New Facebook Page
I just created a new Facebook page, and I need 30 or so “LIKES” in order for all the back end components to kick in, so if you wouldn’t mind shooting over there and pressing the LIKE button, I would appreciate it.
As I was loading the new Facebook page up, I was thinking… I finish out all my artwork on a Wacom Cintiq with Photoshop and send digital files to clients across the nation via the internet. Over the years I have blogged on Xanga, My Space, Blogger, WordPress, and the cutting edge (at the time) BrotherJones. I’ve listened to music on LastFm, PureVolume, Pandora, Slacker, Rdio, and Spotify. I use YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Facebook, DeviantArt, Tumblr, ImageKind, Society6, Dropbox, PayPal, YouSendIt and many other web services. I shop on Amazon and my purchases are delivered to my doorstep the very next day.
About 15 years ago I boldly told my oldest son as he was leaving for college, that the computer would NEVER replace my paint and paintbrush and that I really couldn’t see any reason why I would EVER need a computer or the internet for ANYTHING. Since that time I seem to have softened my bold stance on the subject just a bit.
So Long, DJ-ART
Back in 2005, I coerced my nephew Keegan (with the help of a little cash) to build a custom website for me. Keegan was just starting to flash his monster design chops and I knew if I was ever going to be able to afford him it would have to be right then while he was still in high school. He build a great website for me and has since gone on to become an internet rock star. He currently works in California for Facebook.
Things become obsolete pretty fast when it comes to the internet and sadly that is what has become of the DJ-ART website Keegan built. Since it is a Flash based website, it will not work on any Apple mobile devices, (some sort of Apple – Adobe feud) and since so many people access the web now from mobile devices, DJ-ART for all practical purposes has become an abandoned island floating in a vast internet ocean.
One of the other changes since 2005 is the popularity of blogs. I personally always look to see if an artist I’m interested in has a blog. If they do, that’s where I’m going. Why? Because there is at least some slight possibility that I’ll get to see new content popping up there occasionally. You hardly ever see anything new appearing on an artist’s main “portfolio” website. My experience has been that I always get more internet traffic on my blog than I do on my main “portfolio” website.
For those reasons among others I am going to let the website Keegan built for me expire at the end of this month. At this point in time, I’m going to continue to flesh this site out with content and carry on my web presence from this location.
It was a good ride, DJ-ART.COM. Thanks for the memories.
Photoshop CS 6
I installed the latest version of Photoshop last week: CS 6. I fired it up and the first and most obvious thing I noticed was the base interface has been changed to a much slicker looking, smoked gray color. I haven’t quite got all of the newer intricacies figured out yet, but that would require reading and unless funny pictures are connected to the words in some way, I’m just not interested.
The reason I upgraded was to get the Adobe Design Package that included InDesign. I have been building iPad eBooks with the Apple app called iBooks Author, but there seem to be some limitations with it that will not work for what I am trying to do. Hopefully I can get InDesign figured out and accomplish what I want with it. I am hoping there are funny pictures in the InDesign instruction manuel.
Grand National Horse Show
One of the best things about being a freelance illustrator is you never know what you’re going to be doing next. I can be working along on a Biblical assignment for a client in the south, the phone rings and now I’m drawing wacky animals for a client in the midwest.
When I first started many years ago, I traveled more for my jobs and did some pretty diverse things. I once ended up on assignment at some sort of huge horse show in the Washington DC area. I flew in the night before, got to my hotel in the middle of the night, woke up in the morning and discovered I was in Chevy Chase, Maryland. This was just fascinating to me because the only Chevy Chase I’d ever heard of was that guy on Saturday Night Live (I’m from the midwest).
During the show I got to stand at the opening where the horses entered the arena. About halfway into the show, one of the horses got spooked in the center of the arena, flipped over its wagon, flipped over the other horse on the hitch, and they all started flailing wildly. Judging from the reaction of everyone around me, this was apparently an extremely dangerous situation for all involved. The next thing I knew I was sprinting to the middle of the arena with all the actual “horse people” to help. My help pretty much consisted of staying out of the way of the people that knew what they were doing…
…so the answer your question is, yes, I have appeared on center stage at the Grand National Horse Show.
I ran across this picture and it reminded me of that early art job I worked on so many years ago.
The Mighty Ducks
Back when I was building my foam stop-motion puppet, I wondered if there might be another way to create a moving character. I decided to throw a couple of things together that I’ve toyed around with for years… an aluminum armature and socks. I haven’t named him yet and don’t really know what he is, but he looks kinda like a duck…
Coming Soon To An I-Pad Near You
This weekend I plowed through about 90% of getting an ebook put together… I think… who really knows? Anyway, there’s a little video about it below.
It Is Finished… For Now…
Painting Magnus was a truly horrible experience… for both of us I’m sure. It finally came down to a “this is good enough because I’m not going to do this any longer” sort of conclusion.
As you can see, the paint is very glossy under light and is still quite sticky to the touch. This would not work very well on a lit stage, plus after a few days Magnus would look like one of those old time, hanging fly strips with all sorts of junk stuck all over him.
To remedy this I put corn starch in a bowl and give Magnus a good coating of it. The corn stach adheres to the sticky paint and gives Magnus a matt finish for the camera. He is also no longer sticky.
Magnus is now ready for his big screen, stop-motion film debut. All I have to do now is learn a new software program and write him a story.
Stuck In A Sticky Situation
Poor Magnus StormWeasel. Now he finds himself hung upside down and enduring some sort of primitive, medieval paint torture. Actually, it is me that is suffering the primitive, medieval paint torture. Magnus is covered with a coat of clear Pros-Aide adhesive that makes him permanently sticky to the touch. I have to add the Pros-Aide to my acrylic paint in order for it to adhere to Magnus and rubberize the paint so it can stretch as he moves. Since I cannot hold Magnus, I have to hang him from his feet. It is like trying to paint upside down with melted gum. I don’t know who will cry uncle first… me or Magnus…
In The Box… Again
My ice hockey season came to an end last night with me sitting in the penalty box with a four minute high sticking call and a huge knot on my arm from a slap shot I decided to knock down… hopefully I will remember not to do that again. And what does this blue creature have to do with any of this? Not a thing…
BIBLICAL PORTFOLIO
EPIC FANTASY PORTFOLIO
FANTASY ANIMAL PORTFOLIO
VEHICLES PORTFOLIO
SPORTS PORTFOLIO
HISTORICAL PORTFOLIO
RANDOM PORTFOLIO
CREATURES PORTFOLIO
Dennis Jones 