Art « The Cynical Woman Website

Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Just Doodling – Manga portrait

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Someone on Twitter asked me about ArtRage 2.5. ArtRage is a terrific natural media graphics program from Ambient Design that only costs $25. It’s not as powerful as Photoshop, doesn’t handle photo editing or stuff like that, but if you want to draw and paint on the computer, ArtRage is the program to go for. Here’s a recent sample of work I’ve done.

This is nothing fancy, just a quick portrait done to give me a feel for how ArtRage might handle manga style artwork. My only real complaint is that the marker tool is not all that great for inking. I’d rather sketch an image in ArtRage, take it to Manga Studio for inking, and then bring it back into ArtRage for coloring and painting effects. Thought if I want something seriously polished, I might handle the last part in Photoshop.

But even so, this image was all done in ArtRage, and I think it turned out pretty well. So there ya go. ArtRage. (And version 3 comes out soon, with a new inking tool. Sounds promising to me!)

Tags: ArtRage 2.5, Manga
Posted in Art, Daily Doodle | 4 Comments »

Artwork – Sleeping

Friday, November 20th, 2009

I think it’s ironic that I spent the afternoon struggling to stay awake while working on this one. Honestly, the picture I’m painting from is too nice for me to be sleepy. Image is below the jump, since it’s NSFW (more…)

Posted in Art, Male Pin-ups | 5 Comments »

Art Gallery is up!

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

I’ve spent a couple of days fussing over how best to put together an art gallery for the new site. The current set-up isn’t exactly perfect, but it does seem to work pretty good right now. I’ve got two categories up so far, including cover art I’ve created for e-book publishers and male pin-ups (if you don’t like looking at naked men, don’t visit that part of the gallery; if you do visit that part of the gallery anyway, don’t come whining to me over what you see there!).

Take a look and let me know what you think - The Cynical Woman Art Gallery!

Posted in Art, Site Maintenance | 1 Comment »

One more test with BlogJet

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Just one more test to see if this works. There was something off with my time zones, so I couldn’t get the last post to publish. It would only show up on my WordPress dashboard as scheduled. Oh, and let’s try another pic, shall we?

[The following image is NSFW and included male nudity.]

(more…)

Posted in Art, Male Pin-ups, Site Maintenance | 1 Comment »

Testing blogging software

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

No biggie here. I just want to see which blogging software will work better for me – Blog Jet or Zoundry Raven. This post was done with Blog Jet.

Here’s a test image to see if this works:

(more…)

Posted in Art, Daily Doodle, Site Maintenance | No Comments »

Saturday Art – Summoned and Bound

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

There’s something very naughty and very pretty over at my erotica blog today. It’s a bit of artwork I did yesterday, a male nude. You can find it here. Enjoy!

Posted in Art, Erotica | No Comments »

Artsy Fartsy Knitting!

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

This is a semi-regular post that I do intend to do, as I have a huge love for all things crafty, and finally may have some time to do some crafty things. My most recent venture into the world of the Artsy Fartsy has been in the field of knitting. A friend of mine, Mich, got me started in late June. I had been bemoaning the fact that Princess’ teacher told me she didn’t concentrate as well as she should in school, and Mich offered to teach Princess to knit. She thought it might help Princess learn to focus on a complex task, and give her something fun to do with her hands.

Well, you know if Princess is going to learn how to knit, I was going to have to learn too. Otherwise, how else was I going to help her out when she got stuck? My mom sent Princess a knitting kit, complete with a set of needles, yarn, and basic instruction book. I went out to the local craft store and picked up some needles and yarn of my own. The end result of this is that I have since created a pot holder, a belt,, a dish cloth (with a skull knitted into it!), and now a pair of wrist warmers. I’m most proud of this last accomplishment. The wrist warmers are the first knitted thing I’ve made for myself, and they won’t be the last.

I love that I can make clothing items for myself. I’m very particular about how I dress, though you might not guess it from looking at me. But I flatter myself to think I cultivate a certain sort of goth/punk mommy aura with my tattered jeans and fitted t-shirts, and I like my accessories to reflect that. The wrist warmers will look perfect this winter, giving me a certain radical chic while all the other mama-jamas stand around the bus stop wearing boring old gloves.

Seriously, though, I liked how these turned out, and they got made very quickly, which is also a plus. I’m hoping to make a matching scarf and maybe even a hat for myself as well. I’ve never really had a winter hat that I liked, so this would be a first.

The pattern for the wrist warmers, if you’re interested, comes from Teach Yourself Visually: Knitting, available on Amazon.com. You can also get it here from Barnes and Noble.

Posted in Art | 2 Comments »

Just Doodling

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

I’m schlepping Princess to camp at a local museum all week. The place is just far enough away, and her time at camp just short enough, that there’s no point in me coming back home to do anything. So Pixie and I are spending the day hitting ALL the local museums and parks in that area. There are quite a few.

Yesterday, while Pixie ran amok in the Virginia Living Museum (where Princess’ camp is being held), I squeezed in a little doodle time, experimenting with a new tool in my art kit – a mechanical pencil with red lead. I just can’t drag myself to the computer anymore in the evenings to cartoon, so I am once again switching to doing things the old fashioned way, by hand. A friend suggested I use a mechanical pencil with red leads to do my sketching, then after inking and scanning in the artwork, I can just drop the red channel from the image, and voila! No erasing to do to clean up my artwork. This page has both red and blue pencil in it, and I can’t get rid of both (it doesn’t work that way), but I was able to experiment in Photoshop long enough to confirm that I can do what I want with the red pencil. So without further ado, here’s my random doodles with the fancy new mechanical red pencil!

When you click on the image above, you’ll get it in full size, which will be HUGE, but then you can see all the nifty detail. Yeah, I know, whatever. And yes, that is a talking toilet in the lower left corner. That was Princess’ suggestion to draw.

Posted in Art, Daily Doodle | 2 Comments »

Homemade Holidays

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

I’ve had a lousy week do to work issues, and I’m so fed up and frustrated that I can’t seem to stop snapping at my kids. I hate being the Grinch, so I decided to take a little time off from my obsessing about stuff that I can do absolutely nothing to fix and spend an evening just enjoying my girls instead. Cassie needed to make a Christmas ornament for her bus driver and Sam was in a pissy mood because Cass has all the good play jewelry and she wanted something new. So I broke out all my old beading stuff and this is what we made.

Cassie’s holiday ornament. She did most of this herself. I helped by bending the wires after she beaded them and then finishing things off by making the final loop for the hook. Otherwise, everything else is all her work.

Sam’s new necklace. I used memory wire, which holds its shape forever. That way I didn’t have to add a clasp to the ends or tie anything off. She can just slip it around her neck, but it still has an opening so the necklace will come off if it gets caught on anything. Sam picked out the beads and handed them to me. I did the stringing and finished off the ends with some needlenose pliers.

There was a lot of fussing and fighting over beads and who got Mommy’s help when, but all of that taught me a very important lesson. Doing any sort of craft thing with kids can be frustrating and stressful, but not nearly as frustrating and stressful as what some adults (who should know better) do to others. I’ll take my girls over most adults any day of the week.

Posted in Art, Family Fun, Holidays | 1 Comment »

Deep Fried – A Holiday Self-Portrait

Friday, December 5th, 2008

CWtoon_xmas_portrait02

Yep, this is me. All frazzled and fried, just in time for the holidays. And from what I hear, I ain’t the only one feeling like this.

It’s December 5^th, and I have managed to buy a grand total of one, yes one, Christmas present. That’s it! Even though I put a little reminder in my calendar to start shopping waaaay back in October. See, that’s how organized I am!

So the plan now is to drug— er, occupy the Pixie with some TV and then spend the morning knocking out a few blog posts. After that, I’ll hit the online shops and do the Santa Mommy thing. The Cynical Woman cartoon gets the rest of the day. Tomorrow and Sunday are dedicated to my erotica podcast — I’ve got a story to finish for next month, plus recording to do for the next week’s episode. Oh, and I did I mention I’ve invited the Princess’ little playmates over for an evening of pizza and mini-chick flicks?

No wonder I look like this!

Posted in Art, Daily Doodle | No Comments »