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Artwork in Progress – Undead Merlord

By Cynical Woman October 5, 2015 October 5, 2015 Art, Vector, Work-In-Progress

I do not have a good title for this one yet, but Undear Merlord is a pretty descriptive title. I’m drawing this one in Adobe Illustrator Draw on the iPad. I hate that Adobe Illustrator Draw won’t export its files in a vector format (it only exports to Adobe Illustrator CC), but I still think it’s one of the best vector drawing apps out there. Fortunately, I can export drawings from Adobe Creative Cloud to Threadless, and I have reserved myself one of their new artist shops, so I’m going to play with this to see if I can make some groovy t-shirt designs 🙂

Work in Progress – Undead Merlord by Helen E. H. Madden

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Night blogging?

By Cynical Woman May 21, 2015 May 21, 2015 Art, Life and stuff, Vector, Writing

I swear to you, I have been trying to get back into the habit of regular blogging. I get all sorts of ideas for blogging late at night when I’m lying in bed, but then by the morning, these ideas have evaporated, or else I’ve lost the interest in writing about them.

I set aside the morings for working on the webcomic and for other drawing projects, which is partly why I don’t have the enthusiasm to blog in the morning. All my brain power has gone into drawing for a couple hours at that point, so the well is kind of dry by then. I can usually refresh myself with exercise, but by the time I’m done with that, it’s time to eat lunch and then it’s time to pick up the kids and then I have to deal with homework and chores and dinner, etc. I’m brain-dead once again by the time 8PM rolls around, which means I’d rather watch TV and crochet than write.

But once I get into bed, my brain once again starts to rev up, like it has now. I always read the news before I sleep (bad habit, I know), and usually after doing that, I’ve got ideas for a blog post I’d really like to write, and I know exactly what I’d say…

Except that it’s bedtime, and the lights are already out and Hubster is sound asleep beside me.

So right now, I’m experimenting. I have a wireless keyboard set up with my iPad, and I have a reading light clipped to the iPad/keyboard case. It gives me just enough light to see by. Hubster isn’t in bed yet – he always stays up later than me – so I’ve got a few quick minutes to write this post. I don’t know if I’ll be able to write like this on a regular basis, but it’s worth trying. I’m saving this as a draft tonight, and will post it in the morning. Then I’ll see if I can start other articles this week.

Maybe I’ll even be able to post some artwork from the iPad?

Test artwork for night time posting

Yerp! That seems to work!

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Professional Education for Artists AKA Boondoggle Time!

By Cynical Woman February 5, 2015 February 5, 2015 Art, Vector, Work-at-Home Mom

I recently made the switch from Adobe graphics software to Corel. Or rather, the switch back. The first graphics software package I owned was an early version of Corel, and I kept using Corel for years. But after a number of years, I began to notice that there were fewer and fewer tutorials and how-to books for Corel Draw and Photopaint, but there was plenty of material out there for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

So I decided to make the switch over to Adobe. It was more expensive (a LOT more expensive), but Adobe was the industry standard, and there was plenty of learning material out there to help me make the switch.

That was maybe five years ago. And everything was going just fine… on the Photoshop side of things. I love Photoshop. The mask layers, the customizable brushes, blend modes. It was FANTASTIC.

Adobe Illustrator, though? Not so much.

I was using CS3, and I discovered that things that had been easy to do in Corel Draw, like setting up transparency and gradient fills, were not so easy in Illustrator. The fact that I had to create a layer mask to create a transparency for an object drove me crazy. And I never could seem to get the hang of selecting objects in layers. These were things that were much more intuitive in Corel, I thought.

Then to top things off, Adobe switched from selling software in actual boxes to a subscription only mode, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I simply cannot afford to pay for the subscription model. When I buy graphics software, I usually upgrade maybe every other version, sometimes less frequently than that. It’s what I can afford.

Corel still sells its software in physical boxes as well as in download format, for far less than what I paid for Adobe CS3. And on top of that, I was able to find the most recent version of the Corel Draw suite on sale! The switch back was a no-brainer.

There are plenty of new features in both Corel Draw and Photopaint, so I have some catching up to do, and while there still aren’t as many tutorials for Corel as there are for Adobe, now that I’ve been on both sides of the fence, I’m better at translating Adobe tutorials into Corel. In fact, that’s what I spent most of the day yesterday doing.

I found this tutorial over at TutsPlusDesign. There were a few steps I decided to handle differently. I prefer to weld and trim shapes rather than use a clipping mask (called Power Clip in Corel). But the end result was the same!

Drawn in Corel Draw 7!!

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, and I look forward to spending more time working through tutorials for Corel. Yesterday was a very nice, relaxing day, spent focused only on artwork, with no time whatsoever spent on Girl Scouts (thus my reason for calling this a “boondoggle” day). Still, even for a boondoggle, I think it was time very well spent.

So what do you think? If you know of any resources for Corel Draw or Photopaint tutorials, let me know. I’m thinking of taking one day a week and devoting it to working through tutorials, just to improve my professional skills… and maybe enjoy a little boondoggle in the process.