Remember this guy? Well I got him all properly textured and rendered. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Rendered out in the latest, greatest version of Blender 3D. A small bit of retouching needed around the eyes and a few other small places in Photoshop. And some minor adjustments to the colour. Enjoy.
Following the recent success of my first Artist Trading Card and it’s journey through geocacheland, I’ve decided to make a follow up. My previous card is supposedly on it’s way to Europe! And all I thought the card would do was float around geocaches in central Manitoba or Northern Ontario. I’d like to think I was the first person to combine Artist Trading Cards and geocaching, but as with all things, the Internet kinda beat me to it. A lot. But it is still kind of great that the experiment greatly exceeded my expectations.
This one is a little more detailed than the last. Keep in mind, this is a business card sized painting, so detail is kind of at a premium. As with the last one, I started off with a very large pencil drawing, scanned it into the computer, where I scaled the image to size and then printed it out onto textured linen inject paper. I printed out a whole bunch to a sheet just in case I made a serious mistake and had to start over. I then finished off the image using mostly acrylics, with a bit of pencil crayon and some marker for added detail.
Here are a few snap shots showing step by step how my image came to be.
A Prussian Blue acrylic wash was used for an underpainting. I like to use a complimentary colour to establish value on my underpaintings.
After all the acrylic work was done.
A bit of pointillism with a fine tip Sharpie to add a bit more contrast and help define some shapes.
Just a series of some older and newer vectors. A Football helmet (the oldest), some singing penguins (in tribute to a recent trip to the zoo) and a cartoon puppy dog. Enjoy!
Star Lake, Whiteshell Provincial Park.
At the beginning of this summer I got the chance to check out the geocache we set up at the end of last year.
It was great to get outside and explore, even if the cache is just off a fairly well marked (and well traveled) road. Not to give too much away, but the header shot for this blog post was taken not too far away from the cache’s location. So it’s a pretty scenic area.
This also gave me a chance to try out the baby-wear we bought for our son Aiden. It was the first time with Dad, though Aiden had been in it with his mother a couple of times. He was’t too sure at first, but he quickly settled down and even managed to fall asleep on the way back.
Me and Aiden, checking out the logbook. This was the first time baby and Dad using the baby-wear.
Surprisingly, a number of people managed to find it over the winter. The downside was the cache wasn’t hidden in the same place as we left it. Either snow clearing in the area moved it, or someone thought they had it hidden properly but all the snow we had this winter may have only made it look like it was hidden properly. Or maybe some animals got a hold of it.
The cache and it’s original contents.
Fortunately, someone found the cache and nicely hid it away for us. Not quite the same place as we had the year before, but it was hidden well enough. I chose to leave the cache at its new resting place.
The contents of the cache as of late June.
It was interesting to see all the log posts and a few little goodies left behind.
Some examples of some of the log posts left behind.
More examples of log posts left behind.
My geotagged art trading card I made for the geocache was found almost right away, and has since traveled to parts unknown. Last I heard it was in the Savannah, Georgia area. That made my wife rather jealous as she has wanted to go to Savannah for while now. Especially after seeing the movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. She has it in her head that Savannah must be this really cool, quirky place with a rich history and atmosphere, just like in the movie. People who know better can just keep that to themselves. One day we will get there and decide for ourselves!
Following the modest success of that trading card, I’ll be making another one up and will be placing it in our cache later this summer.
Stay tuned!
Last year I made a word cloud using Wordle.net as an interesting and very visual way to describe my year of blogging. I have done so again this year to see how much (if any) change has occurred. The obvious is the colour change. But that was a deliberate choice by me and had nothing to do with my writing. So far it looks like my language use hasn’t changed much since last year. I think I’ll keep doing this to see if anything changes, or if there is a definite pattern to my writing style.
Eye Opening Design 