This will be my last post here for the foreseeable future. I’m not going away. I’m just moving to:
Skookworks.com
DavidIngersoll.com
DavidLeeIngersoll.com
All those addresses point to the same site. Bookmark which ever one you prefer.
Blogger.com / blogspot.com have been great. If you want a quick and easy way to establish a web presence they’ll make it simple for you.
May your 2012 be more fun, more successful and more satisfying than 2011. Happy New Year!
The above sketch was my first stab at the first illustration of a new project. I’m doing a series of illustrations that need to look as if they were done in the early 19th century for one of the British penny publications. That’s kind of tricky. Early magazine artwork was usually pretty crude. It had to be produced quickly and it had to be simple enough to be mass produced. The art was etched onto steel or copper plates and then printed on the cheapest paper available. Many of the those early illustrations had their figures posed as if on the stage so there tends to be a static quality to the characters.
I got about a third of the way through inking this piece before I decided that I didn’t like how it was turning out. I’m not sure if I can say exactly what doesn’t work for me. Mainly the figures just look too stiff and posed. While that may have been the predominant fashion for illustrations of the time and media I don’t care for my version of it. If I’d managed to completely hide my normal style I might have liked it better. Maybe.
In any case, I’m redoing the illustration. I’m keeping the basic composition but I’m putting a little more life into characters. You’ll be able to see the results on January 1st. Stay tuned!
It’s going to be quiet here for a few days. There’s more art in the hopper. I just haven’t had a chance to write any posts.
Most of my online energy has been going to Oz-Squad.com. My goal is to have that site be nice and robust by the end of the year. I want to be sure that folks have a good reason to visit.
And school is begining to take more of my attention again. Math especially is requiring more and more time to complete the homework. And I’m finding C# baffling. I know that it will seem easy eventually but right now I’m still not grasping the language’s syntax enough to write a program with any sort of ease.
So, yeah. Whine. Complain. Back to work!
These days I rarely draw anything just for the fun of it. Certainly the process of drawing is fun and I pretty much only take on the projects that I want to. It’s just that the drawings I do are generally part of larger projects – a commission, a role-playing game, a book cover, a present, a website, the occasional remake/remodel challenge. To just sit down and sketch something out because it seems like fun in the moment doesn’t happen very often.
Last week, however, Andrea Bonazzi posted a link to this comic on the Frank Belknap Long facebook page and I thought, “That Living Ghost character looks like he’d be fun to draw!”
So here he is. And you know what? He was fun to draw.
Back to work!
No real post today. I was at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland on Friday and Saturday and I’m catching up on chores.
The Oz Squad website is in process. There will be, if nothing else, a placeholder page here before the end of September.
I know. Promises. Promises.
Between summer school and my internship the most art I’ve managed to produce has been a few doodles on the back of my Math tests and one sketch that was part of an assignment for my Humanities class. Grrrr.
I’m spending a little time playing with the templates here before I do any serious work at Oz-Squad.com. Once I get a good grasp on how this works I’ll feel comfortable removing the temp page that’s currently posted. Stay tuned!
Nizzibet and I have a new home phone number. While it feels a little silly to post about it, given the crazy variety of ways that we keep in touch with each other these days, it also seems sensible to get the word out any way possible. We had our old phone number for at least 15 years but, for some reason, when our new phone arrangement was being set up we were told it would be a month before we could get our old number attached to it. Rather than have a different number for a month and then changing back we’re just giving up the old one.
I’ve emailed most of the folks that we communicate with regularly but I’m sure I’ve missed a few people. If you haven’t gotten the new phone number by now (and you want it) please send me a note via the email address on the right side of this page and I’ll be happy to update you.
(Launch postponed from July 31st due to technical difficulties.)
The new Oz Squad novel by Steve Ahlquist
Available now at Smashwords.com
Steve Ahlquist interview at Jazma Online
