Topic: Studio Notes

This Illus­tra­tor file was too big and com­plex to be ren­dered into a high-res­o­lu­tion raster by either Illus­tra­tor or Pho­to­shop. Here GIM­P’s Ghost­script inter­preter was brought in for the job, which it did hand­i­ly in less than an hour. Illus­tra­tor flat-out refused to export the 500,000-endpoint vec­tor file at the res­o­lu­tion I need­ed, and Pho­to­shop kept one of my eight proces­sor cores work­ing at 100% for more than two days before I gave up and gave … Read the rest

I’ll spare you all the details of the lat­est stu­dio move, but it’s com­ing along. Basi­cal­ly I’m mov­ing into my own space. I’m still at Art Explo­sion, just not shar­ing a space any­more. Art Explo­sion is very con­ve­nient to me, and my only real com­plaint with it is that there’s some inter­per­son­al dra­ma there from time to time. In fact, I’ve start­ed to think that all that dra­ma at Art Explo­sion could be turned into a nice web­com­ic if I … Read the rest

Free­dom is the right to say that two plus two makes four. If that is grant­ed, all else follows. 

—George Orwell, 1984

Yes­ter­day I spend the lat­ter part of the day in the stu­dio fin­ish­ing up a pen and ink draw­ing. Work­ing in pen and ink makes sense to me. There’s a lot I don’t under­stand, but every thing I learn makes me bet­ter at what I do. The world makes sense when I’m putting ink on paper. If I … Read the rest

Actu­al­ly, Open Stu­dios goes on all month in San Fran­cis­co and this year they’ve even dep­u­tized the first week­end of Novem­ber. But my stu­dio will be open dur­ing the third week­end of Octo­ber, the 18^th and the 19^th. In addi­tion, at Art Explo­sion this year as with pre­vi­ous years, there will be an open­ing recep­tion in the evening of Fri­day the 17^th. New this year is the «pre­view show» on Thurs­day the 17^th. … Read the rest

This week­end I did some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for some time. I threw away every­thing I’ve ever been told about «work­sta­tion ergonom­ics» and adjust­ed the height and angle of my draw­ing table up. I moved the draw­ing I’m work­ing on up high­er on the board and pushed my chair aside. I did the next cou­ple of hours of draw­ing stand­ing up, sit­ting only when I did some­thing with the computer.

I liked work­ing stand­ing. I’ve noticed before that I … Read the rest

One of the things I feel best about from this past week­end’s Open Stu­dios was giv­ing out pro­mo­tion­al free­bies. In my last order to Pho­toworks, I includ­ed a run of 100 4″×6″ prints of a pho­to of the Mount David­son Cross and all week­end I gave them out. I signed them, num­bered them, and dat­ed them and gave them away at no charge.

Part of the ratio­nale was pro­mo­tion­al. I put some­thing in peo­ple’s hands and they … Read the rest

I took a dif­fer­ent approach with this por­trait of my rock­star friend Pauli. I enjoy the free-form pen work and it has def­i­nite advan­tages, but it has its lim­i­ta­tions as well. Work­ing this way feels like paint­ing with lines and the result is a lot more organ­ic than straight hatch­ing, but I have a lot of trou­ble bring­ing out con­trast. Like­wise I real­ly like the look of a deren­dered draw­ing with­out out­lines, but the trade­off is detail.

Suc­cess­ful exper­i­ment, the … Read the rest

I’ve been pret­ty busy over the past few weeks. I’ve been work­ing on a draw­ing and div­ing in to that process with a lev­el of dis­ci­pline that I’ve rarely exhib­it­ed, and I’ve been prepar­ing myself for open­ing my stu­dio to large num­bers of peo­ple look­ing to buy or just look at art­work. Tra­di­tion­al­ly here in San Fran­cis­co Open Stu­dios hap­pens each week­end, and my stu­dio is a part of a build­ing with at least fifty oth­er artists, so it’s a … Read the rest