Old School Art

It’s Been A While…Again

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Yes…it’s been a while. More than a month this time between status reports. Anyway, I’m sharing the collage I did for Easter with the evil bunny Easter egg hunt featured to the right. It’s not complete. I wanted to add blood and smoke. Maybe I’ll finish it later, when I start to publish all the collages in a book.

I’ve been very busy with ArmLin House work, which is why I haven’t been here much. And last week I finished a painting that’s been sitting around forever. Worked on it in between a visit to the theater to see Civil War. It was a good movie and properly showcased mans inhumanity to man, although it could have been a bit more brutal. I love Kristen Dunst, and she was excellent in the film.

Here’s the painting, also inspired by Hilma af Klint. Not sure I’m going to do anymore of these that are more similar to her work. I really want to do something that’s more dark like me.

I did another painting that’s basically a bunch of brush stokes with a lot of black. I had a technique in mind, but I got a little distracted with it, so I really hated it at first. Next morning, when I got up and looked at it, I wasn’t quite so critical. I started with a few stencils and wanted to go with outlines, but I started to use the stencils as stamps. It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. Still want to try my original idea.

Otherwise, I did a little writing/editing of the next Angels Dark and Dumb book and continue to struggled my way through the next illustration for The Pumpkin and the Mouse Jinn. Hopefully I’ll have it done before I do another one of these posts.

And, last but not least, I started the Evil in Pop Culture series using AI. The first part is in a post before this one. I started with the infamous evil stepmother. In fact, the first book will probably be all evil women.

That’s all for now. Hoping to be back soon with some more artwork and news.

Life Like Drawing

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Showing off my ability to copy anything and make it look real this week. I love to copy with pencil in black and white in general. This was a fun assignment because it’s the opposite, the drawing done with white pencil instead. This one is framed on my wall, and most people approach thinking it’s a photograph.

I usually do life-like drawings in portrait form. I especially love doing old people because there is so much character in their faces, not to mention it’s a challenge to do the wrinkles.

If you are a writer and find keeping your manuscript clean of extra lines and spaces a huge challenge, I wrote a blog post you’ll find helpful. Manuscripts Are A Dirty Business: Remove The Extra Sections, Breaks, and Spaces Before submitting or Formatting Your Book is a great checklist to follow before you format your book. It strips out a lot of the formatting you don’t need and that can cause quite a few headaches, especially with eBook formatting. In general, it’ll help you keep your manuscript clean, and that’s the best option in MS Word because it can cause so many hidden issues with a document.

Minor news on Angels Dark and Dumb. Major progress on the covers and Margery. I know I keep promising this, but the reveal should happen next week. I’ll probably do it in a separate post from my weekly status and artwork post.

Until next week…

Hooked on Art

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Here’s this week’s artwork for ya. Did this piece, obviously titled Hooked, in my drawing class. I expect you can figure out the theme pretty quickly. We were assigned a line drawing of objects found around the house. Funny how these things evolve in my head because I remember walking around the house to find things. I had a big pile of stuff and had to pull out a theme. The only vice of mine represented here is the wine glass. Any other obsession or addiction is a contrary to my controlling personality, gambling and injecting drugs especially. In fact, I’m the one you want holding your money at a casino.

No news on Angels Dark and Dumb. The cover artist is still working on the updates and the new character drawing for Margery. What I can say is that they are coming along quite nicely. Otherwise, have a great week, and hopefully I’ll reveal the covers next week.

This Blog is Almost 20 Years Old

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Can you believe it? Almost 20? WOW! I had to go look up how long blogs have been around and found they started in 1994. That’s 10 years before I started this one. It was originally on the free WordPress site and then I created my own website. I tried a few other sites like Blogger, but WordPress has been my choice of website/blog tools most years.

Now that I’ve completely and totally bored you with technology talk, let me introduce this week’s artwork. This is called Drifting In or Floating In. Done for my Drawing I class, so it’s a photo of an old school piece that was done with ink and black watercolor. I don’t remember the exact assignment though. I think it had to do with foreground and background landscapes.

Unfortunately, there is a delay on the release of the new editions of Angels Dark and Dumb. Going day-to-day at the moment, still working on the new, improved covers. Until further notice, Warrant for Damnation will remain free upon request. While it is more than worth the wait for the new covers, I’m starting to feel like a kid at Christmas. LOL! At my age, I guess it’s a good thing.

The only other big news is that I finished the blog post I mentioned a few weeks ago about remaking the Angels Dark and Dumb. The Remaking of a Fiction Series and Why You Should Consider Remaking Yours is live on the ArmLin House blog, which is my media company’s website. You will find it particularly interesting if you are also a fiction writer.

That is all this week…talk to ya next week…

Run the Gauntlet

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This is all I got for ya this week. It’s an old perspective assignment from my Drawing I class. Also happens to be the hallway to my bathroom, minus the holes and knives of course. My favorite part of doing this drawing was finding the mix of handles for the assorted sharp objects.

Next week I should have book covers. Hopefully all the books in Angels Dark and Dumb will also be published/republished. I’m also writing an informative blog post for the ArmLin House Production blog on the remaking of a book series. So far, I’ve acquired the experience of changing my author name from W. J. Howard to Winnie Jean Howard along with changing the series name, two things that kinda make it time consuming to publish. It’s also taken me way too long to write each of the books. Oh yeah, and my experience with way too many publishers for book 1. Blah blah blah…forever complaining about this series. Truth is I like to do things the hard way.

Saw the new Evil Dead Rise this week too. I give it an average review. As I would, I really wanted more comedic moments. Thing I liked most about the movie was the dark and dreary atmosphere and setting. High budget, so of course the special effects were done well. Not gross or shocking enough for me, but good mainstream horror movie.

Enjoy your week!