Best posts made by jimsz

@Jake-Parker

I appreciate the critique a great deal! Also, no problem with the "tough-love". A creative person is laying everything out there and has to accept the feedback given.

First Day of School

@Matt-Soson Why hide that you are looking for free work? That should have been spelled out in the original post. What's next, telling artists their work for you would make great portfolio pieces?

Artists deserve to be paid for their work and if "donations" are being asked for it should be spelled out and upfront otherwise it is disingenuous at best.

I've been fighting moving over to some digital creation with part of the problem not being able to get used to the slick iPad pro cover and the Apple Pencil basically sliding over the screen.

I've tried a number of screen protectors but they were all just as slick.

After a number of months I finally found a screen protector that has a little bit of tooth to it, not quite pencil on paper feel but pretty close.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016B12TSW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For $10 (2-pack) it may be worth a try for anyone that does not like the slick drawing surface.

Don't do work on spec or for hire. If you see those terms, run.

Do not give up all rights to your work. Sell first publication rights.

Require cover credit for the artwork.

Retain the copyright.

Good work demands good pay.

@Stephanie-Hider said in Own Voices:

I don't know the numbers but I believe Will Terry even mentioned this field is dominated by white males. It seems economically injustice to not allow illustrators if they are just as talented to illustrate "their stories" if that makes sense.

So, what you are saying is someone should be chosen simply because of their race? I'm sorry, I disagree.

An AD should choose whomever they think will do the job, whomever will work as easily as possible with the staff/publisher/etc., whomever will meet the deadline with the least amount of drama.

If it is a white male, great, if it is a female person of color, great. But to choose one over the other due to their gender or color, is bigotry.

The

@Ben-Migliore said in How to draw everyday:

Dose anyone here have any advice on what to do now? How do you draw everyday? What do you do to improve?

The way you draw every day is to simply grab your pencil and draw. If you don;t know what to draw simply start moving the pencil around and see what happens.

A while ago I realized I had become lazy and had not been drawing much at all. I set a goal of 100 days of drawing every day. Then it became 200, a year, two years. I made it to 1987 days in a row and then ended up in the hospital where I couldn't draw for a week! It crushed me because I really wanted to get to 2000 days in a row.

Since then I have taken a small break and will resume starting from Day 1 on April 1st.

You get better at anything by doing it over and over.

Put the website up - having a low number of pieces initially is of benefit. It allows you to build the website the way you wish right from the start without having to juggle dozens of image files. Content and image management done incorrectly can be overwhelming.

Get the foundation of what you want in a website correct from the start will save you hours of work later one.

@doha said in iPad question.:

Huh, I didn't know that about procreate. That does exactly encourage me to buy an iPad pro. I guess I'll look at the Surface Pro.

Are you sure you are talking the iPad 2? The iPad 2 is 7 years old (in March). If you are indeed talking about the iPad (from 2011) you will be hard pressed to find any computer 7 years old that will run the current version or OS released this year.

To answer your question - the Apple Pencil will not work with an iPad 2. The Apple Pencil will only wok with the iPad Pro series.

For older iPads there are numerous stylus available. Jot Pro & Intuos were 2 that I tried and they were OK. ( https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/ipad/best-stylus-for-ipad-ipad-pro-or-ipad-mini-3586503/ )

As for Procreate - all software eventually will no longer be updated for older devices. Processing, Ram, security, requirements are only backward compatible for a certain amount of time. However, if you have software that is doing what you want on a platform that operates well for you - you do not need to update. That's true for Mac OS, Windows, ios, etc.

A couple of hints - if yo don't have a local backup system in place simply upgrade dropbox to 1tb plan and keep all your working/active files in the dropbox folder. The update is continuous. For $10/mo it is the best insurance you can have.

as for your old computer, even it is no longer powers up, you can pull the HD or SD drop it in a housing and access it as an external drive.

Another Bic pen sketch on cheap paper

Don't forget when pricing it all depends on what rights the client is acquiring and how the art will be used.

Who owns the original artwork?

Kill fee?

First rights or all rights?

Copyright?

Publication?

Changes/client alterations?

It's not just about the time and skill involved but also about future monetization as well.

@handdrawnviolist

For the most part you are not going to be able to fix "bluriness" in photoshop. You have a couple choices - you mentioned that the illustrations fit the scanner bed but the media is too large. What about trimming the media so it fits in the scanner? Also, put some weight on the scanner lid to make sire the media is tight and flat against the glass.

As for separating the color from the black lines - it will be messy and will require multiple steps at a minimum. The integrity of your line is going to suffer. Once you eliminate the color as best you can duplicate the layer and assign it "multiply" in order to darken the lines back up.

What settings are you using to scan these images? Whats the reproduction size? Whats the original size? Scan at a higher resolution as you can always take information away for a lower size but you can;t add information is improve the scan. Are you saving in a lossy compression or lossless?

Is your scanner calibrated? Is your monitor calibrated?

Scanning for reproduction has a massive learning curve if you wish to do it right.

Years ago when I was creating a lot of work for a publishing company it was specified that I had to include x number whites, x number black, x number asian, etc. It was so ridiculous that they even specified hair and eye color for the various characters. My belief then (and now) if that is what the client wants it is my job to deliver it and deliver it to the best of my abilities since that is what I was hired for.

That's a different perspective from the "Own Voices" idea. Own Voices is simply a form of racism and bigotry as it segregates, separates and compartmentalize people (the artists) by race. While popular with "educators" it is wrong for the real world.

If a person is a good artist (written or drawn) their audience will recognize a white person. They will recognize a black person and they will recognize an asian, a hispanic, etc, etc, etc.

The same goes for authors. Guess what, Rowlings was never a 10 year old boy wizard yet she wrote Harry Potter. Twain was not a black slave yet "Jim" from Huck Finn is a well rounded and believable character that is from the best piece of American fiction that was ever written

What I tell my kids when they are confronted with this in school is to substitute "white or caucasian" with whatever other race you are being told and if the person telling you would have a problem with the statement using white, it is racist.

You can agree or disagree and I am fine with that.

Quality art (written or drawn) is simply quality art. It does not matter what color the person who created it is and for that to matter and make a difference is bigoted.

What are the goals you have for the website, social media, etc?

In my opinion too many jump into all the various social media sites without a clear purpose other than everyone else is doing it.

How will it make you money?

Google Scan is not scanning an image. It is a second generation manipulation. If you want to scan you need a scanner.

If you want quality scans you need a quality scanner. Look to the specs and purchase as high a quality scanner as you can but don;t be fooled by "interpolation", go for actual scan resolution.

A few things you need to know - your monitor is RGB which is a different color gamut (range) than printing which is cmyk. You need to make sure your monitor is calibrated. If you have an apple computer there is a basic calibration tool in your settings>>displays.

When you scan do some test scans of solid colors, a clean yellow, red, etc. And make adjustments to the color settings in your scanner software. After that scan your artwork. If it is for reproduction work the minimum it should be is 300dpi at the reproduction size. If you work twice the reproduction size, than you can scan at 150dpi.

Remember, you can always reduce the resolution of an image but you can never add detail back by increasing the resolution.

@dottyp said in Dell Canvas:

@jimsz I am looking for a big display at the minute (eyesight problem) do you recommend the Yinova

I highly recommend the yiynova. The product was good, the price very good. Since I don't want to hijack the topic I sent you a link for the yiynova via the discussion window.

Sell giclee prints instead.