Painter Wow!, Sam and whistles

I spent some birthday money from my mom-in-law on the Painter 8 Wow! book, something I've been lusting after for a while. I love these Wow! books because they give explicit details on how artists created specific pieces and why they chose to do it that way. All the illustrations are in high-quality colour on glossy paper and there's also a CD of goodies like extra Paper Textures and instructional Quicktime movies; hence the hefty price tag of the book.

I've also decided that it's time I learn some proper drawing techniques that I only have a vague recollection of learning back in high school, like perspective drawing. I've been researching courses in Toronto but most don't start until the fall (summers are out for me since we're at the cottage a lot), so I've been researching some interesting-looking resources online:

Using Perspective in Drawing
Introduction to Perspective Drawing
Drawing in One-Point Perspective

Experimenting with paper textures.

Any other suggestions for online resources (having to drawing and illustration, not necessarily just perspective) appreciated. I've already been paid for some of my doodles, which always comes as a surprise to me, but only realized recently that duh, maybe I shouldn't ignore this potential of this "fun hobby." Drawing using my Wacom artpad doesn't seem to tire out my tendons in the same way as typing, though I'm happy to report that I can type for much longer stretches at a time now. Anyway, if I take my doodling a little more seriously, I'm hoping that I might be able to supplement my writing income with some freelance illustration. Many thanks to pro illustrators like Kate Parkinson and my sister for their encouragement.

I want to learn to draw things from more interesting angles instead of always directly from the front or side (see My Life In A Nutshell for my typical style now), so I'm going to start carrying around a small sketchbook with me, or my laptop and Wacom artpad for location sketching. Be warned that you'll probably start seeing a number of these dull-looking sketches appear in my Doodle Sketchbook. My office set-up until we move is such that I need to hook up the scanner manually each time I want to use it, which means I'll probably stick to posting digital sketches.

Tamagotchi update: Wee Sam is no longer wee! He's evolved into a teenager. Needs somewhat less maintenance, but sleeps in and has a tendency to sulk. I definitely owe the survival of my Tamagotchi to my frequent support calls with Sara and Annie, by the way, both of whom have been a wealth of Tamagotchi maintenance information. Yay for nieces!

Illustration Friday post. Topic: "Crowded."

Had a good penny whistle lesson with Karen Light yesterday. Right now we're focussing on ornamentation, and we went through "Dusty Windowsills" a measure at a time. In the end, players pick whatever ornamentation they'd like, and some don't do ornamentation at all; there is no one right way of doing things. Karen, for example, doesn't use slides (gradually moving one's finger off one hole to "slide" into the next note) whereas I quite like them. She has nothing against slides, but has pointed out that some whistle players tend to overuse slides and can't play certain note combinations (going from an F to a G, for example) without doing a slide.

Since I've already learned some of the pieces from my 121 Irish Session Tunes book with slides because of listening to the CD recordings, however, this means that I'm now playing some tunes with slides and some without. Karen says not to worry about it, that I'll eventually settle on my own playing style. For now, I'm focussing on the Mary Bergin style of playing for my in-depth study of certain tunes. As far as I can tell, her style involves NO slides though plenty of cuts and rolls, quite a bit of tonguing and staccato for emphasis. Last night I learned how to do a Long Roll, which is fun to do but HARD.

Right now, I have two modes of tune-playing. One is playing without heed to ornamentation but focussing instead on just getting the notes so I can play along in the session. The other is focussing on technique and putting in ornamentation, but can only do this properly if playing VERY slowly. Eventually, of course, the goal is to merge the two. :-)

I'm realizing that my goal of over 100 tunes by the end of the year is probably unrealistic; it would be good to play fewer tunes WELL, I think.

Anyway, have a good weekend! I'm off to FilKONtario this afternoon.

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