Kittys Drawings

Blah!

Sorry for the lack of posting…Been away for the weekend down at Wilsons Prom – frolicking in the waves and having fun….Posing for photographs and trashing a dress that only LOOKS vintage. Trashing I say, but I think it survived all the sand, salt and clambering over rocks. I picked it up at the Salvos around the corner for a mere $25. I will show you photos when they are ready….

Until then, this is a post to say BLAH – Not feeling it today despite my best intentions. Having a slight low moment and think I need to get back to sketching and anatomy before I try and finish something. Even though I feel like such a failure for not finishing anything decent in ages.

You know what I realised not too long ago?? That in all my years of learning art and calling myself an artist – I was never really taught how to draw. In primary school it was all about experimentation and basic rules of colour like what primary colours are etc. High school was mostly about art theory and learning particular art periods and well known artists in history. By the time I got to uni, it was expected that you knew how to draw or that you had no interest in actual technique and rather just wanted to paint. The most valuable thing I learned from school was my life drawing classes which comprised of one semester during my first year of my Fine Arts degree.
Everything else I know is self taught – Any inkling I might have of anatomy and serious techniques are from books, my parents and now ConceptArt.org. All I have going for me right now is my talent alone….I know I have it but quite frankly, that’s not enough. I need discipline and structured learning. I might have books on drawing the figure and calculating perspective, but they don’t give you feedback or the environment of a classroom where there is interaction with your peers and mentors.
I wonder if it’s a failing of Australia’s entire art education system or just the schools I went to? I know here in this country there is not much value placed on artists, instead we focus on sporting prowess. This is changing I know, albeit slowly. I don’t know that if I went and enrolled in another university here in Melbourne, if they would teach all the things I missed out on. It is all well and good to encourage the growth of ideas and the creative process, but if you don’t have a solid grounding of technique then what good is your art? Maybe this is a contentious issue and people disagree with me…If you do I would love to hear your thoughts.

I think this little ramble has inspired me to pursue more formal training. There are adult courses out there and uni degrees…but I don’t want the same thing as what I was learning in Tassie. Time to look into it! Any ideas send them my way please
Thanks for hearing me out!!

With Google Friend Connect that is! I had it on my old Blogspot blog but since I moved to WordPress I lost all my followers *sob*…..SO, now I figured out how to get it on this site and I’ve put a widget up right there ———>
Just under my other subscribing options.
So if it’s easier for you to follow me with Google then click away (and it makes me look popular too!).

Thanks!

Oh and here’s some cute. Just because.

Don’t you feel like that sometimes??

Okay so I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet. STILL no internet at home. Grr. There was never a phone line installed at the new place so it’s a bit of a long and expensive process setting one up.

I have been sketching though so I’ve got tons to show you when I can actually upload some art.

The new house is seriously awesome too and we’re all settled in now. Still need to buy some more furniture – the bedroom is looking very bare!! I’m loving my new studio space and my nice big kitchen. Been baking up a storm!

Anyways, sorry to leave you all for so long. This no internet business is pretty hard! Lol. It should be up this week hopefully and I can post all my sketches.  I’ve also been working on Not Quite Nigella’s portrait. Yay!

Til then…ciao!

Hellooooo!!!

I’ve got my first guest post – over at Cult-of-Pop doing fortnightly Nintendo DS game reviews. Yep, I’m a gamer….I love my DS – it keeps me entertained while I travel to work on the train. That’s 2 hours a day of playing! Woah!

So I shall be bringing the GIRLY to gaming! I’m not really into shooting games and all those ones that the boys usually play. *yawn*. I like fun and cute and puzzles.

Other stuff this week:

Me and Jonny are heading to Ballarat this weekend. Yay! A little break out in the country. It’s going to be FREEZING but I don’t mind, because our room has a SPA. Yessssss. We’re staying at the Heritage on Lydiard which looks pretty awesome. I will take some photos so you might see those on the blog soon.

Sketchy news – I’ve got tons of ideas. Found some brilliant stuff on the net with some wicked poses which I will start drawing as soon as this post is finished. Sorry I haven’t got anything to show you yet – I’ve got some things scanned at work but I’ve just been so busy I haven’t had the time to play with them.

We did  a total of THREE photoshoots this week! That means a lot of take home goodies….. I have so much cheese in my fridge right now it’s not funny.. About 3 bobbly balls of mozzarella (Pantalica brand), yoghurt, sour cream and more cheese. Mmmm dairy. Photoshoots mean a lot of Photoshopping, so I’ve been happily editing away with the Wacom tablet at work. It’s always so therapeutic.

And on fashion…spent an hour at DFO today and was totally and utterly uninspired by what the shops had to offer. No pretty shoes, no pretty dresses. Everything overpriced and cheap, nasty fabrics. I want to find me a full skirt – this one I saw at Route 66 is perfect but at $225, a little out of budget at the moment. Not to mention having to choose between green or black is just too much.

But I digress…..I think I might go trawl Etsy for something unique.

Oh and here is the linky for my game review -> Click this

Until next week, Ciao!! Hope you all have a great weekend.

(how hot is this skirt!!)

We interrupt your scheduled broadcast to bring you breaking news….

Esz is ANGRY!

Angry at designers who think that just because you can’t see something in Illustrator, then it means it’s not there. GRR.

IT IS DAMMIT!! And it’s me that has to spend hours cleaning up your retarded mistakes.

Common complaints:

Masks. I hate them with a passion. They are the most overused feature of Illustrator. There are very few occasions where they are actually necessary. Using a mask to ‘cover up’ your misaligned and wonky boxes is not one of them. I still have to come in and try and figure out what’s supposed to be in the art or not.

Not checking in wireframe view: Hit “Cmd (Ctrl for you Windoze users), Y” to see your art in wireframe. Clean up those empty text boxes and art with zero fill that is not doing anything but taking up file space and giving me a headache.

Not using the coordinates. Those little numbers up under the menu bar are there for a reason. Use them. They will make sure all your boxes are actually boxes and your art lines up nicely. If your rectangle is meant to be 100mm x 100mm, then that’s what it should measure. Not 101.03mm x 109.652mm. Set your 0 point and build everything around that so it all lines up nicely. Don’t fudge it and line things up by eye and hope for the best. I still have to fix it cos that shit doesn’t PRINT.

RGB colour in a CMYK job: Keep your colours neat and tidy and all in the same colourspace please. It’s not hard to do. In fact, it’s harder to have them all over the place. So how does this happen exactly? It hurts my brain to wonder how you managed that one.

Dodgy spot colours: Okay, I can forgive you for using only CMYK in a job because I know your uni teachers taught you to use spot colours as little as possible. But when I tell you I need spot colours only – please don’t just rename the CMYK swatch as “PMS 109″. Renaming a swatch does not make it a Pantone colour. And please stick to using one colour book when referencing Pantones – Solid Coated, Uncoated or whatever, just use ONE.

Using the wrong tool for the job: InDesign is not the ideal program to use when creating art for flexible food packaging. We do not print pages. This goes for any design job, not just my line of work. Don’t use Photoshop for page layouts – photo editing and compositing only thanks. InDesign is only for multiple pages like magazines and books. Illustrator is for single page layouts and vector art. You are not doing yourself any favours by using the wrong program – your computer will run slower and your job will be much more difficult. Trust me on this one.

Use the Appearance panel: It’s been around for a while – but now with CS2 and upwards it’s got so much POWER. You don’t need to have two layers of text if you want to outline it in a different colour while preserving it’s appearance. Just move the stroke under the fill in the Appearance panel. Save some file space and save some time.

Not supplying linked files: When supplying art with photos included…please give me the photos you used too. Don’t just embed them. Yes, I can fix this thanks to the latest versions of Photoshop. But that doesn’t solve the problem if you’ve done something stupid like upscaled your photo in Illustrator. Actually, this leads me to my next problem.

Get your resolution right: If you don’t understand what resolution means and how to handle it – WHY ARE YOU A GRAPHIC DESIGNER? Add too, the difference between pixel and vector art. If this needs explaining then seriously, my brain will explode.

and finally….

Check with your printer: We all have different requirements for what we can and can’t print. Every printer is different. So ask. We will be eternally grateful. This goes for web too – I’m sure there’s plenty of coders out there who would agree with me.

That is all for now. I will leave you with an example of the difference between ‘normal’ view in Illustrator and what you see when you turn wireframes on. See the kind of stuff I have to put up with?

/end rant

PS. I’ve got a couple of sketches in the works so expect to see those soon!

Hello Everyone!

I’ve been up to stuff today! Right now I’m drawing another kitty for everyone It’s not finished yet but I thought I would post something anyway….

First of all – I’ve added my gallery to the blog. It’s up there under the “Gallery” link on the top right. There’s only a couple now as all my other pics are stored on my work computer. So next week you’ll see some extra stuff added. I’m not too happy with the formatting – Maybe WordPress will improve the functionality of the gallery settings. I tried to upload a plugin called NextGen Gallery but couldn’t get it working properly. Grr. So what is there will have to make do for now.

ALSO – I’ve done another header – This one I am happy with so you’ll probably see that one stick around for a while.

Now as to what I’ll be showing you….I think everyone with the tiniest interest in clothes has jumped on the Polyvore bandwagon. I’ve been signed up for a while and have little bouts of obsessiveness. The last few days I’ve done a fair few outfits – always so much fun and very addictive. If only I had the money to buy all the clothes I put on my Polyvore sets! I’m sure everyone feels the same!

I’m not one to add fancy backgrounds to my sets, preferring instead to let the clothes do the talking. I like playing with colours I wouldn’t normally wear too. As you can tell, I love contrast.

Statement boots by kittymeow on Polyvore.com

Something simple by kittymeow featuring Forever21 accessories

Pink & Blue by kittymeow on Polyvore.com

Shiny yellow WOW! by kittymeow on Polyvore.com

Dream work outfit by kittymeow on Polyvore.com

How to wear…Prints AND headwear! by kittymeow on Polyvore.com

Probably my fave out of them all so far. Love the hat and the dress so much *sigh*

What are your favourite outfits you’ve created on Polyvore? Link them below and we can add each other as contacts!

PS. I’ll have a drawing for you tomorrow!