creating-things-by-stan-levine

March 2012

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:01:23 +0100

Last month I joined the Lamorinda Arts Alliance. I am looking forward to painting with there plein air painting group this week. It turns out that my instructor Mira White is a member of the LAA too. I am looking forward to making new creative and artistic friends. Here is one of my recent drawings that I drew as part of a study in the class I am taking with Mira White:

You can see more of my illustration work by clicking on the illustration link from this website.
Another new thing that I got into this month was creating my first mural for a local church in Concord.
There are actually 2 murals that I'm working on. The first one is 28 feet wide by 8 feet high of a scene in Plaka Greece. The mural paintings are being painted on unstretched canvas sheets that will be hung on the walls for an event in May.
Here is my work on the first mural thus far:

The second mural will be 51 feet wide by 8 feet high. I hope to be getting help from my friends at the LAA on this one next week. Over the next few months I will be developing some concept sketches for murals that appeal kids. Themes like pirates, transformers and stuff like seems to be what the kiddos are into these days.
I am also pleased to be drawing caricatures again this year for the Campolindo High School Grad Night, and I am reaching out with my caricature talent to other schools in the bay area. If you are someone who is looking to entertain the graduating class of a high school in the bay are of California, and I haven't contacted you already, please contact me with day and time your grad night will be, so I can report back to you with my availability.
The best way to reach me these day is by e-mail.
Just click on the contact link on this website and should direct you to new e-mail with my address already placed in the "To" line.

2012 Resolution

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:20:12 +0100

In January I started taking a drawing with color pencils class at the local Civic Arts Recreation Center here in Walnut Creek California taught by Mira White. In this class I have been discovering different ways to use color in my drawings. Here is a sample of a homework assignment I completed for this week:

A Fugi Apple.

Blue and green over red create the shadow areas. As the apple turns toward the light source we see a graduation from green to yellow. I think this class will help me to produce some great portfolio pieces that I will pitch to children's book publishers.
I continue to work on the comic book, "Who Is It?...Doomsday!" in collaboration with writer David Moses. It's a 30 page graphic novel. All of the rough sketches are done. Now I have been refining them with brushes and ink. Here is a sample of one of the finished panels of the project:

So far I've illustrated 12 pages, so I just have 17 more pages until I finish.
I have also decided to volunteer my services to paint a mural for a local church. I probably won't get started on that until February, but when I do, I'll take some pictures so you can see my progress.
Business has been slow, so have been taking this time to volunteer my services out to non profit organizations and fundraisers while beefing up my portfolio with new and improved artwork.
I am interested in doing some concept art for video games and movies, comic books and children's book illustration while continuing to serve as a caricaturist for local birthday parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Weddings, and other events where a performing artist could serve as a way to entertain guests.

Origami By Stan Levine

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:22:29 +0100

In January 2011 I started learning origami from various instructional videos on the internet.

This dragon was folded out of $1 dollar bill.

This is a bear I folded, but it was originally designed by John Montroll.

This lizard is made up of separate pieces. The arms and body can move independently.

This dinosaur is another John Montroll design I folded by following along with a video on YouTube.

I folded this frog from a video too, but I used special paper that I got from a craft store.

A Dragonfly

A cat. The paper and eyes that I glued on can all be purchased at a craft store.

An owl

I like cats

This is a traditional Japanese crane. This was the first thing I learned how to fold.
I enjoy making things out of paper. Often times, when I am at a restaurant bar, or cafe, I will fold origami and give it away as a gift to others. I can also be commissioned to create origami at birthday parties.

September 2010 Update Continuted...

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 06:01:26 +0100

Where do cows go to have fun?

To the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-VIES!

This drawing took me all day to complete. I began with an 2H pencil to plan out the perspective and shapes of the movie theater. Then I used a 4B to sketch in the different cows posing in the theater. I went over all my marks with a Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Permanent Marker, and erased all my pencil marks using a kneaded eraser. That's almost half the day right there! In a drawing like this, it's important to plan. In a painting, I can go over things, and as the paint applies from the brush, depending on viscosity (thickness) it can create effects that give me ideas to work with. Paint is conducive to the spontaneous creative mind, because the effects of how the brush applies the paint lead to ideas, and from those ideas, the final product is achieved. With a drawing like this, however, I have to have a pretty clear idea about what I want to achieve. Lines are definite. Applying them is like nailing in the wooden support structure from which a house is build. Then I used Prismacolor Cool Grey Ink Markers to render the lighting of a movie theater. I could have worked from photo references of movie theaters to get the lighting right, but that would have taken the fun away. I embraced that challenge of really understanding the way lights effect substance in a movie theater. I just thought about how the light of the projector is the primary light source in the room. Everything started out with the 20% cool grey marker, but I left the eyes alone, because I wanted them to be obviously watching the movie, and for their reactions to the movie be obvious to us. I thought about all the times I've been to the movies, and posed the cows to represent different responses to different movies I've been to. Some movies put us asleep, sometimes they are funny, intense, or boring. Sometimes I've just sat there mesmerized by glorious car chase scenes while munching away at my popcorn, and sometimes a big smelly fat man sits next to me, and his arms droop over the arm rests into my personal space. All of these situations are depicted by the cows in the theater, adding to the totality of its humor. It's amazing how a corny joke can be so much funnier when it's illustrated with little details like this. If you look more closely now, you can see the father taking his calf to the bathroom, while a cow on the upper right peaks in on the show. The further back we go into the space of the room, the darker it gets. The light of the projector bounces off the cows and chairs in the room, casting long shadows which are one to two degrees darker than the object's value. If you study the drawing closely, maybe you can see all the thought and planning that went into this. I am really happy with this illustration, and I am looking forward to doing more work in this style.
Another thing I've been working on is the development of a card game called Kitty City copyright Stan Levine. This is a role playing game where players assume the role of a kitty. Kitties draw 3 cards per turn, and discard or play at least 1. Players try to accumulate Kitty Power cards, that can be used in Kitty Battles to defeat their opponents and take Kitty Territories. Whomever has all of the Kitty Territories wins the game. Here are some examples of cards I've been developing:

The Catnip card gives the player an advantage in kitty battles.

Clean Kitty protects players against attacks for one round of Kitty Battle.

I've also been taking a life drawing class. In this class, students draw nudes on newsprint with vine charcoal. We begin each class with 2 minute gesture drawings. A gesture drawing is like a stick figure, only it captures the energy of the model's pose. Details are not important in gesture drawings. What is important is to notice how the model is standing, which side of the body is compressed, and which is stretched. Here are some examples of my class work:

Then we do 20 minute poses:

The 20 Minute pose is long enough to start thinking about underlying forms (muscle structures and anatomy.) I still want to get the pose right, but at the same time, I want to try to render the contours of the human form. Some students try to capture a true to life, exact representation of what they are seeing when they draw. To do this, requires a lot of technical left brained skill. The artist must measure the proportions of the body, and keep everything centered over the model's balance point. Being a right brained artist, I tend to go for exaggerate what I see, and go for a more animated style.

Notice how that heel of the back foot has an "S" shaped curve to show how the ball of her foot is planted on the ground; how her buttocks is compressed against the chair's seat to emphasize the sitting action. Her arm draped over the back of the chair. Notice how small I drew it in comparison to her other arm. This is not the way it actually looks, but a stylized way of drawing what I am seeing to convey a sense of weightlessness in her arm. Her arm is just hanging there, over the chair in an inanimate state of being.

What I've Been Working On- September 2010

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:09:15 +0100

Hello Stanimation Fans!

It has been a few months since I've blogged.
Most of my progress can be viewed by checking out my work on this website. I have completed a few more paintings.
I recently enrolled in a life drawing class. I'll have some work to show you in the not too distant future from that class.
I am excited and looking forward with great anticipation to my art show at the Jewish Community Center in Walnut Creek from October 7- December 31. I will be exhibiting 12 acrylic landscape paintings at this show along with 2 other local artists.
Today I worked on some illustration.

I call this one Idiot Darts. It shows what happens when we label people (name calling). I was influenced by a book I've been reading called Non Violent Communication by Marchall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. 2nd Edition. Labeling reinforces the very behaviors we are trying to correct. The book says recommends we handle our anger in a more amicable way by focusing on what we are feeling, needing, and requesting. When we use what the book calls "Life alienating" communication by making demands, using threats, and coercion methods of communication, we may get what we want, but every time we do this, we are decreasing the chances of getting what we want in the future.

A Tennis Joke
When the tennis racket was done playing tennis with the tennis ball the ball said "I GOT TO BOUNCE!"

Well, that's all I've got time to show you right now.
I'll be back soon with more!

Regards,
Stan Levine

Friday June 4, 2010 What I've Been Working On

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:39:09 +0100

Last week I got sick. I think it was some kind of flew, but I'm better now.
I've been working on promoting my photo realistic portrait charcoal drawings. Here are a few ads I designed with Flash:

These are some high resolution images, so they'll probably take some time to load on your computer screen. How much time depends on your connection speed. If you have a slow connection speed, now is a great time to stand up, stretch, use the bathroom, maybe get some more coffee or tea. It will probably be ready to see by the time you get back.
Each of these charcoal drawings take anywhere between 6 to 8 hours to complete. If you like the style I work in, keep in mind that it doesn't have to be a portrait of a person. I can draw just about anything from a photo reference. Imagine how your dog, cat or motorcycle would look as a detailed charcoal drawing, hand crafted by a real artist. Maybe you're someone who is looking for an artist who can draw like this to illustrate your book. You might not have photo references, but if you can use your words to describe what you want to see, I can draw quick 5 minute rough sketches that illustrate your words. If you like what you see, those sketches can be hammered out into fully rendered charcoal drawings.
In terms of productivity, that's all I've been able to do. I am hoping to get a lot more done in the up coming weeks, now that I have my full strength back. I've also been studying Actionscript 3.0, HTML, and Javascript. I've been wanting to design my own video game for a while now. I've been looking at books like Foundation Actionscript for Flash 8 by Kristian Besley, Sham Bhangal and David Powers, and a few internet recourse like www.friendsofed.com and http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/ I'm slowly figuring out how the programming language works by process of immersion. It's similar to how a baby might learn to speak. At first, all the sounds are strange and unfamiliar, but over time they begin to make sense. The type of video game I want to develop is a role playing game, similar to TSR Hobbies, Dungeons and Dragons. The game would start with the player being able to select what type of character it wants to be. You could be a strong knight, a powerful magic user, a cunning thief, a dwarf, an elf, or a cleric. Each character would have different attributes; strengths and weaknesses. For example, a knight might be very strong, but not very bright, while a magic user would be very intelligent but also very weak. I'm going to have to figure out a way to use a programming language to keep track of each character's vital statistics. That way, each time the player faces a challenge, the program would run an algorithm to see if it is successful in overcoming it. This is going to take some knowledge of how to use mathematical operators in conjunction with variables, strings, and logic loops, which all sounds very overwhelming and complex right now. The cool thing is, some of these books I read have source files for games that are already designed and ready to play. I may have a hard time writing my own code, but the beauty of it is, I might not have to. I can just copy the code from the source files, change the structure of it a little bit to suite what I need it to do for my game project, and wallah!
I will have the experience of designing my own video game. From there I can decide what other games of applications I would like to create.

Breath

Wed, 26 May 2010 13:16:55 +0100

"Breath"
24" X 30"
Acrylic on Canvas
by Stan Levine

When I paint on a canvas as big as this, I have to have a reason; I have to be inspired. I have an archive of photos my wife takes from her Nikon that I go through when I need a reason to paint where I found a fantastic landscape of Mendocino's coast. I like how the light travels through the painting along with the water. There's something about it that makes me think of breathing in a meditative state.
Before I painted "Breath," I began with a value study using cool gray ink markers.

A Value Study for "Breath"
9" X 12"
Cool Gray Ink Markers on Acid Free Sketch Paper
By Stan Levine

The value study helps me to visualize what kind of painting I want to make. It helps me to take apart the visual elements of the photograph, and rebuild them in a way that is a creative expression of my own. Then, when I start the painting, I begin with value. I mix variations of Mars Black and Titanium White to block in the light and dark shapes. Once I get the composition going I that I stand back to see how it's working. Then I'm ready to take the next step. I start adding in Cerulean Blue for the water, and add atmospheric light to the rock formations that are pointed towards the light, and Cadmium Red, and Transparent Burt Umber to form a purplish dark light that takes hold on the forms that turn to shadow. I keep my paints thin and watery in the beginning, and thicken it up towards the end to accent the elements I want to stand out strong.
Painting is a process of communicating with nature in a non verbal language of color and light, form and shadow. One must be receptive to emotion without letting it overtake you to insanity. It is a delicate balance that only the true artist can master.

May 26 2010 What I've Been Working On

Wed, 26 May 2010 12:51:04 +0100

It seems that I just can't make up my mind about what I want to specialize in. I am so talented at so many things, that when I try to commit to just one discipline of the arts I feel trapped; like my fate has been sealed and there's no time anymore for self discovery. Then every day is like a repeat of the last one, and that is just not good, so I had to jump out of painting for a little while and learn somethings about Flash Actionscript programming, and Javascript. I've been learning about how variables work, and how to "Timeline Control," functions to make buttons serve as links on a Flash website. My wife and I have a family to raise, and need to find a way to make some money, so I've been thinking about that too. My art coach has influenced me in a good direction. I've reformatted my Vision Chart to suite my pursuit of a "Jack of all trades," career in art. Each month has a specific income goal to reach, that gets broken down in the vision chart into specific artistic services that I will be selling using the internet and phone. Then, each creative service gets broken down into weekly tasks that I must complete to effectively promote and sell them to the general public, and meet my income goal by the end of the month.
Here are a few creative services that I will be offering in the months to come.

Portrait Illustration
Life-like and near photo realistic illustrations of people, pets or a favorite vehicle like motorcycle or whatever it is you take pride in driving on the open road, drawn with graphite or charcoal on 3" X 5," (tiny) 9" X12," (small) 11" X 14,"(medium) or 18" X 24"(poster size). I will have some examples of this type of illustration, and pricing information online here by the end of the month.

Graphic Design
This is something that companies pay top dollar for. They pay professional graphic designers to create ad, banners, billboards, commercials, and magazine ads to sell their products. Some of these products contain photographic elements that are manipulated with software like Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign, ColdFusion, Flash, etc, sometimes the assets are completely fabricated using the software. The software offers vector tools that allow the artist to create smooth even curves and straight lines that can be used to make resolution independent graphics that shine apart from the amateur artist working with marker pens in Mommy's basement at the age of forty-five.
Yes, computers offer professional looking graphics that can make what a company sells or does clear and appealing in the fraction of the time that it would take a door-to door salesman.
Now I want to let you all in on a little secret.
YOU DON"T NEED PHOTOSHOP TO CREATE QUALITY GRAPHIC DESIGN!
That's right! The big software companies got us all fooled into thinking that you have to use Photoshop, or your products won't sell, but here is the truth. There are dozens of open source (free downloads) of graphic design software that can get the job done just as well.
I recently downloaded a programed called GIMP, which is a lot like Photoshop. Here are some things I've done with it:

This was all done in GIMP. I just used the tools to create and position each element, and exported as a Jpeg file, but it could have been exported in any variety of other file types.

For this one, I started out by importing a photo of a paint texture I created with acrylic paint into GIMP. Then I used the text tool to create these transparent letters "FAN," an acronym for Fine Art Network ( a group that specializes in building relationships for fine artists to help sell their work.)
There are dozens of tutorials online that guide you through just about any task you need to create deliver your graphic design products, and meet the requirements of your employer's needs.
So one way to increase my income as a freelance artist is to do more work with GIMP and explore other open source graphic design software, follow the tutorials and develop skills that I can show and sell to clients internationally.

Caricatures
I have been drawing caricatures since 2008. I first learned to draw caricatures from the Academy of Art University in 2006 from Tana Ericson, a former Disney artist in a Drawing For Cartoons class. A lot of caricaturists use chalks that blend well to create soft pastel-like, skin tones. The disadvantage of working with chalk is that it smudges. Some artists have special bags that nobody knows where they get to protect the chalk from sliding off the page in transport. These plastic bags are expensive and bad for the environment, so I have developed an alternative method that is just as effective as the chalks for drawing caricatures. I use a combination of ink markers and color pencils on acid free sketch paper.
Here is a sample.

Luke Skywalker from the movie Star Wars.
This caricature was drawn in 5 minutes. It captures the likeness and exaggerates Mark Hamill's features to a comical level. Now imagine you're at a party, and I'm there drawing people. When they see how they look as a cartoon character, they will laugh so hard they might pee a little!
Now you're probably thinking, wow this is awesome, but I can't afford that.
NOT TRUE!
For $50 an hour ( 2 hour minimum with $50 travel fee) I will drive anywhere within the Bay Area of California to draw caricatures at your party event. That's $150 for 2 hours. Drawing each caricature in 5 minutes or less, I can draw up to 20 caricatures an hour, that's enough caricatures for 40 of your friends to take home and hang on their wall to remember the great time they had at your party.

Acrylic Paintings
While I have a show coming up in October, I can't wait until then to sell my paintings. I'll keep the ones I'm bound to by a contract with the gallery, but any others I create can be sold at cafes, hotels, and private practices all over the Bay Area of California. I just have to pick up the phone and ask business owners if it's okay to display my work on their walls. If a painting sells, the owner could take a percentage.

Other Developments
The more I learn about Javascript, the closer I get to creating video games that I want to upload to a website for people to play for free. That way you will be able to see my programming skills at work, and decide if you want to hire me to create something special for you!
I am also working on something I call a Vision Comic. It's a comic book about me, and what I would like to see happen in my life's future. It's a lot of fun, because I can make anything happen. This is a great way to keep my drawing going, and maybe develop something profitable in the process. I think it would be awesome to create and publish my own comic book. I just have to decide what it will be about, or it will just be a comic about nothing!
I also want to create more Flash animated shorts, and compile them together as a DVD that could be sold on Amazon for $20.

Being multi-talented makes it hard for people to understand what it is exactly that I do. When business professionals ask, "so what do you do?" And I do lots of things, it's not an easy question to answer. The best way to describe it is that I'm an artist, but not just any specific kind of artist, but renascence artist with skills of Leonardo De Vinci's caliber. Leonardo was not just a painter, but a writer, a scientist and an engineer. He devoted his life to using his full metal capacity to accomplish all he could in his lifetime. That is what I strive to do, and I think to do otherwise would be as gratifying.

May 17 What I've Been Working On

Tue, 18 May 2010 08:46:30 +0100

This week I needed a break from painting. I decided to look for ways to fulfill a long neglected dream of being a game developer. I found this great webiste, http://www.protorpg.com that has a download of a role playing game engine written in Javascript by Pierre Chassaing. I have very little programming knowledge of Javascript. I was purely driven by my passion to create an online role playing game to study the Javascript files in the "Games," file that comes with the "Demo," Download. After I played the game a few times, the Javascript computing language began to make sense. In the game, there are NPC (Non-Playing-Characters) that have pre-determined responses to key words the player types when talking to them. The "maps," folder contains the programming information needed to run the NPC and other entities in the game. I started out by changing what the characters say, and when I played the game I noticed that the NPC responded to the key words like "job," or "name," with the words I typed in the "map," files. I also looked at other files that come with the download, and saw files that contain programming information about items and various graphics such as doors, brick walls, grass, or forest. At the bottom of each "map," file there are bitmaps that contain numbers that represent the various graphics in the game. For example, the number 34 represents a fort. By adding 34 into the bitmap of a map file, I was able to add an additional fort to the game. Making the fort functional requires that something be added to the "egg," variable. When the player moves over a staircase, or a fort in the game, the programming loads up a new map file that contains information about the new area the player has moved to. The programming language uses an "egg," term to distinguish which map file to load once the player has moved over a predetermined point in the bitmap of the current map file using x and y coordinates. I am still trying to understand how this x,y coordinate system works, but with a little tinkering around I am confident that I will be able to figure it out. I am also trying to figure out how to add additional graphics to the graphics files that won't be rejected by the programming. Having very little programming knowledge, it takes a great deal of patience, perseverance, and concentration to figure what each line of the script is doing for the game, and now to manipulate it to do what I want it to do. Once I have gained enough of an understanding of how the files work, I will be able to modify ProtoRPG enough to create an RPG of my own. ProtoRPG is not open-source and is not free, so I won't be able to sell anything I create using the ProtoRPG engine. I intend to use ProtoRPG for educational purposes, and to showcase my skills as an artist on my website while giving full credit to Pierre Chassaing as the creator of the ProtoRPG engine once I have his permission. At some point, I would like to take a video game computer programming class, and gain the skills needed to create a game engine of my own. Then I will be able to realize my dream of being an freelance video game developer, while continuing to profit from my talents as a graphic designer and fine artist of acrylic paintings.
Yesterday I was going through some old sketch books that I put away in a closet, and found this character:

Notice how his arm is waving at you! It might take a while to move at first, but after it loads he should be waving at you continuously, every 2 seconds. This visual effect was achieved using a variety of programs and techniques. First I photographed the character from my sketch book and imported him into a free graphic design software called GIMP. I used a cutting tool to separate the alien's arm from it's body; a painful operation! I cropped the arm, and saved it as a PNG file with a transparent background, and did the same for the rest of him. Then I imported the PNG files into Flash Professional 8, on two separate layers in the time line. The time line has numbers on it that represent frames. There are about 30 frames a second in video, but the software lets you modify the number of frames per second. Running the animation at 12 frames per second helps it to load faster on the web. The arm PNG file has an anchor point, an area in the image represented by a circle that determines the center axis from where the image can rotate from. To get the arm to rotate correctly, I positioned the anchor point on the shoulder area of the arm. Then I copied and pasted the arm from it's frame on the time line, to other frames, rotating the arm from it's anchor point up and then down to create the waving action once exported as an animate GIF file.

Part of being mulit-talented means not being able to specialize in one thing. While I enjoy the fine arts, I also enjoy the feeling I get when I solve a problem. Working with software presents many technological challenges that must be hurtled in order to achieve a finished work of art. My passion for being a video game developer drives me to continue to push past my frustration with the challenges of technology. I have to know how to program, how to create bitmap graphics, 3D vector graphics, and animation to make this happen. The knowledge is out there in books, and in many tutorials on the internet. All I have to do is be patient, be persistent, and concentrate on finding the answers to one question at a time. Breaking the bigger tasks into smaller more manageable ones helps to keep frustration levels down, and the creation process fun.

What I've Been Working On

Thu, 06 May 2010 17:15:42 +0100

Last month I met Edward Zeidan, owner of an award winning computer support/maintenance business in Lafayette, California called Nerd 4 Rent. He asked me to create a series of promotional post cards that will be mailed to customers. I drew a few concept drawings, and the Nerd Bucks, concept seemed to appeal the most. Here is the concept drawing that was selected for the next phase of production:

I used Flash Professional 8 to import the concept illustration. Then, in a separate layer, I started tracing over it using a combination of tools that the program offers. Creating a circle, then going into vector mode, I was able to stretch, pull and position control points and handles of the bezier curves. All of the lines were created with bezier curves (vector based shapes that are resolution independent). I wanted the lines to be uniform and geometrically well proportioned. It took a few hours to get the lines in the right place. The Nerd 4 Rent logo that was provided for me from the company has an illustration of a spinner hat in it. When deciding what colors to use for the post card, I had to take the colors used in the spinner hat into consideration for all the colors to be consistent. I have noticed that in a lot of commercials on television, companies use consistent colors and fonts to advertise their products, so It seemed like it would make good design sense to use consistent colors in the drawing for this project. Here is what the final product for Nerd Bucks looks like:

Edward was pleased with this product, and I am looking forward to working with him on more design projects like this.
Another graphic design project I recently finished was a post card for John Palm, an employee that works for California Cooking (CCK). California Cooking is a restaurant supply company that rents, services and sells ice machines and other restaurant supplies. After John and I discussed the concept for the post card, I got started on it using Flash Professional 8. I like this program, because the Graphic User Interface (GUI) is easy to use. It is similar to Photoshop in that it has a tool bar with familiar icons to represent similar tools. I also like how different tool bars for things like color mixing are easily found from the drop down menus at the top of the program window. The only thing that I think would improve Flash is if the action script GUI could be more intuitive for non programmers to use. Here is the first draft of the post card I created for CCK:

The illustration depicts a chef that is upset about his broken ice machine. It was John's idea to give the ice machine a personality, making the post card a funny keepsake that customers will hang on the wall of their office or break room. There were several employees of CCK that saw this drawing and they all had different ideas about possible revisions that they wanted to see in the finished product. I got all of their suggested revisions, and made some suggestions of my own. Once the revisions were approved by John, I started revising this vector drawing to the finished product below:

You see the yellow background, the detail on the ice machine, and the changes in the text. These are all changes that were discussed and agreed on, but at the last minute, I decided to add the tongue drooling water from it's mouth. The team loved this post card, and it would be great to work on more projects like this in the future.

This month is going to be a busy month for me. I have caricature gigs lined up every weekend, and my art coach has me doing some very helpful exercises. I'll be painting for 15 minutes every day as part of my continued exploration of process, not product. It is the process that becomes the product, so in order to obtain it, I have to let go of what I want my craft to be, and just put the paint on the canvas and allow things to evolve one step at a time.
Here are some of my process paintings that I have done this week:

As I painted, I thought about light effects on a lemon that I saw while eating dinner earlier that day. I also thought about the philosophical concepts of the Yin and the Yang. The light makes the lemons mostly dark, but deep within, the light shines through. In the center we see the round shapes that are opposites on each side. This painting is about feelings, and how nothing is ever all one thing, but a complex collection of feelings; thoughts and ideas. While people in politics speak their views as representatives of one singular belief, they must explore other beliefs in order for them to be prepared to win a debate against their opponents. On an psychological level, there are things that make us sad and things that make us happy. No matter how happy I am, there will always be a part of me that will encompass every other emotion. Vice-verse, when I feel sad, thoughts that are negative repeat in my head, but deep underneath those thoughts is a different self with positive thoughts that manifest emotions of happiness.

This is a water color painting of some characters from X-Files; a television show about FBI agents who search for evidence of the super natural. The colors of skin can be very complex, because it is translucent. Light passes through it more in some areas than others. As it wrinkles and bends blood flows this way an that. A combination of yellow, red, brown and sometimes blue is used to pick up all the little details of skin.

This one is based on a photo of my wife when she was a little girl. I explored my process by mixing different colors, and seeing how they blend to get different results. I like the way the man on the left's nose is indicated using darker shades of yellow around it. I like the way I can subtly show little details of people's faces with color. This can be very difficult to do at first, but with experience I have learned that the more contrast there is between light and dark areas, the more information about what I want to see can be indicated.