Bugs, Tablets and I may have bought something .....

Been a bit under the weather this week ...

The bugs hit on Wednesday and they felt really bad. I was still heading off into work but very definitely reduced capacity. Still not right but closer to normal again. It's been the classic hot/cold with a dry cough but add crippling headaches and joint pain to that as well. The headaches were intense on Wednesday. (Meningitis did cross my mind, thankfully it wasn't.)

It did mean I didn't have a chance to play more with the new toy acquired on Tuesday though. Yep. Acquired a tablet ... graphics tablet. It's a Wacom Intuos thing which is purely input. There's no screen on it but you can have it on your lap, keep your eye on the screen and it's fairly intuitive linking the hand movement to the screen when you get used to it. (It seemed to be fighting me today though which could easily be Windows).

Anyway ... I thought I'd try a sketch or two and this happened :

Click for bigger as per usual. I've been attempting to learn more from a group called Inklings, where the lovely pair of Steph (@sourfruitjunkie) and Aria (@genkisoda) have huge fun just drawing things while talking about the techniques that go into what they're drawing.

One thing I'm taking from it is ... there's a huge amount of work that goes in before it becomes as apparently effortless as when an expert does an activity. As a beginner, you look at what you make and think it looks rubbish. You forget that there's a massive amount of work and practice between the beginner and the expert. The thing to tell yourself is that by practicing, you're making the steps to becoming much better and you should learn as much as possible from your early efforts and from watching other people.

There's always room to learn. And it takes ages to get to an expert level. The underlying message though is that drawing is fun. Keep at it.

Here's another sketch :

This one is for the lovely Random Tuesday who had a birthday last week. I was doing more learning about the brush tools available in the drawing package (still far from getting the best from them) and looking to apply some of the skeleton lessons. Everything has a skeleton (even dragons!) ... and remembering that will make your drawings look a bit more real. So in here, I've used a pocket dragon as a reference again and added in customised arms and fingers to make the symbol on the middle. I hope she liked it.

The last one of the evening was for the weekly Mage Cast show, which has been huge fun to watch. One of the cast members has been busy doing other things for the last few weeks though. Where could he be ?

The original had lines which were far too faint, I hope the brightness adjustment makes it more legible. That's another lesson to learn, my AOC screen is extremely good but I think it's bringing out details that other screens cannot. Hence the one above having detail that's too faint to read.

One of the issues I'm fighting with myself on is that I want to unleash the drawings as quickly as possible, before refining them to be up to good standard. I dunno, I get ideas that I think will make people chuckle and I want to get them the chuckles as quickly as I can.

One last sketch before closing thing ... anyone need coffee ?

That one's from coming back to drawing today. I'm trying to keep the style to simple outline with filled colours (I'm surprised at how many drawings and animations actually are simple outlines and flat colour!) with highlighting coming in as appropriate.

But yep. Felt more like drawing today after the bugs in the week. Maybe could have yesterday but I wiped myself out with stuff going on in the morning.

Car service trip up to Cheltenham and ...
My cards were nearly wiped out by a bad reader in the petrol station (I may actually have flipped their PINs in my head, yep - bugs)
Scarily friendly receptionist. As in scary.
Distance travel. Not much but energy is very low still.
I'm changing the car again.

Yep. Lexus number 4 is on its way as part of an offer I couldn't refuse (of the nice kind, not the Godfather kind). I think they're terrified of Brexit and it's led to an offer where :
I pay the same monthly amount;
It holds off the "what happens at the end of the period" issue where I have to either fund buying the car or let it go;
They'll pay 3x services;
Massive deposit contributions - I'm basically not giving them any extra.
Possibly one for a disclosure note ? Maybe. The usual thing where disclosure is necessary is where you tell people how good stuff is without saying whether you were paid to say that. The incentives are all there above and I haven't said anything why I'll be on Lexus 4. (They're fantastic, solid, reliable cars with great performance and spec - what's not to like!).

The next one will be red and one reason to change is that while IS no 2 was better than the first, there were still a couple of thoughts like "It's not giving the economy of the first" and an issue with the phone which I was a bit perturbed about.

More in a few weeks there. In the meantime, I can feel bug affected legs threatening a pain flare up so I'd better hit "post" and say bye !

PS Check out Inklings on Geekspace.tv (twitch link). One more session on Monday evening (Tues 0.00 GMT) in this current run but I hope they'll be back. They're fun.