Author: Cedric

22 Jan

Posted at 00:00h in Art Tech

I do all my artwork from start to finish in Photoshop. It's a very powerful program and overall I enjoy using it. But I've never been thrilled with Photoshop's brushes. There's nothing in Photoshop that does a good job simulating the look and feel of a real-world graphite pencil. Painter and Sketchbook Pro are have pretty good pencil brushes, but I'm...

21 Jan

Posted at 05:33h in Uncategorized
I love a good book. My wife and I have five large bookcases filled with books and four more boxes of books in a hall closet. A surprising number of them we've actually read. But life gets busy and I've got less time to read than ever. Thankfully, there are audiobooks I can download and listen to while working on client projects. Of course as a professional artist I usually can't listen while I'm in the conceptual or sketch phase of a project because it is too distracting. Building the structure of an illustration requires my full concentration. But once that foundation is laid I can relax a bit and listen as I do the inking or coloring. Audiobooks can be more expensive than their paper-and-binding counterparts, but I don't mind. Personally I'd rather spend $25 on something that I will actually listen to rather than $15 on a book that I will never get around to reading. Reading means carving out time to give a book my full attention, whereas listening to an audiobook can be done in the background while I'm simultaneously working on something else. Ah, multitasking! I don't buy novels, I'm more of a nonfiction guy. Here's a few of my favorite audiobooks (in alphabetical order):

18 Jan

Posted at 00:00h in Illustration

Some freelance projects have tight deadlines. Others move at a slower pace. Way back in Spring of 2005 I was contacted by a publisher to illustrate a series of children's books designed to help kids understand various Christian concepts. Since there was no real rush our understanding was that I could set it aside to work on other more urgent projects...

17 Jan

Posted at 06:33h in Uncategorized

Here's a neat site I stumbled upon recently. Illustrator Dani Jones has compiled a list of fifty nifty Illustration links. I've only briefly visited a few of the links so far, but it looks like a good list with lots of informative and/or inspiring stuff dealing with various aspects of illustration. I'm looking forward to browsing more of the links...

16 Jan

Posted at 16:33h in Uncategorized

On top of a busy week for deadlines I'm having some major issues with my computer. Among other things I've got to re-install my operating system and try to recover over 100GB of deleted files. It's not pretty. I spent most of the afternoon under a desk in the corner of my studio curled up in the fetal position while...

15 Jan

Posted at 00:00h in Art & Business

I'm under the gun with some projects, so no time to write a blog post. But don't go away empty handed! Here's three blogs loaded with great info on freelancing: Freelance Switch Freelance Folder Wake Up Later In some cases their content is geared towards other types of freelancing besides illustration (i.e. freelance writing, freelance web design, etc.) but much if it can still...