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pencilbrush

Ahhh I hate to be sick!

There is nothing more that I hate more than being sick!. On Sunday (20.09.09) I was at the north of Israel, doing a BBQ with family and their friends and Finally after two months of being home, I started work again, on Monday (21.09.09). On the very next day after my first work day, I was confound to the bed with a very strong headache, throat pain, dizziness and slow muscle responses (anyone said.. Flu?), but I was more powerful in my mind, I took my dog out for a 20+ min walk (walking like a Zombie), than decided to go to work!

On the bus I tried to stay away from people (I didn't thought I was sick, just maybe headache or something)... at work, it took me 2 hours to realize i'm half dead :D and I went straight home (Bus! errrr).. when I returned home (still feeling all those sickness symptoms) the Sun was out and it was warm, so I though I may at least do another quick dog walk and get some Sun energy. In the mail box, a surprise was waiting for me, the long-short awaited pendants I ordered, yay! (I ordered 4, for me,dad and 2 friends).

Later that day, I was confound to bed until my mom arrived and measured my body temperature, which resulted in 39c degrees.. eek! thats about 2 degrees above the normal.. not good not good! took some pills, and for the past 2-3 days I lived on water, soup and small food, including my Manuka Honey (UMF 20+).

it took me around 3 days to reduce the illness to around 90%, now all that remains are some coughs and bit 'green stuff' from the nose :)

Sorry, no new paint this time,
However, for my Birthday, my mom's ant bought me acrylic colors so I could practice them (being blind colored I hate playing with real colors, I do prefer digital painting though :) )

cya, soon.

Can't Paint so I code :)

Since my operation (which took at the 26th of April) I'm still can't sit, it's been a month already and I've become literally a couch! This doesn't help when you want to draw, since I lay down all day, the only thing I can do is sit in front of my laptop and do what I also do best, which is programming.

This time I'm not programing for the x86 (Intel) based PCs, I took on me to study the newest operating system: Android by Google.

Having installed the programming workspace and the integrated development environment (IDE) called Eclipse and Google's Android's SDK (Software Development Kit) I was able to configure the system, the Emulator and create an 'Hello World' project.

After sleepless nights, sunny days (I had times where I didn't go out of home for a week or two) I managed to learn the basic ideas of how stuff work and code a background running music player that updates the screen and send notifications back to the user on an interval of time:



I will keep develop this app for fun and learn more about how Android works (Mainly graphics). I must say that it is an impressive looking operating system that allows you to do so many and integrate your code with others apps (also the fact that it is open source and mult-task makes it cool)

As for the phones that runs the Android:
1. T-Mobile G1 - can be modified the heck out of it!
2. HTC Magic - can be modified the heck out of it!
3. Samsung Galaxy - I guess it can be modified, I don't know
4. HTC Hero - Closed sourced project (but u can probably still can mod it to other androids)

The phones as you buy them will not come as ROOT permissions so you could not install anything on them unless you know how to go down a firmware with a ROOT users and than update on newer version while still keeping the ROOT permissions.

It's funny, Google makes an open sources tree branch of their Android OS (as for now, it is called 'Cupcake') but yet u can download it, mod it, compile it and install it on your own phone just like any other Linux systems (which is what Android based on, Linux kernel 2.6.x)

I don't know when I will own an Android phone, maybe I will try get the HTC Hero and develop for it (while my emulator is helpful, it is slow as hell - and on my laptop it ain't pretty!)

Until I can paint and draw again, I will play with android more and more.

Another creation of mine

2 weeks ago I finished a piece of art that was commissioned by someone who saw my online art gallery and sent me a message to draw him.
My art is usually consists of drawing the beautiful female figure and less of the male figure, just because I love the softness of curves and slick lines. Overall I love women :) that sums it up pretty much!

So I gave the commission a little of though, but I decided to do it anyway, just for the experience and having at least one male art to begin with.

The actual process took sometime, since, from the beginning to the end of the draw, I've been busy with life, work..etc or just had down times and no mood to draw at all. It happens to everyone, and it's hard to stay focus and motivated all the time, when the project that you work on is sometime insignificance at some points. So, every now and than I used to find my self draw, and hour, two and sometimes half an hour.

So, it has been around 2-3 months since I started the project, until one day I decided to finish the this draw once and for all! I sharpened my pencil, and hit the paper.

for those who want to know how I draw and what is the process/tools that I'm using, so here it is:

Tools:
- Convert/Print the colored image in gray-scale version (it's easier to me since I'm colored bind to see how the shading is done when it's like that)
- regular A4 paper
- regular B2 pencil
- regular eraser (Though I also posses those sticky erasers that looks like gum)

Process:
now having my gray-scale version of the image that I wish to draw/mimic/copy, I always begin with the tip of nose. Now, usually artists measure and plan their art on the paper that they draw on, I usually don't, not that I think I got confidence at the way I draw, it just that I love to draw as it is, without knowing what will come up in the end, I don't like it always to be 100% the same, on the same method, I could just "print" the image and trace it.
from the nose, I build the nostrils and create the shadows around it, than the nose it self, eyes, eye-brows, lips, cheeks, ears, hair, face, body.

The shadowing process is the most time consuming on my part, shadow/light pass consists of and endless net strokes. vertical, horizontal and diagonal strokes with different weights.

The hardest part of a drawing, is drawing it correctly with proportions, correct element positions, the right pose, shading and than details.

In this art, I had few problems when I finished it (I saw them in the middle of the draw, but continued with it anyway), and my problems were: position and details.
I had a trick up my sleeve though! When finished my art, I photographed it (since I don't own a scanner) and fixed the light/contrast in Photoshop.
My trick, was using a Photoshop tools called: "Cloning" tool, the "Move" tool and the "Scale" tool.

basically I put the original image in a layer, and my "imperfect" image over it with a 40%-60% (changeable) opacity and than started to move/clone and scale parts of my art to match the right positions of the original image. Note that I also fixed digitally some details as well.

I didn't made it perfect, as still its my art, together I blended it to make a real cool 90% art 10% digital fix, that you can see below:



I hope you like it, it was a fun project to do, as you can see from the image, my art is on top of the real image, together it creates a unique image.

- Shany.

My latest creation

Hey all,
As a blind color, you'll have to understand the hardship of painting an image that you have draw. A lot of artists who can see colors don't understand how is it to be a color blind and the task we do in order to find the perfect color, weather we have to ask people or just guessing and color picking (if we are doing digital art).

None the less, I must say that as a digital artist, the process of painting on a digital paint software is much easier since the process of finding the color we need is ultra fast, where in real life, mixing the colors and finding the correct color value can be a very tedious thing to do.

Some tricks as labeling and writing down the color mixes might do the job for the long run and decrease time consume in a f 1/4, but still it is very hard for us.

I found out that painting digitally is the only efficient way for us if we want to keep up the paint process undergoing.

In my creation below, there are some technical facial structure problems (which somehow are aligned up so it looks pretty neat and I like it that way), and color problems, especially for the greens (Which I cannot see unfortunately, but even though people are pointing it out for me, I rather keep it like that, because in the end.. its mine, and even though its not perfect, it is for me, in a blind colorish way.)

Here is my latest digital art:

I'm gonna begin again soon

This time I'm going to draw again after a period of off time from the pencil and paper. Though drawing is easy, I need a lot of time and you know how it is in the real world. So, time to draw again!.