Spotty Dog

This is supposed to be an animation but I am not sure if it is going to work...

Have you seen a dentist recently?

This is done in Artrage and the pearls added in CorelPaint.

It's raining again but the kiwi plant has sprouted three leaves!

Under the weather.

This is done in "Artrage" using oil paints, palette knife and eraser. I am still surprised at the people that pop out the Wacom tablet.

The beach was deserted this morning and the sea the colour of pea soup but the wind has picked up again.

My guitar teacher said yesterday that in next week's class he is going to pretend it is an exam situation and I have to play "Canzone d'Amore" (Maria Linnemann) all the way through faultlessly. Oh ha, ha, good luck.

Artrage

Whoooo Hoooo! I worked out how to install "Artrage" and it's a lot of fun. Paint, airbrush, palette knife, felt pens, crayons, pencils, textures, tracing...need I say more? Here's a link to a free download demo version. It doesn't have all the whistles and bells but it had enough to convince me to buy it and it's an incredible twenty dollars, twelve pounds, whatever.

http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html

The wind is still blowing, no comment.

Twins

Gently and Darkly Dead in their own world. I am playing around in Corel Photo-Paint and I didn't mean to make the cartoon squint. I was trying to resize it!

The wind is still relentless even Arthur, the dog, refuses to go outside. If the tomato plants survive this they will survive anything.

Nicolau

I've just discovered "Artrage2" which is actually great fun to use. I tried out their tracing tool and drew this on top of an old photo of an accordian player in a local fiesta. This tool would be very handy for drawing buildings and perspective in general. In fact, I liked the demo so much I have just ordered a full version. It's incredibly reasonably priced.

San Josep this weekend so I will avoid the beach. The wind is still roaring here so cycling is off the menu.

My teacher gave me a new piece of music for the guitar. It is truely horrible to my ears but good exercise for the left hand.

Virtual Reality Problem

This is Rodger who has been chatting online with "SuzyKute, female in her twenties, slim, blond,extrovert". Unfortunately she is a terrible liar about absolutely everything and so I drew Rodger just as she walked into the bar for their first date in real life.

The Wind is Driving me Mad.

And it howls and howls and howls. The wind is never going to stop.

I overheard some irate english campers a few days ago. They were complaining to each other about the intolerable noise level of the building site behind their enormous camper vans and I realised I don't hear the screeching of the cranes here anynore. Screech, clunk, screech, clunk. But I do hear that incredibly annoying sound of trucks reversing in and out of the endless building areas. The Spanish coast is rapidly filling up. The local council just sold a plot of land to developers for five million euros which means the local builders are furious because they can't compete with the giant firms that build two hundred houses at a time. A lot of these houses are being constructed next to a very elite golf course but they don't seem to have worked out that if someone up there has bought a house because they want to play golf than they are probably going to find two thousand other golfers in the line before them. There are way too many houses for the size of the course.

Seaside Season.

This is the official start of the seaside season which means that all the restaurant and bar owners have come back from their vacations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It also brings many men people from hotter climes who want to sell you a fishing rod, baseball cap, sunglasses or African jewellry, so it's impossible to walk along the main street for more than five yards before you are invited to make a purchase.

So the beach, which has been more or less deserted all winter, will now start filling up. But it's a great place to people watch and get ideas for new characters. Guitar class today. Will I actually manage to not make a hodge podge of it?