This weekend has been a restocking weekend for me. Once again, my brown colored pencils are nubs and I'm out of pink erasers. I haven't been out of those in years but I found out a few days that they have all been ground to little chunks and aren't really useful anymore. Luckily, those are all fairly cheap to restock though I spend just as much in gas going into town for them. I should have everything restocked by next week for when I get back to art again.

I sold about half of my chickens and the ducks my sister got me this weekend. No one at the house besides me and my dad (and he's been very lethargic lately) takes care of them and it's becoming a real hassle. My sister a while back ago wanted to get ducks but she lives in a little town with a little yard so she got ducks and dropped them off permanently here. The feed bill will be a lot lower now and the remaining chickens should be a lot easier to take care of now.

Art-wise, I'm planning this week to attempt to tackle a BIG problem that's been bugging me for years. I make mistakes a lot when drawing and I have to erase, redraw, erase, redraw again and so on and so forth. This ends up eating hours of my time and causes me oodles of frustration. I enjoy drawing but erasing and redrawing can quickly turn a fun art project into an irritating chore that's not good for the art itself either! The biggest cause of this for me is drawing backgrounds, or more specifically, integrating characters and backgrounds together.

As you probably know, my art is almost entirely traditional, done with pencils and ink with some digital re-saturation so the colors look more accurate to what is on the paper. Like digital artists, I've been thinking on using "layers" to ease the burdens on me since traditionally, I only work with the equivalent of one layer only. I've got two possible options on what I can do:

Option 1: Traditional Layering
Though I've had it for years and have almost never used it, I do have a glass table art desk stored away. I'm just so used to working at kitchen tables or large clip boards that I haven't really worked much with it. I could use it and combine it with a light (which I already have done in the past) and make the desk a giant light box. From there, I can then use multiple sheets of paper as "layers". On one I'll draw the background, put another piece of paper over it and then draw the characters on it, and then a third piece of paper over the both of them and trace over my work with the aid of the light from below and create a finished, composite image. This hopefully would save me a ton of time erasing and redrawing trying to integrate characters and background together. This way is entirely traditional and can be done without a computer at the expense of more paper. I don't know how well the light will shine through the paper yet so that could be a possible snag.

Option 2: Digital Layering
This option I've experimented with twice in the past (the second "experiment" isn't done yet but will probably be done in a few days) and so far seems to work out fairly well though it could use some fine tuning. For example, if I'm working on an art piece that has multiple characters, some overlapping to some degree, a background, and anything else that makes it complex, I would draw them out separately like in Option 1. What is different is using a computer from this point to stitch everything together. I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to art programs but my friend Professor Awesome is and helps me out with Gimp when it comes to Demordicai Diamonds pages. Using Gimp, he can "cut" out characters that I have drawn and then put them all together saving me a lot of frustration. After that, he can print out the composite which I will ink and color from there.

Which option do you think would be best for me to focus on? Each one I think has the propensity to cut down on frustration, time wasted and allow me to make more art in a smaller period of time.

This week, I got one more commission to finish and I got plans for some other art pieces. Hopefully I'll be able to get to doing some more Demordicai Diamonds pages this week too. I didn't manage to get to doing any last week so I'll be trying to make up for it this week if I can.