THE BLOG HAS MOVED

Nothing to see here from now on. Blog is now on my website at http://rowenaaitken.com/

Alchemy

Having a bit of photoshop overload so switching to a new prog for some idea gen.

Alchemy

I used it a few years ago and thought it was "cool" but didn't feel I could use it for what I wanted to create. Just messing around with it and very quickly came up with some nice things (not useful to what i'm doing but interesting).

Also, remember to save as a jpg or pdf. Just saved one as a svg(?) and it will not open in anything. I am a dufus.

Books for sale

Right guys, got a load of art and game art books for sale. Difference being that ideally you can come and pick them up or I can post them to you but obv at your cost. The reason i'm not ebaying these is cause books cost a bloody fortune to post and with most sites offering free delivery, cost of book + postage prob = or more than the cost of getting it new. So anyhoo, below are a list of the books i've acquired from the days when I wanted to get into mobile phone games, being at uni and blah blah.

Make me an offer. The Game Art: Creation, Direction and Careers is currently missing the CD. I MIGHT have it somewhere but lets call it missing for now. If I find it, i'll edit my rambles.

I'm based in Edinburgh and I take paypal. If you would like to email me about any of these my address is rowena.aitken@gmail.com

meh skull

Having an off day. Can't quite get my eye in so decided to do a bit of practice from a model skull I currently have balanced on a pint glass.

It's meh but it's ok, it's just a practice.

~1hr

Video here

kneeling knight ref page

For you to look at while I livestream.

www.livestream.com/rowena

BkM update

bit of lighting yada yada, stuff, pff...

sketchover for Charco

Ciaran Lucas' piece over on cghub, which I would link you to if cghub wasn't down AGAIN.

BM WIP

quick wip post

This is good, but also bad

Right, come to a stinking realisation. The next piece I am very proud of but it has also taught me an important lesson.

I loved working on this and I think it's a great image HOWEVER I spent too long on it.

See the problem with working digitally is the ability to zoom in, and while it is good practice not to zoom in past 100% which I rarely do these days working @100% on a 1/4 page illo is a complete and utter waste of time. Now when working @100% I do keep a window @ print size of the same piece so I can track progress but sometimes you get sucked in to the little folds and creases. Half an hour passes then you glance at the print size piece and lo you can barely make out that bit of spit and polish on Crumbly's face.

So what am I going to try and do this week? That's right work on my pieces on screen at print size ONLY.

So attached is the finished image for Frog God Games for Hex3, a comparison between 100% and print size (for ref my screen res is 1920x1200 but i've cut the toolbar off at the bottom) and the line work just cause I liked it.

In a way i'm a little bit pissed off but then if I learn from it then that makes this piece very valuable. Even if I deleted that piece right now the knowledge would have been gained (although payment would not find it's lovely way into my bank account).

Dr Sketchy's V-tines Spesh pt 2

Since blogspot only lets you upload 5, here's the rest.

Dr Sketchy's V-tines Spesh

Just back from Dr Sketchy's, ashamed to say it's my first life drawing sesh since graduating in 2006. Bad bad bad. But I did love it and will def go again (the novelty of drinking beer whilst drawing will not wear off soon ;))

Not the most awesome work but i'm going to these classes to improve so fingers crossed it works :)

CS5 and Wacom woes

Ok internets I need your help. Serious issues are afoot. Going to write this as simply as I can, hopefully without swearing.

Photoshop CS5 is not recognising pen sensitivity UNLESS I do the following.

1. Uninstall the drivers
2. Restart pc
3. unplug wacom
4. reinstall driver
5. plug wacom back in
6. start photoshop

now this would be fine and dandy only that IF for whatever reason I need to/accidentally close photoshop or it crashes but as soon as I open photoshop again, no sensitivity which is a little bit annoying since I own a Wacom Intuos4 XL and I use pressure ALL THE TIME!

I have also tried the following:

1. a full format
2. reinstalling photoshop cs5
3. installing photoshop cs4 (same grief)
4. older drivers
5. starting/stopping services
6. swearing at it
7. unplugging wacom
8. different usb ports
9. updating motherboard chipset

Which is more troublesome is A has the same version of Windows 7 (ie 64bit) on his laptop, with photoshop, with the same drivers. NO PROBLEMS.

Which leads me to think is it my pc hardware? Is it the motherboard?

This is driving me insane, I need to paint. How can it be so tempremental? Just... why? I can't spend my life rebooting my pc every time I want to open photoshop.

I live with a software engineer and A who has been building pcs since he was in nappies and they don't have a clue.

Please... someone... help?

Doodles, days off and ultrasounds

Hey folks,

Those of you who may know already I have been suffering from abdominal pain for the last month. Today I had a scan which eliminated gallstones or liver problems; everything fine apparently. So it's more or less a mystery for now :/

Yesterday and today I took some time off, was feeling mildly burnt out and cranky. Felt good to do nothing, so ofc I doodled. Little bit of practice R&R really, no pressure. Most of my colour work lately has started off greyscale then coloured over that to get the values right so decided to challenge myself and go straight in with colour. Turned out pretty well (and yes the self portrait is supposed to look cranky!)

Also in freelancery i've been working on various fun things and one, Dark Harvest: Legend of Frankenstein, was announced where I found out my work is being printed alongside the superfab Scott Purdy! http://www.scottpurdy.net/contact/Contact.html He's a bit good and a cool friend to have :) (which reminds me Scott, need to send you an email ;))

So things I suppose are good :) Changed my hair up a bit and lightened the ends ombre style just for giggles, it's almost Christmas so I can spend time with the folks and see the inlaws for Hogmanay in the highlands, with cocktails as per :) Andrew and I have decided not to get each other presents and instead save some cash for when we get a kitten for it's vets bits and bobs and general cat paraphernalia.

So if I don't post before then have a rocking Christmas and Hogmanay :D

Love Me xxx

I'm ALIVE... kinda

Yes, long time no post. Lot has changed; now full-time freelance and struck with gallstones WOO! Talk about making life easy?

Day 13 of feeling like crap and resigned myself to the fact i'm gonna feel like shit regardless of what I do so i'm knuckling down. So far this afternoon i've got a commission finished and a folio piece done which I started AGES ago. But it's done now. All in all a productive afternoon apart from stabbing pains and having to make coffee by boiling a pan of water since the kettle assploded the other day. This causes fun when one remembers an hour later that there was a pan on the stove full of useful hot water.

So yes, also nuked the folio and doing new stuff for that inbetween work and gallbladder attacks.


So, enjoy.

horse sketches

Following a forum topic on linkedin and a challenge on cghub I thought i'd do a bit of practice. Here's some very loose horse sketches taken from ref photos. Need to study the anatomy in more depth then move onto some sketches from imagination. Dissapointed with some of them but we learn from our mistakes, one mistake being i'm not sketching nearly enough.

Rowena teh zombie WIP5

Well, gonna call it a night. 1:43am and i'm up for fun rather than work. If I don't go to bed now i'll never get up and tomorrow is a busy day :)

Pleased with the results, that Hepworth character knows what he's talking about!

Rowena teh zombie WIP4

Decided that all my grey work IS TOO DAMN DARK! So, took some advice from Andy Hepworth and working between 10-60% grey then darkening/highlighting at the end. Happy so far :)

Rowena teh zombie WIP3

That's all for now, need to do work :)

Rowena teh zombie WIP2

Rowena teh zombie WIP1