So Much to Learn

But so much fun!

The reference to Dad living in the iPad isn’t that far-fetched - I’m learning to use the programs he had on his iPad… very strange to see his learning curve in there right alongside mine…

Back in the day when the tools were straightforward - pencil and paper, maybe some charcoal before one eventually graduated to pen and ink and beyond that to watercolour or oil paint, one did need space and a bunch of stuff, but nothing needed to be plugged in and charged up…

At first, I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time also learning digital tools - but oh boy, have I ever gone to the dark side!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve become obsessed with Procreate and all the cool things you can do with an iPad and an Apple pencil. No, I haven’t miraculously learned to draw, but I have been spending more time than I would have expected working my way through some excellent tutorials and then experimenting like a mad woman.

Mucking around with digital tools

As if learning about layers and brushes and blending and whatevering (BardotBrush.com has been super helpful as I try to wrap my head around all this newfangled fun-ness), I discovered animation!!

Not much to show for my efforts yet, but managed to do this:

and then this:

Dad had a famous eye-roll, which he produced whenever something struck him as being worthy of an eye-roll… And so, I leave you with this:

And, yes - I am also picking away at the more serious aspects of moving this graphic memoir along - I’ve been outlining and doing thumbnails and playing around with layouts and ideas for how to integrate bits of Dad art into the project… It’s a long, slow process not helped at all by needing to learn all the drawing stuff, but I have to say the process is a lot of fun. Squeezing it in around the rest of my work/life isn’t easy, but given the way I can lose myself and relax into this work in a way that doesn’t happen with some of the other things I do in a day, well, that makes the effort worthwhile.